The Days of the Rainbow Read Free Page B

the
No
.”
    “That’s okay, Mr. Fernández.”
    “Good-bye, Bettini.”

THE DOORBELL RINGS . According to the Baroque plan, it cannot be my father because he has the key. If it were the cops, they would be coming either for me or to search Daddy’s desk. I jump up and check what he left on his table. There’s a document addressed to the minister of education, Mr. Guzmán, requesting that our school—the school where he teaches and I study—no longer be led by a military officer. It also says that the presence of that officer at the nation’s oldest school is an insult to teachers’ dignity and goes against freedom of speech. On top of the page, the manifesto reads, “We, the undersigned …,” but the only signature on it is his—Professor Santos. I wad up the document and throw it out the window.
    The doorbell rings again and I put on my coat. If they’re going to take me, I’d better go well wrapped up. I’m very sensitive to cold. During class recess I always look for the sunny walls and I shrug my shoulders as if by doing so I could accumulate heat. When at last I open the door, the person who’s there, with her finger still pressing the doorbell, is Patricia Bettini. She comes and hugs me. Then she says, “My poor dear love.”
    She asks if I have had lunch. I tell her that I hate stuffed potatoes. She goes to the kitchen and makes an omelet with oil, eggs, cheese, and tomatoes. She cuts the omelet in half. I put salt on mine and dip a piece of French bread in it. She doesn’t use any salt because she says that salt makes you gain weight. She has a lot of theories about how to lead a healthy life; she refuses to put salt or butter in her food, and she’s a great fan of Ionesco’s plays. She played the role of Ms. Smith in
The Bald Soprano
. Anyhow, everyone’s name in
The Bald Soprano
is Smith. But now, after graduating from high school, she’s going to study architecture, not drama.
    “We have to find your father,” she says.
    “But how?”
    “Asking everywhere for him.”
    “I already did what I had to do.”
    I explain to her the whole Baroque syllogism. She listens carefully and shakes her head.
    “In cases like these, good people cannot do anything, because they’re all afraid. We should try to make the others do something.”
    “The bad ones?”
    “Nobody’s one hundred percent good or completely bad.”
    “My father thinks that you have no principles and that an ethical person must have principles.”
    “I do have principles. My principle’s that I love your father and I love you.”
    “Those are not principles. Those are feelings.”
    “Okay, then, my feelings are my principles.”
    Patricia Bettini does not answer. She takes a cassette tape out of her purse and plays it in the Sony cassette player. It’s Billy Joel, and the song is “Just the Way You Are.” It’s in English:
    Don’t go changing, to try and please me
    You never let me down before
    Don’t imagine you’re too familiar
    And I don’t see you anymore
.
    I wouldn’t leave you in times of trouble
    We never could have come this far
    I took the good times, I’ll take the bad times
    I’ll take you just the way you are
.

ADRIÁN BETTINI ’ S WIFE didn’t want to turn off the headlights or move the car from the parking space reserved for members of the government until her husband came back from his appointment with the minister of the interior. That’s what she haughtily and clearly told the captain who, with excessively courteous manners, asked her to move her car. While he used his cell phone to contact Fernández’s office, she twirled her wedding ring around her index finger until the metal seemed to be burning her fingertip. When the guy in uniform was walking away, she saw Adrián coming, so she quickly turned on the engine, as if they were fleeing after robbing a bank.
    “How did it go?” she asked while driving around Italia Square and checking the rearview mirror to see whether someone was