I Am Not a Monster Read online

  Sub-Inspector Javier Nori García had hurried in late. His cheeks looked flushed from exertion. Surely he’d come from one of his daily jogs. Ana figured his mind had been wandering and he’d lost track of time. That was how he was.

  “If you say the same thing enough times, Nori, even Shazam can recognize it,” Ana said by way of greeting. “When you get pulled away from your computers to go running, Azotón, everything seems strange to you.”

  That nickname—el Azotón, the Scourge—had been conferred on Sub-Inspector Javier Nori by his colleagues at his first post, a precinct in Zone II of Barcelona, just off Las Ramblas. He’d been given the nickname because he was the whip scourging the motorcycle-mounted thieves of the narrow streets that traversed the historic part of the city. He set up the first digital registry of two-wheeled crime in Barcelona and always carried it with him, in one of the first PDAs on the market, which in the mid-nineties cost almost as much as a computer does today.

  “I swear, Ana, if anyone in this unit ever hears you call me that, my vengeance will know no bounds.” Nori swept his finger across his neck, implying that he’d cut off his boss’s head.

  “Azotón? That’s what they called you?” Charo laughed, almost dropping her thermos.

  “And you—keep quiet, or I’ll find you a nickname soon. Another of my pleasures. Man does not live by jogging and computers alone. Señorita Castillos, let’s say.”

  Ana had rescued Charo from the drudgery of guarding embassies and consulates, or “castles” as they were called within the police department. She had been rotting away on guard duty, protecting foreign diplomats and their families in long and boring watches out on the street, observing the official residents and the whole ecosystem of luxury within which they moved. She and Ana had met at a conference about security, and Ana saw right away that the young woman had a brain, ambition, and a work ethic, all of which she was now demonstrating in the SAF. Within a few months, she’d become one of the best investigators of the unit under Ana’s command. She had an astounding ability to connect one idea with another.

  “Nori, do you miss your jihadis?” Charo responded. “I don’t miss my diplomats. Not in the slightest. And their children, even less. They kept us out at night too often and too late.”

  “All right, pipe down, everyone,” the commander said from the other side of the room. “This is important. I just came from a meeting with the top brass.”

  While her colleagues took seats where they could find them, Ana closed her eyes and smelled the fear that had adhered to the walls over the years. That reminded her of where she was and what her job implied. She needed to get back to basics, to the origins of her vocation, to what really mattered, because sometimes she lost track of it among the bullshit of routine.

  “Okay, shut up, everybody,” Bermúdez repeated. “You’re going to hear about some changes that are coming down the pike.”

  That produced a wave of silence. Changes. That magic word was a fusillade that made everyone open their ears and shut their mouths in the hope that no such bullet would hit them. Some even, instinctively, leaned slightly to the left or the right so the missile would whiz by without grazing them. But the commander had no time to fire. Cell phones went off, several at the same time, which in a police station always means bad news.

  Every time.

  3

  INÉS

  “In my case, the number is thirty,” the girl grasping the purse began to explain with surprising self-possession. “Thirty seconds separated my life now from the one I used to have and will never have again. Sometimes those thirty seconds are just enough time for a glance. You’re staring at a spiderweb as if someone hit the pause button on your brain, or you’re checking out a pair of boots in a shop window to decide whether you deserve them or not, and you don’t realize that he’s not there anymore. Then you bang your head against the wall, because you want to smash your skull against the stucco and scatter your brains, leave everything covered in blood. Because you didn’t notice. How could you not? How could you not notice that absence? How could you not notice that he got away from you, he slid away, he’s gone, you don’t have him with you anymore? Your son’s hand is warm, soft, small. Your son’s hand is wrapped around your own, holding on to the only thing in the world he knows is safe—his mother’s love. And suddenly he’s not there, and you haven’t noticed.”

  As she went on telling her story, the girl gripping the purse seemed to disconnect from the world, unplug herself from reality. She didn’t look at anything, as if her eyes turned inward, toward her soul, toward the endless loop of despair she was living, searched for all her pain so as not to have to chew on it ever again, so as to vomit it up once and for all, so it would never come back. Please.

  “But that wasn’t how it went,” she said. “If it did, I’d at least have an excuse. A moment of inattention, like so many parents have every day. Who hasn’t gone through a scare like that with her kids? Losing sight of them, not knowing where they are, feeling your heart jump in your throat, having the world go blank. Until they show up. Because they always do. Well, almost always. But in my case, it was worse. It wasn’t a moment of inattention. I was the one who let him go. I purposely let go of Bruno’s hand so he would die. I killed him.”

  How was she holding back the tears? I couldn’t stop looking at her. Her body was like a magnet. Her voice pierced my soul. I tried to remember every possible detail. How her jaw went slack, as if she were about to faint, and left a grotesque grimace on her face. How her ankles were so strangely twisted, her feet turned outward. How the five liters of blood in her body flowed into her hands, converted them to claws, holding on to this world.

  “If only I’d left my mother’s house thirty seconds earlier, none of it would have happened. A Wednesday like this, right now, I’d be fighting with Bruno because he’d left the whole kitchen covered in baby food from his snack. Because he was independent almost from the minute he was born, he wouldn’t have tolerated my trying to feed him his purees. At only three months, he already held his bottle by himself. I remember the motion of his little hand trying to grab it, beating at the air, reaching for the bottle. He was . . .”

  Captivated, hooked on her story like junkies on heroin, the addicts gawked at her. They closed their eyes out of courtesy, but also to better enjoy it, concentrating only on the motion of the drug through their veins. I did, too, in all honesty. Maybe that’s why these kinds of meetings are always well attended, because we all need our daily fix of other people’s misfortunes. We’re addicted to the pain of others. Was I that way too? Did I need other people’s pain to feel good myself? Or to do my work? One of my cell phones went off in my bag. I ignored it.

  “Lucía is very brave to tell her story here,” the session leader said, I suppose to make us think he was serving some purpose there. “You’ve all suffered a lot, every one of you. But with each pain, yours and that of others, you’re learning how to heal yourselves.”

  The pain of others helps us heal ourselves? Maybe this guy was more of jerk than I’d first thought. Or maybe he was right. Maybe the misfortunes of others do make us think our own shitty life isn’t so bad. Anyway, pity always goes well with arrogance.

  “I was at my mother’s house,” the girl went on. “She had to pick up the kids from school because I’d gotten a job for three hours a day cleaning an office, and they didn’t let us come in until everybody left, at three p.m., so we wouldn’t bother them. You know, cleaners don’t have enough class to mix in certain environments. This was during the time we were teaching Lucas, my middle one, to pee and poop in the toilet, and we always tried to take off his diaper inside so he’d get used to asking to pee. ‘It’s okay if he pees on the floor or wets his pants,’ my mother said. ‘He’s at home, we’ll change him, and that’s that, because that way he’ll notice when it happens and learn to control himself.’ And that’s what we were doing, with Lucas learning to go to the bathroom. So I had to pay attention to him when, with his
coat and cap already on and the four of us about to leave Grandma’s house for our own, he said, ‘Peepee, Mama, peepee.’ ‘But you’ve got a diaper,’ I said. ‘We just put it on you, so you can go ahead.’ ‘Nooo, Mama, that’s icky,’ he screamed. So what are you supposed to say? You have to wait. I gave my mother the baby and told Edu to watch both of them, Grandma and Bruno (and he already felt so much older and more responsible that he put on his proudest face), and I took Lucas’s coat off. How many times have I thought of that moment, the pee that turned out to be the difference between life and death? I confess I’ve often been tempted to blame Lucas for his brother’s death. After all, if he’d only peed in his diaper, Bruno would be alive now. For a while I couldn’t look at Lucas’s face, and I started to hate him. I needed to hate him so I wouldn’t kill myself—so I wouldn’t kill everyone.”

  The iPhone went off again in my purse. I wasn’t going to answer, not at this most touching moment of the story. But exactly three seconds after it stopped, the other cell started to vibrate, my personal one. Not many people had that number, so whoever was calling knew me well, or at least I’d trusted them enough to give them my private number. Maybe it was something important. The number on the screen was a long one, a switchboard. I didn’t recognize it. Trying to make as little noise as possible and crouching down to be less visible, I discreetly left the room.

  “Where is that idiot now?” On the other end of the line, Manuel was seething, having gotten more and more pissed off with every ring without realizing that I’d picked up and was listening. He was a professional bumbler. “I called both her cell phones. What the fuck is she doing?”

  “Manuel?” I said, neither loudly nor softly, pretending I hadn’t heard his outburst.

  “Is something wrong with your voice? You sound weird.”

  “No, no,” I said, stepping outside the building to find an isolated place. “I was quiet for a long time, and my throat must have gone dry.”

  “You? Quiet for a long time? Tell me who performed that miracle, and I’ll build them an altar.”

  “You ought to like it when I’m quiet. It means I’m stirring up less trouble for you, boss. Especially at certain times,” I said, restraining my desire to hang up on him. “What’s so urgent? I’m in the middle of . . . something.”

  “I need to get in touch with that hacker you know. Right away.”

  Really? Why? Why on earth did he need to talk with him?

  “I’ll call him if you want,” I said, lying.

  I’d always given out that my acquaintance was an IT genius who lived physically cut off from the world. Someone who never answered calls and whose real identity even I didn’t know. Someone with whom you had to communicate by leaving code words on a voice mail and then waiting until he felt like answering.

  “I can call him right now and leave the code for him to call me back. But you know he answers when he feels like it. And he’ll only talk to me, because he doesn’t trust anybody.”

  “Try it, Inés, try it.”

  “What should I tell him is going on?”

  “An issue.”

  “An issue. I admire your capacity for synthesis. Do you think ‘an issue’ is a good enough reason for him to contact you?”

  “A personal issue. I can’t go into details now. But I need to get out of a situation, is what it is.”

  Well, how interesting. Things must be pretty bad for Manuel Grana to call me to solve a personal problem. My neurons began to enthusiastically applaud.

  “Okay, boss. I’ll leave the code on his voice mail and see whether he calls back.”

  I hung up, wondering what Manuel needed to hide that made him seek out the help of a computer whiz like Joan Arderiu, my friend in Barcelona, a man who could, it seemed, hack into anything, anywhere. Then I remembered where I was and why. I hurried back to the room where the therapy session was going on. I was just in time to hear the end of the story from the girl with the purse.

  “Finally, I managed to get the three of them into the car: Bruno next to me in his car seat, Edu behind me because he was the oldest and didn’t need so much watching, and Lucas behind the passenger seat so I could see him in the rearview mirror. By now it was night, and the few drops of rain were turning into a downpour. In March, the dark comes on quickly, you know? And the temperature drops, too, which is why I didn’t take off their coats when I buckled them in. I know, I know, that wasn’t right, because it’s very dangerous to buckle in the kids with their coats on, especially bulky ones like they had on that day. The belts don’t tighten around their chests the way they should, and if there’s a crash, their little bodies can lurch forward so hard the belts can cut off their heads. But it was late, and we were in a big hurry. They still needed their baths, their dinner—Bruno needed to be nursed—their pajamas, stories, and everything else that the two older ones dreamed up to prolong the time it took to get them to bed.

  “So I put them in the car and we left. From my mother’s town to where we lived was only five kilometers. The road was narrow—it had curves and no lights—but I knew it like the back of my hand. All those late nights I’d gone this route, even on foot when I was a teenager coming home after a night out. I could drive it with my eyes closed, even in the rain. To the right, fifty meters, change of grade, a little to the left, and again a little to the right. The windshield wipers weren’t doing much good, and I could hardly see anything, but no cars were coming the other way, so no headlights shone on the asphalt, and I could drive slowly down the middle of the road without concern. Suddenly the wheels stopped gripping the road. It happened subtly and smoothly, but the car lost its purchase, slid a little, and got stuck on something. It wouldn’t move. I put on the hand brake, turned on the hazard lights, and rolled down my window to see what was going on. Maybe a heap of gravel had fallen on the road and we were stuck in it. I couldn’t see anything, and the only noise was the water pouring down from the sky. I looked in the back. Edu and Lucas were asleep. Only Bruno, in the seat next to me, was still awake. He was hungry. Soon he’d start to howl, wanting to nurse. I had to hurry.”

  Lucía squirmed in her chair. Though she hadn’t lost her composure and still seemed far away, you could see how her pain was growing and her soul was showing through, like her body was getting turned inside out. I glanced around the room. Everyone was looking at the floor. They were ashamed of hearing something so intimate and painful, as if they were old village gossips indeed. But they couldn’t help it. They were hooked on the tragedy.

  “I didn’t know it, but that was the last time I was going to see Bruno. He was right there, my son, in the passenger seat, lit up by the little dome light of the Peugeot. That’s my last image of him, and I mean, goddamn, it’s a really shitty one. I can’t even see the little dimple in his chin or those long eyelashes that made everybody fall in love with him. The last time I saw him, Bruno was an orange face full of shadows, and I could only guess at the hollows of his eyes. Suddenly, something hit the car hard on the driver’s side, and we started to slide to the right. We’re going off the road, I thought. My god, we’re going off the road.”

  Now Lucía was paralyzed, holding her breath. If you don’t breathe, it hurts less. If you don’t breathe, you can squeeze the pain until it explodes, like pus from a pimple. The trick is to hold your breath a long time and just let it go little by little while you press tighter and tighter. That’s what Lucía’s body was doing, instinctively, getting ready for the intensity of pain that was about to hit her. Again.

  “I tried to open my door, but I couldn’t. The rushing water had blocked it. I lowered the window and twisted my way out. I knew where we were, on a stretch of road that crossed a dry riverbed, but somewhere upstream the clouds had let loose so much rain that it had become a river again. I kicked off my heels. They weren’t very high, but I couldn’t get anywhere with them on. When my foot touched the ground (I couldn’t tell whether it was pavement or not) I realized how strong the flow of the water was. We were
lucky the car had run aground on something, because otherwise it would have floated out of control. I had to hurry. I tried to open Edu’s door, the one behind mine, but I couldn’t get it open either. The water was blocking it too. Shit, shit, I should have unbuckled them while I was still inside. I banged on the window to wake him up. ‘Unbuckle,’ I said. ‘Unbuckle quickly, honey. We’re home, and I don’t want you to get wet.’ But he didn’t listen. My voice bounced uselessly between the rain and the glass, throwing my own desperation back in my face. I had to try the other door if I wanted to get my kids out of there. Getting around the car was a nightmare; I couldn’t see a thing, and I’d made the mistake of shutting off the engine, so we were completely in the dark. And the roar of the water was terrible—both from the sky and in the riverbed. In that kind of noise, it’s impossible to think. But maybe that was better. Don’t think, just act. Grabbing on to whatever handhold I could, even just the car body with my fingernails, I made my way around the Peugeot. When I got to the passenger side, I had a moment of calm. The car blocked the force of the water so I could get the rear door open without much trouble. Feeling my way, I unbuckled Lucas—‘Honey, come on, grab hold of Mama’—and tried not to sound hysterical while I told Edu to unbuckle himself, that it was very important, and to scoot out his brother’s door. I settled Lucas on my left hip. I breathed. ‘Edu, honey, get out. There’s water. Don’t be scared. Grab on to Mama,’ I told him. Edu was six, and he could get out of there if he held tight to the belt of my jeans. There was no other solution. The hardest thing was to get Bruno out while I held on to Lucas with my left arm and protected Edu with my body, but I managed to do that. In a delicate balance, the four of us started to move away, step by step. ‘Edu, you’re performing like a champ,’ I yelled above the sound of the storm. ‘Hold on tight, tight, tight to Mama’s belt. Very tight, honey, like on the zip line, you know? You’ll see how quickly we can get across the river.’ I don’t remember the kids saying anything. They didn’t cry. Or maybe they did. Maybe all three were bawling, or all four of us were, but I wasn’t aware of anything, because all my senses were focused on getting us out of there. I thought we were going to do it, I really thought so, until we left the protection of the car and the water smashed into us with all its force. I was about to fall over. It was up to the middle of my thigh. I was slipping. I sank. It was hitting me harder and harder, and four or five steps later, I fell. Instinctively I let go of Lucas and Bruno to try to stop the blow with my hands. Lucas managed to grab on to my sweater, and Edu, by some miracle, kept holding on to my pants, but Bruno, who was only three months old, slipped, and I lost him. I think I’ve never screamed so loud. I felt around desperately under the water with my right hand, in a panic, until I found his head, and I grabbed his hair and pulled him out. We’re not going to make it, I thought, we’re not going to make it. I tried one more step when suddenly there was no more footing under me and all four of us sank. I had hold of all of them, trying to get us out of there, trying to pull their heads from the water so they wouldn’t drown, when I realized the truth. And the truth—the damn, fucked-up, horrible truth—was that we could survive, but not all of us. All four of us could never do it. I had to choose who would live and who would die. I could have thought about a lot of things. Edu was the oldest, my first son, the one who changed my life forever. Lucas, the middle one, was the most affectionate, always giving me hugs. And Bruno, Bruno still smelled like a baby, I still wanted to eat up his chubby cheeks. For a long time, I thought all those things about my kids as I decided which one I would send to his death. But I’ve realized I projected all that back into my mind later on. In the real moment, my mind went blank, and my body decided. ‘I’m sorry, Bruno, I’m sorry,’ I told him in tears. ‘I love you, Bruno, but I’ve got to let you go. I’ve got to let you go to save your brothers. Goodbye, Bruno, goodbye. Forgive me, please. I love you.’