The Woman in Valencia by Annie Perreault (book recommendations website txt) 📗

was twelve the last time she saw me, flat as a board, nothing but tiny buds, no hips, hair down to my bum, I was chubby and carefree, always smiling, people said I looked like my father, that I had his eyes but my grandmother’s forehead, now, people who knew my mother sometimes tell me, voices cracking with emotion: It’s crazy how much you remind me of her, you’ve got the same smile, there’s an aid station coming up, gels and fruit, don’t want to miss it…

THREATS AND EMERGENCIES

Claire Halde walks toward the office of unclaimed bodies, large mauve purse hooked over her elbow, cutting off the circulation in the same spot where you might cradle the head of a sleeping baby.

Since arriving, when walking around Valencia, Claire has made a point of noticing the people she passes on the street, the expressions on their faces, the way they walk, their hugs and kisses, and their tone of voice as they exchange greetings or information, or even mundane questions about the direction of a bus, the location of a store, the time. People don’t ask for the time nearly as much as they used to.

It seems to her that the people here are warmer. That much is obvious from the familiar and intimate ways they interact with each other: a hand on a shoulder, an arm around a waist, a genuine compliment between neighbours, a face cupped gently between two hands, a certain way of kissing, greeting each other, folding an acquaintance into a warm embrace on the sidewalk. She also thinks they talk to each other with more affection, more spontaneity. She’s conscious of her North American coldness, her uptight mannerisms, her lukewarm kisses, given out only when she has no other choice, in her own city or anywhere else in the world: head tilted to the right, cheek angled to the left, by way of hello, goodbye, nice to meet you.

She watches the people seated around a table at a café near the courthouse, the way they drink, eat, smoke, look at each other, the hand gestures and facial expressions that accompany their conversations, silences, peals of laughter. More than ever, she feels like an aloof foreigner as she takes the concrete steps two at a time in front of the Institute of Legal Medicine, on Carrer de Ricardo Muñoz Suay. The purse sways back and forth, a mauve metronome that skips a beat when Claire stops short on the landing. She takes a second to close her eyes and release her jaw, clenched too tight as always. She lets out a sigh, pushes open the door.

UNFORESEEN EVENTS

Claire had played out the scene dozens of times in her mind, running the sentences over in her head, getting the Spanish exactly right. She’d read up on the subject. Unclaimed bodies were stored for a time in the morgue at Ciudad Hospitalaria Dr. Enrique Tejera, in cold rooms kept at three degrees Celsius, behind sealed doors opened only by court order. Next of kin had forty-eight hours to come forward and identify the deceased. Failing that, the cadavers were sent to the Faculty of Medicine’s anatomy department, for the students to dissect. Afterwards, the remains were buried in the public cemetery.

For each unclaimed body, fingerprints were taken, the items found with the deceased were photographed and a sample was collected for possible DNA testing.

Claire’s voice quavers as she pronounces the date of August 9, 2009, to the clerk behind the counter. A woman, found dead on Avinguda de las Cortes Valencianas, she specifies, clutching the oversized purse against her hip. The employee shakes her head categorically.

“We have no women on file for that date.”

Claire asks her to check the records for the few days before, the few days after. There’s no match for the woman in Valencia.

“You can always try your luck at the registry office,” the clerk smiles. “You’ll have to fill out the appropriate forms, of course.”

“Of course,” Claire murmurs.

She exits the office in reverse, shoving the door open with her back, and bounds down the stairs even faster than she ran up them. She crosses the paved square in front of the courthouse at a clip, heels clicking on the asphalt like horseshoes or heavy wooden clogs. She speeds up in front of the police station, crosses Avinguda del Profesor López Piñero without a second thought for the light that’s just turned red. Purse still dangling from her arm, she runs, rushing onto Avinguda Autopista del Saler, bearing down on the Umbracle and its palm trees. She hurries into the covered garden without slowing, hurdling rosemary and lavender bushes, trampling fragrant thyme plants, slaloming around bougainvillea and dwarf orange trees. She elbows her way through tourists clustered next to the ponds, bolts across the Río like a spooked horse, to emerge crazed on Passeig de l’Albereda, which she crosses panting for breath. She forges ahead randomly, turning left two streets later, and sprints ahead in a straight line until she’s gasping for air, barely making it to the next intersection, where she catches a glimpse of her reflection, scarlet and dishevelled, in the window of a starkly decorated hair salon on the corner of Carrer de Trafalgar. Then, without slowing her pace, lungs screaming for air, she barges through the door as one would send out a pawn: rashly, hoping for the best.

“A cut and colour. Do you have room? Like, right now?”

KILOMETRE 31

… from here on in, it’s all an unknown quantity, I’ve never run more than thirty kilometres before, it’s okay, I know things could go sideways, starting now, it’s a head game, too…

… my mother, after Valencia, was obsessed with death, she hid her distress well, her friends all told me stories about what an outgoing and funny and smiling person my mother was, about how tender and loving and happy she was