The Woman in Valencia by Annie Perreault (best ereader for pdf and epub .TXT) 📕

lighter, wrist trembling as the blood dripped slowly from the large white dressing, which you stared at like it was the most ordinary thing in the world—a sweatband or a Band-Aid on an insect bite. You didn’t come up with the right thing to say, the right thing to do, the right way to look at her. A loving mother though you were, a considerate person whose heart was normally in the right place, at that moment, you were completely unmoved. Uncaring. You were pure ice. An indifferent witness to the stranger’s distress, watching the events unfold in an inexplicable fog.

It’s that fog that you returned to Spain to try to dispel, alone, six years after the fact. You booked a plane ticket to Barcelona, a train ticket to Valencia, and a room for three nights at the Valencia Palace Hotel.

And now, here I am in Valencia, retracing your steps.

I THREE DAYS IN VALENCIA (THE ARBITRARY COLOUR OF THE SKY)

THE WOMAN IN VALENCIA

That day, like every other day, the fish had glided back and forth overhead. With their necks craned backward and their mouths gaped open, the thousands of visitors to the Oceanogràfic aquarium had stood for an eternity watching them through the walls of a glass tunnel.

For Claire Halde and the other tourists, the memory of these wriggling fish would eventually fade. So would the mental images of the orca and dolphin shows, despite the applause they’d earned. The penguinarium and its gentoos would also be forgotten, like the names and faces of so many of the people who come and go in our lives: classmates, neighbours, teachers, colleagues, one-night stands, travel companions.

Most of the carefree schoolmates whose hands Claire had held in the schoolyard as a child, the smiles of the old ladies she’d greeted politely on the sidewalk, the voices of the many teachers who’d spent a hundred and eighty days a year screeching chalk across the blackboard, the bored co-workers she’d sat next to, pecking away at a yellowed QWERTY keyboard to pay for her tuition, and even some of the men she’d kissed hungrily in the dead of night: All will end up evaporating from her thoughts.

But Claire Halde will never forget the woman in Valencia, the strange blonde who’d approached her that afternoon by the pool at the Valencia Palace Hotel. Claire clings stubbornly to her memory—her skin, face, voice, hair, expression—even though they’d co-existed for all of ten minutes, the time it had taken to exchange five sentences, to stare at one another in silence. Claire had never introduced herself or so much as asked the woman her name. She will forever remain “the woman in Valencia,” a fleeting ghost.

*

The woman’s skin tells the story of her life, a tale spun from the tremors that run through her body in places. The story, one of profound despair, is written plainly on her forehead, in deep horizontal lines that arch down to meet the ends of her eyebrows. The anguish is inscribed in the corners of her mouth, furrows cultivated by bitterness, fine lines etched by roughness and worry. Her flesh sags in places where more comfortable circumstances make for skin that is firmer and healthier, scrupulously cleansed and moisturized daily in front of gleaming mirrors, at spotless vanities. There’s never really anything alarming to be found on the surfaces disinfected and polished by foreign cleaning ladies, who pick up little pots of cream and shaving accessories without resentment. These bright, spacious bathrooms are worlds away from the sinks that reek of mildew, caulking eroded by colonies of black pinpricks that look like gnats, surrounded by cracked, peeling tiles splattered with blood, semen, urine and shit that no one ever bothers to clean. For the woman from the pool, in Valencia, sinks like these are par for the course: rust-streaked porcelain, bright orange stains blossoming from wet razors left lying on the counter. All that filth turns her stomach as she bends over to splash water on her face, pick her teeth with a fingernail, stare at herself in the mirror and assess the damage.

*

The woman makes her way toward the pool. First in a straight line, hips swaying in her skintight pencil skirt, long, gangly legs propelling her forward in fits and starts, then in a zigzagging pattern around the patio furniture. She looks like she’s searching for a particular spot, or a particular someone; her intention isn’t quite clear. The stiff fabric of her steel-grey skirt, a perma-press polyester vise gleaming in the sun, compresses her body into dejected folds. Against the bright sunlight, her silhouette is shockingly frail and bony. There’s tension in her hips, a tightness to her jaw. She’s wearing rather conservative heels and a tasteful blouse that’s partially unbuttoned, revealing a hint of waxy-looking skin underneath. Her hair is a faded blonde. At first glance, she looks like she might be foreign, Eastern European maybe. On her face, there’s a look of profound melancholy, and her eyes are bleak and lifeless. Her arms hang limply, and a large leather purse hooked over her wrist swings back and forth in the void, in time with her advancing steps.

A trick of the eye makes the purse appear disproportionately heavy and awkward. The mauve tote bag, neither shiny nor matte, is broken in as only leather and hides can be after a certain amount of time. Aged and cracked, worn and dull, dried out in the creases—a fair representation of the woman herself. The woman who is now advancing on Claire Halde across the roof of the Valencia Palace Hotel.

*

In a corner set back slightly from the pool, a couple of vacationers are stretched out on fully extended lounge chairs, heads lolling, feet splayed out, bellies slack under layers of fat and skin bronzing in the sun. They could be dozing or simply daydreaming behind their dark glasses. They