Learning to Lose by David Trueba & Mara Lethem

Author:David Trueba & Mara Lethem [Trueba, David & Lethem, Mara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary
ISBN: 9781590513224
Google: EiIKmQEACAAJ
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2009-07-15T04:02:56+00:00

15

Lorenzo hadn’t been back to that upper part of the Tetuán neighborhood since the days he played soccer with other kids on the open stretches of ground. He had seen the outskirts of the Plaza de Castilla grow, but the side street he was now on had barely changed. Humble, clustered houses, some low-lying housing, almost redbrick shanties, that revealed the poor neighborhood it had been. From some streets, he could see the plaza’s leaning towers and beneath the clock of the old water tower on the canal a defiant glass building owned by a bank or a big company. When he and Pilar were looking for a house, they even considered the rich strip on the other side of the plaza. But by then the prices were already prohibitive and he had an immediate feeling of nostalgia looking at them. Nostalgia for a kind of life and city that they would never enjoy.

Finally they found the apartment on Calle Alenza. Pilar was pregnant and they had ruled out leaving Madrid. Lorenzo didn’t know if moving to Saragossa had been hard for her or easy, if it was something she accepted as part of Santiago’s delusions of grandeur, his social climbing, or as another advantage of distancing herself from her past with Lorenzo.

He looks at his watch. It is three minutes past eleven and the cold off the street isn’t conducive to much waiting. Lorenzo is in front of the place, which is lined with people. It must have been an old workshop. A wide elevated platform barely ten inches above the sidewalk is crammed with chairs arranged on either side of a central walkway. Old, not particularly elegant folding chairs. The entrance is a glass and aluminum door, almost completely covered by taped-up posters, advertisements, photocopies. On the door an ugly sign composed of orange adhesive letters reads: THE CHURCH OF THE SECOND RESURRECTION. There is a muted television screen showing images of religious acts. The largest poster on the door says: GOD IS CALLING, ARE YOU GOING TO ANSWER? And the somewhat naïve drawing depicts a cell phone.

Lorenzo watches the people who go in. Mostly Latin Americans, women in their Sunday best, men who have tamed their thick manes of hair with shiny gel. Some have tattoos peeking out from beneath their clean, brightly colored shirts. The doorway is crowded with kids playing on the sidewalk, their complexions dark and their accents local, dotted with the strong Madrid j.

By then Lorenzo begins to worry that Daniela isn’t going to show up. A man approaches the door to call the kids in, and when he sees Lorenzo he comes up to him cordially. The service is about to start, join us if you’d like. Lorenzo goes into the last row, still standing.

Days earlier he had watched, beside Detective Baldasano, his house being searched. His state of mind had been much less calm. He was surprised at how unscientific it all was, seeing four men spread out through the rooms, particularly insistent on going through Lorenzo’s clothes, deep in his closet.

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