Purgatory

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Simón Cardoso had been dead thirty years when his wife, Emilia Dupuy, spotted him at lunchtime in the lounge bar in Trudy Tuesday. He was in one of the booths at the back chatting to two people she didn’t recognise. Emilia thought she had stepped into the wrong place and her first impulse was to turn round, get out of there, go back to the reality she had come from. Fighting for breath, throat dry, she had to grip the bar rail for support. She had spent her whole life looking for him, had imagined this scene a thousand times, and yet now that it was happening she realised she wasn’t ready. Her eyes filled with tears; she wanted to call his name, run over to his table and take him in her arms. But it took all her strength simply to hold herself up, to stop herself from crumpling in a heap in the middle of the restaurant, from making a fool of herself. She could barely summon the energy to walk over to the booth in front of Simón’s and sit in silence waiting for him to recognise her. As she waited, she would have to feign indifference though her blood pounded in her temples and her heart lurched into her mouth. She gestured for a waiter and ordered a double brandy. She needed something to calm her, to still the fear that, like her mother, she was losing her faculties. There were times when her senses betrayed her; she would lose her sense of smell, become disoriented in streets she knew like the back of her hand, drift off to sleep listening to silly songs that, she didn’t know how, seemed to be coming from her stereo.

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