Sam was a short, square-shouldered man of thirty-five, with a solid jaw and deep-set eyes that seemed always to be questioning what they saw. He habitually wore collared shirts, faded jeans, and shoes with a good four or five centimetres of heel. In his left ear was a silver stud; around his neck a silky chain. He spoke in a quiet voice and had a tendency to stress every syllable of his words.
He had been abroad for a good many years, having first departed his Fijian homeland to try his luck in Australia. After two tumultuous years fronting classrooms full of youths in an underprivileged shire of Sydney, he had packed up and moved on to England. It was there that he had come into the field of teaching English as a foreign language, lured by the prospects it afforded for travel. Indeed, he had since helped spread the gospel to St Petersburg, Prague and Milan. This would be his third year in Barcelona.
How long Sam would stay in Spain was a question he could not answer himself. The future was a broad, indistinct horizon of limitless opportunity. He preferred not to make plans anymore, and therein lay his definition of freedom. When he tired of one place, he would move on to another. And yet he was not satisfied. It was this very lack of anchorage in his life which served to torment him.
His friends James and Edith were going out together and from time to time endeavoured to pair him off with one of their companions. The latest attempt involved a double date on St Jordi's Day. Sam put on his best clothes, purchased a rose on Las Ramblas, and went to the Cafe Marseilles to meet them.
First glances are intended to be fleeting; a casual look which must not betray one's initial impressions, whether good or bad. But on this occasion self-control failed him. His date was a striking young woman with large blue eyes and prominent cheekbones. Sam could barely remove his gaze from her, and this did not escape her attention.
Victoria accepted the rose and they sat down at the table together, opposite James and Edith. "So," she began gaily, "wot do you do, Sam?"
He ventured to explain, for conversational purposes, how he had stumbled into the business of teaching English as a foreign language. But at the point where he had arrived in Australia, the discussion was carried off on a tangent.
"Oh, how wonderful!" she declared. "I've always wanted to go there. Beaches, kangaroos, the Sydney Opera House! It sounds like a dream!"
"In fact, I worked with a lot of rebellious teenagers. It wasn't such a pleasant experience for me."
"Rebellious? Wot on earth's there to be rebellious about in Australia?" She frowned at him, mystified. But as he was about to answer, her expression brightened. "No, I don't want to hear about that. Let's not be negative this evening."
With that she turned to Edith and began relating, amid much laughter, an incident which had occurred to one of their acquaintances. Sam was given no opportunity to finish his story.
He watched the waiters bustling about in their pale blue uniforms, taking orders, refilling wine glasses, removing empty dishes. He listened to the guitarist, and observed the rapturous expressions on the faces of those swaying and clicking their fingers at the tables about him.
"This is not for me," he said to himself, and was surprised at the depths of his own disappointment.
He might well have forgotten her, had she not surprised him with an invitation to a birthday party the following week. Sam accepted. He felt he had nothing to lose. Besides which, there was something about the young woman that continued to lure him. Was it purely superficial? The need to know that he was good enough? Or something more?
The party was held on the top floor of an apartment in Premia del Mar. The wide balcony offered a view of the Costa Brava, curving gently north-eastward toward Girona and Perpignan. This faded with the dusk, and ships' lights became visible on the horizon, drifting imperceptibly back and forth.
Inside the guests stood around the large dining room table, chatting amiably, sipping their drinks and pecking away at the abundant food. Serrat's 'Utopia' crooned out of the stereo system to the accompaniment of a tinkling piano.
Sam was introduced to a group which included the host, a tall fair-haired man with a plummy English accent. Richard was in the vacation rental business, subletting apartments to tourists for short-term stays. Victoria herself was in the same line of work, and indeed it appeared to be the common denominator among most of those present.
"Sam's from Fiji," Victoria announced, linking his arm with her own. "He's teaching English here."
"Fiji? How interesting." Richard raised his eyebrows. "So you're a long way from home! I dare say you're not full-blooded Fijian though."
Before Sam could respond, another member of the group put in: "Perhaps just a little. He has got rather dark eyes. I'd wager between a quarter and a sixteenth."
Sam shook his head. "Sorry to disappoint you, gentlemen. But I am a Fijian of British and Indian extraction, mostly British."
The conversation did not progress beyond this point. Sam exchanged one or two more pleasantries, then excused himself and returned to the balcony, leaving them frowning into their drinks.
"The view is fantastic, yes?" said a voice beside him.
Sam turned to the young woman who had spoken. She was slim and dark, of similar complexion to himself. Her hair was tied back in a bushy ponytail. Her wide jaw accommodated a smile of gleaming white teeth.
He nodded in agreement, inhaling deeply. "And the air is great our here."
Blanca had come with her sister, whose fiance was a business acquaintance of the host's. "Merce always brings me to this kind of parties," she said. "I think I am supposed to fall in love with a rich foreigner!"
Sam chuckled with her. "I know what you mean. I feel a bit like a circus act myself."
The two of them remained on the balcony, talking for perhaps half an hour. Then Sam returned inside, concerned his prolonged absence might have become insulting to Victoria. She, however, remained talking with Richard and his friends in a corner. Sam watched her obliquely from across the room; so well made-up, a picture of elegance in her sleeveless top and black leather skirt. How graceful her movements! Was she really here with 'him?'
As though to reassure himself, he rejoined the group and linked her arm with his. But with a vaguely patronising gesture she withdrew it. The others averted their eyes a moment, then picked up the conversation as though nothing had happened.
Sam was humiliated. He drifted back out to the balcony and looked around for his Spanish companion. But Blanca was gone.
That night a dream returned to him from his youth. The shadow at the window was there, watching him, its eyes fearsome and grim. At any moment it might enter, so easily. And Sam had no place to hide. It was the knowledge of his own vulnerability that served to terrify him.
The fear remained inside him when he awoke in the morning, and for some time he lay in his bed, sombrely contemplating what he understood to be the meaning of the familiar dream: Why had it come back to him? But this he knew well. For the first time in many years, Sam was in love.
Now he took the initiative and invited her out. They went to the Cafe Sierra and dined on romescu with dry white wine. Victoria was excited about her latest project. Richard and his partners had leased a penthouse suite in the Vila Olimpica and given her carte blanche to furnish it out. Money no object. She had spent the day browsing through interior design catalogues and was bubbling with inspiration.
Sam listened with a patient smile, his heart sinking slowly within him. Was it only her beauty and sense of style that enticed him? The blue eyes and high cheekbones; so well-made up, in her ruby jacket and silky white top. She was the type he had always aspired to, and she was there, seemingly within reach. Yet she might have been a world away.
"If she is the woman of my dreams, why do I feel so down?" he asked himself. "Where is the energy normally associated with love?"
After dinner they went to the movies. There was a film she was dying to see. They sat side by side in the darkness, watching the big screen. Sam did not dare to touch her, remembering the rebuff at the party, and neither did he endeavour to speak, for she was clearly engrossed in the film. He grew increasingly bored, so that when it was finally over he felt as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
A few days later he received news from James which served to raise his spirits. A colleague of Edith's, whom he had apparently met at a party some weeks before, had been making enquiries about him.
"Well, I'm not getting anywhere with Victoria," he told James. "What have I got to lose?"
"Precisely, ol' son," his friend agreed with a wink. "You never know. You might even like her!"
Sam took the number and arranged the date. Yet, try as he might, he could not place the name, nor the American accent he encountered on the phone. The mystery only enhanced his excitement.
They met in front of Corte Ingles, opposite the Plaza Catalonya. It was raining and Sally was fifteen minutes late. As she hurried toward him there was a moment when Sam realised it was her, and in that moment he knew two things: he did not remember her; and she was not for him. The latter conclusion may have seemed rash. But indeed it was borne out during the course of the evening.
They went to a bar on the Gran Via, nearby. Sally drank beer with him, a refreshing change after Victoria with her dry wines and gin and tonics. And the more she drank the more effusive she became, so that by the end of the night Sam had more or less her life story and all sense of mystery was gone. She was a divorcee from Sacramento. She had previously worked in banking. She had come to Spain for a change of lifestyle. She was on a twelve-month contract with Corporate English. She adored Latin music and was taking dancing lessons.
Sam estimated she was close to his own age. Probably she had been a looker in her youth. But now she was overweight, and an emerging double-chin detracted entirely from the remaining vestiges of beauty in her face. Her hair was blond, though darker toward the roots. She had plastered her make-up on too thickly, and her top was cut a little too low. Her small eyes betrayed her amusement when his gaze chanced to rest inadvertently upon her ample cleavage.
She was decidedly intoxicated by the time they left the bar. "Hey, I know this great restaurant in Barceloneta. They do the best paella. We can go there next time, alright?"
"I'll call you," he replied, smiling politely.
The exchange was repeated several times as he escorted her through the rain to the taxi stand.
The following afternoon Sam took the metro out to Badalona for the game. He played in goal, not having the skills of his British colleagues or their Spanish students, who made up the opposition. It was a cool, overcast day, though the rain held off. Afterwards some of them went for a drink, as was the custom. Sam sat in a corner with James, and naturally their conversation turned to the date.
"She left me cold as a stone." Sam shook his head in apology.
His companion studied him thoughtfully. "You chased a girl who didn't want you. And now you're turning your back on one who does. Wot is it you really want, ol' son?"
"I don't know. When my heart says yes, my head says no, and when my head says yes, my heart says no."
"Put more faith in your heart." James nudged him.
"That's just it," said Sam. "My heart wants Victoria. I'm sure I have no chance. And yet she has this hold on me."
He called her again some days later but she was unable to see him. They had people moving into the Vila Olimpica suite already. Sam, meanwhile, was forced to fend off the approaches of Sally, who phoned him repeatedly.
A few weeks passed in similar fashion, then news came through that Victoria was returning to London with Richard. A farewell bash was to be held at the latter's apartment in Premia del Mar.
Edith, James and Sam travelled up on the train. The night was unseasonably warm, a portent of the summer to come. The humid air was heavy with the scent of flowers in full bloom. Victoria and Richard came to the door to greet them, arm in arm. The host smiled down at Sam with perfect amiability, and the latter experienced no sense of enmity on his part, for this was only natural, unlike that which he had aspired to.
Sam was out on the balcony when he sensed a presence at his side. It was Blanca, the young woman he had met the previous time he had come here. Her smile gleamed in the moonlight, just the way it had that night two months before.
"Hello, Sam. Are you enjoying the party?"
"Yeah, it's a riot," he replied, and they both laughed.
She pointed up the coast, toward Mataro. "Can you see fireworks?"
Sam strained his eyes but could see nothing in the darkness. Then suddenly a colourful object shot high up into the air. It remained there for several long seconds, spinning in the night sky. It was accompanied by a barely audible whistle. Faint as it was, Sam realised he had heard it before, two or three times. It had been at the edge of his consciousness, yet he had not noticed the spinning lights until then.
They slipped away from the party and went for a walk along the beach, toward the fireworks. The shore was an endless fringe of phosphorescent surf that heaved in and out with a gentle hush. The sea was dark and mysterious. They talked easily, without inhibition or pretence. It seemed no time at all before the beach party which was the source of the fireworks display loomed up ahead.
The rhythmic beat of Latin music pulsed out of a chiringuito. A myriad of dark forms jiggled about on the sand all around it, and there was the noise of laughter. Blanca led Sam directly into their midst, and there they remained long into the night, dancing together, watching the fireworks, and partaking in the iced sangria that was being freely passed around.
Sam accompanied Edith and James back to the city on the morning's first train. The sun shone in through the windows. The view was a panorama of beige sand and placid azure sea.
Once home Sam fell straight onto his bed and slept with his clothes on. And the shadow at the window entered his dreams, leering in at him, its eyes fearsome and grim. The familiar dread filled Sam's senses. He knew not where it came from, and there was no place to hide!
The following afternoon he found himself whistling cheerfully as he made his way to the cafe. There were good feelings inside him; so good, in fact, that he now looked back on his despondency of the past two months with wonder. Life was a joy. It was Victoria who had brought him down; or, at least, the manner in which he had been fooling himself over her. Now that she was leaving, the torment was over.
Then what of this dream? The shadow, as he understood it, had represented not just Victoria, but the threat she had posed to his emotions. That threat no longer existed. So who was it; this shadow at the window? He considered Sally, yet the mere thought of her made him wince.
Sam stopped in mid-stride, as though confronted by an invisible wall. Blanca? He recalled it now; how they had held each other through the slow dances, and how at the end she had kissed him. She was not the woman of his aspirations, however. He searched himself and was sure of this.
"Maybe it is her," he acknowledged to himself. "But better to let this one pass."
Toward the end of June Sam's school closed for the summer and he went to work on a camp near Tarragona. The program was run by a group of entrepreneurs who, he quickly realised, had no knowledge of the English teaching industry, nor any particular interest in it. The kids, ranging in age from seven to seventeen, were herded into the compound, which operated as a boarding school during the academic year, and there they remained for the next six weeks, with not a solitary excursion arranged outside the grounds.
As the camp drew on it seemed more and more like a prison for all of them. Sam found himself reflecting on the events which had occurred during the spring; how he had pined for Victoria in vain; how Sally had pined for him. Why was it never right? Why did someone always have to get hurt? There was a strange sort of guilt within him, though he could no more have changed his indifference to Sally than he could have Victoria's to him.
In a sense it was good to be on the camp, away from it all. For the first few weeks his thoughts had been kept occupied by the rigours of his work. But now they were full of self-examination. The exuberance that had buoyed him in the weeks before he had come here was gone. He was pursued by the unsettling notion he had let something slip.
On a sultry afternoon, engrossed in a book in which the heroine persisted in taking on the appearance of Blanca in his mind's eye, Sam suddenly understood it all. The truth struck him like a stone. He was undeniably, unmistakably, unequivocally in love with her.
The last two weeks of the camp seemed like an eternity. He frequented the local bars in the evenings and cursed himself at nights. He allowed his classroom to descend into chaos. Nothing else mattered to him now. He was as low as he had ever been in his life.
"I had it all, right here in the palm of my hands!" he admonished himself repeatedly. "Why didn't I see it? I was such a fool to be afraid."
But inside him there was also hope. After all, she had wanted him that night on the beach a couple of months before. For she had kissed him. So why should anything have changed so soon? It was simply a case of waiting out his last two weeks, then finding her and telling her.
When the camp closed Sam collected his money and walked out the gates to freedom. He had a drink with James and Edith in Barcelona that very evening. They had been unable to gain any information on Blanca for him. It seemed she and her sister were known to few but Richard, and Edith was still awaiting replies to her e-mails on the matter.
There was the crackle of thunder outside, and then the rain began to teem down. The temperature had dropped by at least five degrees. It was the first of the late-summer storms.
"How do you like that!" Sam complained. "I've been stuck on a camp for the past six weeks, and the day I get out the weather turns to shit."
"That's a fairly negative view of things, ol' son!" James chuckled at him.
They were joined that night by Sally and Paco. The couple had met at a club in July and were going out together. Paco was a squat man with dense eyebrows and a broad smile. He spoke English with a thick Andalusian accent, smoked cigarettes, and laughed easily, in the manner of one truly content with life.
Sam beamed with pleasure for Sally, and for her part she smiled serenely back at him, the double-chin prominent, her make-up plastered on a little too thickly, her small eyes sparkling with joy.
"How simple life is for those who know what they want!" he sighed.
The thunder boomed again, this time very close, and the rain thrashed against the windows with renewed vehemence.
The weather deteriorated further that weekend, as if the gods were displeased and had decided in their wrath to bring a premature close to the summer. Sam had been looking forward to his first football game in nearly two months, but now it was cancelled.
He next saw James on Monday afternoon, at the institute, and was greeted with some intriguing news. Victoria had fallen out with Richard and was returning from London. There had been 'other women,' apparently.
Sam felt a great stirring in his breast at this development, though it had little or nothing to do with Victoria herself. Rather he was anticipating the connection to Blanca her presence back in Barcelona should bring.
They met her for a drink the day of her arrival. The weather had cleared somewhat but the temperatures remained unseasonably low. Victoria's face showed signs of her recent suffering and she had lost her tan. The eyes were as large and blue as ever, her cheekbones lent the same symmetry to her features, yet she was no longer attractive to Sam. Beauty for him now meant dark eyes and skin and a wide, gleaming smile.
As the evening wore on Victoria began to direct more of her attention toward Sam, while James and Edith chattered away on their own, so that two distinct conversations were going on either side of the table. She sipped her gin and tonic and leaned on his shoulder.
"You're a good man," she said with a slight slur. "We should get together more often. You still have my number, don't you?"
Their eyes met and the light faded in hers, for she had recognised the lack of emotion in his. He was as unmoved as a zombie.
Victoria gazed quizzically at him for a moment or two. "Wot do you want, Sam?"
The time had come for him to make his enquiry about Blanca. She was visibly taken aback and it made him feel cruel. But he needed to know. Nothing else was of importance to him right then.
She blinked thoughtfully for a few seconds, pursing her lips as she searched her mind for the information he had requested.
"Yes, I remember Blanca. Her sister and Cameron got married in the summer. I've got Cameron's number somewhere at home. I'll give him a call tomorrow, if you like."
Sam's veins flooded with adrenaline. So many emotions came back to him in that moment; hope, exultation, anxiety, fear. It was everything to him.
He was barely able to sleep that night. His head was filled with fantastic notions. He imagined himself striding up to Blanca and sweeping her off her feet. Her eyes would contain the same longing for him that he had known for her these past few weeks. They would collapse into each others arms, together at last, as it had always meant to be.
Victoria failed to call him the following morning, and he was unable to get through to her. But a little after three his phone lit up and began to vibrate. Sam's heart pounded as he raised it to his ear. It was Victoria with the information about Blanca. She was running a cafe in Vilassar de Mar.
Sam took the train up that very evening, passing along the way the beaches of Premia del Mar, where he and Blanca had walked and danced that night now three months ago. He had a sense that this day was to be a turning point in his life. If Blanca shared his feelings, then their future was together and they would know only bliss. But if she said no, his dreams would be shattered and the long path of misery would lie ahead.
Sam found the cafe without difficulty and entered. At least, his eyes seemed to float inside of their own accord. Initially they saw only the customers, eating and drinking at the round wooden tables. Then a young woman emerged from a doorway behind the counter, her hair tied back in a bushy ponytail. Sam's stomach turned to liquid, for it was Blanca.
At first she frowned slightly, as though puzzled, but then the comprehension came into her eyes. "Sam! How are you? It has been a long time."
He returned her greeting and was preparing to tell her why he had come, when a man of short stature and dark complexion emerged from the doorway behind her.
"Just poppin' out for some things, darling," he said in a nasal Australian accent, and gave her a peck on the cheek.
Sam gazed after him in silence, stupefied, then turned his eyes back to Blanca. She seemed to understand it all.
"My partner, Baz," she said. "I came to work here in the summer and we fell in love. He reminded me of you.''
Thirty minutes later Sam was on the train back to Barcelona, his world in ruins. He was strangely numb inside, as one who has received such a blow that the nerves themselves are deadened temporarily. He knew that the pain would come.
"I was too late,'' he murmured to himself. ''If I had known my feelings from the beginning, she would have been mine. But I was blinded by fear. How foolish I was!''
He stared out the window as the train clattered swiftly down the coast, though it was dark outside and he saw only his reflection. Sam studied that face, so tired and drawn, and the final piece of the puzzle came to him.
''The shadow at the window was not Blanca or any other woman I have known. The shadow at the window is me."
End
