Silvia didn’t know whether to step into her place or turn around, but her father would never have let her come back if she had. So, she headed to the living room and stared at that young woman who already carried life’s hardships etched on her face in the form of wrinkles and the shadows of sleepless nights. She let her speak and listened as she explained that she had been living with Lluís for ten years. That he had said he wanted a separation, but that she didn’t know how she could manage alone with a five year old girl with mental health problems. She told Silvia that Lluís was a bad partner and an even worse father, and asked whether she had known that the two of them existed before that afternoon. Silvia said no, tears welling in her eyes. They were such sincere tears that the other woman didn’t dare reproach her for anything. She too had been the victim of a deception. They said goodbye, and Silvia promised she would split up with Lluís.
That night she cried her eyes out. How foolish and blind she had been! Now she knew why he had never taken her to his home and why he had insisted, that one time, on going to a guesthouse on Passeig de Gràcia after the afternoon cinema. If he came by the restaurant again, she would tell him bluntly that whatever they had was over, and that he could go find himself another toy. Around three in the morning she got up and wrote in her notebook everything she wanted to say to Lluís, memorising it. She couldn’t close her eyes anyway. The next day she expected a scolding from her father. She was sure he would penalize her.
But the next day her father punished her with total silence. Only her mother placed a hand on her shoulder as she tried to swallow a glass of milk and two dry ladyfingers before going to work. Her father shot his wife a reproachful look, and she understood that she too was supposed to punish Silvia. But she couldn’t and wouldn’t, because she was painfully aware of the blow her daughter had suffered.
The girl waited, both angry and anxious, for Lluís to come pick her up after work as he always did, but that week he didn’t show up. Her coworkers began asking questions, and Albert, who had become infatuated with her, asked whether she and Lluís had broken up. Silvia replied, “It’s none of your business!” and he didn’t insist. Toward the end of the month Silvia began feeling very tired, and the fatigue coincided with the date of her period, which that month refused to come. First she thought it was due to the heat. Then to the distress. And finally she reached the conclusion that she might be pregnant. She could only talk about it with her friend, and when she told her, the friend decided to accompany her to the doctor.
Silvia asked for a morning off, and Enric and his wife, who ran the business, granted it willingly. She had looked unwell for days and wasn’t performing. She had even felt faint two mornings. In the Barcelona of the 1980s, still shaped by Franco’s legacy, the doctor’s visit was far from pleasant. When Dr. Ferrer saw that the girl was accompanied by a friend, he needed no explanation to suspect what it was about. He examined her, and a few days later he showed up at the bar with a letter for Silvia. It was the positive result of her pregnancy test.
That afternoon at work was hell. Silvia couldn’t concentrate on the orders and dropped three cups of coffee on the floor. Enric’s wife sent her home to rest. Everyone was beginning to talk about the girl and what was happening to her, and Hermínia wanted the clientele calm. Mr. Eusebio had already made an impertinent remark, and Anselm, a young man with progressive ideas, had raised his voice at him. She didn’t want any more disputes of that kind. It was more than obvious that Silvia wasn’t well. And Silvia accepted the offer gratefully and left — but not to go home. She went straight to the office where her friend worked, who was just about to finish for the day. She waited for her outside so as not to disturb her, and when Marta opened the door of the building on Rambla Catalunya, Silvia called out to her. Marta only needed to see her to know what was happening. They embraced, and Silvia began to cry.
The next three weeks were a nightmare. After realising she had no other option, she finally confessed her problem to her mother. Her mother wasted no time telling her father, and he flew into such a violent rage that he nearly hit Silvia — and her mother when she tried to defend her. He went to drown his anger in brandy at the bar. He returned in a pitiful state. Over the next two days he pushed Silvia to tell him where Lluís lived. But the girl didn’t know. That infuriated her parents even more, as well as her older brother, whom her father had already informed of the situation.
They considered sending the girl to France so she could have an abortion, but they didn’t have enough money, and in the end they told Silvia she would have to raise the child as a single mother or marry that bastard Lluís once he had separated or divorced his wife. And they didn’t even know whether he and the woman were legally married or where they lived. Silvia’s parents went into panic mode, because as her belly began to round, the whole neighbourhood would find out, and it would be a miracle if Silvia didn’t lose her job. A pregnant girl at the Centre Moral i Cultural was like a black stain on a white wall.
While everyone talked about her as if she had committed a crime and how she ought to atone for it, no one, of course, asked Silvia for her opinion. They debated her future without considering her emotions, and she grew thinner and her haggard face barely resembled what it had been weeks earlier. Her employers at work noticed it too, as did the bar’s customers, and a month after the appearance of Lluís’s wife and daughter, everyone was making guesses about what was happening to the girl. And everyone guessed right, because it was a classic.
One rainy afternoon in September, while Silvia worked at the bar, exhausted, and Albert tried to cheer her up with one of his stories, Lluís showed up. Silvia’s face was so expressive that the customers who saw her stopped their conversations, their domino games, and even their half drunk coffees. Lluís also noticed everyone’s intrusive stares and said:
“So why is there suddenly this silence? Do you all want to listen to a private conversation?”