Soul Fire

things only I know.’ He pauses and for a moment I wonder whether the computer has finally broken the
connection. But then I hear him again, speaking softly now, ‘You could tell him how I died . . .’

39
    ‘You’re saying you know how you died, Javier? That you remember ? I thought no one on the Beach could remember their last moments.’
    ‘Most Guests don’t. Perhaps it is a . . . safeguard. To stop them torturing themselves with what could have been. But in my case, there is no mystery. I know exactly how I met my
death, Alice, and who was to blame.’
    I stare at the blank screen, willing it to show me Javier. ‘But you wouldn’t be on Soul Beach if it was straightforward. You’d be . . .’ I pause, ‘ . . . at peace,
I suppose. Or in heaven.’
    ‘Heaven. Of course. Why did I not think of that?’ He laughs bitterly. ‘Tell me, Alice, where exactly are you right now?’
    ‘Um . . . in some ancient internet place not far from the sea. In the old fishing district.’
    ‘In my barrio , then. My neighbourhood. It is very respectable, right? Very neighbourly and, where the tourists don’t go, peaceful too. Appearances matter. So my father
was the gentleman outside the house. And inside it, a pig. A bully. A bastard .’
    I lean closer into the screen. I want to show Javier that I am listening to every word.
    ‘From an early age, I understood this was not normal. And I saw something in my mother’s face that was not there in the faces of my friends’ mothers, who always seemed so
smiling and bright. Later, I realised that what I was seeing in her face was fear.
    ‘Papa was big on respect . If my youngest sister cried, that was lack of respect, never mind that Rosa was a baby, only a few months old. If my middle sister, Karina, wet the bed
– and she did, very often – then that was an insult to him personally, an act of disobedience. So he lashed out – usually at my mother, to punish her for what her children
did. We were his children, too, of course, but he forgot that when he was raging.’
    ‘Oh, Javier.’ I don’t know what else to say.
    ‘A little while after Rosa was born, I suddenly understood that physical pain hurt me less than it hurt my mother or my sisters. I don’t know why. Maybe they turned the pain
in on themselves, while I could pretend it wasn’t happening and store it up for the day when I was big enough to fight back. So, I began to incite him. Find ways to redirect his anger. It was
very easy. My father seemed to prefer to take his rages out on me. Perhaps it made him feel more manly to beat another male, even though I was only eight years old.’
    I try not to think about the little boy in the photograph that illustrated the newspaper story of Javier’s death.
    ‘My mother coped by closing down. Karina talked mainly to her toy cat, even taking the scruffy animal to school with her. Ah, until she was six and Dad cut it into pieces to teach her to
grow up. Rosa and I were the closest. She would save supper for me if I was sent to bed early, or sing to me if I was sore. Since Gretchen went, sometimes I think I can hear Rosa’s voice,
here. At night. When everyone is asleep.’
    He sounds wistful. It reminds me of the way Gretchen talked of her song thrushes.
    ‘Did no one know what was going on?’ I ask.
    ‘We made sure they didn’t. My mother kept the lie going out of shame, and we children learned to do the same. We learned that it was better people did not realise we were wicked
enough to deserve this. We lived on the top floor, so we were less likely to be heard. And I tried not to cry out. Dad helped in his own way; he knew where to strike me so it wouldn’t show,
and how far he could go so I wouldn’t need a doctor. The funny thing was, I wasn’t scared of him, Alice. I could always see in his eyes that part of him was under control.’
    Somehow that’s the most shocking of all the things he’s said. ‘He knew what he was doing?’
    ‘Until that last night, yes. That night, as he shouted and screamed and pushed and goaded, he was an animal . I had decided to stand up to him, you see. To leave college. To take a
job to support my mother and the girls. We would not need him anymore. And I told him so.’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘It was a festival night. The Merce . The festival of Barcelona. There is always an energy in the air in that week – but also something wild.’
    Like now.
    ‘I could see he was getting angrier. I felt