Trans. James Womack and Psychopomp
A Day Off (Día libre)
August 31, 2026
She hardly has to wait at all before the nurse calls her through. With her other pregnancies she went to a different hospital, where a number came up on a screen that told her which room to go to. She has come back into the city this morning from the house where she is spending the summer with her family: her husband, her two children and her mother. She had to get up early to catch the train; her husband dropped her off at the station and said have fun before giving her a brief kiss on the lips.
She follows the nurse and lies down on the examining table. By now she knows what she has to do: lift her shirt and lower her trousers a little, but without taking them off entirely. She feels a bit sorry not to have worn a dress; she is hot and her trousers stick to her legs, and she can feel a patch of sweat in the small of her back. She lies down and waits. She knows that everything will be fine, it has always been fine, but her head is filled with all the things that could go wrong: names of syndromes, all kinds of problems, and she remembers that cheese she ate without being sure whether it was pasteurised or not. The gynaecologist is a blonde, with glasses and a Galician accent. She asks about her other pregnancies, her other children, everything all right, vaginal deliveries. Alba always thinks the same things she thought during her first pregnancy: if this is a good one, I don’t want to imagine what a bad one’s like. And even so, another one. And now another. The gynaecologist is very meticulous in her work, looking at the organs again and again, the space between them, the blood entering and leaving the fetus. She measures the amniotic fluid, checks the position of the placenta. She’s doing it for Alba, but also so that her resident can learn the ropes.
‘She’s a perfect little girl,’ she says. ‘Have you chosen a name for her yet?’
‘Yes. Vera.’
‘How pretty. Look here,’ the gynaecologist says and turns the screen. Alba looks and all she can see are greyish lines moving on a black background. She guesses that her baby must be inside the shape that these lines sketch out as they move.
‘Can you see?’
Alba doesn’t even really know where she is meant to look.
‘She’s holding her hand just like you’re doing,’ the doctor explains. ‘Kids are little mirrors, even in the womb.’
She walks back to her house: it’s a bit odd; she feels almost like a spy in her own city, so unusual without the children or any obligations; she feels light. She can stroll at her own speed, she doesn’t have to pick anyone up, she hasn’t made plans with anyone today apart from her brother this evening. She could have gone back tonight, there and back in a day if it weren’t for her meeting tomorrow morning. It’s hot; she gets out her water bottle, with the printed sonograms the gynaecologist gave her wrapped around it. She’s taken a photograph of one of the sonograms, the one where you can see her daughter’s head, and sent it to her husband and her mother. She makes a detour and enters a shop she doesn't usually have time to visit. A small shop, expensive. She only buys things there on sale, when they do huge discounts. There’s a dress that she likes: a strappy dress, short, mint-green. She tries it on and thinks she looks enormous. Like a mesa camilla. The girl in the shop says that she looks fine, and that she’s not always going to be pregnant. Alba feels like she’s been pregnant for four years already. She looks at the girl and envies her: envies her for being thin most of all. She sighs and takes the dress off in the changing room. She tries on a t-shirt, but it makes her feel too hot. She tries the dress on again and looks at herself in the mirror. She looks at herself until she stops thinking she looks bad. She asks the girl to cut the label off: she’ll wear it out.
They make her favourite sandwich a few streets further on, so she walks decisively in that direction. It’s nothing too complicated but it’s unusual: a chicken sandwich, but with beetroot and coriander.
Her house is no longer in that neighbourhood; they moved to a house a little further north, a part of the city where the pavements are wider, but with the same dogshit on them. When she opens the door the place smells of wood, as if while they were away the furniture took over the house and the air inside. It seems strangely neat, not at all like when they are at home: toys in the most unlikely places, scraps of food on the sofa, dishes waiting to be washed in the sink. She opens the fridge and takes out a bottle of water. She lays the table for one. And then, she doesn’t know what to do. Should she turn on the television while she eats? Read a book? She looks at her children’s drawings stuck up on the walls and the photos of her kids get to her before she can do anything to protect herself.
Her brother messages her.
2030 Renoir Cinema Plaza de España. All Hands on Deck. You’ll like it, it’s a French movie.
She hasn’t got any other plans: it’s August and the city is half empty; only the tourists are left. She throws herself down on the sofa to read a book, but she falls asleep after the first page.
It takes her a bit of time to remember where she is, that she’s in her own house, in summer, but without the children or any routine or obligations, taking a holiday in her own life. She picks the book up again and reads it almost straight through.
It’s a pleasant walk over to the cinema. She hears scraps of conversations here and there, and one of them bounces around her head a little: I see things that you can’t see, a man said, sitting at an outdoor table in a café. She tries to think what he was talking about: significant details that pass unnoticed, or maybe ghosts? There’s always a breeze as you turn onto Plaza de España: it lifts the skirt of her new dress a little just as she reaches the doors of the Edificio España. She arrives early, you could say she’s punctual. She doesn’t see her brother in front of the cinema, so she has a look in the window of the bookshop across the way. After she’s taken in all the books she sees her brother coming. He’s not alone, he’s with Carlos, a friend of his that Alba has met before.
‘I hope that she looks like me: it’s really unfair that none of my nephews or nieces looks like me,’ her brother says, putting his hand on her belly.
‘It’s a girl, right?’ the friend says. ‘You’ve got more kids, don’t you?’ ‘Two, yes. I think you’ve met them before.’
‘Sorry, I always get mixed up with all my friends who are pregnant and have kids …’
Neither Alba’s brother nor Carlos has children, so they don’t know how strange it is for Alba to have this day off from her own life. They don’t have time to get a drink before heading into the cinema. Alba guessed that the film wouldn’t have anything to do with pirates because her brother had said it was a French movie. It starts with a party on the banks of the Seine, in Paris, where Alba has only ever been twice. A boy and a girl are dancing together, and later you see them wake up in a park, it’s morning. The girl’s going to spend the summer in the south. A little while later, on a whim, the boy decides to head down there with a friend. They don’t have money, so they carshare with another guy who seems rather posh and less street-smart than them. The girl’s not all that happy when the boy turns up, so the boy gets a bit angry. He follows her around, insists that they spend time together, gets annoyed with his friend. The friend falls in with a girl who’s staying at the same campsite with her baby. Alba pretty soon turns off from the main story: what interests her more is the other one, the story of the single mother who finds an ally. There’s a scene in the campsite bar where they have a karaoke night and they sing ‘Aline’ by Christophe, which Alba hasn’t heard before but likes. She understands the lyrics because they’re watching the film with subtitles. Alba doesn’t know any French. Even so she starts to cry, she thinks it must be the hormones. It’s not a sad scene, more comic than anything else. But it gets to her. There’s barely anyone else in the cinema, so Alba’s brother starts to sing the chorus: Et j’ai crié, crié “Aline!” pour qu'elle revienne. Et j'ai pleuré, oh, pleuré. Oh, oh j'avais trop de peine.
‘Jesus, I can’t believe it,’ Alba says to her brother. ‘We’ve just ordered …’ They’re sitting in one of the bars on the same street as the cinema. It’s Mexican, all done up in red with colorful designs. They’ve ordered nachos with guacamole, two Coronas, and a non-alcoholic beer for Alba.
‘Well, you two can stay, can’t you? I’m sorry, Alba. Maybe it’ll be over quickly and I’ll be able to get back …’
‘No worries. I forgive you. Look, she’s just kicked, you’re pissing her off as well,’ Alba says, pointing to her belly.
‘Well, she kicked you, so maybe she was trying to tell you not to give her favourite uncle such a hard time.’
‘Her only uncle.’
‘Details, details …’
Alba’s brother has time to take a swig of the beer they’ve just brought him. He kisses his sister and his friend goodbye. He apologises again before he leaves. They watch him leave the bar, with that air about him that he always has of just having had a shower.
‘So, what did you make of the film?’ Carlos asks.
Later they’re in the same bar, with another round of beers. Alba’s ordered herself a Corona this time, so she feels a bit floaty.
‘I saw you crying,’ Carlos says.
‘Oh no, how embarrassing …’
‘They weren’t singing that badly, were they?’
‘It must have been the hormones, I don’t know …’
‘I’d like to cry when I watch movies. I mean, you know, get worked up. Why is it so easy to laugh and so hard to cry? Do you think it’s because I’m a guy? I mean do you think it’s got anything to do with all that stuff about boys don’t cry, shit like that.’
‘No idea. But I would say both yes and no. It's true they say crying shows weakness, but it's the same for girls. The whole thing of telling children not to cry–that has to stop.
You’ve got to let them cry and tell them what they’re going through, that they’re sad or that they’re upset or that it’s nothing. They call it giving them emotional validation.’
‘Is that what you do with your kids?’
‘No. Well, I do it but without all the mumbo-jumbo around it.’
‘Is there mumbo-jumbo?’
‘There’s even cults.’
‘I’d never have guessed.’
Carlos has offered to walk Alba home, to start with because it was on his way. And then because he wanted to carry on talking with her. They’ve bought some cans of beer from a guy in the street.
‘We’re nearly there,’ Alba says, feeling guilty for a moment that Carlos is walking her back home, going out of his way for her. They barely pass anyone in the street but it's not very late, it’s just that Alba’s neighbourhood is pretty quiet. After lots of walking, they’ve both fallen silent. They’ve reached the door.
‘Here it is,’ says Alba. ‘Thanks for keeping me company.’
‘It was fun,’ Carlos says. ‘If it happens again, you know, if your brother stands you up and all that, give me a ring.’
The two of them look at each other and smile. Alba is surprised to feel a degree of sexual tension. She looks at Carlos a little confused, but he interprets her direct gaze as an invitation and kisses her. This strange kiss is something new for Alba. It was a short kiss to begin with, and then a slightly more involved one, and now, after they have held each other tight, Alba asks if he’d like to come up. But she’s not really asking.
It's a fairly disappointing fuck, too fast and bumpy. Carlos had a condom in his wallet, which Alba found funny. Then it was a bit complicated, with her belly in the way, even though it’s still small enough. But above all it was fast, Alba hadn’t even taken off her dress. They hadn’t gotten into bed, but both fell asleep on top of the covers a little later. At some point Carlos got up and left. When Alba wakes up to go to the bathroom she is pleased to be alone in the house. She drinks a glass of water and looks at her phone, a reflex. She takes her clothes off, pulls back the sheets and gets into bed. She pulls the covers up to her chin, even though it’s hot, even though it’s summer. She likes sleeping like this. The next morning when she gets into the shower she’s surprised by the lack of guilt. As though the previous night had been a product of her imagination. She remembers the film and the song more clearly than those clumsy kisses. She looks up the song on Spotify and sings it in her pretend French, very loudly, while she applies the rosehip oil to stop herself from getting stretchmarks.
✳