SYNOPSIS
(EXTENDED VERSION)
Back to: Part 4
Part 5
Almas del silencio
Central protagonists: Pablo, Andrew
Pablo responds to Andrew's email the same day. After three years of silence and disconnection, he says that his feelings only grew stronger. Despite the privacy concerns in the light his growing celebrity, he kept the same email address in hopes that one day Andrew would reconnect, and he can't be any happier not that Andrew finally did.
Their relationship restarts, now with the full awareness both have about its romantic nature. As they correspond almost every day, Pablo recounts his steady rising to success and security over the last three years, and Andrew's happy to learn the details. At the same time, he's embarrassed to share that he only experienced stagnation at work and the corrosion of his marriage over the recent years. When he opens up, Pablo responds supportively, reaffirming that being vulnerable with each other is what makes their connection special.
Nathalie notices an abrupt change in Andrew's attitude towards her. As an attempt to make amends for her mistake on their daughter's birthday, she suggests that three of them go together for a summer vacation in Greece. Andrew agrees, under the condition that he'll be the one to pay for it. Shortly before their planned departure, she gets an urgent situation at work making it impossible for her to leave. To her surprise, Andrew decides to go on the trip without her. Without thinking twice, he emails Pablo and suggests that he join him and his child in Greece. Although Pablo is in the midst of an important game preparation, he cannot miss the opportunity to reunite with his loved one, if even for a few days.
When they meet, Andrew introduces Pablo to his daughter as his brother, asking her to not tell her Mom and Grandma about him. Despite the language barrier, the girl quickly grows an emotional bond with Pablo. On the very first night, Andrew initiates sex with Pablo. Pablo is just as randy, but he resists. On the one hand, he's worried that the child will wake up and see what they're doing. On the other hand, he still harbors internalized homophobia and believes that physical intimacy will make their relationship "dirty". Andrew encourages him to think critically, but Pablo doesn't give in. Although disappointed, Andrew realizes his loved one is doing the best he can — because his religious conditioning is deeply ingrained. Unable to fall asleep for a few hours with Pablo's body beside, he realizes that Pablo needs more time to fully accept his sexuality and their love.
Despite the lack of physical intimacy, the couple spends a blissful vacation by the seaside, much like a family. The guys take beach jogs in the morning, discover and enjoy the local food, and spend most of the daytime on the beach. On one of their last days, Pablo rents a car and they make a road trip around the island. As they say goodbye to each other, deep down both realize they need to spend a lifetime, not just a brief ten days, together. Andrew's ideas about emigration to Spain now assume a clear context — aside from his career-related motives and sense of belonging, living by Pablo's side and having a working relationship is a reason strong enough. He's still feeling too vulnerable to share this life-altering venture with Pablo. He says he's grateful for the time they got to be together, and Pablo invites him to come to Barcelona in November, to join the celebration of his 25th birthday. With his budgets drained by the current trip, Andrew's not sure he'll amass enough to afford it, but he hopes so.
As he comes back to his everyday routine in Moscow, he realizes the magnitude of interlocking barriers on his way towards emigration to Spain. The paperwork related to the notarization, translation, and legalization of his degree in Spain involves massive monetary costs. Before applying to residency, which can be his first source of income, he'll have to take at least one year of medical and language prep courses, renting an apartment and having everyday expenses. The budget looks huge, and he's afraid to ask for Pablo's support, believing that he has to be self-reliant. Looking for alternatives, he first takes another job at a private out-patient clinic, to only realize that his earnings here are far from what he was promised in the job interview, and in fact almost the same as he's making in the hospital. The underdeveloped private sector of healthcare in Russia, as it turns out, operates on its own version of corruption and malpractice. A similar barrier of bribes required by governmental licensing agencies in order to open his own practice makes this project bankrupt as well. He finally realizes the nature of economic oppression — whatever door he knocks upon, there's a trap behind it. The imperative of emigration and continuing his career abroad remains becomes yet more clear, but it requires the budget he cannot amass within a reasonable time. He feels trapped, but decides to accumulate the money little by little.
Despite Pablo's repeated invitation, he cannot afford to visit him on Barcelona on his 25th birthday. Pablo expects Andrew's congratulation message the entire day, not allowing the possibility that his loved one forgot about that date — but Andrew is silent. When Pablo calls him at the end of the day, he finds out that Andrew got into a traffic accident. Even though he suffered no physical injuries, his car is badly damaged. There was a major violation on the part of the other driver, which caused the collision, but the corrupt Russian police assigns the blame to Andrew, because the other driver give them a bribe right on the spot, aside from being the son of a high-ranking government official. Because of the unfair ruling, Andrew becomes ineligible for insurance payment — so he'll have to spend a huge part of the savings he accumulated over the year. For the first time during the course of their relationship, Pablo understands that Andrew's financial struggle is related to corrupt structural realities of the country he lives in, not his individual failures.
A few months later, Andrew sees an unexpected positive change in his family life: his wife's parental instinct finally shows up, and, as she spends increasingly more time with their child, her lifestyle becomes more like that of a grown-up. Her relationship with her mother, who continues to live with them, also improves, all the while the distance between her and Andrew remains. They no longer have sex and basically live like co-habiting co-parents, but they're on good terms. Seeing that Nathalie's doesn't revert to her previous lifestyle, Andrew feels relieved: his wife is now capable of taking proper care of their daughter in case that he leaves for Spain, even without legally divorcing.
In February 2008, after recovering from the costly repair of his vehicle, Andrew has enough money to visit Pablo in Barcelona. He's anxious because this time he's gonna be staying at Pablo's and his parents' house, instead of a hotel. He knows Pablo hasn't come out to them yet, and is going to introduce him as a friend. However, their hospitality and openness make him feel at home almost instantly. His persistent feeling of belonging in Barcelona now strengthens, because he lives with people he realizes could become his new family. Spending the next morning alone in the city center, he walks into the cathedral of Barcelona, and for the first time in his life, he senses the presence of a benevolent cosmic force, which he believes is exactly what people call God. He thinks that this force brought him to this city, to loving Pablo, to loving himself, and to seeing a better, brighther future around it all. He prays that it all works out in the end.
Leaving the church, he's feeling light and relieved. On the seafront avenue, he bumps into Irina, his university mate who'd shared her emigration experience with him three years ago. Living and working in Madrid, she now came to Barcelona to attend a conference. After a decade of not seeing her, he's amazed by how stunning she looks compared to the poverty-stricken girl she was in Russia. It's not her outfit, but her vibe that is most striking, and that's for a reason. She made a huge progress in her career as a fertility care doctor here, got married, and had a child. He's happy for her, thinking that hard-working people like her deserve success, and at the same time understands he deserve it as well but is lagging behind so much at his age. Irina invites him to attend a conference-related clinical workshop the next day, and then Andrew sees with his own eyes how differently the management of clinical care is organized in Spain, on top of a much healthier workplace culture. His tantalizing dreams about emigration and making a career there burn an increasingly bigger hole in his heart.
As it turns out, Pablo prepared an entire program for the evenings they spend together in the city, and those are unforgettable. Thinking about the kind of life he could have in this city, Andrew has his vulnerability at its peak. At another home dinner, Pablo's parents unknowingly rub a good ounce of salt into his wound, asking him if he'd be eager to emigrate. He replies ambiguously, anticipating the shame of having to explain that his financial difficulties make it impossible at the moment, and also unsure about Pablo's reaction. In the same conversation, he hears them expressing concern about him not being married and not having a girlfriend. To steer the conversation away from the obvious pain point, Pablo shares that González, his team's head coach, no longer gives him enough credit — at least, so he it perceives. The coach's new favorite, he complains, is his nephew Julio, who Pablo sees as a mediocre player and a sleazy person. Pablo sees his promotion into the team unwarranted, but his parents dismiss it as envy. After so many years of fame, they think, and not without reason, that he's become addicted to being in the spotlight.
When Andrew and Pablo are saying goodbye to each other, Pablo promises that their separation will not be long, because his team is going to come to Moscow for a major tournament three months later, in May 2008. Andrew keeps silence about his growing resolve around emigration, though his sense of belonging is now as painful as ever. After the full career briefing that Irina gave him and his first-person experience in a clinical setting, he see the truth: it's better to get a dignified future in his thirties than never.
In Moscow, Andrew continues to work and deposit bit by bit into his emigration budget. Luckily, he sees that his wife is finally providing responsible care for their child, and with her well-paid job, there's no reason to worry for their economic well-being. His relationship with Nathalie evolves into a sort of benign friendship, and he believes that after his emigration they can peacefully divorce and arrange how he'll be seeing Ann.
Meanwhile, his e-mail correspondence with Pablo becomes more intense and his feelings grow stronger. In May, Pablo comes to Moscow for the scheduled match. Even though he stays just a few days, they cannot miss the opportunity to meet and spend some time together without anyone else knowing. On one of the team's free evenings, when Pablo does not risk attracting the attention of his team mates and managers, Andrew picks him up at the hotel and they drive to the Sparrow Hills, a large riverside park.
As they stroll there, masking with sunglasses to prevent Pablo from being recognized, Andrew finally opens up. He says that after many years of unwavering effort he's hit a dead end in his career in Russia. He opens up about his financial situation. He shares that the car accident last November was the tipping point, making Andrew reckon with how frustrated, unbelonging, unfulfilled, and unsafe he had been feeling for the majority of his life in Russia. Pablo can't believe that Andrew kept it all bottled up for so long, and now he becomes painfully aware of the wide economic gap between them, implying the same gap in freedom and opportunities. Andrew proceeds to tell him that in a week he is going to be laid off from his academic clinic, along with tens of other doctors. The newly appointed Minister of Health, a woman who doesn't even have a medical degree, is going to serve the same system she owes her assignment to: she has to free up positions for her cronies and protegés. At a loss for words, Pablo suggests that he find a position in another hospital, but Andrew presses his argument to a more radical strategy, because the healthcare system in Russia is the same everywhere. He says he's going to relocate to Barcelona for good and start from scratch there by taking a prep course and then applying for medical residency.
Pablo becomes visibly anxious. He says that this enterprise is reckless given that he has a child here in Russia, who should be his biggest life priority. This sounds like defensive bullshit to Andrew. Shocked by Pablo's lack of empathy, he brings up their relationship and asks how they can make it work staying two thousand miles away from each other. Pablo goes up the bullshitting spiral by saying that his fatherhood is a more natural and therefore more important existential experience than their love. Andrew thinks Pablo still hasn't fully accepted his identity, but then he notices that a group of teenagers is pointing in their direction, and within a few moments a girl aims her phone at them. He understand that they recognized Pablo despite the sunglasses. They hurriedly walk away to the car and start off with a jerk.
As they ride in silence, the real reason behind Pablo's objection now hangs in the air. When they get to a safe place and get out of the car, Pablo says it out loud. Him being unmarried and not having a girlfriend causes gossip about his sexuality in the Spanish media, and he's certain his career will be ruined if the public learns the truth. When Andrew asks what can be done about it, Pablo says there isn't anything. He sadly says they're destined to remain "souls of silence" ("almas del silencio" in Spanish), his metaphor reflecting the title of the book.
Next: Part 6