by Pablo Poveda
That place gave me a bad vibe. Death wandered among the rooms. As I held the wrench in my hand, I unwittingly thought of the possibility of increasing the number of murders.
I shook that thought off of my head, went back to the room, and knelt next to Blanca.
“Sorry.”
“Are you alright?” she asked, looking me in the eye.
“Yes, why?”
“You’re pale,” she said. “Very pale.”
“I’m fine. I need a drink.”
I hit the slab with all my strength. I broke it in two on the second blow. We pulled out the debris and put it aside. There was the box. It was one of those rectangular colorful metal candy boxes. It was ironic that such a bright object represented the reasons my friend took his life. We looked at it expectantly like pirates in a movie, about to open a treasure chest.
“What are you waiting for?” said Blanca just before we felt a tremor in the building. People were shouting, specifically men shouting. They were on the staircase, then in the elevator. “Shit, hurry up.”
I stood up and walked to the door. I heard the neighbors yelling. Suddenly, the doors to the floor we were in opened. The neighbors in the adjoining apartments came out to the corridor. An elderly woman screamed and went back into her apartment. From the other side, a man spotted Estrella’s cadaver behind me, then looked at my feet, smeared in gore. He called me a son of a bitch and passed out. The murmur of mother of gods filled the corridor. Everything happened so quickly and yet so slowly that I did not have time to react. My limbs froze, and my mind — that could not handle the surrealism of that situation — flew to another plane of existence. Like in a Wim Wenders movie, I became an angel who saw everything — even myself — standing like a bonsai at the door, motionless and confused. Young tanned short-haired agents of the National Guard, clad in black uniform and tactical boots, appeared in the scene. I raised my arms because those were the only parts of my body that I could move and obeyed their orders like a trained monkey. They surrounded me, and then I saw Officer Rojo walk out the stairwell, angry and jumpy.
“I knew it,” he said in a menacing tone. “We got you.”
I saw Blanca walk out the door of one of the adjoining apartments and sneak away covertly. How did she do it? She must have jumped from the bedroom balcony to the apartment next door. I saw her walk away while the agents surrounded me and entered the apartment like a pack of hungry hounds. They pushed me against the wall and handcuffed meI expected an agent to read me my rights and telling me to call my lawyer, but he kept silent instead and looked me in the eye like he had caught an enormous tuna. From afar, I saw Blanca signal good-bye and sneak away in the middle of the stir. One of the officers dismissed the crowd of curious neighbors who insulted me. Some officers shuddered and even shed a tear upon seeing Estrella’s face. An officer had begun to call the ambulance when another one told him it was not necessary. That was real life, and nobody was used to death, not even the police. One had to have a good pair of balls so as not to break down.
Everything went dark when I found myself crying aloud that I was innocent, that they were wrong, that I had not done anything. I cried like an angry child looking for a hug — from Blanca, or Clara, or Estrella, or any woman with the smell of sweet perfume and soft skin.
Rojo came out of the apartment with the metal box in a plastic bag. They covered Estrella’s body with a blanket. The handcuffs hurt my arms and wrists. They pushed me from behind, forcing me down the stairs until I got into the back of a patrol car, narrow and with a plastic seat.
The realization that everything happening around me was corporeal — the danger and the deaths — slowly settled in. We were real, like the chronicles that I had written so many times in the newspaper and that I had shamelessly embellished. I felt like an intruder, an intruder in my own reality. I realized that I was drowning in a pool of shit, seeing the end of my days behind steel bars and concrete walls.
10
There is always a moment of reflection, a pause. A moment in which the images come to mind without a rational order whatsoever, like a movie employee who puts the wrong reel in the projector. The smell of the frying oil used by the neighbor comes to mind through the window. Who the hell is the bloke who smokes in the car? That lame family who discussed aloud in the line of the airport, repeating the names of Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and a movie actor. I recalled their clothes and haircuts. A man sunbathes on a deck chair with his shirt open and his chest bare. The irrational order of the images makes no sense whatsoever. But there is little one can do while standing there, witnessing the chaotic parade of mental slides, unaware why they are presenting like this, nor wishing for it. It is a similar feeling as when one crosses the threshold of a hospital because it is better not to think of what awaits in there.
A feeling that can come out of the blue one July afternoon on the balcony of your parents’ beach apartment. Someone smokes a cigarette, and the wind brings the smoke to your nostrils. A myriad of thoughts piles up when you find the lifeless body of a girl on the floor, a girl that you used to know and with whom you had slept at least once. The touch of her soft skin comes to mind, and you rejoice in its memory with longing at the thought that you will never touch anything alike. It hurts in the core like you had committed the atrocious act with your own hands. Not sure why, guilt invades you, triggered perhaps by the fact, at that moment, she was but a mere carnal relief. The only way that comes to mind to ease the guilt that begins to torment is attending her funeral and approaching her beloved ones, expressing your sympathies for their loss, and telling them: “I am sorry. I did not kill her, but I crossed paths with her and did nothing to help her veer away from this course.”
You hear conversations out on the street — men and women passing by under the window, talking about topics that are as versatile as they are menial. You listen to them and blame them for walking by, knowing that your wish — as the big nosy you are — is to listen to them. Their conversations are menial and irrelevant, with no place in your sphere. People often talk about menial topics, one after another — verbal rubbish — holding on to the conversation so that they do not feel out of place because deep inside, they want to talk about something, fit in, give their opinion, say something, and be listened. So oppressive is the fear of silence and loneliness. They fear being left out of the evolutionary chain.
When thinking about those people, one cannot help feeling superior and, at the same time, displaced for expecting too much from them, for believing in their drive and ability to think, and for holding the conviction that common sense is still common. One imagines that the human species continues to evolve and that, at the same time, the system where one lives works too well with or without its individuals. That not every opinion is worth listening to — neither is yours — and therefore one opts for silence, that talking about television is wasting saliva. That we do not really have free will, and problems of life are actually the size of peanuts.
The smell of garlic comes back to mind, which in turn brings the remembrance of tobacco, and so images succeed one after the other. You select one of such images, pause it, zoom in it, focusing on nothing. You remember that you have not had sex in weeks, that porn has clouded your imagination, and that you are trapped in a dead-end labyrinth, without sex nor anything that motivates you.
* * *
As I returned from my rumination, I raised my eyes and fixed my attention on the blue shade of the walls. I was in an interrogation room, sitting on a chair in front of a plastic table; a one-way mirror was to my left. I looked into it and could hardly recognize my reflection. I had an urge to smoke, drink, do something, disinhibit myself for a moment, relax, put out cigarette butts, and blame someone else for my disgrace.
They were going to take my statement, but I did not have much to say and was getting tired of lying all the time.
Rojo walked in through the door with a firm and tense countenance. He carried a notepad, a binder folder, and a great desire
to punch me in the face. In a way, I was glad that there were still policemen committed to their work, the way he was. Society had become a uniform and diminished whole. Apathy had taken over, and no citizen would take the street to denounce a crime or demand justice, even if it only were to make a fuss and step out of the routine. Compassion was exclusive to funerals. Everybody was terrified of death on a spiritual scope, but it was a merely individualistic and selfish matter. None of us liked the idea of dying, nor expressing an opinion about it when, next door, somebody lodged a couple of leads in the head of somebody else.
“Let’s cut to the chase,” Rojo said, sitting in front of me. “Give me a statement, and I’m out of here.”
“I’m innocent,” I replied.
Rojo gave a strong sigh. “Is that it?”
“Yes,” I responded. “What else do you want me to say?”
The officer opened the folder. He started listing a series of faults and misdemeanors that I had incurred.
“Not to mention this month’s list,” he said. “Should I read them too?”
“It won’t be necessary,” I replied. “Everything you need is in the box.”
“Which box?”
“The box you confiscated,” I explained. “That’s what I was looking for.”
“What’s inside?”
“I don’t know,” I answered.
“How do you know that is going to change anything?”
“I just do,” I replied. “I trust who told me.”
“That woman, right?” the officer guessed.
“Open the box,” I told him. “Let’s find out what’s in it, don’t you think?”
“Good try,” he replied. “What’s your excuse now?”
“If you’re asking about Estrella,” I said, “we got laid once.”
“You’re an insolent. You should be worried” — he stood up — “or not, anyway you are done for.”
“I’ve told you already,” I replied. “I did nothing, I was set up.”
“Who cares?”
“Everything is in the box,” I repeated. He looked at me and smiled.
He walked out, slamming the door behind him.
Again, I had been an idiot. I did not want to appear weak before Rojo, but the truth could not be any more different. I was scared. I was not aware of the magnitude of the problem that was beginning to weigh on my shoulders. I cursed myself several times. My jerk self would not give me a break.
Minutes later, two short-haired officials showed up. They were even more robust and muscular than Rojo.
“Come with us, sir,” one of them said.
“Where to?” I asked.
“To the suite,” the other added.
I walked with them without resisting; we crossed the corridor that I so much hated from the beginning. People in the station looked at me differently. I had become sub-human to their eyes. No longer was I a person; nobody could sympathize with me, not even display the slightest sign of sympathy. In their eyes, I was a criminal. They took for granted that I had attempted against society, and therefore I deserved to be there in that situation. We went down a flight of stairs and entered the jail where I was put in a cell. It reeked of urine, ammonia, and filth. The space was dark and narrow, only adorned by a small window facing the outside. There was no bed; comfort was out of the question. Two cement platforms sticking out of the wall functioned as bunk beds.
The police officers scoffed at me and disappeared.
In the cell was another prisoner, a middle-aged man with glasses, lowering his head.
He was thin, wore a shirt, and gave me the impression of regretting having done something. However, soon, I would be able to contemplate the coldness in his gaze.
I stood in front of the bars, wishing I were on the other side. I became aware of my psychological state. The lack of freedom made me appreciate it more and long for it. The stranger looked calm, sitting in the dark.
“Hello,” I greeted him. “My name is Gabriel.”
He did not answer.
“Do you have a cigarette?” he asked.
I became aware the night ahead was going to be long.
* * *
Much like it had happened at the sausage factory, after spending a few minutes there, I became accustomed to its stench, damp and penetrating. I decided that pondering who had been in that pen before was of no benefit, so I sank in my reflections.
“What did you do, Gabriel?” the man asked. I was not sure I wanted to talk to him.
“Nothing,” I said, “I didn’t do anything.”
“Sure,” he replied, ironically. “Then you should be out in no time.”
“How about you?”
The man raised his head.
“Conrad,” he uttered. “Conrad Outbursts, you can call me that. Of course, that’s not my real name. I go by many.”
He seemed convinced of his own words regardless of how nonsensical they were. He was a nutcase and probably deserved to be where he was.
“You must have a real name.”
“Does it really matter?” he said. “A name is but a label, a classification for the mind. It’s a way for others to address me that I acknowledge.”
“As you wish,” I responded.
“They accuse me of killing a man but can’t prove it.”
“And did you do it?”
“Does that matter?” he asked.
“You make me think that you did,” I murmured. “Otherwise — ”
“I intended differently,” Conrad replied. “I can sense fear exudate from your pores. You are judging me, aren’t you?”
“No,” I said nervously. “I don’t fear you.”
“What do you do for a living?” he asked. “We’ll have to talk about something.”
“I’m a journalist. Or at least, I was. Now I’m not so sure.”
“I see,” he replied. “So am I, academically speaking. I never practiced the profession. Do you like books, Gabriel?”
“Yes, of course.” I felt a little relieved. The conversation was heading in a more relaxed direction, and I was getting tired of standing. I took a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of my pocket and offered him one of the two last ones. I lit up my cigarette and exhaled the first puff in the air. “I write too.”
“Fiction?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m finishing a novel. It’s difficult to explain.”
“No, it is not,” he added seriously after having a drag off of his cigarette.
“What do you know?” I asked, offended. I always found those unsolicited comments utmost annoying, like pills of acid directly dispensed to my stomach. I was fed up with people tactlessly and judgmentally downplaying the difficulty of a process, simply because it is an activity that could hardly generate an economic return. “Writing is an art.”
“Shut up, will you?” the man said. I was about to punch him in the face. “I’ve written five books already. I know something about it.”
“Five?”
“Five.”
“Your face doesn’t ring a bell,” I said with contempt. It was his turn to get burned.
“No one reads my books,” he replied with seriousness. “I burn them when I finish them. Oh, yes.”
“What’s the point of writing if no one can read your work?” I asked. Damn lunatic. “What’s the purpose of writing then?”
“I don’t write for other’s approval,” he said squarely. “I write for myself. I loathe structure. People would not understand. My stories are void of main characters and plot. Because that’s what life is like, isn’t it? It’s a story without a plot most of the times. But people want the certainty that limits provide. We are despicable; we want all the work done for us. My books are not meant to become bestsellers. People don’t want to read me. Literature has been cheapened into becoming just another means of entertainment for the poor. Almost everyone has the ability to read. Therefore, books are mass-produced to satisfy the demand, thus cheapening literature. And cheap minds are not a
fter enlightenment. We live in a culture of people who overcome. They live after the example of others, who lived after the example of yet other people before. I don’t want to write about people who overcome obstacles.
“No. I’m not interested. I like stores that end badly or don’t have closure. Dull marriages that get stagnant in the lethargy of complacency. Those cowardly people who dare not step forward. There are no heroes in my stories. There are people. Sometimes not even that. They’re my stories — my journey — and I don’t want to share any of that with anyone. If your mind is set in the economic goal of your book, you are but a fucking phony because there is no story, nor authenticity, only money that will never come. You are pathetic, that’s what you are. Writing is traveling, flying with your mind, a dream that won’t dissipate when you’re awake. And I want to fly. I want to go to the cinema and see my own movie, sit by myself in a theater and put my feet on the row of seats on front of me. I want to see people fornicate, doing as I say. I want to be the director and kill them all in great detail in the most painful way.
“That is what writing is about. It’s about my pleasure, not others’. I want to hear the popcorn crunch between my molars. That’s me, and I don’t need anybody else’s approval. If you write for the pleasure of others, to be in the newspaper and sell lots of books, you’re a poser; you are not a writer, but a trained monkey. You become a ghost of yourself to live up to other’s expectations. I don’t like fame. I commit too many atrocities to be famous deliberately.”
“Yours is a peculiar vision,” I said. I was honest. That man was right. He might not be totally sane to our standards, but his words framed literature in a way that I had not contemplated. Unfortunately, it was not truth. Storytelling is an art, and his thing was but rambling and excuses. Though his dialectic helped me forget that he was an alleged criminal. But so was I. We were on the same boat.
“Do you have another cigarette?” he asked. He had finished his last one, tossed the butt to the floor, and crushed it with his foot. “This is the first time I’ve smoked. Do you have any alcohol?”
