A Crack in the Wall

by Claudia Piñeiro

  “Yes, go on.”

  The girl gets up. His wife snorts. Borla asks:

  “What do you mean, Simó?” as if “Yes, go on” had been intended for him. Pablo skirts the issue by repeating his question:

  “What if she doesn’t come back?”

  “If she doesn’t come back there’s nothing to worry about – I’m just ringing you in case, so that you can be prepared, that’s all,” says Borla and ends the conversation as curtly as he had started it.

  Pablo stands for a moment with the receiver still in his hand.

  “What did he want?” Laura asks.

  “Nothing important,” he tells her.

  “All the same, you could have said to help me clear the table,” Laura complains, seamlessly changing the subject and confusing Pablo for the time it takes him to realize that she is referring to Francisca, not Borla.

  Laura gets up and takes the dirty plates left on the table over to the sink.

  “Leave it, I’ll do it,” he says.

  She accepts, but doesn’t want to go to bed before returning to her theme, as if to remind Pablo that if there is going to be an important worry keeping him awake all night, it should be one supplied by her:

  “Please – speak to Francisca.”

  She leaves the room and for a moment he doesn’t move, staring at their dirty plates and glasses, the half-cleared table. He wonders what would happen to this household if Laura or Francisca ever found out what he did. Whether they would be able to understand or would condemn him. Whether they would have done the same, in his position. Then he clears away the last things, takes them to the sink and makes a start on the washing-up. He could leave everything in the sink for the woman who comes in the morning to help with housework, but he likes washing, letting the water run in with the soap, watching the bubbles rise on the crockery, rinsing everything and putting it to dry on a dishcloth so nothing slips. The telephone rings again and Pablo shakes his hands, looks for another dishcloth and, not finding one, dries his hands on the back of his trousers. He answers and this time hears Marta’s voice.

  “I’m scared, are you?”

  For a moment he says nothing, such is the surprise of hearing her. Marta tries again:

  “Hello! Are you there, Pablo?”

  “Yes, I’m here,” he says quickly, fearful that she may cut him off if he doesn’t speak.

  “Aren’t you scared?”

  “No, I’m not scared.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I’m not even worried, Marta, and you shouldn’t be either,” he says, trying to sound convincing. “I really think Borla’s right – there’s nothing to fear.”

  While he waits to hear Marta’s voice, Pablo reckons that this must be one of the very few times – apart from that night – that she has called him at home for any other reason than to complain about something he has omitted to do, or done wrong. At the very least that girl’s appearance in the office that afternoon has served to show that Marta still, occasionally, needs him.

  “I can’t sleep,” she whispers. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  And Pablo wishes he could tell her what comes into his head when she says these words, but he doesn’t dare. So he casts about for something else, something less honest but more appropriate.

  “There’s really no reason you shouldn’t go to sleep as normal.”

  He murmurs two or three more platitudes along these lines and Marta feels better – at least she says she does, thanking him before she hangs up. Pablo puts away the last things, turns off the light and goes to bed. At least that is his intention. When he goes into the bedroom the television is on and Laura seems to be asleep. He fumbles between the sheets for the remote control and switches off the set.

  “Don’t turn it off, I was watching,” she says, pointedly pulling herself up against the headboard.

  As Pablo takes off his clothes and gets into bed, Laura asks:

  “Have you spoken to Francisca?”

  “Not yet,” he admits. “I’d rather wait until she’s in a better mood.”

  “In other words, never,” she says and then, without trying to make it sound like an order but with sufficient force that Pablo takes it as one:

  “Go and meet her out of school tomorrow and speak to her then.”

  “I will, don’t worry about it,” he says, and he realizes that this is the second time that evening he has told a woman not to worry.

  For a few minutes they lie side by side without speaking. After a time Pablo moves onto his side and strokes her thigh. Laura’s first reaction is to tense up, as though fearful. Then she relaxes, in so far as she is ever able to do that. On screen a woman police officer is examining a corpse still warm from a murder. Pablo watches the picture without reading the subtitles. The woman reminds him of Marta, although she doesn’t look like her – it’s something to do with the way she smiles, the movement of her hair falling over her shoulders. Languorously Pablo runs his hand down the length of his wife’s thigh and, although she doesn’t move or speak, he takes the fact that she hasn’t actively moved her leg away to mean that she’s prepared to have sex that night. So he moves in closer, extending his caress beneath the elastic of her pants towards her pubic hair. Laura makes a small movement, like a reflex, closing her legs then yielding again. Pablo bides his time and only after stroking her for a while does he try to kiss her; she turns away but only slightly so that it doesn’t seem like an outright rejection, and his kiss ends up grazing her cheek, close to the corner of her mouth. From there, Pablo drops down to her shoulder and there, on his wife’s shoulder, he finds Marta’s mouth, the mouth of the woman who only a few minutes ago rang him and said:

  “I can’t get to sleep, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  That’s why he goes to her house and lies down next to her, stroking her hair until she falls asleep, stroking her face with the back of his hand and just when he thinks that she’s asleep, Marta takes his face and guides it towards her mouth – which is right here on Laura’s shoulder – and Pablo opens her lips with his. Marta lets him, she doesn’t tense up or turn away or close her legs; Pablo’s tongue comes up against Marta’s teeth, he runs his tongue over them, one by one, because Laura isn’t here any more, not her and not her shoulder, just Marta’s mouth. Laura has died in some accident, or from an illness – he doesn’t know exactly. All he knows is that now he can be with the other woman, the one he desires, and he feels how she makes him hard again as he waits to penetrate her, to be inside her and it’s Marta guiding him, wanting him, asking him to sink into her, to fuck her, that’s how Marta Horvat asks for it and he likes to hear it, to answer the call and penetrate her as often as she asks for it, just as he penetrates Laura now – not Marta but Laura, who never speaks, or asks, or begs, Laura who has merely lifted up her nightdress and lowered her pants to halfway down her thighs, sufficient for him to find a way in. Laura does her bit, not suspecting that there is another woman in this bed, naked and illuminated by the light from the television set that nobody’s watching: it is Marta who moves beneath him, coaxing from Pablo’s body something only she knows how to command.

  Laura takes a tablet, turns off the light and settles herself into a shape for sleeping, her back to him. Pablo studies his wife; the glow from the television set is enough to highlight her still-youthful shoulder, her lightly tanned skin, the small scar she has always had on her left shoulder blade. Laura makes an involuntary movement, kicking out, as though she is dreaming of falling into a well. He, meanwhile, falls into another, that open footing that was waiting to be filled with cement the next day. Even when he closes his eyes he still sees it in front of him, he can’t help it – impossible to make it disappear. But this time he can make the gaping hole in the ground wait in vain for Pablo to do what Borla tells him: to throw the body of a man into it. This time he says no, he will not do it. And Marta doesn’t cry, or beg him or tremble. And then, so as not to let the hole remain empty, Pablo dives i
nto it. And he doesn’t drop in like a dead weight but floats in the air like a feather, drifting in a limitless, bottomless space, and the endlessness of his fall causes him more anguish because, if Pablo Simó had the choice, he would rather plummet down and be smashed to pieces.

  He turns off the television. Minutes go by, perhaps even an hour, and he can’t get to sleep. But he must try, he should take advantage of the quiet, the exhaustion of a sated body. Following the curve described by Laura’s body, Pablo settles himself behind her in the bed – not touching her this time – and covers his head with the pillow so that the dawn light that will be filtering through the window in a few hours won’t waken him. Just as he is about to fall asleep, at that strange point somewhere along the line of fading consciousness, he hears Laura say in a hoarse voice:

  “Promise that tomorrow you’ll talk to Francisca.”

  And Pablo promises that he will.

  4

  Over the following days Pablo hears nothing more about the girl with the rucksack who came looking for Nelson Jara; nor does anyone else at Borla and Associates. Laura’s worries about Francisca occupy his mind and, although up until now Pablo’s only intervention has been a hurried exchange on the way back from school, one dominated by awkward silences and monosyllables, Laura raises the subject every night, usually when they are in bed, obliging Pablo to contemplate all kinds of possible scenarios, ranging from adolescent mischief to juvenile delinquency.

  Until one April morning, when Pablo goes to the estate agency that handles Borla’s new builds in order to discuss with the employees various promises that have been made in their name to potential buyers: an extra window somewhere completely inappropriate, a dividing wall to be put up because the buyer absolutely must have an extra room, another wall taken down to make a room bigger, a dressing room made into a study or a study made into a dressing room, more sockets, taps where there aren’t any pipes, a gas outlet on the balcony… Modifications either suggested by the buyer or included as a condition when the time came to complete the sale, which the seller, under pressure, reckoned to be “a nuisance, but one the architects can easily accommodate”. But even though they use the plural and refer to “the architects”, really they mean Pablo Simó, to whom Borla has assigned the task of meeting clients’ demands, with the strict instruction that no sale should ever be lost, even if the changes requested contradict the basic rules of architecture, so long as the costs can be transferred to the client and not reduce the profit margin too much.

  “I don’t know who he thinks he is. See what people are like, Pablo?” Borla said to him the afternoon that a colleague stormed out of the office, slamming the door hard enough to leave his anger in no doubt, after Borla had turned down the offer to collaborate on a project. “Are we running a charity here, or a counselling service? Do we make social architecture? If that were the case, why would I do business with a man like that when I could be building housing estates like we did at the beginning, remember, Pablo?”

  And Pablo remembers them very well: the Juan Enrique Martínez estate in Chubut, the Sindicato Textil estate in Paraná, the San Agustín estate with its seventy-two dwellings, in Rio Tercero; projects he came up with, planned and directed. Although that kind of architecture may strike some people as dull, Pablo Simó never turned out cookie-cutter houses; he went to the sites, spent a few days in the neighbourhood, walked around the area and, when possible, interviewed the people who were going to be living in the new development. They were cheap houses, but Pablo juggled the budget to find the best materials and colours. He spent the most time on designing communal areas – the places where residents were going to meet each other after a day’s work, where they would play ball games or cards, drink maté and beer, chat, listen to music or watch football, the places where each person would, in their own way, do what all people do at the end of every day: fill time until the new day begins. They had won the National Urbanism Prize for the San Agustín development, eighteen years earlier. Of all the architectural jobs Pablo Simó has done in his career, the social projects are the only times he has really thought about the person who was going to live in the house he was conceiving. And he didn’t think of that person in the abstract, but as flesh and blood, with a face, a laugh, a smell all their own. That wasn’t the case later on. An era began in which in order to win a tender you had to lower the profit margin by so much that Borla decided it wasn’t worth getting involved in that sort of project any longer. Plus there was a revival of fortunes in the private housing sector, along with the growing value of a square foot in Buenos Aires and the availability of cheap credit, factors that meant Borla could make much more money buying a plot and building on it than he ever would attempting some contrivance with overheads and polynomials for the sake of a tendering process that would anyway see him getting paid badly and late. After turning down two consecutive proposals from Pablo, Borla explained to him the company’s new work philosophy: from now on they would not think of the person who was going to inhabit this building they were putting up, but of that person’s reasons for buying what they were offering. A housing development commissioned by the state, or a company or a syndicate, is already sold before the first brick is laid; not so a block of flats. And Pablo Simó, who has worked for Borla since graduating in architecture, accepted his comments without question, demurring only in the time he steals occasionally from his daily work to draw the eleven-storey, north-facing tower. And even when he is drawing the tower he doesn’t have any potential resident in mind, other than himself.

  Anyway, that April afternoon, on his way back from the estate agency, Pablo stops for a coffee at a branch of a chain that has been scattering identikit cafés throughout the city – quite a different place to the bar he usually frequents at mid-morning, where the same waiters have been toiling for years, shouting their orders over to the bar with enviable brio, and where there are white cloths over the wooden tables and old-fashioned glass sugar-shakers with metal spouts. The main reason Pablo Simó never goes to this particular café is his hatred – a question of principle and loyalty to his belief in sympathetic architecture – of any outlet designed as part of a chain.

  “A chain’s retail outlets are defined by marketing, not architecture, Simó,” Marta Horvat said one afternoon after they had been to San Telmo to evaluate the purchase of an old building with a view to its demolition. They had stopped in front of an anodyne perfume shop that would have looked at home in a shopping mall, but not in that cobbled street.

  At any rate, it is unusual for Pablo to take that route, via the corner opposite the underground station, a corner he only ever passes on his way back from the estate agency. And on those occasions he’s usually in such a bad mood that he doesn’t even feel like stopping for his mid-morning coffee. Today, however, something makes him slow down as he walks past the entrance, then retrace his steps. Perhaps it is because the temperature has dropped suddenly and the unexpected blast of cold weather makes him want something warm. Or because he’s assailed by the aroma of recently ground coffee. Or because he feels in better spirits than usual, having managed to deflect three of the estate agents’ absurd demands. They looked most put out by his rejections, even though two of the changes they wanted entailed putting windows in supporting walls – something that would certainly have compromised the structure and, ultimately, the stability of the building. It could be for any of these reasons or none of them; Pablo doesn’t stop to wonder why, but goes into the café and sits close to the door, at one of those tables everyone avoids because of the inconvenience of making way for customers going in or out. Hardly has he sat down when someone speaks over his shoulder.

  “Good morning.”

  “A large, strong coffee,” he replies, without looking round.

  But the words are met by a gentle burst of laughter that doesn’t sound right even for a waitress in this sort of café. Pablo turns round and finds himself looking at the girl with the rucksack.

  “Hello,” she
says.

  He takes a moment to respond.

  “Hello.”

  And he realizes, for the first time, that the rucksack girl is pretty. That’s exactly how he thinks it, with those words: “a pretty girl”. A man might not look round in the street for such a girl, perhaps she wouldn’t even catch his eye – she’s not physically exuberant, she doesn’t wear make-up, her hair is tied in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. But she’s definitely pretty. Pablo can’t tell whether the girl is wearing the same clothes as the day he first saw her, but she might as well be: jeans, a T-shirt and trainers. There is something different about her today though; it’s as if her face were framed by a brighter light, emphasizing the simple beauty of her features. The girl smiles, more with her eyes than her mouth, and he would be happy to stay like this, studying each element of her face, but he senses that she is disconcerted by his silence and realizes that he will have to say something or the girl will leave.

  “Are you still looking for Jara?” he asks.

  “No, not any more,” she says.

  “You sorted out that business matter.”

  “Yes, luckily.”

  “And you managed to do it without Jara…” he says.

  “Yes. Where can he have got to, eh?”

  Pablo doesn’t answer because the girl’s question has reminded him that she is not only pretty but potentially dangerous, and it is this sense of threat that allows him to reply dishonestly:

  “An odd fish. Who knows where he is.”

  “Fortunately I don’t need him any more,” she says.

  “So how come you’re still in the neighbourhood?” asks Pablo, conscious that in a few minutes he will have to brief Borla about this chat.

  “I live near here; I’ve actually moved into the area.”