Pablo drinks the wine and finds it warm; he has had the glass in his hands too long, swilling the liquid in imperceptible anticlockwise rotations. At that moment Anita walks past, says goodbye and, without pausing, continues to the front door with her awkward gait. Pablo makes as if to get up and see her out, but she doesn’t give him a chance, disappearing behind the door which closes with a bang.
The noise makes him shudder and he wonders if Anita’s movements have always been so lumbering or whether this is a side-effect of adolescence. He didn’t know her when she was a little girl; he’s only known her for the last two or three years, since Francisca started secondary school. He puts the wine glass down on the table and goes to his daughter’s room. The door is slightly open; he knocks and asks to come in.
“What’s up?” Francisca asks.
“Nothing,” he says, walking in. “I just wanted to say hello.”
“Oh – hello,” she says.
“Hello,” he says.
From what Pablo sees around him, there are no indications that anyone has been studying here with serious application. Ares, a music-sharing program, is open on the computer. Pablo couldn’t put a name to the song coming out of the speakers, though he likes it. There are various nail varnishes on Francisca’s desk – one of them black – along with cotton balls soaked in nail varnish remover, dirty glasses and a plate bearing the remains of what appears to have been a sandwich. The window is wide open to noises from the street and blaring car horns. His daughter seems bent on the almost obsessive task of removing varnish from her nails.
“What are you doing? Are you smelling?” she asks.
“Smelling what?” he asks, not understanding.
“I don’t know, you tell me. When Mum comes in here she always starts sniffing.”
“I’m not Mum,” says Pablo staunchly, and he surprises himself with the words that – though inarguably true – seem to renege on an unspoken agreement he and Laura, and doubtless many other couples, have to show a united front where their daughter is concerned. Why should parents need to have their children think that, especially when it comes to education, they always agree? Why not own up to differences of opinion? Why should he not now, here in his daughter’s room, dare to tell Francisca that it doesn’t bother him as much as it bothers her mother if she has the odd beer and goes out with boys when she feels like it? Pablo doesn’t recognize himself in these questions, nor in the questions he asked himself just now about his wife possibly having a lover. He isn’t so cowardly as to blame this ambivalence on the effect of wine on an empty stomach. If he were going to let himself get carried away by the wine, he would step out of this room now, go and find his wife and say, “Why not have a fling with a new guy, somebody different to the one you’ve spent the last eleven thousand and seventy days of your life with? You deserve it, I deserve it.” He would say it to her in all sincerity, as though he were speaking to a friend – for aren’t they friends? And he wouldn’t be jealous. He tries to imagine his wife in the arms of another man and – honestly – he doesn’t feel jealous. He doesn’t feel anything. Or rather, he does – but what? Relief? If, instead of his wife in those arms, he pictures Marta, he feels excited. Switch Marta for Leonor and he feels furious – he would be capable of tearing her out of this imaginary man’s arms. Why, if he hardly even knows her? Why, when this girl has neither Laura’s legs nor Marta’s tits?
“Did you want anything else?” Francisca asks as she collects up the used cotton balls.
“No, no,” he says, and knows it’s his cue to leave, but first he asks Francisca, “Are you all right?”
“I am,” she says.
“You are?”
“I am,” his daughter repeats.
And now he sees that, in stressing “I am” rather than saying simply “Yes”, his daughter is also implying that there is someone else who isn’t well. She is the one who is well. She. Pablo waits, but his daughter doesn’t ask how he is or say anything else. He moves to leave, then as he’s turning the handle thinks better of it and turns to ask her:
“Tell me something, how do you see me?”
“What?” she asks.
“I don’t know, I mean – do I look good to you or bad, old or fat, or old-fashioned? How do you see me, Francisca?”
“I don’t see you, Dad. You’re my father.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Just that I don’t see you; I don’t look at you.”
“So have a look now, and tell me.”
“Are you serious?”
“Very serious.”
The girl stops what she is doing to study him; for a moment she even seems preoccupied, as if concerned there might be something wrong with him. But with that fleeting interest typical of adolescents, Francisca is soon back in her own world, transfixed by the computer. He tries again:
“Look at me and tell me, please.”
She raises her face. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Pathetic, Dad.”
With, that Francisca turns her back and concentrates on selecting a new song from the interminable list in front of her on the computer.
9
Pablo lies in bed that night considering his daughter’s damning verdict. She could have answered his silly question some other way, said he looked old, or out of shape or plain bad. But Francisca chose the word “pathetic”. What had he expected her to say? How did he expect her to see him? Had he really wanted her opinion – and if not hers, then whose? He turns over in bed. Laura, who has been asleep for a while, is lying next to him, on the right, as she has for so many years. He wishes he could remember how it had been decreed that he would sleep on the left and she on the right, how they had decided on this division of the marital bed. Did they ever even decide it? Or did it just happen, first one night, then a second, growing into a habit like many others in his marriage? If she woke up, would he dare ask Laura how she sees him? No, he wouldn’t – he’s definitely not going to ask her. But how does he see Laura? He looks at her and can’t immediately think of an answer. Men and women who have spent more than eleven thousand and seventy days together do not ask each other this kind of question, he thinks, and he rolls over to face the other way. He curls up, and in making the movement his body grazes her back, but she sleeps on, heedless of the contact. This would be a good night to wake her up and have sex: Laura’s drunk some wine, she went to bed happy, surely she wouldn’t reject him and she might even be a willing participant. The last time he woke her up, putting his hand between her legs, she said, “Is this necessary?”, put a pillow over her head and went back to sleep. But she was in a bad mood that day; today would be different, he knows her. Actually, he’s the one who doesn’t feel like having sex tonight; he should feel like it, he thinks. Shouldn’t he? By his calculation they haven’t done it for more than a week, nearly ten days. But he can’t fool himself: however much he strokes it, going up and down it with his warm hand, his penis is lifeless and seems to want to stay that way. Did the humiliation of Francisca’s chosen adjective finish it off? Pathetic. He’s distracted by a dry rattling on the other side of the window, like bullets striking the glass without breaking it. It’s started to rain. Pablo wonders if Leonor will be out enjoying the second on her list of favourite things: wet needles. Or perhaps she’s back at home enjoying her third-placed predilection, he thinks, moving restlessly under the sheets. This time Laura also moves in her sleep and settles into an awkward position that makes her breathing come as a light snore. Pablo turns over and pokes her in his usual bid to stop her snoring: it’s a short, sharp prod, enough to make her move again without waking her, and thanks to that she stops snoring. If his poking and prodding did wake Laura up, Pablo wouldn’t be stupid enough to ask how she sees him. He would try to make love to her, though, even though he’s not really in the mood. It would calm him and help him to sleep. But Laura doesn’t wake up; Laura doesn’t do what he wants her to do, she
doesn’t go where he wants to take her. Pablo Simó looks at her and wonders where she and he, after so many years, might find a meeting place. It’s hard to meet someone you’ve been with for eleven thousand and seventy days. He’s sure they would find each other more easily through sex than through philosophizing about how they see each other, or who they are or who they have ceased to be. How can you talk about these things at the age of forty-five, and who can you ask? How would Pablo Simó like to be seen? How does he even see himself? He remembers that a few hours ago Leonor described him as “odd”, and although the word could be taken badly, he didn’t mind it and still doesn’t, remembering it now. He starts wondering what the girl meant by it and entertains a hope that to her it might mean “different”, “exotic” or “unusual”, but, at any rate, someone worth getting to know. Somebody special, he thinks, turning over to face the window again. The rain is falling harder now, the drops bigger and heavier than wet needles; lightning illuminates the dark room for an instant and Pablo lies quietly waiting for the thunder that must perforce follow a few seconds after it. It can’t not come – that’s not in doubt – it’s just a question of how long the journey will be. There aren’t many things you can be as certain of as thunder, he thinks. Being a special person or not to Leonor, for example, and not merely a “specimen”, as Marta Horvat had called him on more than one occasion:
“Simó, what kind of specimen are you?”
And having said it, she used to laugh with those perfect, white teeth that he so often fantasized were biting him. Marta found all kinds of reasons to call him that: because he preferred drawing to managing projects, because he didn’t know any fashionable restaurants, because he took his summer holiday in Valeria del Mar, or because he had no interest in subscribing to Summa magazine. Pablo accepted the slur and more than once deliberately provoked it with observations he knew would send him straight to the “specimen” category, because it was one of the few ways of getting Marta’s attention, however briefly, and of laughing with her.
Odd. Specimen. Pathetic. Hugging his pillow, his gaze still fixed on the window, Pablo places the adjectives in order of degradation. He can think of only one adjective worse than “pathetic” that has been applied to him: “vermin”. That adjective would go straight to the top of the list, but nobody said it of him – he chose the epithet for himself. Vermin. He doesn’t want to think of the word because it will lead to Jara, and Jara, joining forces with Francisca and aided by Laura’s snoring – which started again when she changed position – will make sleep an impossibility for Pablo.
He tries thinking instead of Marta, of Marta’s teeth, of the mole on Marta’s leg; that doesn’t work. Then of buildings for Leonor. Then of Marta again. But it’s two o’clock in the morning and Jara’s winning by a mile. He arranges his pillows against the headboard and sits up. The rain hasn’t stopped, although now there is no lightning to help him play his game of certainties. He feels like he needs to get out of bed and go out, walk around a bit, sit in a café and talk to somebody about Nelson Jara. What’s this man doing back in the middle of his life? Why now, after three years? If Leonor hadn’t appeared, would Jara have continued to be nothing more than a memory that assailed him every so often and then, though troubling, continued on its way? He looks at Laura sleeping by his side and knows that, if he has never yet spoken to her about Jara, he surely never will now. He did speak about it to Marta, a long time ago, but that doesn’t count because during that conversation they made a pact of silence that cannot be broken, and because Marta gets in a worse state than he does when anyone mentions Jara. He wonders if he will ever speak to Leonor about Jara and the events of that night. Because he didn’t just put him in a pit and bury him; burying Jara was only the inevitable conclusion to a series of prior actions – each of them less significant, but crucial nonetheless – during the course of that night. Will he ever be able to speak to somebody about the sequence of events leading to Jara’s death and to his own transformation into vermin? He wouldn’t do the same thing today, he knows – promises himself as much, this sleepless night that is quiet but for the noise of water striking the windows like bullets – Pablo Simó swears that he would not do that again. Today he would square up to Borla; Marta’s tears on the phone wouldn’t be enough to send him rushing out of the house; he wouldn’t clean up the scene; he wouldn’t keep quiet. What has changed since then? Nothing concrete; what’s happened, happened. But now he knows what it feels like to be vermin. Was he always vermin anyway? Was he always destined to become it? Can he ever cease to be it? He wonders if there is something latent about his condition, like a disease written in the genes waiting for the trigger of some chance event. If that’s the case, then the disease would have been crouching within him as he moved through life oblivious to it, waiting for the moment to manifest itself, undeniable and brutal, as it did soon after Nelson Jara and he met for the first time at the studio to talk about the crack.
Pablo Simó waited all afternoon for Borla to come, waiting on even past the time he usually left work, and when his boss finally arrived he told him what it was the man wanted: money. Borla was as resolute as Jara had been: he would die before handing over a penny.
“I wouldn’t even give that old fart a coin I picked up in the street,” he added, calming down a little after the initial fury sparked by Pablo’s news. “Why should I give him a single penny? Tell him I already contribute to a charity for hopeless cases.”
“The crack looks significant,” Pablo observed.
“But his house is not about to fall down. Obviously I’m going to fix his wall, you know that – but I’m not going to let him start dictating terms. I can’t stand rip-off artists.”
And then, with Pablo still considering the concept of a “rip-off artist”, Borla started giving instructions on the way to proceed: that they should keep Jara calm, telling him that he would soon have an answer, and that in the mean time Marta should press on with plans to lay the concrete.
“The only risk here is that Jara goes to the municipality and leans on some jerk to get the work stopped,” Borla observed. “Which can also be sorted, you know, but that costs money, and I confess that I’m heartily sick of people dipping into my pockets, Pablo” – and as he said this he put his own hands into his trouser pockets as though there were something to protect there. “Keep him quiet until we’ve got the cement in; once we’ve covered the foundations and laid the slab, nobody with half a brain will listen to this loser’s gripe.”
Marta’s job was the easiest: she just had to speed up the work. There was no magical art to that – it was a question of ringing the contractors, demanding longer hours, bulking up the teams, ensuring that everybody was working to maximum effect and praying that it would not rain, as it was raining now, three years later, over Buenos Aires. On that day Marta looked up a weather forecast on the computer, confirmed that no rain was expected all week and committed to having the cement ready in four days. Pablo Simó’s part of the deal was quite a bit more involved. How do you keep a “rip-off artist” like Nelson Jara quiet? Pablo began with the most cowardly of strategies: trying to avoid him until the concrete was ready. But, hoping to pre-empt Jara counter-attacking with one of those surprise visits he liked to make, the following day he sent a note to his house that read:
Dear Señor Jara, we are addressing your concern. In a few days you shall have an answer from us, which we hope will prove satisfactory.
Pablo Simó was gambling on this brief missive being sufficient to stop Jara getting annoyed at the lack of an immediate response and taking his complaint to the municipality, but he knew that it wouldn’t stop him indefinitely: a man like Jara wouldn’t sit around twiddling his thumbs for long. He would want to see, to ask questions, to hustle, to insist, to negotiate. Pablo didn’t feel able to go along with Borla’s plan and meet this man face-to-face, knowing that at some moment Jara was bound to sniff out the ruse and see that he was being deceived. For that reason whenever the phon
e rang Pablo let the call go to answerphone and picked up only once the speaker had identified himself and he could be sure that it wasn’t Nelson Jara calling. Jara did in fact leave two messages, which went unanswered, and Pablo reckoned that another two or three calls, which were cut off before anyone spoke, were also from him. And although Pablo Simó was powerless to prevent him dropping into the office at any moment, changing the hours at which he arrived and left – upsetting though he found this upheaval in a day that depended on methodical daily rituals – gave him a certain guarantee against finding Jara stalking him in the corridors.
For all his efforts at avoidance, the same day he sent the note he heard somebody, with a voice that could have been Jara’s, shout “Simó” as he was going into the underground. Quickening his step, he plunged into the crowd without turning back to see whether or not Jara was behind him. Another day he thought he saw Jara among the people swarming down the stairs onto the station platform, just as the doors of the carriage in which Pablo was travelling closed and the train moved away – but again, he couldn’t be sure. The indisputable encounter occurred two days later, as Pablo was returning from lunch, when he saw Jara standing at the entrance to the building where their architectural practice was, his plastic bag, bulging with files, held on the floor between his legs as he swayed back and forth, the way he had a few days previously as he sat on the other side of Pablo’s desk. At the risk of being spotted, Pablo watched him for a time from the opposite corner to where Jara stood vainly waiting for him to arrive: he saw how the man kept checking his watch at minute intervals; how he once more rang the concierge’s bell and waited while nobody came to answer the door; how he chewed off the loose skin at the sides of his nails; how he put one hand to his face and rubbed his jaw worriedly. Without seeing it, Pablo could also guess at his furrowed brow, the pain at his waist from standing such a long time, the sweat, the raw skin around his fingernails, the anxiety. Pablo was tempted to cross over the road, stand in front of him and say:
A Crack in the Wall Page 7
