A Crack in the Wall

by Claudia Piñeiro

  “Want some?”

  “OK,” he says, and he sits down too, opposite her. As he does so, Pablo’s bare foot grazes Leonor’s and he notices how she swiftly withdraws it at his touch. He grieves to think he may have thrown everything away. And immediately he wonders what that “everything” might have amounted to. Was it really necessary to look behind the cloth that very day? Was it necessary to pressure Leonor into talking? Was it necessary to behave with a violence he didn’t recognize in himself, going through her things, rebuking her? Pablo tells himself that, although perhaps none of these things was necessary, they were inevitable, and he suspects – he is almost certain of the fact – that he is going to leave this house with some answers, but without Leonor.

  They drink, watching each other over the rims of their glasses.

  “Am I going to regret confiding in you?” she asks him.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Look, if you betray me, I’ll be merciless.”

  “I’m not going to betray you,” he says, and he tries to imagine what “merciless” might signify for this girl.

  Leonor looks at him while taking another sip of lemonade and then, just when she seems ready to start talking, she unexpectedly gets up, goes back to her room without explanation and returns with an enormous bar of dark chocolate. She opens it, carefully to start with, but when the foil won’t peel away easily she tears it off, breaks off a piece and offers it to him.

  “Do you want some?”

  “No thanks,” he says. “Number one on your list of favourite things?”

  “Number one, yes.”

  Leonor plays with the chocolate without yet eating it, making it spin on the tray, stopping it suddenly then spinning it again, repeating the action several times before she finally says:

  “I’ve been working with a lawyer for four years, nearly five; I started working with him not long after I arrived here from Mar del Plata. Dr Delpech, the guy’s called. He works in debt collection. Someone owes money, someone else wants to call in the debt and can’t – Delpech takes on the case, chases the debtor, puts pressure on him, whatever it takes to scare the debtor and make him pay up. I handle the admin – the papers, the procedures. We work with people who are behind with their rent, or with the monthly payments on their appliances or someone with a loan of a couple of grand that they took out to get a new car and then couldn’t pay off. Two-bit jobs, nothing, small change.”

  She cuts the bar in half, offers him one of the pieces again, and again Pablo declines it. She eats it. He waits, but when Leonor has finished she doesn’t immediately return to her theme but plays again with the paper, as if she were ordering the words in her head before speaking them aloud. Or summoning up courage.

  “Carry on,” Pablo says.

  “OK, well that’s Delpech’s business. Or his front, because his real business is something else.”

  The girl drinks the rest of the lemonade and looks at him. Then she takes Pablo’s glass and drinks the little he had left, too. She wraps up the chocolate like someone trying to convince herself she won’t eat more. Pablo is tempted to take her hands, to stop their constant activity and hold them, stroke them, but before he has a chance Leonor abandons the chocolate and now one of her hands fiddles with her hair while the fingers of the other drum a repetitive rhythm on the tabletop. He doesn’t take her hands; he knows that he shouldn’t. It would come too late now, a gesture out of time and place, something to which he no longer has the right. Barletta himself, standing behind Leonor, says:

  “Man, what a dickhead. You really screwed that up. Was Jara’s crack that important to you?”

  Leonor looks at him, her hands lying calmly on the table now. Pablo is relieved to note that her anger seems almost entirely gone.

  “I’m going to ask some questions too,” she says, and Barletta disappears. “After I fulfil my part of the deal, will you give me answers to what I want to know?”

  He nods; he knows he’s made a deal, but it worries him to think what of interest he may have to offer this girl.

  “You don’t want to know what Delpech’s real business is?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You still can’t guess?”

  “No.”

  “Taking over other people’s flats.”

  “What?”

  “Identifying properties to usurp.”

  “Usurp?”

  “That’s what the lawyers call it: usurpation. According to Delpech it’s the legal term for it. There are cases cropping up almost every day: a man, or a family or whoever gets into a house that may have owners but isn’t inhabited, and as time goes by not even a judge can get them out. Squatters – you know what I’m talking about, right?”

  “Was Jara working for you, then?”

  “No, no. Delpech has a network of informers in the administrations of residents’ associations, in some rental agencies, among caretakers. When someone finds out that a worthwhile apartment is accumulating significant debt and that the owner is nowhere to be seen, he goes with a locksmith, gains entry, changes the locks and starts paying the bills – the electricity, gas, whatever. And after a while, if all goes to plan, if the owner doesn’t turn up and there are no heirs, he starts to rent it out. The idea is that, a few years later, after a period of time stipulated in law, Delpech will put his name to these properties and make money out of them.”

  “If they don’t put him in prison first.”

  “He’s not breaking any law. He doesn’t take anything away from the owners or legitimate heirs. Delpech always says that if he didn’t take over those flats they’d go to the state, to the same coffers where everything they take from us ends up.”

  “You mean he’s some kind of Robin Hood, your lawyer?”

  “No, come on, I’m not that naive. I know that he’s not whiter than white. But who is? Look around you, the people that you know. Did they get everything fair and square? That architect you work for, the investors who fund his projects, your neighbours, the guy you’re selling your next apartment to – was all their money made above board? And what about the people we see on TV? Or the politicians? Even you, yourself: have you never in your life done something a bit shady? Why should other people get away with it and not us? Those are the rules of the game – and we weren’t the ones who invented them.”

  Pablo doesn’t answer, and he wonders if he will ever be brave enough to tell her – supposing their relationship doesn’t end badly and for good tonight when he leaves the apartment – that he, Pablo Simó, buried Jara beneath the concrete of the building next door. He keeps asking himself the question, but has no answer for either her or himself. Then Leonor continues:

  “Everybody’s played the system, Simó, you know that – some more than others, but they’ve still done it. And if they haven’t done it, they’re going to one day, and if they don’t end up doing it, they’re going to regret it; nobody wants to be the chump.”

  “So how did you play it?”

  “I kept this flat for myself. When it first turned up I started by doing the work I always do for Delpech: asking for title deeds, checking whether there were heirs, doing a search on any long-term debt, to see if there were any moratoria we could exploit. The apartment was clean, and I don’t know what came over me or exactly when I made the decision, but I remember that I was on my way to Delpech’s office, holding my report, making a mental calculation of what it would be necessary to put down to secure the flat, and just as I was about to open the door and go into his office this question popped into my mind: ‘And why not for me?’ That’s exactly what I thought: ‘Why not for me?’ And right there I turned round and went back to my desk. I put the folder in a box and bided my time. I hadn’t mentioned to Delpech that I was working on this flat; by this stage I hardly ever consulted him, I just went to him with the final package. I told him how much a place was worth, how much he would need to pay, and then he made a decision. Even so, I was cautious, in case he came by the informat
ion some other way. I waited a month, two months, and after nearly three months I decided to start paying off the debts myself. I let another two months go by and still nothing had happened. So then I went with a locksmith. The caretaker didn’t bat an eyelid because he had given me the information himself and been paid for it, but I still didn’t move in.”

  “When was that?”

  “About two years ago.”

  “So why have you only just moved in?”

  “Because I’ve recently split up with someone. I used to live with my boyfriend, who had moved here from Mar del Plata first. When I came, he had a little flat that belonged to his grandmother that nobody was living in. So I didn’t need a place because we were living together. This flat was more like an investment, to have something of my own. Everybody needs something, right? But anyway, events conspired. I had to move out very quickly, and that was how I wound up here.”

  If Leonor believes Pablo Simó to be absorbed in the story of how she ended up with Nelson Jara’s apartment, she’s wrong. Pablo is thinking about that boyfriend she used to live with. And he wonders if the girl still loves him, or if he loves her, why she hasn’t mentioned him before, why they split up and if the split is definitive. Pablo Simó would like to ask Leonor Corell these questions, but he knows that none of them is permissible under the terms of their pact.

  “What are you thinking?” she asks him.

  “Nothing.”

  “You think I’m a monster.”

  “No, of course not. Everyone plays the system – you said so yourself.”

  “So what have you done, Simó?”

  “Is that what you wanted to ask me?”

  “It’s one of the questions I have.”

  “I haven’t done anything,” he lies.

  “Well, then it’s about time you started.”

  “It’s about time, yes.”

  Pablo Simó wishes he could turn back time, return to the moment they were lying together on the wooden floor and kiss her again, and get on top of Leonor, caress her, enter her.

  “I have something to show you, something I’m sure you’ll be interested in,” she says then.

  “What?”

  “When I moved in I did a thorough clean – the place was disgusting, nobody had cleaned it for years. There was even a cup with some remains in it, milk I suppose, that was full of maggots and giving off a stench I can still smell sometimes. Can you smell it?”

  “No.”

  “I can, I suppose just because it made an impression on me,” she says and, as if the smell really were still there, she sniffs her hands. “I cleaned everything on my own. I didn’t ask anyone to help me, so as not to arouse suspicion. My hands were raw from so much scrubbing. After that, after the deep clean, I wanted to throw away all the junk Jara had kept everywhere. That was when I found these boxes under his bed, and inside one of them was all this information about his building and about Borla’s studio that I couldn’t really understand: Jara’s last diary was there with appointments, calculations, photos. I don’t know, there was so much stuff mentioning Borla and Associates that you would think there was nothing in this man’s life that mattered more to him. So I thought it would be better to go and meet you and find out if you knew anything about him. You remember when I went to see you?”

  “Yes, I remember.” Of course he remembers.

  “I had the rucksack stuffed with Jara’s papers – I don’t know why, just in case. I thought perhaps you might need them. Shall I show you your book?”

  “What book?”

  “There’s a book that has your name on the cover and your photo.”

  Pablo is stunned. Leonor goes to her room again and a minute later reappears with a box she puts on the table and then opens. Pablo instantly recognizes Jara’s plastic bags and his orange folders; the very same ones the man thrust at him in their first meeting, the ones he had with him when he stood at the door to the studio waiting in vain that day that Pablo spied on him from the opposite corner then fled like a coward. But Leonor, rifling through the box, takes out something he has not seen before: an exercise book with his name written in a cursive hand and a photograph of him, blown up in a colour photocopy.

  “Do you want to read it? Have a look.”

  And Pablo doesn’t know if he wants to, but he takes the book and flicks through it without daring to focus on the personal information in front of him. He feels as if he were holding his own diary – but written by someone else. And he doesn’t want Leonor to witness his reaction to the book when he does read it.

  “Do you mind if I take this away? I’d like to have a proper look at it. Anyway, it’s getting late and I ought to go – it’s been a very long day.”

  “Long and strange,” she says, and smiles in that distinctive way that makes Pablo forget about the world. “Take it, yes. But after you read it you’re going to have to tell me if everything he says in it is true. That’s what I wanted to ask you; that’s my part of the deal.”

  “Have you read it?”

  “Yes, pretty much.”

  “And?”

  “Well – it’s all about you,” says Leonor, and she smiles again.

  Pablo gathers up his things, puts on his yellow cardigan and his shoes.

  “Right, I’m going.”

  He moves towards the door. Leonor goes with him, turns the key and opens the door. He looks at her and makes as though to kiss her on the cheek, but the girl takes his chin, and turns his face just enough that his mouth faces hers, then presses her lips against his in a brief, gentle kiss. It’s more than Pablo feels he deserves. Why did she move her bare foot away when he brushed against it, if she’s kissing him on the lips now?

  “Women are like that,” Barletta tells him.

  He waits for a moment, but he knows that he can’t expect more of Leonor this evening. So he steps away from her, walks towards the lift, pushes the button and waits. She waits too, in the doorway, until the lift arrives, and then they wave to one another, without saying anything else. Pablo opens the lift door, goes in and closes it, and as he presses the ground-floor button he hears the sound of the door to Leonor’s apartment closing.

  The lift jerks into action, removing Pablo Simó from view and with him the book written by Nelson Jara.

  16

  On the underground, Pablo Simó sits with the book on his knees. He looks at the cover, tracing with one finger the letters, written by hand in thick, black ink, that spell out his name. Then he turns his attention to the photo, which must be more than ten years old, and wonders where Jara could have found it. He suspects that it’s the photograph from his student identity card at the School of Architecture; he’s sure that there’s no other photograph of him wearing that shirt with the thick purple lines – though Laura insists they’re blue – which never wholly convinced him but which he certainly wore that day. He remembers it well because his wife had given it to him for a wedding anniversary that happened to coincide with the day identity cards were renewed in the architecture department, and Laura had insisted on him wearing it – even to the point of making him take off the shirt he already had on to change it for this purple striped one. How did Jara get a copy of that photograph? Pablo doesn’t know. Nor does he know what’s stopping him from opening the notebook. He tells himself that he would rather take his time over it at home. Looking at his watch, he sees that it is nearly eleven o’clock at night; it’s going to be difficult to explain his lateness to Laura. But he doesn’t feel worried, and much less sorry; it was worth running the risk for all kinds of reasons: he got to walk through the city with a girl he thinks he’s in love with. He kissed her, caressed her, and, in a wonderful encounter far surpassing any fantasy he might have had before their meeting, he made love to her. Besides (and it shames him to put this other revelation on a par with making love to Leonor) he established that Jara’s crack was nothing more than a fraud fabricated by the man himself. That alone may be justification enough for braving Laura’s anger. He
closes his eyes and, letting himself be rocked by the motion of the carriage as it lurches from one station to the next, he imagines Jara marking up the wall according to the sketch that he wants his fake crack to follow, standing on a chair, using a plastic ruler to measure the distance between each twist of the fissure he is going to carve, joining up the points – would he use a cross, a dot or a dash to make each mark? – and then drawing in every stroke of the crack exactly as he had imagined it, chipping at the wall above the drawing with a chisel, a gouge, even a screwdriver. And once the groove was opened, he imagines the man brushing out the debris, blowing on the crack to dislodge dust and plaster, shaking off any fragments of the wall still clinging to his clothes and finally sweeping up the rubble with obsessive care just as he, Pablo Simó, would have done in his place.

  The train comes into a station, slows and stops. Pablo opens his eyes and looks for the name: Callao. There are two more stops before he has to get out and change lines. He looks again at the notebook, his book; in a way it makes him feel important – if Jara dedicated one entirely to him, he must have deserved it. Or did he also write one for Borla and another for Marta Horvat? He resolves to ask Leonor the next time he sees her, or when they next talk, and to ask her for these other books, if they exist. The next time he sees her, he thinks, as the train sets off again. He closes his eyes, imagining Leonor naked. He wonders if there’ll be another chance to see her like that and promises himself that there will be and that this time Jara won’t be allowed to spoil things, especially not now that he knows that everything to do with that man and the crack was a fraud, an invention. Well, not absolutely everything: his corpse, or what’s left of it, is still buried under the cement, that’s for sure. That, regardless of any lies Jara may have told, remains true. It will always be true.

  He changes trains first at Carlos Pellegrini and then at Avenida de Mayo, where he finally gets onto the line that will take him home. He dozes, but wakes up just in time to get out at his stop, Castro Barros. Outside he’s dazed by the lights of a Saturday night in Buenos Aires. The cars don’t hurtle past the way they would on a weekday and there are groups of young people out on the street. A man walks past him – surely on his way to a date – fresh from the shower and smelling strongly of aftershave. As Pablo continues towards his house, he hears laughter, murmurs, a car horn, another horn answering it, screeching brakes, another horn, somebody shouting to a friend from the other side of the avenue, a rowing couple making up with a kiss. The smell of pizza gusts over him and Pablo realizes that he’s hungry – how many hours is it since he last ate? A boy wearing a sweatshirt with the logo of a local pizzeria passes him carrying a pile of takeaway boxes, confirming that his senses don’t lie.