A Crack in the Wall

by Claudia Piñeiro

  He’s yards away now from the building where he lives and he wonders if he ought to be fabricating some sort of excuse to explain his lateness to Laura: the usual work complications; Borla’s lack of consideration when he’s not the one in a hurry; the reduced frequency of underground trains on weekends. In spite of his trepidation, Pablo Simó dares to hope that Laura will still be in a good mood, as she has been these last few days, and that his lateness won’t have given her a reason to be annoyed or irritable as she usually is. He prays that she went to the cinema without him, that she enjoyed the film and is flung in an armchair now, glass of wine in hand, or in bed watching another film on TV, maybe even an old one she’s seen several times, while she waits for him. He wonders if his wife will suspect that he’s been making love to someone else. He smells his hands, checking that they don’t smell of Leonor, and even though it’s necessary to conceal from Laura what he was doing only a few hours earlier, it saddens Pablo Simó not to have the girl’s smell still on his body. He pulls up the collar of his cardigan to sniff that too, and although he picks up a scent that isn’t his and isn’t recognizable, he takes it to be a new clothes smell – the starch or fabric softener the garment was washed in before it was put on sale – whatever, but definitely not Leonor’s smell.

  However, Pablo’s hopes are simply that: hopes, and as soon as he puts his key in the door, before he’s even opened it, he can hear Laura crying. It’s tempting to pull the key out again and run away, but that’s not an option – he wouldn’t be capable of it. So he does what he ought to do: he opens the door and goes in. On the other side of it is Laura, her face a picture of devastation, the blue vein pulsing above her left eye, clutching a handkerchief which every so often she dabs her eyes with, blows her nose on or bites as if it were guilty of some terrible thing that has happened. Pablo struggles to understand what his wife is saying, but even though it surprises him that his late arrival one Saturday after twenty years of marriage should cause such a scandal, it never occurs to him that Laura’s wailing might have some other cause than him and his romance – romance? – with Leonor Corell. He tries to make sense of a few broken phrases he can pick out from the midst of howling and hiccupy sobbing, but however much he tries, it all sounds incoherent. Could Laura know more than he suspects? Could she have followed him, spied on him? No, she couldn’t, he tells himself – but then why is she shouting, why does she grab onto his jacket, as though he might be about to escape, why does she say, breathlessly, “I want to kill myself,” and then release him and throw herself onto the armchair, weeping disconsolately? Pablo doesn’t dare ask her what has happened, because he knows that she has already said it, between howls, perhaps even more than once, although he wasn’t able to understand, and he also knows that if his wife repeats it in this state, he still won’t be able to understand. He waits for Laura to catch her breath, to calm her weeping, to control her hiccups and lower her voice. When she manages that and says again, “I want to kill myself,” the words sound clear, modulated in every syllable, without shrieking, and are therefore intelligible to Pablo, who happens to say that it’s not that bad, that he was at work, that it got much later than he had realized, but before he has finished Laura’s fury grows again and she shouts:

  “If this isn’t ‘that bad’, what is ‘that bad’ for you?”

  That much he hears – loud and clear – but he still doesn’t grasp the significance. Then Laura complains that if he had been there that afternoon, perhaps the girl wouldn’t have stopped being what she is, but at least she, Laura, would not have had to be alone at that awful moment, alone when she slapped her, alone when she kicked her friend out of the house. It’s only then that Pablo Simó realizes that when his wife says “the girl” she isn’t referring to Leonor, but to Francisca, and he feels greatly relieved, though simultaneously bored of this family drama, which seems to be dragging on indefinitely. Laura’s screaming now that this is the worst thing that has ever happened in her life, she screams that even his – Pablo Simó’s – death would not be such a grave event, because that is the law of nature and everyone must die some day, a theory Pablo agrees with, although they have never talked about it, but not this, she repeats, not this. Pablo, not understanding what “this” refers to, asks his wife:

  “What do you mean by ‘this’, Laura?”

  “Haven’t you been listening to me, Pablo?”

  “Yes, but try not to shout and to be a little more clear. Otherwise I can’t understand you.”

  “You’d like me to be clear?”

  “Yes…”

  “Really clear?”

  “Yes – of course.”

  “Your daughter’s a dyke, Pablo,” says Laura, exaggeratedly opening not only her mouth, but also her eyes and even her nostrils.

  “My daughter’s a what?” he asks.

  “A dyke! Are you going to tell me now that you don’t know what a dyke is?”

  “Dyke?”

  “A lesbian, gay, homosexual…”

  “Francisca?”

  “Yes, Pablo, Francisca. Have you got any other daughters?”

  “Where did you get that from?”

  “I went into her room and I found her and her dyke friend, sucking each other’s faces off.”

  “Ana?”

  “Yes, that revolting —”

  “They were kissing?”

  “They were halfway down each other’s throats, Pablo. Mouths open, tongues inside one another. You can’t imagine what it was like for me to see them, the shock I had. Our daughter was never butch. She was a sweet little girl. The other one was, but not her. How could I even have imagined…” And once again Laura swaps shouting for weeping.

  Pablo goes to the kitchen and returns with a glass of water for his wife. Francisca appears in the doorway of the corridor that leads to the bedrooms. She looks at him, he looks at her; Laura, with her back to her daughter, is saved a moment’s disgust. The girl’s face is misshapen, swollen from crying, and her eyes look inflamed and red, more from anger, Pablo suspects, than from grief.

  “Can you come to my room a moment, Dad?” says Francisca in a stifled, barely audible voice.

  But Laura hears her and before Pablo can say anything, without turning to look at her daughter, she yells:

  “Get out of here you disgusting animal, get out!”

  And the girl returns to her room, putting up no more resistance than a hateful face.

  “Laura, do you think it’s helpful to treat her like that?”

  “I treat her in the way I’m able, in the way that comes naturally, in the way she deserves.”

  “What does she say about it?” he asks.

  “She’s got nothing to say – what would you expect her to say? Does it matter what she says, Pablo?”

  “Let me speak to her.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. What do you want to talk about? What it’s like playing tonsil tennis with another woman?”

  “Why don’t you take a pill to calm yourself down?”

  “Because I’ve already had three and they made absolutely no difference.”

  “Then have a wine, or a whisky, whatever it takes to unwind a bit. The way you are at the moment isn’t going to help solve anything.”

  “Because this has no solution, Pablo – that’s what you seem not to understand. How the hell do you solve the fact that your daughter is a lesbian? Is there a lesbian help centre? Is there a rehab farm, like for drug addicts? Is there some new kind of medication?”

  “Let me speak to her.”

  “Do what you want,” says Laura, getting up abruptly and spilling the water left in her glass, then disappearing down the same corridor along which Francisca also disappeared a moment ago, with the same aim of shutting herself in her room behind a slammed door.

  Pablo waits a few minutes before going to his daughter’s room. He pours himself a glass of water, drinks and thinks about what he is going to say. He doesn’t really know. Probably it’s better to let
Francisca speak first, he thinks; after all, she did ask him to go to her room. Remembering that makes it easier to broach his journey down the corridor; however, when he gets to Francisca’s room he still doesn’t feel ready to face her and lingers by the door, waiting, he’s not sure what for. His daughter is listening to music, but he can hear her sobbing even though the sound’s turned up. He waits a moment more, captive to the music, which he likes although he doesn’t know it, and the weeping, which pains him, as if the two elements combined to form an improvised duet that sounds better than expected. Finally he takes a couple of deep breaths and knocks on the door, saying:

  “It’s Daddy, can I come in?”

  Francisca doesn’t respond, but after a few minutes the handle turns and the door opens just enough to let Pablo know that he has permission to go in. He does so, cautiously, as though asking for approval with every step. The room is illuminated only by the computer screen from which the music emanates. The girl is sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, hugging her knees. Pablo moves aside some large cushions and sits on the edge of the bed.

  “What are you listening to?”

  “Leonard Cohen.”

  “Where did you get it from?”

  “It was recorded for me by a friend who’s good at finding weird stuff,” she says, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “Do you know him?”

  “No,” he says. “Should I?”

  “If you like it, yes; if not, no. There’s no point in listening to someone you don’t like.”

  “I do like this guy.”

  “I can make you a copy if you like.”

  “Go on then. Who’s the friend that’s good at finding weird stuff?”

  “Toni.”

  “Do I know him?”

  “He’s the guy I sometimes meet up with after school, the one Mum doesn’t like because he has a beard.”

  “Today your mother must be wishing she’d never said a word against Toni and his beard,” he says with a smile, which she returns. “Toni knows his music.”

  “Do you lot ever listen to music?” Francisca asks.

  “Us lot?”

  “You and Mum.”

  Pablo hesitates, not answering, as though Francisca’s question posed some difficulty in answering. She says:

  “I mean, I’ve never seen either of you listening to music at home. Do you listen to music somewhere else, like at the office?”

  “Yes, sometimes I listen to it at the office,” he lies.

  “I’m going to play you my favourite song,” says Francisca.

  And while she goes to the computer to select the track she wants to share with him, Pablo wonders why he hardly listens to music when, up until a few years ago – fifteen? twenty? – it occupied an important place in his life. He wasn’t ever an expert or a passionate fan, but he enjoyed it. And Tano Barletta too; they used to listen to all kinds of things during the long nights they stayed awake working on presentations for the faculty. Barletta really did know about music: everything he made Pablo listen to was good, unusual – like what Toni finds for Francisca – a “jewel”, Tano used to say. Even without his passionate endorsements, Pablo had to admit that Barletta’s choice in music reached him, got right inside him and moved him. Tano is bound to know of Leonard Cohen, Pablo thinks, and his gaze falls once more on his daughter, sitting against the wall and hugging her legs. Even the scant light falling on her face is sufficient confirmation of her beauty, her youth and her desolation. Why is his daughter, at this early stage in her life, as desolate as he is? Can that kind of misery be genetic or inherited, he wonders? Are some of us predisposed to be crushed by events that pass by others leaving no mark? Why do some suffer what others barely notice? Cohen’s music isn’t helping. It only seems to underscore his own sense of desolation.

  “Did she tell you?” Francisca asks.

  “Mum? Yes, she told me. Do you want to tell me in your own words?”

  “Mum always makes such a drama of everything. I kissed Ana, it’s true. But does that make me a certain thing from now until the day I die?”

  “So – aren’t you?”

  “Aren’t I what, Dad?”

  “Um…”

  “Say it.”

  “Aren’t you…gay?”

  “I don’t know, you tell me. Ana is my friend. She asked me to kiss her and I wanted to kiss her, nothing more than that. I wanted to know what it was like. Does that make me gay, Dad? If so, why don’t all those men I kissed make me the opposite?”

  “All those men?”

  “Dad…”

  “Sorry.”

  “I kissed a few men, and I kissed a woman – do I have to know now who I’ll want to kiss for the rest of my life?”

  “No, nobody knows who they’ll want to kiss for the rest of their life.”

  “But Mum’s forcing me into that decision. Mum’s waiting for me to announce that I’m gay, and I can’t tell her that I am to get her off my back, because the truth is that I really don’t know what I am at the moment. Is she going to stick a label on me with each new thing I try? If I smoke a joint I’m going to be a drug addict, if I get drunk I’m going to be an alcoholic, if I go out with more than five blokes I’m going to be a whore. I kissed a friend, Dad, that’s what happened, nothing more, I swear.”

  “You don’t have to swear anything to me,” he says, and for a while they sit in silence. Pablo’s wondering how many things, even if done only once in a lifetime, confer a label on the doer. Is Barletta a “thief” because he stole a Keith Jarrett CD that summer in Villa Gesell? Is Leonor a “squatter” because she’s living in a flat that isn’t hers? What label would befit someone who has buried a man (a dead one?) in sordid circumstances and without involving the police? “Accomplice”? What label applies to Marta and Borla, after the events of that night? The same for both? And is he already labelled “adulterer”, having slept with Leonor Corell a few hours earlier? Is Laura already a “wronged woman”?

  “Haven’t you ever kissed a man, Dad?” Francisca asks him, interrupting his reverie.

  “No, never,” he says, trying to conceal the shock he feels at being asked such a question by his daughter.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I haven’t, because it never came up, because I was always attracted to women, I don’t know…”

  “Do you think I’m a lesbian, like Mum does?”

  “No, no, Francisca, I don’t think anything. Or rather, I think the same as you: that you don’t know, that almost nobody knows.”

  “What am I in your eyes?”

  “You’re my daughter, my little girl.”

  “Ana says that she knows for sure, that she’s never liked boys.”

  “She probably does know, then.”

  “Probably.”

  Cautiously Pablo moves towards her, crouches beside her and hugs her. She lets herself be hugged and starts to cry on his shoulder.

  “Will you stay beside me until I go to sleep?” Francisca asks.

  “Yes, I’ll stay.”

  The girl slips out of his arms, turns off the computer and gets into bed. Pablo switches off the light, sits beside her and takes her hand. Francisca sobs a little, but gradually the rhythm of her breathing calms and finally she falls asleep. Pablo looks at her, kisses her hand and tucks away a strand of hair that has fallen across her face. Pulling the sheet up to cover her shoulders, he kisses her hand again. And as he sits there on the edge of his daughter’s bed, he realizes that he feels neither pity nor concern for her. He gazes at her – he can’t stop gazing at her – and wishes he could find a word for what he feels. Respect? Admiration? Yes, he thinks, it’s that: he admires his daughter. He, even if he had wanted to, would never have dared to kiss another man.

  17

  He gets up early. It’s Sunday and the likelihood is that Laura and Francisca – unless last night’s episode has altered their respective biorhythms – will sleep on until midday. He fetches the newspaper from the doormat outside a
nd goes to have breakfast in the kitchen, taking Jara’s notebook too. The book about him. He places it on the table next to the cup into which he’s going to pour his coffee when it’s ready. He looks at it, still not daring to open it. Instead, he begins with the newspaper; Sunday papers have more and more advertising and that irritates him. He quickly skips over the advertisements for domestic appliances and reads the international news, the politics sections, sports. Most of this he scans; none of the headings draw him into reading the whole piece. His gaze falls on the book again. He looks at his photograph on the book’s cover. He looks at the purple stripes on the shirt he’s wearing in the photo. He goes to check if the coffee is ready yet. He pours it out, leaves it to cool a little. He drinks it. He opens the cover of the book and on the first page finds the following lines:

  Pablo Simó is an architect, married (Laura) and with a daughter (Francisca). He was born in Lanús in 1962 and has no siblings; his parents are dead. He’s been in full-time employment since graduation. He is not an associate of the Borla architectural practice despite having worked there for nearly twenty years.

  It’s chilling enough that Nelson Jara should have known details of his life including the name of his daughter and wife and whether or not his parents are living, but the passage that most reverberates in his head is “He’s been in full-time employment since graduation. He is not an associate…” Why did that fact strike Jara as worthy of inclusion in his notebook? Why has Borla never offered to make him an associate? Why has he not demanded it?