A Crack in the Wall

by Claudia Piñeiro

  Towards the end of the day, Pablo takes out his folder of sketches and once more draws the eleven-storey north-facing tower. He draws it the same as always: the same façade, the same windows, the same layout, the same entrance. But this time, when the sketch is finished, he counts the floors and pauses at the fifth. He chooses one of the windows at random and draws in a crack, almost invisible to the human eye on this scale, but real. It’s really there and nobody can deny it because he drew it, from top to bottom, from left to right, approximating as closely as he could the crack he remembers crossing the wall of the apartment where Jara once lived and where Leonor lives now.

  That evening when he leaves the studio, rather than descending into the underground he walks a few blocks and goes into two or three property agencies to ask about flats available to rent.

  “Something small, two rooms, or three at the most. Small and cheap. And furnished, if possible.”

  They show him pictures of properties matching the requirements he describes. Pablo barely glances at these, considering them only briefly in order to feign an interest in the look of the places worth renting; then he closes his eyes and presses them with his fingers, as if he had a headache or was tired, and meanwhile he tries to remember the block in which each of these flats is. Some of them he can place, others not; it’s easier when the apartments are in areas he knows from scoping out potential sites for Borla. If memory serves, the one they offer him half a block away from Avenida Federico Lacroze could be next to some land they tried to buy from a school that had started to teeter after the 2001 crisis and closed for good three years later, but another architectural practice beat them to it. And the one in Calle Tronador, he’s practically sure, is next to an early twentieth-century mansion that was demolished a few months ago and where there’s already a security fence and site board. He jots down the addresses of the ones that interest him; he doesn’t leave his own details but promises to call to arrange an interview and to view the apartments personally. Back on the street after visiting the last agency, he decides to use what’s left of the daylight to have a look at the apartments he has noted down. The one on the corner of Federico Lacroze turns out not to be next to the school plot they wanted to buy and couldn’t secure – there’s a house and another building between them – but the one on Tronador is indeed next to that demolished mansion where Garrido and Associates Architects are in the process of building some duplexes – very upmarket ones, if the hoarding is to be believed. Luckily, he doesn’t know Garrido. He finds a phone booth and makes an appointment to see the apartment the next day. Then he looks for the nearest underground station and plunges in, on his way back home.

  This time he goes straight home, without pausing to have his last coffee of the day. Entering the flat, he’s relieved to find nobody in the living room, so he can go straight to the bathroom, putting off greetings and explanations, to wash his face, wash it again, then dry it with a white towel, not rubbing his skin but giving it gentle, brief pats, and then stay there for a few minutes looking at himself in the mirror.

  Next he goes looking for Laura. He finds her in the room that has, until now, been the marital suite, shared for twenty years. He tells her that he’s leaving, that he’s decided they should separate. She doesn’t believe him: first she laughs, then she gets angry and shouts at him, orders him to sleep in the living room that night – not because she sees that they are indeed separating, but because she treats Pablo like a little boy and this is a punishment to stop him being silly – and finally she tells him to get out and shuts herself in the room with a slam. Laura seems convinced that her husband’s announcement is a hangover from the argument they had the other day after she fought with Francisca, and evidently wants to tell him so before going to bed. She appears in the kitchen, in her nightgown, just as he is warming up something to eat.

  “We’re on edge because of what this child is putting us through. The worst thing would be for that to end up affecting our relationship too.”

  And without waiting for his response or observations she goes back to her room, as though gifting him this maxim as something to reflect on. Pablo is left with the words of his wife playing in his head. But does Laura believe that their relationship has not yet been affected? Does she believe that this life they’ve led for the last twenty years can still be called that of a couple? Is it enough to say that whatever can be jointly administered without too much inconvenience – bills, a home, breakfasts and dinners, the odd conversation, a bed where not much happens, the television, the education of their daughter, a bank account and health insurance – constitutes a couple? Their relationship mustn’t be affected, Laura says, and Pablo knows that it won’t be because the relationship to which she refers no longer exists. He’s known this for a while, although he hasn’t dared to admit it even to himself because there are certain “truths” – that Father Christmas exists, that the Tooth Fairy cares as much about the number of teeth we lose as she likes paying for them, that teachers love all their children equally, that love can last a lifetime – that we find hard to stop believing in even when the evidence, such as Mummy hiding the presents under the tree, is really incontrovertible.

  While Laura sleeps, that same night, Pablo goes to their room and, making as little noise as possible, starts to pack a suitcase with a few essentials. The following morning, a little before his daughter gets up to go to school, he goes to her room to talk to her. He explains that he is looking for a place to live because her mother and he have decided to separate, trying to follow as closely as possible what he imagines to be the guidelines of modern psychology in relation to childcare. But Francisca isn’t easily convinced.

  “Is it because of what happened the other day?” she asks. “Because of what happened with Ana?”

  He reassures her that their decision has nothing to do with her, that it’s a decision her mother and he should have made a long time ago. And Pablo is firm, emphatic: he wants to leave no room for doubts that might lead his daughter to take on board a guilt that isn’t hers. He thinks he’s said enough to leave the matter closed, but Francisca asks him:

  “Why?”

  “Because being married is something that has stopped making us happy.”

  “No, I’m not asking why you’re getting separated. I’m asking why that happens, why one day you don’t love someone any more, why you stop being happy with them. Will that happen to me, too?”

  Pablo wants to say no, that it won’t happen to her, that she’s going to fall in love and the feeling will last forever. Francisca living the whole life stretching ahead of her with the same person. He thinks of that and it scares him, and he asks himself if that really would be a mark of determination – a whole life spent with the same person – or simply of a kind of resignation. Because life is long, and getting longer, and love is so difficult to recognize in the midst of all the fireworks and glowing embers.

  “I don’t know, darling. But you’re going to be happy. I’m sure that, whoever you end up with, you’ll know how to be happy.”

  Francisca doesn’t ask him anything else. He’s about to go, but before he does he corrects himself on a previous point. He says that in a way she did have something to do with the decision they made – at least on his side – because she showed him that it is possible to do what you want without all the planets falling out of the sky.

  “And if they do, we’ll have to go and ask Professor Hawking what happened, because it certainly won’t be anything to do with us.”

  Francisca laughs:

  “Do you know anything about Stephen Hawking?”

  “Nothing,” he admits, and then both of them laugh, but immediately afterwards she looks serious.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks her.

  “Promise me that as soon as you have somewhere to live, you’ll take me with you.”

  Pablo doesn’t answer; he can’t, he has a lump in his throat. But he nods, several times, and when he’s certain of being able to speak without h
is voice catching, he says:

  “I promise you.”

  And he isn’t lying.

  He goes over to her, kisses her forehead and says:

  “I’d better go and let you get dressed. I don’t want to make you late for school.”

  Pablo leaves her room and waits in the kitchen. Usually by this time in the morning he would be underground on his way to work, but today he wants to wait for Laura, who took more tablets than usual last night, to wake up.

  “So it’s true?” she says, soon afterwards, looking at the suitcase, her eyes filling with tears.

  “Yes.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  “Because I can’t think of a reason for us to keep living together.”

  “Being married isn’t enough?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t know what makes you think you’re so special, Pablo. Tell me, how many couples do you know who have a reason to keep living together beyond the fact of being married? That’s a stupid, romantic concept of marriage.”

  “I’ve always been stupid. Perhaps I’m starting now to be romantic.”

  “At your age it’s not going to be a good look.”

  Pablo prefers to keep his silence. He can’t think of anything else to say; he would only be going back and forth over the ground Laura and he covered last night. Anyway, it may be that on this point she is right, that romanticism looks ridiculous in a man of his age. Is Laura exactly the person he sees today? Is Laura the person he has known these last eleven thousand and seventy days together? Or might there be another Laura that Pablo hasn’t yet been able to discover? Has she other aspects of her character to bring out, could she be a different kind of woman if she were with another man, or on her own? Pablo suspects that daily routine and the passing years have made a trap for her, that Laura is more than the woman he sees, but that the trap is fatal and inescapable.

  “Is there someone else? Have you got another woman, Pablo?” she asks, and for the first time her voice breaks.

  “No, Laura, I haven’t got another woman. I’ve got nothing – just this suitcase and that dead man I told you about, the one I buried under the cement.”

  “Oh yes, the famous corpse. You thought you could trick me, right? You underestimated me. That dead man doesn’t exist. You told me that because you thought a story like that would make me want to leave you. But now you see it didn’t work, I haven’t left you. I’m made of sterner stuff. Through thick and thin. Corpse or no corpse. If you want a separation, you’re going to have to be the one to leave.”

  “That’s what I’m doing,” says Pablo and, picking up his suitcase, he walks out of the door.

  Francisca catches up with him on the landing. She hands him a CD.

  “It’s Leonard Cohen. I haven’t made a recording for you yet, but take mine, and I’ll get another one later.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Remember your promise.”

  “I remember, and I’ll keep it. I’ll call you as soon as I have a place to sleep.”

  She comes closer and hugs him.

  “I love you,” Francisca says, close to his ear.

  “I love you,” he says to her.

  Francisca turns to go back into the apartment, trying not to let him see that this time she’s the one about to cry. Are they also similar in this respect, his daughter and he? In hiding their tears? Pablo gets into the lift, presses the ground-floor button, and holding on tight to his suitcase feels the beginning of its descent in the pit of his stomach.

  Watching the floors pass, he wonders when the last time was that somebody said “I love you” to him, or that he said it to anyone. He can find no answer. Even as he arrives at the ground floor, he can’t think when the last time was.

  20

  He arrives at the office a little later than usual, carrying his suitcase. He puts it in the storeroom, next to some rolls of carpet left over from the redecorating Borla did in his apartment and which his wife wanted to get out of the way, together with some furniture they used in the last showroom. On his way back to his desk he inadvertently kicks an envelope that has been slid under the door. The envelope reads: From Leonor, for Pablo Simó. He wonders whether the girl came by recently, while he was in the storeroom, and preferred not to stay and say hello, or whether the envelope was already there on the floor when he arrived a few minutes ago and he simply didn’t see it. He opens it. Inside is the paper he had asked Leonor for – a detailed description of the crack’s progress day by day – and, to his surprise, several photos from that Saturday they spent together: him trying to take the camera away from her in front of the Liberty building, him sticking his tongue out beside the door to the dry-cleaners, and three other photographs that the girl must have taken without Pablo realizing: one crossing Avenida Rivadavia, another of him hailing the taxi and a third next to the graffiti extolling Stubborn Blood. A little pink slip of paper, clipped onto one of the photos, reads, “Thanks for everything, Leonor.” Pablo’s attention is held by this note. Although it doesn’t say so, the text reads like a farewell. He puts the document written by Jara into an envelope he labels “Nelson Jara’s papers”, and puts that away in the bottom drawer of his desk – somewhere it can easily be found when he no longer works there – and then he adds the photos with the little pink note to the folder of sketches of the building he plans to make one day.

  Next, he looks for a blank sheet of paper and writes:

  What would happen if one afternoon I paid you a visit? What if one of these days you discover that I am still alive? That there was a fundamental fact you didn’t know and still don’t know, and that is that when you threw me into the footing I hadn’t died yet and that fate, distraction or human error allowed me to climb out before you tipped your damned cement on top of me? Well, we shall soon see, because any day now I’m coming to see you, to bring you personally my very cordial and sincere greetings, greetings I’ve been keeping to myself for three years.

  Nelson Jara

  Pablo opens the drawer to his desk, looks inside the envelope that Leonor sent him with Jara’s handwriting and checks that the “y” hasn’t come out as badly as he thought. Then he looks for another envelope and in the same handwriting he writes Architectural Director Borla, Associate Architect Marta Horvat, Non-Associate Architect Pablo Simó. He places the note that he has just written inside the envelope, licks the glue on the flap and closes the envelope. Then he puts it in his pocket: this afternoon he’ll have time to go to the post office and send it.

  When Borla arrives, Simó requests a meeting; the architect seems surprised by this formality, but of course he agrees.

  “Come to my office in five minutes. Oh, and bring a couple of coffees with you.”

  Ten minutes later, Pablo goes to Borla’s office carrying a coffee.

  “You’re not having one?” his boss asks, putting sugar into his cup and stirring it.

  And he says no, that he only drinks espressos, short and very strong. Borla’s utter lack of interest in Pablo’s taste in coffee is evident, but he articulates it even so:

  “What did you want to talk to me about, Pablo? I’m guessing this isn’t about coffee, right?”

  “No, no, Mario. I wanted to let you know that I’m going to be leaving the practice.”

  “What?”

  “Simply that, that I won’t be working with you any more.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m making some changes in my life; I want to do some of the things I haven’t had a chance to do up until now.”

  “Such as? Walking across the Andes or climbing the Lanín volcano?” Pablo doesn’t answer and Borla continues, “I have a friend who threw in everything at the age of forty to go and climb Lanín – you know? – and at forty-one he was back at the same lawyers’ firm as before, but on a slightly lower salary.”

  “No, I’m not going to climb Lanín. I’m going to build a tower block.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes, I’ve had one i
n mind for a long time.”

  “Well why don’t you bring me the project? If it’s worthwhile we’ll do it.”

  “I don’t think you would find it worthwhile.”

  “Well if you’re not convinced by your own project…”

  “I certainly am convinced by it, but it’s not the sort of project that would be of interest to everyone.”

  “Are you thinking of putting the money up yourself?”

  “Why did you never make me an associate?”

  “On a project?”

  “No, in this practice.”

  “Because…I don’t know, because it wasn’t necessary, because you never asked for it. Do you want to be an associate? If that’s the issue…I don’t know, perhaps with a symbolic percentage.”

  “No, not any more. Now I want to leave.”

  “And when will you go?”

  “I don’t know…in a few days.”

  “You can’t leave me stranded from one day to the next.”

  “The thing is, I need to get straight to work.”

  “And you already have another job?”

  “Something of my own. With the money I make from that I can start saving for the tower block I want to put up.”

  “Ah, well you must be onto something good. Is it something within our profession or an undertaking in some other kind of business?”

  “Within this profession, or rather, related to this profession.”

  “Related to the profession – yes, that’s a good sideline. Architecture itself, as they taught it to us in the faculty, isn’t a viable business any more, but there are lots of possibilities ‘related’ to architecture these days. Let me know the details sometime – I might like to get involved myself.”

  “OK. When I’ve got it up and running I’ll let you know.”