by Claudia Pi
“Listen, honey, I know your old man’s got no job, and everything’s grim, but this is about more than that. Don’t let yourself get pulled down by his depression.” Teresa let the papyrus go and stood up. “This will have to be tied, because otherwise it’s not going to stay. It’s trying to rebel. I mean, it’s why we have savings, isn’t it? For emergencies like this.” Teresa took out of her pocket a little reel of ochre-coloured twine and, with Lala’s help, secured the plant. “Recycled sisal thread – never have anything non-biodegradable in your garden.” Lala helped her to attach the plant’s tie. “Think about it: the centuries go by, we are gone, and the plastic’s still there. Speaking of plastic, weren’t you going to get your tits done this year?”
“Yes, but now I’m going to wait a bit until Martín’s stopped stressing about money. He gets so wound up.”
“The silicone can wait, but not the grass. In a couple of months he’ll have a new job and your lawn will be a disgrace.” Teresa uncoiled the hosepipe from its automatic cart, attached the correct nozzle, to produce a gentle, consistent shower and gestured to her workman to turn on the tap; when the water started to flow, she sprayed the borders. “I know that you’re thinking ‘Why spend all that money every year, when the ryegrass dies in November anyway?’ and it’s true, it does, but, well… it comes down to priorities… we are always having to make choices in life.”
“You know me, I’m going to do it, it’s just a question of getting it past Martín.”
“And why does he have to know?”
“Ever since losing his job, he’s become very obsessive. Don’t tell anyone, please, but he keeps a record of our outgoings on the computer and it drives me round the bend.”
“Why don’t you get him some therapy?”
“Martín go to a therapist? Knowing what they charge? There’s no way he’d go, I swear, he’s so stingy these days. He’s even banned me from having Twinings tea, can you believe it?”
“There’s only one way to deal with men like that, and that’s to lie. And don’t feel guilty, because it’s for his own good. Don’t you think it will put a spring in his step to see the grass all green when he looks out of the window?”
Teresa passed the hose to Lala. “Here, you do a bit of watering, I’m just going to get a bit of iron from the jeep for that jasmine. It looks a bit withered, don’t you think?” Teresa went, and Lala kept watering. And as the water rained evenly down on green leaves, Lala convinced herself that yellow grass would definitively do nothing to improve her husband’s state of mind.
25
Romina and Juani arrive in the playground one night. They’re not little any more, but they still go to the playground. It is where they first met. They remove their roller blades. They take beer out of the rucksack. Two half-litre bottles each. Or three. Sometimes a litre bottle. Whatever they can get. They drink. They laugh. A guard goes by. They wave to him. They wait for him to walk on. They drink more beer. They laugh.
“Shall we start?” she asks.
“Go on then,” says Juani. Romina looks for a thick stick to use as a pencil. In the sand she draws a line that curves this way and that.
“A viper,” says Juani.
“I’m not that obvious.”
“A spiralling noodle,” he says. She laughs. “No, moron.”
“The branch of an electric weeping willow.”
“No.”
“A spring.”
“No, something way cooler than that.”
Juani thinks, looking at her. He keeps looking at her. “It’s not your hair, because your hair’s straight.” He touches it. He leaves his hand on her hair. “I give in,” he says. “What is it?”
“What I have inside my stomach; I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s like that,” says Romina and she draws the twisting line on the sand again. They look at each other. They drink some beer. They look at each other while drinking beer. Juani moves closer and kisses her. Romina’s mouth still tastes of the drink. She strokes his face. “We are friends,” she says.
“Friends,” he repeats.
“I don’t want to be like them,” says Romina.
“You’re not like them.”
“I’m scared of us stopping being friends – do you understand?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Now it’s your turn,” she says, and passes him the stick. He draws a circle and inside it two dots.
“A button.”
“No.”
“A pig’s snout!” she shouts, sure that she is right.
“Wrong again.” Romina studies the drawing from different angles.
“A socket?”
“You’ve lost.” She waits for an explanation.
“It’s us two,” says Juani, pointing to the two dots, “behind the wall.”
“Behind the wall, or in front of it?” she asks.
“It comes to the same thing.”
“No, it’s not the same. You know that picture they show you, and you have to say whether you see an old woman or a young one?”
“Yes, I saw a young one,” he says.
“The wall of The Cascade is the same,” says Romina, and she traces the circle with her stick. “You can look at what the circumference encloses or at what it leaves outside, right?”
“No.”
“Which is the inside, and which is the outside?” Juani listens, but says nothing. “Are we shutting ourselves in, or are we shutting out other people so that they can’t come in?”
“What are you on about? Are you pissed?” Juani prods her with his bottle, which is nearly empty. Romina laughs. She drinks more beer.
“You’re being really thick, Juano. What about a spoon – you’ve seen a spoon?” she asks and she demonstrates the shape of a spoon with her hand, in the air. “Is a spoon concave or convex?”
Juani laughs; beer spills out of his mouth. “I haven’t got a fucking clue.”
“It depends which side you look at it from,” she clarifies. And pointing at the palm and back of her hand she says, “Concave… convex.”
Juani says, “Ah…” and he laughs because he didn’t get it. She laughs too, empties a bottle into her mouth and then tosses it to one side. She scrubs out the circle with the palm of one hand, then stands up and goes to the swings. Juani follows her and takes the swing next to her. Their bare feet tip above their heads. Each time they come to the top, they look at each other. They see who can swing higher. And a little higher still. Juani says, “I’m going,” and throws himself off. He falls and then gets up, waiting for her on the sand. Romina swings once more. She throws herself off, too. She falls onto the sand on her knees, beside him. She lands on top of the empty beer bottle. The bottle shatters. Romina screams. Blood begins to flow and to mix with the sand. Juani doesn’t know what to do. Both of them are scared. He lifts her onto his shoulder. He squeezes her thighs tight and feels Romina’s blood on his chest. Romina screams and cries. She clings on to Juani’s neck, her head hanging over his back, her black hair swishing from one side to the other as he runs, carrying her. He goes for help as quickly as he can. He feels his shirt warm and wet, sticking to his chest. He keeps running. He starts to run out of breath. He panics. He slows down and realizes that he has no idea where he is going.
26
They went in two cars. Lala had suggested going together, so that they could chat, but Carla preferred to make her own way. She was in a hurry: she had to go to the supermarket, a chore that increasingly depressed her, but the fridge was empty and Gustavo was going to start complaining again. She didn’t like it when he complained; she was scared that he would not be able to stop. And she knew what he was like when he could not stop himself. Each time he had not been able to stop himself, they ended up moving house. Also, she needed to preserve Gustavo’s current mood, because there were some important things she had to tell him, things he wasn’t going to like. She needed to tell him that she had decided to get a job, anything, to get her out of the house. She had a
lready started making calls and sending emails, but she had not yet told him. She would tell him soon. But it wouldn’t help if he started getting annoyed about something that was nothing to do with her. And she suspected that this business with Lala was going to take more time than she could spare. On the way to the vet’s, Carla heard on the radio that the nation’s vice-president had just resigned. She felt sorry; she liked him, but she knew that many people in Cascade Heights did not, so she kept that quiet. She found his difficulty in pronouncing “r” endearing. He had resigned over the failure to investigate bribery in the Senate. Or so it seemed. It isn’t easy to single out one reason for a person’s resignation, she thought.
They arrived at the pet shop almost at the same time. Lala had come with her eldest son, Ariel, who was seventeen. The boy seemed disgruntled. Perhaps he didn’t like his mother borrowing a credit card in order to buy a dog in instalments, Carla thought. She certainly wouldn’t like it. But she had been without a mother for so long that she would forgive such a lapse of judgement, if she could have her back. Just as she would forgive the way her mother had abandoned Carla with a father who took his grief out on her, in the absence of the wife who had left him. Or the fact that she had felt obliged to marry Gustavo when she was still so young, almost without knowing him, just to escape from the man her mother had escaped years before.
She still did not understand why she had said “yes” so quickly when Lala had called her. “You can’t imagine how sweet it is! Ariana loved it, and I want to give her it for her birthday,” Lala had told Carla, before asking to borrow her card. “I said to Martín, we can’t pay it all at once, but in six instalments we won’t even notice it. And he agreed but he said that there had just been some problem with the card and the bank and they’ve suspended the account. Martín says they’ll sort it out any minute, but the days go by and nothing happens. Bank employees are like that. Of course they’re in no hurry, so what do they care?”
Carla didn’t care either, and yet here she was. When she had told Gustavo he practically killed her. “If it was for medicines or food, but for a dog… Carla, is it so difficult to say no?” And he knew that it was. Because he had often heard her say no and enough and I can’t go on, but she did go on. “Don’t you know that Martín’s gone bust?” Gustavo had said to her, and she had not known, and she was sure that Lala did not know either. “She can’t not know, she’s his wife,” said Gustavo. And she thought, what’s that got to do with it, but she didn’t say this.
Gustavo told her that for months the Uroviches had been paying only for essentials – day-to-day shopping, utilities that could be cut off if they went unpaid: electricity, gas, telephone. That El Tano Scaglia had been paying their health insurance ever since he had insisted on footing the bill for Ariana’s appendix operation. “It’s cheaper for him to pay the instalments every month.” Martín had not been paying The Cascade’s service charge for some time now. School fees, yes, though El Tano had advised him not to pay them, “because they can’t chuck your kids out halfway through the year – it’s against some law passed by the Ministry of Education. So long as you pay the registration fee and perhaps the first month, you can send them for the rest of the year without worrying; nothing will happen. That’s what Pérez Ayerra did one year when he was short of cash and he ended up negotiating to pay half.”
But Martín didn’t want to do that. “Or Lala would find out,” said Carla.
“If she hasn’t found out already, it’s because she doesn’t want to know.”
“Give me a break – she must have some idea where the money comes from.”
“It’s not deliberate – just ditziness. When girls want to behave like airheads…” And Carla decided not to listen any more. She had already said “yes” and, on this occasion, it was much easier to take out her card and pay than to go back on the agreement.
The pet shop occupied a large area at the entrance to a shopping mall. It looked like a supermarket, with long shelves from which you could serve yourself anything from healthy food to little, jangling balls, leather bones, leads in different materials and colours, tartan blankets and bronze plaques on which the name of a pet could be engraved.
Carla and Ariel waited to one side while Lala went straight to the cage where the Labrador and Golden Retriever puppies were kept. There was a black and a gold one.
“Mine is the gold one, isn’t she dreamy?” said Lala excitedly, motioning them over. “Ariana’s going to be over the moon!” And then, indicating Ariel, whose face registered no emotion. “Just look at this one. He’s as unfeeling as they come, definitely not an animal-lover like me…”
The assistant took the dog out for her and she lifted it up in her arms. “Do you know what he said to me?” she went on, in front of the assistant. “He said, why couldn’t we spend the money on a skiing trip for him. Can you believe it?”
“So what?” said the boy and sulked off to examine an iguana, confined in a fish tank.
“He’s just a boy…” said Carla.
“Yes, but it makes you angry when someone’s values are so skewed, because that’s not the way we’ve brought him up.”
“I would have said the same thing, at his age.”
“Well, you’re not an animal-lover either. It would do you the world of good to have a kitten or something. They give you company. I’m not saying it because of your pregnancy problems, mind. Animals make everyone feel good.”
The women went on to the till. Ariel followed them. Lala was holding the puppy in her arms, as though it were a baby. “OK, I just have to get a health record for her. Her parents are pure-breds, but the puppy doesn’t come with any papers, did you know that?”
“Yes, or rather, I’m not the sort of person who pays nine hundred dollars for a dog’s family tree,” Carla laughed.
“Leave that to people who have more money than sense, right?” said Lala and she shot Carla a complicitous glance. The vet was preparing to fill in the health record and to give some instructions about vaccinations.
“Do you mind if we do the card first, because I’m in a bit of a hurry?” Carla managed to intervene.
“No, of course not. Can you swipe the card, please.”
“In how many instalments would you like to pay this? Three?” the vet asked.
“We agreed on six the other day,” Lala replied. When the vet had nearly finished filling in the credit-card slip, Lala interrupted him. “No, wait a minute. What food should I be taking for this little darling?” The vet emerged from behind the counter, approached one of the shelves and pointed out the food recommended for the dog’s breed and size. Lala followed him, while Carla waited at the counter. “And how long will one of these bags last me?”
“About three weeks.”
“Right, put two bags on the card too.” She went back to stand beside Carla. “You don’t know how much these animals can eat.”
“No, I don’t know,” Carla answered, thinking that Gustavo had better not find out that he was also financing the animal’s food. Ariel plunged back among the shelves, surfacing by the tropical fish tank.
“Right, now we’re ready,” said Lala to the vet, who tallied up the sums on his pocket calculator.
“Altogether, that’s five hundred and eighty – could you sign here, please.” The man gave Lala the slip and she passed it to Carla. Carla signed.
“I can’t wait to see Ariana’s face when she gets home from school today!” Carla smiled and put her card away. The vet continued: “So, for forty-five days, no going outside, to avoid distemper.” Lala listened, all ears.
Carla interrupted: “I can go now, right?”
“Yes, you’ve already signed, haven’t you?” Carla nodded. “Off you go then, Carli. See you soon.” Just as Carla was leaving the shop, Lala shouted from the counter: “And thanks, eh?” Carla made an effort to smile again. She looked for Ariel, to wave goodbye. But the boy didn’t see her; he was standing, hand in pockets, in a corner, watching a hamster endless
ly running on its wheel.
27
The day that Carla Masotta turned up at the agency happened to coincide with one of the worst days of my life. I had just come from an exchange of contracts, which should have made me happy, given that I had not been able to finalize a deal for months now, and that commission was going to be a lifeline in the stormy waters to come. It was the autumn of 2001. Paco Pérez Ayerra had sold his house and rented another through my agency. He had financial problems or, rather, his company had financial problems. The economy minister had resigned and the new one appointed by the president had lasted only fifteen days. He made a speech, he asked for belt-tightening, he made a trip to Chile and, when he came back – no more job. The president had replaced him with the bald guy who had been the previous president’s economy minister. This guy was now the leader of a rebellious breakaway party, making his affiliations as a minister rather unclear. I remember Paco saying that baldy’s return would probably bring about change, because people abroad trusted him. All the same he preferred to have no registered assets against which claims could be made if it came to that. Citing “force majeure”, he insisted that only the buyer, not he, should pay a commission on the sale of his house – an argument which, of course, I could not accept. “This is how I make a living, Paco,” to which he answered, “that’s not my problem.” Finally, grudgingly, we both agreed that he pay half the usual rate. But what really annoyed me wasn’t that loss, but the fact that, while he was counting out the notes and writing down the serial numbers of the dollars as he received them from Nane, Paco put to one side all the oldest, most torn and dirty notes, until he had enough to meet my fee. Then he used those notes to pay me. “Right, is that all sorted then?” said Nane. “We can’t let money cause any bad blood between us, can we?”
And I answered: “Everything’s sorted, Nane,” while I put her husband’s dirty notes away in my wallet.
Carla came into the office looking determined, but you could tell she was nervous. She sat down opposite me while I finished a phone conversation, without removing her dark glasses. I was talking to Teresa Scaglia, not yet knowing why she had called, because she kept going round in circles without saying anything.
