The Absent City

by Ricardo Piglia

  “There’s a woman,” Junior said. “She calls me on the telephone, passes information on to me. Now she says I should go to a hotel, the Majestic on Piedras and Av. de Mayo. There’s a guy there, a certain Fuyita, a Korean who works in the Museum, a security guard, the night watchman. I don’t know, maybe she works for the police.”

  “In this country, everyone who’s not in jail works for the police,” Renzi said, “including the thieves.”

  Junior stood up. He was leaving.

  “Did I give you the recording?” Renzi asked. “Here,” he said, and handed him a cassette tape. “Listen to it, then you can fill me in.”

  “Perfect.”

  “I’ll meet you here, tomorrow.”

  “At six,” Junior said.

  “Be careful.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s full of Japanese out there,” Renzi said.

  Outside, the cars were coming and going. “They are always watching, even if there is no point to it,” Junior thought. The sky was gray; at 3:50 P.M. the president’s helicopter flew over the avenue toward the river. Junior checked the time and entered the subway. Toward Plaza de Mayo. He leaned back against the window, half asleep, letting the swaying train move him around. They look at each other, the dumbshits, they travel underground just for that. An old woman traveled standing up, her face swollen from so much crying. Simple people, proletariats dressed to go out, modern clothes from Taiwan. Couples holding hands, checking out their reflections in the window. The dark ones with black hair, the Peronios, as Renzi called them. “In the middle of everyone they shaved me clean like a nobody,” Junior sang to himself. “I’m mute. I sing with my thoughts. The barber, an Italian immigrant on Av. Constitución, didn’t want to do it at first. ‘What are you trying to do, kid?’ I don’t want lice,” Junior had answered. He shined his white bowl with brilliantine (“I don’t want lice”). Miguel MacKensey (Junior), an English traveler. The lighted subway sped through the tunnel at eighty kilometers per hour.

  2

  The Majestic Hotel, with its marble entrance and dilapidated walls, was right on the corner of Piedras and Av. de Mayo. In the mezzanine at the top of the stairs there was a desk, and behind it an old man petting a roan cat, his face next to its nose. Junior saw a carpeted hallway, several closed doors, and the entrance to a basement. He stopped warily and lit a cigarette.

  “This animal that you see right here,” the old man said without looking up, “is fifteen years old. Do you know how old that is for a cat?” He dragged his words as he spoke, with an intonation somewhere between respectful and cunning, his thin neck buried in the lustring lapels of a corduroy jacket. He was standing between the key rack and a glass door, and held the cat on the counter. The bow-legged animal began to move slowly, arching its back. “This animal is a miracle of nature. He understands as if he was a person. I brought him from out in the country and he has stayed here ever since. A gaucho cat.” When he smiled his small eyes became smaller. “From Entre Ríos.”

  Junior leaned over the cat, who breathed with a kind of quivering, and petted it on the back.

  “He’s nervous, see? He understands everything, he doesn’t like the smell of tobacco. Can you feel how he breathes?”

  “My name is Junior,” he said. “I need to see Fuyita.”

  “And?” the old man asked with his little suspicious smile.

  “Do you know if he is in?”

  “Mr. Fuyita? I couldn’t say. You’ll have to speak with the manager.”

  “Nice cat,” Junior said and grabbed the cat by its nape with a quick move. He pressed him against the counter. The cat shrieked, terrified.

  “What are you doing?” the old man asked, covering his face with his hand to protect himself.

  “Give me the number,” Junior said. “I work in the circus.”

  The old man had fallen back against the wall and was looking at Junior as if he wanted to hypnotize him. His eyes were two small quail eggs in his wrinkled face.

  “That animal is the only thing I have in the world,” the old man begged, “don’t hurt him.”

  Junior released the cat, who jumped and left, meowing like a baby; then he took out a 1,000 pesos bill folded in half.

  “I need the room number.”

  The old man tried to smile, but he was so nervous that he just stuck the tip of his tongue out. “An iguana,” Junior thought. He reached for the bill and put it in the small front pocket of his jacket with a furtive move.

  “Two twenty-three. Room two twenty-three. Fuyita is Christ,” he said. “They call him Christ, get my drift?” He stuck his tongue out twice and turned around toward the key rack. “Go on up,” he said. “I’m not here, you didn’t see me.” He was sticking his tongue out and in, facing the wall so that no one would see him.

  The elevator was a cage, its ceiling full of inscriptions and graffiti. “Language kills,” Junior read. “Viva Lucia Joyce.” He looked at his face in the mirror; it looked as if he were trapped in a spider web — the shadow from the wall’s gratings covering his shaved cranium, his melancholic skull. The hallway on the second floor was empty. The yellow walls and the carpets drowned out the harsh rumblings from the street. Junior rang room two twenty-three. The buzzer seemed to ring somewhere else, outside the hotel, outside the city even.

  “What is it?” a woman’s voice said after a while.

  “Fuyita,” he said.

  The woman opened the door just a crack. Junior thought that maybe Fuyita was not a man. “Fuyita Coke, the Japanese Dame.”

  “You’re Fuyita,” he said.

  The woman laughed.

  “Language kills,” he quoted blindly. The woman was a pale outline in the room’s semi-darkness.

  “Who are you? Did the Deaf Girl send you?” she murmured. Then she raised her voice: “Say, why don’t you go to hell? Who in the world are you?” There was a brief hesitation, a deep breath. “He’s not here.”

  “Calm down,” Junior said. “My name is Junior.”

  “Who?” she said.

  “Junior,” Junior said, pushing at the door. It opened gently, without any resistance from the woman.

  “Asshole,” she said. “Get out of here, you son of a bitch.”

  She spoke in a low voice, as if she were shouting in a dream.

  The room was dimly lit and the air smelled of camphor and alcohol and cheap perfume. The woman headed back toward the bed. Junior followed her slowly, trying not to lose track of her in the thick shadows cast by the furniture.

  “You better not touch me or I’ll scream,” she said. “If you touch me I’ll scream.”

  He finally became accustomed to the greenish light in the room and was able to see her face. She had been a blond, she had been hit, her lips were swollen, her mouth cracked, her skin full of welts. She wore a shirt that barely covered her breasts and a man’s pair of shoes without shoelaces.

  “Why did he hit you?” he asked.

  The woman dragged her feet as she walked. She sat down on the bed and rested her elbows on her knees absentmindedly.

  “And who are you?” she asked.

  “I’m going to help you.”

  “Yeah, sure,” she said. “Did Fuyita send you? Are you Japanese? Come here, let me see.”

  She lit a cigarette lighter. The flame illuminated the mirror on the dresser.

  “I came to see him,” Junior said. “He told me to meet him here.”

  “He left. He’s not coming back. Poor guy.” She started crying without making any noise. Then she leaned down and looked around for her bottle of gin. She was not wearing anything other than the shirt and you could see her breasts, she did not try to cover herself up. “Shit,” she said, tilting the empty bottle. “He can die for all I care.” She made an effort to smile. “Be good and go buy me some more.”

  “In a moment. First we’ll talk, then I’ll go and get you some gin. Turn on a light—”

  “No,” she cut him short. “What for? Keep it as it is. G
ive me a cigarette.”

  Junior handed her the pack. She opened it avidly and started smoking.

  “Tell me if he isn’t rotten? He took my clothes so I wouldn’t go out. What did he think? That I was going to run after him?”

  “He left,” Junior said. “He put your clothes in a suitcase and left. Fuyita Coke. Do you want some?”

  “I don’t do coke,” she said. “It’s been years. Do you come from La Plata? Are you a narc? It’s Deaf Girl’s fault, she’s a mare, a drug addict. I’m sure he’s with her.” She leaned forward to speak to him in a low voice. Up close her face looked as if it were made of glass. “He wants to leave me for that shrew. Leave me for that bitch.” She stood up and started moving around the room. “After I. . do you know what I did for him, what I did for that man?” She stopped to one side, in front of the chair where he had sat down. “If you could see what’s become of me,” she said, and lifted her shirt to show him her legs, and brought her feet — in the rubber-soled shoes — together. “Don’t you see? I danced in the Club Maipo, I did. I’d come down completely naked, wearing feathers. Ms. Joyce. It means happiness. I sang in English. What does she think, that nobody? I’ve been lead dancer since I was sixteen and now that bitch comes and takes him from me.” Junior figured that the woman was going to start crying. “He decided to send me to Entre Ríos, can you understand that? He says that I’m too stifled here. But do you understand what he wants to do to me, that he wants to bury me alive?” Desperation made her move in place and breathe heavily. “What would I do if he sent me to Entre Ríos? What would I do there, answer me that?”

  “The countryside is pretty,” Junior said. “You could raise animals, live near nature. Ninety percent of the gauchos just fuck the sheep.”

  “What are you saying, you degenerate? Are you sick? Why did they shave your head? Are you Russian? I saw a movie once with a Russian whose head looked like a bowl, just like yours. Did you have ringworm? Are you from the country?”

  “Yes,” Junior said. “From the town of Gualeguay. My old man is the foreman at the Larrea cattle ranch. He was, that is. A drunk worker killed him, betrayed him, stabbed him with a knife when he was getting out of a sulky.”

  “And then?” the woman asked. “Go on.”

  “That’s all,” Junior said. “He had it in for him because my father had called him a bum at a dance once. He waited for his chance and finally paid him back. They’re all drug addicts, out in the country. Always hallucinating.”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s what I’m saying. I can’t sleep out in the country. Wherever you look there are drugs and trash.”

  She walked toward an old armoire with a crescent-shaped mirror in the rear of the room. Junior managed to see the reflection from the mirror that broke the semi-darkness when she opened the armoire, then a mattress that was rolled up and tied with wire, and an empty hanger. The woman stood on her toes and searched the upper shelves. From behind she seemed very young, almost a girl. When she turned around she had a bottle of perfume in her hand. English Cologne La Franco. She opened it and took a drink, raising her face toward the ceiling. She wiped her mouth and looked at him again.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “Another thing about the country,” Junior said, “are the locusts. Short-horned grasshoppers. You have to make noise so they won’t land, horns, shots, my father would even blow the siren on the boat. Or else with smoke, burn the cane thickets, the dry grass. That’s why I like the city — no locusts. Just mosquitoes and cats.”

  The woman left the armoire open and walked toward the center of the room with the bottle of perfume pressed against her stomach. She moved slowly and looked at Junior with a suspicious expression on her face.

  “And why was it that you wanted to see him?”

  “I have something to ask him.”

  “He told you to meet him here? If you want to see him, why don’t you go look for him at the Museum? Tell me, you wouldn’t be a friend of Fat-Man Saurio’s?”

  “Calm down, shhh. .,” Junior said. “Silence in the night. Fuyita asked me to come here. Now. . if you say that he’s in the Museum.”

  “Me?” The woman started to laugh nervously. “What did I say, kid?” She lifted the bottle of perfume and took another drink. Then she put a few drops on her fingertips and patted herself behind the ears. Junior could smell the perfume’s mild fragrance mixed with the closed-in smell of the room.

  “Maybe he’s in the Museum, maybe he’s not. If you’re such good friends with Fat-Man Saurio, you must know something. Why don’t you have him tell you about Deaf Girl.” She started to laugh again, as if she were coughing. “Tell me the truth, is he with her or not?”

  She had started to cry and could not stop. She pressed her closed fists against her eyes. Junior felt sorry for the woman and asked her not to cry.

  “How can you ask me not to cry, do you want to tell me that? With what he’s done to me!”

  “Here, take this,” he said, and handed her a handkerchief. “Calm down, don’t cry. Where are you from?”

  “From here, I’ve always lived in the hotel, I’m the girl from the Majestic. But I come from far away, from the interior of the country, from the south. From Río Negro. Look, I stained it all,” she said, and tried to fold the handkerchief, smiling. “Do you think it’ll show?” She was touching her bruises with her fingertips.

  “No,” he said. “No. But why don’t you clean yourself up a little. Come here, let me see.”

  He moistened the handkerchief with the eau de cologne and cleaned her bruised face, which she allowed him to do with her eyes closed.

  “That’s enough,” she said. “That’s enough. Hold on, let me turn on a light.” She went up to a lamp with a pleated ruffle lampshade. It gave off a bluish light when she switched it on. Then she looked at herself in the mirror. “Mother of God, I look like a monster.” She began to fix her hair. She looked at one of her legs. “Anyway, I’m full of wounds and it doesn’t hurt, I don’t feel much, see?” She lifted her shirt and showed him the scars. “This was done by a motorcycle, this by a dog that bit me, here I sort of ran into a wall, I didn’t see it. But it doesn’t hurt. Most complain about every little bruise. I’ve been knocked around by that brute. People are afraid of pain, but not me, right now I don’t feel it at all. It has to do with endorphins.”

  “With what?” Junior asked.

  “Endorphins. It’s scientific, kid, they explained it to me at the clinic. It’s a natural sedative made by the body. If you do heroin, the body quits making endorphins. Just stops. That’s why when you quit everything hurts, because you don’t have enough endorphins. In my case, I think it made too much and things don’t hurt like they should. That’s why I drink, anyway. Alcohol. Out in the province there’s a lot of heroin, in the country, in the valley, everyone can get it, they carry it on the sulkies, the Italian farmers hide it in their boots.”

  “Do you have any now?”

  “Never. I don’t buy it, I left that shit behind. When you’re on horse you don’t feel anything. Anyway, your body changes — you don’t shower for a week but you don’t stink because you don’t secrete anything. You don’t cry, you don’t pee, you don’t feel cold or hot, you barely eat. You can be a heroin addict your whole life, they know that you don’t die from it, unless it’s of very poor quality, the worst of the worst, which would poison you. But you have to be a millionaire to afford pure heroin. And one thing’s for sure: the day you skip a dose, the withdrawal symptoms kill you.”

  “You can’t quit.”

  “What do you mean you can’t quit? You’re crazy. You have to go somewhere where there isn’t any, where you can’t get it even if you’re dying. I left the small town, where they sell it even in kiosks, and came to the capital, and locked myself in a bathroom for three days. When you quit heroin everything is reversed. You sweat a lot, I was always all sweaty, they’d lift me from the tiles and I’d be totally wet. It’s terrible, because you’re sup
ernervous and lethargic at the same time. Besides, you cry over anything. I’d look at an ashtray and cry. I started drinking then. At first, I remember, I drank Ocho Hermanos Anisette.”

  “It’s better.”

  “It’s the same shit. In order not to be an alcoholic you have to avoid drinking by yourself. Now I wake up in the middle of the night, drink a little bit of gin and go back to sleep.”

  Junior looked at the woman, who was touching up her face. Her skin was taut and shiny as if it were made out of metal.

  “Come here,” he said. “I want you to look at this picture.”

  It was a snapshot of a young woman wearing a plaid skirt and a black turtleneck sweater.

  “And who is this?” she said, grabbing the picture with both hands.

  “Have you ever seen her?”

  The woman shook her head no.

  “Did they take her away?”

  “She died,” he said.

  “Who did her in? Fuyita?”

  “Do you think he did it?”

  “Me? Are you crazy, kid? I don’t know anything.” She leaned over on the bed and started filing her nails. “Don’t pay any attention to me. You better watch out, too, because I’m half-crazy. And who knows this little cutie, anyway?” She raised her face. “Deaf Girl is always running around with women. Have you been to the Museum yet? There’s a machine, do you know or not? There’s something very strange in all of that.”

  “Nyet.”

  “Everything is scientific. Nothing evil. I met a Russian guy once who had invented a metal bird that could predict rain. This is the same. Pure science, no religion.”

  “No,” Junior said. “Is the machine a woman?”

  “She used to be a woman.”

  “They locked her up.”

  “She was in a clinic for a year. Don’t tell him I told you because he’ll kill you, Fuyita will. Don’t let him know you came here. He’s jealous as a snake.”