One morning, Satan himself leads the Chilean to nothing less than the hottest place imaginable: the center of the sun. It’s so hot there that Satan has to put on a special suit or else he’ll get burned. Once inside the center of the sun, they come to a small two-by-two-meter cubicle, and Satan opens the door. The Chilean enters and he stays there, hopeful and deeply grateful. Weeks pass, months, years, until one day, moved by curiosity, the Devil decides to pay the Chilean a visit. He puts on his special suit again—even reinforces it with two additional layers, because he thinks he may have singed himself on the previous trip—and he heads off to the sun. He has scarcely opened the door to the cubicle when he hears the Chilean shout from inside: “Please close the door, it’s chilly in here!”
“Please close the door, it’s chilly in here!” says Rodrigo, and his performance is a success.
“I think that you are the chilliest man in the world,” Bart tells him, “and I want the chilliest man in the world to try the best beer in the world.” Piet proposes they go to a bar where they sell hundreds of beers, but in the end they decide to go somewhere closer, where they clandestinely sell Westvleteren, the so-called best beer in the world, and on the way Rodrigo leans on the umbrella, but he doesn’t know if it’s necessary, he feels like he doesn’t need it anymore and could throw it away, but he goes on using it anyway while he listens to the story of the Trappist monks who make the beer and sell it in modest quantities, a story he finds amazing. He hopes he likes the beer a lot and he does, although they buy only one for the three of them, because the bottle costs ten euros.
They go back to the apartment at two in the morning with their arms around each other, so Rodrigo doesn’t have to use the umbrella: they look drunker than they are. Later, in the living room, they go on drinking for a while, they half listen to each other, they laugh. “You can stay, but only for tonight,” says Piet, and Rodrigo thanks him. They drag in a mattress while Bart stretches out on an old chaise lounge and covers himself with a blanket. Rodrigo thinks about what he will do if Bart tries something in the middle of the night. He considers whether he will reject him or not, but he falls asleep, and Bart does too.
He wakes up early; he’s alone in the living room. He’s a little hungover, and the coffee he finds in the kitchen does him good. He looks at the street, he looks at the buildings, the silent facade of the pizzeria. He wants to say good-bye to Piet, and he cracks open the door to his room: he sees him sleeping next to Bart in a half embrace. He leaves them a note of thanks and goes down the four flights of stairs. He has absolutely no plan, but he’s encouraged by the idea of walking without a cane, and once in the street he tries it, like in a happy ending. But he can’t do it, and he falls. It’s a nasty fall, a hard fall, his double pants rip, his knee bleeds. He stays on the corner, thinking, paralyzed by pain, and it starts to rain, as if he were a character in a cartoon with a cloud hanging above him—but this rain is for everyone, not just him.
It’s a cold and copious rain and he should look for a place to take shelter. He has very little money left, but he has no choice but to buy another umbrella. This is the moment to think of Elisa and curse her, but he doesn’t do it. Now he has two umbrellas, the blue one for balance and the black one for the rain; he says it out loud, in the same calm tone in which he would say his name, first and last, his birthplace. “Now I have two umbrellas, blue for balance and black for rain,” he repeats, as he starts to walk, with no other purpose than that, simply: to walk.
FAMILY LIFE
For Paula Canal
It’s not hot out, it’s not cold. A shy, sharp sun overcomes the clouds, and the sky looks, at times, truly clean, like the sky blue of a child’s drawing. Martín is in the last seat of the bus, listening to music, bobbing his head like the young folks do, but he’s not young anymore, not by a long shot: he’s forty years old, his hair fairly long, black, and a little curly, his face extremely white—well, there ’ll be time later to describe him. For now he’s just gotten off the bus, carrying a backpack and a suitcase, and he is walking a few blocks in search of an address.
The job consists of taking care of the cat, running the vacuum cleaner every once in a while, and watering some indoor plants that seem destined to dry out. I’m not going to go out much, hardly at all, he thinks, with a trace of happiness. Only to buy food for the cat, to buy food for myself. There is also a silver Fiat that he has to drive every so often (“So it can breathe,” they’ve told him). For now, he’s spending time with the family: it’s seven in the evening, and they’ll be leaving very early, at five thirty a.m. Here is the family, in alphabetical order:
Bruno: sparse beard, blondish, tall, smoker of black tobacco, literature professor.
Consuelo: Bruno’s partner, not his wife, because they never married, although they act like a married couple, perhaps worse than a married couple.
Sofía: the daughter.
She’s just run past, the little girl, chasing after the cat toward the stairs. She doesn’t greet Martín, doesn’t look at him; these days kids don’t say hi, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing, because adults say hi too much. Bruno explains to Martín some of the details of the job while, at the same time, arguing with Consuelo about how to organize a suitcase. Then Consuelo approaches Martín with a friendliness that unsettles him—he isn’t used to friendliness—and shows him the cat’s bed, the litter box, and a piece of pressed cloth where the cat can sharpen its claws, although none of these things get much use, according to Consuelo, because the cat sleeps wherever he feels like it, does his business in the yard, and scratches on all the chairs. Consuelo also shows him how the little door works, the mechanism that allows the cat to go out but not come in, or come in but not go out, or come in or out as it likes. “We always leave it open,” says Consuelo, “so she can be free—it’s like when our parents finally gave us the keys to the house.”
To Martín, the existence of that door is fantastic—he’s only ever seen one like it in Tom and Jerry cartoons. He almost asks how they got it, but then he thinks that maybe Santiago is full of pet doors and he’s just never noticed before.
“Sorry,” he says at the wrong time. “What did you say about our parents?”
“What?”
“You said something about ‘our parents,’ I think?”
“Oh, that this door is like when our parents gave us the keys to the house.”
The laughter lasts for two seconds. Martín goes out to smoke and sees an empty area in the yard: two and a half meters of disheveled grass where there should be a few plants and maybe a bush, but there’s nothing. He flicks his ashes furtively onto the grass, puts out the cigarette, and wastes an entire minute thinking about where to throw it: in the end he leaves it under a yellowed weed. He looks at the house from the threshold, thinks that it isn’t so big, that it’s manageable, though it seems full of nuance. He tentatively observes the shelves, the electric piano, and a large hourglass on the end table. He remembers that when he was a child he liked hourglasses, and he turns it over—
“It lasts twelve minutes,” says the little girl, who then, from the top step where she is trying to hold on to the cat, asks him if he’s Martín.
“Yes.”
And if he wants to play chess.
“Okay.”
The cat wriggles out of the girl’s grasp. It’s an uneven gray color, with short, dense fur, a thin body, and fangs that protrude slightly. The little girl goes up and down the stairs several times. And the cat, Mississippi, seems docile. He goes up to Martín, who wants to pet him but hesitates: he’s not so familiar with cats, has never lived with one before.
Sofía comes back, she’s in her PJs now and she walks clumsily in her big slippers from Chiloé. Consuelo asks her to not bother them and to go to her room, but the girl is carrying a heavy box, or a box that’s heavy for her, and she sets up the chessboard on the living-room table. She is seven years old, and she has just learned how to move the pieces, as well as the game’s mannerisms
or affectations: she looks cute with her brow furrowed, her round face in her hands. She and Martín start to play, but after five minutes it’s clear that they’re getting bored, him more so than her. Then he proposes to Sofí that they play at losing, and at first she doesn’t understand, but then she explodes in sweet, mocking laughter—the one who loses wins, the goal is to give up first, to leave Don Quixote and Dulcinea unprotected, because it’s a Cervantes chess set, with windmills instead of rooks, and courageous Sancho Panzas as pawns.
How idiotic, thinks Martín. A literary chess set.
The pieces on the board look tarnished, tasteless, and although he’s not one to form quick impressions, the whole house now makes him a little anxious and annoyed, but not because of anything he sees: the placement of each object surely answers to some obscure theory of interior design, but an imbalance persists nonetheless, a secret anomaly. It’s as if the things don’t want to be where they are, thinks Martín, who is nevertheless grateful for the chance to spend some time in this luminous house, so different from the small, shadowy rooms he tends to live in.
Consuelo takes the girl upstairs and sings her to sleep. Though he listens from afar, Martín feels that he shouldn’t be eavesdropping, that he is an intruder. Bruno offers him some ravioli, which they eat in silence, with a phony masculine voracity. Something like, Well, there are no women around—let’s not use napkins. After the coffee, Bruno pours a couple of vodkas on the rocks, but Martín opts to keep downing the wine.
“What’s the name of the city where you’re going to live?” asks Martín, to have something to say.
“Saint-Étienne.”
“Where we played?”
“Who’s we?”
“The Chilean soccer team, France, ’98.”
“I don’t know. It’s an industrial city, a little run-down. I’m going to teach classes on Latin America.”
“And where is it?”
“Saint-Étienne or Latin America?”
The joke is so easy, so rote, but it works. Almost without trying, they draw out the after-dinner conversation, as if discovering some belated affinity. Upstairs the little girl sleeps, and they can also hear what might be Consuelo breathing or snoring slightly. Martín discovers that he’s been thinking about her the whole time he’s been in the house, from the moment he saw her in the doorway.
“You’re going to be here four months,” Bruno tells him. “Make use of that time to have a go with one of the neighbors.”
I’d much rather have a go with your wife, thinks Martín, and he thinks it so forcefully he’s afraid he has said it out loud.
“Enjoy it, cousin,” Bruno goes on affectionately, slightly drunk, but they aren’t cousins. Their fathers were, though: Martín’s has just died, and it was at the wake that they saw each other again for the first time in years. To treat one another like family now makes sense, it’s perhaps the only way to build a hasty sense of trust. The idea had originally been to rent out the house to someone who wouldn’t change it too much. But they couldn’t find anyone suitable. After a lot of finagling, some of it pretty desperate, Martín was the most reliable person Bruno could find to housesit. They’ve seen each other very little over the course of their lives, but maybe they were friends at one point, when they were still children and were compelled to play together on some Sunday afternoon.
Bruno lays out for him again what they’ve already talked about over the phone. He gives him the keys, they test the locks, he explains the doors’ quirks. And again he lists the advantages of being there, although now he doesn’t mention any neighbors. Then he asks if Martín likes to read.
“A little,” says Martín, but it’s not true. Then he turns overly honest: “No, I don’t like to read. The last thing I would ever do is read a book.” After a pause he says, “Sorry,” and looks at the overflowing shelves. “It’s like I’ve gone to church and said I don’t believe in God. Plus, there are a lot of worse things. Even worse than the things that’ve already happened to me.” He gives Bruno a placating smile.
“Don’t worry about it,” Bruno says, as if approving the comment. “A lot of people think the same thing, but they don’t say it.” Then he picks out some novels and puts them on the end table beside the hourglass. “Still, if you ever feel like reading, here are some things that might interest you.”
“And why would they interest me? Are they for people who don’t read?”
“More or less, ha.” (He says this, ha, but without the inflection of laughter.) “Some of them are classics, others are more contemporary, but they’re all entertaining.” (When he says this last word, he doesn’t make the slightest effort to avoid a pedantic tone, almost as if he were making air quotes.) Martín thanks him and says good night.
He doesn’t look at the books, not even at their titles. Lying on the couch, he thinks: Books for people who don’t read. He thinks: Books for people who have just lost their fathers and had already lost their mothers, people who are alone in the world. Books for people who have failed in the university, in work, in love (he thinks this: failed in love). Books for people who have failed so badly that, at forty years old, taking care of someone else’s house in exchange for nothing, or almost nothing, seems like a good opportunity. Some people count sheep, others recite their misfortunes. But he doesn’t sleep, sunk too deep in self-pity, which, in spite of everything, is not a suit he is comfortable wearing.
Just when sleep is about to overcome him, the alarm clocks go off; it’s five in the morning. Martín gets up to help the family with their suitcases. Sofí comes downstairs, sulking, but right away she finds, who knows where, a surge of energy. Mississippi is nowhere to be seen and Sofí wants to say good-bye. She cries for two minutes but then stops, as if she has simply forgotten she was crying. When the taxi arrives she insists she wants to finish her cereal, but then leaves the bowl almost untouched.
“Kill all the robbers,” she tells Martín before getting into the car.
“And what should I do with the ghosts?”
“Martín is joking,” says Consuelo immediately, throwing him a nervous look. “There are no ghosts in the house—that’s why we bought it, because we were guaranteed there were no ghosts. And not in France either, in the house where we’re going to live.”
As soon as they are gone, Martín stretches out in the big bed, which is still warm. He searches in the sheets for Consuelo’s perfume or the smell of her body, and he sleeps facedown, breathing deeply into the pillow, as if he’s discovered an exclusive and dangerous drug. The noise of the street starts up, the commotion of people going to work, the school buses, the motors revved by drivers anxious to avoid the traffic. He dreams that he’s in the waiting room of a hospital and a stranger asks him if he’s gotten his results yet. Martín is waiting for something or waiting for someone, but in the dream he doesn’t remember exactly what or who and he doesn’t dare ask, but he knows that what he’s waiting for isn’t test results. He tries to remember, and then he thinks, It’s a dream, and he tries to wake up, but when he wakes he is still in the dream and the stranger is still waiting for an answer. Then he wakes up for real and feels the immense relief of not having to answer that question, of not having to answer any questions. The cat is yawning at the foot of the bed.
He unpacks his suitcase in the master bedroom, but there’s not much room in the wardrobes. There are several plastic bags and boxes full of clothes meticulously packed up, but there are also some unboxed garments. He finds an old Pixies T-shirt with the cover from Surfer Rosa on it. “You’ll think I’m dead, but I’ll sail away,” he thinks—of course, that’s from a different album, he’s got it wrong. He tries to picture Consuelo in that shirt and he can’t, but it’s a medium so it must be hers and not Bruno’s. In any case, he puts it on—he looks funny, it’s too tight on him. Wearing only the T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, he heads out to the nearest supermarket, where he buys coffee, beer, noodles, and ketchup, plus some cans of horse mackerel for Mississippi, because
he’s hatched a demagogical plan, thinking the cat will see the situation like this: they’re gone, they left me alone with a stranger, but I sure am eating great. He comes back practically dragging the bags: it’s several blocks away and he knows he should have taken the car, but he’s terrified of driving. Back in the house, as he’s putting away the groceries in the kitchen, he looks at the cereal and milk the girl left behind. He finishes what’s left of the girl’s bowl, while thinking that he can count on the fingers of one hand the times he’s eaten cereal. Men from my generation don’t eat cereal, he thinks—unless their children eat it, unless they are fathers. When did they start selling cereal in Chile? The nineties? Suddenly, this question seems important. He sees an image of himself as a child, drinking a glass of plain milk, like he always did, and then rushing off to school.
Afterward, he inspects the second floor, where Bruno’s study is—a large room, perfectly illuminated by a skylight, with books in strict alphabetical order, countless desk supplies, and degrees on the wall: undergraduate, master’s, doctorate, all hanging in a line. Next he takes a look at the girl’s room, full of drawings, decorations, and, on the bed, some stuffed animals with their names written on tags. She’s taken some of her animals with her, but they’ve made her store others in her closet or chest; she left five on her bed and insisted on giving them name tags so Martín could identify them (one brown bear wearing sports clothes catches his attention—its name is Dog). Then he finds, in the upstairs bathroom, in with a pile of magazines, a pamphlet with sheet music for beginners. He goes downstairs and sits at the electric piano, which doesn’t work; he tries to fix it, with no luck. Still, he reads the music and presses the keys. He has fun imagining that he is an impoverished piano player, one with no money to pay the electricity bill who has to practice like this, by touch.
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