The first two weeks pass uneventfully. He lives just as he had planned. At first the days seem eternal, but gradually he fills them with certain routines: he gets up at nine, feeds Mississippi, and, after breakfast (he goes on eating cereal after he discovers a love for Quaker Oatmeal Squares), he goes into the garage, starts the car’s motor, and plays a bit with the accelerator, like a pilot waiting for the signal to take off. At first he moves the car timidly, but then he dares to take it out for a spin, for multiple spins, each one longer than the last. When he comes back, he tunes the radio to the news, opens the window in the living room, and turns the hourglass upside down; while the grains, the minutes, fall, delicately and decisively, he smokes the day’s first cigarette.
Then he watches TV for a few hours, and the effect is narcotic. He comes to feel affection for the rhetoric of the morning shows, of which he becomes something of a scholar; he compares them, considers them seriously, and he does the same with the celebrity shows. Those take a bit more effort, because he doesn’t know the characters—he’s never paid attention to that world—but eventually he comes to recognize them. He eats his lunch of noodles with ketchup in bed, always watching TV.
The rest of the day is uncertain, but it tends to be spent walking. He has a rule not to go to the same café twice, or to buy his cigarettes from the same corner shop, in order to avoid building any sense of familiarity: he has the vague impression he is going to miss this life, which isn’t the life he’s dreamed of but is a good life nonetheless; it is a beneficial, restorative time. But all of that changes the afternoon he discovers that the cat has disappeared. It’s been at least two days since he’s seen Mississippi, and the bowl of food is untouched. He asks around with the neighbors: no one knows anything.
He spends several hours desperate, frozen stiff, not knowing what to do. In the end he decides to make a flyer. He searches on the computer erratically, incoherently, for a photo of Mississippi, but he finds nothing; before leaving, Bruno cleared all personal files from the hard drive. Anxiously, he ransacks the entire house, taking a certain pleasure in the disarray, the chaos he is sowing. He searches carelessly through trunks, bags, and boxes, dozens of books, flipping frenetically through the pages, or shaking them with something like rage. He finds a little red suitcase hidden in the wardrobe of the study. Instead of money or jewelry it holds hundreds of family photos, some of them framed and others loose, some with dates on the back of them and even some short, loving messages. He likes one photo in particular, a large one in which Consuelo poses, blushing, with her mouth open. He takes a diploma Sofí received from a swimming course out of its frame and replaces it with the photo of Consuelo, and then he hangs it on the main wall of the living room. He thinks that he could spend hours stroking that straight, black, shining hair. Since he can’t find any photos of Mississippi, he searches online for images of gray cats and chooses one at random. He writes a brief message, prints some forty copies, and puts them up on lampposts and trees all along the street.
When he comes back, the house is a disaster. Especially the second floor. He is annoyed that he is the author of the mess. He looks at the half-opened boxes, the clothes strewn across the bed, the many dolls, drawings, and bracelets scattered over the floor, the solitary LEGO blocks lost in corners. He thinks that he has profaned the space. He feels like a thief or a cop, and he even thinks of that horrible, excessive word: raid. He begins, reluctantly, to straighten up the room, but suddenly he stops, lights a cigarette, and blows some smoke rings like he used to do as a teenager, all while imagining that the little girl has just been playing here with her friends. He imagines he is the father who opens her door and indignantly demands she clean up her room, and that she nods but goes right on playing. He imagines going into the living room, where a very beautiful woman, a woman who is Consuelo, or who looks like Consuelo, hands him a mug of coffee, raises her eyebrows, and smiles, showing her teeth. Then he goes and makes that cup of coffee for himself, which he drinks in quick sips while he thinks about a life with children, a wife, a stable job. Martín feels a sharp jab in his chest. And then a word that is by now inevitable looms and conquers: melancholy.
He contents or distracts himself with the memory that he too, long ago, had been the father of a girl of the same age, seven. For a day, at least. He was nineteen and he lived in Recoleta with his father and his mother, neither of whom had gotten sick yet. One afternoon he went down to the kitchen and he heard Elba, the woman who helped around the house, complaining that she could never go to the parents’ meetings at her daughter’s school. He offered to go in her place, because he cared about Elba and Cami, but also out of a sense of adventure, which, in those days, was much more pronounced in him. He had long hair then and he looked very young—in no way did he look like a father—but he went into the school and sat at the back of the room next to a guy who was almost as young as him, although a little more of a man; more worldly, as they say.
On his right arm the man had a brown tattoo that was barely darker than his skin. It said: JESÚS.
“What’s your name?” Martín asked the man. He responded by indicating the tattoo. He seems nice, Martín thought.
“You look really young,” he told Martín.
“You too,” Martín said. “I was still a kid when I had my kid.” Just then the teacher closed the door and started to talk; some parents came in late and the door got stuck once, twice. None of the parents acknowledged this until a fat blond woman in the third row got up and, with an enviably resounding voice, interrupted the teacher: “How can this be? What would happen if there was an earthquake or a fire? What would become of the children?”
The teacher fell into the silence of one who knows she should think carefully about what she is going to say. It was precisely the moment when she could have blamed her bosses, the system, the municipalization of public education, Pinochet, the ineffectiveness of the Concertación party, capitalism—it was clearly not the teacher’s fault, but she didn’t think fast enough, she wasn’t brave: the voices accumulated and she let them build, everyone was complaining, everyone was shouting, and to make matters worse, right then someone else arrived late and the door jammed again. Even Martín was about to start yelling, but then the teacher asked that they show some respect and let her talk. “I’m sorry,” she said, “this is a poor school, we just don’t have the resources, I understand you are angry but keep in mind that if there is a fire or an earthquake, I’ll also be trapped in here with the children.” The effect of this grim observation lasted two or three seconds, until Martín got up furiously and pointed his finger at her and said, with a full sense of drama: “But you, ma’am, are not my daughter!” Everyone supported him, enraged, and he felt very good about himself.
“That was rad,” said Jesús later, congratulating him on the way to the bus. As they said good-bye, Martín asked him if he believed in Jesus. And Jesús responded with a smile: “I believe in Jesús.”
“You, ma’am, are not my daughter,” murmurs Martín now, like a mantra. That night he writes to Bruno, saying: All’s well.
One afternoon, on the way back from the supermarket, he finds that someone has put up posters right on top of the ones he made. He goes up and down the street and confirms that right where he’d posted his flyers, there are now signs announcing the disappearance of a Siberian and German mix named Pancho. There is a decent reward of twenty thousand pesos. Martín jots down the number and the name of Pancho’s owner: Paz.
There is a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the kitchen. Martín drinks only beer or wine, he’s not used to liquor, but on a whim he pours a glass, and, with each sip, he discovers that he likes Jack Daniel’s, that he is spellbound by it. By the time he decides to call Paz, he’s fairly drunk. “You put your dog over my cat” is the first thing he says to her, awkwardly, vehemently.
It’s ten thirty at night. Paz seems surprised, but she says she understands the situation. He regrets his heated tone, and the conversation ends in charmless
mutual apologies. Before hanging up, Martín catches a voice in the background, a complaint. A child’s voice.
The following morning Martín watches through the window as a young woman on a bicycle rides up and sets herself to the time-consuming task of moving the Pancho posters. He goes out to the street and looks at her from a certain distance—she isn’t beautiful, he thinks, decisively; she’s just young, she must be twenty years old, Martín could be her father (although he doesn’t think this last part).
Paz pulls down her posters and finds space for them above or below his. She disguises the torn corners by folding them, and, while she’s at it, she adjusts Martín’s posters, too. She works skillfully, and he wonders if she does this for a living. She must be part of a squad of lost-animal seekers, Martín thinks, like those people who professionally walk dogs. This is not the case.
He introduces himself and apologizes again for having called her so late. He accompanies her the rest of the way down the street. At first she seems reticent, but then the conversation begins to take shape. They talk about Mississippi and about Pancho and also about pets in general, about the responsibility of owning pets, and even about the word pet, which she doesn’t like because she finds it derogatory. Martín smokes several cigarettes while they talk, but he doesn’t want to toss the butts. He holds them in his hand as if they were valuable.
“There’s a trash can over there,” Paz tells him, suddenly, and the sentence coincides with the corner where they have to part ways.
That night he calls her and tells her that he’s covered dozens of blocks looking for Mississippi, and that he’s also kept an eye out for Pancho. It sounds like a lie, but it’s true. She thanks him for the gesture, but she doesn’t let the conversation flow from there. Martín begins to call her daily, and though the conversations stay short, he feels good about them, as if those few sentences will be enough to establish himself as a presence in her life.
A week later he sees a dog that looks like Pancho close to the house. He tries to approach it, but the dog runs away, scared. He calls Paz, but he has trouble talking. What he has to say sounds like a lie again, like an excuse to see her. But Paz accepts it. They meet and patrol the streets for a while, until it’s time for her to go pick her son up from kindergarten. Martín insists on going with her.
“I can’t believe you have a son,” he says.
“Sometimes I can’t believe it either,” answers Paz.
“Another boyfriend” is the first thing the boy says when he sees Martín. He drags his little backpack expressively behind him without looking Martín in the face, but Paz tells him Martín thinks he’s seen Pancho and this gets the boy’s hopes up; he insists they keep looking for the dog. They cover many blocks, looking for all the world like a perfect family. They say good-bye when they reach Paz’s house. Both of them know that they will see each other again, and maybe the boy knows it too.
It’s been over a month since Mississippi’s disappearance, and Martín doesn’t hold out any hope of finding him. He even types up a confused e-mail to Bruno, full of apologies, but he doesn’t dare send it. The cat returns, however, one morning at dawn, barely able to push through his little door; he’s covered in wounds and has an enormous ball of pus on his back. The vet is pessimistic, but he does an emergency operation and prescribes some antibiotics that Martín has to give Mississippi daily. He has to feed the cat baby food and clean his wounds every eight hours. The poor cat is so bad off, he doesn’t have the strength to move, or to meow.
Martín focuses on Mississippi’s health. Now he loves the cat, takes care of him for real. He forgets to call Paz for a few days. One morning, she is finally the one to call him, and she’s happy when she hears the good news. Half an hour later they are sitting beside the cat, petting him, commiserating with him.
“You told me you lived alone, but this seems like a family’s house.” She throws the sentence at him suddenly, looking at the photo of Consuelo. Martín gets nervous and delays his answer. Finally he tells her, downcast and murmuring, as if it were painful to remember: “We separated some months ago, maybe a year ago. My wife and our daughter went to live in an apartment, and I stayed here with the cat.”
“Your wife is beautiful,” says Paz, looking at the photo on the wall.
“But she’s not my wife anymore,” answers Martín.
“But she’s beautiful,” repeats Paz. “And you never told me you had a daughter.”
“We just met, we can’t say words like never and always yet,” says Martín. “And I don’t like to talk about her,” he adds. “It makes me sad. I’m still not over the separation. The worst part is that Consuelo doesn’t let me see the girl, she wants more money.”
Paz looks at him anxiously, her mouth half-open. He must be feeling the adrenaline that sustains the liar, but he’s getting distracted by those small, slightly separated teeth, the aquiline nose, those thin but well-formed legs that seem, to him, perfect.
“You had your daughter very young,” Paz says.
“Not really,” he replies. “Or maybe so. Maybe I was too young.” Now he is completely wrapped up in the lie.
“I was a mom at sixteen, and I almost had an abortion,” says Paz, maybe to balance out Martín’s confessions.
“Why didn’t you?” Martín asks. It’s a stupid, offensive question, but she’s unfazed.
“Because abortion is illegal in Chile,” she says very seriously, but then she laughs, and her eyes shine. “That year,” she goes on, “my two best friends got pregnant. I was going to get an abortion at the same place they did, but at the last minute I changed my mind and decided to have the baby.”
They have sex on the armchair, and at first it seems like a good lay, but then he comes quickly, and apologizes.
“Don’t worry,” she answers. “You’re better than most boys my age.” Martín thinks about that word, boys, which he would never use but which, coming from her, sounds so appropriate, so natural. She has almost no freckles on her face or arms, but her body is covered in them. Her back looks like it was spattered with red ink. He likes it.
They start seeing each other every day, and they keep looking for Pancho. The possibility of finding him is by now remote, but Paz doesn’t lose hope. After each search they go back to the house and tend to Mississippi together. The cat’s wounds are healing slowly but favorably, and, on the spot on his back where the doctor shaved his fur, they can already see a finer, lighter fur growing in. The romance also advances, at an accelerated speed. Sometimes he likes this acceleration, he needs it. But he also wants it all to end: he wants to be forced to tell the truth, and for it all to go to shit.
One day Paz realizes that Martín has taken the photo of Consuelo down. She asks him to hang it up again. He asks her why.
“I don’t want us to get confused,” she says. He doesn’t understand very well, but he hangs the photo up again. “If it bothers you to screw in the house where you slept with and screwed your wife,” Paz tells him, “I’d understand.” He shakes his head emphatically and tells her that for some time now—that’s the expression he uses, “for some time now”—he hasn’t thought about his wife.
“Really, sorry to insist,” she says, “but if it bothers you to fuck here, you have to tell me.”
“But she and I were really almost never having sex anymore,” answers Martín, and they fall silent until she asks him if he ever had sex with his wife on the table in the living room. He gives her a horny smile and says that he didn’t. The game continues, vertiginous and fun. She asks if his wife ever dipped his dick in condensed milk before sucking it, or if perhaps, by chance, his wife liked him to stick three fingers in her ass, or if there’d been a time when she asked him to come on her face, on her tits, on her ass, in her hair.
One of those mornings, Paz shows up with a rose bush and a bougainvillea. He gets a shovel and together they construct a minimal garden in the empty plot by the house’s entrance. He digs clumsily, so Paz takes the shovel away from him,
and, in a matter of minutes, the job is done.
“Sorry,” Martín tells her. “I know the guy is supposed to do the hard part.”
“No worries,” she answers, and she adds, cheerfully: “I was born under democracy.” Later, apropos of nothing, maybe as a way of anticipating his confession, Martín launches into a monologue about the past, in which brushstrokes of the truth are mixed with some obligatory lies, as he searches for a way of being honest, or at least less dishonest. He talks about pain, about the difficulty of building long-lasting, simple ties with people. “I’m addicted to the drug of solitude,” he tells her, sounding like a slogan on a plaque. She listens to him attentively, compassionately, and she nods several times in affirmation, but after a pause in which she adjusts her hair, settles into the armchair, and takes off her tennis shoes, she says it again, mischievously: “I was born under democracy.” And at lunch, when she sees him cutting his pieces of chicken with a knife and fork, she says she’d rather eat with her hands because she was “born under democracy.” The phrase works for everything, especially in bed: when he wants to do it without a condom, when he asks her not to yell so loud or to be careful about walking around the living room naked, and when she moves so savagely and eagerly on top that Martín can’t hide the pain in his penis—to all of these things, she responds that she was born under democracy, or she simply says, shrugging: “Democracy!”
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