The Sickness

by Alberto Barrera Tyszka

  “I never trust men with small ears.”

  That is how Karina remembers him—neither pleasant nor unpleasant. The first time he visited the doctor, he had struck her as polite and friendly, but nothing more than that. He filled in his medical form and then sat down and waited. Karina was surprised when he didn’t pick up a magazine as most patients do. Indeed, there are some people who only read in waiting rooms.

  When he came for his second appointment, he seemed more nervous. Karina remembered clearly how he rested his hands on his knees, sighed, and kept glancing around him, as if he couldn’t control his eyes, or, rather, as if his face were obliged to follow them wherever they went. He also stood up several times and paced around, taking short steps. He went out into the corridor, then came back in, nodding briefly to her when he did. Then the telephone calls began. Ernesto Durán turned into a regular, repetitive irritant. Four or five out of every ten calls would have his voice at the other end. He was always cordial, polite, even affable, but then, one afternoon, Dr. Miranda called her into his office and begged her, yes that was the word he used: “I beg you, please, Karina, not to put through any more calls from that patient,” he said. “Not one. Never again. If he phones, I’m not in.”

  It wasn’t easy. Durán was a persistent fellow, obsessed. It didn’t take him long to realize that Karina had become a detour, and that their phone conversations were merely an eternal deferment. One day, he exploded. He felt humiliated, he’d had enough, it was a mockery, who did she think she was, he roared before slamming down the phone. Karina was left shaking. She managed to keep a grip on herself in front of the patients in the waiting room, but immediately got up and walked down the corridor to the restroom. While still managing to remain calm, she was nevertheless aware of the occasional internal shudder: Durán’s shouts, or at least their echo, were in her body, trapped inside. When she looked at herself in the mirror, her eyes filled with tears. She felt ridiculous, furious, stupid. She washed her face, hoping to salvage a little of her pride from that cold water.

  The following day, however, she was surprised to find a small box of chocolates and a little note waiting for her. Durán was asking her forgiveness. Half an hour later, he did so again over the phone. Karina treated him rather coolly, with a certain haughtiness in her curt, discreet replies, but it was clear that she was touched by the gesture. Durán, moreover, tried to go a little further, to put his case and explain his sense of urgency. Karina softened her tone somewhat and, in a spirit of camaraderie, explained that there was no point in making any further attempt to contact the doctor. She suggested an alternative strategy: when Dr. Miranda was able to see him again, she herself would phone to arrange an appointment. When they said goodbye, neither of them felt much faith in the other. A whole week passed without a single “Hello” or “Good afternoon” from Ernesto Durán. Karina even came to the conclusion that he must finally have resigned himself to the situation. Then the first e-mail appeared. Then the second. Then the third. She read them all carefully. Although she was reluctant to admit it, she found them rather touching. She showed them to Adelaida, and they both agreed that Durán was clearly desperate and utterly sincere in what he wrote, that he was, in short, a sensitive man in difficulties. Adelaida even remarked that Dr. Miranda’s attitude seemed most unfair.

  “Are you going to show him the latest e-mails?”

  “Certainly not.”

  Karina knew her boss well. He had been absolutely clear on the matter: “If he phones, I’m not in.”

  Karina prints out the third e-mail and takes it with her to the small restaurant where the two friends have lunch together at least once a week. As well as the paella—which usually contains more onion and peppers than creatures of the sea—any new snippet of news from Durán always lights up the meal. They had both tried to imagine what life must be like for a man in the grip of such a vast, corrosive, potent fear. The two women felt moved when they read about the terrible sensations that assailed Durán whenever he felt he was about to faint. They also followed with great interest the tale of his failed encounter with the therapist Dr. Miranda had recommended. But they want more. Adelaida wonders what he does for a job.

  “He sounds to me like some sort of administrator.”

  “No, I don’t think he’s studied at all, he just works for the phone company as some kind of assistant.”

  Karina would also like to know more about his family life. When he got married and when he got divorced, for example. She finds it odd that he says nothing about his private life. What really happened with his ex-wife? Does he have a girlfriend now?

  On this occasion, however, Karina seems less enthusiastic. She suspects that the new letter will answer none of these questions. Adelaida cannot contain her curiosity. Nor can she understand why the look on Karina’s face has been one of fear and alarm ever since they set off for lunch together, ever since her friend announced the arrival of another e-mail.

  “What’s wrong? Tell me.”

  “I’m afraid, that’s what’s wrong.”

  “Why? What does the letter say?”

  “I only read the first sentence.”

  “And one sentence was enough to give you a face like that?” asks Adelaida, astonished.

  It isn’t just fear that Karina feels, she feels disappointed too. Up until now, Durán has been a gentle mystery, not threatening in the least. He could even be seen as picturesque or slightly eccentric, but never dangerous. The opening sentence of this third e-mail was a wakeup call, alarm bells had suddenly started ringing inside her. She felt unsure now; perhaps everything was far less romantic than she imagined. Perhaps Ernesto Durán wasn’t just a lonely man with a fear of fainting and a desperate need to relate to someone. Perhaps he’s a madman, someone with serious mental problems. Karina takes the letter out of her handbag and shows it to Adelaida.

  “Read the opening sentence,” she says, holding it out for her friend to see.

  Dr. Miranda,

  I have a confession to make: I’m following you.

  Andrés ought to go to his father, show him the X-rays, tell him the truth, tell him exactly what’s happening; he should, moreover, explain that further tests are needed, that from now on, his relationship with medicine will become uncomfortably close, so close he’ll grow to loathe it; he should go to his father and tell him that it’s hopeless, that there’s not a thing they can do about it, that he has cancer and doesn’t have much longer to live. How long exactly? Medical calendars tend to be vague: not much longer. Which always means less.

  But he doesn’t do any of these things. Postponing duties, especially when those duties are painful ones, is also a temporary way of surviving. The poet William Carlos Williams was also a doctor. He wrote: “Many a time a man must watch the patient’s mind as it watches him, distrusting him . . .” Andrés didn’t know how his father would react when he found out the truth. He distrusted both his and his father’s minds because he wasn’t at all sure about himself, about how he would react once he’d told his father the truth. He’d decided to confront the situation, however tragic, head on and talk to his father; but when the moment came, he didn’t know how to, he felt invaded by thousands of tiny fears that raced around in his mind like trapped lizards and always led him to postpone that duty yet again: he should talk to his father, but not just then, later.

  This morning, he again manages to distract himself from the task in hand. He has spent whole days using the same method. In order to ease his feelings of guilt, for he knows he doesn’t have much time, he keeps himself busy with matters related to his father’s illness, but which help him to avoid speaking to him directly. Now he’s trying to negotiate with Merny. She’s the woman who cleans Javier Miranda’s apartment twice a week. On Thursdays, she cleans the place thoroughly, and on Tuesdays she merely tidies up a little and does any ironing. Andrés has left his father at the movies with the children so that he can come and talk to her. He tells her everything, sparing her no detail, but w
arns that his father doesn’t yet know, that he knows nothing. When Merny hears this, she seems slightly surprised, but she’s never been one to show her feelings. She’s a reserved woman. She doesn’t ask many questions. Sometimes, it’s not easy to guess what she’s thinking, not, at least, for Andrés. When he suggests that she starts coming to the apartment every day, from Monday to Friday, Merny doesn’t answer, she looks uncomfortable and eyes him rather warily. Andrés makes it clear that he’s not asking her to be his father’s nurse. He’ll hire a nurse himself. He just wants her support, to know that she’ll be there all the time to do the cooking every day and pop out to the pharmacy or the market if necessary. “What do you think, Merny?” he asks.

  She’s thirty years old, a beautiful, dark-haired woman with ample hips and good legs. Her name, Merny, is a combination of two names. Her mother is called Mercedes and her father Nicolás. They put together the first syllables of their respective names to create a new one, Mer from Mercedes and Ni from Nicolás, Merni. It was the clerk at the registry office who made the i into a y. Merny lives with a man called Jofre. Andrés has seen him a couple of times, but knows little about him. He knows he works as a bricklayer, but nothing more. Merny doesn’t often talk about him either. She lives with him, but he isn’t the father of her two sons; they’re from her first man, a Colombian who went off to Barranquilla and never came back. Her oldest son is called Willmer and he’s eleven years old. He’s thin and gangly and is growing his hair long so that he can get some rasta braids. He likes rap and basketball. The youngest is called Yurber and he’s only four. He’s a chubby, smiley little fellow. In the morning, he goes to the school nearest where they live and in the afternoon, a girlfriend of Merny’s looks after him. Willmer, on the other hand, is old enough to be out on the street by himself.

  “The street’s a dangerous place,” says Merny. “There are a lot of bad people in the street. Just in the barrio next to ours you get kids of ten drinking and getting high on crack and carrying guns. Everyone knows about it, even the police, but they don’t do anything. Perhaps just as well. They might make things worse.” Then she adds: “Fortunately, Willmer’s really into sports. So far, thank God, my son has turned out well.”

  Merny, Jofre, Willmer, and Yurber. Andrés finds it odd that poor people should like such names. Why do they choose them? What’s wrong with Juana or Gerardo? Why not Elena or Luis or Inés or Ramón? Or do they perhaps find those names too ordinary, too dull and insipid, with no particular spark of their own? Perhaps that’s why, when it comes to choosing a name, they turn to characters in films, baseball players, famous foreigners. Always in English, of course. He also doesn’t understand parents who like to make up those strange combinations and burden their children with almost unpronounceable first names. That’s very popular too. Like Merny. A son born to Jason and Mildred becomes Jamil. But then, when they go to the registry office, the same thing happens as happened with Merny. The clerk writes the name as he thinks fit: Yaimil. Yaimil Rodríguez. That’s the name of one of the nurses who works nights at the hospital’s emergency room. Other people might well think that it gets a child off to a bad start, that, for some, their first name is their very first disadvantage in life.

  Merny doesn’t see it like that. On the contrary. She’s never said as much, but it’s clear that she’s proud of her sons’ names. You could almost see it as an act of affirmation, a brief exercise of power, a victory. She has given birth to a child who will, no doubt, have a pretty hard time of it. Her baby is just another dot on the poverty line in the national statistics. Merny will probably have no control over anything. Hers is an existence bound to the state as regards health, education, and work. Poverty seems to trace a path that always ends up in the state’s apartments—be it bureaucracy or prison. Perhaps the only personal, private thing Merny could offer her children in that first moment was a name. A special name, a name like Willmer that has a ring of the future and of the north about it, something unusual. Or a different name, like Yurber, so different that only she could have thought of it. That perhaps is her personal seal, the one thing she can control, the surest thing she can give them. An illusion with a ring to it. The opportunity of a name.

  Once, years ago, when she’d first started working for his father, Andrés had to drive her home. Someone called her from a public phone, from the barrio where she lives. Willmer would have been about nine months old. “Something’s wrong,” they said. “He’s sick. You must come.” Merny got very worried, but she looked at Andrés, taken aback, when he offered to give her a lift. He happened to be visiting his father that day. He even offered her medical help, but Merny refused. Almost reluctantly, she allowed him to take her in his car to a place near where she lived. They took the highway, and she spoke very little, but kept restlessly moving in her seat, as if she had a strange ability to move her spinal column from one buttock to the other. And sometimes she waggled her fingers. Andrés tried to calm her and said again that if it was anything serious to please let him know. She asked him to drop her in the avenue at the foot of the hill, the vast mountain where the marginalized have slowly constructed their own difficult realm. There she would get a jeep that would take her a few miles farther on, as far as a hill, near a police station, where she would get out and continue on foot up the concrete steps to her barrio, her house, and Willmer’s fever.

  It could take more than an hour. The last stretch alone consisted of more than four hundred steps. Her sister counted them once, she said, one by one, as she climbed them. She was coming back alone, at night. Four hundred and twenty-two steps, to be exact. She did it to take her mind off feeling so frightened.

  Andrés can vividly remember giving Merny that lift. It was at the height of the electoral campaign. On the way back home, he listened to the party political broadcasts on the radio. “The moment for the poor of this country has arrived,” bawled one candidate, meanwhile inveighing against the old political parties and promising a new paradise. There’s also a heaven where everyone is called Willmer.

  Merny still lives in the same place and in the same way, with the same fears. How much time has she wasted going up and down those steps in order to come to his father’s apartment? Twice a week every week. She comes to clean, to get rid of the dirt produced by someone else. Four hundred and twenty-two steps there and four hundred and twenty-two steps back. Plus the jeep, the avenue, the bus to the train, twelve stations to another subway station, another avenue, and another bus to the door of the apartment building. It’s a long way to come just to kneel down and get to grips with a stubborn stain between the tiles on the floor of a kitchen that isn’t hers. Is that how she sees it? Is that how she feels? When she goes up the steps to her house, after a day’s work. When she looks at that vast hill, crammed with tiny houses and hovels. Not even the police will venture into some of those barrios. When she goes up those steps and thinks that Willmer is no longer a baby with a fever, but that there are other dangers, like being old enough to kill someone. He could turn out to be a complete lout. What must she do to avoid that? How can she help him?

  For a moment, Andrés wonders what lies behind Merny’s look, behind those eyes which he sometimes finds elusive or even incomprehensible. What are they hiding? She’s not happy with her life. How could she be? No one could be happy with those four hundred and twenty-two steps. Is that what lies behind her look? Is that what lies behind her gaze? A dark, silent, long-repressed resentment? He suddenly feels cold. Perhaps Merny doesn’t care about his father at all. She’s spent years here, so close, so much part of their lives, but, at the same time, so far away. He looks at her now and feels that he doesn’t know her, that he doesn’t know what she thinks or feels about his father. Perhaps she’s just thinking about her work. Perhaps, for her, the death of old Miranda is simply a work-related incident. Perhaps not. He’s suddenly terrified by the thought that Merny might secretly hate them. Does she hate them?

  At last, she speaks. She does so hesitantly, almost sad
ly, but without disguising what she feels, without hiding what she thinks. Merny doesn’t like the idea of working for a man who is about to die. It’s nothing personal, she just doesn’t want to be in the apartment when, inevitably, Javier Miranda passes away. That, at any rate, is what Andrés deduces. She doesn’t say as much, of course. She utters sighs more than words. She converses in vague sounds, interjections, thoughtful pauses. In the end, she says that she’ll think about it. That’s all. She’ll think about it.

  “I’ll tell you later. Now I’ve got to finish cleaning the bathroom.”

  Dear Dr. Miranda,

  I have a confession to make: I’m following you. I’d love to see your face now, to see your reaction. What do you think? Does it bother you? Does it worry you? Does it frighten you perhaps? Or maybe you don’t even care, perhaps you even find it amusing. I no longer know what to think. Let me just make it clear that I haven’t begun following you because I want to, but out of sheer desperation. I’ve tried everything, but you don’t answer my e-mails, your secretary lies to me, and I don’t know how else to get you to listen to me, to resolve my situation.

  Now I think that perhaps this is the only way to make you understand how hounded I feel, how all this is affecting me. I’m even starting to have problems at work. I’m beginning to think they might fire me. I mean it. The attacks are getting ever more frequent, and every time that I feel I’m about to faint, and my blood pressure plummets, I usually try and get to the restroom quickly. I splash my face with cold water and breathe deeply. Sometimes, too, I do a quick handstand, like we used to in gym lessons at school. I support myself on my hands and rest my feet against the wall. That way the blood flows back into my head and I know then I won’t faint.