“Wait, wait. Listen.” Adelaida interrupts her and moves her stool closer. “Just think about it for a second. If you tell Dr. Miranda everything, if you show him this e-mail, what do you think will happen?”
Karina hesitates for a moment. She imagines Andrés, grave-faced, standing before her, holding the printed e-mail in his hands, reading it. But the scene dissolves at once, it goes no further.
“I don’t know. I haven’t a clue. He could react in all kinds of ways.”
“Exactly.” Adelaida draws still closer. “He might laugh it off and do nothing at all. Or he might phone the police. He could get this Durán guy into a lot of trouble.”
“But—”
“Wait, I haven’t finished. Look, I’m not suggesting you commit a crime, Karina. You know the doctor well, don’t you? How long have you been working for him now?”
“Seven years.”
“Longer than many marriages. Right then: you know his style, know more or less how he writes and what he might say to a patient like Durán.”
“But I’m not a doctor. I’ve never studied medicine.”
“That doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you write to him, that you reply.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Of course I do. I think what that man needs is for someone to speak nicely to him, to listen to him, to give him a little attention.”
“And I think the beer is going to your head, Adelaida.”
“Just try it. Write to him once. Even if only to make him stop following the doctor, so that he has one less thing to worry about. That way, you’ll be helping them both.”
Karina again hesitates for a second, a second into which all her questions fit and into which slips the possibility that, yes, she really could do it. All temptations rely on such seconds. It’s all they need.
“What have you got to lose?”
The truth is she has nothing to gain either. But the temptation is still there, waiting for her. Why? Is it that she has a crush on Ernesto Durán? That first time, when she saw him come into the office, she had perhaps liked the look of him, but there had been no chemical charge, she hadn’t felt an immediate, unnameable attraction. Durán first began to touch her heart with his e-mails. She has got to know him more from having read those than from having seen or spoken to him. Through writing and reading she has begun to develop a kind of melancholic complicity that was now becoming a tension, a risk. The man behind the words interested her more than the man she’d seen or with whom she’d spoken on the phone. It was as if they were two different men, and she didn’t yet know which was more real, more authentic. Was that what tempted her?
“Alright,” said Karina, with a faint smile. “I’ll do it once. Just once.”
Dear Señor Durán,
I must, first of all, apologize that it has taken me so long to respond to your e-mails. The life of a doctor is an extremely busy one, as you know, and these last few weeks have been particularly hectic.
I have read carefully what you had to say and found it most interesting. For the moment, I think that you must try to remain calm and, above all, do nothing foolish. By which I mean, of course, following me. I have nothing against you, and I intend to keep a close eye on your case and, as soon as I can, will attend to you personally.
I will be away at a conference outside the city this week, but, the moment I return, I will be in touch with you again. Meanwhile, if it affords you some help and relief, feel free to continue writing to me.
Hoping that this letter restores to you a little much-needed calm, I remain,
Yours sincerely,
Andrés Miranda
When Andrés told Karina that he would be taking a few days’ vacation on Isla Margarita with his father, she saw in this the hand of God, and sensed behind or beneath this unusual turn of events the invisible fingers of a far superior force. Her boss’s sudden absence also proved to be her muse and gave her the push she needed to reply to Durán’s letter. It took her a while. She tried to put herself in the doctor’s place, she experimented with various tones and wrote several rough drafts before arriving at the definitive version. In the past, Dr. Miranda had asked her to write the occasional short message, usually in response to the sales departments of pharmaceutical companies. These had been concise letters of only a few lines, in which she had politely thanked the sales people for certain medical samples they’d sent, but never anything memorable or personal, and certainly nothing that presented her with a stylistic challenge that sent a shiver of excitement through her, the fascinating twinge of anxiety she felt when confronted by the blank computer screen: being able to choose had aroused in her an indescribable sensation, a kind of thrilling void in her mind. She felt she was as likely to sit paralyzed for a few seconds as to feel an urgent, unstoppable need to write a stream of words, extravagant and uncontrollable. Being able to choose, for example, which word to use for “Dear”—Estimado or Apreciado—was a revelation to her. Karina spent almost an hour turning over each word, savoring the sharpness of the consonants, the rotundity of certain vowels, weighing up the effect that each might have on Durán. It was no small matter: it was, after all, the first word that Dr. Miranda had addressed to him in a long time. In the end, she opted for Estimado, partly because it seemed to her more formal, more cautious, and partly, too, because she liked the e. However hard she tried, she could find no other reason, no other cause. She simply liked beginning the letter with an e. And that was that.
As regards his other patients, Andrés had spoken to Miguel, who promised to attend to them in case of emergency. Maricruz Fernández, another doctor at the hospital, had also undertaken to step in if necessary. He met with no objections from his family either: Mariana thought it an excellent idea, and the children, after some initial resistance, soon had to admit defeat: their father and grandfather would be traveling during the week, and the children couldn’t possibly miss school. His father was somewhat suspicious at first, but Andrés soon clarified any doubts he might have by saying that the trip was strictly a business matter: a company on the verge of bankruptcy was offering him a house in lieu of payment, and, thinking it might be a good investment, he’d decided to go and take a look at it, and then remembering the journey they’d made there together all those years before, he’d thought: why not repeat the experience?
Now he’s on the deck of the ferry looking back at the port. It’s so similar and so different from the image of himself in that same place and in that same position all those years ago. He has a faint smile on his lips. He’s amused by his own silliness, by the childish ploy of inventing a house and a bankrupt company; there’s something about the lie that delights him: it’s the blithe uncertainty, the not knowing how or when he will continue the lie or make it real or where he will find such a house, and just how he will disentangle himself from the fantasy that is serving as the reason for the trip. Andrés rests both arms on the ship’s rail and watches as the port of La Guaira grows gradually smaller. The horizon is the only reliable measure of speed, and that horizon, growing ever more blurred and diffuse, is the only sign of reality he now has. The boat is too large a piece of machinery for him to be able to tell whether it’s really moving or not, or if, like a dog, dizzy with salt and seawater, it’s going round and round in circles on the waves. Only the horizon changes, by disappearing.
“What are you thinking about?” His father has come back from the bathroom and joins him at the rail.
“Oh, nothing. I was just looking at the sea. Would you like a beer?”
His father says he would and they both make their way to the bar. The ferry is almost empty, apart from a few German tourists, who always look slightly lost, as if someone had tricked them, as if Venezuela were a geographical error, a mistake in their Berlin travel agent’s pamphlet. One of the tables inside is occupied by a man and a woman. Andrés had noticed them when they boarded the ferry. She is a good-looking mulatta of about thirty, with straight hair and a slightly sad expre
ssion. She’s wearing a pair of beige shorts and a white sleeveless T-shirt that barely contains her small, firm breasts. The man is a classic fat guy, with the typical belly of a forty-something male who spends more time drinking beer than doing sit-ups. In fact, he’s drinking a beer right now. He’s also glued to his cell phone and talking in a very loud voice, moving about in his chair, making grandiloquent gestures, and looking scornfully at the woman, as if she were a nuisance, as if being with her were a tiresome duty. His attitude is so blatant that Andrés begins to wonder if he’s actually talking to anyone. He speaks so loudly, issuing orders and instructions, as if he were addressing employees, mere subordinates. He never receives any calls. As soon as he ends one call, he immediately dials another number and recommences his brief routine: he gets to his feet, paces up and down, beating the air with one hand, projecting his voice and generally strutting about, with the clear intention of being noticed and heard by other people. He shows no hint of embarrassment and never lowers his voice. Andrés concludes that the whole thing is an act, an act that the woman finds harder and harder to bear, which is why she has that melancholy look tattooed on her face; she clearly does feel embarrassed and probably thinks this must be obvious to anyone. Perhaps she’s thinking that her husband, boyfriend, partner, or whatever is making a complete fool of himself. At one point, when he’s some distance away, he shouts something to her that Andrés doesn’t quite catch, and then he realizes that the fat guy has ordered her to go and buy him another beer. He’s gripping his cell phone in his right hand and the empty can in his left. The cell phone survives, but the can is crushed, crumpled and hurled into the sea.
“Do you mind having to travel by ferry?”
His father feels guilty: the only reason they’re on this five-hour boat trip is because of him and his phobias. If he wasn’t still so afraid of flying, they could have made the same journey by plane, gliding through the air for a mere thirty minutes. Andrés tells him it doesn’t matter, it’s fine, they’re in no hurry, besides, he’s enjoying being back on a ferry. Javier Miranda isn’t so sure and thinks his son is just saying this to keep him quiet. Not that he minds; in fact, he’s very grateful. His fear of flying is far greater than any other fear. He can’t control it. He feels that he couldn’t even step onto a landing strip without trembling. He imagines he would turn blue, that his lips would swell up, and he’d feel a sharp pain in his cheekbones, as if his eyes were trying to escape into his body. The mere image of a plane in the air is enough to make him feel sick. He needs to think about something else.
“The last time we made this trip, your mother had just died,” he says.
“Yes, I know. You wanted to take my mind off things,” replies Andrés. “You wanted to get me out of the apartment. That’s why we came.”
Then Javier thinks that perhaps they’re doing the same again, only in reverse. It takes him a while to unravel that sentence, although he understood it perfectly well when he thought it: they’re making the same journey, but this time, perhaps it’s Andrés, his son, who’s trying to take his mind off things. Can this be true? It’s a question he doesn’t dare ask himself.
When they can just make out the port of Punta de Piedras, when it’s still only a smudge of shadow sewn onto the bottom of the sky, the fat guy asks the woman to get him another beer. Now everyone is out on deck. Most of the few passengers gather at the front of the boat and watch the coast, their next fixed destination, coming nearer. A boy is shouting insistently at the sea, the same word over and over: dolphins! He elongates the vowels, stretches them out until they squeak: Dooolphiiins! And then he whistles to them. Perhaps someone has told him that dolphins are like dogs. At any rate, the boy shouts at them as if he believed they were. He shouts at his parents too, protesting, complaining that during the whole trip, they haven’t seen a single memorable sea creature. Not a whale, not a tuna, not a dolphin.
“You lied to me!” he screams.
His parents look thoroughly fed up and, as if their son were the responsibility of the other passengers, go back inside, leaving the child on deck.
“We’ll be right back, Roberto,” they say.
“Dooolphiiins!”
Andrés goes inside too. The truth is he’s intrigued by the woman with the fat guy. On the pretext of getting a coffee, he heads toward the covered part of the boat. His father stays outside, staring at the horizon, at the fringe of land that is still no more than a mist, a distant stain. The interior of the boat is air-conditioned, but it still doesn’t make things very cool, or at least not cool enough. There are flies as well, buzzing unsteadily about, almost as if they were giddy; they drift drowsily around in the middle of the room. It occurs to Andrés that the boy on deck would be better off looking for flies rather than dolphins. But he forgets the thought at once when he approaches the bar where the woman is waiting for the beer she’s ordered. He leans on the bar next to her and smiles, trying to be friendly. He’s suddenly filled by a sense of the ridiculous: how many years has it been since he did something like this? He doesn’t want to seduce the woman, simply to play at seducing her, to flex his flirting muscles and return to a gym he hasn’t visited in a long time. The woman smiles back. It seems to Andrés, however, that the smile is just a smile, and so he says nothing. A few seconds pass, then Andrés gives a half yawn, a fairly bad imitation, but he can’t do any better, and he smiles again. He orders a coffee. He waits a few seconds more, looking at the woman out of the corner of his eye before attempting to start a conversation:
“It drags a bit, doesn’t it?” he says, but immediately regrets having said this. “It drags a bit.” What does that mean exactly?
“Yes, it does,” she replies, after a pause.
Andrés gives her a broad, grateful smile. Her smile is rather less broad, but he doesn’t mind. The barman returns with the beer, and the woman pays. Andrés asks if she lives on Isla Margarita, but she says, no, she lives in Maracay, she’s with her husband, who has come to the island on business. Andrés understands then that the fat guy speaking interminably into his phone to no one at all is, first, her husband, and second, a man who does deals and goes on business trips. The woman doesn’t leave. She appears to be waiting for his coffee to arrive. She doesn’t seem particularly bothered about taking her husband’s drink to him as quickly as possible. Secretly, it pleases Andrés to think of the beer getting warm. They begin a desultory conversation, as if led on by natural curiosity, as if the only thing that has brought them together is the implacable need to kill time. Thus he learns that her name is Yadira, that she does little else but be the fat guy’s woman, that she’s not married to him, although she calls him her husband, that they have no children, and it remains unclear whether they live together or if Yadira is his second front, the branch office of the fat guy’s proper family. Andrés lies and says he’s divorced and is going with his father to spend a few days at the beach: it’s sometimes good to get a change of air, he says. He’s not quite clear why he’s saying all this, but feels it’s part of the game, that this is how he’s expected to behave. He orders another coffee. She continues to talk about her life, more cheerfully now, offering more details. The can of beer sits sweating on the bar.
Yadira is talking about her adolescence, telling him why she left school, when, suddenly, the fat guy with the cell phone appears, his face pressed to the fiberglass window, where he’s watching them from outside, from the deck. He raps with his knuckles on the opaque plastic, his squashed nose looking even more like a snout. He’s obviously not at all pleased. Yadira doesn’t even say goodbye. She picks up the can and leaves.
“Where did you go to buy the coffee? Caracas?” his father asks.
“I was talking to a girl,” Andrés says, smiling and proffering the small disposable cup. His father takes a sip and scans the deck, as if trying to locate which girl had kept his son talking.
“That one.” Andrés saves him the trouble and points at the fat guy, who is no longer issuing instructions do
wn his cell phone, but is clearly telling Yadira off.
“She’s pretty,” Javier says.
Andrés nods. Then they turn back to the island. Now it really is an island; they can make out its shape and texture, the yellowish-red color of the parched earth. The glare of the sun burns their eyes. Then his father, by various circuitous routes, tries to find out if there’s some special reason for the journey they’re making. Andrés senses at once what his father is after and realizes that behind all his father’s words lie the clinical tests, the CT scan, the results from the MRI scan . . . There they all are in the middle of the sea. There, too, are an operating room, catheters snaking through the water, drifting gauze, tubes, bits of paper, syringes. The sun is a yellow stethoscope. Andrés snatches a sideways glance at his father, using his right hand clamped to his eyebrows as a sun visor. This could be a good moment to tell him the truth. Is it? Is it a good moment? Isn’t it perhaps too soon? They haven’t even reached the island yet. What would happen then? What would the trip be like once Andrés has told him the truth?
“I don’t know,” his father says, trying to bring what he’s trying to ask to a close. “I just thought there might be something else, you know what I mean.”
There is always something else. Something that moves and hurts and no longer works. That is the inevitable story of bodies, the biography of deterioration. Health is an immutable ideal. The most perverse of all utopias. Michel Foucault said that, viewed from the experience of death, illness can even be seen as a function of life. “Paradoxically, from the corpse’s point of view, it looks like life.” Exactly. Health doesn’t exist, it’s a heaven that forms no part of existence: we human beings can only live while sick. It’s just that in his father’s case, the illness is in its final stages. What comes after that? His father is still looking at him, as if secretly he, too, was awaiting that revelation. Why doesn’t he tell him the truth now, this instant?
The Sickness Page 7
