Open Door

by Iosi Havilio

  ‘I’m going to catch a taxi, can I take you anywhere?’ Aída asks after a pause. I tell her no, thanks anyway, I still don’t know where I’m going. She insists.

  ‘Why don’t you come for a drink at my place while you decide?’

  I let her lead me. The rain, which has come back with renewed enthusiasm, convinces me.

  Aída’s place was a two-room affair in Calle Montevideo, half a block from Avenida Córdoba. An old building with a very tall door of black iron, two or three stairs covered with a red carpet and a traditional lift with a rectangular mirror at the back.

  When she opened the flat door, Diki jumped up at her, pawing at her legs. Aída bent down to cuddle him and Diki responded by licking her cheeks. I had seen many dogs in my time, but never one like this, ugly as well as lame.

  ‘Do you like anisette?’ Aída asked. ‘I love it,’ she answered herself and filled two small glasses decorated with gold crescent moons. Two Turkish glasses. Anisette seemed like an old-fashioned drink to me, and now that I could see her clearly, under lamplight, it felt appropriate: Aída had something old-fashioned about her too.

  She raised her glass, I raised mine and we clinked them. I don’t quite know how Aída ended up massaging my neck, and my back, her hands like pincers. She did it very well, like a professional. She poured me another glass, and, as she unbuttoned my blouse, she asked:

  ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  We spent a long time on the sofa, listening to music, talking nonsense, initially without touching each other, then later, on her initiative, playfully intertwining our legs. Aída’s were long and slim. Another glass of anisette and Aída leant her head against my shoulder. She asked me to stroke her. To the touch, Aída’s skin confirmed something that had caught my attention when she was near me in the lift. Her cheeks were covered in little transparent flakes, like puff pastry. Aída suggested we lie down on her bed. We’ll be comfier there, she said.

  Clothes always lie. Or rather, if they don’t lie, at the very least they conceal. Aída undressed. And if she had seemed a fairly normal girl before, well formed but normal, when I saw her naked, straight on, I was surprised by how small her tits were, like toys, as if they were only there because anatomy demanded it. She sat down on the bed and started rolling a joint. Get in if you want, she told me, and when I saw her from behind, I found her tiny knickers hilarious.

  Then she embraced me and I let myself be embraced. She wanted to kiss me on the mouth. Not today, I stopped her, maybe another day. She didn’t protest. And all that time, as we smoked in silence, until I fell asleep, I couldn’t stop thinking about Aída’s skin, which changed every other minute, which she shed like a serpent.

  That same week, without giving it too much thought, I moved into her flat.

  THREE

  On Sunday we woke up at half two in the afternoon. Why don’t we go out for a bit of air, said Aída from the bedroom, her voice still not clear from last night’s cigarettes. I was sitting on the toilet, flicking through one of those women’s magazines that published Aída’s photos. By some miracle, I didn’t have a hangover.

  OK, I said, let’s go. Aída came into the bathroom, looking wide awake. I’ll make coffee, she said, stroked my forehead and left. I stayed in the bathroom for some time, engrossed in an article about a new equestrian style in women’s fashion which had been all the rage in Europe for years and which, according to the journalist, was going to land here at any moment. One photo, filling a quarter of a page, showed a blonde model, practically albino, her hair pulled tightly back like a ballerina, posing with her mare. I immediately thought of the moribund horse in Open Door and his owner, the two Jaimes, whom I had met the day before. I imagined them together, lying on the straw, keeping each other company right now, while Aída was making me breakfast.

  I took the magazine into the kitchen to show Aída. Look, I say to her and she makes a contemptuous gesture with her hand. It was a joke, to piss her off, she didn’t like horses, even in photos. As a girl she’d had dreams, dreams of horses that she’d never tell me about. She called them dreams, but they must have been nightmares. I persisted anyway: I didn’t tell you about the horse from yesterday, I said, the one I went to examine. Poor animal, I think it’s got cancer. Aída pulled a disgusted face. And you know what? I said between sips of coffee, it has the same name as its owner: both of them are called Jaime. Aída laughed, thinking it was a joke.

  Afterwards, while Aída showered, I had a second cup of coffee, black, no sugar, to wake me up a bit more.

  Shortly before seven, I saw her for the last time. She was wearing faded jeans and a black T-shirt, she’d put her hair up in a kind of bun. She seemed happy, normal. Her breath was bitter, from an empty stomach.

  We had gone to La Boca. We were bored, the walk had been a failure. Too many people around, too many noises all at once and nothing much to do.

  At some point Aída went into a bar. She gestured with her hand, she barely moved her lips, she seemed to say I’ll be right back, or something like it. I lit a cigarette. With my back to the street, I caught my reflection in a long and narrow mirror with traditional painted designs around the edge. People passed to and fro and I disappeared and reappeared between them.

  A blond boy stopped in front of me. He had a cigarette hanging from his mouth. He smiled at me and mimed lighting it with an imaginary lighter. I gave him mine. He couldn’t have been skinnier, or dirtier. He was that type of blond whose hair is the only blond thing about him. A tough street kid, tanned skin, full lips, theatrical stare, aged about fourteen or fifteen. He lit his cigarette with the tip of mine and lingered longer than necessary in handing it back. He had a scar snaking between the knuckles of one hand. He didn’t take his eyes off me. He looked at me the way some brats do, unintentional and yet intense.

  ‘Fancy a smoke?’ he said bringing his face closer, all his teeth on show. I just looked at him, a bit lost.

  Do you want to or not, the boy pressed me and, because it was Sunday, because I was bored and because Aída still hadn’t come out, I hunched my shoulders as if to say: Why not? The boy jerked his head for me to follow him.

  First I glanced into the bar and amongst the crowd I saw Aída going into the toilets. What had she been doing all this time? It didn’t surprise me, Aída did that sort of thing, disappeared, played hide and seek. The blond boy was waiting for me at the corner.

  We took a diagonal lane and came to a yard that doubled as a basketball court, a few parked cars around the edges. The blond boy guided me to an out-of-sight corner where there were two other boys, even rougher looking and much younger. One was rather chubby with the look of an obedient dog, his face camouflaged in the hood of the tracksuit he was wearing. The third boy was much taller than the other two, wearing denim from head to toe, a proper show-off. Did you get it? the blond boy asked the one in denim, who immediately took a long, fat joint out of his pocket, twice the size of a normal joint. The blond boy lit up, took two deep drags and passed it to me. We smoked, each taking our turn, in perfect harmony. They asked me my name and I asked theirs. They told me that they lived round here and that they played in a band. They wanted to know where I was from. From far away, I replied.

  Drugs don’t always act the same way, it all depends on the person and the circumstances. The lad in denim, who had struck me as the most laid-back of the three, was retreating into himself. The fat one, on the other hand, had taken down his hood and was getting more and more excitable by the minute. The blond boy, like a good leader, didn’t seem to be affected.

  ‘We want you to suck us off,’ the little fatty said out of nowhere, projecting the not-yet-fully-formed voice of an overweight adolescent.

  The blond boy released a smoke-filled laugh. The one in denim turned pale, then red. All the blood rushed to the fat boy’s head, enough for the three of them. And he laughed too, through clenched teeth. As I didn’t say anything, didn’t even move, their nerves finally got the better of them and they p
assed me the joint again. The round continued without comment. When the joint had finished, we said goodbye with a kiss on the cheek, like good friends.

  FOUR

  It was getting dark. After my adventure in the yard, I went back to look for Aída at the door of the bar. I went in, checked the toilets, looked around the tables, but nothing, not a single clue as to where she might have gone. I crossed the street and sat down on a bench on the riverside. I lit a fresh cigarette and, with the smoke inside me, the effects of the joint revived. I felt good.

  I noted the time on my watch, five to nine, and started walking along the river. Up ahead, at the foot of the old bridge, not quite in focus yet, I make out a small crowd of people and a series of intermittent lights, now illuminating, now concealing them. I draw closer to find out what’s going on.

  The police have set up a cordon to contain the fifteen or twenty onlookers pressed up against the railings at the riverbank. Most of them are probably there because they’ve seen other people stop first. In the street, next to a patrol car, there’s a fire engine and an ambulance with the doors wide open and a stretcher spilling halfway out onto the asphalt. All the lights are flashing: those on the patrol car very quick and blue, the fire brigade’s lazy and red; the lights on the ambulance aren’t revolving but flash intermittently, green and white. Together they merge, ricocheting off the opaque water, colouring the iron skeleton, creating sparks on the rust. The sirens are silent.

  Like the others, elbow to elbow, squeezed into the narrow gully between bodies, I too lean against the railings. Like the others, I look upwards. Not just anywhere, but at the top of the bridge. I can’t see a thing. What’s going on, I ask. I can imagine what it is, but I’d prefer to be told. The lady next to me gestures with a finger and says: Up there, in the middle. I still can’t make out anything, the night is closing in, thick and starless. What’s going on, I ask. And the woman, whose face I now see is full of wrinkles, a red scarf patterned with arabesques knotted round her neck: There, walking on the ledge, can’t you see? Her voice is cracked, scratchy. There, look, he’s moving, on this side. Yes, I see, I’m starting to see. Nothing more than a shape, thin, with a point on top, slightly less black than the rest. That must be the head, then what I can only assume to be the torso, the arms, the legs, now I’m just seeing what I want to see. Because in truth, it’s exactly the same as before, just a shape moving slowly, clumsily, like an old machine with a broken engine.

  In a minute, someone else appears next to the old woman, who has stopped talking now – a lad of around twenty in a blue sleeveless t-shirt and shorts with a pattern similar to that of the woman’s scarf. He’s wearing flip-flops and both his hands are busy, the one closest to me with a pizza in a box, still sealed, the other grasping the hand of a little girl in a yellow bikini, who, although she doesn’t look it, must be starting to feel cold. Does he want to jump? asks the lad, without looking at me. It looks like he wants to jump, he answers his own question. And then immediately, to the little girl: Don’t look. And the girl: Why, I want to see. The old woman starts talking again, without taking her eyes off the action up above: Look, and she points again, a bit higher up, as if she wants to reach the bridge with her hand. He’s moved across from the other side. Right in the middle, see? To think that he’s so young, says a new voice, a bit further over, a woman, not so hoarse as the one here next to me, and much fatter, a fake pearl necklace holding in her double chin. How can it be? she asks herself, or us. Nobody responds apart from the little girl: I see her, daddy. Is it a girl, daddy? I don’t know, and don’t look, I told you. How old is she daddy? And the father, who seems too young to be a father, is trying very hard to see what his daughter distinguished so quickly. Look, daddy, there’s another one, on this side. Is it another girl, daddy? It’s true: another shape appears on the stairs on this side of the river, then another, and another with a flashlight. These forms are much bulkier than the one in the middle of the bridge. The old women can’t see them, they’re getting desperate, and in this observatory, thirty or forty metres away, a contest begins to see who can guess the next move. There are cries of: Look, there are three of them, they’re surrounding him. There’s one further down, the other two have climbed higher up. Look, look everyone. And everyone has their own story. From behind, a tall man in a mechanic’s uniform of worn blue confirms in a fluty voice that the person wanting to jump is a man, that his wife is in the ambulance having a panic attack, and even ventures: He must be desperate. Do you know him? The woman with the fake pearl necklace doesn’t contradict him, she takes his word for it and follows the action. A fireman without a helmet seems to be directing the three rescuers’ mission from the base of the bridge through a walkie-talkie. At his side, a man from the coastguard, his light brown suit clinging to his body like a glove, issues instructions to his men who are floating in a small boat, quite precariously, circling aimlessly without lights under the arch of the bridge. Here and there they dodge clumps of water hyacinth. In order to communicate, the man from the coastguard forms a megaphone with his hands. We can’t make out a word. Further over, beyond the red and white tape, which blocks the path with the word danger every ten centimetres, there’s another group of people, smaller than ours, but among which can be discerned an old woman, a not-so-old woman, a mature man, another younger man, and two children rather than one. They don’t, however, have our secondary group of curious onlookers, who don’t dare approach the railings, preferring to remain protected by the darkness, but who comment, murmur and speculate all the same. Like the cars and buses, which, before turning into the avenue some fifty metres ahead, slow down without actually stopping, resembling a funeral cortège. Some drivers are in too much of a hurry and don’t have time to pay attention to the patrol cars, or the bridge, or the police cordon, far less to what is going on up above, and give three sharp blasts on their horns, as they would in celebration, to hurry on those ahead.

  For a while nothing changes on the bridge. Some people get impatient, the girl wants to go, she’s hungry. And the father tries to lighten the mood with a joke at which no one laughs: Come on, mate, make your mind up, my pizza’s getting cold, he says to the person up there, who, of course, doesn’t hear him. Or maybe he does, because not a minute later we begin to notice movement once again on the cross-beam of the bridge. Two of the firemen stay at the highest point, illuminating the scene: what can they see, what are they planning, I wonder. The third is just a few metres away from the person threatening to jump, and he begins a game of push and pull, coming and going, in which one advances and the other retreats. They know, like two fencers contemplating one last, fatal lunge, that to touch the other would be to finish everything. The first must be saying something like: Stay there, I’m not going to do anything, I just want to talk to you. And the other: Come any closer and I’ll jump. Each wants the other to stay where he is. But until when? It’s a blind impasse, with no solution. One knows what he wants, the other, seemingly, does not.

  It’s half nine and once more the action builds to a viscous nothing. I don’t want to think any more. I don’t want to and yet I wonder whether I should do something, try something, approach the fireman speaking into his walkie-talkie and ask him something. But what?

  The lad with the pizza announces: He’s not going to jump at all, you’ll see. And he takes the girl’s hand again, turns around and departs, not without glancing back once or twice as he walks away; surely it can’t happen right now, not after waiting so long. But no, he’s right, it doesn’t look like anyone’s jumping after all.

  In a while, the man leading the operation on the bridge takes the initiative again. The suicide case isn’t putting up as much resistance as before. He’s getting tired. The fireman advances a few steps and must be speaking to him. I wonder if he has something prepared or whether he’s improvising a few words on the spot to say that everything can be worked out, nothing’s final, except for death. No, not that, the word death can’t be prudent in such circumstance
s, better to avoid it. And the jumper will say to him: No, nothing has any meaning. A difficult argument to refute.

  Now a small spark appears between the two. Look, explains the old woman, he’s lighting a cigarette and passing it to him. See? Yes, a tiny ember that weakens and revives as the smoke is drawn in or exhaled illuminates the black point that is not quite yet a head but which shows up against the black of the bridge and the blue-black of the sky. The shape smokes and breathes. Anyone would smoke at a time like this.

  I put my hands in my trouser pockets to fish for my cigarettes, and with one in my mouth, we’re equal, from a distance. Two pairs of lungs filling with smoke. I feel calmer, he’s not going to jump, it’s for the best. The threat of a storm also seems to have passed right by.

  I count: one, two, three long drags. Some, like the woman with the fake pearl necklace, have resigned themselves to not seeing anything and move away slowly, along the edge of the cordon, noiselessly, with a certain respect. Somewhat frustrated, perhaps.

  And the taste of the cigarette in my mouth, rough on my palate, reminds me that I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast, that Aída and I meant to have lunch together but we couldn’t decide, lunchtime passed, and I was still hungry, even more so after the joint.

  The too-young father and his daughter in the yellow bikini must be munching their pizza in front of the television by now, while they tell the young mum about the time they wasted in vain at the foot of the bridge. And if I leave, I’ll buy a pizza on the way and surprise Aída.

  But just then, as I’m about to go, the old woman with the scarf grabs my arm, gesturing upwards with her nose. Look there, behind, the one next to the one with the flashlight, see? the woman says to me in a low voice, as if there’s any way he could hear her. Yes, I see, one of those crouched down a few metres behind the jumper, positioned on a higher beam, either because he has taken the decision alone or because he has received a signal from the head of operations, moves, only just at first, then suddenly tries to catch the smoking figure with a swipe that doesn’t quite reach, and everything that follows is too quick, too inconceivable. For the last time, the guy, or girl, hesitates. The glow of the cigarette can no longer be seen, he lets go with one hand, swings a leg over the rail and, just in time, before they can grab his other arm, he lets go and falls: he is falling.