by Iosi Havilio
Our turn comes and we’re landed with a fat official. Beba takes it upon herself to explain the situation and the guy listens impassively, uninterested. Now I have to give my version of events. I don’t know where to begin. I tell him about Sunday, that we went out at about four, that we went for a walk by the riverside, that at some point Aída went into a bar to pee and that I went for a wander. That afterwards, I went to look for her but never found her. The official types everything I say but he has to go back several times to make corrections because his fat fingers don’t fit the keys and he presses two at a time.
Now that I look properly, I see that the plaster Virgin Mary is plugged in via a long cable that comes out of the back of her robes.
Beba nudges me, she wants me to talk about the bridge. I give a blow-by-blow account, as I experienced it, including all the details, up until I got on the bus. After that I fainted and slept for almost thirty hours in the care of the hospital, I say. They look like they don’t believe me.
We are told that an as-yet-unidentified female threw herself into the river from the old bridge in La Boca at 9.45 p.m. on Sunday 11th February, that the duty magistrate has already intervened and due to adverse weather conditions the recovery of the body by the coastguard’s divers has been postponed until further notice. What’s clear is that, for the time being, Aída is still missing.
After walking several blocks in silence, we arrived at the door of the flat. By mutual agreement, Beba slept in the double bed in the room, and I took the sofa. Despite everything, I fell asleep straight away. That night I didn’t dream.
The following day, too early, I was woken by Beba’s legs, criss-crossed with a thousand tiny veins, sweeping back and forth in front of me behind a broom. It wasn’t even seven in the morning. The television was on a channel showing the weather forecast. The storm wasn’t going to pass until Saturday.
‘I couldn’t get a wink of sleep all night, this is all such a mess,’ says Beba with a mug of coffee in her hand. I could barely look her in the eye, something about her was starting to repel me.
Beba kept talking for some time, it was her speciality. I finished my coffee without paying any attention, spent two minutes in the bathroom, dressed in the same clothes as yesterday and left for the surgery.
What exactly could have happened? I tried to reconstruct the events since Sunday on a piece of paper: the mix-up with Aída, the suicide on the bridge, the faint, the day and a half in hospital, my arrival at the flat, the appearance of Beba, the policemen. I went over the same thing a thousand times, trying to put my thoughts in order, to introduce some logic to the situation, but I didn’t get anywhere. Was it possible that I had witnessed Aída committing suicide without realising it? Yes, it was possible, and at the same time both absurd and in bad taste. A hundred times I replayed the blurred yet indelible images of the negotiations between the firemen and that nameless body, which nobody could even confirm as male or female. I even found myself asking that jaded question, which sounds so stupid in other people’s mouths: Why did she do it? Did she have a reason? Of course she did, everybody does. But as for proper reasons, what you’d think of as reasons, private, weighty motives, none occurred to me. She wasn’t a happy girl, but that doesn’t mean anything. Aída must be somewhere, playing hide and seek, sooner or later she’d appear, and all this delirium would become a dark and amusing anecdote. Things would sort themselves out.
At closing time, I repeated the usual routine: I switched off the surgery lights, lowered the blind, put the chain on the door, but I didn’t leave. I didn’t want to see Beba again, the very idea tortured me. I undressed and lay down on the consulting table. It was a bit narrower and a good ten centimetres shorter than me, but still quite comfortable. I fell asleep immediately.
I had a strange dream that lasted all night. A dream full of animals.
SEVEN
Saturday came round again and I went back to Open Door. This time I took the train to Luján. I phoned Jaime from the station. He took a while to answer. I was in the stable, he said and then told me that the other Jaime had been lying down all week but that he didn’t look too bad. I’m in Luján, I told him. Jaime fell silent for a few seconds, then asked whether the café was open so I could wait for him there. I’ll be out front, I said. I’ll be with you in twenty minutes, he replied, with an enthusiasm that I’d never suspected he could summon, adding: It’s a beautiful day. Jaime hung up and I couldn’t prevent my mind from straying to that vivid image I’d had in my head all week of the two Jaimes frolicking in the sun, caressing each other’s backs, snorting, each merging into the faded eyes of the other.
At the station’s exit, I was approached by a bald man with heavy dark circles under his eyes, as if they’d been painted on with shoe polish. It was hard to tell whether he was a taxi driver or about to proposition me. Can I take you into the centre, he asked, confident that he would be taking me into the centre. Someone’s picking me up, I answered, feeling protected by my reply. I crossed the avenue and felt a bit disorientated by the two-way street split in the middle by a small, elongated square, which broke off abruptly at the corners.
There was a nameless ice cream shop on the corner, makeshift, just opened for the summer. It had very few flavours on offer, most of them were empty and covered with paper. I asked for a cone of dark chocolate and lemon mousse. The chocolate wasn’t bad but the lemon, too sticky to be mousse, had lumps of ice in it that bulked out the cone. I sat under a small tree which, when I leant back against the trunk, pushed back at me with hidden thorns. It was a palo borracho, a silk floss tree, and it was sharp. From here I could see a black iron bridge at the end of the station, connecting the two platforms, four or five metres above the tracks, useless for committing suicide. If Aída, or whoever it was, had chosen this one instead of the other, she would only have managed to break a leg, or both legs, or a hip.
On the way to the house, we stopped at the entrance to the loony bin, as Jaime calls it, to let them know that he wouldn’t be tending to the nursery that afternoon. He told the guard at the gate, sticking his head through the window without getting out of the car. The man nodded from his little hut and we drove on.
The dirt track was still muddy from the recent rain and the truck skidded from side to side, like a drunkard. Jaime was concentrating hard, gripping the wheel with both hands, his face practically pressed up against the windscreen. It was good fun.
We arrived at the gate and I moved to open it before Jaime did.
‘I’ll get it,’ I said and he smiled. When I unhooked the latch from the post, I had a strange feeling, a kind of déjà vu.
Jaime made some maté tea and we exchanged a few words about the weather, the countryside and the city. Then we went to see the animal.
The other Jaime was lying down at the back of the house, in the open air. We approached slowly, respectfully. He looked weak, exhausted, and had deteriorated somewhat since last Saturday.
‘I took him outside to see if the fresh air would do him any good,’ I heard Jaime say behind me, in a resigned voice.
We led him carefully by the reins back into the stable.
‘He’s going to die tonight,’ said the other Jaime. His eyes were shrunken, very red. I held out my hand to him and he didn’t understand. And an impulse I can’t explain made me embrace him. A little out-of-time, he reciprocated and for a while he patted my back with his big tanned mitts, as if he were stroking the horse’s flank. I don’t know who was consoling whom. My nose was pressed up against his neck and I could smell an unfamiliar odour, sour, stale and exciting. I grasped his arms and gently pushed him away a few centimetres: he was crying. I took his face between my hands and kissed him very close to his lips. Jaime closed his eyes.
I thought about how unusual the situation was, about those hands touching me, those arms squeezing me tightly, and about any number of other things. I thought that if I wanted to I could fall in love with Jaime. I thought about how he must be thinking about some
thing too. About me? The horse? The burial? It will be a difficult burial, he’ll have to do a lot of digging, he’ll need help. Maybe the best thing is to have the horse put down and cremate him afterwards, keeping the ashes in a large urn. Wasting no time on agonies or ceremonies.
I moved away from him a little, I grabbed his hand, and with the other I gestured for him to follow me. I paused by a mound of straw a few metres away. Jaime stopped crying. I undid three or four buttons on my blouse. Jaime dried his tears with the cuff of his shirt, embarrassed and clumsy. His face changed suddenly, he almost laughed. I thought he was what you would call a decent guy. Jaime looked me in the eye, his lips trembled and he stretched out his arm without touching me.
‘Let’s go, it’s getting cold,’ he said and I didn’t know what to do, feeling ridiculous with half a tit on show.
On the way back to the house, in a low, hoarse voice, Jaime spoke again:
‘You’d be best spending the night here, it’s very late for you to go back now.’ He spoke the way gauchos must speak, no beating round the bush. I nodded, it seemed like a good idea, I was tired and had nowhere to go. I was in no danger with Jaime.
That evening, he heated up some stew, a bit dry, but tasty. During the meal he asked me if I would mind sleeping in his bed with him. He said it would be more comfortable for both of us. The armchair, he explained, is too rickety. I smiled.
When we entered the bedroom, full of faded pictures and oversized furniture, the ceiling high above our heads, I sat on the edge of the bed waiting for Jaime to throw himself on top of me. He didn’t. He touched me a bit, out of a sense of duty. That was it.
I wake in the middle of the night and discover a bronze crucifix hanging on the wall, which prompts a long shudder. How come I didn’t see it before? I sit up in bed, Jaime is at my side, on his back, his teeth and gums on show. I have the urge to run my finger around his lips. And close his mouth. I’m thirsty. I don’t dare to leave the room, this much silence scares me. I wrap myself tightly in the blanket which has fallen on the floor and I drop off again without too much trouble.
Morning brought a ferocious headache. Jaime heard me moaning, he tells me as he tips up the kettle and a torrent of steaming water cascades into the mouth of the maté gourd. It’s a bright and shining morning.
‘Were you dreaming?’
‘Yes,’ I say to reassure him.
Jaime passes me the maté. I feel good by his side. I ask after the other Jaime, whether he’s already been to see him, he says yes, he seems a bit better, livelier, he even saw him eating enthusiastically. That made me happy and I even thought that perhaps the horse would survive a few days longer than expected.
‘And you, did you dream?’ I asked Jaime.
‘No, not last night. But sometimes I do.’
‘About what?’
‘About anything, nothing really.’
‘And what’s it like?’
‘Always the same.’
Jaime wasn’t being honest, he was looking to one side, hiding something. Something in his ‘nothing really’. Later, he left me alone in the house for an hour. I lolled in a canvas deckchair I found folded against the veranda wall. I stayed motionless the entire time, slack, forgetting about my body. The headache dissolved in the humid, mid-morning calm. Through the soft aura of the sunlight I could see the gate through which the truck had driven off, the row of poplars bordering the road, behind which a team of polo players was training, the sown fields, and farther away, in the distance, a long, low hovel, unfinished and badly made, with a corrugated iron roof and an electric-blue water tank connected by an orangey pipe to the back of the house, and infinite lamp posts, and all those wire fences before the horizon. The countryside, that was it: a jigsaw whose pieces could join together differently every time you blinked.
Jaime returned with a bundle of wood, a bag holding meat, lettuce, a pile of potatoes and sweet potatoes and some tomatoes. With him was a short man, with a flat face and almost no neck, the kind of guy who seems to have been formed in a mould. He took charge of preparing the barbecue, without speaking, or even looking much. A man whom Jaime called Boca.
‘I have to go back this evening,’ I said to Jaime after we’d eaten. He had his back to me, but I could sense his reproach. ‘I have to work early tomorrow,’ I explained, ‘I’m expected at the surgery.’
Again he protested, silently, without getting angry. With one hand, his left, he grabbed a bottle of wine by the neck and filled a glass in front of his chest, which he offered to me with the other hand, without turning round. I waited. I wanted him to look me in the eye. How many seconds, or minutes, can he stay like this, I wondered, like last night, lying in bed, his gaze focused somewhere far away from me, his bloated hand, so rough, squeezing my tits, perhaps, it occurred to me now, because he preferred not to see them. I’d helped him to undress me, he’d hurried me on, he’d pulled off my knickers with one tug, and there I was, for the taking. He stared out of the corner of his eye at the tufts of curly hair covering my sex, and I directed one of his hands down there, he let me do it, but he didn’t touch me, or stroke me, or rub me, he let his hand drop, like someone covering a hole so that nothing gets in or out. There he was, immobile, for a long time, and I didn’t dare to take his clothes off as I had planned. I was falling into a deep sleep and he had to cover me with the blanket and switch off the bedside lamp.
Just like yesterday, Jaime didn’t move. I took the charged glass, lingering for an instant with my fingertips brushing his rough hands, wide and paw-like.
The short man Jaime had brought to do the barbecue and who’d sat down to eat with us without a word was stretched out in the shade a few metres away. He was snoozing, belly-up, his forehead marked with charcoal.
I go back by train. Jaime drops me at the Luján bus station. I soon find out that an unexpected transport strike has just been called, that the last bus left at six thirty and that service is suspended until further notice. An improvised handwritten sign is repeated in various ticket windows: ‘No service’. A man tells me that if it were up to him he’d make the trip but the thing is that on the motorway they might pelt the bus with rocks. Or shoot at it, adds another man with his back to us, playing solitaire on a computer. The next train leaves in twenty minutes, says a voice from within. It’s raining. I approach the taxi rank and take the first of a long queue, which gets me to the railway station in under five minutes. The platform is filling with people, most of them students, calming their nerves with cigarettes and increasingly rowdy conversations. There are also workers, pensioners, women with babies and a pair of drunks resting their elbows on a hamburger stand. The train finally arrives, ten minutes late. It’s empty and I sit down by a window that won’t shut. I swap seats, but soon, when the train starts moving, the window catch gives way and I have to hold it all through the journey to keep from getting wet. In the next compartment, across the corridor, are four young seminary students, each one younger than the next. Only one of them is dressed as a priest. But there’s no doubt, it’s patently obvious that they are a brotherhood. They chat, read and joke amongst themselves. The one in the cassock has a guitar case between his legs. The carriage fills up, the atmosphere becomes tense. The jolting of the train begins to lull me to sleep, until an unexpected event draws my attention. It’s not entirely clear how or when the fight begins. First there’s a struggle that the darkness doesn’t let me see fully. There are three or four involved, boys and girls, pulling at each other’s hair on the platform of a very old station, while the doors of the train are still open. There’s a bicycle in the middle, someone slips, someone else clings onto a wheel, kicking in the air. It’s no big deal, it’s not serious, and yet it’s enough to change the course of the journey. The boy on the ground manages to crawl onto the train, dragging the handlebars behind him. The student priests fall silent, they observe the situation, they question it with their eyes, slightly tense, but they don’t intervene. The doors close suddenly and the boy who made
it on board gradually composes himself. Those left on the platform kick the chassis of the carriage and one of the boys, or girls, launches a gob of spit that splats against the student priests’ window.
Initially, it’s hard to tell whether the boy who got on the train is the victim or the culprit. His face is flushed, he trembles slightly, and, despite being a robust lad, he looks ready to spill a few tears at any moment. There’s no doubt that he’s the victim. With his gaze glued to the window, mortified, he hides as best he can from the stares of those around him, he rubs his mud-soiled hands, and discovers a small superficial wound on his right palm, which he spends the rest of the journey sucking. Occasionally, he bites his right thumb as well, whether to control the pain or because he’s angry, I don’t know. He wants time to pass more quickly.
As the minutes tick by, the glances that have been measuring him up, initially with apprehension, then with curiosity, and finally with compassion, give way to indifference and oblivion. Three or four stations further on, to bury the incident once and for all, one of the student priests decides to take out the guitar and, with some very rudimentary arpeggios, accompanies himself in a song in a strange form of Spanish that sounds rather antiquated, which gradually inspires the other young priests to join in with the chorus.
I arrived at Aída’s at around half ten, without thinking too much about why I was going there, whether it was to pick up my belongings, to find out whether Beba had any news or even in the hope that Aída herself would be there to surprise me with some preposterous anecdote that would bring the whole thing to a close. I went up to the fourth floor and when I tried to open the door of the flat my key wouldn’t even fit in the lock. I rang the bell a couple of times. Nothing, no response. I peeked through the gap next to the skirting board: complete darkness.
