by Iosi Havilio
At the main door I came across the building manager, who was smoking with his back to me, a thin fishing rod under his arm. He wasn’t surprised to see me, in either a good or a bad way. He signalled that he’d be back soon and reappeared with a sheet of paper folded in three that was addressed to me, with Friday’s date and an official stamp. I read the heading. Subject: Urgent service of process. National Court of Criminal Instruction … It was a court summons for Monday morning at ten.
I start walking aimlessly, drifting. It’s almost midnight and the city reeks of a collective hangover. Kalton Family Hotel, says an illuminated sign half a block from where I am. I head over to it. I ring the bell, a little man with a moustache sticks the top half of his body over the counter, weighs me up, slightly surprised, and eventually opens the door. It’s no more than that, a typical family hotel, a solution.
‘Just one night,’ I say, ‘just for today.’
‘Twenty pesos for a private bathroom. Fifteen for shared.’
‘Private bathroom,’ I say, and the man is pleased.
Second floor, room twenty-seven, I find it hard to believe there are so many. I climb the stairs and walk from one end of the narrow corridor to the other, making the loose floorboards creak. There’s no sign of anyone, they’re all in their rooms, single men and women, families with children, couples, lovers: I can picture them all perfectly. The hallway is a war-zone, a violent crossroads of who knows how many televisions blaring all at once. Everyone against everyone else, the winners are those who dare to turn up the volume that bit more.
On the door of twenty-seven, the seven is missing. The room is essentially a giant bed enclosed in a kind of hole, a cement niche painted red. It’s hellish, it’s all there is. The carpet is flooded, as is my private bathroom. I’m too exhausted to ask to change rooms.
I lie down and the weight of my body forces the different lumps filling the mattress to spread around me. It’s like lying on a ball of uncooked dough. At least the bedside lamp works. I stretch out my arm, open the drawer of the bedside table and grab the only thing that’s in it, a slim book with a very soft cover that says on the front in Portuguese, imprinted in gold capitals: New Testament. And at the bottom: Free distribution. I let it fall open: John 9:1. I read in a low voice:
‘As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
‘“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
‘After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. “Go,” he told him, “wash in the pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.’
EIGHT
Very early on Monday. I’m woken by a chorus of strange noises from inside and outside the hotel. It’s a grey morning. I call the surgery and leave a message saying that I’ll be there around eleven.
‘I’ve got some urgent business to take care of,’ that’s what I say.
I dial Aída’s number to make some kind of arrangement with Beba to pick up the rest of my things. I try three times, and each time the phone rings out. Aída’s voice, recorded on the machine, no longer answers. Things are moving quickly.
The courthouse is a labyrinth of corridors. I keep returning to the same place, the wrong place: a desk where a policewoman sits in front of a very thick book. By this stage, she doesn’t even ask to see my ID before letting me go any further, as she did the first few times.
‘Which office are you looking for, love?’ she asks reluctantly, knowing that all of us here are after some office or other. She shows me where to go, it’s a bit more difficult than I had thought. None of the notions I had about the legal system are as fantastical as the reality.
Finally I come to the office indicated on the summons.
I make my presence known at the window. It’s really a door split into two. I’m told to wait in the corridor, they’ll call me. It takes fifteen minutes. People circulate around me, some in a hurry, some taciturn, alone or in groups of two or three, and I catch murmured snatches of a conversation already in full flow, all inference and tainted dialogue, unending. Almost all carry files under their arms: lawsuits, documents, warrants, statements, expert reports. A young couple and an older man exit from a door at the side. The couple seem uncomfortable, embarrassed. Whatever the reason for their summons, they hadn’t thought it would go this far. The man, meanwhile, puffs out his cheeks, holding back a smile.
My name is called.
‘Bernardo Yasky, court clerk,’ is how he introduces himself.
He’s young, with very thick eyebrows, neither fat nor thin, neither ugly nor handsome, with smooth skin and stubby hands. He doesn’t make eye contact for a single second during the half hour I’m there. He’s wearing a white shirt with thin blue and grey stripes, and a regulation black tie. His chest is very hairy, lots of little black curls showing through his shirt.
I tell him everything, almost exactly, while he types from memory, not watching the screen, his hands agile, as if they’d broken away from the rest of his body. He types and smokes. Afterwards, without looking at me, he reads out my statement.
Finally, he asks if I want to add anything. No, it’s fine like that. Then, at top speed, he finishes combining my words with the legal forms. Done, he says and wheels his chair over to the printer. He hurries the pages, pulling them out before they’re quite ready, and lays them in front of me as if this were a hand of poker and these were my cards. The guy stretches out his legs beneath the desk and unintentionally kicks my ankle with the toe of his shoe. I jump, I wasn’t expecting it and he over-apologises.
But he doesn’t draw back his legs, and once or twice I feel them brush mine again, inadvertently. As he marks the places where I have to sign with a faint pencil cross, he says, without lifting his eyes from the papers, almost smiling:
‘I’m rather clumsy.’
I read the last paragraph before signing: (…) I SWEAR under penalty of perjury that I have told the truth to the best of my knowledge and belief in response to the questions I have been asked. I sign, doubtfully.
Afterwards, next to the door, imprisoned between two high shelves filled to the brim with boxes that could land on top of us at any moment, we say goodbye with a handshake. He has the last word: We’ll probably summons you again, he says, and releases my hand.
Since I finished somewhat earlier than expected, I decide to walk to the surgery to kill time. I think about Aída, I go over my statement in my mind. At no point did I lie.
I arrive at the surgery and, behind the counter, a girl I’ve never seen before mistakes me for a client. I tell her who I am and her smile tightens slightly. From the till, she removes an envelope with my name on it. It’s the owner’s handwriting, I know it well. She says she’s sorry, but she has to sack me, she says I left her no alternative. In fact, she’s not sacking me, she’s asking me not to complicate things and to send her my resignation. She’s also left me a bit of money, compensation I suppose.
My gaze moves swiftly across this animal world that was mine for almost six months. I thank the girl by raising a hand, leaving the letter on the counter. She purses her lips and raises her shoulders, apologising for something that wasn’t her doing. She seems happy with her new job. I wonder whether I ought to give her some practical advice.
I spend the next few days and nights in the Hotel Kalton. The night watchman gets me a television in return for a tip. I eat in bed, I watch all the programmes and when I get bored I turn to the Brazilian bible, which I read in parts, at random, wherever it falls open. I understand Portuguese much better than I thought I did. It’s a pleasing language, full of the sounds of the wind. I’ve been paid up to
and including Friday, so I just let myself be.
NINE
On Saturday, I take the train again and I’m in Open Door before midday. I was in two minds about whether to bring the Brazilian bible with me, but no, why would I need it.
I arrive at the house on foot, I don’t have a single peso left, not even enough for the bus. It feels like a long way. Jaime was expecting to see me sooner, or at least to hear from me.
‘I couldn’t come any earlier, I had a legal matter to take care of,’ I say and he doesn’t show any interest in finding out what.
The first thing I do is to examine the other Jaime, who has improved considerably. It shows in the whites of his eyes, which are much livelier, and in the rhythm of his breathing. Jaime asks whether he could get better by himself. With difficulty, I reply.
Why did I come? I don’t question myself, Jaime asks me even less. We start preparing a meal. We both happen to be very hungry. The radio is loud: there’s a tacit agreement not to speak.
Later, after lunch, I tell Jaime about Aída. My story lasts the time it takes for him to roll and smoke three of his cigarettes. The kitchen reeks of smoke.
‘You must be sad,’ he says, or asks. With Jaime, it’s hard to tell.
When we take our siesta, Jaime offers me his bed again but this time he doesn’t ask my permission to lie down next to me. He’s less inhibited and takes advantage of the first brush of contact to stroke my back underneath my blouse. He kicks off his boots, snorting. I help him to undress, and take off my own clothes. Before I know it, he’s inside me. For a few minutes. He doesn’t leave me time for anything.
We sleep our siesta with our backs to each other. The sheets smell clean, Jaime must have changed them with me in mind. Or perhaps not, it could just be a coincidence. It’s my first siesta for a long time. I enjoy it, although the silence unsettles me at times.
When I open my eyes, it’s already night-time. Jaime is still aroused. He climbs on top of me again. This time he grips the headboard with both hands, his nose scraping the wall. He moves like an animal. I try to take pleasure from it. At times I even succeed. His penis slips out and I feel it colliding against the inside of my thighs. It struggles, almost manages to enter again but immediately slides out, ending up limp with the effort. I cool off, I become dry. I wait for him to sort himself out with his hand, for him to wet his fingers with saliva and pass them over my lips. But it would seem that Jaime doesn’t know about that sort of thing, even less that he wants to find out. He persists. My face is squashed up against his solid, hairy chest. It’s no use, I end up having to make way with my own hand. I guide him. He’s a terrible lover, with no technique.
On Sunday, Jaime wakes up with a fever. A relentless, country fever. He says it’s nothing, that it will soon pass. I touch his forehead with my palm. It’s boiling.
Some five hundred metres from the house, there’s a small shop. Jaime asks me to go and buy some coarse salt to make him a steam bath. He tells me to take the pick-up. I say I’d prefer to walk. The road is full of potholes, enclosed by two barbed-wire fences, three wires high on the right and four on the left. It’s half twelve and the sun, close to its zenith, prevents me from seeing things as they really are. The shop door is a curtain of rubber strips which I pull aside in order to pass through. There’s no one there. Hello, I say, but there’s no answer.
I retreat and, at the entrance, I clap my hands together. Still no response. I clap again, harder this time, and I hear the patter of small, reluctant, dawdling footsteps. The first thing I see is not that pair of tiny feet, with skin like dirty porcelain; instead it’s the dust they raise as they drag along. The feet stop and I hear a soft breath close behind me.
I raise my head and have to lean slightly to see a round, flushed face, the forehead covered in pimples. It’s a girl, somewhere between thirteen and sixteen; at that age you can never tell.
‘We’re closed,’ she says, ‘we open again at four.’
Silence. Neither of us moves from our position: I remain in the shade, she’s in the sun. I don’t know what to say, nor does she and, almost in unison, we shrug, hers apologetic, mine regretful. But I can tell that she likes me, or that she’s bored, or something like that, because she changes her mind straight away.
‘Do you need much?’
‘A packet of coarse salt.’
‘Come in,’ says the girl, and enters the shop, raising more dust. I follow her, a metre behind. Inside, it’s cool and dimly lit, ideal to rest my eyes and my head for a while, worn out as they are from so much sun. A light, crystalline dust with a taste of pollen envelops the atmosphere. It’s there and it’s not there, I can feel it, but I can’t see it, like a spent cloud at ground level.
It’s a typical general supply shop, but quite a bit smaller and much poorer than those that you still see in some villages, imitating those of days gone by. Even so, despite its precarious construction, it has that characteristic spirit of a cosmic market that conveys a sense of powerful abundance. Against the back wall, behind the counter, shelves reach to the roof, fashioned from piles of bricks and planks of wood, forming niches of different sizes in which the less usual merchandise is kept. It’s not that the items are unusual in themselves, the odd thing is their coexistence. Their proximity to each other makes them absurd. There are brooms, flippers, bulk and bagged flour, candles, nails, screws, nuts, whips, household and garden tools, inflatable dolls, bundles of wood, balls, portable barbecues, lifejackets, two bicycle wheels, a cement mixer, noodles, two fishing rods with red floaters, bottles of gin, liqueurs and demijohns, an old mobile phone with a broken antenna, more balls, sunglasses, stale bread, three carrots, six potatoes, a tomato, various pairs of espadrilles hanging from a string of garlic, all together and in full view.
The girl climbed a high stepladder and took a moment to find the salt, which, in the end, she found by her hand.
‘I don’t serve very often,’ she apologised, ‘it’s my dad and brother who work here.’
I watched her in silence and now that I could see her better, without the sun on her face, there was something in her gaze, in her precise hand gestures, that I couldn’t put my finger on, something that made her rather unusual.
I asked her for a box of matches, just so that I could look at her a bit longer.
She had a slim back that contrasted with her hips, which were very developed for her age. She was wearing faded trousers, full of patches and mud stains.
‘Anything else?’ she asks and I stay quiet as long as I can, just for the sake of it, I want to see what she does. She gets nervous, glancing at me, she bites her lips until she ends up smiling. She reveals her teeth, very small and white, all the same size, like the matching pieces of a game. I pay for the salt and the matches and I’m pushing aside the plastic strips when I hear her voice again.
‘You’re not from round here, are you?’
‘No, I’m not from round here. I’m passing through,’ I say. It’s about right.
The girl comes to the door and waves her hand vigorously, as if we were never to see each other again.
TEN
It’s Monday morning and Jaime is feeling much better, although he still has a touch of fever. I prepare a mug of maté and take it to him in bed. It’s best, we agree, that he doesn’t go out until his temperature drops. I suggest calling a doctor, but he’s almost annoyed by that. It’s not serious enough to call a doctor, he says.
‘Don’t you have to go back?’ Jaime asks, beginning to sense that I don’t, and hurriedly adds:
‘You don’t need to worry about me.’
He asks me to go to the hospital to drop off some papers at the office. They’re time-sheets, he explains without my asking and adds: So that I get paid. He gives me the keys of the pick-up and a few instructions about how to get there.
As I’m leaving, he stresses, in case I’m in any doubt:
‘You can take all the time you want.’
•
I pull up in f
ront of the barrier at the hospital entrance and wait my turn. The guards are registering a car that’s leaving, checking the boot and confirming the identity of the people inside, they’re very strict. It’s like crossing a border in wartime.
One of the guards approaches, walkie-talkie in hand, and asks for my details. I fill out a form while the guy casts his eye over the back of the pick-up. His expression suggests that he has everything under control. He almost smiles at me and raises the barrier.
I’m met by a long drive of about eight hundred metres, shimmering in the sun’s rays, tall trees like sentries on each side, leading to a roundabout with a pergola surrounded by palm trees at its centre. Road signs come into view at the end of the drive, to help visitors familiarise themselves. Slow, Patients Crossing, says the first, and further ahead: Block 8 Sub-Acute Care and Surgery. And in the middle distance I catch a glimpse of my first loonies, dressed in orange or blue. One passes close by, an enormous yellow rosary hanging round his neck.
I accidentally circle the roundabout twice, then park the truck next to the other cars, between the main building and a pleasant-looking kiosk with a tiled roof.
With Jaime’s papers under my arm, I climb the wide steps that lead up to this kind of castle. Management to the right, administration to the left. I follow the arrow. I knock on the door and wait for a response. A pale-faced girl answers, her black hair in a bowl-cut, her white blouse buttoned to the neck. Catholic or trendy, I can’t tell which. She is wearing a thin gold chain but whatever is hanging from it is hidden beneath the fabric. I give her the papers and she recognises them straight away. She smiles, touching the tip of her nose.
Outside, a day of brilliant sunshine beckons. I smoke a cigarette underneath the pergola. This place is incredible, it makes no sense.
