by Iosi Havilio
Suddenly, out of nowhere, three guys appear. They come towards me. They walk close together, shoulder-to-shoulder. Denim jackets, black trousers, white trainers and sunglasses: from a distance they look identical, as if in uniform. They’re loonies, I suppose, and yet they don’t look like it, dressed like that, so streetwise. They approach, surrounding me. They don’t seem surprised to see me. They ask me for a cigarette, I don’t have any. So they try for a peso:
‘Can you spare a peso?’ they ask. Another no. They move on. One of them glances back at me and murmurs something that makes the others laugh.
It’s after one o’clock when I get back to the farm. Jaime is in the kitchen making lunch, he looks much better.
‘Good as new,’ he exaggerates and asks happily: ‘How did you get on at the loony bin?’
I tell him a bit about my impression of the place and ask him what’s at the back, on the other side of the roundabout, where the three loonies emerged in their sunglasses, looking like three ordinary guys.
‘Rehabilitation, drug addicts,’ he says, his voice changed, as if he were talking about extra-terrestrials.
The phone rings. Jaime answers, it’s for me.
‘A Yasky,’ he says, ‘from the court.’
And in the five seconds before I take the receiver from him, a thousand suspicions pass through my mind. Most of them horrible.
‘I need you to come to the Judicial Morgue at eight tomorrow,’ Yasky says, without preamble. I don’t know how to answer him, the idea leaves me frozen. He explains that he hasn’t been able to contact Aída’s aunt, who is the only family member they are aware of, so I’m the only suitable person to identify the body.
‘Are you sure it’s her?’ I ask in a whisper.
‘I’ll expect you tomorrow,’ answers Yasky.
I stand with the receiver still in my hand, shaken. I don’t know how Yasky managed to get this number. Jaime complains because he doesn’t like being disturbed by the phone while he’s eating. I wonder where Beba could have got to.
That night, fear overtook me, and with fear came insomnia. I dream wakefully, lots of nightmares all together, each worse than the last. Aída appears in almost all of them. I wet the bed, I can’t help it.
In the morning, Jaime asks me whether I want to bring my things here, to be more comfortable. Don’t I need them? No, I tell him, I’m fine like this. Jaime insists. He says he could bring the pick-up and help me. I don’t have any things, I say and he doesn’t ask again.
ELEVEN
The Judicial Morgue is in Calle Viamonte, behind the School of Economic Sciences. I present myself at the entrance. A thin policeman tells me without looking at me that I have to wait. Until someone from the court arrives. I ask him whether he can’t tell someone I’m here anyway. There’s nothing to tell. He also asks me, this time to my face, still not looking me in the eye, but addressing me to my face, to wait in the street so as not to get in the way. I oblige.
Others who, like me, must be here to identify a corpse, file past under my nose: alone, in groups of two or three or four, depending on the circumstances, civilians or police officers, some hurried, some sorrowful, some embarrassed. Silent accomplices to the situation, some ignore me, while others look directly at me, by chance or on purpose, wondering: what is she doing? What’s she waiting for? Who can have died?
An old woman with tinted tortoiseshell glasses, the kind that are coming back into fashion, gets out of a patrol car with the help of a fat man who takes her arm. He is wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. She approaches in slow motion, pausing at a lamp post close to my shoulder to catch her breath. Wait here a moment, I’ll be back in a tick, says the fat man, but the woman pays no attention to him. Very faint, fine lines cover her face, like a teenager who’s been up all night. She exaggerates a noisy sigh, to attract my attention. I look at her. She’s waiting anxiously for me to say something. She speaks first.
‘This is hell. Could someone tell me when this damned summer is going to end? And they say that winter will be even worse. And to top it all …’
The old woman unfolds her arms to her sides, as far as her well-used joints allow, in a gesture of complaint. She takes a deep breath and continues.
‘They tell me I’ve got to be strong because the body has decomposed quite a bit … it was in the flat for almost a week without them realising …’
The old woman leaves a deliberate, dramatic pause. Then she becomes anxious and speaks again, her voice scratchy and rather sinister:
‘Apparently the poor thing suffocated on her own vomit,’ she says and squeezes my wrist as if to say something else, something that she swallows at the last minute, when the fat man appears and takes her arm. The sun is burning my forehead, I feel ridiculous.
Yasky arrived forty-five minutes late. He apologises twice and adds laconically, by way of explanation:
‘Such terrible weather.’
I don’t understand how he can wear a jacket in this heat. A fat file is squeezed under his armpit, a lawsuit. I wonder what the brief could be.
The corridors of the morgue are much less gloomy than I expected. In fact, they’re quite the opposite, a strange hybrid of a hospital and a university on a quiet day. The walls have been painted recently; they shine.
Yasky walks briskly, his fleshy body swaying, and I follow close behind. Now that I can see him properly, Yasky is just an ordinary guy, sometimes refined, sometimes distinctly average, the type who likes collecting things in his spare time, by era: stamps, vinyl records, pornography.
‘We’ve been given an impossible case,’ he reveals, without looking at me. ‘Three bodies, no weapon, no motive. A whole family.’
We stop in front of a door with a bronze plaque with the word Administration marked out in relief. Yasky knocks twice, there’s no immediate response. He turns slightly and contrives a kind of quick smile, out of obligation, or nerves. The door opens and the man who answers must be two metres tall, ginger from top to toe, an enormous head, his flat face peppered with a thousand freckles. His arms and cheeks are equally hefty. He must be about fifty and looks to me as though he has Irish roots. He takes no notice of me, but lets Yasky in and shuts the door. Five minutes later, it swings open and Yasky sticks out his head.
‘There are a few formalities to take care of, we’ll just be a moment,’ he says and during this new wait, a question consumes my thoughts to the point of obsession. It’s a question I haven’t asked until now, a stupid question that doesn’t change anything, but I can’t help it. Was Aída looking at me as she fell?
Yasky comes out again, this time followed by the massive redhead who ignores me completely when I try to catch his eye to greet him. He’s a sullen type. His freckles give him a candour that openly contrasts with his character.
This time Yasky and I walk next to each other, the ginger man leading the way, along the same corridor as far as a double door. The redhead lets us into a room with three trolleys welded to the floor and lots of drawers with handles along the far wall. The atmosphere is cool, much more agreeable than outside. On the trolley to the right, the nearest to the door, there is a shape, a body, its extremities protruding slightly, covered by a polythene sheet. The first thing I see is a pair of feet, not yet entirely blue, falling to either side, thoroughly dead. And I find it hard to believe that these are Aída’s feet.
Yasky gestures for me to follow him. We position ourselves on either side of the trolley. The man talks to Yasky, but it’s aimed at me:
‘The body isn’t in very good condition,’ he says, taking his position at the head, like in the films. He moves unhurriedly, he knows the score, he’s an expert in dealing with corpses, you can tell. For a few seconds, Yasky and I just observe the out-stretched plastic. Aída comes to my mind, her long face, the prominent nose, the curly hair, caressing me with moist hands, and then moaning, then smoking.
‘When you’re ready,’ the man says to both of us, as if Yasky were part of the family. Yasky deflect
s the question to me with his eyes, nodding slightly, and I must make some gesture that the other man takes as agreement because he whips back the sheet in one swipe, without warning, revealing much more of the body than is necessary, as far as the middle of the abdomen: the skin is opaque, the eyelids sealed, the mouth slightly open, expressionless, her parts seem put together by force, as if in a collage, the breasts falling to either side like the feet, the hair like dried seaweed.
I shake my head and avert my gaze, swallowing a lot of saliva.
‘Are you sure?’ asks Yasky, a bit hoarsely.
‘Completely sure,’ I reply and I don’t know why I add: ‘Nothing like her.’
The ginger giant wants to give me another chance and instead of hurrying, he takes his time covering up the unknown woman’s head. I can’t help looking at her again: a corpse, the first I’ve ever seen close up, so horrible and so simple, no mystery. It’s not so bad. How many times have I seen living beings who are much more broken? In my mind’s eye, I can conjure up dead animals of all species. I thought that this would be different, but no, it’s the same. I feel strong, I’ve just faced death in flesh and bone and I’m still standing, whole and unaffected. A morbid fascination grips me, I want to see more, but the body is covered again and Yasky is following the giant to the door. Did I disappoint them?
The same scene is repeated: Yasky and the other guy disappear into the office again, I remain outside. Perhaps Aída is locked in one of the drawers, unable to say: Here I am. Five, ten minutes go by, I get bored. I wander off, away from the exit, to see what I find. There’s not a soul to be seen. On both sides of the corridor there are further doors, all closed and nameless. What do morgue employees do? Talk on the phone, do the filing, organise meetings, make plans for the weekend, like normal public servants. At a corner, where the corridor turns and narrows, there’s a coffee machine. I slot in two coins and press a button: espresso, medium-sweet. The machine launches into action. Across the screen runs the word: Preparing. I wait with folded arms. Behind me a door opens and closes. I turn round and a boy with a knot of snakes tattooed on his forearms comes and stands next to me. Hi, he says and I notice how the open jaws of the snakes bite at his wrists. I return his greeting and it strikes me that the morgue is like a small village where everyone knows each other and an outsider like me has to pretend to belong to the tribe. The only thing I can think of to say is that it’s very hot today. Yes, he responds enthusiastically and adds: And the air conditioning isn’t working. The machine announces that my coffee is ready. Preparation complete, it says. I grab my cup and I don’t know whether to wait for him to get his. Coffee makes me feel the heat less, he says and explains: It must be because the body heats up as well and the temperatures match. I don’t know what to say.
Yasky appears at the other end of the corridor and beckons me. I raise my hand to say goodbye to the boy, he smiles at me, and only now do I see a piercing at the tip of his tongue.
Yasky has gone on ahead, he’s waiting for me on the pavement, blocking the sun with one of his files. He’s perspiring all over.
‘I’m very sorry,’ he says, ‘these things happen sometimes. That’s why this place exists.’
Everything seems to indicate that we’re about to say goodbye. Before we do, I decide to ask:
‘I’m curious about something. That woman, where did you find her?’
‘At the bottom of the river, at the foot of the bridge.’
Yasky hails a taxi.
‘I’ll keep you informed, as soon as there’s any more news.’
I still have a lot of questions, but I’ll keep them for another time. It’s so hot I could die.
TWELVE
The last weekend in February was the end of the carnival. We ate early, lentil stew, which I made myself and turned out a lot better than I expected. Exquisite, said Jaime after the first mouthful and he devoured the rest in one go.
As he did every day, Jaime started talking about the horse. It was his favourite subject, his only subject. Over the last few days, the other Jaime had made a noticeable improvement, it was difficult to explain. And, even though the nodules were still there, they’d magically decreased in size. Jaime fantasised about riding him again.
It’s a miracle, he was saying, and the animal looked at him with his enormous eyes, with a mixture of helplessness and scepticism. Jaime repeated the word, with all the excitement of someone who suddenly believes in miracles for the first time.
‘It’s carnival,’ I say presently, to interrupt him, ‘let’s go along for a bit and see what’s happening.’
Jaime didn’t refuse, but he didn’t say yes either. He crushed his half-smoked cigarette into his plate next to the scraps of food and went to put on his boots straight away. He was an odd man, almost always decent, but he would change suddenly and become terse, ill-humoured. I was getting to know him.
I stuck my head out onto the veranda. A light, slanting drizzle was falling, swirling about to form thousands of razor-sharp droplets. Like fake carnival snow. Jaime brought the pick-up right to the door so that I wouldn’t get wet. On the way to the village we didn’t say anything, silenced by the thrum of the engine, or by the excitement of zigzagging over the wet mud to leave fresh tracks.
The fiesta took up five blocks on Avenida Cabred, the heart of the village. First of all, there was a parade of floats, each recognisable by the sound of their chosen anthem, repeated ad nauseam on loudspeakers. Each song played over the next, composing a kind of diabolical meta-melody. The floats were themed. Girls in dresses of fake sequins danced on top, making the rickety structures tremble. It was impossible not to think an accident would happen at any moment.
Alongside the floats passed jugglers, flame throwers, a giant caterpillar, the young and the young-at-heart exchanging jets of foam sprayed from bottles in the shape of Rey Momo the carnival king, a gaggle of internees from the hospital wearing unrecognisable costumes, families, single men and women, the two village transvestites and a small group of inoffensive drunks at the tail of the parade. Jaime parked the truck widthways across the street, parallel to the railway tracks, right in front of the abandoned silos at the entrance to the village. All kinds of vehicles had sneaked in behind the endlessly circulating floats: motorbikes, cars, a fire engine, sulkies and a cloud of bicycles that entered and exited the darkness like swift ghosts. Jaime bought a couple of cans of beer and we sat on the pavement, our legs hanging down into the ditch. And even though I was what you would call a recent arrival, some faces, still mostly nameless, were becoming familiar to me.
At one point a row broke out and Jaime became uneasy. We couldn’t see much, but from a distance it appeared that two guys were about to come to blows. We moved closer and recognised Boca from behind, throwing himself on top of someone else who stumbled. Jaime signalled for me to stay where I was and pushed his way through the crowd, broke the circle of goading onlookers and shook Boca by the shoulder. It took him a good while to cool Boca down, all the blood had risen to his head and his gin-breath reached across the street. Jaime’s intervention wasn’t well received by a public hungry for a fight but you could tell that the other man, Boca’s rival, wasn’t entirely sure about fighting anyway because he didn’t protest the matter for a single second.
Boca calmed down and at once acted as if nothing had happened. He talked a lot, we understood very little. He kept repeating that carnivals were old-fashioned.
‘There’s too much noise here,’ he said at one point, fixing us with his tiny eyes. Jaime shrugged and I smiled.
Boca proposed going to buy more beer. Jaime stood up and gestured for me to go with him. I’ll wait for you here, I said and Jaime smiled at me in the way that boyfriends do when they’re parting from a girlfriend they’ve just started seeing.
The drizzle persisted, still swirling, still with thousands of tiny drops of moisture pricking at my cheeks. Everything seemed so strange to me, so new and fleeting. It was a bit like being on holiday, visiting a dis
tant relative, the kind you never miss but who seem indispensable when they are close by.
Suddenly, a small hand rested on my shoulder. I jumped slightly and turned my head at once to see who it belonged to. It was Eloísa, the girl from the shop, who was already moving away with short steps, surrounded by other girls, looking at me out of the corner of her eye, with a mocking or conspiratorial little laugh, I never knew which.
I lay down on the wet grass, closed my eyes and Aída’s face came into my mind, blurred by the smoke of the cigarette she calmly inhaled and exhaled. I began to drop off.
Boca’s booming voice returned me to what was left of the carnival. Jaime sat down at my side, happy to find that his girl was still there. We shared a final can of beer, while Boca resumed his monologue. He was no longer talking about the carnival, now he was saying something about some guy who swore he’d seen a flying saucer in a nearby field.
THIRTEEN
Jaime and Boca had gone out early to buy building materials. It was a day of clear blue skies and fluffy, starched clouds. I was washing down the veranda when the telephone rang. Yasky’s voice trembled slightly, it was hoarse, unclear.
‘No, there’s nothing new,’ he says and pauses before continuing. ‘It was just that, I wanted to let you know, I thought you’d be waiting … I’ll call again when I have some news.’
That was it.
I continued mopping the veranda tiles until I couldn’t go on and I lay down on the grass. Lying like this, my hands scratching at the dirt, my eyes duelling with the harsh rays of the sun, as if I were somewhere else, I let myself be taken by a delicious lethargy, which is violently interrupted by a sharp jolt that shakes me so hard I’m lifted a couple of millimetres off the ground. A powerful blow from within the earth. The echo of the tremor lasts for a few seconds. Then it fades, without explanation.
