The man smiled, unable to avoid a paternal gesture, just as he couldn’t help noticing her lips painted with Chinese red lipstick. In front of him was not his niece but an athletic woman, worthy of being contemplated at a distance that precluded any kind of filial bond, the way one looks at a beautiful, desirable, innocent woman. He nodded while at the same time framing the girl with his fingers.
“You certainly look beautiful,” he said, closing one eye, watching her through his fingers, framed in the imaginary viewfinder of a camera. “How young you are, Lo, how young, there’s still so much you don’t know.”
“Nobody ever wrote me such nice verses.”
The man pressed the shutter of his camera. Thought it would have made a magnificent photo, a portrait of plenitude.
“No, Laura, those verses are terrible. You deserve something a lot better. You’re a real woman now, just look at you, I’ll bet there are tons of boys jumping up around you, like puppies. Though I don’t suppose they write poems as bad as mine, boys nowadays don’t write poetry, right? Besides, you only write when you’re unhappy. And you’re not unhappy, are you?”
“I’m just a silly girl,” she said with a frown. Her lower lip began to tremble. “A silly girl,” she repeated, on the verge of tears.
“What makes you say that?”
“A very silly girl,” she said again, her face in her hands.
Her shoulders trembled rhythmically. The man embraced her. Between hiccups, she told her uncle all about her amorous disenchantment with Antonio. Sitting next to him on the sofa, Laura confessed her solitude, the bitter experience of feeling used and betrayed for the first time. Laying her forehead on his chest, she said she felt very alone at home, with those parents of hers, enclosed like fish in their respective fishbowls, each gaping away alone, without paying attention to anything or anybody; she talked of her fear of failing her exams, of disappointing her father, the university professor, and her mother, who was so good, so quiet, so focused on her exotic dishes. Everything, in short, was a black block that weighed down on her chest and stopped her from breathing properly, a maze she couldn’t get out of, which is why she wrote, but she still kept feeling this black block on top of her chest and couldn’t get rid of it. Her uncle wiped her face with a handkerchief he produced from one of the multiple pockets on his photographer’s vest, dried her tears, and kissed her on the cheek, near her lip. He felt the girl’s chest shaking against his own, pumping the cleanest blood imaginable, the blood of all horses stampeding, of all thoroughbreds there have ever been, the boiling blood of a volcano, the sap of a primitive fruit tree, the tree of good and evil, a ripe substance now pushing to overflow all banks, like the systole and diastole of a desire it was no longer possible to repress, and he detected, very close to him, the scent of freshly squeezed lemons given off by his niece’s body, impregnating the fabric of her T-shirt; her gentle breath, which smelled of a mixture of pineapple juice and tobacco, issued a tender, voluptuous invitation, so he took her by the shoulders and brushed aside her hair in order to search out the bottom of her eyes and say in the voice of a radio presenter,“You mustn’t worry, I’m here to help you. Don’t be afraid.” And it seemed to him that his voice sounded a little shrill, as if he were afraid or lying, so he coughed to clear his throat and repeated, in a polished voice now, without a hint of doubt,“Don’t be afraid, please.”
Laura nodded while rubbing her eyes. She let her uncle stroke the back of her neck and pressed her cheek against his neck, just as she had dreamed so often. And as happens in certain dreams, everything was very simple, without blunders or hesitations; she just let herself go, let herself be cradled by that wise, silky voice, the touch of fingers on her neck, behind her ears, then around her shoulders, moving around the nape of her neck and her dragon tattoo, long fingers that traced her skin and now climbed up the back of her skull, pressing electric buttons concealed beneath her scalp, like acupuncture points.
“Laura . . .”
“What?” she replied.
She heard the voice repeating her name very close to her ears and felt her legs tremble a little when Óscar’s lips sought out her own, but she did not reject the advance, rather she succumbed to a desire she had only ever expressed in solitary yearnings, while stroking her sex in the bath and discovering without surprise the same shuddering between her thighs, except that now there was another body, a pair of hands, a mouth, and skin, all very different from Antonio’s bony, angled body; this was the body of a man, an energetic, comfortable shape emitting a warmth that took her in and carried her off, which is why she allowed herself to fall back slowly onto the sofa, her uncle kissing her on the neck, and she detected the scent of a sport cologne, acidic sweat, a man’s smell replacing Antonio’s, which struck her now as rancid, the smell of old ashes, a wet dog, and Óscar’s body was replacing Antonio’s, which moved away, getting smaller and smaller, coming off like the slough of a snake, from his head to his toes, slowly to begin with—she watched him stagger along with his leather bracelets, his black T-shirt, and samurai ponytail toward the end of an alley that could be the darkest bottom of his own shoes—and then more quickly, seemingly pushed by an invisible force as she advanced in the exploration of Óscar’s body, so solid, that of a grown man, and felt his strong hands grabbing her gently, molding themselves to the shape of her tiny swimmer’s breasts, then she gazed into the bottom of those eyes, so close to her they were transformed into the single eye of a Cyclops, and deep inside watched Antonio leave without moving, inert, like a straw man that has just been thrown into the current of a river.
Polanski half-opens its eyes, and outside, on the other side of the window, the figure of the man, looking slightly larger on account of his warm clothes, moves around. His actions are meant to be energetic, but all he does is move in the cold of the morning, which forces him to walk back and forth in front of the door with short steps, like a bird. He rubs his hands together on the roadside, but stops when he discovers an orange sign with a telephone number under the words “FOR SALE.” The placard bears the name of a real estate agent from the capital. The logo shows the needle-like silhouette of the Chrysler Building in New York. Somebody has gone to the trouble of using a ladder to stick the sign on one of the upstairs windows of the house. The advertisement is absurd, pointless. Who on earth could see that for-sale sign? Nobody, except for the black kites. Somebody must have put it there the day before, when he was out walking. He must call Ana and demand an explanation. She should have asked his permission before agreeing to a sign like that. He must write Call Ana re sign on a sticky note and put it on the door of the fridge.
He tests the edge of a frozen puddle with the tip of his boot. Seen from the kitchen window, it could be said he is reflecting on something, but in fact, all he’s doing is shaking; he hasn’t had breakfast, and his swollen fingers beat inside his gloves, the inside of his head is full of cold air, and it isn’t a pleasant sensation but rather an icy weariness that keeps him stuck to the puddle. He goes over his ingestion of food in the previous forty-eight hours. He imagines the chief nurse screwing up her nose, as if detecting a bad smell, when the scales confirm the excess weight of the university professor and renowned art critic who recently seems to have adopted the habit of coming to dialysis with a couple of extra pounds. He’ll have no choice but to admit that he drank too much water the night before; the pizza, Laura’s diary, the subsequent lack of tobacco—he had to calm his nerves somehow, so he drank until he was sated. But now, as he detaches himself from the puddle and walks back and forth along the pavement, he’s lugging around all that liquid, and he feels it accumulating in his fingers, and also his ankles, and eyelids. He checks his watch; it’s already after seven thirty. He raises his hand with impatience at the oncoming car, and the headlights illuminate the holes in the unpaved road in bursts. The taxi driver’s look is framed in the rearview mirror. “We’re a bit pressed for time today,” he says, and the man n
ods, a little befuddled by the blasting warmth coming from the car’s heating. On the radio, two men discuss the government’s foreign policy. The taxi driver shakes his head and clicks his tongue, leans toward the radio and insults one of the program participants. His features are framed in the rearview mirror—a pair of rural eyebrows, a frown, small eyes. The broad, red nape of his neck is half-hidden by the collar of his wool sweater. As usual, the car stops at Jeremías’s post. His figure can just be made out behind the steamed-up glass, seated next to a thermos. When he sees them, he passes the newspaper through the car window. The man says good morning and drops a coin into his chapped hand, but Jeremías simply grunts in reply, pulls his cap down over his head, and goes back to his little room in short jumps. The taxi driver traces a mocking smile in the rearview mirror. The car heads for the highway, and the gas station disappears behind them. Perhaps he should have asked Jeremías about the accident, he must know what happened. He saw him bend down next to one of the windows. He must know what became of the car’s occupants. Two? Three? How many people were traveling in the car? Perhaps in the last few hours there has been a multiple organ donation and somebody, like him, will receive a kidney, a liver, or a heart. “Jeremías gets crazier every day,” says the taxi driver, pointing to his temple.
The lights of dawn sparkle on the frosted ground. From the fallow fields emerges a mist that clouds the early morning with a suggestion of tundra. There are pairs of rooks pecking at the fields, and long puddles covered in a thin layer of ice. The sky grows light timidly, imprecisely, until the slightly polar clarity sketches the outlines of houses in the city, the white smoke of several chimneys, the first garbage trucks. There are people in the street now—they come out of their front doors, bent double against the cold; there are pedestrians waiting at bus stops and others being swallowed down by the entrance to the metro; a homeless person walled in by cardboard; and a man walking his brick-red dachshund in the park. They stop at a traffic light, and a girl walks past in front of them. He feels a sudden dizziness. He sits up to take a better look—the coat with the large collar, the medium-length hair, the beauty spot on her cheek, the student’s backpack. The vision of the girl introduces a misalignment into his perception—the gesture of a painter taking a step back and squinting to gaze at the canvas—and he is on the verge of saying “Laura.” The taxi driver turns down the radio.
“Pretty, huh?” he says, keeping his eyes on the girl, who has already reached the opposite sidewalk and is rounding the corner of a building covered in scaffolding.
“What was that?”
“The girl . . . you know what I mean,” he draws a pair of hips in the air,“a real beauty.”
“I thought it was somebody I knew.”
“All cats are gray in the dark, right?” says the taxi driver, winking in the rearview mirror.
The windows are misted up.
“It’s very hot in here,” says the man, as if talking to himself.
The taxi driver shrugs his shoulders, turns down the temperature, but turns up the radio. The presenter states that the world is immersed in fear, that’s the main driving force, fear, and nothing else, and one day we will know the true causes of international terrorism, which will be purely economic, as history clearly shows; but another voice declares that the crux of the matter resides in the impression of an immediate threat and in knowing who is creating the problem, who profits from the fear, because fear, he maintains, is not free, but just the opposite; a third voice, however, remarks that this is infamy, because fear feeds on itself, without interruption, without measure; a fourth voice attempts to refute this hypothesis, and the debate descends into an incomprehensible discussion syncopated by voices cutting each other off. The presenter appeals for calm and proceeds to encourage the listeners to phone in and express their opinions. “Because you, dear listener,” he says before going to commercial, “are what the news is really about.”
The taxi driver turns off the radio while dodging a line of cars. A local bus gets in their way, so he brakes suddenly. He honks the horn by banging on the center of the steering wheel.
The image of the girl was not a mistake, but a grimace of imagination or memory. He smiles on thinking of the face the taxi driver would have made if he’d informed him that the girl who just passed in front of them was not the silhouette of a pretty, young woman, or his lover, but a joke, nothing more, a joke of his dead daughter’s. He hasn’t managed to establish a chronological link to imbue these events with meaning but has ended up qualifying them as a private joke. They used to disconcert him, but now they put him on a state of alert.
Having read Laura’s diary after the morning news failed to send him to sleep, he took a bottle of mineral water and went up to the second floor. He wasn’t searching for anything, he just kept walking and gazing at the frieze of the walls. Everything was still as it was supposed to be, with the slightly spectral quietude of a domestic museum—the teddy bears, the schoolbooks, the parka, the red spine of the photo album. He picked it up and sat on the edge of the bed. There were the postcards Óscar had sent her from all over the world—the Brooklyn Bridge, the Twin Towers, the spectral lights of Osaka, Tlatelolco Plaza in Mexico City, a suburb in South Africa, the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu, and Ankara, and St. Petersburg. He stopped at the image of a water buffalo. This postcard had been sent from Bangkok. He took it out of the album and read the text. You see I don’t forget you. Even when I’m very far away. You’d like this country a lot. I bet you a ride on my bike this arrives in time for your birthday. Love you, Óscar. He drained his bottle of mineral water and tried to sleep. He could feel the sparrows chirping on the roof.
Perhaps it’s only right that Ana should know about the diary, should read what he himself has read. It is her daughter. He weighs up the possibility of showing it to her censored; he would only need to hide a few parts, the most insidious references, in particular the salacious evidence of Laura and Óscar’s relations. That way, Ana would be accessing the diary of a teenager, because that’s what it is, no more, no less, a text, like any other, written to express her insecurities, disappointments, trouble communicating, questions to which there is never an answer—the diary of a young girl. He wonders what would hurt Ana the most. Perhaps all he would achieve is to cause her posthumous, gratuitous pain. After all, it wasn’t addressed to her, but to him; the diary is his discovery, his secret, his joke. He tells himself he should protect Ana from this revelation. He wonders what hurts him the most, and in fact it is his own disappearance, his absence, or worse still, the references to an image that is very similar to the shadow of an anonymous observer, a neutral, floating attention that judges everything with dispassionate curiosity. That was him, a deaf presence. And that’s the most revealing thing, even more, perhaps, than the image of a morbid passion—Laura and Óscar making love in a wheat field, secretly kissing on the porch—which is something he can accept without argument, because, when it comes down to it, and this was the painful joke, he didn’t know Laura. He knew nothing about her. Though he also knew now that his daughter had been happy.
The intermittent sound of a horn brings him back to the image of the cold sidewalks. He examines his heart, but only feels a vague sadness.
“We are definitely going to be late today,” declares the taxi driver.
The traffic lights change color. The car continues down the city’s main avenue, finally gets past the traffic, and enters a tunnel that leads to a large plaza near the clinic. He pays for the journey, leaves the car, and heads for the revolving door of the medical center. He is greeted by the piped music—Raindrops keep falling on my head—and anticipates the salty taste of saline in his mouth. He changes in the cubicle and comes out in a pair of beige-colored pajamas. The room smells of bandages and iodine. From the sofa, Ángel raises his eyebrows in greeting while the ward manager leans in toward the scales. She screws up her nose. “I can’t believe that someone like you should b
ehave like a little child,” she says, while at the same time jotting down his weight in her notebook. “You’re more than four and a half pounds over today.” He stretches out his arm on the venipuncture table. Sara’s latex-gloved fingers explore his fistula indecisively, pressing down on the gaps that are still free, between his tendon and his muscle. She doesn’t tell jokes today, she is nervous. Or she seems to be, and this is not a good sign. It could be said he feels his veins shrinking under his skin. He holds his breath and counts to ten. He doesn’t close his eyes. He is just preparing himself for the worst, when the needle forces its way through skin as hard as lemon rind.
8
He should have realized it wasn’t going to be a good day at the clinic, especially when Ángel pointed in the direction of the chocolate-colored armchair somebody had placed under the window. A pigeon was delousing itself on the windowsill. It was a dirty, anxious bird, but it wasn’t the pigeon that had attracted his attention, and Ángel gestured again, this time with his jaw, at Tere’s armchair, which was still empty, slightly tilted back, like the chair at a dentist’s, next to the machine’s loose cables. He quizzed his companion with his eyes. Ángel hadn’t seen the girl in the waiting room, and certainly not at the venipuncture table, he was absolutely sure about that. A woman brought the breakfast trays as usual. They watched her movements, how she served the decaffeinated coffee, the rolls spread with butter and jam. She handed out the breakfasts without stopping at Tere’s place. This time, all Ángel did was screw up his nose. The man sipped his coffee greedily. After a while, the nurses filed out of their room. They formed a perplexed, silent group. The ward manager stepped forward and asked for their attention. She stared at the floor tiles, as if pondering the firmness of the ground under her feet. Perhaps she wasn’t sure how to talk to them and was remembering her medical training courses, though she must have confronted similar situations before. She seemed to opt for the most professional approach. She shuffled her clogs and looked up at them, but her eyes, absorbed by the tiles on the wall, seemed to fly over the top of them, attentive to some object moving behind them. Tere’s mother had phoned first thing. She had found her early that morning, on the floor, next to a broken glass, perhaps she had been thirsty, had filled a glass with water in the kitchen, and on the way back to her room, had collapsed. Her mother had tried in vain to resuscitate her and then called for help. The ambulance didn’t take long to arrive, but all the medical team could do was certify her death. Tere had died of cardiac arrest; her heart, while young, must have had some congenital condition. In the absence of conclusive proof, this was the likeliest hypothesis; this is what the nephrologists had told her. She could say that Tere hadn’t suffered, she probably hadn’t even had time to realize she was dying. She pointed toward the other nurses, they were all deeply affected, as was the medical team, which given the patient’s young age, had, from the start of her illness, followed her case with special interest. A funeral would be held in the clinic’s chapel sometime in the coming days. Her eyes stopped wandering all over the room and glazed over. They, she said, should not lose hope; when they least expected it, they could receive a call from the Transplant Coordination Center to inform them that they were the recipients of a kidney. Every month, dozens of such operations were carried out. The donation of an organ was a gift that could arrive at any moment, possibly long before they imagined, so they should be ready to receive it in the best possible of conditions. “We will all remember Tere with great affection,” she said, gazing at her team of nurses. She may have been waiting for one of them to corroborate her words. There was a silence that demanded to be broken. Ambrosio coughed loudly when the nurses left the room. The rhythmic sound of the machines evoked a group of beached dinghies. Encouraged, perhaps, by the tone the chief nurse’s words had taken on, the Jehovah’s witness suggested they pray together for the girl’s soul, but nobody seconded his proposal. Marcela’s face was contorted into an expression of mourning. Next to her,Ángel sighed. He hoped that, just as the ward manager had suggested, Tere hadn’t suffered. In the light coming from the window, her armchair resembled an old shoe; on the other side, the pigeon remained quiet, dozing on the sill.
The Plimsoll Line Page 14
