Rage

by Sergio Bizzio

  "Oh no..."

  "The old fellow strung me a line of legal terms. I can still feel the icy sweat running down my spine, as I felt then, I promise you. That's how I felt with him, believe me. Not with you. With you it was different..."

  "Why did you tell him all this?"

  "Because I pay him, obviously!"

  "That's mad..."

  "Don't pursue the point, it's not taking us anywhere. And I can guarantee that this year I'm going back to London in far worse shape than last year. Since I've been here, I've had no shut-eye at all... Listen Rosa, I don't want to hassle you, I don't want you to believe I'm telling you all this to put pressure on you in order to make you do anything at all you don't want. It's just that you made me so happy when..."

  "Don't cry..."

  "OK. Let's forget about it. It's not your fault. My behavioural problems, my sudden rages, my nightmares... what do you have to do with any of all that? It was my fault to let myself go along with it. I've been an idiot..."

  "Esteban..."

  "I'm leaving. We'll see each other again next year. I really hope I'll have forgotten all about you by then..."

  "Where are your mum and dad?"

  "Packing the cases..."

  "Have the Senores come home?"

  "My grandparents?"

  "Yes."

  "No, they're still not back."

  "We'll have to be really quick."

  "Whatever you say, my love."

  "But promise me something first. When you return next year, we'll move on from all this."

  "I promise."

  "Swear to me, by God."

  "Come over to me, and stop right here..."

  At that point, Maria heard the voices of the younger children approaching, and scarcely had time to conceal himself. His heart was pounding heavily, with what sounded like an echo, so it seemed as if he had two hearts rather than one.

  The children came running down the corridor. They were uttering hysterical shrieks. At once Esteban emerged from the room, adjusting his belt: he looked pale and scared. The children swept him along ahead of them. They didn't seem surprised at having bumped into their big brother so suddenly; instead they were anxious to free themselves from him and carry on zooming around. But Esteban grabbed them with one arm and shook them violently. He was on the point of ordering them to leave immediately when Ricardo unexpectedly appeared. He came along roaring like a beast, with his hands extended like paws and a monstrous expression on his face.

  Esteban saw him and smiled.

  "I caught them!" he said, feigning he was joining in.

  Ricardo shrugged his shoulders and let his arms fall to his sides.

  "What on earth are you doing up here?" he asked.

  "I'm allowed to take a turn about the house?" replied Esteban.

  Ricardo considered for a moment.

  "Come on you lot, the game is over," he said slowly. "We're going."

  "Already?" asked Esteban.

  "Yes, already," his father told him.

  It was an order.

  Esteban joined his brother and sister in an ill-tempered huff, with an expression of a man sorely interruptus on his face.

  Ricardo tracked them with his eyes as the three of them passed him by, heading for the staircase. Then he followed them down, with little tight steps, like an animal herding its young.

  19

  "Rosa, it's me..."

  "Ah, Maria..."

  "All well?"

  "How do I know..."

  "What's up?"

  "Just about everything..."

  "Tell me about it..."

  "No, leave it out..."

  "Come on, tell me, my love, don't be an idiot! What happened to you?"

  "Where are you?"

  "Don't start over with that..."

  "The Senores' children were staying here with their own kids, I'm not sure if I told you the last time we spoke, but..." Rosa interrupted herself.

  "But?..."

  "Nothing, that's all. I've no idea what I was going to tell you..."

  "Was there some problem?"

  "Who with?"

  "With them? Or with one or another of them, I don't know..."

  "No..."

  "From the way you put it, it seemed as if there was. You're not going to tell me that one of them made a pass at you?" persisted Maria. Rosa changed the subject.

  "Do you know what I wanted to tell you? That the other day I was outside the house and all of a sudden I turned round and... you won't believe this, you'll think I've gone crazy... it seemed to me there was someone upstairs, in one of the rooms, on the top floor, a person..."

  "So what?" asked Maria after a pause. "No doubt it was somebody from the house..."

  "Well yes, possibly," said Rosa, suddenly deflated. "I went straight upstairs but I couldn't find anyone at all... There was a rat there, though, you know? Yuck - and I've gone and forgotten to put some rat poison down."

  "You'd put poison down to catch a rat?"

  "The Senora told me to. Seems fair enough. If I spotted one, it can only be because there are more. And that's the first time I've ever seen one. When I first came to work here, I thought the place would be full of mice, but apparently not. That's the first time I've ever seen one. No, that's a lie, there was one other occasion. But it was a really long time ago... Maria, why don't you come over here? Where on earth are you?"

  This time it was Maria who changed the subject.

  "And the fat guy you told me was pursuing you last time we spoke?" he enquired.

  Once more Rosa switched the topic of conversation:

  "Oh you've no idea: last time the phone kept being engaged and I went upstairs to see if I'd replaced the receiver properly, and when I touched it I found it was all warm! Or tepid, as if someone had just been using it... As if someone had been using it right up until the time I got there..."

  Maria felt gooseflesh prickle his skin. He glanced rapidly around him, looking for a cloth or a napkin he could use to hold the earpiece from now on, by way of forestalling Rosa's assumptions, should it cross her mind that it could have been him using the phone, and that she should go upstairs and check whether it was still warm or not. But there was nothing lying around he could use to wrap the receiver in. The house seemed as stripped bare as he was. For the first time since he'd been living there, he observed that the principal materials used to build the villa were marble, wood and metal. The only fibres in sight were in the carpets and curtains. Exactly the opposite of his own home, where there were rags and scraps of fabric lying all over the place...

  He was left no option but to hold the receiver between two fingers, his index finger and thumb, as if the phone were suddenly on fire or had changed into an object of disgust.

  "Aren't you being ever so slightly paranoid?"

  "Yes, it's possible... I don't know, it seemed to me..."

  "It's so incredibly hot, if you think about it..."

  "Only not here. Here the heat only comes with the autumn. Do you know that out to sea... I read it the other day in Selections... do you know why the sea is cold by day and warm at night?"

  "Why?"

  "Because the sun warms it up during the day. Then it gets late. The sun stays there all day warming and warming it up, and you get to feel the benefit at night. Because at night the same thing happens. At night the water cools down little by little, and you can feel it's properly cold by the next day."

  "Have you ever been to the coast at Mar del Plata? It's incredible that I've never even asked you that before..."

  "No. And you? I've never asked you about it either..."

  "Yes, I went there once, quite a while ago. It's really pretty there."

  "I guess you've been and taken a photo with those two big polar bears you see on the way into the resort..."

  "They're lions. Sea lions. No, I never took a picture, I didn't have a camera. It was because I didn't go there on my holidays: I went there to work. We built a skyscraper over thirty stor
eys high, thirty-five maybe, I can't remember now. A real monster. God it was hot! When you looked down from on top, it was like being on top of an anthill!"

  "And on Sundays? Did you also work on Sundays?"

  "No, on Sundays I actually got to go to the resort. Once you went down into it, it didn't seem like such an anthill. You got used to it."

  "And was I right or wrong, about when the water got cold?"

  "Sometimes it did. One Sunday it was, another not so much. Do you know who I saw there one day?"

  "Was it Cristian Castro?"

  "No, unfortunately. It was Juan Leyrado. He wore a little beret and sunglasses, and he had a belly, bulging eyes, a T-shirt, I don't know what else. He looked like a Martian, but I still recognized him. And another time I saw Adolfo Bioy Casares, I don't know if you're familiar with him..."

  "No...,,

  "He's a writer. How strange you not knowing who he is: he's a very famous author. I've seen him in a heap of photos."

  "I didn't realize..."

  "That's a pity. You see someone like that and you recognize a gentleman, a dandy, a real senor. I mean it seriously, he's a proper intellectual. Now, if I'm not mistaken, he's dead... But on that occasion he was there, sitting by a canvas windbreak, watching the people go by, dressed to the nines, and with a hat, you ought to have seen it. Even at a hundred yards, he looked something else. And guess what - I pass by and I take a look at him, and the guy takes a look back at me, then sweeps off his hat and greets me!"

  "Did he know you?"

  "No of course not, how could he? Don't be ridiculous. But he looked at me and tipped his hat at me, I swear to God. And from that very moment I loved him. I don't usually like to speak in such terms, but yes: I loved him. And then I was left there just thinking... Don't you think that the government will have to make itself responsible for writers and for their children's future? What I say is - what would it cost the government to put half a million pesos in the bank for its artists, so they could write away quietly, without worrying about the future? What's half a million to the government? Nothing, no more than loose change. I did the sums. The State gives them some spare cash, and they deliver a book. What do you think?"

  "What do I know about it? We're here breaking our backs all day long too..."

  "But that's not the same, my darling: we're the working class."

  "Ah well, all the more reason, then. Why would the government be about to award money to artists so they can dance the night away on a stage, and not give us - the workers - anything at all, having to dance to their tune morning, noon and night. On top of which, nobody even thinks of applauding us!"

  "Rosa, I don't feel like an argument..."

  Silence.

  "One day I'd love to take you to the Mar del Plata..." said Maria.

  Another silence.

  "Hello?" asked Maria.

  "Where are you?"

  "You've already asked me that a thousand times over, Rosa. And I've already told you I can't let you know. You'll just have to get used to the idea that I am where I am... that I love you just as much as ever... and... well, you know how things are."

  "No. That's just it, I don't."

  "Tell me about the big guy. Who is he?"

  "No one. It doesn't matter. That's enough."

  "Are you annoyed with me?"

  "No."

  "It sounds to me as if you are."

  "Are you in prison?"

  "No."

  "I can't believe what you're putting me through... and I'm getting really tired of it."

  "Don't say that, my darling!"

  "But Jose Maria, what do you want me to say to you, if you won't tell me anything?"

  "Don't call me Jose Maria: it sounds as if you don't know who I am. In any case, you aren't offering me any explanations either..."

  "What am I not offering you any explanations about?"

  "I asked you about the fat guy - and nothing. You tell me absolutely nothing. Who is he?"

  "You come and visit me here, and I'll tell you."

  "You know, you're a really good negotiator! You should be a lawyer, you should."

  Silence.

  "Withdraw what you said about being tired of me."

  "I never said that I was tired of you. You misheard me. I told you I'm beginning to tire of this whole novel you're spinning me."

  "Me too. Would you prefer it if we hung up?"

  "You want to hang up?"

  "I asked you first..."

  "If you want to hang up, then do so," said Rosa after a pause.

  And after another pause, Maria hung up, offended.

  20

  He didn't call her again until the end of the summer. Throughout those months he lived like a recluse (which is really saying something, referring to someone as reclusive as he), in a miniaturized version of a world of normal activities. Gymnastic exercises, reading books and, best of all, his nocturnal excursions in search of food were still his major pastimes: he suspended his walks, stopped taking an interest in movements around the house, avoided listening in on the Blinders' conversations and concentrated all his efforts on not knowing anything about Rosa's life, just as if he wanted to forget all about her.

  He was wounded. The image he had in his head of Alvaro raping her tortured him... The fact that Esteban was on the point of making out with her (probably for the second time), also that the "big guy" or the "fat man" was still calling her and presumably meeting up with her on the street pained him, but he was most of all hurt by the tone in which Rosa had addressed him during their last conversation, a dry tone that deliberately excluded him.

  Why had she spoken to him in that manner?

  Whereas it was true he never told her where he was, it was also true that she had her suspicions that he was a prisoner, when he kept calling and swearing his love for her. Did his voice and his vows not affect her, were they stripped of all meaning by the simple lack of his presence? How come she could fall for Cristian Castro without ever having met him, and be unable to feel the same for him? He was pretty sure that if Cristian Castro suddenly appeared and told her: "Stay faithful to me for the next twenty years, and I'll come and collect you when my career is over," she would have been absolutely true to him.

  He couldn't exactly ask her direct, precise questions; nor had she ever offered any sign of confiding the secrets of her private life in him. In one sense, she was deceiving him. She said she was in love with him, but she hadn't said a single word about Alvaro raping her, or about Esteban's seduction, even about the "big guy" and his intentions. On the contrary: she was always avoiding them and pushing them aside. Were he really a prisoner, as she assumed, was that sufficient cause, in no more than a couple of months, for her to entertain at least three suitors, including one rapist?

  It pained him to be unable to say that he was living with her...

  Finally, one afternoon, he realized what that tone was in Rosa's voice, which had so offended him. Rosa addressed him like that because she had grown used to those mysterious little chats with him, not because she either didn't desire or didn't care for them. But then, just as he was disposed to forgive her and call her up again, he looked out of the first-floor window and saw Rosa downstairs with Israel.

  He felt such intense loathing as he recognized the man, and not because he was wearing one of his hideous rugby shirts. Maria had forced himself to believe it wasn't actually Israel, but some other man. The shirt, it had to be said, made his hackles rise and obliged him to confront reality: Israel, his enemy, the provocative idiot who aeons ago had hit him in front of Rosa, this was the "fat guy", the "big boy". His attitude - the attitude of the two of them - stopped there in the doorway to the tradesmen's entrance, left no room for doubt: romance was in the air. The smiles, the flirtatious manner in which looks were raised or dropped shyly downwards...

  Maria ground his teeth and his eyes filled with tears.

  Israel gave Rosa a kiss on her cheek and started to move off, still saying somethi
ng to her, no doubt "I'll call you" or "let's talk about it later", that would fit the gesture he was makingwith his hand, with his little finger and thumb spread over his face. Rosa nodded. Then she closed and locked the door, and walked back a few yards, staring thoughtfully at the ground. Maria wanted to believe that Rosa was pondering whether what she was doing was the right thing... Rosa must have decided that it was, since a smile suddenly lit up her face, and she ran the remaining distance to the kitchen skipping like a teenager.

  It was horrible, the worst possible betrayal. Now, just when he had come to understand everything, he could believe none of it. He decided to disappear, disappear into the interior of his own disappearance, before he met Rosa. He didn't hate her. But he could never forgive her the relationship with Israel. From that moment on, he would really and truly lock himself away. He wished to know nothing more about her.

  A few days earlier, Rosa had scattered rat poison throughout the attic rooms. It was in cubic granules, like large grains of rock salt, laid out in little mounds in every corner. He had gathered them all up and scattered them in the toilet grating a few days later, to give the impression that the rat had eaten them. During the days he lived with the poison in his room, he had never noticed its smell. Not a single grain of poison remained in sight, but now its smell pervaded everywhere.

  21

  His isolation was almost complete. In the ground-floor living room there was a stereo system with a radio, but he obviously couldn't switch it on. The Walkman, lacking headphones, was of no use to him, and the Blinders didn't subscribe to a daily newspaper. The only publication which arrived regularly was Selections from the Reader's Digest, which on one occasion he had leafed through in the Blinders' bedroom without any of what he read catching his attention.

  He knew who was president because he'd heard his name used, but this was now so long ago he was unsure whether he was still in power. There were three television sets in the house: one in the ground-floor living room; another in Senora Blinder's bedroom; and the third in Rosa's room. Senor Blinder always switched on the living-room television, and the only thing he watched were Argentine and European football matches. Senora Blinder watched films in her bedroom, and Rosa watched soaps and all kinds of celebrity-gossip programmes, but he had never felt secure watching television behind closed doors, because the sound would have prevented him hearing whether Rosa or Senora Blinder had left the building. That meant the only news he had heard from the outside world was that emanating from the livingroom television set.