The Fragility of Bodies

by Sergio Olguin

  He shook his hand, then turned away. Lucio waited for a few seconds longer in the hall. He thought of Pablo Muñoz’s face, that sorrowful expression. The boy hadn’t been asking forgiveness for jumping. He was begging him to say that he had not wanted to kill himself. Now Lucio had passed the message on and he felt that there was one less burden on his soul.

  IV

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No.”

  “You’re annoyed.”

  Lucio looked at her in the mirror. Verónica was standing behind him, both of them in the bath.

  “Not at all.”

  Lucio looked again at his lip. It had stopped bleeding, but it was inflamed. He dabbed it with cold water. Verónica sat on the lid of the toilet, naked, her legs parted, like an object of artistic study. He was naked too, his hair tousled, his cheeks flushed. He washed his face. He would have liked to take a shower, but he suspected she wouldn’t like it. When had he started to notice that there were things he did that irritated her? When had he started making efforts not to annoy her? Perhaps it was that time when they had both been lying naked on the bed. He had been stroking her stomach. He liked her navel, the beginning of the mons veneris, the taut, pale skin. He had said to her:

  “I like imagining your belly pregnant. I’d like to make a baby with you so I could see your belly grow.”

  Verónica had tensed up and pushed his hand away.

  “Don’t be a cretin. Don’t say something that you’re not prepared to follow through on.”

  “I’ll follow through on anything,” he had said, not yet understanding what she was so annoyed about.

  “No. Don’t say that you’d like to see me with a pregnant belly, because it isn’t true. Don’t say that you’d like us to be partners, because that’s also not true. Don’t say anything that you don’t want to, or can’t, stand by.”

  Then she had got up and had stood behind him, putting her arms around him. Lucio liked the fact that she was as tall as him. Verónica’s hands stroked his chest.

  “Your wife is going to realize that somebody bit your lip.”

  Lucio said nothing. He went to the bedroom and started to get dressed. He couldn’t find his boxers anywhere. Eventually he found them behind the bed, under a pillow that had fallen onto the floor.

  Verónica threw herself onto the sheets, face down. Lucio contemplated the body that had, minutes before, been between his hands and felt a kind of vertigo, a sensation that sooner or later all this would end. He put on his trousers and kneeled on the bed. He wanted to caress her again, to touch her, feel her, possess her, all those things that made him feel that they were alive, they were together and that there was a quota of happiness in the world for them.

  He stroked her back, moving down to her ass and her legs. Verónica had bruises on her thighs, her buttocks and the left side under her breast. He had caused those bruises. Some were violet coloured, others reddish or yellow. Now that it was over and he was getting dressed and going away, he could touch her with this tenderness. But when they were in the throes of desire they couldn’t help but love each other harshly. They bit each other, pushed each other, gripped each other so hard their hands hurt. He had several cuts; his back was scratched. Her body was covered in bruises. And yet there were no complaints. Neither of them had asked the other to be more gentle. Lucio didn’t know what was going on in her head, but he had been surprised by his own desires. He had never had sex like that with his wife.

  Verónica didn’t look at him. She kept her eyes closed as he lowered his hand to her sex and touched her. Later he moved his fingers away. Lucio wished then that life could stay like this. That something of her could stay with him, even if only on his hands: the dampness, the smell of her body. In a few minutes, everything would be gone.

  He lay back down beside her and kissed her neck. She turned over and looked into his eyes.

  “You know that I love you, right?”

  Lucio couldn’t find the words to reply. He kissed her and, when they parted, she said:

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank you for what?”

  “For your silence.”

  V

  That Thursday he arrived home early. The boys were playing with a beach ball in their room and he joined them, rolling on the floor and fooling around with them until Mariana came in to say that she had made them maté. They went to the kitchen and spent a good half hour there, drinking maté and eating a cake Mariana’s mother had baked. As there were still a couple of hours before dinner, Lucio decided finally to fix the blinds in the boys’ room, which had been broken for a week. That meant changing various slats which had rotted and snapped. He had some spares he could use, left over from an old blind which some time ago he had refused to throw out. It made him happy that it had proved to be useful, as he had always suspected that it would. That job took more than an hour. Afterwards he started running a bath and, when there was enough water, went looking for Fabián and Patricio. Fabián had fallen asleep on the floor. Gently Lucio woke him up but, when told he had to have a bath, the little boy started to cry. He had to be promised a chocolate after dinner. He put the boys in the tub and let them enjoy a long bath time. Mariana had already put out towels and clean clothes for them both. The whole bathroom ended up wet, with the dirty clothes thrown on the floor. When they were ready, they went through to the living room. Dinner was already served up: spaghetti with braised chicken.

  While Mariana took them off to bed, Lucio cleared the table and washed the dishes and pans. He still hadn’t finished by the time she came back so she took the opportunity to go on the computer, because she needed to download some practice exercises for the fifth-grade class. Lucio never used the internet. It bored him. He had an email account which Mariana had created for him, but he never checked it. She, on the other hand, spent quite a lot of time on the computer. He preferred to watch television or listen to the radio while he got small jobs done around the house.

  In fact he was watching the television when his mobile rang. For a moment he feared that it was Verónica. An absurd fear, because she never called him; she only ever sent text messages. It was a colleague from work.

  “Plate Number 7 smashed into some kid. Malvino was in the cabin.”

  “Fucking kids.”

  “It’s a mess.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “They took him to the Central in Haedo, because he had a panic attack. Pierini and Saúl have gone over there.”

  “And the kid?”

  “He didn’t jump out of the way in time. It caught him full on.”

  He hung up, swearing. Mariana looked at him, but she didn’t need any explanations. Nor did she need Lucio to explain why he was going out: he wanted to be alone. He walked along the sidewalk, turned a corner and decided to call Verónica, although it made no sense to do that. He wasn’t calling her because he wanted to pass on information for her piece but because he needed to hear her voice, share this moment with her. If he could, he would have got on a bus and gone straight to her apartment. But he didn’t feel he could do that.

  Nor did he feel any better after the call. He had hoped that her voice would be like a balm for his pain, but it hadn’t worked that way. There he was, in the dead of night, in a lonely street, and yet he felt as though he were standing on a train track. He could hear the screams, see the boy’s face, feel the sensation of reducing a body to dust.

  VI

  Four days passed with no news of Verónica. He had not sent her any texts or called her, either. But every time he got an SMS he thought that it was from her. And eventually, one Monday morning, it was. She texted him: I need to ask you a favour.

  “I need to ask you a favour,” she repeated when he called her on the phone. “Could you go somewhere with me?”

  “Go with you?”

  “It’s really hard to explain. Actually, it’s simple.”

  “Is it hard, or simple?”

  “I need you to come with me to Lugano.
I would go alone, but I think it’s better if I go with someone. And I thought you’d be the right person.”

  They arranged to meet the following morning at the junction of Avenida Rivadavia and Avenida La Plata. She would collect him, in a white Volkswagen Gol, and drive with him to Villa Lugano. She didn’t give him any more details.

  This time she arrived punctually, at eleven o’clock in the morning. Lucio was surprised to see a baby’s car seat in the back.

  “It’s my sister’s car,” Verónica quickly explained. “It even smells of baby food.”

  “I can’t smell anything,” he said and added, looking back at the car seat, “Chicco – my children had a high chair the same brand.”

  They took the freeway towards Ezeiza and left it after a few minutes at the exit on to Calle Larrazábal. They drove down a series of streets that were unfamiliar to Lucio but which Verónica had marked on a map.

  “I’m going to give my sister a GPS for her birthday.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To visit some houses.”

  “Your family?”

  “No, no need to panic. The corner of Larrazábal and Zelarrayán is, for want of a better term, the geographical centre of the area where all the boys came from who’ve been run over on the Sarmiento line in the last five years. I have the addresses for six of the cases. I even have the address for the boy who was killed last week.”

  Verónica stopped the car at an intersection and looked around her.

  “Those boys would definitely have hung out around here. What do you think they’d be doing? Cleaning windshields? Look at those kids in smocks. Shouldn’t they be in school? Any one of them could be next, but how do we find out?”

  She started the car again and drove further into the neighbourhood.

  “Are they all from round here?” Lucio asked. “What is this? Mataderos?”

  “I think Mataderos is over to the left. This is Lugano, Villa Soldati is to my right and also on the left is the Villa 15 shanty town, better known as the Ciudad Oculta, the ‘hidden city’. Two cases come from there, the last one and one other. But today I want to look at the other four. We’ve arrived: this is our first stop.”

  Verónica parked the car and asked Lucio to wait inside. She got out and walked towards a stuccoed house with broken glass stuck along the top of the dividing wall for protection. She knocked on the metal door. Presently a woman of about seventy came out. They spoke for a few minutes then said goodbye. Verónica returned to the car.

  “Not a good start. The family moved out soon after the accident. Let’s move on.”

  Verónica drove back through the streets by which they had already come, continuing on, very slowly, through a district of high-rise blocks, as though she could find what she was looking for just by circling the area. She looked for the address and, after various wrong turns, located the right building. She got out of the car then came back a few minutes later, got back in and slammed the door. Clearly something had made her angry.

  “The people in the apartment don’t know anything. According to a neighbour, the parents and the kid lived there, but he was still pretty much a baby when they moved out. Obviously they never officially updated their domicile and the idiots in the courthouse didn’t bother to check the address.”

  She looked up the address of the third child. Ten minutes later they arrived at a block of low houses outside which rubbish had accumulated on the sidewalk. Verónica checked the number she had written down and went to the corresponding house. The door was open and she called “hello”. A girl appeared with a baby in her arms. From the car Lucio watched as Verónica talked and the girl shook her head.

  “Let’s go. Nobody knows anything here.”

  The fourth address was a run-down house partitioned into apartments. A fat, dark-skinned man was sitting in the doorway, looking rather friendless. This time Lucio offered to get out instead of her. Verónica hesitated, then agreed that they could go together.

  “Good morning,” Verónica said.

  The man must have been about forty and was sweating despite the cool weather. Or perhaps it was a layer of grease that covered him. He looked at them without smiling.

  “Does the Palmieri family live here?”

  The man looked at her as though he didn’t speak Spanish. Verónica tried again: “The Palmieri family. Carlos and Elvira Palmieri. One of the children was called Luis and he lost an arm in a train accident. Do you remember them?”

  “I remember.” He let a few seconds pass before adding: “That family doesn’t live here any more. I think they went back to Paraguay.”

  “You don’t happen to know if there’s any way I can find them? Any relatives you know of?”

  “Didn’t I just tell you that they’ve gone? I don’t know anyone from their family.”

  Verónica was about to return to the car when Lucio asked:

  “And the lad who lost his arm. Do you remember him?”

  “Of course. How could I forget?”

  “Do you know how the accident happened?”

  “That boy was always hanging around in the street. Plus…with parents like that.”

  “They never said anything to you about the accident?”

  “The mother went crazy afterwards. But then she hadn’t looked after him.”

  “And what did the boy do all day? Did he go to school?”

  “You must be joking. He never went.”

  “Did he ask for money or collect cardboard to sell?”

  “He was too slow-witted to make money. He spent all day playing soccer.”

  “Was he good at soccer?”

  “So they said. Until the poor bastard lost his arm.”

  “Did he play here, in the street?”

  “Here, all over the place. He played in a club, I think.”

  “In Deportivo Español? In Yupanqui?”

  “No, I think it was on this side of the freeway. A five-a-side club, not one with a full-sized ground.”

  “Do you know which club?”

  “Why would I know something like that?”

  They returned to the car. Verónica sat and looked at Lucio with eyes wide open. Then she kissed him on the mouth. The fat man, still watching them, would have had no idea why.

  VII

  That Saturday they had played against the maintenance team from Moreno. One of those games that it would have been better to miss. The opposition seemed to think they were playing in a World Cup final, the way they acted. Worse still, a few of them had been wearing proper soccer boots and one of them had raked his soles down Lucio’s calf. He didn’t break it, thank God, but those cuts would take time to heal.

  Verónica came across his injured leg after they had sex. She brought her face close to the wounds and studied them with fascination, as though contemplating precious jewels. She placed a finger on one of them. Lucio moved his leg away.

  “Don’t be a baby,” she said, looking at him.

  Lucio said nothing, but he moved his leg back. She stroked it, circling each of the wounds. They were the shape of rubies. Again, she placed a fingertip on the one that was still raw. She barely touched it. It was such a light caress that she seemed barely to be touching Lucio’s leg at all. Very gently, she pressed it. Lucio felt a burning sensation.

  Lucio smiled at her and she must have taken that as an invitation to press harder. She pushed her finger into the wound until she felt Lucio trembling. It was too much for him and she drew back a little. Now she looked at her finger, with his blood on it. She licked her finger and then sucked the trickle of blood that had started to run down Lucio’s calf. Verónica dug her long nails into him, near his knee. Lucio moved to touch her nipple and she smacked his hand away, while still sucking his leg. That slap surprised him; she should watch herself. He pulled her hair, hard, in a quick motion. Verónica screamed. In that moment Lucio manoeuvred himself beside her and tried to lie on top of her back, but she quickly turned over, so that she was face up. Lucio
grabbed her wrists and held them with one hand. One strong, big hand. Hers were like two trapped swallows. It was clear that he was hurting her, but she didn’t complain. Lucio beat his hips against her pelvis and still she said nothing. Each time he thrust harder against her, as roughly as he could, his body going in and out of her body.

  Verónica looked straight into his eyes.

  “That’s it, murderer, fuck me like that.”

  He thrust into her even harder, while the word murderer covered him like sticky saliva. He came, and didn’t collapse onto her but rolled over to lie beside her. Verónica looked at him with an indecipherable smile.

  10  Clean

  I

  It was a small gripe but one that he couldn’t get out of his head. Who should name a soft toy – the person giving it or the person who receives it? Because it’s one thing to give an impersonal, average, any old toy, and it’s another thing entirely to give a toy with personality. He decided to baptize it. It was a furry dog with its tongue hanging out. Bushy struck him as a good name.

  Rafael was going to meet Martina in the square that morning. His daughter would come with her grandmother and they would spend some time together. Rafael was feeling happy because he had got his wages from the club. He would be able to pay for the room he was renting, buy a present for Martina and even get himself a pay-as-you-go phone. He put twenty pesos on it and wrote the number down on a piece of paper to give to his mother. So that she would have it, but also so that she could pass it on to Andrea. He wanted to talk to his ex-wife.

  For the first time in a long while, he had shaved. He had got rid of the beard that had been with him all those years. Now, looking at his clean-shaven reflection in the mirror, he saw himself as he was ten years ago, barely out of adolescence, when he had just finished secondary education at night school and dreamed of studying art. Back then he had imagined that, with time, he could become a sculptor like Henry Moore, famous and garlanded. A decade later he was merely a survivor. It could have been worse.

  He had long hair. He put it in a ponytail, making his face look even fresher, his forehead broad and his small brown eyes (which looked fearful, to his dismay) more visible. He had always had that rather timid expression, although he was not, in fact, timid. His expression confused people. It wasn’t one of fear, but indifference, rejection, incomprehension. Anything but fear. He stroked his cheek. His skin felt smooth. He liked seeing himself once again as that adolescent who had got lost so many years before. As if he had skipped those years of hell to reappear now.