The Fragility of Bodies

by Sergio Olguin

  Rivero was a nasty piece of work, no doubt about it. He obviously wanted to dissemble, to pretend that he didn’t understand the question, but he couldn’t prevent his face from going through all the states of guilt: surprise, fear, confusion and finally anger. His eyes, when they met Verónica’s cool, intransigent gaze, were full of hatred.

  It was clear that the guy had something to do with Vicen’s death and that he was the one supplying the boys for the railway game. She wasn’t going to be able to prove it in this interview. It wasn’t her intention that he should incriminate himself during their conversation. But if she left him sufficiently rattled, she knew that he would make a false step. And she needed to be ready to recognize that moment when it came.

  But there was something else. Or, rather, someone else: Juan García. Verónica had arrived at the club with various aims: to find clues, to see the face of one of the men responsible for the crimes and to get a message to Juan García that, no matter how hard he tried to hide, she was going to find him. So she stood up, said goodbye as agreeably as possible and employed a gambit that she had learned as a child, from watching Columbo.

  “Ah – I’m so sorry to take up more of your time, but do you know Juan García?”

  Now these bastards know that I know; they won’t be able to carry on without looking over their shoulders, she said to herself as she left the club. And, much as she liked animal metaphors, it didn’t occur to her to think that she was a gazelle stalking two jackals.

  III

  Verónica had stopped talking to Lucio about her investigation. He didn’t tell her anything about visiting his friend at the psychiatric hospital either, much less about their conversation there. He was sorry not to be able to share these experiences with her any more. Right from the start he had felt that Verónica was somebody he could trust. And he hadn’t changed his mind about that. The interest had simply evaporated.

  Bed was still a place where they understood each other. Or, at least, a place where their bodies reinstated the communication that had been lost by words. Even pain was an element in that language in which they needed to take refuge so as not to become distant to one another.

  That night they had drunk too much. It was still early – dusk had scarcely fallen by the time Lucio arrived at Verónica’s. That week he was finishing early, but he had claimed to be working overtime so that he could go to the apartment without his wife suspecting anything. Verónica welcomed him with a bottle of cold white wine that she had already started drinking before his arrival. There were also some little cheese crackers and familiar music drifting from the computer.

  By the time they finished the bottle of wine they had taken off almost all their clothes. The cushions of the two-seater sofa had also fallen onto the floor and they were sinking into the hard base of the seat. Verónica led him to the bedroom, trying not to stumble over the cushions or knock over the glasses. Lucio collapsed onto the bed face down and Verónica threw herself on top of him. He liked feeling her as a dead weight on top of him, her breasts squashed against his back, her soft pubis on his waist. Lucio wanted to kiss her. He tried to turn over but she wouldn’t let him.

  “What’s wrong, little boy, are you scared of me?”

  He could have switched places – pushed her off and got on top of her – but he let her have her way. There was a wonderful pleasure in giving up control, letting someone else take the lead.

  Verónica placed one hand on Lucio’s crotch, caressed his testicles, reaching for the erect cock which was sticking into the mattress. Then she took her hand away and stroked around his anus. She pushed a finger into him, penetrating him. Then she did the same with another finger. Using the pressure of her groin against his ass she angled her fingers deeper into him. With her free hand she took his shoulder and made him lie on his side while she propped herself up so that she could reach over with her other hand to masturbate him slowly.

  “You like this, don’t you?” Verónica whispered in the voice of a huntress moving in for the kill. And Lucio kept as still as a hare, startled in the darkness by sudden light.

  His body was too big for Verónica, for her to do all the things she seemed to want to do. She had to stretch her arms to maintain pressure in one hand, rhythm in the other. She leaned her jaw on his arm the moment before he ejaculated. Lucio felt how she increased the pressure a little more with both hands just as he was finishing. The semen fell onto the sheet. Verónica ran her fingers over the tip of his cock, slowly extracted her fingers from his anus and hugged him. She pressed her ear against his back, like a doctor about to ask him to take a deep breath. Her hands left a damp trail on Lucio’s body.

  The music in the other room had stopped playing. Lucio’s mouth was dry. He wanted to drink. He got up from the bed.

  “Are you going?”

  “I’m thirsty.”

  He went to the living room to fetch the wine, but the bottle was empty. Verónica also stood up and went to the kitchen, returning with another bottle of white wine and a corkscrew. She gave them both to Lucio and collapsed onto one of the armchairs. Lucio poured out two glasses and passed one to her.

  “The silence is killing me. I’d better put on some music.” Verónica went over to the computer and scrolled through the songs to find the ones she wanted to hear. She was completely naked, but she moved with the elegance of someone at a social gathering who knows that she is beautiful. She could just as easily be naked as wearing a short skirt or tight jeans. She always seemed somewhat indifferent to the reactions she provoked.

  A grave voice came on, singing some melodic song. Verónica liked that slightly sad, slightly monotonous style of music.

  She went back to sit in the chair and drank from the glass. Lucio had stretched out on the two-seater, still stripped of its cushions. He felt too tired to get up and put them back in place. His face rested on the armrest and he looked at Verónica. It was getting dangerously close to the time he needed to leave. Perhaps she would want them to go back to bed, but he knew that that wasn’t an option; the next step was for him to put on his clothes and go. He tried to think of something else, even if only for a moment. He remembered what he had talked about with Malvino, the previous afternoon.

  “Do you think it’s possible to hate someone you don’t know?”

  “You mean without knowing them personally?”

  “Without having had any direct contact.”

  “Well, one can hate Hitler, or General Videla, without having to have shared anything with them.”

  “People you don’t know.”

  “If we’re talking about Martians, who may not even exist, I think the answer is no. To feel hatred, you need to feel a profound contempt for what that person does or thinks. I’d even say that the thing they do or think must directly influence our lives. That’s why I can understand the stupidity of a soccer fan who hates a supporter from another club. It’s idiotic, but there’s a kind of logic to it.”

  “You’re the only woman I know who talks about soccer.”

  Verónica drank deeply from her glass, then placed it on the coffee table. She looked at him with shining eyes, as if she enjoyed finding the weak spot in her prey so that she could choose that place to bite.

  “And what does your wife talk to you about?”

  Lucio said nothing. It was time to get dressed and leave. His body felt heavy.

  “Your wife doesn’t talk about soccer. She talks about that night’s soap opera. Your wife doesn’t listen to Mick Harvey. She emotes over Arjona. Your wife fucks like a wife and never tries out new ways to bring you pleasure.”

  He had to get out of there. Get dressed in silence and leave. But he decided to play her at her own game.

  “You’re wrong. My wife is much better than you are in bed.”

  She could have said something to insult him, or started crying or laughing, but instead she stretched out her hand, picked up the glass of wine and threw it at his face. Lucio raised his hand to try to protect himself an
d the glass shattered, cutting his cheek and his right palm. Verónica shut herself in the bathroom and shouted at him from there, ordering him out of the apartment. Lucio got dressed, took some paper napkins to clean the blood off his face and went. He had to wait in the front hall of the building until the doorman came to let him out. During those minutes he was scared that Verónica would come down, say that she was sorry and beg him to come upstairs again. Or that she would shout at him through the entry system. But Lucio left without hearing anything more from her.

  IV

  Angrily she banged down the toilet seat, which he had left up, and sat down to piss. A long stream that seemed to go on forever. She sat there for a good while, her elbows propped on her legs, her hands covering her face. She didn’t want to hear anything that was happening outside the bathroom. A few seconds earlier she had shouted:

  “Get out of here, I never want to see you again.”

  Her own voice echoed in her head and even the sound of her piss couldn’t cover it. On the other side of the door, Lucio was moving around silently. She didn’t know if the glass had hurt him much or not at all. She wanted nothing more than for him to get dressed and leave.

  She heard the apartment door close. Lucio was leaving and did even that almost noiselessly, given the circumstances. Anyone else would have slammed the door. And his consideration annoyed her even more than if he had left shouting and swearing.

  She sat there for a few minutes more until her legs began to cramp and she got cold. Coming out of the bathroom she felt dizzy, thanks to all the wine they had drunk. She thought of going to clear up the broken glass that was scattered around the living room, but she felt ill, as though she might vomit. Instead she sat down on the bed. Despite the effects of the alcohol, she couldn’t stop thinking. About Lucio, about how little he had put into the relationship, about the ease with which he left his house for hers, his wife’s cunt for hers. She should have thrown the whole wine bottle at him, not just the glass.

  If this had happened five years ago, Verónica would have got dressed, put on make-up and set off for a nightclub or some new bar frequented by lots of interesting guys. She was getting old. Her thirties seemed to have come on very quickly and she had given in too easily. That night, at any rate, she didn’t have enough energy to take a shower or even change her underwear.

  In spite of her anger, which burned in her guts, she began to fall asleep and it was a while before she noticed that her mobile was ringing. By the time she did realize, it had stopped ringing. A few seconds later it started ringing again, and this time she got up to answer. Could it be Lucio, finally having something to say for himself? She made her way towards her mobile, which was in the living room, threading her way through the broken glass. The screen read CALLER UNKNOWN, so it couldn’t be Lucio. She picked up and the voice at the other end sounded faraway and unfamiliar.

  “It’s Pedro.”

  She didn’t remember any Pedro among her acquaintances.

  “Who?”

  “Father Pedro.”

  Of course. How could she have forgotten the priest from Villa Oculta?

  “I need to speak to you,” the priest told her. The line was very bad; even so, Verónica could tell that he was worried or scared about something.

  “Go ahead – I’m listening.”

  “In person and in private – it’s very important.”

  “I can come to your church right now.”

  “No, it would be dangerous for you to come alone at this time of night.”

  So Verónica offered her own apartment as a place to meet. They arranged to convene there in just over half an hour. She glanced around the living room in its chaotic state and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, looking like the archetypal broken woman. Broken and naked. Quickly she put on her jeans, underwear, a clean T-shirt and some sneakers, then got to work clearing up the broken glass. That job took about fifteen minutes. She arranged the armchairs, picked up the bottles and glasses, cleaned the ashtrays and aired out the room. Verónica was just opening a window when the intercom buzzed. As she went downstairs to open the door it occurred to her that she hadn’t brushed her hair or washed her face. But she consoled herself with the thought that she was going to meet a priest. This wasn’t the moment to be worrying about her looks.

  The priest was waiting for her with his hands in his jacket pockets. It wasn’t cold, so this seemed more like the stance of a troubled man. She was reminded of that old Italian movie she had seen once in a cinema club: Fists in the Pocket. She kissed him on the cheek and they went upstairs together. They didn’t exchange a word until they were in the apartment and she asked him to ignore the chaos. She invited him to sit down in the armchair and asked if he would like a coffee.

  “I’d prefer something stronger, if you don’t mind.”

  So much the better; it meant that she didn’t have to focus attention on preparing a hot drink. Verónica went to the little bar and brought out a bottle of bourbon and two glasses. She sat on the two-seater sofa and poured out two double measures of whisky.

  “Do you know what the sacrament of silence is?” Father Pedro asked Verónica, who didn’t even know what a sacrament was.

  She shook her head.

  “When a priest takes confession from a penitent, he has an obligation not to tell anyone what was revealed to him as part of the confession. It can’t be discussed, even with the parishioner, outside the confessional.”

  “In no circumstances?”

  “None. Breaking the sacrament of silence would signify the automatic excommunication of the priest concerned, even if he’s a bishop, or the Pope himself.”

  The priest took a long drink of Jim Beam and Verónica did the same. Then he went on:

  “Confession is a sacrament and to violate it is to go against God’s laws.”

  Verónica began to realize that Pedro had not come to the apartment expressly to give her a theology lesson.

  “Today Vicen’s mother came to the church. And she asked to take confession. I could have refused, I could have called on another priest to fulfil the sacrament. I should have done that, because I already knew that I was prepared to undergo excommunication if necessary.”

  “Vicen’s mother told you something connected to the case?”

  “A few days after Vicen died, a man with the surname Iriarte came to the villa. He told her that he knew her son had been in an accident and that he had been killed. This man offered her and her other children somewhere to live. In El Chaco. Vicen’s mother is from there, but she didn’t want to know. Here she had work, but the prospect of owning her own home was tempting. Obviously she was suspicious. She thought that there was something odd about the offer and she didn’t immediately accept it. So, to convince her, Iriarte told her that the proposal was part of a housing plan developed by a sub-secretariat of the city government.”

  “Hang on, the alleged accident took place in Haedo, which is in Greater Buenos Aires, and they offer her a house in El Chaco. And the offer comes from a sub-secretariat of the City of Buenos Aires, which has no jurisdiction either in the province of Buenos Aires or in El Chaco.”

  “She was still unconvinced, so on top of that they offered her a cheque to cover her relocation costs. Seven thousand pesos in exchange for moving straightaway. She showed me the cheque. It was issued by the Undersecretary of Housing and Environmental Management, within the Ministry of Social Development.”

  There was another silence. Dense, viscous. One part of Verónica had calmly taken note of Pedro’s revelation. Another part, though, had been engulfed by an anguish comparable to that felt by someone present at a deathbed. Like in those movies where someone decides to give their life for the sake of truth or justice and accomplishes this with their dying breath. Verónica was watching a priest die in front of her eyes. She couldn’t be unmoved – regardless of faith or its absence – by the fact that someone who had devoted his life to an ideal should decide to relinquish it. And that this offer
ing was made in the names of both justice and her own investigation. Quietly, Verónica said, “Thank you.”

  “Faith is a gift from God. For a Christian it means more than life itself. A religious vocation is absurd and incomprehensible without faith. I have always wanted to be a holy man, but I’ve never managed it. I have sinned and repented more than once during my ministry. I know that I am a weak and sinful human, but faith has sustained me. When I felt that it was beginning to get lost or diluted in other feelings such as solidarity, empathy or support for fellow beings, I resolved not to sin again. To commit myself to a life of holiness. But I didn’t manage it. Here I am…”

  “Here you are…”

  “Getting drunk. At least I hope that it hasn’t been in vain.”

  “It won’t have been, I promise you.”

  “It’s strange. The first time I saw you, crossing Avenida Argentina, you seemed like an angel to me. Afterwards I was honest with myself and recognized that I simply found you attractive. That my attempt to neutralize that desire was another sign of my discomfort with this role that I’ve been playing.”

  Verónica poured herself another Jim Beam. Then she saw that Pedro’s glass was empty too and refilled it. She would have liked to talk, to help him with a psychoanalytic interpretation or something similar, but she felt inadequate to the task.

  “And if I desired you in the same way as any other man, I should recognize it. And if I wanted to help you achieve what you were looking for, I should do everything possible to help you achieve it. Now I don’t know who I am. But I do know what I’m not.”

  Verónica was going to say “thank you” again, but the words stuck in her throat. This was madness. But what wasn’t? She got up from the sofa as best she could, making an effort to keep her balance, and walked towards Pedro. Sitting astride him, she started to kiss his eyes, his cheeks and finally his mouth. She felt Pedro’s hands running over her back and buttocks. She couldn’t speak, nor was she sure whether this was another way to say thank you, or to push him, once and for all, into the abyss.