Jaime died at the start of spring. Someone who didn’t see him, or who caught sight just too late to swerve and avoid him, ran him down as he was changing a tyre at the side of the road. From the skid marks, it was thought to have been a lorry, but it could have been a bus or one of those big four-by-fours. And he was left there, lying between the tarmac and the verge for several hours, until around midnight, when a family collecting cardboard to make a few pesos discovered him and notified the police. And even though I saw him in the coffin just the other day, I have a clear picture in my mind that he was found on his back, eyes wide open, looking more drunk than dead.
I didn’t have to take care of anything. Héctor, Jaime’s brother, dealt with it all. He went to the morgue to identify the body, dropped in to the police station, took care of all the formalities for the insurance, arranged the wake and transport of the body with the funeral parlour. All very swiftly, as if it had been planned. First, a policeman who had known Jaime since childhood notified Héctor, who in turn called me at dawn, the time of day when this type of news tends to arrive. It’s terrible, he said, I can’t believe it. I didn’t know how to reply, having forgotten about the possibility of death. Not Jaime’s death or mine, or that of anyone in particular, but Death as a whole. Hello, hello, Héctor repeated and then I let out a Yes, it’s terrible, my eyes on Simón as he slept sprawled out in Jaime’s place. Then I kept still, as still as a person can be, looking without seeing, at the furniture, the high ceiling, the spiderwebs, getting nowhere with the questions about life that were filling my head.
The night of the accident, it didn’t strike me as strange that Jaime didn’t come home to eat, but for the fact that he didn’t let me know. Recently he had become addicted to his mobile phone; he used it all the time, under any pretext, to ask me whether I’d had lunch, pretending he’d forgotten something, to let me know a storm was approaching, always needlessly. In fact, on the phone he seemed like someone else – expressive, self-assured, almost a modern man. I went to bed convinced that inebriation had caught him early. An inoffensive habit that he indulged once or twice a week. At best, he would stagger home, his breath rancid, effing and blinding to no one in particular, and disappear into the woods to vomit. Other times, he would find some open piece of ground and lie back in the front seat of his pickup until he was less plastered. That’s how he described it, plastered. Once, a breakdown truck had to drag him out of a ditch. I remember the expression on his face when he got out to open the gate, equal parts shame and mud. I also remember the breakdown guys brazenly making fun of the old man.
The wake started just after eight, the day after the accident. The funeral home was just a few blocks from the Basilica of Luján, three floors of granite facade with long balconies and tinted glass. At half seven a taxi ordered by Héctor came to get us. A white car, shining white, with black lights inside and a mini-bar that seemed nothing more than a prop, not at all like a funeral car. Five minutes into the journey, Simón was asleep. It wasn’t surprising; he had skipped his siesta, running around all day with unusual energy. I made him comfortable on the seat, curled up with his head in my lap, and I abandoned myself to the scenery.
I had made this trip so many times with Jaime, coming and going, to the vet, to the shopping centre, to the railway station. The very road where the accident had taken place, more or less halfway between Open Door and Luján. By the Camel sign, Héctor had told me on the phone. And although I was looking carefully, forehead pinned to the glass, I couldn’t see anything, no marks, no bloodstains, nor the pickup, which must have already been towed away. Too late: when we were almost on top of it, I recognised the giant, muscular camel posing with a cigarette in its mouth.
At some point in the journey, I wondered whether the taxi driver, a very young, dark-haired lad, knew about us, that we were in mourning, about the tragedy. Whether he knew he had gone to pick up the wife and child of someone who had just died, that this wasn’t just any old trip. I’ll never know; we didn’t exchange a single word and the tuneful FM station he was playing at a very discreet volume allowed for either possibility.
We had to go round the houses to get there. A spring rock concert had been organised in front of the cathedral. The event was announced with overhead banners every two or three blocks: 21st September 5pm 21 Bands. We went round the perimeter of the plaza along side streets, held up in a bottleneck that was unusual for a place like this. The driver, one hand on the wheel, the other arm hanging out of the window, sighed several times in protest. The third time, he caught my eye in the rear-view mirror in search of complicity, a comment, or perhaps not, perhaps just apologising. I didn’t know what to say so I ignored him and kept my eyes fixed on the cars around us. A twenty-minute delay. In the background, the high and low notes of guitars and basses competed with car horns.
At the door of the funeral parlour, I could make out Jaime’s twin nephews from afar. Like two soldiers, more twin-like than ever, as if the occasion of their uncle’s death had forced them to emphasise their natural similarity: both dressed in grey suits, almost certainly school uniform, the same hair and fringe, truly identical. I hadn’t seen them for a long time, which must have been why they greeted me distantly, raising their hands rather than moving to kiss my cheek. Or perhaps because the situation made them uncomfortable and they hoped to go unnoticed. Too many changes of position forced Simón awake and there in front of them he opened his eyes, teary but not actually crying, looking for something around him.
That was when it first occurred to me that sooner or later I should try to find some way of telling him what had happened. I had spent the entire day attempting to organise a whole series of thoughts, past and future, relating to Jaime, to me, to the house, to life in Open Door and at no point had it entered my head that I needed to talk to Simón; the more distant and distracted he was the better. Now it was late, I had to surrender to what was coming, I would think about it tomorrow. Anyway, time and Jaime’s absence would take care of explaining better than me.
After greeting the twins, I don’t know why, perhaps intimidated by their rigid posture, I avoided the main door and entered through the garage. I moved forward with Simón in my arms, in near darkness, between a small ambulance, a quad bike and a barbecue that still contained ashes from lunchtime. Instead of retreating, which would have been the sensible thing to do, I grasped the handle of a panel door and surprised two girls painting their toenails in front of a giant television. Sorry, I began to say, and vaguely waved a finger in the air. Not so much unwilling as in a state of absolute sloth, one of the girls, shaven-headed and wearing a sleeveless top, stood on her heels and gestured to another door, next to a string of garlic bulbs hanging from a hook. Go through there and climb the stairs.
We enter another room, not as dark as the first but definitely much more frightening, with a row of coffins standing on end, leaning against the walls like resting totems. Show coffins, waiting for their time. I follow a light and we finally come out in the foyer of the funeral parlour. We appear at the foot of a wide staircase, once again face to face with the twins, who have abandoned the door and are now guarding their father, eyes swollen with exhaustion.
The sight of us unleashes Héctor’s tears. Lots of tiny tears. He embraces me, I’d like to cry too but I can’t. I’m sad, inside myself as well as by contagion, but more than that, I’m stunned. For the few seconds the embrace lasts I can smell a strong odour of mothballs. Images of Jaime and Héctor run through my head, not as I knew them, already old, but at the start of everything, when they were really brothers, five and seven years old, chasing each other, playing, fighting, the countryside always there in the background, snapshots of a childhood I imagine to have been happy.
Héctor dries his face with his cuff, recomposing himself quickly. He tells me that the wake will be on the second floor, that he’s just come from the police station, that no witnesses have come forward as yet, other than the cardboard-collecting family who found him, and that the room will be ready in fifteen minutes. He provides this information without making eye contact. Héctor’s wife, Marta, also takes part in this little conclave, and another man I’ve never seen before, white haired and smooth cheeked, who doesn’t stop nodding. The man asks how it was, what happened, and Héctor goes over the little he knows out loud, as he will continue to do for the rest of the evening. He says that the man who ran him over didn’t stop to help, that it’s hard to believe he didn’t see him, that he must have felt the impact, although perhaps he thought he had hit an animal. Marta sighs, silently indignant. He’ll go on to tell how a lawyer approached him in the police station. An arsehole, Héctor calls him, who accompanied him to the scene of the accident to take photos before they took the pickup away. What we know for sure, he concludes, is that Jaime didn’t put out the markers when he changed the tyre and that he was parked very close to the road.
The wait seems long, we’re squeezed in under the landing. As people arrive, they look at me from a distance, measuring me up, observing Simón; they must know the story, they will have heard of us, of Jaime’s new life. They’ll know that in some way I was his wife for the last four years, that the child in my arms is our son. They don’t approach, just in case. I think about Boca, the ranch hand and companion who spent so much time with Jaime. I say to myself that someone should have told him, I’m about to ask Héctor but I hold my tongue, he’s already got enough on his plate.
A boy with a piggy nose announces that the room is ready. We climb the stairs in a slow procession. The layout and wallpaper make it feel like an old house. First, a room with mirrors positioned opposite each other, to multiply the number of people, to make you feel less alone. Before it was converted into what it is now, this must have been the living and dining room. A bit further along, on either side of a wide corridor, are the bathroom and kitchen. At the back, a closed door and the room where the coffin lies.
I let Héctor and the twins approach Jaime before me. The truth is I don’t really know how to behave. I suppose I’m something like a widow and yet I’m not. When Héctor withdrew, I asked Marta to hold Simón so that I could go up. As I stepped forward, I realised I was less frightened by the idea of seeing Jaime dead than of seeing him disfigured. Héctor had given me no indication of the state in which the body had been found and I hadn’t asked. I slowed down for the last few steps, so that I would see Jaime’s body appear gradually and so lessen the shock. Not as pale as I would have expected, hands interlaced over his chest with a rosary between his fingers, jaw held up by a white handkerchief knotted round the neck, Jaime seemed, as they say, to be at peace. And for me, seeing him, no longer imagining him, had a calming effect.
I touch his forehead with the back of my hand, as if checking for fever, then his chest, and I rest my clenched fists on the cold handles of the coffin. After the initial shock, I take a step back, running my eyes over the objects decorating the room – the wreath of flowers, a standing crucifix, more flowers, in vases, bunches, some loose, two chairs made of dark wood – and I go back to observing Jaime, more carefully this time. Then I notice something perturbing.
In this new Jaime, the final Jaime, who I’ll only see this once, in addition to his stillness, the smell of alcohol, or formaldehyde, I’m not sure, I suddenly discover an oddity that bears little relation to death. Instead of his lips being sealed, as was his habit, somewhere between resignation and embarrassment, I catch sight of a small opening at the right-hand corner of his mouth, a sarcastic, sly smile, as if death had caught Jaime mocking something.
I must have been standing alone by the coffin for five minutes. From what I heard in passing, Héctor had paid extra to have a slightly superior coffin to the standard model provided by the insurance. Polished and varnished, with a bronze-plated cross. Appealing to look at and to touch. Gradually, other people began to approach, relatives, friends of the family, all unknown to me. A tiny old lady with platinum hair and sagging cheeks, a younger woman of around fifty with acne pockmarks, and two very circumspect shaven-headed men. Whether deliberately or in imitation, the four of them positioned themselves on the other side of the coffin, leaving me without protection. For a while I could feel their eyes wandering from the dead man to fix on me out of poorly disguised curiosity.
Pushing my introspection to its limit, at some point I can’t bear any more and raise my head suddenly, to greet, to make myself known, and I meet those four pairs of eyes directed at me, which look away slowly but simultaneously. I thought I felt marked out before, but this is worse. To my relief, a man in suit and tie appears and causes them to forget about me. At first he is disconcerting but he soon reveals himself to be part of the ceremony. He walks around the coffin, straightens a badly folded cloth, retreats a few steps, adjusts the stand where the wreath is and finally approaches the candelabras. He removes a spoon-like tool from his pocket and collects the wax accumulating at the base of each candle so that it doesn’t spill. He does this with great care, taking pride in his work. I suppose a candle with spilled wax would give the wrong impression, somewhere between sloppiness and indifference.
I need air, so I disappear. To reach the street, I have to go via the first floor. Unlike Jaime’s, which is more intimate, the wake on this floor is brimming. So much so that, timidly at first, gradually with more confidence, the attendees will invade our territory throughout the night, using the toilet, stealing chairs, helping themselves to coffee. They also take ownership of the staircase to sit and chat.
Out on the pavement, the night is lively. I notice many passers-by crossing the road a few metres before the funeral home. People prefer to avoid death. A blonde girl with no superstitions, ice cream in hand, comes towards me pushing a pram. She comes so close that I’m convinced she’s going to speak to me, but no, she carries on unhurriedly. I sneak a glance into the pram: she’s carrying supermarket bags. The fake baby reminds me of Simón, who I left in Marta’s care. I go back inside and no one notices my distraction; they must think I went to the toilet to cry in private. Marta and Simón are in the kitchen making little boats and planes out of paper napkins. Thanks, I say, and she replies: He’s an angel.
By one o’clock, there’s hardly anyone left. Simón is sleeping on the floor like a puppy, between a couple of women wearing too much make-up. Marta approaches Héctor, who is sitting three chairs from me. The boys are hungry, she says. Héctor springs up: Let’s go. And to me: Will you come for something to eat? First, he breaks away towards Jaime, takes a look at him and returns. I follow suit, without wanting to; I feel I’ve already said goodbye, but it’s the done thing. He’s the same as before, slightly less alive, with that stony smile that will stay with me for ever. At the very last second, there’s time for a fleeting memory of that rough man I fell in love with unintentionally and with whom I fell out of love without realising it. I can still feel him jerking about on top of me, like an animal, impotent at times, insatiable at others. A memory that belongs to me and me only, I think as I turn my back and move away.
Héctor and Marta walk in single file to the stairs; one of the twins, I’ll never be able to remember their names, turns his head before disappearing to check whether I’m following them, looking slightly put out, who knows why. I pick up Simón, who doesn’t wake in spite of all the commotion, the conversations flying around him and the noise from the floor below, which by now sounds more like a party than a wake. On the way out, I discover a little pile of ashes and cigarette stubs, swept into a corner but not yet thrown out.
When we reach the street, Héctor gestures to say he’s forgotten something. I’ll just be a minute, he says, pushing back through the tinted glass door. As they wait, the twins start to argue. One wants a hamburger, the other pasta. Honestly, boys, Marta says indignantly. An ambulance identical to the one I saw in the garage arrives at full speed and brakes sharply in front of us. From the driver’s side, a short man with a beard gets out, in a nurse’s uniform, and runs into the funeral home. I wonder whether those girls are still painting their toenails. Héctor reappears and says in a low voice to Marta and me: I went to ask them to close the coffin so that he doesn’t spend all night on show.
In a daze, or perhaps not, perhaps just to take our minds off things, Héctor chooses a pizzeria half a block from the basilica. It couldn’t have been noisier. Stragglers from the rock festival move around us: gangs of boys and girls, singing, trucks with equipment, lots of mess. The next room has table tennis and pool tables. At the back, a row of bowling lanes separated from the dining room by a transparent screen that doesn’t quite reach the roof.
Initially we sit there feeling rather uncomfortable. In fact, before we are served, Marta will suggest to Héctor more than once that we look for somewhere else. Yes, he’ll say, I didn’t realise but we’re here now. Marta shakes her head but doesn’t back down. She just protests: Honestly, Héctor.
As the minutes pass, it feels as though all the various sounds in the place are helping us fill the void. Random shouts of triumph; cursing; the sound of balls hitting the wooden floor and skittles toppling, sometimes all at once, sometimes out of time; the waiters’ orders as they pass in front of the till with loaded trays, never stopping; and snippets of conversation from the tables around us.
Héctor and the twins devour the pizza without chewing, at record speed. Marta gestures with her hand for them to slow down, but they take no notice. I’m given two slices of napolitana and one of fainá flatbread. I eat with no appetite, out of habit. The pizza is topped with mashed hard-boiled egg, which makes it difficult to chew. More than once I have to hold down a retch.
Are you still hungry? Héctor asks, standing up. He goes out to smoke, the twins go to the toilet together and take half an hour to return. I’m left alone with Marta. She stretches out her arm and offers me her palm. I hesitate, I’m not in the mood, but it would be much more difficult to refuse, so I copy her movement and put my hand in hers, which she immediately covers with her free hand. It’s as though we’re going to make a promise to each other. She looks me in the eye silently and finally says: You have so much yet to live.
Héctor returns, orders another beer and we start chatting. In reality, they talk and I listen, occasionally emitting a Yes. The topic of conversation is roads, accidents, the brutality of lorry drivers and Jaime’s carelessness. Why on earth did he stop there? protests Héctor. If he’d just pushed the truck a few metres further in, he’d still be with us. What a man, he keeps saying, and Marta pacifies him by squeezing his wrist. I come out in his defence: But he was always so careful. They look at me in unison, reprovingly, as if I spoke unknowingly, as if I’d never met the real Jaime, and once more I feel like a perfect intruder. Luckily, Simón wakes up and his ill humour makes us forget everything for a while.
In a daze, understanding little of anything, Simón puts pieces of pizza in his mouth and magically wakes up. More beer and Héctor starts ranting about the folk from the other wake. How disrespectful. Back and forth, making a terrible mess, as if they were at a football match. Marta says that everyone says goodbye to their loved ones as they see fit. The discussion grows heated, I follow fragments of it, busy ensuring that Simón doesn’t stray too far. Not so much out of fear as to keep Marta quiet, because she keeps throwing out warnings: Oh, I’m terrified he’s going to head over there, watch one of those balls doesn’t escape, she says pointing at the pool tables.
On the return journey it wants to rain but doesn’t. Just a few insignificant drops land on the umbrella, you could count them if you wanted. Not even a drizzle. Instead, the night is cooling quickly, winter’s last effort. I sit behind the twins, who are entertaining themselves with a hand game. As soon as the car pulls out, Simón falls asleep for the third time since we left home. Neither Héctor nor Marta speaks to me for the entire journey. Nor do they say much to each other, just a few short phrases; they can’t agree whether the boys should go to school the next day. Two or three times, Marta will point out the fuel needle, already in the red. There’s more than enough, Héctor will reply.
We leave the Camel sign behind; no one says anything. As if we had come to a mutual agreement, out of respect for Jaime and for fate. We take the dirt track towards the farm in the deepest darkness. Several winds get up at once, whirling the air in all directions. The car’s headlights form a long cone of light full of milling dust. I’m not wearing a jacket, nor is Simón; I never thought the cold would return.
When we finally arrive, Marta caresses my cheek over the back of the seat, one of the twins says Bye, the other stays silent. I carry Simón, who is lying almost crossways, like a pennant. I’m shivering. Héctor waits by the gate with his hand on the latch until we get out of the car. He hurries us a bit. It’s ridiculous for him to drop us so far from the house, he doesn’t even suggest the possibility of taking us right up. Nor does he justify himself. He doesn’t want to come in, to see what his dead brother left, he prefers the distance. In a sense I understand him. With one foot in the car and the other on the ground, before he gets in and shuts the door, Héctor grabs me by the arm, drawing me towards him, and says, very close to my face, his breath smelling unmistakeably of pizza and beer: You have to be strong, things will sort themselves out, you’ll see.