Eloísa reappears one night, without warning, when I’ve already started to erase her from my mind again. Determined to get Simón, who’s annoyed at everything, to go to sleep, I ignore the first knocks at the door. Their persistence eventually distracts me and forces me to my feet. Who is it, I ask, exaggerating my reluctance, certain that it’s Canetti with his melancholy vibe. It’s me, I hear that unmistakeable voice, echoing as if in a cave. I open the door and Benito’s huge head fills my entire field of vision. A long silence and finally: Someone’s looking for you. He stands watching me and says: People.
I go downstairs with Simón. The hooded boy who used to guard the entrance hasn’t been there for a few days. Change of habit. Nose to the door, I peek through the crack between the sheet metal and the wall. It’s Eloísa and seeing her again is no surprise. To some extent I was expecting her. Her cheeks are puffy, red, as if she’s been running. Also, I realise when I greet her, she smells of a fresh joint, recently smoked, her eyes narrowed and sickly. Behind her is the same car she got out of the other day when we met by chance on the corner by the zoo. The full-on glare of the streetlights makes the chassis shine. You didn’t call me, bitch, that’s the first thing she says, with the deepest frown she can muster, like a mask. I’m about to tell her the sweat rubbed her number off my hand, but there’s no point, what for? She gets there first anyway: Let’s go for a drink? I’m with Simón, I say. Eloísa raises and drops her shoulders, as if she couldn’t see anything inconvenient about that until I clarify: My son. I open the door slightly further so she can see him sitting at the bottom of the stairs, a little ball of annoyance. Ah, says Eloísa, suddenly remembering what she had buried completely. That’s a bugger. Can’t you leave him with someone? I smile to say no. Come on, she says, let’s go out for a bit, my friend will take us in the car. The proof of Eloísa’s return is that she makes me hesitate. I don’t think so, I’m going to stay here, I say and close the door.
I drag Simón by the arm and almost crash into Benito, who has been lurking in the shadows, a sentry. With each flight of stairs, I nearly stop, play for time, turn back and come up with a quick lie, say that the person who might have taken care of him went out, she’s sick, or asleep, that next week we’ll definitely meet up. But the impulse to retreat clashes with a mysterious and tenacious force that makes me carry on climbing and so we arrive at the third floor and Simón turns into the corridor towards the flat and kicks the door. The heat, the humidity, something deeper I can’t fathom has disagreed with him. I give in.
Come on, I tell Simón, who doesn’t protest, sure that he has won the battle. We go up to the fifth and ring Herbert’s doorbell, he sticks his head out rather disconcertedly. Is your mum there, I ask. Herbert glances behind him and lets us in. Sonia and Mercedes are sitting at the table, they’ve just finished eating, lethargic, their eyes duplicating the television screen. Nothing, no hello, not even indifference. The first impression I have of Mercedes confirms all the stories I’ve heard about him. He’s a sitting bull. The naked torso, the square head, bushy eyebrows and a mass of tangled hair that couldn’t be blacker. He really is frightening. For a moment, I’m invisible, just long enough for a recce of the territory. It’s an ambiguous setting: unplastered walls, pipes exposed, as are the cables and the bare concrete floors. There are numerous cardboard boxes piled up on one side and a series of very new appliances: stainless-steel kitchen, a fridge big enough for a whole community, an ultra-modern washing machine. Excuse me, I say, wishing I hadn’t come. I’m about to ad-lib: I have to buy something from the Chemist. Or no, better tell the truth: A friend I haven’t seen for ages came by. In the end, it’s neither of the two, I don’t explain a thing, I’m direct: Could Simón stay for a while, I have to go out. Like dominoes toppling, Herbert and Sonia transfer my question with a turn of the head until it reaches Mercedes, who takes a while to react. He’s devoting all his attention to tearing the last bits of flesh from a chicken leg. With the bone in his hand like a pointer, he raises his brows, directs a stiff smile at me, shakes himself like a mime artist and nods with his whole body. It’s a yes, I take it as a yes, but I still can’t tell whether he’s making fun of me slightly, whether he’s suggesting that in some way I’m going to have to pay, perhaps it’s just an odd way of saying yes, of course. You stay with me, says Herbert, and Simón immediately perks up. He doesn’t even wave goodbye.
I close the door and realise how much time must have elapsed; Eloísa has probably already left. So, with that outcome in mind, once again feeling disconcerted by the contradictory forces of a moment ago, instead of hurrying I move with increasing slowness over the distance separating me from the ground floor. I count to three before I take the next step. All the same, I think, if I go back to get Simón now they’ll think I’m mad. The best plan is to go around the block a couple of times, take about twenty minutes at least. On the pavement, I realise the red car is no longer there and that the heat is more or less the same inside and out.
I begin to walk towards the corner and two short blasts of a horn stop me by the supermarket. They’re on the other side of the street, facing the wrong way against the traffic, lying in wait. Eloísa calls me over, waving her arm through the window. Let’s go, she says, get in. Something quick nearby. Good, I say, nearby, I can’t be long.
I get in the back, the upholstery smells new. Eloísa is in the passenger seat. She twists round, hugging the backrest, and introduces me to Axel, who’s driving, the same guy as last time, I assume. Axel greets me through the rear-view mirror. For a while, until we get out and I can see him face-on, his figure is reduced to a hunched back and portions of face that enter and exit the frame: an eye, the tip of the nose, pieces of ear and cheek. Where are we going? Axel asks. Surprise us, replies Eloísa and vaguely slaps the air with the back of her hand. How did you find me, I find myself saying, just to say something, not really interested. Aaahh, she plays mysterious, hands open. I have informants, she says. I smile. For the few minutes we spend in the car without settling on a destination, we continue to exchange short, worn phrases that don’t reveal much: All good? This is mad, isn’t it? Yes. And you? You’re the same. You cut your hair, I’m going to say and Eloísa’s going to show me the cross tattooed on her neck. To help us, or so he doesn’t have to listen, Axel turns on the radio and skips nervously from one station to another until he is grabbed by the anthem of the summer. That’s what he calls it, and turns up the volume.
After many false turns in search of somewhere in the neighbourhood, Eloísa orders: Park here, I’m starving. We end up in a taxi drivers’ bar a few blocks from the building, next to a funeral parlour. Jaime again. We sit at a table next to the window. The place is a pastiche of styles. Eloísa takes me by the hand and for the third or fourth time comes back to the same: What are you up to, you daft cow? Her nails are bitten, painted black. Well, I say, I’m here. She insists, she wants me to tell her, I have no way out. I try to sum it all up in one phrase, I chew it over but can’t find the words. I got bored of the countryside, I say and she laughs. And the old man? I hesitate, three, four long seconds, as if saying it out loud: He had an accident, He was run over by a truck, He was killed on the road. The problem isn’t the novelty of death so much as the reflection it entails, the obligation to recreate the grief, to put on a sorrowful face, because not even Eloísa, who never held him in high regard, could escape the platitudes. Did you chuck him? I’m succinct: He died. And her: You’re fucking with me. She’s going to say something else, but the waiter appears and saves her. The guy, a small bald man with a squirrel-like face, questions us with his chin, Axel asks for the menu and the man looks at him as if insulted.
Eloísa returns to the subject of Jaime, she squeezes my wrist and winds up the story with a short phrase: Man, what a head-fuck, I’m sorry. Really. She shakes her head as if saying never mind. How long has it been? she asks and answers herself: It’s like three years, that’s mad, she’ll say it a hundred times. She herself has much to tell. Her parents separated, her mum went to live in Misiones and her old man stayed in the house with her and her brother. My eyes are gone, hypnotised by the silvery pearl. I’d like to see it properly, I’d have to ask her to keep her tongue still for a few seconds. She says that one day she got tired of all that horse shit and got the hell out of there. Now everything’s really good, she speaks to her old man occasionally and everything, the bastard hooked up with a girl of twenty-three who works for the council in Luján and they live in a horrible but airy little apartment. After all the mess, they sold the house, did you hear? Yes, I say, although I didn’t hear anything, but I witnessed the demolition which is more or less the same. She explains: They split the cash, fifty-fifty, and gave a little bit to me and my brother, do you remember my brother? I nod although when I try to visualise him a motorbike comes into my head.
There’s no doubt, if the Eloísa of my memory was talkative, the current version is several times more powerful: her age and the city. She barely takes a breath. As I listen to her, or at least pretend to, half of it is swallowed by sheer velocity, I take one of her cigarettes without asking, an old habit, part of the re-encounter. As in the Fénix, smoking is an effort. It’s as though Axel isn’t there; he spends the whole time entertaining himself on his phone. The waiter comes back, this time Axel keeps him there, issuing a series of commands about how he wants his burger, which gradually put the guy in a bad mood. With ham but no cheese, with tomato but no lettuce, a dribble of oil, French bread, good and crusty, mayonnaise on the side. Eloísa orders two Fernet and Cokes and a portion of chips, she decides for me and asks if I’m ok with it when the waiter has already gone. Axel returns to his mobile, Eloísa to the conversation.
From Open Door she moved to a place near La Plata, the name of which she can’t remember; she was there for a few months staying with a boy she met in a bar. Half musician, total dope-head. Until she found out that the guy took part in Umbanda rites. He was a real nutjob. She kept wandering, a long summer in Misiones, a season in Uruguay, too quiet for her, and finally she ended up in Buenos Aires. Lots of nightlife, lots of weirdos. I hooked up with a thousand guys, she says. I smile. What didn’t she do. She repeats twice: What didn’t I do. She worked at just about anything I could imagine: bars, restaurants, telephonist, a motorbike place, a service station, even as a hostess in a high-class brothel. Only a hostess. Legs, you know it? Then she spent about six months working as a promoter for a mobile-phone company in Liniers, a bunch of sharks. And she began sleeping with a forty-something photographer, a cool guy who got her work at events. Parties, presentations, stupid little things. She met Axel at a wedding, she was waitressing, tray-carrying, as she calls it, and started telling him how pissed she was. Then, hearing his name, Axel raises his eyes from the screen for the first time and nods twice in confirmation. He has a strange face, a false square, his eyes not entirely in line, the nose reddish, scaly, covered in blackheads, the mouth large, dry lips. Seeing them together, their features, the clothes they wear, their way of talking or staying quiet, it’s hard to think of two more different people. At first glance, it seems as though a kind of mutual pity must have brought them together.
The Fernet and chips force Eloísa to take a pause but she immediately picks up where she left off. She talks to me about the neighbourhood, my neighbourhood, which she knows well through a very good friend who has a second-hand-clothes shop. I’m distracted by an Uuuhhhh coming from a nearby table. Two old men sitting next to each other, drinking some kind of aperitif with soda, have started pulling at the remote control. The television is right above us on a high wall mount. It’s showing a football match and one of them clearly wants to change channels, the other resists but ends up giving in. Now the screen shows a ship sinking at sea, a group of helicopters hovering over it like flies.
ECOLOGICAL DISASTER
300 TONNES OF CRUDE OIL IN
THE PERSIAN GULF
Eloísa goes to the toilet. I’m left alone with Axel who, without letting go of the phone, pressing keys blindly with his thumb, suddenly smiles at me, but says nothing. Since he doesn’t sustain eye contact, I focus on a large, recently squeezed spot that’s perfectly equidistant between his brows, a third eye. A fine scab is forming at the edges, the still fresh blood coagulating in the centre. The slight difference in skin tone between that area and the rest of his forehead makes me suspect he is wearing some kind of make-up. I’m not sure.
I take advantage of the interlude to look around me. The thing that grabs my attention most is the cabaret-style bar with gold studs, dark wood, the deep-red cushioned edging making you want to sink an elbow into it. The drinking-den effect is continued with a row of burgundy-coloured stools and the bottles multiplied by the mirrored walls behind the counter, liqueurs, wines, whiskies, grenadine. Further along, built into the wall, there’s a grill, as large as a double bed. From a distance, I can make out a couple of chickens and a piece of steak, that’s all. A grill of that size must have functioned to its full potential at some point, or perhaps not, it could be a project that failed in the attempt. Even more disconcerting is an arrangement of vines, garlands and pineapples, somewhere between Caribbean and Amazonian, swinging above the bar. Another jungle.
So, how’s the city treating you? Axel is speaking, he surprises me. I turn to look at him at the same time as he discards his phone on the table, opening and closing his hands as if the muscles have cramped from so much tapping. Yeah, I say, it’s fine. And the zoo? It must be something spending all day there, isn’t it? Like a film. Yes, just like a film. He wants me to tell him an anecdote about animals, but everything that comes to mind involves humans, Iris in the jungle, Canetti deliberately turning to shit, Yessica and her fake tits. I invent something about a goose that tried to escape and was caught crossing the road. Axel laughs loudly, grunting like a pig, a piece of burger in his mouth.
Meanwhile, a man with no legs enters the bar, travelling on a kind of skateboard, but square, like a mobile platform. He’s wearing glasses with green lenses, like jam-jar bottoms; rather than seeing better it’s as though he doesn’t want to see at all. He stretches out his hand. He passes us and Axel pulls a face of repulsion, he clenches his fists as if he were in pain too, it’s unclear why, whether it’s the legs, the misery or the stumps. Something is torturing him. In his hurry to get rid of the poor fellow, Axel puts his hand in his trouser pocket and instead of taking out what he was looking for, he spills a load of coins on the floor, some notes too. The cripple devotes himself to collecting it all, moving with amazing dexterity; Axel makes as if to bend down but aborts the movement halfway. Perturbed, he plugs his mouth with bread, chewing as best he can, jaws full, and refuses energetically when the man gestures to hand back everything that fell. He tells him with signs to take it all, that he wants nothing more than for him to get out of his sight quickly. The process leaves Axel exhausted and sweating, fists clenched on the table, not even craving his mobile. I’ll be right back, I’m going to buy cigarettes, he says, and flees.
Eloísa takes advantage of Axel’s absence to tell me about him. He’s really quite alone, she says, confirming my intuition about how the couple got together. It’s highly likely that Axel would say the same about her. Pity for pity’s sake, that sounds about right, after everything. You have no idea of the money they have, not a clue, she continues. Axel’s parents live in Miami, they left after a kidnap attempt on his sister. Eloísa saw her once: An aberration. Axel wanted to stay because of his girlfriend, Débora, another moron. The boy handles the family’s money, but as for doing, he does nothing. Did I tell you they own a jeweller’s? They’re shit-deep in money but really stingy. Stingy, I repeat, surprised to hear Eloísa use that word. Stingy, she repeats: Tight-fisted, penny-pinching, miserly. And she continues: As you can see, he’s a real druggy. I’ve seen him out of it hundreds of times, practically dead. But I love him – pah, I don’t know if I love him; I like him and we have fun. I live at the back of the house, we see each other when we want to and when we don’t, we don’t. Seeing him return, Eloísa pretends not to notice and says in a whisper, as if it were another confidence: Can you imagine what Miami must be like?
They drop me at the door of the building. Eloísa asks me what my work schedule is like. She says she’ll drop by some day so we can go for a beer. She notes down her mobile number for me again, on a piece of paper this time. Before saying goodbye, she takes out a half-smoked joint and hands it to me. A little present. Getting back into the car she sticks her head out of the window again. Axel says goodbye too, with two short, sharp beeps. They disappear and I’m left like an idiot holding the door with my ankle so it doesn’t shut on me. I think about everything we said, everything we didn’t, I think about the past, everything that is no longer and never will be again, I think about how each of us had to devise our truth in relation to the other, a comparison of before and after. And that’s the reason for all the affectations, the smiles, the embarrassment, the surprise, the And you? This is mad, and I promise. All those words.