Grey day, with warm, fleeting showers, like rehearsals for a storm. Something of a relief amid such oppression. The zoo is almost empty, only a handful of people feel like trailing round with a raincoat or umbrella – defeated or desperate mothers, tourists whose remaining days are numbered. I stay at the back of the reptile house drinking maté with Esteban; if someone appears I intercept them on the path to ask for their ticket. Yessica had to go to cover someone in the children’s play area. Esteban tells me about the flat he’s renovating so that he can go and live with his girlfriend. He divorced a year ago, his daughters stayed with their mother. It was for the best, he says, so that things didn’t end too badly. He talks to me about sprung floors, about low units with worktops and sliding doors, for which he’s already paid a deposit, the electric grill he’s thinking of installing on the balcony, airtight PVC vents. As I listen to his monotonous, forced voice describing the spaces of his new house like the Stations of the Cross, living room, kitchen, utility room, I move my head rhythmically at intervals of six, seven seconds, so that he feels he’s being listened to, so that he doesn’t lose the thread, to justify my presence. He says that from the balcony you can see the tower in Parque de la Ciudad. Know where I mean? The train passes right in front, but since it’s on the thirteenth floor you barely notice. He tells me a neighbour says it’s just the occasional rumble and he gestures with his hands as if strangling an imaginary victim. I smile without understanding. I like the sound of trains, it’s like life … isn’t it? He answers alone, convincing himself: And you can get used to anything. He’s quite right about that, although I don’t know whether it’s more a case of everyone getting used to whatever comes their way, which isn’t quite the same thing. I keep the comment to myself, it doesn’t contribute much. The good thing is that they can’t build anything to spoil my view, it’s state land. It really gets the sun, he says in a fit of optimism, his arms open as if about to hug me but without following the gesture through. Now he’s drinking maté. He sucks the straw and, with a final smack of the lips, he informs me: Come March, it will be exactly twenty years until I pay off the mortgage, fixed payments with fairly reasonable interest. The sprung floor, the futon, the slat blinds, the girls’ room, the train tracks and the neighbour, the loan signed in the notary’s office, the new girlfriend and the ex-wife, in my mind all these things accumulate in the three rooms, which I imagine to be sad despite all the sunlight. Esteban smiles, he doesn’t stop smiling, he wants to be happy again. And from the way he looks at me, stretching his eyelids wide, he’s waiting for my approval, a word of encouragement I don’t manage to utter. Luckily, three successive beeps come from my mobile, arriving just in time to rescue me.
Message from Eloísa: By myslf, y dont u cum over? Excuse me, I say in order to move away from Esteban. Halfway between the tortoises and the exit, I stand for a while contemplating the boa constrictor, which seems to be dreaming with its eyes open. I’m at work, I finally write. Eloísa again: make something up dont be such a spoilsport. A diminutive Chinese couple trot up to me under a cape the shape of a bat. I check their tickets, they look at each other, they smile at me. Opposite, at the food stand, a typical family, father, mother, boy, girl, are waiting under the awning for the rain to stop, each with an ice cream in their hands. The distance and the curtain of water won’t allow me to see whether all four ice creams are the same.
It’s exactly a month today since I started work. I’ve never missed it, I’ve never arrived late, I’ve never objected to any task, even mopping the aisles of the reptile house one day when the cleaning staff was on strike. I think of a plausible excuse to escape: feeling unwell, toothache, an urgent matter. I can say that Simón has a fever, that’s believable, Esteban witnessed my phone beeping. Better to say I’m feeling dizzy, it’s vague yet convincing, you never know what it might be a sign of. I leave it fifteen minutes, a reasonable time for the symptoms to appear. Eloísa doesn’t persist with the messages. I suppose I have to speak to Esteban but I’m not sure, perhaps I need to see someone else, a supervisor, head of personnel. Yessica appears, back from the play area and in a state of pure ill humour. There are girls who shouldn’t be allowed to breed, she says. They should have their uteruses forcibly removed. I tell her I’m not feeling well. She raises her brows distrustfully, hand on the walkie-talkie, she avoids looking me in the eye. She exposes her gums like an angry mare. She must sense my escape plan and is objecting in advance. It takes me a while to find Esteban, before I recognise his voice on the other side of the wall. I go round and see him chatting to the polar-bear keeper, still the same subject, his only subject. This time it’s the transparent screen he’s thinking of putting in the shower. Think it’ll be expensive? he finishes saying as I interrupt the conversation, craning my neck forward with my hand raised. Is something wrong? Esteban asks. Unintentionally, I come out with a voice that is subdued, an invalid’s voice. No, it’s just that I don’t feel very well. And he, with an unworried gesture, almost affectionate, touches my shoulder without it quite being a caress and tells me to go to the sickbay. Go and see if they’ll give you something. There’s nothing for it but to do as he says. I repeat Esteban’s words in front of Yessica: I’m going to see if they’ll give me something. I don’t give her time to answer, I leave her chewing on her foul mood.
The sickbay is attached to the office where I had my first interview. The idea of bumping into the man from human resources isn’t a pleasant one. I only saw him the once but every time I remember his oily face, spiky hair and dark-circled eyes like a goblin’s, my repulsion grows. He seemed a poisonous type. As I approach, I slow down, I think several times about turning round, disappearing for a short wander and then going back to my post. I can say my dizziness passed on the way or that they gave me something and that’s that.
I knock on the sickbay door, once, nothing, second time too, the third time it opens. I’m received by a tiny woman in a white apron who can’t be more than five feet tall, wet hair, long-suffering eyes and round glasses. It’s hard to tell whether she got caught in the rain or whether she’s just had a shower and hasn’t dried herself properly. From the way she picks up the pen, but mainly from the way she drums her fingertips on the desk, I can tell straight away that she’s not going to be friendly. I’m listening, she says after asking my name and ID number. I’m feeling dizzy, a bad headache, I invent. Since when? A few hours, I say. Anything else? Fever? Cough? Muscle pain? I shake my head. Is your vision cloudy? A little, I venture. She wants to know whether I’m taking any medication, antibiotics, antihistamines, sedatives. Nothing. She asks for my arm to take my blood pressure. She inflates and deflates it in silence and without raising her eyes from her notebook says: It’s fine, bottom number’s a bit high.
Do you think you might be pregnant? Impossible, I reply and for the first time she meets my eye. A sarcastic look, I don’t understand why. Then she starts writing and remains silent for a couple of minutes. She doesn’t examine me, it’s all just words, she doesn’t use the stethoscope on the desk, nor does she take my temperature. She drops the pen, producing a metallic clatter, and speaks again: Whatever you want. I can give you something for the headache, or I’ll write an order for you to go and have some tests. It’s your body, that’s what she says, and for the second and final time she shows me that pair of bloodshot grey eyes behind the lenses.
I leave the sickbay with an order for the laboratory. I try to decipher it under the drizzle: full haemogram, haematocrit, cholesterol and urine. And on a separate sheet, HIV: While we’re at it, so you can forget about it, that’s what she said. I raise my gaze and find myself looking at a bronze statue. I bend down to read the plaque: Eduardo Holmberg. Holmberg again. In a suit and hat, between an elephant and a dwarf giraffe, a monkey on his shoulder and a scorpion on his arm.
At the entrance to the reptile house, Esteban and Yessica are waiting for me. She sent me to get some tests, I say, holding up the papers. Now? interrupts Yessica, who has definitely discovered my ruse. Go, says Esteban. Take care and let me know if there’s anything I can do. Yessica turns into fifty-something kilos of hatred.
When I’m out on the street, I text Eloísa. On my way, give me the address. The reply comes in five seconds, as if she’s doing nothing but sending text messages. To find Axel’s house, I get my bearings from one of the stallholders at the zoo door, the one with the stuffed toys. He doesn’t send me on a direct route at all. If you don’t want a lot of traipsing you have to take the subway and a bus or bus then subway. Since it’s stopped raining, I decide to do the last stretch on foot.
Where Avenida de los Incas ends or begins, I cross under a bridge and walk uphill, skirting a small plaza stippled with young jacarandas. As I approach, I try to guess which will be Axel’s house. Is it the chalet with the palm tree out front, the one with the bare brickwork, a white one with creeper-covered balconies, or the one concealed behind a very tall fence, as high as a man standing on another man’s shoulders? Right enough, it’s the one that’s hidden from view, the grounds must occupy a quarter of the block. Before ringing the bell, I notice the two signs next to the entrance. The first says: Beware of the dogs. The other one is in English:
DON’T EVEN THINK OF PARKING HERE
Eloísa’s voice rings out from the future, robotised. There’s no Who is it? Come in, she says, through the garage. And the railing slides back on its own. First, a garden with curved beds, grass shorn to the ground and a path of paving slabs leading to the garage. To reach Eloísa, who is waiting for me on the threshold of a small, half-open door, I have to go round four cars: a pickup with tinted windows, a silver convertible, a jeep and a vintage car. Further along are three bicycles hanging from a rail and a red motorbike, one of those big ones. Eloísa embraces me and kisses me on both cheeks, as if we were meeting again after many years. We climb a spiral staircase that leads to a large kitchen, immense, like a train carriage, ending in a large window overlooking the park. A couple of pines, a magnolia tree and, at the back, a covered barbecue area with a straw roof. Finally, says Eloísa. It was an effort but you came, was it difficult? I shrug. I thought you’d got lost, she continues. No, I say and I’m about to relate the sequence in the sickbay but I check myself in time.
I was going to mix a Fernet, you want one? Each of us with a glass in our hands, we leave the kitchen and settle in the everyday dining room, too luxurious to be for every day. Each wall has its picture: a mappa mundi with cheeses instead of countries, a temple with a golden cupola and a field of sunflowers. In the middle of the table there’s a dish of fruits made of rubber or wax, I can’t tell which. I grab an apple, I squeeze it slightly and bring it to my nose as if I want to smell its aroma, Eloísa laughs. She laughs at me.
We spend a long time chatting about everything and nothing. Actually it’s she who talks, I listen and enjoy myself: a television programme she watches every afternoon, where couples argue live on air, the trips she’d like to make, a spot on her neck that won’t stop oozing pus, her constant horniness, that’s how she puts it, from when she gets up until she goes to bed, and once again, Jaime’s death. How did it happen. Was I sad, did I love him. Did he leave me any cash. I tell her about the accident next to the Camel sign. Yes, I totally remember. I don’t say anything about the eviction, I make up a story about the house being sold and me receiving a part. She insists: Tell me the truth, were you in love? Yes, I say, and her response: I don’t believe you.
Come on, she says to me presently, let’s go and see Axel, he’ll want to say hello. I stand up and follow her, thinking that she told me she was by herself. We pass the dining room, I brush the back of my hand along the edge of the table, glass, marble and gold edging, I fleetingly count a dozen chairs. Before we advance, Eloísa points out some towelling booties, like flat slippers, for me to slide across the parquet. Over the table hangs an enormous crystal spider. We cross the living room in a semi-darkness that suggests an uninhabited house. I can only see outlines, a horseshoe armchair fit for a small crowd, a coffee table with a ball of smoked glass in the centre, the rest, the ornaments, the pictures, the details, escape me. A few lines of light are just managing to defeat the lowered blinds.
Eloísa guides me by the hand to a door on a different level. She opens it without knocking, Axel jumps and almost drops the headset he’s wearing, earphones and microphone in one, but he has quick reflexes and manages to rescue it in time. On the computer screen I can see the face of a girl or a guy, it’s not clear, moving like a spastic doll. Axel blushes, as if we’d surprised him naked. I move closer to greet him and he tries to stand but halfway up he is tugged back by the cable of the earphones, which, out of apathy or because he’s very engrossed in the conversation with the girl or guy, he doesn’t think to remove. The kiss takes place in the air, without contact. Axel covers the microphone with his hand and murmurs: She’s driving me crazy, I don’t know how to get rid of her. Fuck her once and for all, then delete her from the chat room, Eloísa tells him and Axel responds by spitting out a laugh that spatters us both with saliva. A laugh of embarrassment, his own and someone else’s. Axel is one of those people who never makes eye contact for more than a second or two. He gives the impression that if he did, he would immediately come apart. His strength lies in appearing nervous, upset, always somewhere else.
In Axel’s room, everything is the opposite of the rest of the house, neither spacious nor luxurious. He has another room on the first floor, Eloísa will explain to me, the real one, but he never uses it, he moved downstairs because he feels alone up there. He spends all day on the computer, he’s a freak, says Eloísa. As well as the computer – there are actually two of them, one black, the classic kind, another small and portable – there’s a single bed, a television, shelves with books and CDs, some recently bought, never opened, still wrapped in cellophane, various bottles of perfume and a cork board with photos: Axel with friends, Axel and his family, Axel skiing, Axel looking wild against a black background, Axel and a blonde clinking glasses on the deck of a cruise liner. Next to the window hangs a painting: a man in a suit and tie walking a bulldog on a leash, each with a third eye. Like Axel’s everlasting spot. It’s one of Débora’s paintings, I find out later from a magnetic postcard on the fridge door. Scenes of daily life, drivers, bank tellers, families leaving the cinema, street sweepers, all kinds of people, common and clairvoyant. Mystics, that’s what the series is called.
Back in the living room, I bang my knee against the foot of a grand piano camouflaged in the half-light. I can only see it now that Eloísa has switched on a candelabra with seven artificial candles, flickering bulbs that give the illusion of flames. Oh. Shhh, she says, pointing out a mahogany-coloured urn. It’s Axel’s granddad, she says arching her eyebrows, her index finger forming a cross with her lips. We shouldn’t wake him.
Another Fernet and Eloísa takes me to the basement: Come and I’ll show you the bunker. Beneath the garden there’s a tunnel that links the games room and gym with the barbecue area, where Eloísa’s room is. It’s a narrow passageway, all concrete, with fire extinguishers and exposed pipes. About halfway along, Eloísa moves ahead of me, types a code into a keyboard and the wall opens. A secret door. Remember, in case the world ends, she says and whispers: Four three two one, j k l m. A trap for idiots. For five seconds, the time it takes Eloísa to find the switch, all I can see inside is a solid black hole. The neon tubes flicker and light up one by one: an underground house. To one side, there are two rows of truckle beds with pillows and blankets. Between the beds, oxygen tubes with masks hanging by the mouth. In the centre, a folding table, a mini library, a small television and a sofa bed. The kitchen looks new: electric oven, extractor fan, a washing machine and a power generator. Look at everything his parents keep down here, says Eloísa as she opens the larder, they’re totally bonkers. Tins of sardines, soups, pre-cooked meats, dehydrated chocolates. Eloísa grabs a vacuum pack of peanuts. Before we leave, she leads me to the bathroom, which is quite ordinary, except for the shower, a cylindrical cabin with a mixer tap.
We return to the surface and Eloísa explains the underground shelter in her own way: It seems that Axel’s old man has a bee in his bonnet about the war. The granddad, the one in the urn, was in a concentration camp and they went for something like twenty years thinking he was dead. They found out he was alive pretty much by chance, through a bank account or something like that. And since they got it into their heads that the Nazis were coming back to bomb Buenos Aires, utter nonsense, they’ve been really unhinged, says Eloísa, tapping her temple with her index finger. We skirt the barbecue area along a path made of tree-trunk rounds, dodging the pool and the deckchairs. Grill, showers, hammocks, another kitchen and a small room with cane furniture, a reed curtain and a mattress on the floor. Eloísa’s room, just like a beach house. My bed, she says, and flops on her back. More chat, more Fernet and a joint as we watch a programme about couples, the one she told me about a while earlier. Hang on while I have a shower, I’m disgusting, says Eloísa at one point and I think that sooner or later we’re going to kiss again and see each other naked. There are times when it’s all I wish for and then I don’t even want to think about it.
It’s getting on for eight, I think about Simón and Herbert. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I take advantage of Eloísa still being in the bathroom, I gather my strength and decide to leave. I’m going to leave her a note but I can’t find paper or anything to write with. Anyway, she’d never understand me, better to leave like this, without telling her. I jog across the garden, pass quickly through the kitchen to the garage door. Between the cars I realise that I’m trapped. With no keys or buttons in sight, I have no way out. I’d like to disappear, to teleport myself, to never have come. But there’s no way out. I go back inside, perhaps Eloísa is still in the shower, that would simplify things quite a bit. I stick a foot in the kitchen and with a short, sharp Ohh of true fright, Axel raises his arms in shock like a trainee ghost. Sorry, I say, and he juggles so that crisps don’t fall out of the packet onto the floor. No, no, I’m sorry, he says, I was somewhere else. And Elo? he asks. I point out back. I was leaving, will you open up for me? Yes, yes, he says distractedly and passes in front of me, his trousers hanging low with the crack of his arse on show. White and green skin, a vision that reminds me of the slogan of the Evangelical church: Helmet of Salvation, I murmur imperceptibly.
Guiding me between the cars, Axel complains at the lack of space. Yes, I say, incapable of making any comment, not about the convertible, or the pickup, or the jeep, or the collector’s model, nor about the hanging bicycles. I could say: What lovely cars, they must be worth a fortune. But no. Axel opens a panel next to the door and presses buttons rapidly. Come back whenever you like. Yes, yes, thanks. Bye and bye. I escape quickly, without looking back. On the other side of the bridge, calmer now, standing in a queue of three at the bus stop, I receive a message from Eloísa: WHERE DID U GET TO GIRL???