We arrived in the city along with the floods. We got out in Pacífico at around midday. A short while earlier, we had heard the barrage of hail on the roof of the bus and the complete darkness passing by the window. In fact, it was only me who heard it, as Simón was still sleeping unawares. The deluge must have lasted half an hour, long enough to turn avenues into rivers and streets into streams. We got out at a bus stop in the centre of a labyrinth of cars pointing in all directions. Car horns managed to do what the hail hadn’t: they woke Simón, who opened his eyes in the midst of all the chaos but didn’t cry; the noise was bigger than him, as was the atmosphere of uncertainty. We walked a few blocks along the middle of the street, the only island of tarmac in the stream of waves lapping over the drains. To cross the road we followed a line of people guided by a rope tied from one pavement to the other. Further along, some men in fluorescent jackets were using a boat to rescue an elderly lady and her dog.
Without much choice in the matter, we took refuge in a bar crammed full of people. Squeezed in at the counter, we shared a ham and cheese sandwich and a 7UP. As Simón chewed, he swivelled his gaze from side to side like a mechanical doll, from the madness in the street to a giant television screen replaying footage of the old lady navigating between cars with her dog. He observed the panorama without astonishment, the way you accept dreams.
We must have stayed there a good hour, until the situation outside seemed to calm down slightly. We moved away from that rehearsal of apocalypse, hugging the side of a walled enclosure that hid the gardens of an endless building. Two blocks further on, water up to our ankles, we came across a hotel. With no time to hesitate, I rang the bell. But the Hotel Lyon, as it was called, didn’t allow children or pets. We were attended by a woman in a hairnet, her legs swollen with fat varicose veins, who was quite friendly despite the restrictions. As she spoke, she was holding her sandals in one hand and a hairdryer in the other. You’ve got another one on the far side of the avenue. It’s not that expensive and it isn’t bad either, she said. What I can’t tell you is whether they’ll have room. She saw us off, raising the hairdryer as if it were an extension of her arm.
I walked a few blocks along the pavement with Simón in my arms and the bag over my shoulder, my trousers quickly succumbing to the soaking. It was quite an effort to find the Hotel Fénix, in fact I walked past it twice without realising. It was a three-storey house, the front covered in graffiti, slogans and remnants of posters. The name was etched on a bronze plaque, the kind used by dentists and notaries in small towns.
Another bell, another woman opens the door to us, wringing out water. But this one is smoking. She has a wrinkled face and a button nose, and she looks us up and down distrustfully. I ask for a room. I’ve only got one left, without bathroom, she says in a very marked Spanish accent, the kind you hear in films, and adds: Payment up-front. She lets us in. We follow her down a long, dark corridor that leads out to a flooded courtyard. Barred windows, lumpy walls and a statue of the Virgin Mary built into an artificial cave. In the centre, there’s a cement drum, a cistern that’s half buried or was never finished. All around, ferns. Hanging, on the tables, in pots, climbing the cables. The place is reasonably well cared for and yet exudes a feeling of irredeemable sadness. The woman disappears and returns shortly with a bunch of keys. She shows us our room, long and narrow like a coach: two beds, a bedside table in between and a wooden wardrobe that takes up half the space. Here’s the kitchen, she signals to me and explains: You use it, you wash up and you clean it. To get to the bathroom you have to cross the courtyard, she tells me. We’re used to that, the last month at Jaime’s was the same. She raises her chin to ask whether I like it, whether we’ll stay. It’s fine, I say, and pay for a week. I feel extremely relieved.
The room has a window that takes some effort to open, with its old, iron latticework. When I finally manage, it isn’t really worth it – more floods and flowerpots. In addition to the ferns, I discover a bed of thistles.
No sooner have we arrived than we meet the first challenge. In a moment of distraction, Simón, who hasn’t lost that intrepid attitude he’s adopted since Jaime’s death, climbs up onto the fake cistern and jumps. The Spaniard, which as I’ll discover later is what everyone calls her, sticks her head out of a window identical to ours on the other side of the courtyard and gives two violent tsks, as if shooing away a cat. Simón pays no attention and the woman seeks me out with her gaze and purses her lips, reproaching my lack of care. Get out of there, I say, and Simón does as I tell him.
In the afternoon, as the water level drops, but with the flood still making itself felt in the whirr of sirens and the traffic jam in the background, we go for a stroll around the neighbourhood. The hotel is on a street with no traffic lights, which is impossible to cross because of the speed of the passing cars. On the same block as the Fénix there is a row of old town houses, small mansions from another era, some of them camouflaging their abandonment behind clusters of bougainvillea and climbing figs that don’t understand the concept of dividing walls, others laying bare their decay. Opposite, across the lanes of traffic, a construction site split by two jibs pointing in opposite directions. At the foot of the embankment, a few shacks are holding their ground: corrugated-iron roofs, walls made of canvas and cardboard. Without crossing the street, there’s also a mechanic’s workshop, a warehouse and, half a block down, in premises that still have a sign saying Grills to Go, an Evangelical temple.
CHURCH OF THE KING OF KINGS
The Helmet of Salvation
I take a flyer without stopping. Meeting timetable: Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, from 5pm to 9pm. Wednesdays, 9.30am: path to the sacrament of confirmation. On the way back to the hotel, we stop at a kiosk. Actually, it’s Simón who stops, captivated by a window at ground level, his eyes glued to a plastic cat on a motorbike complete with sidecar, somewhere between a piece of junk and an antique. I decide that all this upheaval deserves some kind of reward, so I knock on the window and a man with nicotine-stained teeth and several days’ growth of white stubble pulls back the window reluctantly. A cold, dry wind hits my face; the man prefers his air conditioning to making contact with the outside world. How much is it? I ask, pointing at the cat. The old man deflects my question with his eyebrows, as if I had said something absurd. I insist: The price. He still doesn’t respond, he shuts himself back into his winter, examines the toy all over in search of a label and shakes his head. He opens the window again. I don’t know, and he says to Simón: Do you like it? Simón grabs on to my leg, embarrassed, but still nodding firmly and clearly to say yes. Take it, the man says to me, give me whatever you think, and he extends his trembling arm with the motorcyclist cat, which could end up on the floor at any moment. For that reason, to prevent it from falling, even though I’m not sure about having to decide the price myself, I take it. From my pocket, I remove a five-peso note, screwed into a ball, reshape it and venture: Is that all right? From the expression on his face, it would appear the old man had something else in mind; to make up for it, I buy a packet of coconut biscuits. Back at the hotel, I throw myself face-down on the bed. Almost a siesta. Simón entertains himself playing with the motorcycling cat, along my legs, my back, my head, as if they were mountain paths. My body feels large, aching and damp, nails scratching at my skin, my neck stiff, my arse wet. I stay like that for a good while, abandoned, until Simón falls asleep at my feet. I turn over and prolong the lethargy imagining countries in the cracks on the ceiling.
It’s still daylight when I go out into the courtyard. The kitchen clock is showing half eight. At first glance: pots, pans and dishes hanging up and a series of pizza trays and cake tins balanced on a low unit with a worktop and loose doors. In the fridge, everything is identified with tape, names written in thick marker pen, coloured plastic containers. Matilde, it says on a pat of butter, some eggs and a plastic bag containing minced meat or lentils, something dark and small. There’s also a packet of gnocchi, a sachet of tomato sauce and a bottle of tonic water labelled Raúl. The red containers have a ‘2’ or a ‘z’ in black on the front and on the lid. The doors of the cupboard are covered with mosquito nets, like in the country. There’s enough food to cope with a siege: lots of packets of noodles, polenta and flour, several piles of tins.
Halfway through my inspection a man walks in – he is heavyset and stooped, not from age but from chronic bad posture, perhaps a labourer or docker – and greets me with a polite and friendly hello. He opens the fridge, takes out a bottle of tonic water and I realise that he is Raúl, unless someone else shares his things. I sit down at the table and think about some food for the evening. Voices, growing as they approach and weakening as they move away, and a baby’s cries create a din I’m unaccustomed to. Everything went so fast, when barely anything happened for so long.
Suddenly, the Spaniard’s voice erupts like a whirlwind: The little boy’s crying, she says in a reproachful tone as if I had hidden something from her when I arrived. I hold my hands out in front of me, excusing myself, get up and walk the ten steps separating me from the courtyard where Simón is, barefoot, with a dizzy expression. I walk over to him, hug him and realise the woman has followed me and is now observing me from the door, contorting her mouth, eyes like eggs, waiting for an explanation I’m not about to give. It’s all fine, I say in Simón’s ear. In the room I ask him whether he had a bad dream. He shakes his head. Pee, he says, and it doesn’t take me long to realise that his trousers and back are wet with urine. After changing him, we stay in the room for a long time, me, stroking his back, him, gradually calming down after his fright. I wonder whether he’s got it into his head I might abandon him.
Later, in the kitchen, as I’m preparing some rice I brought from the house, I meet a Romanian woman of around my age, with very blue, alarmed-looking eyes, a broad back, from rowing or swimming, a violently uneven fringe. Initially she doesn’t speak, she does everything stealthily, ignoring me, unfriendly, or maybe just shy. She lights a ring on the hob, fills a pan with water and leaves.
When she reappears, I tell her I lowered the heat because the water was boiling. Ah, she says, and throws in the two sausages remaining in the pack. She looks at me suspiciously, side-on, almost with contempt, wrinkling her nostrils as if I smell bad or she’s about to attack me. She gives the impression she doesn’t want anything to do with anyone. Just in case, I venture no further than hello. In a while, it’s she who looks for an excuse to move closer and strike up a conversation. Have you got the time? is the first thing she asks. I’m about to guess at nine o’clock, but I raise my eyes and gesture at the clock over the fridge: quarter to ten. And then: Mayonnaise? I don’t have any, I apologise with a tight smile. We only arrived a few hours ago. Where from, she wants to know. The country, I say, and she nods mutely, several times, as if the word country inspired respect or solved some mystery. And you, I ask. She says she’s from a small village. Transylvania, her voice darkens, she grits her teeth, pulling a monster face, suddenly funny. Returning to her own voice, she tells me that it must be two years already since she arrived in this country. It’s good here, she concludes with a shrug. She asks me whether I work, I tell her not yet, that I’m going to start looking. She stays quiet, her mouth slightly open, as if about to blow out a candle, which only reinforces that air of permanent surprise in her eyes, somewhere between fright and fascination. She says she spent about a year selling coffee on the street from a little cart that she still has in her room – they never came to claim it back. And she can’t remember the location of the warehouse to return it herself. She explains how the business works, she talks about rents and percentages. Because she struggled with the language at first, she operated with gestures and photos stuck to the cart: coffee, croissants, sandwiches, even soup. It’s good work, she says. No boss and out in the fresh air.
We eat our rice. She munches standing up, with a sour expression, eyes on the pan. I invite her to sit at the table. She doesn’t hesitate. She pricks her remaining sausage with a fork and approaches. She tells me her story in snippets, getting tied in knots by her tongue and the past. Her mother died in childbirth, or shortly after she was born, I’m not sure which, her father left her in her grandmother’s care until the age of twelve, after which he took her to live with him in Bucharest. At school she met Draco, her boyfriend, who convinced her to come here. They lived in guesthouses for a year. In several neighbourhoods, she says. He got involved in a business with an uncle who already lived in Buenos Aires, importing tyres from India, but it failed, they never got the money, and she had to work the taxi ranks with her cart. Yuri, Draco’s uncle, lives with his wife in a hotel full of transvestites in Constitución, she says, and purses all her features as if there were a rotten smell. At the racecourse, Draco met a guy who tricked him into buying half a horse that didn’t exist. Very bad, she says. They split up. He decided to go to the south to try his luck: He likes mountains. She preferred to stay: I was already too cold.
And now I’m here, she says. In June she managed to get a visa with a work permit and started working at the zoo. Thinking that she’s got the wrong word, I make her repeat it twice. She insists and explains: In the subtropical rainforest. I smile, laughing at the joke, but she looks at me seriously, almost offended, it’s no joke. She tries to explain what it’s all about but it gets complicated. I understand that it’s something along the lines of a roofed jungle with tropical plants, hanging bridges, some real animals, tarantulas and snakes behind glass, and others fake. Fake? Yes, made of rubber. She works on the door, checking tickets, she says it’s good work, although she doesn’t earn much. She says it with an expression of disgust. Because of the animals, because of the money.
She suddenly falls silent and turns her head to one side, avoiding my eye, as if she had spoken against her will. My plate is still almost full; I quickly swallow three spoonfuls to meet the requirements of nourishment. She stands up, lights the hob again and puts on a kettle full of water. Now she faces away from me, turns on the tap and rinses the fork and the pan she used to boil the sausages. What did I do in the country? I took care of horses, I say. For a while, neither of us utters another word, all that can be heard is the crackle of the flames under the kettle, the stream of running water, my jaws grinding a biscuit and the collisions Simón causes with his little cars at the other end of the kitchen. Before we say goodbye, the girl speaks again to tell me her name: I’m Iris.
In the dark, in this strange, damp bed, I spend several hours trying to find a position that will allow me to sleep. In my half-awake state, I can’t help thinking about the house in Open Door, which I imagine covered in water. Submerged, or floating away. I also think about Jaime, who must be freezing his arse off underground.