Quarter past twelve in the human resources office. No one explained the reason for the appointment, I assume it’s about the missing iguana. They keep me waiting in the same place I sat anticipating the job interview that first time. I don’t know what I’m going to say, I don’t have it very well rehearsed, I’ll improvise and we’ll see what happens. On either side of the armchair there is a novelty: a synthetic pine with felt squirrels attached to the branches and an aluminium magazine rack with copies of National Geographic, an animal atlas and a booklet published for the zoo’s centenary. I open it at random, my eyes fall on a paragraph in an article called ‘The Founding’ and within three lines I’ve come across Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg. The man with the library that had the snake book, the man on the statue, the same man who wrote the novel about Martians. Mr Nic-Nac. Two pages are devoted to praising him without restraint. Energetic, philanthropic, erudite, patriotic and a humanist. At the bottom, a photo of Sarmiento: patron of the park, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento donated three black-necked swans for its inauguration. I continue leafing through the booklet and stop at ‘The Monkey Mystery’. Apparently, at one time, the zoo’s monkeys moved about the island without restriction, an arrangement that some time later was curtailed, leaving them stuck with the cages in which they have been kept to this day. The legend goes that in the summer of 1933, every morning, two chimpanzees would appear without explanation on the other side of the lake. The keepers were on edge for several weeks, because of the outrages the monkeys committed at night but above all because they were unable to fathom how they crossed from shore to shore when they couldn’t swim. The authorities resolved to mount a night guard to solve the puzzle. The answer lay with the buffaloes, which …
A door opens and the greasy guy appears, forcing me to suspend my reading. Shall we? he says, and stretches out his arm to usher me into his office ahead of him. Water, coffee? Thanks, no. And how are they treating you? I smile. You’ve got a good boss. Yes, we get along very well. You caught the tough season, now summer’s coming to an end you’ll see how everything changes, sometimes it gets too quiet. Well, he says, let’s get down to it. He broaches the topic without beating around the bush: Quite some business with the iguana, isn’t it? I nod. A mystery, he says. I think about the monkeys. There’s honestly no explanation, I say and immediately regret it, promising myself that from now on I won’t volunteer anything, to avoid false steps that might give the game away. Let’s see, we’ll just run through it, he says, and moves the mouse, eyes on the monitor screen. Here it says that it was the thirtieth of January. Do you remember anything? I tell him about my routine, the trip round the reptile house, the gathering of lost objects, the doors that close and those that don’t. And the nursery? Couldn’t you have left it open without meaning to? I shake my head determinedly and during the silence that follows I’m convinced the guy’s going to say something like You’re not telling me the truth or Someone saw you. But no. Ok, he says, bringing the topic to a close, to my surprise. We’ll have to keep investigating.
I called you in for something else, he reveals without looking at me, rifling through some papers piled on the desk. Silence. Here it is, he says, and starts reading to himself, running his index finger down the sheet to the rhythm of an electrocardiogram. You arrived in December, it’ll be three months next Monday, won’t it? The thing is that your contract’s going to expire, he wants to know whether I’m aware of that. I lie: Yes, of course. What’s your plan? I shrug, stretch my hands forward to suggest that I intend to keep working. Very well. He twists in his seat and tells me that they’ll offer to renew my contract for another three months. Unfortunately at the moment we can’t talk about you becoming permanent. But you never know, with things the way they are, he says, waggling his thumb. What I can tell you is that, as of next week, you’ll be working in another sector. It’s still to be decided, but they always rotate it fairly. Although he doesn’t say as much, I assume it’s because of the iguana, until the episode is cleared up. I accept without hesitation.
Eloísa tires of being friendly, my silence irritates her: Hey girl, what’s up? I don’t respond to that either. It’s not that I’m annoyed or anything, I just don’t know what to say, how to approach her again. I prefer to stay quiet. She wouldn’t understand me, she gets angry quickly. She sends me half a dozen messages in one afternoon, she goes from When will we see each other? to What’s wrong, bitch? And from there to an unceasing series of insults: Whore, Spoilsport, Fuck-up. UR SICK IN THE HEAD, is the last thing she writes. Then, she disappears.
In spite of herself, Iris has her send-off. Very intimate, Simón and me, no one else. The plane that will take her back to her country leaves at half three in the morning. Cheap flight, she says. The taxi comes to get her at twenty to one. It’s a cool night, the first in a long time. The sky is amazingly clear for the city. I manage to count some twenty stars. We settle in the courtyard of the Fénix under the yellow lamp. Simón cavorts about until he runs out of energy. He goes to sleep by himself, without me having to say anything, suddenly adult. In an unusually good mood, the Spaniard lends us an airbed which we put at the end of the table. The characters passing through the hotel come and go, from the bathroom to the bedrooms, from the kitchen to the hall where the television is. Iris has bought ham, bread, Roquefort and two bottles of black beer.
She says that she went to work today as if it were any other day. She did her double shift, spent the morning in the subtropical jungle and the afternoon at the ticket booth for the sea-lion show. At six she presented herself at human resources to let them know she was leaving. When? she says the unpleasant guy asked her and she couldn’t contain her laughter. We drink several toasts, we recall anecdotes, we laugh as we remember the encounter with Yuri and Olga. In Iris’s room, lined up on the mattress, already sheetless, are the ticket, the passport and a plastic envelope with very colourful banknotes, presumably Romanian. Flowers, national heroes and planets. She gives instructions for me to send her telegram of resignation. I also have to pick up her final wage.
I’m leaving along with the heat, I don’t know whether she’s protesting or saying it with joy. The last goodbye is short, clumsy, almost non-existent. There are no embraces or effusions, just a superficial peck on the cheek. The night takes care of erasing any emotion. Iris opens and closes her hand from inside the taxi, a timid wave, like a diva in decline. See you soon, she says and I repeat as if at a mass: See you soon. The car drives a block and turns the first corner to the right, a brisk swerve that makes the tyres screech. I stay standing at the door of the hotel with Simón in my arms gripping my body with his arms and legs, absorbed in some undefined thought that flees behind Iris until the roar of a motorbike rouses me. The return journey is hell, Simón’s weight tortures my back to an implausible degree.