Canetti comes with me the first night. He picks me up at the hotel after ten, when I have no energy left for anything. I feel absolutely shattered: Simón, hours on my feet, sleeping badly, this new life I didn’t expect and which began so suddenly, without warning. I don’t know why I don’t change my mind while I still can, in fact I mentally rehearse excuses not to go: my son has a fever, I’d prefer not to leave him alone; I’m feeling unwell, vomiting, the best thing to do would be to look for someone else, there must be loads of nurses in the neighbourhood. But when Canetti turns up smiling, freshly showered, in a check shirt that must be about as old as me, convinced he’s doing us a good turn, I swallow my words and allow things to happen. Simón has just fallen asleep, Iris will be in the kitchen, or in her room but with the door open so as to hear him. If it’s something to do with work, she’ll always be willing to help out. I don’t think he’ll wake up, I say, just to say something. It’s not like he’ll die if he does, she says, with her own particular brand of humour, and sends me packing, swatting the air with the back of her hand. Like someone trying to scare a fly. Let’s go, I say to Canetti, who is waiting for me in the hotel corridor, keeping a wary eye out for the Spaniard. Walking along the pavement, I realise I’m wearing boots. It’s ridiculous, it’s not raining nor is it going to rain, it’s as if I can’t get rid of some of my country habits. I can’t be bothered going back to swap them for more urban footwear.
First we skirt a very long block, which must actually be four or five together, against the shell of a ruined building, old warehouses that advertisements promise to convert into something stunning and futuristic. We cross to the other side of the railway tracks, take a leafy gated passageway between the barbed wire and a series of buildings with visible brickwork, another street, two more blocks, then we turn left and cross the avenue next to a very organised camp of cardboard collectors.
On the way, Canetti returns to his story, about his sham illness, how he tried to pass as insane and leave work. Increasingly, as he adds details, contradictory at times, it strikes me that he must be exaggerating his tale. The limp is real, his past as a bank worker is also plausible, but the whole business of drunkenly beating the bathroom tiles so he could go to the psychiatrists’ interviews with fresh wounds, that’s what he says, fresh wounds, that really stretches the limits of credibility. He keeps his mouth closed for a few minutes, as if recalling it all. I glance at him, his face hardened with scars, the tortured eyes, and my doubts vanish, I believe it all. There was a point, he says suddenly, eyes on the ground, waiting for the traffic lights to change so we can cross, when I felt like a hero.
After he has whistled for an entire block, we come to the foot of a high-rise that anyone would think was abandoned, unfinished or under construction, if it weren’t for the clothes hanging over balconies, the lights flickering on and off, and a rickety armchair on the pavement. Without further ado, Canetti announces: We’re here. The front door is made of corrugated iron. Black and reinforced, with three numbers painted in aerosol: 975. That’s when I realise that this building is a squat. Relax, we’re safe here. Two sharp knocks on the sheet metal and a voice asks from the other side: Who is it? Canetti says his name and adds: From fourteen. The door opens and a flat face in a hood peers out, like a caricature of a guard dog that’s scary all the same. Follow me, says Canetti quietly, and we walk along a dark, narrow corridor with puddles I step in without seeing. We stop at the foot of a staircase lit by a neon tube hanging directly from the cables. Further along is the shaft for a non-existent lift.
Canetti knocks at another door, three gentle knocks this time, like a child asking permission to enter his parents’ room. The response takes a while. It’s me, he says. We’re welcomed by a head that seems the size of two and a grave hello, distorted as though a recording is doing the speaking. We enter an atmosphere that’s fuzzy round the edges and, despite the weak light, I can see him a bit better now. He’s an enormous boy, handicapped, of uncertain age, somewhere between adolescence and forty, deformed. In the centre of the room, sprawled in a red armchair, is a very wide woman surrounded by cushions; more than just fat, she’s inflated, pure volume. I can also make out an iron bedstead, a lamp with rings on it, a small shrine and a desk on castors, covered with untidy papers which, on seeing me, the woman pushes to one side with her foot. Canetti introduces me to Tosca and the rather deformed boy, Benito, who stays standing the whole time, watching a television that’s as bulky as he is. I’ll wait outside, says Canetti, and Tosca repeats the last word but in the tone of an order. Outside, she spits, and as soon as Canetti leaves she says to me: He’s a worm.
Come here, girl, closer, I won’t bite. I obey. As I approach, I take in the true proportions of this immense woman, wrapped up in spite of the heat. I find it hard to imagine how she gets out of her chair, to eat, to sleep, not to mention to go out anywhere. Sit here, she points to the bed. She’s about to say something else, but instead pulls a face. Ow, she complains and squeezes that limitless belly. Holding on to the arm of the chair for propulsion, she stands up. I make as if to offer her a hand but she scares me away with a sharp gesture of contempt. Incredibly, she manages by herself.
Tosca goes to the bathroom, she walks leaning on a stick. For a while I’m left sitting by the boy with the Cyclops head, index finger in his nostril. Benito is wearing blue overalls, like a mechanic or a painter, too tight for him. On the muted television, lottery numbers are filling up an electronic scoreboard. Next to me, on the bedside table, is a colourful bust of Jesus and a bronze cross, two compartmentalised pillboxes, precariously balanced piles of medicine boxes and an old mobile phone with a broken screen. Above that, an image of a Virgin Mary with a burning heart in the middle of her chest. I stretch my neck to better see that symmetrical red organ connected to the body by an artery that perforates the skin. A fantasy heart, but one with vital functions.
Sweet Virgin of Syracuse,
wipe away the tears caused by
hate and violence
in so many regions of the World,
in particular the Middle East
and the continent of Africa.
Still just a shadow, Tosca releases a Tsssk, and although I’m not sure whether it was directed at me, I straighten up quickly. At the same time, accepting responsibility for the scolding, Benito removes his finger, still digging, from his nose. The woman advances very slowly, like a sea lion out of water, tongue slack, rocking. At the foot of the armchair, she collapses. Thirty-six with the head of a nine-year-old, she says, presumably referring to Benito.
So, girl, you know how to give injections. Yes, I say. I need two a day, when I get up and before I go to bed. All right? Before I can reply, she asks again. It wasn’t Mercedes who sent you? I shake my head and show by my expression that I don’t know any Mercedes. Look, I have to take these, she says and shows me some long, amber-coloured glass phials: Morphine 10mg. The pain keeps on hurting, I just use it so I can forget for a while, so that it hurts somewhere else, she says. I nod in silence, with a minimal smile, and since I don’t ask, she becomes impatient and explains: A tumour, girl, here, at the back, she says, indicating the nape of her neck with her thumb over her shoulder. A peach of a tumour. She coughs, laughs, both at the same time. But don’t worry, it’s nice and tame, if you behave yourself, I’ll introduce you one day. Are you sure you know how to do this? Beni, come here, orders the woman and the huge boy obeys. She looks me in the eye: Let’s see, inject this into his arm. She gives me a syringe and a bag of saline solution. I hesitate, but she encourages me with her hands. I fill half the tube, I ask for his arm, I feel it, I look for the vein, I press down and prick. Uh, protests the boy and the woman asks him: Did it hurt? No, he replies, a bit. Ok, continues Tosca, someone’s coming today, but not tomorrow, so I’ll expect you at eight, or better, seven thirty. Agreed? Yes. When I’m already on my way out she wants to know how much I’ll charge. I shrug, I haven’t thought about it. Well, tell me later, but don’t go crazy.
Outside, Canetti comes towards me, emerging from the gloom. He guides me towards the door with his arm extended. And? Fine, I say, she seems like a good woman. Yes, fierce but good, he replies contentedly, almost proudly, as if speaking about himself. We go out to the street and it looks like he’s planning to see me home. Let’s go, he says, and I leap in first: You don’t need to come with me, I can find the way myself, I lie. But he insists on taking me the block and a half that separate us from the main avenue. Then I understand, the check shirt, the combed hair, the clean-shaven face, it wasn’t altruism, he’s expecting something in return for finding me this little job, as he called it this morning. It’s not clear. I glance at him for a good few seconds, trying to guess his intentions: will he want to invite me for coffee to continue telling me his woes, or will he expect me to ask him to my hotel room. Just in case, and to prevent a return journey filled with tedious questions, I only take drastic action when we reach the corner: I’d prefer to go back alone, thanks for everything. Canetti stays silent, with a disappointed expression, as if I’d tricked him, and I hurry to cross before it occurs to him to follow me.
Venturing down new streets on the way back to the hotel, I immediately forget about Canetti. In my mind, he becomes less and less offensive, just a man with real, incurable loneliness. Instead, Tosca occupies all my thoughts, that impossible woman. I think about the Virgin Mary in her shrine, about the macrocephalic son, about the silent television, the piles of medicine boxes, about her swaddled cancer, but also about Jaime, the truck that ran him over, the driver who carried on pretending not to have noticed, how could he not have seen? I’ll never know.
Illnesses, accidents, pills, gunshots, the sea. I make a mental list of all the ways of dying that occur to me at that moment. I wonder which will be destined for me.