Hotter and hotter: enveloping, sticky, like a distant relative, invisible and giant, the kind that bears down and won’t stop hugging you. After injecting Tosca’s morning dose, I return to the hotel and spend the morning watching Simón make a thousand attempts to climb the cistern that never was. The Spaniard has resigned herself and no longer reprimands him. The rest of the day unfolds in more or less the same way as the previous day: at two, handover with Iris at the entrance to the zoo, that world of children and reptiles until half six, when I return to the guesthouse, prepare some food, put Simón to bed before ten, back to Tosca’s and a night-time walk in solitude. By virtue of repetition, all the things that just a few weeks ago seemed absurd now feel completely normal to me.
Yessica treats me better now, there are even days when she speaks to me as an equal. Over the course of an afternoon, she often asks me to take her place so she can escape to the toilet. Cover for me a while, that’s what she tells me. She doesn’t say as much but I know she’s going to retouch her make-up, which has melted in the heat, exaggerating her features. She comes back looking like new, healthy, her cheeks red with a double flush, from the powder and the temperature. Sometimes she slips off when her mobile rings too. She has lots of boyfriends, or none, I haven’t worked it out yet.
Today she confesses. A different, almost tender Yessica is looking me in the eye: I’ve been out with guys, she says, waving her phone, but this is different, he’s not just anyone. I’m totally hooked, just imagine if I fall in love. And what do you like about him, I ask just for the sake of it, to sound friendly. Everything, the way he is.
Apart from her and Canetti, I often run into the boy who takes care of the polar bear, I don’t know his name, to me he’ll always be the boy who takes care of the polar bear. He’s a friendly guy, who stares at me intensely, to see if I notice.
When it’s quiet, I make the most of the time to study the plaques above the animals. Sometimes I question Esteban, who always answers hurriedly, as if he doesn’t believe I’m really interested. Yesterday, for example, seeing that the Indian python was unusually active, coiling and uncoiling itself around the petrified trunk, I remembered the artificial mouse nursery Iris’s aunt had set up in her Moscow apartment and I asked him what the snakes ate. Without stopping, eyebrows arched, surprised by my curiosity, my ignorance, he said twice: Rabbits, rabbits. He enunciated clearly, almost soundlessly, as if it were a secret, or just obvious. Assuming they eat them live, I would have liked to ask him what he knew about the technique of tying mice up by the tail to make them easier to eat, whether the same was done with rabbits, but he’d already moved away.
Now, for the last few days, I’ve been studying the crocodilians. I already know them more or less by heart. Alligators, whether Chinese or North American, are less aggressive than crocodiles, they only attack for food. They eat fish, small mammals, birds, tortoises and, in some cases, carrion. They are also distinguished from crocodiles by their lower jaw, which wedges right against the upper, hiding the fourth tooth. The adults are dark green and the young, black. Like cats and dogs they have a third eyelid, that white membrane that slides over the eye making them look like extraterrestrials. Among the Yacare caimans, the male and the female share their tasks equally: they build the nest together, they care for the eggs and protect their young. Their diet varies as they grow and depending on the season. Newborns feed on insects, amphibians and snails. This is the most southerly of the caiman family.
After eight days and fifteen injections, Tosca proposes a deal. First, without my asking, because she must have seen me looking at the picture on the first day and she’s beginning to like me, she tells me the story of the Virgin of Tears. She thinks it was in 1953, but it could have been ’52 or ’54, she can’t remember any more, she had just turned fourteen, she’s sure about that. So it had to be ’53; I was born in ’39, the day the war began. Tosca, her father and her sister Violeta – her mother had died of tuberculosis the previous winter – travelled to Syracuse on a pilgrimage when talk of the miracle began to circulate. A humble woman from a family called Fangasso had suddenly gone blind during pregnancy. But the blindness lasted less than a week. On the seventh day, she recovered her sight. And the first thing she saw when she woke up was the plaster Virgin she had been given for her wedding with tears falling down its cheeks. One just like this, Tosca tells me in a fit of enthusiasm, pointing at the image hanging on the wall. The miracle lasted a month, many people had the opportunity to see it for themselves: the Fangasso family, pilgrims, priests from neighbouring parishes, even an investigating commission sent by the Vatican to accredit the miracle. The Virgin cried ceaselessly. Lagrimi humani, says Tosca, who was a witness.
She finishes her story, we go through the morphine ceremony and, five minutes later, revived from the initial effects, she speaks again: There’s an empty flat on the third floor. And she stops there, she closes her eyes as if to sleep and leave me guessing. But no, she half opens them, rather sleepily: If you want you can stay there in exchange for continuing with the injections. As long as you keep it between us, because if the other nobodies find out they’ll all come crying to me. The only thing you’ll have to pay is your share of the electricity and the gas, and sort out the water with Benito. Thanks, I say although I’m not sure. You can stay here tonight after seeing me, you think about it. I nod. Benito accompanies me to the door and I’m about to ask him if he’ll take me to the third floor, if he’ll show me the apartment so I can get an idea of it before I decide, before I move in, but I can’t find the right words, he moves behind me like a giant shadow, unapproachable.
When I get back from the zoo, I tell Iris about Tosca’s proposal in the kitchen of the Fénix. Free accommodation, I say briefly. I tell her what I’ve been mulling over all afternoon. Anticipating her ill humour, I extend my hand and ask her to give me a moment. She purses her lips and raises her eyebrows, smelling betrayal. I tell her about Canetti, yes, she knows him well, and in fact she finds him disagreeable, I don’t like him, she says, and about Tosca, the old woman I’ve been giving injections to for a week, I say the old woman contemptuously, as if wanting in some way to soften the decision to leave. I also mention the building, a squat but not dangerous. Iris shrugs, as if she doesn’t care, with that mixture of annoyance and indifference that is so like her. A pause and the challenge: Why not come with us? I was thinking that if I tell Tosca she’ll surely agree to there being three of us. It’s all the same to her, I add, wanting to convince Iris. She looks at me perplexed, as if I’d invited her to a session of masochism.
During the time I spend packing my bag, Iris disappears. Offended or sad, she hides in her room. Night falls, Simón runs around the patio, twice I have to lean out of the window and shout at him to stop trying to climb the dividing wall. Now the question of tomorrow and the day after is circling round my head, I didn’t stop to think what I’m going to do with Simón when I go to work, who will look after him, because I don’t suppose Iris will do it once we’ve gone. I think that perhaps I was too hasty, I don’t even know what kind of place we’re going to end up in.
The Spaniard claims for one more night and we spend a while complicating things with the calendar until she’s convinced I’ve paid up until the following day. I don’t, however, manage to get her to return the hundred pesos I left as a deposit for the keys because she says the ones for the wardrobe are missing. Not that I insist. Iris shows her face again at the last minute, as if she’s been spying on us. She raises a hand from the end of the corridor and says, as if it were any old leave-taking: Tomorrow.