As well as being called the tower, the building is known to the locals as ‘el Buti’ because of someone who lived there and died resisting an eviction attempt ten years earlier, at the start of the occupation. A lad, they tell me, who went by that name. Sprayed on the staircase walls at the bottom of the lift shaft in really large red letters, carved on unpainted iron railings, over the rust, on the ceilings, on the doors, as well as the outside walls, even on the muck-covered pipes:
EL BUTI LIVES AND RESISTS
Until the night of the move, all I know of the place can be reduced to Tosca, the señora, as almost everyone calls her, and her world. That multi-use area of hers: bedroom, dining room and kitchen. The taxi drops us half a block away, the driver decides without asking that it’s better for us to get out there because otherwise he’ll have to go all the way round. I can’t work out whether he does it out of concern for my pocket, laziness or fear of attack. What’s clear is that I have to lug the suitcase and Simón, as well as a selection of bags that we have accumulated since we arrived in the city: tins of pâté, a packet of powdered milk, an extra towel that Iris lent me and insisted we take with us, damp clothes, my zoo uniform and the Albertus Seba book. At the door I say the same thing I do every day: I’m here to see the señora. I’m still no one, I don’t even have a number. The hooded boy, who sees me come in and out every night, who never says hi or bye, because that’s the way he is, not much of a talker, protecting himself with the loud music pumping through his earphones, this time he can’t help making a gesture of surprise, seeing me appear with another person and all my stuff. In fact he gets slightly worried and, instead of staying at his post as usual, he follows me. As if he wants to help me, or not, perhaps quite the opposite, to check that the señora is aware of my intentions.
I push on and knock at Tosca’s door. It doesn’t open for a while. I have to shout my name three times before I’m recognised. Come in, I finally hear. I push timidly; the bags and Simón remain in the doorway, distant but on view. You’re early, girl, Tosca tells me and I’m scared she’s forgotten her offer, that it’s all been a big mistake.
I’ve surprised them in the middle of a meal, stuffed flank steak with potato salad. Tosca and Benito never cook. They order from the deli: omelettes, chicken and chips, spring rolls. When it’s time for the injections, the little plastic trays holding leftover mash, the colourful smears of a Swiss roll, the empty pizza boxes or picked bones remain on the table and the quiet storm cloud of fried oil in the air can still be inhaled, even seen. Benito doesn’t register my presence, he chews standing up, spellbound in front of the television, squeezed into those overalls he never takes off, two or three sizes too small, as if he needs constant reassurance that he hasn’t grown. After a bite, perhaps because she has a suspicion, perhaps because she can see something in spite of the half-light, Tosca waves a hand for me to approach her. Her full mouth, false teeth flecked with egg, pork and carrot, is still able to say: You didn’t tell me you had a boy. My son, I say, pointing rather stupidly at Simón, as if I too had only just realised he was with me.
Simón takes a step forward and Benito greets him by inclining his heavy head. Surreptitiously, firmly but without causing a flap, surprised by the ogre boy’s features which from his perspective must seem even more giant and deformed than they are, he grabs on to my leg and hides. If I were someone else, if I believed in signs, in children’s intuition, I would think it a bad omen, that this move isn’t a good idea. It’s fine, but keep an eye on him, I’m fed up with the little shits, one day I’m going to tell them all to bugger off, says Tosca. She chews and adds: Beni, take them up to seven.
We follow the hulking mass up the stairs and on the third floor he guides us along the corridor to a flat with just one room, almost bare. Two rolled-up foam mattresses and a wardrobe that looks too important for so few square metres. A bulb with no shade does too good a job of illuminating everything. On an old sewing-machine table there’s a portable stove connected to a cylinder by a rubber hose. For water, says Benito in his friendly monster’s voice, use the bucket, and he points to a paint-stained one under the bathroom basin.
The first night I barely sleep. Or not at all, I can’t be sure. I stay awake with my eyes closed, simulating sleep. On the alert. Getting accustomed to the noises that lead me towards dawn: shouts, screeches, slamming, fights, telephones that no one answers. I can hear the rumble of several superimposed conversations, real, televised, barely discernible. And suddenly, a voice that detaches itself from the rest: shit, whore, honey, c’mon, Beto. The murmur quickly returns to the level of a muffled but permanent presence. The outside world also makes itself heard: brakes, engines, footsteps, explosions and sirens.
But the thing that keeps me from sleep more than anything, adding to the insomnia of recent days, is not the noise from the street or the music or the conversations, but those strange murmurs produced in the bowels of the building and which at times I think might be in my head. Metallic sounds, wind-like, flushes, hums, sputters, like the secretions of a decomposing organism. And although I could guess at the origin, broken pipes, perforated vents, dying electrical appliances, the fact is that all together they compose a striking, overwhelming echo that’s impossible to ignore.
And yet, despite the filth, the heat, those intestinal noises, and the smell of shit that rises in waves, at some point in the early hours Canetti’s words from the first time he brought me here come to mind: We’re safe here. I even babble them to myself, to confirm it. And so I relax and rest a bit, although still without sleeping. On the third day I cover the windows with black bin bags to prolong the night.
It takes me a while to understand this strange community, to get used to certain codes, at least the most basic ones. There’s a system of hierarchy that I’m picking up through observations and comments. Within the group, some top dogs quickly come to the fore, privileged folk who delegate routine tasks to others. Among the most famous are Perico, el Buti’s younger brother, who does what he wants: Whatever the hell he feels like, says Canetti; the famous Mercedes, a man feared by everyone; Tosca, of course; and a transvestite called Eva who lives alone on the top floor.
There is a series of guidelines for coexistence that, over the first few days, Canetti and Benito will take it upon themselves to reveal to me. The former, too longwinded, his friendliness always ambiguous, the other quite the opposite, rustic, almost caveman-like. In el Buti the rules are meant to impose order, but in many cases they are also linked to resistance. One mistake could end it all, Canetti explains to me, and adds: Eviction is just round the corner. Those guys are a bunch of shysters, Tosca tells me one night when I’m trying to elicit a bit of history from her, but she leaves me hanging. She mentions her father, some wasteland, the construction company, a rogue engineer and a bankruptcy request. I also find out that there’s a judicial order that has been pending for something like ten years but that no one wants to carry out a violent eviction. You have to ask permission to bring people from the outside, give some notice. Not just anyone comes in here, girl, you have to keep an eye out, and to keep an eye out, you have to know, Tosca tells me, slashing the air with her index finger to leave me in no doubt. Entries and exits are certainly monitored. Just in case, Canetti clarifies.
Tosca takes care of the electricity. Before, everyone worked it out for themselves, they hooked up to the building on the corner, the Chinese supermarket or the convent school that occupies half the block. But inspections began to take place much more often and things got complicated, so Tosca managed to place a meter on each floor and she divides it up at the end of the month. She collects the money and pays the bills.
Since no one ever came to install the pumps, the daily rhythm is marked by the issue of water. One day is enough to get the idea. Some flats still have taps; others, like mine, don’t. The water is raised up the lift shaft by a system of buckets, ropes and pulleys. On each floor, someone takes care of transferring it to other containers. To take advantage of this, I need to make arrangements with Benito, who organises the turns. At best, the pressure from the street during the night allows the water to reach the first floor. The only ones who don’t have to worry are Tosca and Benito. Or rather they do, because if there are any leaks their flat will be flooded straight away, which would cause a short circuit that would leave the whole building without electricity.
Most people make do with gas cylinders for cooking, some with electric heaters. It depends. The problem is transportation: the higher up they live, the harder it is to carry things. We need to take a cylinder up to the seventh, Canetti tells me, shaking out a hand. It’s still a long way off, so I don’t even want to guess what winter will be like.
A week passes without me realising and it’s as if we’ve always lived this way. Iris continues taking care of Simón while I work but now, since I don’t cook for her and although she resists, I’ve started paying her, not with money, which she would never accept, but with chocolates, tins of sardines and jars of black olives.