He grimaced with disgust and took some paper napkins out of his doctor’s coat pocket. Then he advanced with deep breaths to avoid concentrating on the ugly pile, and just as he was about to bend down to pick it up like a puppy's, he noticed someone touching his waist with their fingertips. He felt a tingling sensation that rose up his spinal cord and he rose in a reflex action.
"Forget that pile of shit, Salas, and follow me."
Rodolfo Grau had just arrived, accompanied by his arrogance to save him from the bad taste in his mouth.
"You’re not thinking to leave that filthy mine in the middle of the room," Salas protested simply for the pleasure of doing so, for in reality he was delighted to have gotten out of the repulsive task. “And if any of these patients tread on it as an oversight?”
It'll be picked up by some of the assistants, Salas." The director spoke as if each word was a huge effort. “Follow me and let others do their work.”
"But... social work..." The retired doctor had in mind a speech to gain a little favor from his now superior, but he had already left the room, leaving him as Cándido, the Tertullian: talking to himself.
As soon as he took his seat in front of the wooden oak desk in his office, Rodolfo Grau offered a cigarette to the old doctor. Salas looked at the gift suspiciously.
"Smoking is not allowed in here, sir," he said the last word with his characteristic sarcasm.
Shrugging, the man opened the first drawer of the desk and took out a wide glass and a bottle of Jameson. He poured the liquor into the glass and offered it to him, too.
"You're with me, the director of the center, in my private place of work," he said as he filled his own glass. “If I offer you alcohol and nicotine, it is because you can accept it.”
Salas replied with a half-smile, as if wondering whether this was a sign of comradeship or whether it was a trap.
"I quit smoking years ago, so I'm going to turn down your little friend with a filter," he said, "but the whiskey does appeal to me."
Director Grau nodded smiling. Then he began to speak as he lit his cigarette with a match.
"Sir, tell me, what did your first few hours feel like in the Center?"
"Are you kidding, Rodolfo? This place is hell.”
The mentor drew imprecise forms with the smoke while he thought about his next sentence.
"Don’t you fit in? Come on, I’m sure some friend has helped you.”
"Only Saul Morgan. If it weren’t for the conversations I’ve had with him, I would slice my veins with a nail cutter.”
"Saul Morgan," Grau repeated, as if he wanted to keep the two words in his memory for the rest of his life. He put the cigarette in the ashtray and typed something on his laptop computer. Then he continued with his questioning: "How do you feel spiritually?” The old man opened his eyes so wide that his interlocutor was obliged to rephrase the question. “I mean... your goals. Do you have any personal goal set in here? Because I assure you it’s elemental.”
"I have come to serve my sentence, not to seek answers or justifications. Now, you have cojones to ask me that question, so I'm going to open up a little for you,” Rafael said as he submerged the ice chip in the whiskey. “Between you and me, Rodolfo, I thought I might find something of God in this pain. I don’t want to say that picking up shit from the floor or dealing with patients is a mystical experience, but if we understand that every day locked in the center is a penance, then maybe I can give back some of the pain I've caused. And so, hopefully, I can be at peace.”
"I confess I find it difficult to understand.”
"Maybe it's hard for me to explain. I haven’t talked about myself in this way for decades.”
"I've noticed that you change your expression every time you take that glass of whiskey to your mouth. Do you often drink a lot of these?” Grau changed the subject suddenly.
"Before, and practically at all hours. I had my drunken time without a respite, you know? Now I still have no respite, but at least I'm sober for life,” the old man explained sarcastically, and burst out laughing like a foolish child.
"What happened to make you drink?"
The question made the laughter dry up until his lips became a thin expression line on the ex-doctor's face.
"We don’t even know each other enough so I can answer that question, lad," he said, so Grau suddenly felt as if he were talking to a war veteran who he owed the utmost respect.
"Then tell me why you stopped drinking. That must have been very good news for you.”
Salas crossed his legs and let out a tired sigh.
"What do you want, Rodolfo? You bring me here, you offer me whiskey and cigarettes, and you start harassing me with questions about my private life. Why?”
"I want us to be friends, that's all."
The old man spat a new laugh.
"I'm not a person who delights in friendships, so, dear director, I'm afraid you're wasting your time."
"But Saul Morgan has become your friend faster than the cock crows," he said mystically, and then spread the ash on the tip of his cigarette in the ashtray.
" I suppose he reminds me of my son-in-law.”
Grau raised his eyebrows. Maybe he found the opening he needed?
"Do you miss him?"
“A lot. Alfonso was an exceptional boy, and indeed I admired him. He was successful where I failed: he made his wife happy.”
Dr. Grau poured more whiskey into the old man's glass and continued the round of questions.
"Now that you’ve mentioned her, do you hope to be reconciled to your daughter?"
The retired man looked at the director with a layer of sadness covering his eyes.
"Verónica hates me. But she is pregnant, and I recognize that the only thing I want in this life is to see the face of my new grandson.”
"What do you think of the guys?" Grau asked, sipping Jameson's glass and adding a new twist to the conversation.
“Guys?”
"Yes, the ones in the lounge room. For example, Nico, what do you think of him?”
"The boxer boy?" The old man made a funny grin on his face. “That boy is very fucked in the head! Punching his knuckles against a concrete wall...” he stated between teeth as he shook his head.
"Yes, he obviously has an illness.” Grau strove to maintain professionalism in the conversation. “But what do you think is his problem?”
"Don’t ask me, Rodolfo, to answer those questions, it’s up to you, the experts. I'm just here to pick up crap from the floor. You know...”
"Yes, social work."
Someone knocked on the door of the office from outside that startled Salas. He turned back to the origin of the sound and director Grau, demanding an explanation.
"What the hell was that?" He asked, confused.
"It's Félix. You shouldn’t pay too much attention to him," Grau said matter-of-factly as he brought out a plastic cardboard. “What do you see in this picture?”
Salas took it as disoriented as if he had taken any card from a magician's deck, and watched it for a few seconds.
"A tractor that is about to pass over a man with one arm. In the distance there is a girl playing ball,” was his answer.
Félix pounded on the door once more, as forcefully as if he had used a wooden log.
"Can you tell me three words that rhyme with heat?" The director continued with his survey.
“Beet, seek and teak. Hey, why the fuck are you asking me these questions?”
The director gave two consecutive puffs to his cigarette before answering:
"It's an intelligence test we do to the patients. Don’t put on that face of indignation, the test is not intended for you. I simply want you to know it so that in the future you will be able to do it to the new patients.”
"Do you think I'm going to be here for so long?"
"That's not for me to answer. Nevertheless, I must make sure that you knows all our procedures and protocols, for now you’re one of us,” Grau explained with exagge
rated professionalism. “You need to pay attention and respond. Can you name the twelve months of the year in reverse order?”
The old man closed his eyes and tried the test:
“December, November, October, September...”
"Okay, you don’t have to go on!" He congratulated him: “you have more mental efficiency than an eight-year-old boy,” he said amusedly. “Okay, now give me three movie directors.”
“Garci, Amenábar and Pedro Almodóvar.”
"And some that aren’t Spaniards?"
“Spielberg, Hitchcock and Woody Allen. Is there really anyone in this center who is not able to perform this test correctly?”
"There are many who are unable even to say their name and surname, my new friend. Remember that they are mentally deficient; dead souls, so to speak. Now touch the tip of your left foot with your right hand, then the right with your left hand.”
The subject did it perfectly and without question.
The door was struck this time continuously from the other side. Salas interrupted his test.
"Hey, aren’t you going to let him in? How long will Félix be banging the door?”
"Félix doesn’t have to come into this office. He’s suffering delusional disorder, or what is the same, paranoia. I assure you, you don’t want to chat with him. He will leave voluntarily when he finds another entertainment that is not my door," said Grau with renowned cruelty.
"Delusional disorder... you mean he’s a neurotic?" The old man asked with growing curiosity.
"Psychotic, to be more exact.” Rodolfo Grau gave a new puff on his cigarette, and immediately moved the glass with Jameson to his mouth.
Salas pursed his lips. As if he could read his mind, which at that moment he was trying to remember the difference between neurosis and psychosis, Grau went on to explain himself better.
“As you do know, neurosis is the delusional diagnosis that is preceded by traumatic experiences, that is, by events that the patient suffered at some point in his past. Traumas that is so powerful that they modify the mind of the subject. A good example of neurosis can be found in Maruja. Did I introduce you to her?”
"The maniac who verbally throws her insults at the mirror?" Asked rhetorically the elder. “Yes, I know who she is.”
"This peculiar little old lady, who always lived as a single woman, committed a sin that you can’t imagine.”
“What did she do?”
Apparently, his eagerness to know was already so great in the ex doctor that he didn’t realize that Félix had stopped pounding the door with his fists.
"Lady Maruja had a twin sister whom she loved dearly, which was not an impediment to her committing one of the greatest transgression to a sister. Her sister was going to marry a very attractive Portuguese man, a worldly man but significantly younger than her. And he was a womanizer. Well, on the very day of the wedding, while the rest of the guests danced, Maruja, who had never been touched by a man, was seduced by him. And she let herself go. From that day on, while her sister was married to him, Maruja took her brother-in-law as a lover to bed, not once, but several more times.”
"Don’t fuck with me, did she really?" Salas was so intrigued that he seemed to jump out of his chair at any moment.
"Yes, until her sister caught them in the middle of the act. And something terrible happened. The deceived twin, hurt as she was, ran and left the house without seeing the car that was just passing the main gate and it threw her several meters in the air.”
"For goodness sake."
“Maruja provoked, with her null willpower and fraternal infidelity, the death of her beloved sister. Her brain wasn’t able to bear it, much less forget it, so she modified her own nervous system to eliminate the event from her mind. The guilt, the regret and the embarrassment of having caused the death of her sister so upset her that today she is the sweet old woman who argues with herself thinking that she is looking at her deceased twin through the mirror. And, for all this, her diagnosis is clearly neurosis.”
“I get it. And Félix, did he suffer any trauma?”
"Not at all, or else we’d know. Félix, unlike Maruja, suffers from acute psychosis. His brain has been sickly since birth, but increasingly severe. He lives completely apart from reality, as if in another world, but he has no reason to do so. Like the someone who has always been blind, Félix was born with slight delusions that became more acute with the passage of time. Today he is a difficult human being. He is harmless, of that I have no doubt, but neither do I recommend that you get together with him.”
"What is your motive?"
Director Grau's eyes narrowed and they gleamed. No doubt the conversation had taken a path as unexpected as it was interesting.
"Because he's an asocial madman who lives surrounded by beings and things that do not exist for us. He's like a monster, a rabid dog, just that Félix doesn’t throw himself at anyone’s neck.”
There was an awkward silence in the study. “Are you satisfied with the scientific information?” He asked arrogantly as he crisscrossed his fingers.
The old doctor nodded distractedly, for his mind seemed to continue to revolve around the cases of Félix and Maruja.
When, nearly half an hour later, the stupid intelligence tests were over, the center's director gave permission for Salas to leave and return to his room.
"See you, Rodolfo.” He said good-bye with an unobtrusive squint. “Enjoy your whiskey!”
"The ice has melted, now it’s more water than alcohol.”
As soon as Salas left the office and closed the door, Grau put the cigarette down in the ashtray, he reached out and pulled the fixed telephone that rested on a corner of the oak desk. From memory, he dialed a number. Judge José Miguel Callejo took the call on the second tone.
The director identified himself as Dr. Grau and, as if he had been waiting for days to make the call, he blurted the message:
“Salas already knows of the existence of Félix.”
“So soon?”
“That soon.”
"Well, you already know my opinion: there shouldn’t even be a hello it’s dangerous.”
“Yes, I'm afraid it’ll be difficult to avoid that.”
No one spoke for seconds, and Grau could feel Callejo biting his nails in a cloud of uneasiness on the other side of the connection.
"Have you talked to him?" Said the judge at last.
"With Salas? Yes of course.”
“And?”
“Baffling.”
"Well, look, keep me informed of any news.” The director, skilled at psychoanalyzing everyone, gave him the impression that Callejo was trying to stay as distant as possible. In fact, the following words he heard saying farewell was "I wish you the best.”
As soon as he hung up the phone, Rodolfo Grau leaned back on his chair and, absorbed in his thoughts, finished the whiskey with the remaining melted ice.
Rafael Salas was tired, as if during the interview with the director he had been forced to hold a pile of books on the palms of his hands. He took a few steps down the aisle away from the director's office, and when he started to pay attention, he realized: he was lost again. He walked aimlessly for some minutes in which he didn’t meet anyone. Through the few windows that illuminated the deserted corridor, the sun still glinted among the dark clouds. Shortly, he reached a long hallway limited by the wall that led to the exterior of the building (on the right), and a gray wall with metal doors along (to the left). He was forced to wonder about what the doors were. Why metal? What or whom were they hiding or locking up with such vigor? The old man's eyebrows arched more for every door he reached: all were open, and there was absolutely nothing in them. The rooms were replicas of each other, and the word that best defined them was a hole in the wall. Devoid of windows and furniture, Salas exaggerated, thinking that not even an insect would survive locked up in such conditions.
Rafael's interest suddenly shot up as he passed the last of the gates: it was closed. Why? Was anyone inside? Alt
hough it was what his body begged him to do, he was not able to extend his arm and force the lever unlocking the door. It was the umpteenth time in a few days that Dr. Salas felt overwhelmed by fear.
Footsteps were heard in the distance, approaching the corridor, and the disturbing atmosphere suddenly settled in the mind of the old doctor when he saw that it was one of the nurses (the same one who had obtained the doctor's white coat). She was less than thirty years old, infectiously sweet with her permanent smile, decorated with braces. She came to mind as the ill-fated Twin Peaks star, Laura Palmer, every time Salas saw her. She must have seen him very lost, for without exchanging words she took his right arm and prepared to accompany him to his room. The old man's heart skipped a beat when, just before turning the corner, a loud rumble came from the only closed door... as if someone had struck it with all its might from within, aided by a wooden log... The old man wanted to turn in an instinctive act, but nurse Palmer, who acted as if she had heard nothing, forced him to keep moving.
A few minutes later Salas was safe between the four walls of his room. From time to time, there was a soulless cry, more typical of an animal than a human being, and he wondered if it was Nico, the boxer boy, or maybe the kid with the shaved head who habitually defecated on the tiles of the lounge room. In that taciturn moment, Rafael realized that he had fulfilled 72 hours, three days, since his entered the center.
After a long hot shower and many minutes of reflection, Sara Mora left her room and went downstairs feeling like a heroine under her skin. Without pausing to say good morning to anyone who was watching television in the living room, she left the house with a determined attitude. The sky had dawned overcast, though it had not rained since the night before, and the asphalt of Victoria Road was practically dry. A gust of wind slapped her, however, as soon as she opened the door, which caused Sara to wrap herself in her jacket and harden her gesture.
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