A Crack in the Wall

by Claudia Piñeiro

  “And there’s a difference?”

  “Are you trying to pick a fight? You see – that’s not your style either.”

  Laura puts on her jacket. Her hair gets caught under the jacket collar and she rearranges it in front of the mirror.

  “Perhaps my style is changing,” he says.

  Laura looks at him but says nothing. Then Pablo adds, “I bought these jeans too,” pulling up his jeans from the waistband, tugging at them a little as though to suggest that he could fill them better. “Do you like them?”

  She studies Pablo’s reflection in the mirror and says:

  “Try not to go anywhere very dusty – dark jeans are impossible to clean.”

  “Yes, don’t worry,” says Pablo Simó, giving his wife a kiss. He picks up the list of buildings for Leonor that was lying on the bed with his wallet, puts both of these in his pocket and leaves the room before Laura.

  He’s arranged to meet Leonor at the corner of Rivadavia and Callao. Even though most of the buildings selected for this tour are in the danger zone because of their proximity to his house, Pablo knows that Laura’s route to the supermarket will take her in the direction of the Flores district, not towards the centre, like him. By the time Pablo arrives with Leonor at Rivadavia 3,200, their furthest point on this avenue, his wife will be safely far away. Glancing at his watch, he sees that he has arrived twenty-five minutes early. He looks over at the El Molino café, closed in 1997 and seemingly doomed to remain closed; the National Congress building; the bar on the opposite corner, across Callao; beyond it the Plaza de los Dos Congresos is thronged with flags and banners making demands Pablo can’t quite make out. He sees a small, grubby tent – not part of today’s protest, he decides, but left over from some previous demonstration. He wonders at which of the four cardinal points Leonor will appear. So as not to spend too long waiting on this corner, he walks up the Avenida Rivadavia, looking for a quiet bar where he can wait for the girl away from the clamour of a protest that doesn’t interest him. Ought he to be interested? Not today, he tells himself, not on the day he’s going out for the first time with a girl – though strictly speaking this isn’t “going out” – after eleven thousand and seventy days of monogamy.

  He finds a suitable bar, goes in, picks a table and sits down. Then he takes the list of buildings out of his pocket, lays it on the table and goes over it again. The selection now strikes him as worryingly flawed: it’s a century out of date. Most of the buildings he has picked for Leonor were built nearly a hundred years ago. Since when has he been so interested in art nouveau? Why hasn’t he chosen a single modern tower? Why, instead of walking the girl around Rivadavia, didn’t he propose a tour that takes in, for example, the new waterfront developments at Puerto Madero or the business district of Catalinas, both abounding in prize-winning, celebrated architecture from the last decades which he could have shown and explained to her, flaunting his expertise? Why didn’t he think of taking her to Palermo Soho, or Palermo Hollywood, or Palermo Queens, even to Las Cañitas – not the home of his favourite architecture, but still a perfectly pleasant place to walk with a girl like Leonor? All this he asks himself while sitting in a bar poorly lit by thick amber-coloured globes speckled with air-bubbles, and with bare Formica tables, hard wooden chairs, white plastic napkin rings (prism-shaped), and old dispensers with advertisements for vermouth stamped on them in red; it’s a Saturday afternoon and the place is empty apart from himself, the waiter and the cashier.

  He looks in his pocket and realizes that he isn’t carrying his Caran d’Ache pencil, or his measuring tape. He asks the waiter for a pen and writes an A and an N beside the building at Rivadavia 2,000 that is definitely art nouveau; another AN goes beside the building designed by Palanti. Pablo knows that even Colombo’s buildings are classed within the same movement, although for Tano Barletta – with whom he had argued for two whole hours standing in front of this pair of apartment blocks on Hipólito Yrigoyen at 2,500, and almost arrived late to the final exam of History II as a result – “Colombo’s work is a wonderful monstrosity that goes beyond questions of style.” Tano was a fanatic, a defender to the death of the Milanese architect, something that hadn’t met with approval during their time at the faculty; in fact, some junior lecturer said in front of Barletta that Colombo’s façades were not architecture but decorative fondant, to which Tano yelled from the back of the theatre:

  “Stucco, not fondant! Stucco, not fondant!”

  And he paid for this spirited defence; they failed him twice on the exam.

  “Colombo did what he wanted,” insisted Tano. “He didn’t give a shit about other people’s opinions – that’s why the smart families wouldn’t employ him, Pablo. Look where his buildings are: Almagro, Balvanera, Boedo; not even one in Barrio Parque or Recoleta.”

  Pablo Simó hasn’t chosen any buildings for Leonor in Barrio Parque or Recoleta, either. Consulting his watch, he sees that there are still ten minutes to go. He wonders whether or not to put AN beside the building on Avenida Paraguay at 1,300, chosen because he suspects it will prove to be Leonor’s favourite. Technically, Pablo thinks the design may belong to the Liberty Milanese movement, and even though he knows that Liberty Milanese was Italy’s art nouveau, he thinks this building deserves its own designation. So he writes down AN, and in brackets LM. Pablo Simó begins to see that all roads seem to be leading back to the same place in the previous century, although he isn’t sure to which movement the balconies on Arenales and Riobamba belong and he can’t remember the name of that building’s architect. He’s always been proud of his love of rationalism; why, given this unique opportunity to show a woman his favourite architecture, has he plumped for art nouveau?

  “It’s the extravagance of the style, the curves, the exuberance. That’s what makes art nouveau sexy, Simó,” Tano would surely reply if he were to walk into this bar where Pablo sits drinking a soda that’s short on fizz, on this near-deserted avenue.

  And even though his friend isn’t there and Pablo has no idea where Tano might be now, he imagines him sitting in the opposite chair at the table.

  “Since when are you art nouveau, Pablo?” Barletta asks him. “I was the art nouveau one. You were the rationalist, the elegant art deco, and I was the flabby one, even though we both hailed from the same middle class. What’s happened to you?”

  “Nothing, Tano.”

  “Nothing? How many years have gone by since we last saw each other? Fifteen? Twenty? Something must have happened to you in all those years, Pablo.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with the passing years, Tano.”

  “So what is it?”

  “It’s to do with today – with these last few days.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I swear if there were anything by Gaudí in Buenos Aires I’d go and live there right now.”

  “Gaudí isn’t going too far?”

  “The more undulations and curves the better.”

  “You’ve fallen in love, Pablo!”

  “What are you on about?”

  “You’ve fallen in love. I don’t think it’s a curvaceous building you want to get into, but a curvaceous girl.”

  “You’re mad, Tano. I’m still with Laura.”

  “And?”

  “I’m still married.”

  “And?”

  “So the situation’s the same as when we last saw each other.”

  “Hardly the same – a lot of time has passed, brother. We’re older, Pablo. Do you know that I don’t know a single guy of our age, I swear, not one, who isn’t sick of his wife?”

  “Sick?”

  “Yes, sick, that is the word Pablo, sick; even if they don’t put it that way, you can tell from the way they talk about them – or don’t.”

  “Yes, I am older.”

  “And more scared, too.”

  “Scared of what?” Pablo asks.

  “That life will always be like this,” he answers. “Nothing more than a petty annoyance we have no
choice but to endure, a mild annoyance, but permanent all the same, not painful, not fatal, but sapping.”

  Pablo plays with the napkin dispenser, pressing on the spring until a pile of napkins falls out at once, then he dedicates himself obsessively to replacing them. Without looking at Barletta, his eyes fixed on the action of his hands, he says:

  “The girl’s just over twenty-five, Tano.”

  “I told you there was a girl!” Barletta cries, beaming. “Didn’t I tell you? Art nouveau my arse!”

  “Yes, there is one, and she’s pretty and she laughs and she’s nice to me,” he says, and lets his gaze drift to a bus passing on the avenue outside.

  “You’re in love, Pablo.”

  “Do you think? I don’t know if this is being in love, Tano. I don’t think I know what being in love is like. Is it this? Have I finally succumbed?”

  But when he shifts his gaze back from the window, Tano Barletta is no longer sitting opposite him. Pablo’s on his own now. Alone – and in love? – with his scribbled list of buildings, less preoccupied now by the subject of art nouveau than by whether he, at this stage in his life, can say that he knows what love is. Against what parameter or measure can he check whether what he felt in the past was love or not? It’s possible to know what a car is, or a mountain, a bear, an apple, or a plastic napkin dispenser. A corpse buried in the foundations of a building. But what is love, Pablo Simó asks himself today, perhaps for the first time in his life. Is it what he felt for Laura when they first met? Or what he felt later, when they decided to get married? Is love that pain he felt in his chest in the hospital, the day that Francisca was born? Or is love that alteration that Marta Horvat has so often triggered in his body? Is it the reason he is still married? Or is that simply a derivation of love, as Liberty Milanese derived from art nouveau? Is it love that led him to lie to his wife about the reason he wasn’t going to the supermarket as he has on so many other Saturdays, or to buy a yellow cardigan and new jeans and sit in this bar waiting for the time of his rendezvous to arrive?

  Pablo gazes blankly out of the window. Two girls of Francisca’s age pass the window, laughing, and behind them a man alone, and behind him a woman walking a dog. He wonders if any of them know what love is. Does the waiter know, or the cashier? Does Laura? And Marta Horvat? He reckons that even if they do not know, they must believe they do, because love is a democratic concept: everybody claims to recognize it and know or have known about it. For some it’s a source of joy, for others woe, but nobody claims ignorance. Even his invented Tano Barletta thinks he has the right to ask him about it, as though he were privy to some higher knowledge. The same Tano Barletta who, as far as Pablo knows, never had a relationship lasting longer than two weeks, who liked to maintain that marriage was for cowards or dullards, whose appreciation of the female sex was limited to a chart he used to carry around in his student days, based on a points system that rated different parts of the candidates’ bodies, but principally their bums, thighs and tits. That same Tano Barletta, albeit imaginary, has just assured him that he, Pablo Simó, is in love. Is this another of those chalk/cheese situations? He and Tano Barletta may mean different things by love. The more he looks for answers, the more questions he comes up with. Or perhaps it is simply the same question taking different forms. Because if you aren’t sure what love is, what questions are left to be asked? He doesn’t know, but Pablo is sure of one thing: that nobody, married, single, male, female, young or old, dares to doubt – as he does today – that love exists.

  He looks at his watch – shit, it’s five minutes after the time he arranged to meet Leonor. He leaves money for his drink on the table and rushes out, anxious that the girl may already be waiting for him.

  Or worse: that she may already have gone, which would go to show precisely how little Pablo Simó knows about love.

  12

  There are too many people on the corner of Rivadavia and Callao for a normal Saturday afternoon. And there’s too much noise. Why did he tell her to come here? Only he would think of asking a woman to meet him in a square where there are always people protesting with banners, flags, loudhailers and horns. He tries to see whether she is standing at one of the other corners, straining to see between the flags; there’s no sign of her. Could she be behind that tall man with the denim jacket? No, that’s not her. And it’s not the girl with black shades who’s crossing over from the square; it looks like her but Leonor is shorter, prettier, and her hair, even when it is tied in a ponytail, shines more. He turns again, pausing at each of the four possible directions. Lots of people, but not her, not Leonor. What should he do now? Just wait? Pablo toys with the zipper on his new cardigan, pulling it up and down a few inches, as if that movement makes up for his lack of action. He could call her to establish whether she has been and gone, or never came. He takes from his wallet the number that Leonor wrote down for him on a paper napkin. For the first time in his life he wishes that he had a mobile phone; today he feels that he needs one – if he had one she could have called him, then he would know what to do next and he wouldn’t feel so lost. He casts around him in search of a telephone booth then asks at a news stand, where they tell him that there is a call centre with phones half a block away. He checks his watch: fifteen minutes since the time they agreed to meet – more than fifteen, eighteen, nearly twenty. At the call centre, he dials Leonor’s number.

  “Are you still coming?” Pablo Simó asks the girl.

  “I’m standing on the corner. Where are you?”

  He doesn’t answer but hangs up, leaves two pesos – more than enough to cover the call – and runs towards the corner of Rivadavia and Callao. From a little way off he sees her. She’s wearing a pink jacket – what could that mean? She still has the mobile in her hand, open, as though she were waiting for it to ring again. He runs as fast as he can.

  “Hello,” Pablo says, trying to disguise his breathlessness, and while he’s wondering what to do next, she puts her hand on his shoulder, brings her face close to his and kisses his cheek.

  “Hello,” she says. “Where were you?”

  “In a call centre. I thought you weren’t coming.”

  “I got here a while ago, and as I didn’t see you I went to buy some water,” Leonor says, indicating the bottle, from which she takes a sip before offering it to him:

  “Do you want some?”

  He looks at the girl’s hand on the bottle but says nothing, and Leonor, interpreting his silence as a “no”, takes another drink.

  “So where do we start?”

  “We’re going up Rivadavia first,” he tells her.

  “What do you mean, ‘up’ it?”

  “In the direction that the numbers get bigger,” Pablo answers, and points out the route they need to take.

  “Let’s go up, then,” she says, smiling with her eyes.

  They walk along Rivadavia in silence and, although it isn’t an uncomfortable silence – quite the opposite – Pablo wonders whether he ought to start a conversation. Why is it always obligatory to talk when you’re with someone? Why do most people find it so hard to tolerate silence? He would be happy to continue like this, walking quietly beside her, but he’s worried that that the girl will think him nervous or shy, or lacking in things to say. Better for him to do what everyone else would and say something, he decides. He could kick off with the buildings they are going to see and what he knows about them – it would be a good way to show off in front of the girl, but perhaps it’s boring to launch into this so early into their walk. The thing is, he doesn’t know if he’s at liberty to talk to Leonor about anything else. She asked for building façades to photograph and for him to accompany her; that much is clear, but how much else can they talk about as they walk? There’s the photography course that Leonor’s taking. Or how long it took her to get to their meeting point. There’s the brand of mineral water she’s carrying and whether she prefers waters with or without sodium. There’s the weather. Definitely the weather – who doesn’t t
alk about that? But as soon as he pictures himself saying “Nice day, isn’t it?” to this girl, he feels like an idiot. He could ask her who she lives with, if she has a partner, or has had one. No – not unless she asks him first, he decides, and he hopes that Leonor does not ask him, because he would be obliged either to tell her about Laura and Francisca or to lie to her. He looks at her again and decides that waiting for the girl to speak first isn’t such a bad option. But they keep walking and Leonor says nothing, though she doesn’t seem to find the silence awkward: every so often she looks at him, smiles and drinks water but says nothing. Pablo pauses to let her take a step forward then moves sideways, trying to change their relative positions so that Leonor isn’t walking on the outside of the pavement; she doesn’t understand the gallantry and looks puzzled by his manoeuvre.

  “What’s wrong?” the girl asks.

  “Nothing,” he says, but he tries to make the movement again, touching her lightly on the back to indicate that she should step sideways.

  The girl laughs, moves her rucksack as though that were the obstacle to Pablo’s positioning, and lets him swap sides.

  “What’s wrong?” she insists.

  “Nothing, just that that’s your side and this is mine.”

  “Why?”

  “Because women walk beside the buildings and men beside the street,” Pablo explains.

  “Really? Who said?”

  “I don’t know who said it. It’s a custom.”

  “Are you someone who’s very attached to customs?”

  Pablo feels uneasy; he’s not sure what to say. Is he very attached to customs? If so, which ones? After eleven thousand and seventy days with Laura, how can he be sure if the customs he respects are his, hers, or the ones they both agree on? What told him to ask this girl to walk on the inside of the pavement? Leonor, tired of waiting for Pablo to answer her last question, tries another:

  “But why – is it because it brings bad luck? Is it like walking under a ladder or crossing the path of a black cat?”