The Swimmers

by Joaquin Perez Azaustre

  “The last I heard—and this was a while ago now, a year and half or more—was that he was interested in homeless people.”

  “In Oliver’s case, I wouldn’t be surprised if he decided to become one so he could photograph himself in one of his fictional self-portraits, as he likes to call them.”

  “Maybe. You know how he is: one day he calls you because he’s in town, you meet for dinner and have a great time like always; then the next day you try to call and he’s nowhere to be found, like he’s vanished. No address, no telephone number, nothing.”

  “That’s just what I wanted to ask you about. That’s exactly what’s happened.”

  “You can’t track him down? That’s no surprise. Don’t worry, Sebastian.”

  The waiter comes over bearing a tray with two tumblers. He sets them on the table and fills them there, generously. Then he leaves a small bottle of water between the two and discreetly withdraws. Jonás pours a small squirt in both whiskies.

  “You don’t understand. This time is different. You were the last one I invited to participate because—and don’t take this the wrong way—I knew you’d have no scheduling conflicts. But Oliver exhibits a lot now, and he was the first one I talked to. Ever since, I’ve been trying to get a hold of him; no luck by phone, his voicemail’s full, nothing by email; nothing on social media, or at any of his addresses. I’ve talked to everyone who knows him, and nobody can tell me a thing. You know how much Oliver means to me. He’s like my son. I even went to the police, but they just ignored me. I’m getting desperate. Are you sure you haven’t heard from him in the last few months? Try to think. Please. Maybe you just forgot.”

  Chapter 30

  When Jonás wakes up he doesn’t know where he is. His eyelids are heavy, but he doesn’t feel especially destroyed. Above his head he can make out the lamp of his parents’ bedroom, with miniature oval crystals hanging from a metal ring with small glass inlays. He stretches out his hand and recognizes the white woven quilt beneath him. To his left, the noontime splendor enters through the window that leads to the terrace. He recalls the end of his conversation with Sebastian, in a haze, and sees himself saying goodbye in the hotel lobby, after a few more whiskies, and then making his way to one of the darker and more secluded establishments downtown, still open at that hour, going on two or three in the morning, where he sometimes ends up after dropping off his friend.

  He pokes at his pockets. He finds the taxi receipt. His wallet is still in his pants; he checks it and confirms that his credit cards are in place, though he’s missing more money than he can remember spending, probably less than usual. He sets his feet firmly on the carpet and gets up. Then he spots himself in the round dresser mirror, feeling like an intruder.

  Before giving it any thought he’s in the shower, with a generous jet of water running down his back. For lack of a toothbrush, he’s rinsed his mouth with toothpaste. He lathers himself up and steadies the shower head as he leans against the wall, relaxed and exhausted; he’s suddenly alarmed to realize how unsettled he is by the silence.

  He pulls back the shower curtain and seizes his father’s white bath robe. It fits him perfectly; he must have built more muscle than he realized or else he’d never fill it out. In his backpack he carries a disposable razor set. The blade glides over his chin, the clipped monotone scraping leaving him clean-shaven. From the medicine cabinet, he takes the aftershave he discovered the previous afternoon, half-full, and upends it generously into the hollow of his hands, which he proceeds to press against his cheeks, his chin raised, and along his neck and jawline, as he saw his father do every day with his customary joviality, a quality he had retained until recently, when they stopped talking much; it is then that Jonás discovers that his every movement this morning has been directed toward this very instant, the moment he has rediscovered the aftershave and washed himself in his father’s smell, that fresh blue porosity in a bottle.

  He combs his wet hair and returns to the bedroom. He tries to recompose the quilt, exquisitely embroidered, although he knows he’ll never leave it pulled as taut as she would want; but what can he do: no matter how much he tries and strains, that perfection has always been just out of his reach. He can’t imagine what could have happened to his mother, but the one thing he was sure of as soon as he woke up, and which is now starting to haul at his equilibrium, rendering it more precarious, is a certainty that he will not hear her voice again, whether in person or on the phone, and this whole house, with its tidiness, its unmoving order, no longer has any clues to offer him. He needs to call his father.

  He takes pictures of the apartment. When he’s done, he thinks of the junk room. He goes to the kitchen, opens the table drawer, and takes out the key ring with a small metal elephant, almost the size of his thumb. He puts the apartment keys in his pocket, pulls the door shut, and climbs up the stairs. In a moment he is once again opening the gray steel door. The one thing he hasn’t checked is the easel, which is covered by a sheet. He lifts it and contemplates the canvas his mother has left unfinished. He takes a step back. It too depicts a pool, but seen from within. Or maybe not exactly, because it could be a pond, a swamp, or the sea. He can make out the image of a helpless body, a mix of Jonás as a child and Jonás now, but lacking all muscularity, unconscious and sinking, with his father behind him; not his father now, but someone more similar to the man he once was, holding Jonás up by his armpits, bending his legs against the background, its emerald murk almost more solid than them, heavier and denser.

  After looking at it for a while, however, it seems to him that the identities of the two bodies might be the opposite: because the body that Jonás has identified as his father’s, trying to save him in this scene, also bears certain similarities to his own, and the body he’s established as himself, more insubstantial and vulnerable, may well be, from a certain point of view, a more elderly version of his father; since the faces cannot be differentiated in the darkness of the image, each of the two figures could be either of them.

  Chapter 31

  He spies him through the window, at the same table as always, and their gazes cross. The eyes of the old swimmer brighten as he starts to get up and leave. Jonás stops him with a wave of his hand, walks through the automatic doors, and enters the café of the Hotel Ángel. Sitting in the booth with its blue cushions stuck to the wood, not moving a muscle, Leopoldo exhibits a restrained posture that transmits a feeling of unease: it is not the noble calm he usually exudes as he observes the street. This time he seems much more restless, as if he too had had a rough night.

  Jonás pats him on the back and lets his right hand linger on his shoulder: he watches his body shrink back and his knees press together beneath the table, despite Leopoldo’s efforts to hide it, to contain the wobble of his legs.

  “Leopoldo, you’re trembling. Are you alright?”

  The vibrations cease, and he lets his head drop into his hands, leaning his elbows on the glass next to an empty cup. From above, without sitting yet, Jonás contemplates the white crew cut as Leopoldo’s thick, round shoulders begin to shake.

  “My granddaughter. My daughter and my granddaughter. I can’t find them, Jonás. Not at their house, not anywhere. I’ve called her cell phone, but no one picks up. I went to my granddaughter’s school, in case they were on a field trip or something, but they would have told me. At my daughter’s office they said they haven’t heard from her in two days. Nothing’s changed in her apartment. I don’t know what to do.”

  Jonás clasps his hands together as he examines Leopoldo’s: large and blocky, an ironworker’s hands, with thick fingers, two bone clubs covered in flesh, impotent and sterile, trying to find an explanation.

  “Have you reported it?”

  “Yes,” he regains his composure. “They told me they only file reports after seventy-two hours, but these first forty-eight are going to drive me crazy. You have to understand, I see my daughter every day. We eat lunch or dinner together, I spend the afternoon with Alicia,
my granddaughter.”

  He lowers his head again, and this time he covers it completely, his palms outstretched. Between his fingers, portentous and open, there appear small clearings where his white hair shows through.

  “You know what they told me? That people disappear every day.”

  “Every day?”

  “Yeah. Apparently we should be used to it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Jonás rubs his hands together again and then runs them across the bed sheet that covers the canvas. He doesn’t like what he’s thinking, but he can’t keep listening to Leopoldo. All he wants to do is head up to his apartment and slowly peel off that sheet, with the dried droplets of paint like congealed patches, and recall her graceful and delicate hand, its evident finesse, the energy of its fingers suddenly cut short, just when the image was beginning to take shape, to flash in her eyes: his mother’s paintbrush cutting through the void, protected and tangible, as if Jonás too, just by touching it, could later plunge into that painting, into its green waters.

  “I guess I’ll just wait out the next twenty-four hours and keep my cell phone on me. Then I’ll head back to the police station. Although I get the impression it won’t do much good. Not that they didn’t treat me right this morning, it’s not that. But they just acted like it was so normal; no one seemed worried in the least. And we’re talking about a young woman and a little girl here… Anything could have happened to them.”

  Jonás remains silent. He feels a sharp pressure in his temples, a shooting pain.

  “I don’t think so. I hope not, don’t talk like that. Wait for them at their place. Look, I’m sorry but I’ve got to go. You have my number; call me if you need me, or if you find anything out. Any time.”

  “Here, take this. I made a bunch of copies.”

  Leopoldo takes a full-color copy of a photograph from the inside pocket of his cream-colored jacket. Jonás looks it over at length: redheads both of them, smiling at the camera with cheer and candor, the little girl with an expression that echoes one of Leopoldo’s.

  Jonás thinks that both mother and daughter are quite pretty, but he decides to say nothing. When he offers his hand, Leopoldo embraces him. Jonás can feel the fortitude of that body clinging to his and the slight stir of his breathing. He tries to return that strength with his own, but he can’t manage. Then, without uttering a single word, Leopoldo walks out the glass door, dragging his leg from the right knee down, heavy-hearted and fragile, with that sturdiness so admired by Jonás now rattled from the inside out, destabilized, like a fallen tree trunk suddenly hollowed out, at the mercy of the winds.

  Chapter 32

  After changing his clothes, Jonás shuts the door. He has two hours until the pool opens, and he’ll have time to reflect on the way there; all he wants to do is to stand on the edge, before that circulating clarity, and let himself fall, let himself be dragged in, to move his arms and legs with the lassitude he so often experiences upon starting his swim, to feel the sudden absence of a burdensome gravity weighing him down.

  When the elevator door opens on the fifth floor, he finds the rubber mat covered by sheets of newspaper. Marius got held up this morning, unusual for him with his monotonous punctuality, but the papers spread out in the elevator, with the latent moisture and the unbreathable odor of bleach overpowering the lemon-scented air freshener, tell him that the doorman is now downstairs. When he descends and the door opens, Jonás finds Marius in front of him, about to enter, with the same imperturbable smile on his sharp cheeks, the bald head and hardened hump beneath the blue bowtie, his hand holding the mop in its bucket.

  “Good morning!”

  “How’s it going?”

  The doorman steps aside, letting him pass. Jonás has walked down the steps now and is headed for the door, taking care not to slip.

  “Just a moment, please!”

  He turns around, mildly annoyed.

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “It’s not about me,” Marius looks at the bucket, circular with a smattering of white bubbly foam. “It’s my brother. He called me again to ask when you’re planning to visit him. You wouldn’t believe how insistent he can be.”

  “Your brother?”

  “Yes, don’t you remember? So you can take his picture, the portraits in the greenhouse.”

  Jonás recalls the business card Marius gave him, with the directions, the bus number and the stop where he should get off, as well as a description of the place, still tucked in his wallet.

  “Hmm, let me think.” He turns his gaze toward the street; he’ll be done with his swim in another three hours, Sergio won’t be around to catch lunch, and he has the afternoon free. “Tell him to expect me at five; I shouldn’t be later than that.”

  It isn’t as cold out as yesterday, and his raincoat keeps him perfectly warm. He walks by the ticket window in the subway and sees no one on the other side of the glass, the chair and counter empty. Taking out his pass, he punches it; the metal doors open. He looks around at the advertising panels, enormous and garish, featuring giant girls with immaculate teeth, willowy in their bikinis, their waists covered in beach wraps, standing next to their luggage before boarding a plane: an ad from an agency promising unforgettable days of sun and mild waters. He notices a slight change, however: the upper corners are starting to curl down, coming unstuck due to their rapid aging, perhaps. Jonás recalls that those same appealing girls, ready to depart for a nameless tropical destination, have already been there for several weeks, and now their thighs have come free from the walls, their flip-flops seem more wrinkled, and cracks have started to show in their shiny blue eyes, like smiling suns beneath the veil of their long lashes, which are so large as to be individually distinguishable. He might enumerate them slowly, one-by-one.

  There is not much movement on the platform: four women—one middle-aged, carrying a plastic bag, who can’t stop staring at the digital clock that hangs from the ceiling, announcing one minute until the next train arrives; two teenagers with headphones; and a fourth, somewhat older, with her hair tied back. Across the way, just one young girl with her little sister. Blondes. He remembers his conversation with Leopoldo in the hotel and the fragility of his friend’s limp as he walked off. Jonás observes them both and thinks to himself that either of them could be the daughter or the granddaughter.

  Inside the subway car, Jonás tries to articulate his thoughts, but he only manages to feel even more constricted: maybe what’s hedging him in is the solitude of those seatbacks, the majority unoccupied, and the fact that the train looks like six o’clock on a Sunday morning, when the only ones aboard are stragglers from the night before, half-asleep with unseeing bloodshot eyes, or travelers headed to the airport for early-morning departures. But it isn’t a Sunday at dawn, it’s a regular Friday at noon, and there are too many free seats in the car, though new passengers get on at the stops, their gazes looking more lost than usual and exhibiting a strange slowness for that time of day, as if they too were suspicious of all that space.

  He exits right in front of the café, across from a newspaper stand. Through the movement of the revolving door he sees his father, leaning on the bar; he’s already spotted his son. He gestures to him, arching his eyebrows, and Jonás walks inside. After a split second of doubt, they shake hands without much conviction.

  “You were right. It’s all exactly the same, everything in its place, but you can tell no one’s been there recently. The thing is, all her stuff’s there: the dresses, the overcoats, even the hats. Mom wouldn’t have left without all that. Maybe it’s time for you to go to the bank and ask for her latest account statement, if you can. Her bank book only shows her transactions up until two months ago. I couldn’t find her purse, or her bag either. We should report her missing.”

  His father’s face hardens, though nothing in it has moved a millimeter, and Jonás feels the recollection of an icy drop of water run between his shoulder blades.

  “Jonás, the report
isn’t official, and even if it were it wouldn’t change anything. We can file one if you want, but I already told you they’re helping me out. I’ve been to the bank already and checked her accounts. Not a single transaction. Now you’ve got to try and remember the house. Not just what you saw: it’s something deeper than that; I’ve been there. I inspected everything, as you can imagine.” Jonás’s features have started to relax, although he’s still on edge. “But there’s always some little thing, a detail or an impression, even if it seems insignificant. You know her well. You two are a lot alike,” he finishes, hinting at a tired smile.

  Jonás walks back through the apartment in his head. He passes through the entryway and turns right.

  “On the table with the phone, in the living room. Two pictures.”

  “One from the day at the water park. The other on the beach. Yeah, I saw them. But they didn’t tell me anything special. They’ve always been there.”

  “Not as I recall, they haven’t. On that table there was a wedding picture, like the one in the entryway, but with the two of you more relaxed, probably after the toast.”