They reach the glass bar, under blue lights, manned by two waiters who are also wearing vests and bowties. The blackness is deeper in the furthest reaches. At the tables to the rear he can see the darkened shapes of couples and groups, often seated around what might be an ice bucket, with a bottle inside and others around it. In the back there are nooks, folding screens, in a sort of indefinite opaqueness, with the minimal, oscillating sway of bodies intertwined on different divans. Some of the closer tables, the only ones really visible from there, are still empty, but those that are occupied exhibit nothing different than what might be found at any bar: people talking animatedly while they drink a few cocktails. And yet, there is an augmented excitement in their faces when they look toward the back. At one of the tables, a man finishes his drink in one gulp and takes his companion behind one of the panels. Their silhouettes gradually melt into the others until they disappear completely or are integrated into a harmonious and silent whisper of agitated breathing and ice cubes, while the waiters stand expressionless, their faces displaying the most absolute inscrutability.
“Now I get why this place is so far from the center. It requires a certain discretion.”
He instinctively lowers his voice when one of the waiters comes over.
“Good evening. What would you like to drink?”
“This gentleman and I have an appointment with Mr. Montesinos.” Humbert’s sharp, rough voice cuts off any possible answer from Jonás.
The waiter, with a cold, gray look, ignores Humbert and addresses Jonás.
“Are you the photographer?”
Jonás nods.
“Just a moment.” He has a hard but amiable tone. “Can I get you something while you wait?”
“No, I’d just like to deliver this envelope. He told me to look for him here.”
The man walks over to the other waiter at the end of the bar. They converse for a few minutes. When he returns, Jonás gets the impression that the subject of their discussion was his companion.
“We’ve been waiting for you.” He casts a sidelong glance at Humbert, collapsed on the bar, his gaze fixed on the blue and green glass bottles with different geometric shapes, slender, cylindrical, containing different brands of gin. “Follow me, please.”
He accompanies them to the opposite end of the room. Jonás hadn’t noticed the other hallway there, beside two doors. One of them is ajar, and he can make out what seems to be a locker room, with a long wooden bench, showers, sinks, and lockers. They’ve left behind the dark room, with its gentle, contented murmur. A bit further on, another set of stairs: this time not spiral, but in two broad flights. They lead downwards.
“There’s still another floor to go?” he says in surprise, looking at Humbert, who seems to have fallen into a dazed state of derangement.
“It’s several levels deep,” responds the waiter, ahead of them, as he begins the descent, “because the building was erected on an old network of caves.”
The walls are lined with black carpeting. Jonás turns to Humbert, who finally returns his gaze, though now with an intermittent trembling in his right hand.
“Are you okay?”
“I need a drink,” he whispers, and Jonás is unsure whether to hold him up by the arm; for an instant he seems about to stumble down one of the steps, but in the end he keeps his balance and tries to feign an expression of confidence. “Seriously. I’ve got it.”
The stairs end, and they come out into the second basement level. This time, there is a reception with sofas, very similar to the sofas on the floor above. On one of them Sulla Montesinos is seated, his skull shining in the dim light, holding a tumbler filled with whisky. He is wearing a suit like the one from last time, linen, in a more yellowish shade.
“If it isn’t the artist.” Today, however, Jonás does not note in his timbre that same command, as if a haze of tiredness had diminished the vigor of his voice. “And who do we have here?” He looks at Humbert, jumping up with surprising agility, opening his arms wide. “If it isn’t my television star, my favorite news anchor! How about that? You got enough gas in you now for today’s show?”
Humbert smiles ostentatiously and looks sideways at Jonás in satisfaction.
“I saw the kid up there, next to the stairs. When he told me he was here to see you, I said to myself, ‘I better keep him company, that way I can say hi to my old friend Sulla Montesinos.’”
“You did the right thing.” They embrace. From one of the corners of the room, the driver appears. On seeing him, Jonás thinks the suit must have shrunk, or else the man has considerably augmented his dose of steroids in the last two weeks; he’s even more voluminous. When their eyes meet, Jonás seems to see in his expression that same satisfied contempt from the rearview mirror.
“Listen,” Montesinos turns to the driver, “a reserved room for our anchor friend here.”
“But,” Humbert tries to protest, “the boy had something to…”
“It’s nothing, it’s nothing. A trivial matter. He did a story for me. I’ll take a look at it, pay him, and meanwhile you can enjoy our latest acquisition. Truly exquisite.”
This last part gets Humbert’s attention, and his face recovers a certain expressiveness.
When the corpulent sidekick returns without him, Sulla Montesinos erupts.
“This better be the last time that idiot makes it down this far! He’s already caused me enough trouble.”
“We thought…”
“That’s the problem: you didn’t think!” He lets loose a sonorous clap against the man’s rhinoceros neck, and Jonás shivers. “I don’t care if he’s up there around the piano, getting drunk and harassing other customers… After all, they’re not going to come pick a fight with me. But making his way down here… Never! Don’t you understand that the key to this business is confidentiality? Do you know what kind of people come here? If they see that loudmouth stumbling around, knowing he’s headed straight for the TV station afterwards, they won’t come back. And then you can kiss everything goodbye. Be polite, be tactful, even if he gets impertinent: he still has a bit of influence, as discredited as he may be, and he’s been a loyal customer these last few years. But I don’t want to see his face down here again. Now get out of my sight.”
The driver disappears through the door. Jonás doesn’t like the way he looks at him.
“Ah, how the mice will play.” Montesinos leans back and gestures. “Let’s see those photos.”
A waiter comes in with a tray. He has brought another glass with a finger-width of whisky.
“If you’ll allow me to offer you a drink… I think this brand may be to your liking.”
“Absolutely.” Jonás remembers his night at Sergio’s house. “It’s very good.”
“My pleasure.” Montesinos takes the envelope that Jonás holds out to him. “To the assignment.”
They toast, and Jonás thinks of his father. He nearly finishes his whisky in one gulp.
Montesinos starts to examine the pictures. In his second sip, Jonás perceives the vapors of a patiently aged fruity mix with aromatic essences, fennel and nutmeg, wood and density, and an aftertaste of bitter almond: first it engages his nose and then his taste buds, flooding his mouth with a sweet and sticky placidity.
“How’s the whisky?”
“Extraordinary.”
“The same as your photographs. Especially this one.” He shows Jonás a shot in which he stands erect as a pale lighthouse in the orchid-filled night, creatively moving his hands among them, as if organizing the silent orbits of their air traffic with a feline gesture, like an animal on the hunt, sure of its prey: somehow different from his expression now, which is perhaps a bit more crestfallen but still tense.
“I’m glad you like them. As far as the price…”
“I hope,” he interrupts Jonás and hands him an envelope, “that you’ll find this sum adequate.” Jonás opens it, takes a look at the bills, and puts them back in the envelope.
“I see you’v
e gone to great lengths to inform yourself, Mr. Montesinos. That’s the gallery rate.”
“Good.” He rises, and Jonás imitates him. “So then, Mr. Ager, I think we’re finished here.”
Chapter 43
After being left alone, he takes a few minutes to react. The sofa had engulfed him in its comfort. Standing up straighter, he turns his back to the exit and heads slowly down another long hallway. Now the sounds grow louder, diffuse sighs concentrated on the other side of the first door. He feels a slight temptation to open it a crack, but he pulls his hand from the doorknob and moves on. Until the very last, he had expected Sulla Montesinos to make at least some allusion to their dialogue in the greenhouse, even if it was only a question or some vague reference. Not only did he avoid any sort of comment, but he acted, strangely, as if that interrogation had never taken place. For a moment, Jonás even thinks the conversation didn’t happen, along with others from the last few days: above all when that heat, radiating perhaps from the floor itself, runs up his ankles, accumulating in his hands and his temples, streaked now by several drops of sweat. He takes off his trench coat and folds it over his forearm as he continues advancing along a corridor, which seems to him, as he hesitantly sets one foot in front of the other, wider than the others. From time to time he hears a dry, sharp slap, like the sound of a tanner shaking out a hide. The air too feels thicker as he moves further away from the stairs, trying to remember—because he followed him fleetingly with his eyes—which of these doors Humbert walked through. He starts to feel a penetrating pinprick very near his eyelids, gradually becoming painful, and he thinks to himself that the whisky has given him a thirty-year-old kick. Getting out of this place can’t be that difficult, but he decides to give himself five minutes more.
“Humbert,” he hears himself whisper, as if it weren’t him speaking, while he leans against the crack in one of the doors. The smell of painted paper enters his nostrils fluidly, and he has the impression he’s taken a punch not five minutes ago. The dust from the carpeting floats into his eyes, stinging lightly, and a remote perplexity of disequilibrium starts to settle into his knees, fragile and hollow like rattles, lacking all cartilage after his descent: the breaststroke swimmer’s weak point transformed into a dark, vertical immersion, Leopoldo from some region of his head, the meniscus tired in its erosion, the kick in the water; he grabs at his hair like Humbert moments before, or maybe twenty or forty-five minutes, when Jonás asked him what was down here and he responded the path to hell, heaven, purgatory, whatever you’re looking for, I’ll be your guide; why is he being broadsided by these phrases, alternating images, porous reality stalking him through the haze, with the sudden desire to run up to that rain outside, snuggle into the water of clean sheets in his apartment with Ada? A demolition, another lightless street, and then he finds himself before the roof and falls slowly backwards, a coconut cracks open as he hits the ground, he’s still got time to think about it, visualize it, restless shadow, the temptation of abandonment is an emerald warmth across those thighs which hold him up now, he feels the gentle vapor of the abrasive nylon as it slaps his face, don’t even think about passing out, you hear me?, what’s wrong with this guy?, get up, can’t you see they’re words within words in dancing dialects of sonorous nothingness, and even so he obeys and starts walking, or so it seems to him, suddenly he feels more agile and slides his hand down to his belly, with the motes of peach fuzz devoid of any other carapace, downy and snuggly, it’s not time yet you handsome very handsome, and somehow his head clears, he squeezes his eyelids together and opens them again in the mirror and sees himself behind the door, feeling like a cement mixer, I dance for you I just take shower, there must be a shower, there’s jacuzzi Turkish bath sauna your choice, I want a faucet, and the hands guiding him to the bathroom in a soaked stream his neck cold fright heaves the tiled whiteness sewer swirling urine.
He stretches his arms his shoulders back a dry crunch the pinch of vertebra T7 an inhaler so he can sleep. He leans back slow while the hands guide his pants, and he contemplates his legs, defeated in a naked lukewarm defenselessness with the fabric bunched up around his ankles, his shoes aren’t damp while Ada looks at him from inside come lay down with me and him still trying to understand where he is the delight of those lips gives him back a bit of sensation inside himself, like a ship in a bottle in the belly of the whale, the whale in the bottle when she caresses him they’re geisha balls slow be careful why you here handsome, I can’t breathe I’m suffocating nothing serious it’s just a panic attack and so on for several months without being able to breathe under any circumstances, the whole house filled with inhalers in fact I still have some of them, the inside pocket the trench coat a tiny cannon, salbutamol sulfate tetrafluoroethane norflurane, pressurized container pure two hundred doses sufficient, his back screams, arches, and his father: walk tall stand up straight stretch one more stroke; years of swimming in tons of water lunge keep lunging excessive development front upper body concave pectorals silicotic night silence, I can’t sleep I can’t breathe I can’t be here please call an ambulance don’t worry babe relax you’ll see it will pass in a minute it’s just a bad dream my darling come here sometimes only sometimes gathered up in his chest the air would return to his lungs through the open window.
She has concealed her body in the trench coat, she is an outline leaning before him as he recomposes himself; he finds her there hunched over, her hands gently gripping his ankles, she shakes her head and so does he when he takes off the trench coat and discovers her naked, on her knees. He recognizes the blue pantyhose despite the dim ochre light, he tries to push her away and he melts, filling the prophylactic inside her mouth, and she says handsome.
“Why are you covering yourself up? It’s terribly hot down here…”
“You hot because you bad,” she smiles as she kisses his thigh. “Cold here.”
“You have to help me,” he whispers while she cleans him with wet naps that have appeared beside the couch.
“You just sick.” For the first time he notes the agreeable timbre of her voice.
“No, not sick,” he struggles to bring his right hand to her chin and lift it slowly, so he can look into her big dark eyes, brushing aside the tangle of loose hair.
“You drunk. Tonight quiet. Not many customers. Rest if you want.”
“You have to help me.” He can barely stretch his back against the couch cushions. “The man who came here with me… Have you seen him?”
“I don’t know, I only see you. You stay here and rest. I like you. Handsome.”
She stands erect in front of him. She has a splendid body, sinewy and maternal.
“Please,” he hears himself, before being struck by another dizzy spell. “Help me get up.”
Again she cleans his inner thighs and pulls up his pants. She zips them, buttons them, and buckles his belt. Then she puts on her emerald-green vinyl corset and garter belt. Jonás looks at it: topped with a delicate red ribbon of lace above the underwire demi-cup bra, it exposes her round, firm breasts. She sits down beside him, lifts his right arm, and hangs it over her shoulders. After the first tug, he becomes conscious of the strength in her legs, long and elegant, but more muscled than the rest of her body. Without letting him go, she puts on her heels and takes, from a rack fastened to the wall—which he had also failed to notice—a black dressing gown with tiny blue flowers. It looks like satin, and its smoothness refreshes him as it grazes his cheeks. He’s surprised to see her undertake this entire sequence without letting go of him, as if she were used to undressing and dressing with a heavy weight attached to her shoulders, but he doesn’t say anything; he concentrates all his effort on not tottering: the base of his neck is being struck by icy gusts, and he still doesn’t completely trust his body, as if its vigor had reappeared tenuously only to later abandon him.
She smells very nice. Like flowers, he thinks. They walk out into the hallway, finding it deserted. She never stops smiling, with a relaxed sympathy that
disconcerts him. They head toward the sofa. How much time has passed? Both of them tremble in unison when they hear a tremendous crash against the adjacent wall, as if someone with terrific force had picked up an armoire and heaved it against the ground, followed by multiple shouts.
“Let’s get out of here,” he whispers, and his voice starts to gain a hint of willpower, beyond mere begging. She nods and wraps her left arm around his waist. Jonás also attempts to cling to her, and his hand alights, from behind, on the laces of the corset.
“I take you to the stairs. Then you go on.”
“Please. I don’t think I can do it.”
“It is me who can’t!” She lowers her voice notably. “Not even here, in the hall.”
He encircles her shoulders for the first time: hard and toned, a milky mahogany color. Then he looks at her features: the high cheekbones set above a wide mouth. She has a pretty jawline, delineated, which contrasts with the hardness of her athletic limbs. Her eyes herald not darkness, but a soft light which seems protected from any outside world. In that instant he feels his legs failing him; he nearly faints, and yet she holds him steady, firming up her side against his and tugging forward once more. When they reach the stairs she leans him against the wall, strokes his face, and then leaves him completely alone.
For a few seconds, Jonás considers the possibility that she may not return. He hears the click of a lock; one of the doors opens, and from the adjacent room, bathed in a reddish light, comes an adolescent blonde with transparent white skin, accompanied by an old man in a suit and sunglasses. Her gaze is crystalline and her incipient breasts sparkle with glitter. He tries to stretch his hand out toward the railing to help himself along, but he’s so afraid of falling against the steps that he doesn’t dare move. For a moment he watches as she walks off, nude and shaven, her buttocks hard and compact, round and firm, wearing high heels which are surely a few sizes too big for her. He tries to close his eyes in an effort to calm down. Sometimes this works for him: he discovered it years ago, living with Ada, on certain nights when he would suddenly feel short of breath. She would drift off placidly, and he would start to understand, over the course of several hours of insomnia, that he wouldn’t be able to sleep until he was overtaken by tiredness. First it was a small incision in his chest, a lack of conduction, as if the oxygen wasn’t circulating fully through his respiratory system. The first emergency room medic recommended lime and valerian root tea, but it had no effect. After several nights without sleep, a second doctor prescribed a minimal dose of bromazepam; and then a third, his first anxiolytic. In the morning he almost couldn’t move, spending the next twelve hours half-asleep; and yet later that night, after a day of sleepwalking, the anxiety in his chest returned. In those moments only Ada could calm him, and his breathing would grow somewhat steadier. But when even she could not make a difference, Jonás would think of his family’s house; not just any part of the house, not just any instant, but a single time and place, a sensation that helped him fall asleep more securely—something he reserved for the worst nights: waking up and hearing the sound of his father’s razor blade being rinsed in the sink on a Sunday morning, while he listens to the sports news on the radio. Jonás closes his eyes again, and when he opens them, the hallway is empty once more.
The Swimmers Page 18