by Pablo Tusset
I wanted to get up and look at myself in that mirror on the wall, to see what I looked like, but I was in no rush to move too fast. For the moment, I decided to check out the room by craning my neck to see what I had behind me. Nothing major: an old hospital bed, high bedside table, a pair of green Skay chairs, a stretcher, a white screen (folded up), a mirror with shelf and washbasin underneath, and a door with a square window in the middle, just about eye level. On the high bedside table were my wallet, my house keys, the Bagheera keys, tobacco, lighter, a pile of money, a woman’s high heel and three white papers that seemed to have something hidden in their folds. Where had I seen a woman’s high heel just like that one, somewhere before? In the car park beneath the private gardens, in Nico’s hand. From here, I began to retrace the steps, point by point, that had led up to my last hour of consciousness, before I had been attacked by a size forty-five Sebago heading for my left eye at Mach 4 speed. I didn’t know how much time had gone by since then. The memory felt like that of something that had occurred three or four days earlier, but I knew that wasn’t possible: I ran my hand over my chin and calculated about a day’s worth of stubble. I lost consciousness on Monday at midnight, which meant that it was probably Tuesday, probably in the morning.
Tuesday, June 23, the day before the summer solstice. San Juan holiday. Some holiday.
I got up. I was all swollen and my oversized head was killing me, but at least I could walk. The blow to my head, as reflected in the mirror, produced a result that was less spectacular than the pain would suggest: a little reddened dent that widened my face a bit toward the left. Once I had ascertained that I was more or less in one piece, I decided to check out the little window, which promised some kind of view out on to the other side of the door. No such luck: it looked onto a windowless corridor that extended far beyond my field of vision both left and right. The door handle offered no keyhole and I tried to turn it. It gave, but the door was still locked from the outside. I thought about shouting, banging on the door, I don’t know, trying to get the attention of someone in the outer world, but instead I chose to take a fifteen-second time-out for reflection. I did have my wallet and all the documents in it. My expired identity card still bore the address of my Magnificent Parents, so if some stranger had found me face down on Jaume Guillamet, I would now be in the Imperial Suite of a luxury hospital and MH would be feeding me chocolate bonbons by now. I also had to rule out the possibility that I was in a public hospital: not even public hospitals have such disgusting rooms, nor is everything so quiet and lonely, nor do they tuck in concussion victims with their cigarettes and cocaine. In other words: a very bad scene. And after thinking about it for a bit I realised that the panorama was even worse than I had first imagined. If those two hyenas who assaulted me with that shoe had put me in the hands of some kind of thug, then wouldn’t Lopez have advised my father of this? Clearly he had done nothing of the sort, otherwise my father would have used the red phone and a commando of marines would have already swooped in to rescue me in an F-15 fighter plane complete with minibar.
I tried to remember the last time I had seen my Guardian Angels’ white Kadett. It took me about two seconds: on Travessera, a block up from where I had stopped the taxi driver, just before entering the car park labyrinth with Nico. That’s where they had lost track of me.
And now I was all alone.
Because of my stupid head.
And also because I was an arsehole.
Plan of action?
I had no other choice but to put together a quick mental pastiche made up of action movie sequences, the scant combat instruction I allowed myself to learn in the military, and all the Bugs Bunny stunts I could remember. Five minutes later, I had a perfect Bugs Bunny strategy, the first part of which involved recovering some of my physical and psychological fitness. To start off with, I was practically pissing my pants – underneath the central pain source in my gut I detected some intense bladder strain. I did my business in the sink and when I was done the world seemed a slightly more comfortable place. After that, I took little sips of water and splashed my face with abundant scoopfuls as well. Then I decided to test the analgesic properties of the cocaine and prepared myself a healthy line, surrendering myself to the notion that I was inhaling a panacea. My next move was to erase all signs of my little tune-up: I dried the visible droplets on the washbasin, put the towel back in its place, rearranged my cocaine supply in the same position as I had found it in. My strategy was to pretend that I was still sleeping so that I might be able to surprise whoever might come in. Before that could happen, of course, I would probably hear footsteps in the hall, so I allowed myself to remain standing in order to do a bit of light exercise to shake off the numbness – you know, the kind of thing healthy people do in the movies. At first I stuck to making big circles with my arms, nothing that would imply violent head movements, but little by little the coke took effect and I was able to test out some more ambitious stretches. I had not put my shoes back on (I would have, but they didn’t fit in with the plan) and I even thought to check and see if the soles of my black socks had gotten dirty from walking around shoeless. Stretched out on the bed, the soles of my feet would be visible to whomever entered, and if they were dirty they would most certainly betray my manoeuvring. I thought about wearing them inside-out while I did my exercises, or maybe turning them round so that the heel of the sock covered the top part of my feet, which offered the advantage of returning them to their original position with greater ease … But a quick examination of the soles revealed that this was not necessary. Generally, I find it incredibly annoying to make an astute observation only to then realise that it is completely useless, but I was determined to infuse myself with positive energy and so I gave myself a mental pat on the back and tried to boost my morale by congratulating myself for such a tremendous attention to detail.
By the time I heard the faraway voices, the keys jangling, and the footsteps approaching, I stretched out on the bed and pretended to sleep. I realised that I was in reasonably good shape. And just then, I also realised that instead of all that moronic sock strategy, I should have used my time to improvise some kind of powerful weapon. Unfortunately, though, the nature of my mind is more Magilla Gorilla than Terminator.
The footsteps stopped at the door to the room. I thought I could see three pairs of shoes.
‘Some piece of work, huh?’
This voice, I could tell, came from the other end of the room. It sounded as though it came from the other side of the window on the door.
‘You’re telling me. Even with five guards we couldn’t lift him up. We had to drag him in on a blanket.’
‘Didn’t you put him out?’
‘They shot him up with sedatives on the street, but after two minutes he was already moving again … They had to give him another dose to get him to stop growling and flapping his arms.’
‘Well, if he’s as stubborn as his brother, he’s gonna be a hell of a fight … You don’t think you overdid it a little with those injections? He’s been sleeping for twelve hours …’
‘No, he woke up already. See? He buttoned his pants.’
I had to interrupt the shower of mental insults I rained upon myself because one of the guys began to bang away at the door:
‘Come on, buddy! Time to wake up!’
With that racket, there was no way I could pretend I didn’t hear. First I moved around a bit, but the guy was a real move-it-or-I’m-gonna-hit-you-again type and so I had to fake a sudden bolt-to-attention thing, and opened my eyes wide. Immediately I started making faces as if I was suffering, more or less as I had done when I woke up for real, just exaggerating it a little this time around.
‘Open your eyes slowly. That’s it. Cover your eyes a little. Can you talk?’
I supposed so, but I thought it would be more useful just to grunt. Finally, they opened the door and the two characters I’d heard talking – one bald, the other skinny – entered the room. Both of them were wearing
white robes, which made me think that they had to be veterinarians, at least. They didn’t make much of an impression, but on the other side of the room I could see two other guys in blue coveralls, boots and wide belts from which clubs and pistols dangled. These two were normal-sized. I continued with the sick act and one of the veterinarians, the bald one, brought me some water in the glass that had been sitting on the shelf above the washbasin. They were very interested in knowing if I was feeling better, if I wanted more water, if I was allergic to who knows what … I uttered various yesses and a few noes with a tweety bird voice and I let them help me up.
‘Where am I?’ I asked, Hitchcock-style.
‘Relax, take deep breaths. Take a few minutes, and as soon as you’re feeling better and can walk we’ll take you somewhere where everything will be explained to you.’
Pretending that I couldn’t walk properly was critical – I invented an intense ankle pain that prevented me from being able to rest my foot on the floor. The bald guy took off my sock and groped about from the top of my foot to the back of my ankle with the self-importance of a real-life veterinarian.
‘Does that hurt?’
‘No … yes … ah, yes … that, there.’ I made like I was about to put on my shoes but the guy said I’d be better off barefoot until my ankle improved. It was most definitely against my best interests to give up my shoes, but I decided that arguing the point would be unwise. With great effort, I got up on my one good leg, and rested sixty kilos of Pablo on the slender veterinarian. Just then, one of the armed dudes came in to place a pair of handcuffs round my wrists. I began to babble in protest: “but, but why?”, “where am I?”, etcetera, and then launched into the old violent-struggle routine. I did it with such well-feigned clumsiness that I almost fell forward straight onto the folded screen, but luckily the three guys held on to me.
‘Leave him, guard, we don’t have to put the handcuffs on him,’ said the bald guy.
The guard then made a little bag out of the white tablecloth on the bedside table and gathered up all my things sitting on the table and stuck them inside, and took my shoes as well. Once we left the room – me, still propped up by the slender veterinarian’s sternocleido-whatever – I took advantage of the moment to check out the corridor, looking left and then right. To the left I saw a succession of doors that ended at a staircase that led downstairs. In the other direction, about twenty metres to the right, the corridor was cut off by a door with metal bars. There, another guard manned the scene at a little desk. We went toward him, and when he noticed us he rushed to open the door with a key that hung from a little chain. At that moment, the veterinarian crutch-replacement and I were at the head of the pack; the guard carrying my shoes and the white tablecloth with all my things followed behind us, with the bald veterinarian after him and then, finally, the second of the two guards held up the rear.
When we reached the threshold of the door with the metal bars, I knew my moment had arrived. It’s difficult to explain what I did next. Right under the doorframe I murmured something and turned slowly (forcing the veterinarian crutch-replacement guy to turn with me, of course), as if I wanted to ask the guard behind us a question. Once we were face to face, I mustered up an expression that made it look as if I was frightened to death of him and he, the poor thing, got so scared by my face that he jerked backwards. From that point on, everything happened very fast: I reached out and grabbed the white tablecloth-satchel with my left hand, and almost simultaneously I wrapped my right arm around the neck of the veterinarian crutch-replacement, who doubled over so that his head might stay attached to the rest of his body. Then I gave him a 1502 newtons-per-second shove toward the guard who, in turn, fell against the bald veterinarian behind him, and you’ll have to imagine the rest because I didn’t see anything more. I left them there, yelling amongst themselves, and I made a break for the door.
I turned the corner, running as fast as one can run in socks down a tile floor, and about halfway down the corridor I reached a dark staircase – I picked the ones going upstairs and took the steps three at a time and, two floors further up, trying not to breathe too hard, I stopped for a listen. It wasn’t long before the guards reached the stairs (“the stairs,” I heard one of them shout), but by then I had already stuck my hand in the satchel and felt about for the high-heel of hash and after taking a fast bite out of it (in the interest of saving at least a little bit), I threw down the remainder of the chunk with all my strength into the open space in between the flights of stairs.
I was in luck: the hash hit the ground with a sharp thud a couple of floors down from where the guards were, and instantly I heard the sound of boots heading downstairs in search of a phantom as I continued upstairs: up, up and away into the darkness, maybe six or seven stories high, ignoring the double doors I passed at the entrance to each floor until, on the very last landing, I had no other choice but to open the door I found before me, and enter a room that was so dark that I could only infer, from the echo of my own movements, that it was some kind of wide, open space. I continued forward, sticking close to the wall.
The wall eventually came to an end, forming a corner with another wall. There, I allowed myself to fall onto the floor to catch my breath. For a few seconds I was nothing but a heart and two lungs, locked in a fierce battle to see which could pound more furiously. Then I began to note the stinging sweat that had seeped into my eyes and, once again, the pain of my throbbing temples. I couldn’t see a thing, though it smelled humid, like cardboard, or something, I don’t know: I would almost say that the smell in there was like that of dissected animals, not because of any relation the smell actually bore to any existing taxidermy-related fluids but rather because of the relation it bore to the words “dissected animals.” I know that’s probably a difficult comparison to understand, but it’s also pretty difficult to understand the relativity of time and everyone swallows that one just fine. I hadn’t heard alarms or anything, and I hopefully guessed that the guards would be scouring each floor for me, one by one until they reached the top. But in any event I did have to get a move-on. From my mouth I removed the bit of hash that I had managed to nick off the chunk Nico had sold me, and I placed it in my shirt pocket. Then I undid the improvised satchel and distributed its contents among my pants pockets, taking a brief break in the process to sniff a bit of coke, my nose stuck against the paper. Then I mixed a bit of the powder with some saliva and applied the paste to my temples in the hope that the cocaine would have some kind of topical effect. After that I tied the tablecloth around my waist – it might come in handy down the road, I thought, feeling as if I was in one of those Roger Wilco adventures, one of those scenarios where you never know what the fuck you’re going to need in the next screen.
About ten metres away from me, a thin sliver of light shone at about floor level, the kind of light that shines out from under a closed door. I lit my lighter and moved forward a bit. Bingo: a closed door. I opened it without thinking, really: it was a tiny washroom that looked as though it hadn’t been used in years, weakly lit by the glow coming in from a teeny window. I went back out and flicked on the lighter again so I could see a little. It was a broad, diaphanous space, kind of like a big office, but without tables or computers, only dust. Along one of the walls I spotted a door, a fire-door. I walked over and pressed down on the horizontal bar in the middle and it opened. I walked through an extremely thick wall and, a bit further on, I found myself in yet another empty room, visible beyond my flickering lighter. The only difference was that this one was much smaller than the first, and was decorated with English-print wallpaper. You could see from the distribution of the wall plugs, certain marks on the floor and a few areas where the wallpaper subtly changed colour that it had once been a bedroom. From there I went into another corridor and quickly realised that I was in an old, abandoned home whose windows had been boarded up. But all this was part of another building, there was no doubt about it.
From that second room I entered a third,
and from the third to a fourth.
Anyway: trying to describe a labyrinth is like trying to photograph a ghost. And in reality, the place wasn’t even really a labyrinth – it was a motley bunch of interconnected buildings that occasionally seemed totally normal, occasionally not at all. But nobody had actually planned it specifically to confuse the casual visitor. Even so, it was enough to make me realise that the confusing aspect of a labyrinth is not its geometric complexity but rather the experience it induces, and that interminable darkness induced plenty. I had to summon up every last bit of strength so as to not succumb to the feeling of terror that would no doubt plunge me into an abyss. One thing I did lose, however, was my sense of time, and so I have no way of knowing exactly how long I wandered through those commercial spaces, homes, and staircases, submerged in that eternal, artificial night. The air was still thick with the smell of dissected animals: it was the smell of abandoned, forgotten things. The only things I found, very occasionally, were a few pieces of rickety furniture here and there in the empty rooms, or else small objects that were rather commonplace but chilling nonetheless: a blue porcelain poodle that had been left on a Formica counter; a 1983 calendar with a photograph of some Swiss landscape; the remains of a Bruce Springsteen poster in a bedroom; a roll of toilet paper; a kid-sized toothbrush in a toilet that had been overtaken by spiders – forgotten pieces that provoked the same choked-up feeling as objects recovered from a faraway shipwreck. With Quest in mind, I grabbed the porcelain poodle and the toothbrush – the former could double as a respectable flying object that, when broken into fragments, would have useful, sharp edges, and the latter also had a certain useful-object je ne sais quoi about it. That was what I was thinking about when suddenly I heard a boom. The boarded-up air began to vibrate with life. Oddly enough, though, I did not get scared – the opposite, in fact, because I quickly realised that it was a firecracker, a blessed firecracker that brought me back to the reality that there was indeed a place, just beyond the walls that surrounded me, where people were getting ready for the San Juan festivities. At least I knew that Barcelona still existed somewhere.