‘And who’s this?’ he asked, flashing his brilliant white teeth. ‘A new toy, you sly dog?’
Paloma pretended not to hear him, or perhaps she really didn’t. The wine had taken its toll on her, too: I noticed she had the same dry mouth and tired, bloodshot eyes, the same desire for the night to be over. But in fact, without the least intention of taking herself to bed, Paloma went over to the radio, tuned in a station playing Eighties pop and sat down in the chair directly opposite Felipe, surveying the chaos around her: pieces of paper covered in toeprints stuck to the wall, drinks left dotted around the room, the translation error on my computer screen.
‘Nice place,’ she said over Cyndi Lauper, who was singing away in the background. ‘Did you move in recently?’ she asked without taking her eyes off a box with DICTIONARIES written across one side: legal dictionaries, medical dictionaries, dictionaries of geography.
I’d been living there a while, sure, but to say I’d ‘moved in’ was a bit of a stretch. Felipe had bought the apartment with his reparation money (‘compensation, expiation,’ he’d say with a chuckle) and my slow relocation there had begun with me staying over occasionally, and then gradually moving my things from my mother’s house. Leaving without leaving. A half-measures move.
The story of my indecisive relocation didn’t seem to interest Paloma. Not like the dictionaries, which she got out one by one, flicking through each before dumping them back in their box. She asked if I translated.
‘Something like that,’ I replied. ‘I take on the odd job to earn a little cash.’
I translated foreign advertisements and, if I was lucky, the occasional second-rate script of some shitty, Sunday night movie. Paloma, engrossed in lighting her cigarette, gave a blasé nod before walking up to me and unhooking the camera I’d forgotten was still around my neck. She took a few shots of the apartment but soon abandoned the camera on the table and asked if we had anything to drink. She was exhausted, she said. The time difference had really knocked her out, but she needed to unwind before going to bed.
‘Is Consuelo always that intense?’ she asked, exhaling a puff of white smoke. Paloma needed to relax, as if she’d heard the line that was still ringing in my head: ‘I want you to know that I do all this for you.’
Felipe said we had some pisco and he couldn’t think of a better way to round off a night spent in that time capsule of a house than with a delicious nightcap. Paloma removed her shoes and hugged her legs, tucking them beneath her on the armchair. I sat next to her, very close, as close as possible. Felipe served three glasses of pisco and knelt down in front of us, his eyebrows knitted together and his eyes wide open.
‘Have your tits grown?’ he asked me out of nowhere, gawping at my chest. ‘They’re bigger, aren’t they? Pointier, that’s it, like little cones,’ he went on, pinching his own nipples.
Paloma looked at my breasts and I snuck a peek at hers: her see-through bra under her white top, her breasts bigger or rounder than mine, less conical.
‘I’d love a perky pair like that – much nicer than the German’s,’ Felipe said, and Paloma burst out laughing and nodded, repeating ‘cone tits’, ‘conical’ – memorising the words without taking her eyes off my chest.
I told Felipe to stop fucking around and I tried to change the subject but there was no need. Felipe was already off on one about maths, real and fake numbers and the importance of arithmetic, and I let my mind wander to save me from his neurotic dead people chat – the story of the dismal body he’d found that afternoon, the corpse that, according to him, would change everything.
‘Thirty-one, almost the same age as me. Are you listening, Iquela? Don’t you get it?’
Paloma was staring at him, either distractedly or indifferently. She flitted between taking photos, commenting on Santiago and answering Felipe’s questions, when she would reveal a very different kind of dialect: one she must have picked during her travels in Europe, but which she couldn’t distinguish from the Chilean she’d picked up from her mother.
‘Let’s see now, Fräulein Paloma,’ Felipe began, ‘what do we call sports shoes?’
And Paloma fell into the trap.
‘Sneakers.’
‘Trainers,’ he corrected her. ‘Iquela, where did you pick up this textbook foreigner?’
And Paloma, fighting back the giggles, reeled off a list of words she knew:
‘Diaper … sidewalk … restroom …’
And Felipe went on correcting her.
‘Nappy, Fräulein, we say nappy and pavement. And don’t get me started on restroom … it sounds like a place old people go to die.’
Soon everything was making us laugh, and we raised our glasses and drank as Felipe cracked joke after joke – ‘This German’s one schnitzel short of a picnic,’ – and in fits of laughter I translated for Paloma from Chilean Spanish to her Spanish, honing in on the gaping gaps in the language that Paloma was so convinced she spoke to perfection. She was knocking back the pisco. Only her eyes betrayed her exhaustion and drunkenness. We sat there for a long time talking about this and that until, out of nowhere, Felipe asked Paloma what her mother had died from.
‘Cancer?’ he asked. ‘It’s all the rage,’ and he waited for a reaction that didn’t come.
Paloma sunk back into her chair and made a sort of sideways pout with her mouth, a gesture I recognised: she was biting the insides of her cheeks, that slippery, hidden skin. She’d chew until she felt some relief, until she tore the skin away and got rid of that infuriating smoothness, scoring new paths for the cool metal of her tongue barbell, the silvery tip gliding across that raw surface. It wasn’t unlike my occasional tic for listing the objects around me, in that it allowed her to zone out of whatever situation she was in. Felipe had shown me the listing trick when he was a boy and didn’t want to think about sad things: he’d taught me how to count objects so that they became associated with a perfect, seamless figure.
‘The objects turn into digits, which fill the different compartments of your mind,’ Felipe would say, ‘so that the sad thoughts don’t have anywhere to live and we’re just left with the numbers. The bad thoughts become homeless,’ he’d say, pulling a knowing face, an absent face, a sad, blank face.
I thought about apologising to Paloma for Felipe, but the truth was he was right. My mother regularly called to tell me about this or that friend who had been diagnosed with cancer. That’s what she would say, ‘they’ve diagnosed him’, as if it were the only diagnosable disease. Bone cells attacking your pancreas, invading your lungs and lymph nodes, distending your uterus, your prostate, your throat. (Bad cells, confused cells, after everything.)
‘Habemus cancer,’ Felipe said. ‘It’ll be our turn next.’
He got up off the floor and began pacing around the room, all the while staring at Paloma, looking for some vital clue.
‘So she died in Berlin but you want to bury her here, in Santiago?’ he scoffed, his footsteps out of sync with the sugary, pop beat of ‘Time After Time’, his fingers counting and his face forlorn.
Paloma nodded. Of course, what with Ingrid being Chilean, there was no issue with her being buried in Santiago, but for that she’d had to be returned. ‘Be returned,’ Paloma said, but I realised that this wasn’t what she meant. She was looking for the exact word, but it had escaped her, and I was primed to jump in.
‘Repatriated,’ I said.
‘Repatriated, that’s it,’ she repeated, relieved and grateful (and I began to wonder if only the dead could be ‘repatriated’).
Felipe couldn’t believe his ears.
‘That’s all I need,’ he said, burying his face in his hands and letting out a pained sigh that slipped entirely from my mind as we moved on to our second or third round of pisco.
He was still pacing around the room muttering and jotting down phrases in a notebook when, eventually, he announced that he was leaving. He was always doing this: upping and leaving without warning. And I always wanted to know where he was going,
and why, and how long he’d be. But there was something about Paloma that was stopping him, holding him back. It must have been her eyes, because the only thing she did was stare at us and smoke.
‘Cigarette, Iquela?’ she asked, inhaling deeply (perhaps remembering, perhaps not).
Felipe eventually came out with the question he really wanted to ask.
‘Hey, Fräulein,’ he said, already halfway out of the apartment, his hand on the door handle, ‘why didn’t you just burn her?’
I looked at him agog, certain, now, that Paloma really would lose her cool, and I immediately corrected him as if to protect her from that word: ‘burn’.
‘The correct term is “cremate”, Felipe.’
But Paloma didn’t bat an eyelid. Felipe opened the door to go wherever it was he was going, and from there, standing on the threshold, he turned to me and, with a smile, a wink, two chuckles and a shrug of his shoulders, he said:
‘Tomaytoe, tomahtoe …’
7
Fifty short steps make a block, but the blocks don’t repeat themselves, no, only my steps do: two, four, six recurring steps, and the heat and clouds, and my long drunken strolls, my ambles from Avenida Irarrázaval to Pío Nono Bridge under the starless sky, with only white clouds and a hovering heat, and I let myself be carried by that heat and the pisco, and then, before I know it, I come to the bridge, or it comes to me, the bridge with its dozens of dead, although today it’s just one, a thirty-three-year-old corpse, which means I’m up, the arithmetic has to work out because we’re heading into extra time, even the newspapers know it, like the culture section today with the headline EXHUMATIONS, yeah, just like that the paper announced Neruda’s exhumation, and I would have been none the wiser if it weren’t for the newsvendor on the corner, who said good morning and then, well, look who’s back from the dead, and for a second I thought about who this living dead man could be, but it was just one of Don José’s little jokes because I hadn’t been to see him in ages, too busy sorting, repairing, taking away, but Don José saved all the big scoops for me, what is this obsession with digging up the dead? he asked, and I froze and stared at him with all my eyes; disinter, no! surrender, never! I said, but Don José insisted, saying they were planning to order the … the … and I cried exhumation! thaaat’s the one, Felipe, the exhumation of Don Neftalí Reyes, put that in your pipe and smoke it, and I didn’t put anything in any pipe but I did buy the paper off him to see for myself, and it’s true, they’re going around disinterring bodies, bloody hell! isn’t that a bit much? first it was the living dead, then came the bodiless dead, and now this, so how’s anyone supposed to match the number of dead to the number of graves? how do we make all the bones tally with the lists? how can certain people be born and simply never die? mortuary anarchy in the fertile and chosen province! what we need around here is a maths whizz, a numerical mind that knows all about the maths of our end times, because we can’t be having all this whereby you die and they give you a real funeral, then a symbolic funeral, then a change of tomb and now what, an anti-interment? it just doesn’t work like that! time for some fresh air, Felipe, that’s it, take a deep breath, think about the cold and expel all those thoughts, black like petroleum, like grunge, like Mapocho water, cos it’s night-time in the river and on the Pío Nono Bridge, two twenty-two says the Law School clock, replace the goddamn battery, arseholes! that clock’s always stopped, though who knows, maybe the minute hand isn’t the problem, maybe it’s me who’s stopped, and everything’s so dark and the darkness has always made me feel with my skin, this skin that’s bristling now cos someone’s coming, a pair of pupils in the pitch dark, cos it’s night-time on the roof of my mouth and inside my eyelids, just like it’s night-time at the bottom of the river, and then I listen carefully and I’ve not a shadow of a doubt; a voice scrapes its way up a throat to ask me, got a smoke, kid? and I jump back scared because the voice has no body, you can’t see bodies in the depths of the night, and despite my fear I reply, sure, but it’s not my voice that says it, my head just nods up and down and then I pull a smoke from my pocket and look out east and realise you can’t see the mountains, can’t see the bodies, no, just some huge storm clouds, white, low-lying clouds carved out of cement, out of marble, out of bone, but I block out all that crap about the clouds and hand him the cigarette, and he asks me if it’s my last one and I tell him it is but that it doesn’t matter, have it, I say, holding out my hand, which brushes against his fingers, letting me know that this voice does have a body, I mean, it has hands, and they’re long and cold and bony, and I hold the lighter up to his mouth and I light it and a new expression emerges, his shining face, his well-defined jet-black eyes, shining puma eyes, a wolf’s muzzle and then poof! the night draws its curtain back over his face and the guy thanks me and his voice floats disembodied again, but at least I can see the tip of his cigarette, which he passes to me, and I pop it between my lips only to feel a soggy, squashed filter, but I don’t care and I smoke it anyway, and then the guy starts speaking, or his mouth does, and he says Sundays are slow, that’s what he says, it’s a tough sell but I go out all the same, and I wonder if he means he goes out because he’s sad, because it’s a sad, shaky voice that’s speaking to me now, asking me something I don’t quite catch, no, I’m on another planet now because the Mapocho is distracting me, hypnotising me, carrying me away, carrying me far enough to spot a drum, there on one of its banks, a dustbin on fire sinking down to the bottom of the river, and it occurs to me then that those guys must be round there somewhere, the ones the locals talk about, down-and-outs, skeletons dancing on the shore of the blackest of rivers, the dead finding more and more dead floating there, and it’s not even Sunday any more on the Mapocho, because two twenty-two means it’s Monday, you shitty clock! and as I shout, an icy gust of wind whips my bones and I do up another button on my shirt and wonder if it’s those night-time thoughts sending chills through my ribs, that’s what I’m thinking when the guy starts talking to me again, he touches me, says I have a nice chest, you wax, kid?, and I shake my head but I don’t say anything, I don’t want to hear my voice, my voice is starting to grate on me, that’s right, I don’t want to hear another peep from me so I say nothing, and he carries on talking, saying something about how he depilates all his hair, it’s nice all silky smooth, that’s what he says, it’s nice all silky smooth, kid, and I try to look at him but I can’t cos it’s pitch black, and he offers me a joint and I say no, I’m alright, that’s what I say, despite not saying anything, cos I just nod when my voice goes into hiding, when my voice goes red and burrows down inside me, and the guy lights his joint and his lighter’s also red, and for a second I can see the piercing in his left eyebrow and his hair tied in a tight bun, and then the darkness swallows him again, yeah, and I guess I could imagine him with a different face, but the truth is I don’t imagine any face at all, because now he’s putting the filter to my mouth and telling me to suck, and his fingers brush my lips and he tells me they’re nice, you’ve got nice smooth lips, kid, he says into my ear, his breath all close and warm, and I take a slow deep drag, so deep it hurts, I inhale the smoke into my mouth and I think smoke, fog, blindness, and then I think about the clouds, strangely low, too low, yeah, but I lose my train of thought again when the guy starts talking: I want to give you a kiss, is what he says, and I don’t respond and he laughs, and the fire on the shore of the river flickers and the man’s voice gets louder then fades and the bridge stops vibrating and falls still, frozen, and I feel a sudden urge to make a noise, to explode, to crunch leaves and crush shells between my fingertips, but I start speaking to him, I’ve got no other option and the silence is suffocating me, I ask him about dead people, if he knows any or has seen any lying around, and I think I can see the guy staring at me, sizing me up before replying, I don’t know that you and I have the same ghosts, kiddo, and then he goes and changes the subject, the idiot, says I’ve got a silky smooth chest and velvety lips, and I don’t care
about that, no, cos I want to talk about the dead, not about silky, superficial things, so I ask him if he’s ever seen a dead person and he says just once, once he saw a man here, standing on this very railing, just flung himself off and bam! he fell right here, and I ask the man what he did and he says he didn’t do anything, and I push for more details about how he feels about it and whether he feels a bit bad, and the guy says, why would I feel bad? and I can hear from his tone of voice that he’s shrugging his shoulders, because the voice directs the body, everyone knows that, the body surrenders unquestioningly, and then it occurs to me that the man is right, why should he feel guilty if it wasn’t his fault, and his fingers are back, pressed against my lips, and the filter is squashed and soggy and I inhale deeply and the guy follows suit and we cough together and the bridge shakes and I think it’s shaking cos there’s a seagull on the railing and the seagull is contemplating the riverbed below and that bed is totally still, the Mapocho is silent and without its voice it too disappears, and the guy says it’s unusual to see a seagull at night, and I say it’s unusual to see a seagull at all, and he asks, how’d you figure that, kid?, and I tell him there’s no sea or coast in Santiago and he says it’s not unusual, anyone can lose their way; it’s normal to feel confused, that’s what he says, it’s normal to feel confused, kid, and then he moves in closer, yeah, I can feel his breath inside my mouth, you never felt confused?, and I don’t answer and the seagull doesn’t move and the guy’s breath is sour and lingering, and then comes another question altogether, want me to suck you off, kid?, and I’m not sure if I do, but I answer no, cos when I’m not sure about something I say no, that way I can be sure, and he laughs and asks if I’m scared, it doesn’t make you a fag, you precious thing, though I am a queen, a twink, a bona fide nancy boy, and he laughs louder and comes right up to me, and I’m surprised by the force of his hand between my legs, a slim bony hand that slips down inside my pants and I feel him take my dick out of my trousers, that’s right, he takes it out and starts tugging on it and in a second it’s gone hard, and I grab hold of the railing thinking that way I can focus on cold things like ice and metal and the river, and his hand keeps moving and my trousers fall down, right down to my knees, and my mouth is dry and my eyes are dry, the river is dry too, and the fire in his hand goes out and the embers rain down on the Mapocho, I watch as they vanish, and I notice that his feet are bare and covered in blood, but I can’t be sure cos the hand is moving fast now, touching me, and I can’t be sure if there are shards of glass encrusted in his feet, or if those feet are even feet or are they paws, are they toenails or paws? the queen with bloody paws, yeah, and the hand carries on, ah, and I’m not sure, I’m not sure what’s at the bottom of the river, I’m not sure why his hand is moving so fast or why it’s damp, and I’m confused, I think I see a shadow up there in the clouds, a flock of birds opening and closing like a fist punching the sky, yeah, beating and beating, yeah, don’t stop, ah, and the hand moves fast and doesn’t stop, ah, and the hand goes on and feels good, yeah, and I come, I die, and the sky caves in and the pieces crash down on top of me, grazing my shoulders, my chest, my hands, and then I lift up those hands and see they’re covered in snow, but no, cos snow is white, snow is cold and it melts and this isn’t melting, no, this stuff raining down is something else, this is ash, goddamn ash, once again it’s raining ash.
The Remainder Page 6