—Is this seat taken? Nula asked, using for the first time in his life an expression that he’d read many times in certain novels and had often heard when he went to take an exam at school or he was asked to wait at some public office.
She didn’t respond right away, and only looked at him, but Nula realized that she was thinking because the look she gave him was abstracted for a few seconds, cut off from the external world, while her thoughts, hidden, unstable, inaccessible to him, possibly sought, behind the forehead on which passing wrinkles implied some effort, the response that she was about to give and her reasons for giving it. Before speaking, and after her gaze had reconnected with the external world, she took a moment to glance at her tiny, silver wrist watch, then looked up again, the movement perhaps a bit abrupt because the bubble of dark curly hair spilling from the crown of her head vibrated slightly.
—No, of course. Sit down, please, she said, her lightness seemingly calculated and her intonation contrasting with her serious, vaguely preoccupied demeanor. As he was sitting down, Nula saw La India turn the corner toward the house, and though he lifted his hand and shook it several times to get her attention, she didn’t seem to recognize him, but that same night, when she saw him come in, she greeted him by saying, You already have a mother, but you’re spoiled and now you always want two for the price of one, and he, worked up, was about to say, I’m not the one with a cult of personality in this house, but he felt miserable thinking it and kept his mouth shut.
—That was my mother, he explained to Lucía.
—Such a beautiful woman, and so young, Lucía said, as though she was thinking of something else.
—Allow me to introduce myself, Nula said. Nicolás Anoch, but my friends call me Nula; it means Nicolás in Arabic. I’m studying philosophy in Rosario.
—My husband studied in Rosario, too, but medicine. My name is Lucía, Lucía said.
—I dropped medicine for philosophy, Nula said. I got tired of opening and closing cadavers. They’re all the same inside.
—My husband is Doctor Riera. His office is just around the corner.
—Yes, that’s right, Nula said. I think I’ve seen the sign. Across from the municipal building.
—Directly across, yes, Lucía said thoughtfully. And then, studying him openly, she said, Your face looks familiar. Are you from the neighborhood?
—Yes, Nula said. I’ve lived half a block from here my whole life. In the luxury tenements. Are you a city planner?
—City planner? Lucía said with a dry laugh. How could I be a city planner? I’m nothing.
Disconcerted momentarily by her sarcastic interjection, Nula hesitated a few seconds, until it occurred to him to say, Would it be alright if we used tú with each other?
—Sure, Lucía said, and looked at the time again.
—Are you waiting for someone? Nula asked.
She was about to say something, but the arrival of the waiter interrupted her. When he left, they kept talking. Nula felt incredibly impressed to be at a table using tú with her, and reconciling himself to what he’d gained up until that moment, a thousand times more than what he’d dared to hope for fifteen minutes before, he felt content with the exchange of pleasantries that didn’t even seem like pleasantries to him because in fact they satisfied him completely. Even though the arrival of the waiter had kept her from answering his question, it was obvious that she was waiting for something or someone; she drifted in and out of the conversation, checking the time every so often, and never lost her grave demeanor even when she said things that seemed cheerful. They discussed the neighborhood, the good weather, the city, and though every so often Nula would bring up personal details, more so out of his childishly inflated sense of himself than as an actual seduction tactic, she didn’t seem to hear them, or in any case she didn’t seem inclined to tell him more about herself than the two or three things she’d said at first and which had more to do with her husband than with herself. More and more frequently, Lucía would look out at the street, scrutinizing the people who passed, as though she were looking for someone in particular, drifting off for several seconds before returning to the conversation. Her laughter, when she laughed, was always abrupt and not exactly happy, and a few times, Nula, confused, had to admit to himself that no matter how much he thought about it, he wouldn’t find, at that moment in the conversation at least, anything to laugh at. His worries from the week before returned, although she appeared calm and relaxed, with no trace of mental disarray in her focused and attractive expression. She was friendly and warm, and though she didn’t seem inclined to offer him any special favor, she treated him in a friendly, intimate way, possibly because she didn’t take him very seriously, but Nula, growing slightly bolder, so as to not lose heart, told himself that it wouldn’t be the first time that he’d managed to sleep with someone who hadn’t seemed to take him very seriously at first. Even though that bravado wasn’t quite convincing, he already knew that what might happen there didn’t matter much, that he couldn’t decide anything, that whatever Lucía might do, he’d already gotten caught in her aura and he was trapped there.
Eventually, it started to get dark. Lucía asked if he wanted to go for a walk and Nula followed her out. They crossed to the opposite sidewalk, hurrying to avoid the quickly approaching headlights from the next block, but rather than heading for her house, Lucía, saying that she still had some time, suggested that they take a walk around the block. When they reached the entrance to Nula’s building, Lucía went up the stairs and started looking curiously at the two rows of apartments and the central garden, where the white-globed nightlights had already been lit. Forgetting Nula, she studied the entrance for a few moments and then, to disguise her excessive interest, came down the stairs to the sidewalk and asked him, So this is your building?
—Yes. The third apartment on the right, Nula said, gesturing in its general direction with a vague nod and thinking, She’s starting the same circuit she took the other day, but this time, whatever her reasons, I’m taking it with her, and for a while still, I think. And they turned at the corner of the ice cream shop: La India’s ice cream friend (he’d opened after Nula moved to Rosario for medical school), who was filling a cone, looked up, surprised to see him with someone, but Nula, watching him covertly, acted as though he didn’t see him so as to not have to say hello. They turned onto the cross street, shaded darkly under the trees, and walked in silence to Doctor Riera’s office, the dark interior of which she stopped to inspect, and then they kept walking, turned north on the street parallel to 25 de Mayo, and Lucía stopped halfway down the block, outside the same house as the week before, gazing inside through the half-open door with the same blatant indiscretion, and though the lights were on and apparently there were people inside, after a few seconds Lucía started walking again, more quickly than before, a severe look on her face. While up until then Nula had wished that she had been less distracted from the conversation, he now knew that he’d been relegated by Lucía to a kind of nonexistence and completely forgotten. The warm aura he’d have liked to settle into indefinitely aspirated and expelled him at intervals, without warning, and he couldn’t tell if she was doing it in a calculated or a careless way. Finally they turned the last corner and reached her house. Lucía opened the door. The house was dark, and it was obvious there wasn’t anyone there. Nula thought she’d invite him in, but just the opposite happened.
—Well, Lucía said. Thanks for the tea and the conversation. It was nice to meet you. Now you know the house, so you can visit me whenever you want. No need to call ahead.
She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Nula, overwhelmed, started to babble something, but she turned around, flipped on the light in the entryway, and closed the door. A few seconds passed before he heard the small metallic sound of the lock which for the last week, and for many years afterward, had echoed in his memory, familiar, translated from the hollowness of pure circumstance to the metonymic ether where things, dissected and reorder
ed, producing both anguish and consolation, restore and represent the flawed and ephemeral experience. He took a few steps down the sidewalk, toward 25 de Mayo and his house, but he stopped suddenly, stood motionless for a few seconds, and then turned and started walking in the opposite direction. He passed Lucía’s house and, without stopping, noted that the entryway light was still on. He reached the corner, turned right, and when he was halfway down the block, in front of the house that Lucía seemed to have a problem with, stopped and briefly studied the door that was now closed but which, like the Persian blinds over the side window, where a few parallel rays slipped through the bars, allowed the light from inside to filter out. Finally he decided to ring the doorbell; he hadn’t been hesitating, actually he’d been standing there for no reason, not really knowing what to do, when suddenly, without thinking about it, and without knowing what would happen if they answered, he rang the bell. Almost immediately, as though he’d been waiting behind the door for someone to ring, a five- or six-year-old boy opened it and looked up at him.
—I think I’ve made a mistake, Nula said. Does the Anoch family live here?
The boy looked at him and without saying a thing closed the door again, possibly because they’d taught him not to speak to strangers, or maybe he’d surprised him in the middle of a solitary game, and unable to distinguish the game from reality, he’d acted in a certain sense deliriously, his abrupt behavior belonging to the character he was playing in the game and not to the normal way he’d act outside of it, or following, on the contrary, an accelerated logic whose intermediate stages he short-circuited, he’d figured that since that family didn’t live in that house there wasn’t any more reason for the door to be open. Shuffling through these possibilities, laughing to himself, Nula continued his circuit. He was deliberately doing things that made no sense to him, he thought, and he remembered a conference he’d attended at school. The speaker had said that humanity, after the death of the gods, forsaken to the magma of the material, had begun to realize that its actions lacked significance, but that each individual could, if he wanted, give them meaning and assign his own value. And he told himself that, in their reproduction, Lucía’s enigmatic intentions would ultimately reveal their meaning. But he didn’t learn anything more about them when he stopped at the nameplate that read Doctor Oscar Riera, Clinical Medicine, which he was able to read thanks to a streetlight between him and the trees. As before, the office was dark and silent, so after trying to peer inside without seeing much, he continued walking, turned at the corner with the ice cream shop without looking inside, and soon reached the entrance to his building. He went up the stairs that led to the entrance and was already walking to the apartment when suddenly the place where he’d lived since he was born looked strange to him, the garden where he’d played as a kid, the two rows of apartments separated by the hibiscus and the rosebushes, the glassy planters and the blooming hedges, fragrant in the evenings. Lucía’s curious gaze had displaced his own, and explained the apparently permanent alienation he felt, which translated into words would have been more or less the following: The strangeness of the world isn’t in its unthinkable or distorted sectors but rather in the immediate, the familiar. It just takes an outside gaze, which can sometimes come from ourselves, however fleetingly, to reveal this to us.
That night, in bed, he came up with several plans, to be carried out the next day, but discarded them all after deciding that none satisfied him. One thing was for sure: he’d taken Lucía’s invitation at face value. The next day, though, he worked from two till eight at the law school kiosk, and it didn’t seem prudent to show up too late at Lucía’s because of the danger that she might not be alone. But by the time he got up his caution had vanished: after showering and eating breakfast, he walked out, turned the corner, and went straight to Doctor Riera’s office. He rang the doorbell, below which a sign read Ring the bell and come in, and pushed through the half-open door.
A woman of a certain age, who must’ve been the secretary, or the nurse, or both things at once, came through the side door that led to an empty waiting room, and with a severe expression asked him his name. When he told her, she must have realized that it wasn’t the name she’d expected to hear, that is, of the patient who’d made an appointment for that time (it was ten exactly), and she was telling him that he’d have to make an appointment for another time when a second door, which also led to the waiting room, opened and Doctor Riera appeared. Seeing him, Nula thought, He’s as beautiful as she is, even more so, for a man: as virile as Lucía is feminine. He’s tall, well-proportioned, with an athlete’s body and an intelligent expression. And his dark, curly hair makes him look younger than her, though he may in fact be older, thirty-five, give or take. His eyes are sharp, his clothes are neat, but because he’s tall and upright, muscular probably, without an ounce of excess fat, even the worst clothes in the world would look good on him. His gestures are precise and natural. He doesn’t seem to have a single defect. Clearly they’re made for each other. They’re like gods and I’m the larva that squirms at their feet and which they wouldn’t even bother to squash. There’s no doubt whatsoever that I’m finished before I even start. And how virile and melodious his voice sounds as he tells the nurse to let me through, that the next patient won’t be there till ten fifteen!
And then he was inside, a clean and tidy office, and Riera gestured to a chair, just in front from the one he sat in, on the other side of his desk. He took a blue index card and a fountain pen from a drawer and transcribed Nula’s answers to his questions, his name, birthday, marital status, residence, and a few details about his medical history. Then Riera stopped writing and examined him, first with his gaze, then with the ritual question he must have asked every new patient, but in which Nula thought he detected a slight hint of scorn.
—What seems to be the problem?
Nula invented some sort of allergy, an itch on different parts of his body that came and went over the past few months. Riera looked at him for a few seconds and then, as they stood up, he said:
—Alright, you can get undressed.
—All the way?
—Not yet, Riera said. You can leave your underwear on.
He had him sit down on the examination table and took his blood pressure, then listened with a stethoscope, or directly with his fingers, on his abdomen, on his chest, and around his back. Then he told him to stand up and take off his underwear.
—Where does it itch? he said.
Nula gestured vaguely around his hips, his belly, his thighs, his head. While he put on a pair of rubber gloves, Riera started examining the skin more closely, murmuring I don’t see anything. Separating his hair with his fingers, he quickly studied his scalp; with the tip of his index finger he rubbed his eyebrows against the grain, straightening the hair in order to examine the skin more closely. Then he told him to lay down again on the table, face up. He sat on a black leather stool and sank his fingers into his pubic hair, slowly and carefully separating the hairs in order to see the skin beneath. After a moment he stopped and then said:
—It’s not lice. You can get dressed.
Nula stood up.
—Hold on, one second, Riera said. With two fingers on his left hand he lifted his penis and with his right hand palpitated and weighed his testicles, then with the same two fingers folded back the foreskin and studied it closely, even going so far as to squeeze it, expanding the orifice in order to see into it. Then he told him to turn around, and separating his buttocks he examined his anus for several seconds. While he took off the gloves and threw them in a cylindrical, metal receptacle, whose lid opened by pressing a pedal that stuck out from the base, Riera announced that he couldn’t find anything in particular.
—It must be psychosomatic. How’ve you been sleeping lately? he asked. I can prescribe a tranquilizer if you want.
—No, not at all. I sleep really well, Nula said.
Riera watched him closely while he dressed, and when he finished, and their eye
s met, it seemed to Nula that despite the gravity of his expression and his professional tone when he spoke to him, there was, in Riera’s eyes, a tenuous spark of mockery.
—How much do I owe you, doctor? Nula said.
—Nothing, Riera said. When you’re really sick I’ll charge you. For now I’d rather not think of you as a patient.
He followed him to the door but their eyes never met again. The ten fifteen patient was already in the waiting room, reading a magazine, and he stood up when he saw them come in, deferential to the medical authority, like a private who comes to attention when a superior officer enters the room. Nula said goodbye without turning around and went out to the street. He was so preoccupied that rather than walk down San Martín, as he’d imagined he would, he returned home. He grew more worried the more he thought things over. He threw himself on top of his bed but the very moment he collapsed onto it, as if he’d bounced, he stood back up. A kind of anxiety was taking over him without his even realizing it completely: the visit to Riera’s office, like the profanation of a sanctuary, produced both pride and fear, and he replayed over and over, in a fever, the doctor’s gestures and words. Everything felt saturated with meaning, but a kind of multiple meaning, impossible to specify, one which changed direction each time he tried to force an interpretation through it. The couple that had just come into his life was taking on a disproportionate prestige, representing, with their physical beauty, their tact, their enigmatic behavior, a side of the world that his dark and tragic family life hadn’t allowed him to know existed. Those two attractive, singular people, endowed with a glow more intense than anyone else he knew, appeared sheltered from contingency, from the vulgar details that underscored the mutability of perfection, a kind of gift, at once immediate and inaccessible, offered up by the external world. Even though it had its darker side, like the vaguely mocking look he’d given him after the examination, Doctor Riera’s behavior nevertheless seemed more rational than his wife’s, but his last words, with their irregular feel, seemed to contain a coded message or a warning. Nula spent the rest of the morning going over his questions, waiting for La India, who closed the bookstore at noon and would be on her way back soon after, but at twenty after twelve, when he went to the kitchen to pick at something because he was starting to get hungry, he saw that La India had left him a list and some money to go to the store on the boulevard to buy three or four things they needed for lunch. And so he didn’t open the fridge, and instead hurried out to the street.
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