Ramón didn’t budge.
Think of what I’ve done for you and your family. You’re betraying me. I beg you not to betray me now. Look at the shape I’m in.
“How could I not remember? I’m so grateful to you, it’s just that…” She was on the verge of tears. “It isn’t there, Señor Martínez, it isn’t there.”
She must’ve been sniffing around in the drawer. She’s not stupid, she must know something.
Ramón changed strategies. He clasped his hands together as if in prayer. He showed his vulnerable side.
Elodia started to cry. She wiped her tears on her apron.
Ramón pointed at the closet again, plaintively.
“All right, let’s see,” said Elodia, apparently defeated.
She climbed back onto the stool and swept her hand over the shelf, her eyes brimming with tears and her lips bathed in snot. She paused where the key had clinked earlier. Ramón knew it was there. At that very moment, Elodia’s fingers were touching the piece of metal, the only thing he needed to get hold of the gun and put himself out of his misery. Hurry up, he wailed silently, just grab it.
Elodia drew back her empty hand, lowered her arm, and stepped down from the stool. She was crying and trembling with shame. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him.
“It’s not there … I swear it’s not there.”
25
Paulina was seized by a mortal panic whenever she found her father sleeping with his head twisted into an odd position. Since he was connected to an artificial respirator day and night, it was impossible to tell if he was alive by checking his breath. She had to scrutinize other, more subtle signs: the trembling of his eyelids as he dreamed, the reddish color of his fingernails, the pulsing of a vein against the skin on his neck or wrist. In this way, she learned to examine her father in such painstaking detail that every so often when she was bored in class, she amused herself by sketching parts of his face and hands.
One Sunday morning when Carmela was out, Paulina went into the bedroom to check on her father and found him asleep with an open cookie tin on his lap. She tiptoed toward him. She was about to check his vital signs as she usually did, but the cookies caught her eye and whetted her appetite. Slowly, she reached a thieving hand into the tin.
The chocolate cookie had an aftertaste of oregano. It must have been a wholesome, organic recipe. Despite its unusual flavor, Paulina ate another. It didn’t taste as bad as the first. She felt a pleasant tickle on her tongue like a kind of fizzing, as if she’d taken a sip of ice-cold soda.
Twenty minutes later, she started feeling dizzy. She assumed it was a divine punishment for filching the cookies. She began to feel a stabbing, slow-motion sense of guilt, and considered purging her sins by making herself throw up. She thought of looking for Mateo so she would feel less alone in her angst, but lately he was so withdrawn and glued to his electronic appendages that Paulina scarcely recognized the zombie he had become. She had complained to her mother several times. She asked her to tell Mateo to be more attentive to their father, but Carmela only made excuses for him, appealing to the emotional incompetence of men.
Delirious from the effects of the cannabis, she went into the bathroom and splashed some water onto her face. In the mirror, she noticed her eyes were irritated and gleaming. She lost herself gazing into her pupils, her imperfect hazel irises, and the red blood vessels in the whites of her eyes. Never had she studied that hair-raising organ so closely. Then she was shocked by the completely inexplicable fact that she had two eyes but only one nose.
Staring at her nose, she began to crack up. Why was it so hilarious? She couldn’t remember. Maybe the cookies were stale, rancid. I’m hallucinating. She went back to her bedroom and locked herself in. When she threw herself down, the springs in her bed squeaked like scampering rats. The idea of rats scurrying across the room amused her, and she laughed hysterically, rocking her pelvis back and forth to trigger the noise. Carried away by the rhythm, she gave herself over to a lascivious swaying that in the end looked like a demonic convulsion. Exhausted, she suddenly paused and laughed again. She’d never had so much fun. What was going on? What was she thinking? She couldn’t remember, but she was feeling great.
26
“Have you been to the Cineteca lately?” Eduardo asked as soon as he’d stretched out on the couch.
The question, so frivolous and unexpected, distracted Teresa from her grief for her friend Lourdes, whom she’d met in the chemotherapy suite, and who, after years of remission, had suffered a relapse six months earlier. No one was safe from recurrence, no matter how many blueberries, limes, or pomegranates they consumed.
But something seemed to be going on with Eduardo. The simple fact of asking his analyst a personal question marked a tipping point in the transference process. She needed to take advantage of it.
“I used to go all the time,” she said. “I love the movies.”
Eduardo sat up on the couch and turned toward Teresa.
“Do you think it would be a clean enough place for me to go?”
The goal was to achieve a psychological shift. Stodgy moralists insisted that people could never change. Teresa accepted that everyone had an immutable core, a kind of soul in the secular sense—a piece of hardware, like the aluminum soul of a polyethylene pipe—but she believed that habits, ideas, and emotions could change. Eduardo’s psychological soul stood alone, beyond the id, ego, and superego, the holy trinity of Freudian psychoanalysis. Freud himself had shown the way: where id was, there ego shall be. Beneath the disputed territories of these agencies of the personality lay the solid foundation of life, beyond the vagaries of circumstance, impervious to mutation. No matter what traumas, love affairs, or books changed a person’s behavior, the soul continued to exist. Psychoanalysis was simply the search for that inescapable truth. Like the tragic heroes who’d served as inspiration for Freud, at some point everyone must come face-to-face with himself, experience recognition, achieve anagnorisis. For this to be possible one had to believe in a mental essence, and Teresa could find no word less stale than soul to describe it.
“Are you thinking of going to the Cineteca?”
“I don’t know,” said Eduardo. “I haven’t been to a movie theater since I had leukemia. Ten years or more. My mom used to take me on Fridays.”
Eduardo almost never mentioned his mother except to criticize one of her unhygienic habits. This was indeed a crucial session.
“What do you want to see?”
“A Syrian movie Emilia posted about on Facebook. She said it was the most beautiful film she’d ever seen and she was dying to see it again. I sent her a direct message and said I was dying to see it, too. I’d never even heard of it. She messaged me back and said ‘Let’s go,’ with three exclamation marks. I told her I’d be out of town this weekend, so we agreed to go next week. Just thinking about it … What if she expects me to kiss her there, in the seats, in that fusty air? How will I be able to breathe? What if she gets popcorn? If she eats it with her hands I’ll be so grossed out. If I kiss her it’ll be so disgusting, I know it. I can’t.”
“What is it you’re so disgusted by?”
“I … I don’t know. Not her. Myself.”
The truth was there, echoing in those words, in which Eduardo had finally confronted a clear reflection of himself. Now he was speechless. Teresa waited in silence, thinking that this was precisely the cure: to look at ourselves in the mirror is necessary to change our appearance—in this case the self, the psychological self-image. That was why Freud drew so extensively from classical tragedy, from the recognition that unites the hero with his destiny. Teresa remembered her own moment, not on a couch but in bed with her lover in a hotel room, when she told herself that she didn’t want to be good. That same night she demanded a divorce from her husband. A twinge in her chest took her back to the depression that followed, the social opprobrium, her cancer, and her foolish self-reproach. The tumor was her own fault; according to the teachings of
Wilhelm Reich, it was the suppuration of her soul. How she had hated herself when she read that charlatan’s work. How disgusted she had felt, just like Eduardo.
“Why do you disgust yourself?”
“No, I mean because of everything I could pick up at the Cineteca. It’s got to be dirtier than a regular movie theater. I read a study about English hospitals. They found out that there’s thirty percent more bacteria per square foot in public hospitals than in private ones, although the bacteria in the private ones is more resistant to antibiotics. Obviously. But the point is, the cleaning leaves a lot to be desired. I checked to see if the film was showing at another theater, but it’s not. It’s not even available online. It was the last one to be filmed in Syria. They were already at war, it’s not exactly romantic. It’s about a little blind girl who recites the Koran. I guess Koran reciters are the rock stars of Islam. And the little girl has such a beautiful voice that rumor has it that Allah is bewitched by her and protects her from the bombs so they won’t interrupt her recitals. And people believe it, so they gather around in massive groups during the bombings to hear her sing. But then some terrorists kidnap her and do horrible things to her and force her to sing for them in the barracks, all covered in blood. That part was in the trailer. It would be weird to kiss during a movie like that, right? Anyway, I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t like me and she only said yes because she wants to see it again. And I’m going to come out of there covered in dust mites from God knows where. They’ll eat me alive. If I could just disinfect the seat before she gets to the theater. But we’ll probably meet up outside, right? They’d have to let me in half an hour early. But there’ll be another movie showing then.”
The decisive moment had passed, and Teresa had failed to seize it. She would have had to interrupt Eduardo before he took refuge in his phobia. Why hadn’t she intervened in time? How had she been so distracted? Like the man with whom she’d thought she was happy, Eduardo was a rational automaton whose engine ran on the blood of a fearful child, the stifled child he carried inside him. The time had come to stray from her method.
“What’s the movie called?” she asked.
“By Night I Vanquished the Moon. I know it sounds cheesy, but it won an important award at Cannes.”
“It sounds good.”
“I can’t go. It’d be such a nightmare if I had an attack in front of Emilia. I’d have to take a mask in case I started feeling bad.” Eduardo was talking about the panic attacks that his therapy with Teresa had helped him get under control. “And then what? I’d have to lie and say I have asthma, and it’s not like that’s too attractive, either. And apart from that, last night I read an article about a rabid raccoon that got into a movie theater in Dallas and bit three guys in the audience. One of them was unvaccinated because he was a Mormon or something. Two months later, he dropped dead. I started watching videos of rabid animals and people foaming at the mouth and hallucinating, terrified of water even though they were dying of thirst. Then suddenly it was five in the morning. Apparently, the strain of the virus carried by rodents is resistant to vaccination. What’s the deal with viruses? They’re not even alive and they can kill you. I don’t know how people can live in a world like this.”
“Why don’t you visit the Cineteca ahead of time and see how you feel?”
“I can’t take the risk.”
“Of what? Getting bitten by a raccoon?” Teresa said, convinced that the time had come to sabotage the transference with dynamite.
Eduardo stared at her as if the rabies virus were already having an effect on his brain.
“My mother pays you to understand me, not to make fun of me just like she does.”
“I’m trying to understand you.”
Eduardo rose and began to fold up the sheet he used to cover the couch. Teresa felt like adding, in a sadistic outburst, “Don’t you realize you’re afraid of germs because you disgust yourself? You’re disgusted by the photos of your bald head as a child, your deathly pale face, your mother in a surgical mask and gloves. You’re disgusted by your penis and the wet dreams you can’t control. You don’t want her to castrate you or hollow you out like your mother. Do you know what that rabid raccoon is really called? Go ask Emilia. It’s between her legs.”
“Thanks,” he said sarcastically, ready to leave.
“I’ll go to the Cineteca with you. I’d love to see that movie.”
Eduardo looked at her with the same bewilderment he reserved for his mother when she came home tipsy on a Friday evening.
“My treat,” Teresa added.
Finally, Teresa was experiencing, without the fog of marijuana, one of those unlikely moments that saved her life from absurdity.
They bought tickets for the five o’clock screening and hung around for a while outside the theater. Dozens of moviegoers went by with enormous sodas and cartons of popcorn. Eduardo checked his watch constantly. An usher came over to ask if they were going to go in to the movie. Teresa told him they were thinking about it. They thought about it for another half hour. In the distance, they heard rapturous singing. They left as it began to get dark.
27
Ernesto had bribed the authorities, that fucking faggot. You betrayed your own brother, you’re after my house, you predatory piece of shit. Ramón spat on him with glee the last time he came by to make threats. The doctor had signed his eviction order. Doctors and judges, the same kind of scum. Because Ernesto was footing the bill for Dr. Aldama’s house calls. Your brother’s helping us out, we can’t afford it, Carmela had said. But it’s an investment, that snake, so he can get hold of our assets. Ramón was going to assert his constitutional rights by filing a writ of protection based on Article 4, Paragraph 7 of the Constitution, the right to housing. You had it coming to you, asshole. It’s a wild world out there without legal protection. I’m not paying up. Aldama’s sentence is invalid. That debt was canceled when we were born to the same woman. You’re not getting me out of here. I have ten business days to start the proceedings. What time is it? Ramón searched for his watch among the packets of pills. It wasn’t where it should have been. Ernesto stole it. Carmela! Where’s my watch? I have to get to court. The ruling should take just long enough. Maybe a year. Where did I put my watch? Tell them I’m running late. I got held up, but I’m on my way. I was feeling a bit under the weather. Who are you? Let go of me, you piece of shit. Get your hands off me. Get your hands off me. How much did he pay you? Fucking police. Where’s your arrest warrant? Put me down, you moron. Call Carmela. Tell her to file the writ of protection.
“Calm down,” said Elodia. “It’s just my son Toño.”
Show me the arrest warrant. Let me go and I’ll pay up. I have cash. How much do you want?
Ramón’s bed had been set up in the study. Toño sat him in the wheelchair and pushed him out into the garden.
“Say hello to Benito,” said Elodia. “Good morning, Benito. Señor Martínez is here to see you.”
Get this fucking thing off me. I have the right to speak.
“That’s your oxygen. Leave it where it is. Leave it there.”
“Do you want me to strap him in?” asked Antonio.
“He’ll calm down in a minute. I don’t want him all bundled up like a tamale.”
I don’t want any tamales. Bring me a red pozole with some nice lean pork. What would you like? No really, it’s on me.
“Cocksucker!”
“Look, he’s already forgotten,” Elodia said to her son. “Now get off to work.”
They left Ramón dozing in the garden. He pulled off his oxygen mask in his sleep. Benito woke him.
“Son of a bitch!”
Carmela? Help me.
Benito was getting worked up.
“Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch!”
Elodia came outside to see what was going on.
“What is it now, Benito? What’s the matter with…”
Ramón was convulsing. She knew that, when he had one of these fits, she was supposed
to bring the inhaler and administer three puffs, to let him breathe. The oxygen mask had been tossed onto the grass. Ramón’s lungs were filling with fluid, which the doctors extracted with an enormous needle. Elodia needed to rush upstairs for the medicine. If she didn’t, Señor Martínez would suffocate. She knelt down at his side and held his agitated hands in hers.
“Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch!” the parrot screeched.
Each night, Elodia lit a candle and prayed for Ramón’s eternal rest.
“Light my way, O Lord…”
Ramón opened his eyes, roused by a rush of adrenaline.
Help.
“Our Father, who art in heaven…”
A flood of light, voices, Benito reciting Our Father, Elodia squawking, “Son of a bitch!” Carmela tasting a chorizo sope.
“Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…”
Ramón’s heart pounded like a drum, echoing through his consciousness. His system was rocked by a turbulent wave of endorphins.
“Forgive me, O Lord.”
Elodia clung to Ramón’s hands to help her withstand the harsh gaze of God. Just how serious was the sin she was committing? She was afraid. She desperately needed to pee. She tensed her abdominal muscles. She knew that when it was all over, before she dialed the thirteen digits of Señora Martínez’s cell phone, she would make a stop in the bathroom. She would sit on the toilet and rehearse the lines as she relieved herself. Señora Martínez, it’s Elodia. Benito would be the only one to witness the truth.
“Son of a bitch!”
She would tell Carmela that when she heard Benito squawking, she came out into the garden and found Señor Martínez asleep and at peace. She would take a sip of water before dialing Señora Martínez’s number. Then she would deliver the news, and cry, and lie, and sin.
Elodia murmured a hodgepodge of prayers, while Benito paid jubilant tribute to Ramón’s life.
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