“Your dad has a right to a private life too, you know,” Mariana says. “Perhaps he did have girlfriends, but didn’t want you to find out. There’s no reason why you should know everything.”
But Andrés wants to know everything. He leaves his father with Merny at the hospital for another session of chemo, and goes straight back to the apartment. He wants to poke around, rummage, pry, as if he were a private detective. Javier Miranda’s bedroom is fairly austere. No decorative details. A double bed with blue sheets, two pillows, a wooden bedside table on which there is a lamp, a book, and a remote control for the TV. The book is one Andrés gave him a few weeks ago. The jokey, slightly nostalgic memoirs of a Caracas journalist. It was the only thing Andrés and Mariana thought he might like.
Gray curtains at the windows. A large wardrobe, with two wide doors. Andrés opens them gently, as if not wanting to make any noise. There’s a shelf on which sit three photos: one of Andrés’s mother, one of Andrés and his father crouched together on a beach; the third of Andrés, Mariana, and the grandchildren. The clothes hang there, still and perfect. Andrés opens the drawers and glances inside. At that moment, he feels ashamed, embarrassed. It strikes him as rather ridiculous being there, behind his father’s back, handling things, looking through his father’s underwear, riffling through his shirts. What is he looking for? What does he really want to find? Is it possible to find a life that’s over, that might already be lost to them both?
In the drawer of the bedside table he comes across an envelope stuffed with letters. Again he feels ashamed, dishonest, but he has come too far now, there’s no point in turning back. They are short letters, unsigned, but clearly in a woman’s handwriting. Or so Andrés believes. Besides, the letters themselves tell him this. They appear to be brief declarations of love, either delivered by hand to his mailbox or slipped under the door. No dates, no names, no concrete details. It all seems to indicate a clandestine affair, one that must be kept hidden. One note in particular attracts his attention: it’s written on the back of half a dry-cleaning ticket. Just two lines: “I dropped by this afternoon. I wanted to surprise you. I needed a kiss. I needed you.”
There’s a book in the drawer too: Dying with Dignity by Hans Küng and Walter Jens. Andrés can’t help feeling a slight tremor. Where would his father have got that book? The top right-hand corner of page thirty-five is turned down. That’s as far as he must have got. Perhaps he stopped on that very page last night. Andrés reads the chapter heading: “Euthanasia discussed: the merciful death.” He closes the book and the drawer. The fact that his father has it hidden away in there means that he doesn’t want anyone else to see it. And anyone else means Andrés.
His father and Merny have made a pact. Or, rather, he has imposed a pact on her. They both reached crisis point one afternoon, when they were alone together in the apartment. He was having a really bad reaction to the chemotherapy. The immediate aftereffects were ghastly: he felt dreadful, his blood pressure was low, he was feeling dizzy and nauseous, and he was taking epamin to avoid possible convulsions. He’d had a chemo session earlier that morning. At lunchtime, Merny had served him what the nutritionist had recommended. He ate reluctantly, muttering and protesting.
“It all tastes the same,” he said.
Merny did not respond. She wasn’t having a good day either. Willmer had been out all night. She hadn’t been able to sleep. He’d been behaving oddly for some time, and she knew something was wrong. The neighbors said her son was getting into bad company, that he’d been seen with boys from another barrio.
“Not good,” thought Merny.
Not good meant crack, guns, police, prison, and cemeteries. Willmer finally got in at six in the morning. Merny wanted to slap him, but didn’t dare. Jofre didn’t either. After all, he wasn’t the boy’s father. Willmer went straight to his room, without saying a word, he appeared to be under the influence of drugs. Merny left for work, because she has to work, because she can’t miss a day, because now more than ever she needs money to get Willmer out of the barrio. That’s the only solution. Send him somewhere far away from there. To her sister in the country, for example. That, she thinks, is the only way to save him.
The old man leapt out of bed and ran screaming to the bathroom. He just had time to kneel down by the toilet bowl, but it was too late, he had already vomited his guts up on the way there. The corridor and the bathroom floor were a real mess. In the washbasin, too, there were the remains of his lunch mixed up with other fluids, saliva and dribble, remnants of Javier Miranda’s own body. He stayed hunched over the toilet bowl, trying to withstand the retching. He let out a low roar. Everything the body expels stinks, is disgusting and shameful, repellent leftovers no one wants to see, that should be swiftly cleaned up, covered up, erased. That’s what Merny’s there for.
But Merny had her own crisis. She vomited up her existence in another way. She exploded. She screamed. She’d had enough. She took off her apron and flung it down. She couldn’t help it. There she was, just about to leave, having left everything spotless. She had her own dirt, in her own house, far away, in another world. She didn’t want any more work to do. For a moment, the scene seemed utterly incomprehensible. The old man hugging the toilet bowl, coughing and groaning, and Merny standing nearby, beating the wall with her fist, shouting and crying. They remained like that for a while, two bodies furiously flailing and protesting, until gradually they calmed down, not looking at each other, not touching, each in their own place, letting their breathing return to normal.
Between them, they cleaned it all up. They had to put bleach on the floor and the tiles. The fetid smell had invaded the apartment. It was like a second skin tattooed on every object. The apartment was like the belly of some infected animal. Javier invited her to go out somewhere for a drink. Merny declined, embarrassed, saying she really should go straight home. In the end, he made her go with him. They went to a nearby café. She didn’t want to order anything, so he ordered them each a coffee. When they finally felt able to talk, the first thing Merny did was to apologize. The old man had a hard time convincing her that it wasn’t necessary. It was even harder to get her to open up and tell him what was going on in her life. That was when they made their pact. Javier Miranda offered to give her all the money she needed to send Willmer off to Los Andes, where one of Merny’s sisters lived. In exchange, they would have a private agreement, behind Andrés’s back.
“No more special diets, alright? No more of that disgusting grilled chicken with no salt. I want olive oil, I want butter, I want sweet things.”
“But Dr. Andrés says that . . .”
“It doesn’t matter what my son says. Merny, look at me. Do you really think I don’t know I’m going to die?”
“We’re all going to die, Señor Javier,” she said, lowering her voice and looking away.
“Yes, we’re all going to die. But I’m going first. I’m dying already.”
The name of the dry cleaner’s is De Luxe. This was all Andrés could make out on the half ticket he found in his father’s bedroom. Then it was simply a matter of calling information, getting the telephone number, phoning and asking for their address. Now he’s standing outside the shop. He’s spent days pondering that woman’s voice. On at least two occasions, he’s tried to have a conversation with his father about love and marriage. Once, he even attempted to probe deeper into his private life.
“I can understand you not marrying again, but have you never even had an affair?”
“I’ve never been one for affairs,” his father replied vaguely.
“Didn’t you even occasionally go with a prostitute? What did you do with your sex life all those years?”
This line of questioning got him nowhere. Javier Miranda merely smiled faintly, almost ingenuously, a mere gesture, barely completed, and said nothing more. As the days passed, the voice of that woman on the phone kept gnawing away at Andrés. He began to hear it more and more often, to stumble over the sound of it again and ag
ain. It was the only clue he had. That voice. And a dry cleaner’s.
He’d done his research almost innocently, without giving it much importance, but now that he’s actually outside the shop, he can’t help feeling a certain unease again. He’s thought it all through, but is unsure quite how to proceed. There’s a number written in red ink on the left-hand corner of the ticket, presumably the customer reference number. That should be more than enough to track down the woman he’s looking for. All he has to do is come up with a plan, carry it out and get what he wants. That’s the next step. For example: Andrés could go in, looking around him with a crazy, hesitant expression on his face.
“Good morning,” he could say, smiling shyly and going over to the young woman at the till.
“Good morning.”
“I have a bit of a problem.” Initially, Andrés would linger over the pauses, then babble furiously, trying to confuse the woman. He would heap her with words and endless stories, creating an overwhelming sense of confusion. “And all I have is this,” he would say at last, showing her the half ticket. “Could you possibly help me?”
Or he could enter the shop, go straight up to the woman and propose a bribe. Or else, frankly, without further ado, with no cutesy preambles, he could adopt a straightforward approach and pour out his troubles, tell her all about his father’s secret affair and the enigma of the woman’s voice that has brought him to this place smelling of lavender and steam. Whichever ploy he finally chose, Andrés emerged from the dry cleaner’s with a name, address, and phone number. The woman is called Inés. Inés Pacheco.
One day, when he was a boy, he followed his father. He was fifteen at the time. Well, everyone has been fifteen once. He can’t remember why he did it, there are no clues, no explanations. His memory offers him only a feeling, something resembling rancor, an aggressive, piercing pain. Andrés is crouched down in the shelter of the dusk, spying. He’s hiding behind a truck being loaded up with crates of vegetables. There are carrots, celery, zucchini, and two crates full of red onions. In the crate at the back he can see only the green fingers of some leeks. His eyes take in this landscape, peer through the windshield, and finally reach the other side of the sidewalk. That’s where his father is. He’s talking to a couple of men. Andrés is a little disappointed. He has a fantasy about his father having a secret affair with another woman, who has at last replaced the memory of his mother.
He had waited patiently near the building where his father worked and then followed him, just like in the films, always keeping a few yards behind, occasionally changing sidewalks to avoid being seen. His father went to have a coffee with his usual friends, then made his way to that alleyway and those two men. He took some bills out of his wallet and offered them to the men. They exchanged glances. They didn’t seem at all pleased. One of the men, the taller one, shook his head. The three of them talked briefly. Andrés was getting more and more tense. He was afraid something would happen. Suddenly, with no warning, one of the men punched his father in the stomach. A short, sharp blow. Javier Miranda doubled up, the breath knocked out of him. The other man, almost in the same movement, as if they were working in tandem, swiftly brought up his knee and struck Javier Miranda in the face. Andrés couldn’t move. He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to do too many things at once. He wanted to race over and punch those two men, he wanted to run away, he wanted to cry out, to call for help, he wished he’d never followed his father. The two men took his father’s wallet and watch and walked quickly away. Andrés stayed where he was, stock still and frozen behind the truck, while his father struggled to his feet, moaning and wiping the blood from his mouth. Not even then did Andrés dare to go over and help him. His fear of giving himself away, of revealing that he’d been following him and why, was too strong. His father limped away. In his memory, Andrés’s eyes are red. The memory smells of red onions.
That night, his father came home late. Andrés pretended to be asleep. The following morning, he told Andrés some silly story about tripping and colliding with a door in the office. That’s how he explained the cuts to his eyebrow and mouth. They never talked about it again.
Nevertheless, Andrés remembers it now, on the fourth floor of a small building in the old part of Chacao. He’s standing outside the door to apartment 4C. He has just rung the bell. After a few moments, he hears or thinks he hears the sound of footsteps. He could almost swear it’s the sound of sandals approaching. The door opens gently and there she is. Or so Andrés thinks. She must be Inés. She’s a woman of about sixty. She was obviously very beautiful once and still has all the elegance of a once-beautiful woman. She has very dark shiny hair. She looks at him without saying a word, she doesn’t even seem surprised. She merely waits.
“Good afternoon, are you Inés Pacheco?”
“Yes,” says the woman.
What follows is silence, because Andrés doesn’t know how to continue. He’s run out of script, he suddenly finds that he has no idea what to say, and is now hanging from the edge of this scene, afraid he might drop abruptly into the void. The woman is still looking at him, waiting, increasingly bewildered.
Then after a pause, Andrés asks, perplexed: “Don’t you know me? Don’t you know who I am?”
The woman studies him more closely, as if trying to locate Andrés’s face in her memory.
“No,” she says quite naturally.
“I’m Andrés, Javier Miranda’s son.”
Only then does the woman react, and she seems to tense slightly, as if something inside her had cracked. But she still says nothing and makes no move to invite him in. She remains silent, looking at him. Andrés merely watches expectantly.
“I think there’s been some mistake,” she says at last. Her tone of voice is warm, but she pronounces each word rather too exactly, too precisely. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
And without letting Andrés add anything further, or giving him a chance to react, she gently closes the door. Andrés stands in silence for a few seconds, taken aback. Then he hears, or thinks he hears, the sound of sandals approaching and then moving off again.
The situation is getting worse all the time. Karina arrives at the office now at half past six in the morning, when the cleaners are just starting work, when the grime and the shadows are still part of the dawn itself. She leaves at eight o’clock in the evening, two hours after finishing her day’s work. Dr. Miranda has urged her to take a vacation too, but she refuses. She watches the time pass on the computer screen, always waiting for the unexpected to happen, for a new e-mail suddenly to appear.
“You’re going mad,” says Adelaida.
“Typhus is less contagious than hysteria,” wrote Joseph Roth. Adelaida doesn’t know these words; she has never read and never will read Joseph Roth, but this is more or less what she thinks too.
“Look at you!” she cries. “Look at the state you’re in over that guy. He’s passed his sickness on to you!”
“It’s your fault,” says Karina in her own defense, albeit rather unconvincingly. “You were the one who persuaded me to start writing to him!”
“That has nothing to do with it. Don’t try and put the blame on me. You’re the one who let that madman poison you.”
Is that the right word? Has she been poisoned? Karina herself wonders the same thing several times a day. It not only has to do with her response to Ernesto Durán’s absence; there’s something worse, something she hasn’t even dared confess to Adelaida, something she may not even want to put into words.
It happened for the first time two Wednesdays ago. On her way home, Karina stopped at a video shop. She thought that perhaps a film would help her overcome the all too frequent bouts of insomnia that had been troubling her lately. She went into the shop at seven o’clock at night, the place was packed, and she was afraid there wouldn’t be any new films available. She went straight to the shelves marked “Comedy.” Perhaps she just needed something to distract her, perhaps that would help her to sleep. Howev
er, as she advanced slowly down the narrow aisle, running her eyes over the titles of the films, she began to feel nervous, strangely nervous. It wasn’t something she could describe clearly, but suddenly, the shop seemed much too small; suddenly, she felt hemmed in, unable to move freely, in need of air. A shudder ran through her. Almost a faint electric shock, like a distant nerve tweaking. The voices of the other customers appeared to come at her from varying distances and at different volumes, almost as if they were circling her or dancing, suspended from the shop’s suffocating ceiling. She felt unsteady. Her left eyelid was twitching. As if it had a life of its own. As if it were independent. Her forehead felt cold and clammy too. Her saliva was like sand, difficult to swallow. She couldn’t help thinking again of Ernesto Durán. She grabbed the video that was closest at hand and walked briskly over to the queue at the register.
There were three people ahead of her. Karina couldn’t believe this was happening to her. She tried to calm herself, tried taking deep breaths, clenching her fists and digging her nails into the palms of her hands, as if pain might help her keep control. Inevitably, the same fear she had so often read about began to surface. Was she about to lose consciousness? She wasn’t going to faint right there, was she? To conceal these feelings, she crouched down, pretending to check some detail on her shoes. This allowed her to rest one knee on the floor and to feel safer, steadier, more balanced. This wasn’t her idea. She’d read about it in a letter. Ernesto Durán had told her of something similar happening to him when he was queuing up at the bank. The other customers, of course, haven’t heard that story. Women don’t usually keep bending down to check their shoes while they’re waiting in a queue. Karina was aware of this, but couldn’t help it. Whenever she got up again, she would give a stiff smile, make some gesture, some pointless attempt at explanation. Then she was almost immediately overwhelmed by a terrible feeling of fragility. She was sweating profusely. She felt as if she were hyperventilating, as if a strange weakness were invading her being, as if she could no longer stand the lack of oxygen. There was now only one person ahead of her in the queue. Being able to look outside, through the glass door, was the one thing that gave her a tiny bit of peace, but even that was not enough. Then came a burning sensation, a fierce pricking in her throat. Karina started to scratch her neck. She was afraid it might be an allergy, although she couldn’t help connecting it with the unrelenting feeling of asphyxia. She swayed back and forth on the spot; she stretched out her arms, tried to expand her lungs, took deep breaths through her nose and mouth, rested her hand on the shelf containing sweets to one side of the counter, bent down, checked her shoe again, and straightened up, wiped the sweat from her cheek with one hand, glanced out of the corner of her eye to see if the other people behind her in the queue were looking at her. Then she could stand it no longer. She plonked the film down on top of some chocolate bars and raced out of the shop. Gasping for air, she only got as far as the steps leading out of the small shopping center. She sat down, not caring now or even thinking about the people hurrying past her, their legs almost brushing her.
The Sickness Page 11