The Shape of the Ruins

by Juan Gabriel Vasquez

  “All four of us stood up and went into the kitchen to tidy up the house a little, wash the dishes, and take out the garbage. We were all in there, each busy with some task, with the tap running, with the noise of the plates and cutlery and garbage bags being pulled out of the bin and fresh ones shaken open to replace them. And in the midst of all that bustle, we heard the bells on the front door. On the door of my house we have a set of those bells that let you know when it opens or closes, I imagine you know the sort of thing. Anyway, we heard them ring, and Estela said to my son: ‘Go see who’s here.’ He took off the rubber gloves, left the kitchen, and came back a minute later saying the door hadn’t opened but had closed. Nobody said another word about the door and I suspect nobody gave it another thought. At least for my part I’d forgotten it the next second. And we only thought of the door again when Estela and I returned from the long weekend, the night of the following Monday, and found that we’d had a break-in.

  “They’d broken one of the windows by the door, those small, rectangular windows on the right as you enter the house. Remember? They reached a hand in and opened the door from the inside. Has anything like that ever happened to you, Vásquez? Do you know what it’s like coming home for the first time after thieves have been in your house? It’s a feeling of desolation, of total frustration, impotence, and injustice. Stupid feelings, because who’s going to be so ridiculous as to talk about justice when someone’s just broken into your house, right? It’s like saying that was impolite to someone who’s just shot you three times. But that’s what you feel. I told Estela to go back to the car and I would take a look. One doesn’t say look and see if they’re still here, one just says take a look. ‘Oh, spare me the heroics,’ she said, and went in first. We looked through room by room, but you know in these cases that nobody’s there, that they left hours ago. And of course, there was nobody there. And they hadn’t wrecked the place either. They took small things: jewelry, a laptop, loose change that had been on my bedside table. From the downstairs cabinet they’d taken the kaleidoscope and the old pistols. They hadn’t taken my big computer, because of its size, but they did break the lock on my desk drawer and took everything that was in there, including what I inherited from my father: all that we were going to return as soon as we could.

  “Yes, that’s right: what you saw that night in my house, they took that. Other things that you didn’t see, all that too. Everything, Vásquez. They took it all, those things all ended up in the same bag as the valuables. I imagined them emptying the drawers and later asking themselves what all that shit was, excuse me, a piece of bone in a yellowish liquid, and I imagined them pouring the liquid into a toilet I imagined to be green, I don’t know why, and throwing the bone and jar away separately. I never cried over lost things, not even as a child, but that night I cried. I wept because my father was not there to weep for me. Or rather, I wept because my father was not there, and he would have wept for his things. I wept to replace my father’s absent weeping. That’s why I didn’t get in touch with you, Vásquez, I suppose I don’t need to explain it. Because there was no longer any need for any column or interview. Because now there was nothing to return.

  “I’ve been full of regrets for two years now. Regretting that I hadn’t decided to return my father’s inheritance earlier. Regretting not having kept them in a safe, as Estela had sometimes advised me. I’d say what for, since I’m the only one the things matter to, and besides, no one knows they’re here. But Estela said that things that matter only to you should be cared for more than other things, because usually they cannot be replaced, and that’s why they matter only to you. But I didn’t take her advice, of course, and what happened happened. And during all this time I’ve tried to mourn them, as if someone had died. And I have to tell you that I had achieved it or I was achieving it, Vásquez. When I wrote you that e-mail, what I had in mind was to tell you what I’ve just told you: explain that what happened to thousands of people in Bogotá had happened to me. Tell you: ‘Now I’m one more, Vásquez, now I’m part of the statistics. The incredible thing is getting to this age without it having happened to me before.’ Or tell you: ‘Imagine, Vásquez, what bad luck. They grabbed a handful of things, a bit by chance. They took everything from the drawers of my filing cabinet and there went my father’s things. And what can you say? What bad luck: that’s all you can say. That’s what they call a rotten break. They don’t know what they took, Vásquez. The bastards don’t know what they took or the hurt they caused.’ I was going to tell you all that. That’s probably all I would have told you if you hadn’t gotten ahead of me. Because now, with what you just told me, with that little detail that would be superficial or dull in other circumstances, everything’s changed.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said finally. “What is everything? Why has everything changed?”

  “How long ago did we leave the cafeteria, Vásquez? How long have we been talking about this matter? Fifteen, twenty minutes? Let’s say twenty. If you could see what was going through my head, what has gone through my head in these twenty minutes, you’d die of fright. A whole life has turned upside down in these twenty minutes. Do you know why, Vásquez? Because while we were walking side by side down corridors, while we were going up and down in elevators, I have done nothing but remember what Estela used to say. You already know: if I thought my things were safe, if I thought nothing would ever happen to them, it was because nobody knew they were here and because they didn’t matter to anyone else. But now you tell me what you told me and all those certainties begin to change. In these twenty minutes everything that’s happened over the last few years has changed, and what I see now frightens me and would frighten you if you could see it, if you could enter my head and see the difference between what I thought I was experiencing and what I now think I experienced. Because you just made a confession that was unimportant to you, and the only thing I can think about those bones my father left to me before he died is this: that two years ago there was a person in the world who knew of their existence, that there was someone else in the world they mattered to. Or rather: another. There were two of us, you and I, and now there’s another. Now there’s Carballo. Now Carballo is with us. Two years ago, when I came home from a trip and found that my inheritance from my father had been stolen, Carballo already knew it was there. How did he know? Because you told him, Vásquez. Because you told him.”

  * * *

  —

  YES, IT WAS TWENTY MINUTES, twenty long minutes that Benavides spoke to me nonstop while guiding me through the labyrinths of the Santa Fe clinic, from the cafeteria to the door to the first floor, from the door to the corridor with the tall windows that leads to the buildings, and arriving through that narrow corridor (where one has the impression of pressing oneself against the wall to avoid running into a person coming the other way) to the elevators that go up to the doctor’s offices. I accompanied him to his while he talked. I saw him pass between the secretaries’ large desks, sad and deserted at this hour of the night, and open his office door and look for something in the filing cabinet, and then turn into the other room, where the blue examining table stood covered with a paper sheet, and tug a white lab coat exactly like the one he was wearing off a hanger, all this while he kept talking. He handed the white coat to me—“Hold this for me,” he said—and kept talking. He did not stop talking. I accompanied him down in the elevator, back to the second floor of the towers and then back, through the corridor with the windows, to the main door, and he did not stop talking; and I accompanied him up that stairway of speckled steps and metal handrail that left a sour smell on one’s palms, and he did not stop talking; I accompanied him to the fourth floor, and we walked together until we reached a glass door where a woman with an exhausted face and a large mole on her forehead, sitting behind a chipboard desk, greeted him: “Dr. Benavides, how wonderful to see you. Are you going to room 426?” A bell rang and Benavides pushed open the glass door. Only then did he stop
talking about Carballo and the things stolen from his private drawer.

  “Dr. Vásquez,” he said, “are you going to put that coat on or not?” and then he spoke to the woman with a mocking smile. “Oh, Carmencita, doctors these days.”

  I was taken by surprise. And when one is taken by surprise in front of a third person, the instinct is always to play along or hold up the fiction the other has embarked us on: one feels like an actor who must maintain the illusion while in the scene, and only later ask for explanations. Carmencita looked at me with concerned eyes.

  “Of course,” I said. In order to put the coat on, first I put the book Benavides had given me between my knees. It was not an easy operation. “Sorry, I was a bit distracted,” I said. But when the glass door had closed behind us I grabbed Benavides by the arm: “What is this, Francisco? What are you doing?”

  “I want you to come with me.”

  “Where? Don’t you think our conversation’s been left half finished?”

  “No, it’s been left interrupta. Like the occasional coitus. We’ll finish it later.”

  “But what you just told me is huge,” I insisted. “Do you really think Carballo could have done that? Do you think he’s capable of such a thing?”

  “How ingenuous you are, Vásquez. Carlos is capable of that and much more. How is it possible you haven’t realized by now? What happens is that something is one thing and something else is quite another. But what I’m telling you is we’ll continue this later. This conversation, I mean: I swear we’ll continue it later.” He delicately removed my hand. “Right now I have other things to think about.”

  I followed him to the end of the corridor, the way a member of a cult follows his leader: the white coat I’d recently put on made me vulnerable to Dr. Benavides’s magnetism. We went into a room on the right-hand side. The blinds were up and the window was an imperfectly black cloth. First I noticed a bald man reading the newspaper sitting at the far end of a green sofa, right up against the armrest as if the rest of the sofa were reserved for someone else. When he saw us come in he closed the newspaper (a dexterous flick of the wrists), folded it twice, and left it on the armrest to stand up and greet Benavides. It was a normal greeting—he shook his hand, smiled, said a couple of words—but something I couldn’t figure out made me feel the power that the presence of Benavides had in this room, or rather the respect and even admiration he inspired in the man on the sofa. That was when I noticed the other presence: that of the woman lying in the bed, who seemed to be asleep or resting when we came in and who was now opening her eyes, big eyes that not even the gray rings under them could make ugly, eyes of a disproportionate size that nevertheless fit mysteriously into the proportions of that face and its tired, corroded, wasted beauty.

  “This is Dr. Vásquez,” Benavides introduced me. “I spoke to him about Andrea’s case. He has my complete trust.”

  The bald man held his hand out to me. “Pleased to meet you,” he said, “I’m Andrea’s father.” The woman in the bed smiled with a genuine but forced smile, as if the movement hurt. I got a better look at her: from the skin on her face and the color of her hair I thought she must be a little over thirty, even though her posture and attitude were those of a woman already worn out by life. Benavides was talking to me: he mentioned the words immunological problem, he said the patient had been bedridden for several years without any real possibility of improvement or cure, and I thought how astute he was. He spoke in simple terms so that I would understand, but it seemed as though he was doing so for his patient’s benefit. He explained that the latest medical advice, after a diagnosis of ischemia, had established the necessity of amputating the left leg. Andrea received these words without flinching: her immense eyes stayed open, looking at the top of the wall, where a metal arm supported a television that was turned off. The father squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, and it seemed obvious to me that the daughter had not inherited her formidable eyes from him. Benavides sat down beside him on the sofa; there was not room for me but I didn’t care: the image of the three men seated as if in an audience for a show starring Andrea would have been a bit ridiculous. So I remained standing beside the sink, as I had sometimes seen doctors do in these situations: associates, assistants, nurses, or mere onlookers. I did not fit into any of those categories: I was an impostor and had been dragged into this imposture by Dr. Benavides. Why? What reasons could Benavides have for laying this ambush for me? He had planned it from the beginning, for he must undoubtedly have been thinking of this moment when he went back to his office for his spare lab coat. The coat smelled clean; in the breast pocket was a blue pen; I put my hands in the side pockets, but I didn’t find anything in them. “Okay, I’m listening,” Benavides said then.

  “The thing is,” said the father. Then he stopped. He turned to his daughter. “Do you want to tell him?”

  “No, you tell him,” said Andrea. She had a deep, mellow voice. There was something about her that, in spite of her circumstances, I could only call charisma.

  “Well,” said her father. “We’ve been thinking, thinking very hard.”

  Andrea interrupted him. “No, I’d rather tell him myself,” she said. “If you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind,” said her father.

  “We don’t want,” said Andrea. Now she was speaking to Benavides: her eyes had fixed on him like two beacons in the night. “Or rather, I’m the one who doesn’t want it. Papá agrees.”

  “You don’t want to go ahead with the amputation?” asked Benavides.

  “It’s not that,” said Andrea. “It’s that I don’t want to go ahead.”

  Benavides said: “I understand.” His voice at that moment was also one I hadn’t heard before: affectionate but not paternalistic, capable of solidarity and sympathy but careful not to overstep. “I understand,” he said again, “I do understand.” He lowered his voice. “Well, we’ve talked about this a lot. You’ve kept in mind all that we’ve talked about, I imagine.”

  “Yes,” said the father.

  “I’m tired, Doctor,” said Andrea.

  “I know,” said Benavides.

  “I am very, very tired. I cannot go on. And anyway, what can happen if we do it? What can happen if they take my leg off? Is there any possibility I’ll get better?”

  Benavides looked her in the eyes. He placed his two hands on the file, as if referring to it without doing so. “No, there is not,” he said.

  “No, right?” said Andrea.

  “No,” said Benavides.

  “That’s why,” said Andrea. “You tell me if I’m mistaken, Doctor, but the only thing we’ll gain by this is more time. More time for me to live like this, without any changes, just waiting until they have to amputate the other one. Because that’s how it is, isn’t it? Within a few months we’ll have to amputate my other leg, won’t we? Tell me, Doctor, tell me if I’m wrong.”

  “No, you’re not wrong,” said Benavides. “As far as we can predict, that’s exactly how it is.”

  The doctor hadn’t taken his eyes off her for an instant. I admired the courage that must take, because not even I, who kept to the fringes of the conversation, could look at Andrea for long, and when Andrea’s father looked at me I was unable to hold his gaze: I sought refuge in my telephone, where I pretended to take notes, or in the transparent bags of IV solution, or even in Andrea’s profile: her tied-back hair, her pale neck where a thick artery was visible, or her athletic arms.

  “In other words,” said Andrea, “all care is palliative. There is nothing else to be done: all they can offer is time. Isn’t that true?”

  “That’s true.”

  “Well, Papá and I,” she said, “have been talking. And we’ve decided we don’t want more time.” The father hung his head and began to sob. “I’m just so tired,” said Andrea. And then: “Forgive me, Papá.” And she started to cry as well.

 
Benavides went over to the bed and held Andrea’s left hand in both of his. Hers was pale, strong but small, and the doctor’s seemed to devour it. “It’s fine,” said Benavides. “You have every right. You also have every right to ask for forgiveness, but you don’t have to. You are living through this, nobody else. And you have been brave: you’ve been very brave, I have seldom seen people as brave as you two. I’m not going to try to convince you of anything. First, because I’ve given you all the necessary information. Second, because I would do the same thing in your position. Doctors should cure when possible. When it’s not possible, we should alleviate. And if that’s not possible, there’s nothing more to do than accompany and support, so all this will happen under the best conditions. I am going to continue to accompany you as I have been doing, but only if you want me to, Andrea, only if you allow me to because it seems useful or necessary.”

  Andrea wept briefly: the disciplined weeping of someone who has already suffered a lot. She ran a hand over her eyes, softly, and then reached for a tissue on the bedside table and used it to clean the tip of her nose, as if out of vanity, as if wanting to dull the shine on her skin.

  “And now what?”

  “We have to do some paperwork,” said Benavides. “Tomorrow we can check you out of the clinic. You can go home.”

  “Home,” Andrea said with a smile.

  “We’re going home,” said her father.

  “Yes,” said Andrea. “Yes. And then? What are you going to do, Doctor?”

  “We’ll do some palliative care,” said Benavides.

  “And then?”

  “Then nothing.”