Rage

by Sergio Bizzio

  As a rule, Rosa was far from careless with him. Although Senora Blinder (mysteriously, as far as Maria was concerned) helped her with the boy, Rosa continued in her role as maid: she was obliged to do all the housework with her son at her side, and it could happen that sometimes she was distracted or he escaped her. Joselito - as she was beginning to call him - was both restless and at the same time often lazy. He still wasn't walking even at fourteen months old.

  He had the exact same face as Rosa...

  Maria called her almost every day throughout the year. They talked about Joselito. Rosa recounted the amusing episodes surrounding him, and Maria told her to be careful around the sharp corners on the furniture, or with the plugs, and more than anything with the staircase, to which Joselito seemed to have become addicted. From time to time (and now only very occasionally from one time to the next) Rosa went back to questioning him as to where he was and when he'd be back.

  Joselito said nothing (he didn't talk yet), but was obviously charmed by Maria. As Maria was with him every minute that Rosa was distracted (each time that Joselito was alone in his room, or in the living room, or in the kitchen - and more than ever when Rosa left him in the playroom on the second floor and set off down the corridor with her vacuum cleaner), Maria went over to him, picked him up in his arms, made faces at him, or gave him a toy he'd made out of balsa wood specially for him to play with and which Joselito immediately smashed to pieces, grinning from ear to ear.

  He liked his smell, which lapped him like a flame, without either form or edges, the sound of his gurgles, his skin as soft as pollen... But nothing pleased him as much as the hiccuping laughs with which Joselito greeted his briefest of appearances.

  He taught him to say `Joselito" ("Lita", he said), or "auto" instead of "tutu", and, as he could no longer give himself a name for fear thatJoselito might go and repeat it afterwards, he also got the boy to call him "mama" too.

  "Ma... ma," he said the first time, kneeling closely before him.

  "Am..." responded joselito.

  "Ma...ma..."

  "Am...am..."

  "Very good! Now, let's do it again... Mama..."

  ... ma...

  "You've got it! My goodness, what an intelligent little boy you are..." He congratulated him, all the while stroking his head, before starting over again:

  "Ma... ma..."

  "Ama... "

  Rosa thought that Joselito was endowed with a vast imagination, because he was always going around looking for something behind doors or at the foot of the staircase.

  "I don't know what's wrong with him," she told Maria on one occasion. "I'm right there beside him and he's going around the back of me, calling my name. He makes me really worried when he does that..."

  "Worried? What about? He's just playing a game."

  "No, he's not playing a game. I'm right there next to him, and he's looking for me all over... Kids of his age don't play games like that. It makes me scared he might have some mental problem..."

  "No, Rosa, what kind of a mental problem would he be likely to have? Kids are just like that..."

  "I'd so love you to know him... you'd be sure to get on so well with him!..."

  It broke Maria's heart: the hour (or the age) had come for him to be seen no longer, not even by his son.

  33

  One afternoon Rosa was mopping one of the atticroom floors with a floor cloth when Maria suddenly heard her swearing. She erupted with a yell, a yell followed by a patter of feet across the floor. There was no doubt about it: she must have just seen the rat.

  Rosa emerged from the attic room at high speed, running backwards. In a frenzy, she picked up the broom and went back in again. Maria could hear the noise of the broom handle being banged on the floor, here - there - all over the place, in an excess of violent disgust. The banging ceased a few moments later: Rosa re-emerged and ran downstairs. Had she killed it?

  In all probability not, for she then came back upstairs with her packet of rat poison. She went into the room and, a few moments later, emerged again. She regarded the broom handle with grave apprehension: at the very least she had hit it.

  "Revolting beast..." she muttered, and went off cursing between gritted teeth.

  Maria waited until he was certain that Rosa wasn't going to reappear, and went into the attic room. The poison was distributed in little heaps, carefully placed in every corner. He collected it all up, piled it up on the bedside table, went down on all fours and looked under the bed and under the cupboard. The rat was underneath the cupboard as usual. It looked like a dark mass, immobile although trembling. It must have been terrified, perhaps even wounded.

  He banged on the floor with the flat of his hand, but the rat didn't make a move.

  "Come here..." he whispered, "let me take a look at you..."

  He stretched out an arm in the intention of catching it, going so far as to stretch out his fingers in the shape of a spider, trying to get near to it... right up close until he touched it. At that instant he felt an icy burning in his hand. The rat had bitten him.

  "Me?" he asked incredulously. "You've gone and bitten me?"

  Between his index finger and thumb there hung a piece of flesh and skin. The wound, which had just started to bleed, was in the shape of a smile.

  He collected up the poison, went to the bathroom, threw it into the toilet, before washing the wound with alcohol. As he left the bathroom, he saw the rat slithering down the corridor, weaving back and forth in confusion. It had no idea which way to go. Maria paused and waited for the rat to decide. Only when it finally did so did he start moving forwards again.

  34

  "How lucky that you rang, and just in time! We're just about to leave for the Mar del Plata!"

  Maria was up to speed with the Blinders' intentions to leave the city behind (they were closing the windows and securing the doors), but he'd had no idea where they were off to. Maria had had no chance to ring her until a minute before they were due to depart, and it was more an act of daring than a lucky chance which caused him to do so then, for the Blinders were close at hand.

  "Are you off?" he asked her in a low voice.

  "Yes! At first I thought of staying put, but then..."

  "You'll get to know the sea..."

  "Yes."

  "And Joselito?"

  "Well, naturally he's coming with me."

  "Buy him a bucket... teach him how to build sandcastles..."

  "Yes."

  "How very nice..."

  "Neither the Senor nor the Senora are too keen on going. It seems as if they don't much like the Mar del Plata, but a married couple they know asked them along and they didn't really know how to refuse."

  "How long are you off for?"

  "I think it's for a week..."

  "And they're going to leave the house empty?"

  "Well, there'll be a watchman here, a policeman in fact. I overheard them hiring a guy..."

  "And he'll be living in the house!?"

  "Who?"

  "The watchman..."

  "Are you mad? He'll stay outside, of course! They've hired someone to be there day and night, outside on the pavement. Did I tell you that I've got the impression that their financial matters aren't all as smooth as they could be, if you catch my drift?..."

  "Yes."

  "Well then. It seems in fact they're going from bad to worse, so that..."

  "And is Joselito doing well?"

  "Divinely well."

  "Does he still follow you around doing those odd things you told me he did, wanting to have you at his side, then looking for you all over the place?..."

  "He hardly does that any more at all..."

  A severe blow, this.

  What else should he have anticipated? Children can forget anything at the speed of light... One week in the life of a child Joselito's age had to be like a decade in the life of a man of his age...

  "Tell the Senora to buy him a bucket..."

  "I'll buy him one myself
!"

  "Fine. Better still. And buy him a spade while you're about it. Do you know what's best to do? Build him a castle at the edge of the water, with a moat around it, and you'll see when the tide comes in that it'll wash into the moat and, if you make a door in the castle wall, the wave will come right inside and wash it away. You can even stick some twigs in the roof too, like flagpoles... But keep an eye on him all the time Rosa, so you don't lose sight of him - you know a beach is like an anthill and if you let him out of your sight you might not be able to find him again, eh?"

  "Don't scare me..."

  "No... OK. Or rather yes. Yes, I want to scare you. You can never be too cautious. It's the same with the water: waves look so pretty but beneath them there's always a current."

  "You've no idea how much I'd like to be there with you..."

  "One day we'll go there, all three of us."

  Then, suddenly, Maria heard the voice of Senora Blinder somewhere behind Rosa, coming down the phone line:

  "Come on Rosa, do please pick up those suitcases. Whoever are you still talking to?"

  "With Claudia, Senora," replied Rosa, "we're just saying goodbye." And she turned her voice back to the phone to speak to him: "Fine, Claudia, give me a ring when you're back..."... "Oh I didn't mean that, what am I saying?" she hurriedly corrected herself. "I mean I'll give you a call. Fine, a goodbye kiss."

  She hung up.

  They left a half-hour later.

  And they took ten days to return home, not a week.

  Maria found himself alone in the villa for the first time ever. It was desperate, he missed Rosa and Joselito so much (he even managed to miss Senor and Senora Blinder!), but also because they'd left such a minimal quantity of provisions behind them. Not a single perishable foodstuff remained at all. In the larder there were tins of sardines and tuna, some jars of jam and sweet chestnuts, two bags of rice, three packets of beans, one box of crackers, some tea and herbal infusions and coffee, and little else. He found a heel of bread in a bag hanging on the wall, and under the table was a case of six bottles of wine. The fridge was unplugged and empty (other than a half-dozen eggs and a couple of stock cubes), its door left open. Anything he ate in the course of this week would be clearly obvious at the end of it.

  But this was not the worst of his worries. From one of the first-floor windows he could observe the policeman standing on the street corner, his back to the villa. He was in uniform and without a moustache. Maria was not thinking of going out, not that he was now in any sort of a position to do so... The policeman was clearly working to a timetable: from eight in the evening until six in the morning. That only left Maria the option of leaving the house in broad daylight. Impossible.

  The street lamps outside the house remained switched on around the clock, the same as the kitchen light. Other than that, the rest of the house was in darkness. Maria couldn't be certain he would remain unseen from the outside if he put on the living-room light - or one of the others in any of the other rooms - and so he made sure never to do so. But he fell into the habit of sitting in one of the library armchairs, or of settling down wherever else inside the house the light entered - to read or at least leaf through their box of files and papers, even watch television.

  The first time he watched television he felt a degree of strangeness, because what they were talking about was exactly the same as years earlier, except that now he no longer recognized any of the personalities appearing on screen. And those who were still there years later, and who looked game to remain there for many more years, were phenomenally old, as if an incredible quantity of time had elapsed since the last time he saw them.

  He slept for three or four nights in Rosa's room. He left off doing so when he began to smell his own odour in her pillow. On the first night he ran a fever, his body felt like an anthill, and he noted a degree of insensitivity in the hand bitten by the rat. He observed that certain of the muscles were painfully contracted: the involuntary contractions affected one muscle at a time, each one an individual fibrous filament, on one occasion in his biceps, on another in a thigh... In the morning he checked over the entire room. Rosa didn't store any secrets there (no letters addressed to her or written by her). In the bedside-table drawer he found the star-shaped rattle which he'd managed to deliver to her as a first-birthday present for Joselito. Above it and on one side hung a sketch in blue ink, possibly scrawled in Rosa's own hand, on the wall above the skirting.

  He opened the wardrobe. How few clothes she possessed! Joselito may just have arrived in the world, but he owned more outfits than she did. Children's bodies grow at such a rapid rate; even so, children always seem to own more clothes than they can possibly wear. But as an adult, when a body has grown as much as it can, if you want to put it like this, then one is obliged pretty much always to go about in the same clothes.

  This was hardly the case for Senor and Senora Blinder. Their wardrobes were well full to bursting. However, it was noteworthy that they too kept no secrets stored there, or at least - like Rosa - nothing written down on paper. Not one thing he uncovered during those first three or four days alone in the house was of the least interest in terms of disclosing secrets. Or else perhaps the Blinders kept them extremely well concealed or Maria was already fully informed about them. In the end it was disheartening: a lifetime, two long lifetimes which, up until now, had failed to produce more than a ghost could discover in the course of a few short years (a ghost able to employ no more than one sense, the sense of hearing, at that).

  Nonetheless, he was able to corroborate or complete a number of details regarding the Blinders: Senor Blinder was a solicitor, suffered from high blood pressure, and was unhappy and obsessive. At some point in her life, Senora Blinder had set up an art gallery; she was a "social" alcoholic (there was not one single photo of her in which she didn't appear with someone at her side and a glass in her hand, despite the fact that in the villa she only drank at night and in bed); she used any number of face creams, adored pastel colours and in all probability maintained a secret lover, to judge from a variety of overly coquettish designer garments relegated to the back of the wardrobe. The most interesting thing he found in the Blinders' bedroom was simultaneously perturbing and disturbing: one of his little matchbox aeroplanes.

  The miniature plane was in the top drawer of a chest facing the bed. No doubt little Joselito had abandoned it somewhere, and Senora Blinder had picked it up and deposited it there. Or perhaps Rosa had cleared it up off the floor, and assumed that it was a gift that either the Senor or Senora had brought him... Nobody said anything about the miniature plane: it was he who had learned of its existence there. Objects which nobody has brought to a given place, and yet exist there at least as a topic of conversation, carry a great potential within themselves by their very existence, even if they are generally relegated to the rubbish bin without anyone having given them the least attention. The world, the entire planet, is filled with things which nobody has put in the right place. He left the miniature aeroplane where it was and shut the drawer.

  One night (he was now sleeping in the Blinders' bed) he was awoken by a strange noise. He got up hurriedly, bent on discovering the cause. It crossed his mind that a burglar must be trying to get into the house. He went over to the window and opened it a crack: the policeman was there, still standing with his back to the villa. Next he went down to the kitchen. He found an empty wine bottle had fallen over beside the dustbin lid, which had also tumbled over, upending it. That was what had caused the noise he'd heard. Rosa had forgotten to take out the rubbish... He studied the bin bag: it was tied at the top, but there were slashes in it, as if it had been clawed or bitten. Who had done this?

  The rat.

  He ran a hand through his hair and over his face, relieved, and went back to sleep.

  He was hungry. The overlooked bin bag served him from then on as a source to raid for the remains of what little was left and which he had no further choice but to consume: a tin of tuna, another of sardines
, three egg shells, a packet of rice, the wrappers of a couple of stock cubes... He opened the bin bag, threw out the remains, and closed the bag up again. On occasion, when he was particularly hungry, he'd try and cheat his stomach with a slug of brandy. Or he would prepare coffee or tea for himself. What he liked best of all was mate tea, but he could hardly drink a whole packet of the stuff if Rosa was not drinking it at the same time. So he took up the habit, after using a reasonable quantity out of the tea caddy, to dry the used leaves on the window sills.

  He had begun having difficulty swallowing. He wondered if he might be suffering from angina, or the flu, but his throat didn't actually hurt him in the least: it was more like muscle spasms up and down his trachea, as if it were seized by an alien hand, holding him down by force and preventing him from swallowing normally, even from breathing at times. The fever came and went, rising and falling like a tide, and each time, when he retired, it left him with a different experience: unease, anxiety, more sensations of a crawling anthill...

  He was irritable. One afternoon he broke the picture frame containing the portrait of Alvaro with a violent punch. He propped it down on the floor, knelt over it, and unleashed his full force behind his fist and against the glass. On another day he began running up and down stairs at full tilt, until he was exhausted. He had clenched his jaw so tightly in the process that his face ached.

  At still other moments he was afraid. He had never been so alone in his entire life. Dr Dyer's description of a free man in the erroneous zones (combining an unusually high level of energy, a harnessing of the mind in creative diversions to overcome the paralysis that results from a dearth of interest) - in which he fully believed he saw himself described - fell apart without a sound. The silent footfalls of his bare feet wandering about the house aimlessly were in the end the only sounds he could hear.

  When seven days had elapsed since Rosa and Joselito, together with the Blinders, had left the house, he took up a position near the garage, desperate to hear the sound of the car motor on its way home, bringing his family back to him. He was growing weak, he'd lost weight and his chest was burning. He slept on a carpet on the floor. His throat seemed to have closed over and he could scarcely swallow at all. His muscles were quivering here and there, all up and down his body, like nervous currents of light amid the serene darkness of the house.