In early autumn he got the flu. He felt embarrassed to be taken care of, to have broth made for him, to be tucked in when he fell asleep. Anita would poke her head in from the doorway and say hello from there so as not to catch it, she would try to make him laugh and sometimes succeeded, she’d make him a drawing or come in with the laptop and they’d watch a movie together — he, lying in bed; she, sitting on the floor with a handkerchief tied over her mouth like a miniature bank robber. It was a long week of convalescence, and it happened to be the same week as his birthday. He got a black leather jacket he really liked, but as soon as he opened the package, he felt his desire recede, felt the jacket degrade to the point of seeming just a ridiculous piece of merchandise. And since the end of summer, the same thing that happened with objects he longed for had been happening with everything else; it was as if he couldn’t focus his attention on them.
He spent those days at home, alone, and when his fever broke, he’d wander around the house snooping through everyone’s drawers. On one of those afternoons, he discovered, in one of his father’s desk drawers, the keys to Aunt Eli’s house. When he touched them, it was as though he’d gotten an electric shock that ran clear through him. He picked them up and took them back to his room. He started to fantasize. The keys to Aunt Eli’s house held for him the same seductive appeal every malicious object always had, like the time a boy he knew brought to class a Nazi jackknife, which he claimed had belonged to a German officer. For a few seconds he’d held that small, heavy object in his hand — it was lacquered in black with a little, white swastika on it — and felt a rush of vertigo, as if there were something evil concentrated in the object itself, or as if he couldn’t touch it without being affected by its sway. Something similar happened when he brought Aunt Eli’s keys back to bed with him. The keys, too, seemed to emanate some sinister power, a mysterious, irreversible pull. He hardly slept that last night he spent at home.
First came white light, then pink light, then a shadow, then white light again, pink once more, shadow; when he opened his eyes, the countryside looked frozen, even though the bus was still moving. He was having a hard time thinking clearly. It had taken a stroke of luck — an envelope containing three hundred euros he found in his parents’ bedroom. He knew he didn’t have much time to make up his mind about it; that money certainly wasn’t going to be there for long, and he’d recovered now from the flu. The next morning, he’d left the house with his school backpack full of clothes and the three hundred euros in his pocket, but instead of heading to school, he made for the bus station. Three hours later the bus was on its way and his eyes were opening and closing. He was shocked at how easy it had all been. White light, pink light, shadow. White light, pink light, shadow. It had rained the night before, and the landscape looked both muted and shiny at the same time, as though it had been varnished and then illuminated with a very faint light.
He’d left a note saying that he’d taken the money, he had to do something important, he had to go away for a few days. He’d be fine. They shouldn’t worry. He wrote it quickly and then thought it childish. He tore it up and wrote another, this one more succinct, apologizing and asking them to have faith in him even if they didn’t understand him. He added that he’d return the money as soon as he could, he’d work to pay them back. He signed it. In a postscript, he told them not to call his cell phone — he’d left it in his room, turned off.
Aside from the escape itself, he’d made no further plans, so during the several-hour journey he tried, fruitlessly, to think about how he was going to manage once there and what it was he actually wanted to do. He regretted not having brought warmer clothes, because all he had was a couple of T-shirts and the sweater he was wearing. It had started to rain again. He wanted to see her, that was all. He wanted to see her even if it was just once and from afar, that might be enough. He didn’t really know what he wanted, but for the first few hours he felt possessed by an almost violent euphoria that gradually diminished the closer the bus got to town.
It was completely dark by the time he arrived, and his mood had turned melancholy. He had a hard time almost even recognizing the place. It was the same effect as a house that’s been lived in for years and then suddenly has all the furniture removed; it was all at odds somehow, smaller maybe. There was no one out on the street. It was cold.
He got scared for the first time when he realized that the electricity at Aunt Eli’s house had been cut off. He didn’t want to make any noise, for fear of the neighbors realizing he was there, so he groped his way around in utter darkness and a state of panic, trying to find a window, colliding with chairs, a sofa. Something fell onto the floor and broke, making a sharp, shattering sound that caused him to whip around in the dark, terrified. He felt as if a shadow had just passed, brushing against him. He was exhausted from the trip and had a chill; he hadn’t had dinner. He thought his parents were probably hysterical, might have called the police, thought Anita wouldn’t be able to sleep that night. The house was damp, and when he got into bed, the sheets and blankets felt almost wet. Aunt Eli’s smell was still strong, a stale, sweet smell, like cinnamon or an alcoholic’s sweat. He piled on several blankets, still fully clothed, and curled into a ball, trying to get warm. He’d never felt so miserable in all his life, or so fragile, or so guilt-ridden, but something inside him remained steadfast, as though each movement he made were a quiet rejoinder—I want this, I choose to be here. He fell asleep. A blank, terrifying sleep, extremely deep, imageless. In the darkness, the yellowy light of a streetlamp filtered through a hole in the broken blinds like a needle, glimmering.
He rose at dawn, starving, and inspected the house. Opening the blinds just the tiniest bit, he recalled the summer day he’d been there with Anita. It seemed almost comical that he’d been so scared the night before; it was just the same old house he remembered from that summer, with a huge, kitsch painting of the aqueduct in Segovia, little porcelain souvenirs, photos of his uncle, his parents, even one of him and Anita. It moved him now in a way it never had before, as if Aunt Eli’s life were still there, resting, infused in each of the things that had once been hers, and he got the feeling, for the first time, that he was experiencing an exclusively female world. He felt like he could see thousands of tiny emotional threads connecting all of those things, attached to the Great Women of History collection on the bookshelf, contained within the immaculate kitchen, tucked into the slightly sunken, green sofa on which she’d arranged a crocheted doily in the guise of an armrest, to hide a wine stain. Aunt Eli’s life, in that house, was a mental state, a whirlwind of supremely concentrated details. It made him feel sorry not to have loved her more.
Walking through town, he got the same feeling he’d had at Aunt Eli’s. The morning was sunny but still cold, a damp cold that seemed to radiate upward from the ground. Almost all of the shops were closed, and the estuary looked kind of dirty — full of algae, sticks, a few plastic bottles that the tide had dragged in. It was as though some great misfortune had befallen the town, a plague or a siege, as though the people who’d lived there had fought viciously and then given up, the way primitive peoples gave up when their fields were burned down or an invading army took over and forced their citizens into slavery. Those remaining had a slightly pensive, defeated air — survivors of the shipwreck — but the same lassitude as in summer, a lassitude that now seemed not festive but indolent.