Eloísa finds energy from somewhere; she always has something left. I can’t see her, but I know that she gets up and starts jumping on the floor of the truck, making my head explode. Then she calms down, she moves about, she intrigues me.
A minute or an hour later, a cool breeze makes the hairs on my legs stand on end. I can’t remember the last time I shaved them, not to mention further up. I’m not wearing my trousers any more, or my knickers. I’m about to open my eyes, but Eloísa gives me no time, with her tongue she wets those hollows that hide between my cunt and the top of my legs, the right and the left, first one, then the other. She moves away slightly, pauses, and blows, filling me with her fiery breath, she moves away again: she’s becoming an expert. She has method. But then she loses herself and charges with everything she has, like an animal, licking me from my arsehole to the tip of my clitoris, hungry, disoriented, and she puts her fingers inside me, one, two, as many as she can fit. Another pause, and she asks me sarcastically: Do you want me to go on? And I turn into a single inarticulate plea, incapable of saying a word. We’re in the middle of the countryside. Then she continues, more frenetically than before, and there was I thinking there couldn’t be any more. She swallows me, eats me, tears me to pieces. I open my eyes and finish off howling like a madwoman.
At dawn, the rain returned and erased the tracks that the tyres had left between the house and the gate. Jaime tried to find a way to explain the truck’s mysterious journey.
‘Perhaps I’ve caught something with all those loonies around me, but I could have sworn that I left it right here,’ he said and we both laughed.
When I wake up, Boca is already doing the barbecue. He’s with a girl of around Eloísa’s age. But later, throughout the day, during the meal and as we chat afterwards, he treats her as if she were his wife. Where on earth does Boca find his teenage girlfriends?
THIRTY
I woke up vomiting. Jaime, being used to Boca who, when he overdoes the wine and meat, goes off somewhere into open country, puts two fingers down his throat and returns it all to the earth, didn’t make a big deal of it. Boca returns and explains, even though he doesn’t need to: I let it all out. And sometimes he adds: I’m good as new, or Nothing to see here. Jaime contains his laughter, pressing his lips together like a teenager. He’s his accomplice. Once they hit fifty, men are either too solitary or together too much, like adolescents. Sometimes self-absorbed and ill-tempered, sometimes extroverted and bloody annoying.
Every other Saturday, Jaime and Boca go hunting in the woods. At around two in the morning, after a long barbecue and lots of preparation, they load their rifles and ammunition into the back of the pick-up and disappear into the night. They hardly ever bring anything back. Sometimes they return straight away, other times dawn breaks and they still haven’t appeared. What do they do? Shoot? Get drunk? Have sex? Without witnesses, anything is possible.
Eloísa appears with Loti, leading him by the hand. She whistles from the gate, she doesn’t want to come in. I don’t feel like going but curiosity, jealousy and boredom impel me. With the gate between us, Eloísa makes the introductions. She says our names and smiles, her lips sparkling. Loti is tall, very slim, with delicate yet virile features. His eyes are such a deep blue that they almost seem fake, and his teeth are small, brown and small. But what makes Loti an unquestionable gypsy are his hands. They need no further description, they’re gypsy hands. Eloísa doesn’t know what to say. She came to show me her Romanian, as hunters show off their catch, proudly. He’s her new toy. Loti watches her, besotted, rather lost, either because he likes her a lot or because he doesn’t understand a word she says.
Aída, or her ghost, appears to me more and more often, at any time of day, under any pretext, usually in the kitchen. She even goes so far as to sit at the table, between Jaime and me, but I stay quiet, I act as if nothing’s happening, so as not to disturb Jaime. I get used to it.
THIRTY-ONE
‘Would you believe me if I said that there are no more than fifty people in Buenos Aires who know of Open Door?’ Domingo Cabred to Jules Huret.
Guido’s birthday party took place in the grocery storeroom, surrounded by bags of flour, packets of espadrilles, tools, bags of coal, bundles of wood, giant aluminium pans, all sorts of tins, toys, piles of gardening gloves and a multitude of dust-coated bottles of aguardiente. The same stuff I’d seen displayed on the shelves of the shop, but in bulk and with that nightmarish quality that things have when they are too many to count.
Eloísa came to get me at ten. I’m going, I said. At the same time, or a couple of seconds later, Jaime opened the tap and put a pan containing the remains of dinner underneath the jet of water just to make noise and not have to hear me. Eloísa had gone into the bedroom without asking permission, as if it belonged to her. I persisted. Jaime, I’m going. He answered with more noise, banging the plates and cutlery he had to hand, playing deaf like an offended child. I felt sorry for him.
Eloísa appeared on tiptoes in one of my dresses. What do you think? she said, extending her arms above her head, full of life. Jaime turned off the tap, looked round and raised his shoulders, nose and eyebrows, biting his tongue to hide his surprise. It was a skin-coloured dress, made of a very fine fabric, semi-transparent, and it definitely looked better on her than it did on me. Jaime opened the tap again and spoke with his back to us.
‘I’m going out too, take your keys,’ he said.
It’s a perfect night, said Eloísa and took out a fat joint that she’d already rolled, which we finished quickly, before we even passed the gate. The rest of the way, neither of us opened our mouths. We were in a hurry, anxious. She wasn’t the same Eloísa as in the early days. More grown up, or sadder, she kept things to herself.
The door of the storeroom was decorated with a garland and a string of flashing Christmas-tree lights that intertwined to form an arch. When we arrived, Guido was busy placing bottles of beer in some buckets of ice. It was early. People will start coming around twelve, he said.
The first to arrive was Armando, a pleasant, funny boy, with more pimples than face. Then the rest started piling in. The party started properly when a group of six girls arrived, among whom was Dani, a little blonde girl with short hair who Eloísa pointed out as Guido’s sort-of-girlfriend. The last to arrive was Moncho, who made us all go outside to admire the motocross bike he’d just been given. It’s the business, said Guido.
At about half one, some people started dancing to keep warm. Guido, Moncho, Eloísa and two other partygoers were having a ‘down in one’ contest, emptying their glasses with that unique speed possessed only by teenagers. Eloísa kept winning, it was obvious that they were letting her. She knew it and she liked it. I felt a bit left out, from another generation. Moncho took me up to dance, and I let myself be taken.
Later, the party extended into the shop itself, using the old wooden counter as a bar. The boys danced in a circle, and every so often one or other of them would step into the middle to play the fool. Eloísa started dancing alone, like a madwoman, attempting a sensual choreography, which to me, looking in from the outside, the effects of the marijuana having worn off, seemed pathetic. Disappointed, or frightened, the other girls, including the little blonde who had barely exchanged a word with Guido, were gradually starting to leave. I went outside as well, for some air. The night, moonless, was a dark cell.