I have no idea exactly when Jaime came in or how he managed to lie down without realising that Eloísa was in the bed. Or else he saw her and was still so drunk he didn’t care.
I have to do something quickly, right now, but I only come up with bad ideas. What if I try to sleep again and let whatever happens happen. I glance to either side and I still can’t understand it. Jaime snorts loudly, sprawled across the bed, disrobed and disorderly. Who will wake next, it could be Eloísa and she’ll go without anyone noticing. But if Jaime opens his eyes first there’s no going back, it will be irreversible.
The first thing I do is to pinch Eloísa hesitantly on one arm, very gently. I persist, a bit harder, but she doesn’t react. When I finally manage to wake her, I quickly cover her mouth with my hand and explain the situation with gestures. Disconcerted and desperate to burst out laughing, Eloísa puffs her cheeks out, the colour rises to her face, and she does her best to contain her cackles until she can’t help but release a little gasp, which she thankfully manages to stifle before it reaches Jaime’s ears. She doesn’t look good, she’s pale, drugged. What I must look like, I don’t want to know. Very slowly, measuring each movement by the millimetre, we raise ourselves until we manage to get out of bed. Eloísa goes first, on tiptoe, and I follow, resting one finger on her back to guide myself in the darkness. We reach the door, Eloísa opens it slightly, only as much as she needs to and slinks out like a cat.
Before leaving the room, I look round to set my mind at rest and confirm that the nightmare is over, but Jaime’s eyes, wide open, make me wobble and I lose balance. I hang onto the doorframe and expect the worst. It takes Jaime a moment to speak.
‘Are you all right?’ he asks and I don’t know whether he’s making fun of me, testing me or whether he genuinely didn’t notice anything. Words fail me.
‘Are you all right?’ Jaime repeats and I laugh nervously, almost giving the game away.
‘I’m thirsty,’ I do my best to say and he turns over to continue sleeping, face down now.
It’s true, I’m dying of thirst, I feel like someone has slit my throat.
Later that same day, Eloísa looks at me with different eyes, she suspects, or she knows. We sit next to the bare fig tree and smoke a small joint in silence. She seems serious, grown up, with dark circles under her eyes, very different. It’s not the same Eloísa from a few months ago, not a shred of innocence is left in her face, and yet I want her so much. I can only think about kissing her, about her going down on me as soon as possible.
‘I think I’m pregnant,’ I say quickly, to relieve myself of the burden.
THIRTY-SIX
I did another two tests, different brands this time, always following the instructions to the letter, always with the first pee of the morning, and the stick always comes out the same: two pale pink stripes, nice and clear, one on top of the other. Sometimes the upper stripe isn’t quite as intense as the lower, but there’s no getting away from it, the leaflet promises that two lines are an unmistakable sign: 99.9 % reliable. But it can’t be true, there must be some mistake. It must be a dream, bad but fleeting.
Yasky sent a telegram: NO NEWS ON THE CASE. It’s the only thing he puts. He doesn’t mention ghosts. He’s stopped phoning me, he must be embarrassed, after everything. Aída hasn’t appeared again either, she obviously felt intimidated. Or it could be that I’m not calling to her anymore.
Three days with no sign of Eloísa. Guido says he thinks she went to visit a cousin who lives on the coast, but he’s not sure. She went just like that, without letting me know. I’m dying to know where she is, who she’s with, if she’s laughing, if she’s thinking of me, if she’s horny, if she’s fucking, if she’s like that with everyone. I can’t take it. Just five minutes of relief and then long, endless, delicious hours, filling my mind with Eloísa.
Jaime doesn’t show up either. He left suddenly, with no explanation. One afternoon as he returned from the hospital, he parked the truck outside the front door, came in without even registering me, and locked himself in the bathroom until the following morning. Four days passed like that, just like the first. He would arrive, lock himself in the bathroom until the next day and leave at dawn. On the fifth day, a Friday, at about six, the telephone rang. It was Boca. He said that Jaime was going to be late because a job had come up on a ranch near Luján. A small job that would take them a few hours, so he told me. A week has already gone by, with no word from Jaime. He’s a big boy. I don’t need to worry about him.
The food runs out, only half a bag of self-raising flour left in the cupboard. I have neither the cash nor the will to go out and buy anything. Without really thinking about it, I begin scraping the wall behind the headboard with my nails and bringing to my mouth pieces of plaster, which peel off without too much difficulty. It’s pure inertia. I suck them unenthusiastically, the edges scratch the roof of my mouth. Now I feel able to do a bit more, and I start chewing them. Inside my mouth, the slivers of plaster break into smaller and smaller pieces, and eventually dissolve in contact with the hot saliva. The sensation is strange but pleasant. A bit like eating consecrated wafers, I don’t know, I’ve never tried them, it just occurred to me.
Without Jaime and without Eloísa, the days become long and nights empty. I feel useless, with no desire to do anything. As if the only truth were this country house that destiny made mine, these old sticks of furniture, the loonies prowling too close by, the village turning its back on me in its eternal siesta, and this solitude. Like a bad dream that I’ve always been here, waiting.
In the meantime, I smoke all the remaining cannabis with unfamiliar voraciousness. Tired, horny, moving from the bed to the kitchen, bouncing, leaning on the walls or crawling. Suddenly, without warning, a stabbing pain in my stomach makes me double up. I don’t make it to the bathroom and halfway there, spattering the bedroom wall, I bring up all the plaster. I find it so disgusting that I have to spend a long time spitting up a kind of transparent cream, and it leaves me limp.
I spend the whole day dozing in bed, in the dark. Outside it must be raining, or cold: it’s always inhospitable outside. I’m starting to like all of this less and less. I spend the day alone. I don’t move and at times, because I’ve smoked so much weed, as they call it in the country, my head just goes, I lose all sense, I’m spaced. Everything becomes dark, dense, gelatinous, it all goes through my fingers, which scratch at my skin, hard, they seem to pass through my flesh and, right there, I stop being, I stop acting, I let myself be taken, lying down, standing up, my stomach pressed against the basin of thick, cold, Pampas-style porcelain, and I don’t stop, I laugh alone, I dance about, I shiver slightly, and my fingers don’t stop, as if they weren’t mine, rubbing my clitoris, my button, twisting the hairs that cover my cunt, rubbing and putting themselves inside me, one, two, three, as many as can fit, I’m sweating like mad, and the other fingers go into other parts, massaging my arse, moistening my anus with the juice that slides down the crease, and a little ochre pool, pretty and transparent, spreads over Jaime’s sheets, which swallow what he won’t, what disgusts him, and the smell of the country, of wet grass, of fireflies, of dry vines, the newly cut privets, and the fruit trees, the medlars, kumquats, figs, the smell of wet mud, the smell of pollen, all those smells, native smells, mixing with mine, boiling, like those of a cat on heat, a mad cat, unhinged, a cat who can’t take any more, who crawls, who comes for the umpteenth time, wildly, with misty eyes, undone by myself.
At some point the phone rings. I don’t have the strength to answer. I pull myself upright as best I can and pick up the receiver. It’s Yasky, he says that he has to see me. I don’t let him finish, I hang up. In a minute the phone rings again, I assume it’s still Yasky, offended, but I hear a silence filled with street noise and then Jaime’s choked voice, coughing before speaking. I’m in the capital, I’m with Boca, he says. And I tell him the truth: I don’t feel too good, I woke up with an upset stomach. I hear the sound of the city again, competing with Jaime’s breathing, which sounds like the puffing of a thoughtful animal. He’s about to say something but hangs up instead. He doesn’t call again.