Everything went ok, I received the first two instalments, I paid the guy his share, I even took a trip to the coast, but in two weeks I was sent a registered letter, an official one. The lawyer from the insurance company had discovered that the psychologist was involved in a lawsuit for having given a false diagnosis. Confronted with the evidence, Canetti confessed, accusing the man of having incited him to commit the crime, but they had no sympathy. That’s what he says, his mouth full of smoke: They had no sympathy. They threw me out of the bank without paying me a single peso and started criminal proceedings for fraud, which are still going on. When she found out, my wife wanted nothing to do with it and I didn’t have the will to keep fighting. And the worst thing is that, I don’t know how he managed it, but the guy went and moved to Brazil. I was fucked, truly fucked, he says. As Canetti falls silent and I look into his eyes, sad, broken eyes like an orphaned, tortured cat’s, I don’t know what to say to him, I’m left hanging on the last word he said, that Brazil that echoes through me, carrying distant memories. I sympathise in silence, with my eyebrows, all the words of consolation that occur to me turn out to be impossible to articulate. He realises this and must feel a bit disappointed.
Suddenly, because it’s a certain time, or in order to receive the last wave of visitors, or because whoever operates them happens to be in the mood, the jets of water in the centre of the lake are turned on, more powerful than ever. Flicking it hard with his index finger, Canetti throws down the stub of his cigarette, which lies smoking in the grass. Annoyed, he stands up and limps to the ember, which he stamps on, twisting his shoe. Then he turns round and says to me: Do you know how to give injections? I shrug, believing that I know, or rather that I would be able to do it. He insists: But you’ve done it before? I answer Yes, assuming that he’s talking about animals: dogs, cats, horses. Even a hamster. Well, says Canetti, it must be the same, flesh and bone, yeah? He explains two drags of a cigarette later. Where he lives, a building some ten blocks from the zoo, there’s a lady, the building manager or something along those lines, a very ill old lady who needs two injections a day. Are you up for it? Canetti presses me: It could be a few extra bob. If you like, we’ll go there together tomorrow afternoon and I’ll introduce you, then it’s between the two of you. Somehow I accept, I can’t see why not. On the way to the reptile house, I glance at him. He moves away, dragging the broom towards the bower. He whistles and limps in a regular counterpoint; in fact, everything about him is harmoniously disjointed. When he’s not talking, I’m starting to realise, Canetti is smoking or whistling. I struggle to imagine him in his former life, in the bank, counting notes, married, with his wife, armchair and holidays. Even harder to imagine all the effort he put into passing as insane.
In the evening, in the dark of the room, I trip over the huge tome with the reptile engravings. Simón, behind me, pauses in the threshold, alert to the fall that never happens. We settle down together in my bed, the ceiling fan on full, and start flicking through the engravings.
LOCUPLETISSIMI
RERUM
NATURALIUM
THESAURI
As I read I try to decipher a long list of Latin words on what must have been the original cover of the book, which dates from 1735. Simón is eager and I’m forced to turn the page. There’s Albertus Seba, author of the catalogue: curly wig, purple robe in a fabric with many folds which I suppose is silk, and a handkerchief knotted round his neck. He poses with a commanding air, gazing straight ahead, tense, not particularly convinced by the setting chosen for his portrait. As if he were doubtful of the painter’s skill. The man is in his study in front of a shelf filled with glass bottles: insects, corals, fossils. He is holding a jar containing a foetus in formaldehyde. With his free hand he is pointing to a notebook with illustrations of apes and trees, as well as a collection of molluscs displayed on a green cloth. In imitation of Seba, Simón stretches out his arm and points his finger at something in between the monkeys and the shells, several centuries later, but with the same intention.
The volume consists mainly of illustrations of reptiles, amphibians and plants. Snakes of all colours and sizes, fat, stripy, hunting and hunted. Also some frogs, lizards and an inexplicable swan that is completely out of proportion. I turn the pages and realise that the animals have very human shapes. There are lizards with the features and posture of a man, snakes with women’s faces. Sometimes slightly android. Somewhere between scientific and grotesque. Simón observes them with interest but in general he hurries me to turn the page, he wants to see what comes next. A boa scoffing a rat will keep him absorbed for longer. I think about Iris and the story about her aunt Lena and the python. The most striking thing about the picture isn’t the hunt so much as the fluidity of the action.
As I progress through the pages, I can’t help noticing the pattern of fungus fattening out the book. Like a mountain chain in profile. Simón falls asleep; tiredness still hasn’t touched me. I go back over some of the figures and discover others that passed me by in the first flick-through. This one, for example, of a ferret sitting on its hind legs biting a pear, or the dissection of a toad with its veins on show and its parts numbered.
I return to the start and find the embossed stamp of the Ladislao Holmberg Library: Buenos Aires, 1899. I wonder who he was. I run the tip of my thumb over the protuberances of the paper, it’s a nice sensation, almost tickly.
Seven
Canetti comes with me the first night. He picks me up at the hotel after ten, when I have no energy left for anything. I feel absolutely shattered: Simón, hours on my feet, sleeping badly, this new life I didn’t expect and which began so suddenly, without warning. I don’t know why I don’t change my mind while I still can, in fact I mentally rehearse excuses not to go: my son has a fever, I’d prefer not to leave him alone; I’m feeling unwell, vomiting, the best thing to do would be to look for someone else, there must be loads of nurses in the neighbourhood. But when Canetti turns up smiling, freshly showered, in a check shirt that must be about as old as me, convinced he’s doing us a good turn, I swallow my words and allow things to happen. Simón has just fallen asleep, Iris will be in the kitchen, or in her room but with the door open so as to hear him. If it’s something to do with work, she’ll always be willing to help out. I don’t think he’ll wake up, I say, just to say something. It’s not like he’ll die if he does, she says, with her own particular brand of humour, and sends me packing, swatting the air with the back of her hand. Like someone trying to scare a fly. Let’s go, I say to Canetti, who is waiting for me in the hotel corridor, keeping a wary eye out for the Spaniard. Walking along the pavement, I realise I’m wearing boots. It’s ridiculous, it’s not raining nor is it going to rain, it’s as if I can’t get rid of some of my country habits. I can’t be bothered going back to swap them for more urban footwear.
First we skirt a very long block, which must actually be four or five together, against the shell of a ruined building, old warehouses that advertisements promise to convert into something stunning and futuristic. We cross to the other side of the railway tracks, take a leafy gated passageway between the barbed wire and a series of buildings with visible brickwork, another street, two more blocks, then we turn left and cross the avenue next to a very organised camp of cardboard collectors.