Distracted by a screech of brakes outside, I look behind me. On the television, always silent, there’s a black-and-white cowboy film. A duel in the middle of the desert. They meet under a tree and take their paces with their backs to each other. A half turn and they are face to face, hands on hips, holding their belts, they weigh up the right moment to move their hands to their pistols. Bam, bam. The man who remains standing lowers his weapon and contemplates the horizon, expressionless. He returns to the tree, leans against the trunk and in two steps, without hesitating, puts the barrel of the gun in his mouth and shoots. Another bam. The screen becomes black: The end.
Tosca is sleeping deeply, breathing like a cat with a cold. It’s late. Benito has been invisible for a while. He must have gone to bed. I stand up and check in passing that the walkie-talkie is still on and transmitting that hum full of interference that surrounds Simón’s sleep. I stick my head out into the hall, no sign of Benito, the bed is empty. I enter the bathroom holding the beheaded phial firmly in my hand so that none is spilt. I sit down on the toilet and without hesitating inject myself with what remains of the morphine. Oof, my body turns into a lava flow. From my brain to my feet.
Where were you, Tosca will say and I’ll smile, for the first time I’m the one to disconcert her. A smile that comes from inside me, roaring. I’m going, I don’t know whether I say goodbye, my legs are weak as anything. Rubbery. In the corridor someone passes in front of me, challenging gravity, in slow motion. Someone the half-light won’t allow me to see. I smell a strong scent, sickly and intoxicating. The smell of soapy sex. Eva again, I suppose; she delights in the mystery and pauses before going outside to receive the full light of the streetlamp: her naked, grainy back, endless arse, the blonde wig covering her shoulders. I follow without seeing her face. She takes a step forward and closes the door with her heel. I linger where I am for a moment longer, hearing the strident clash of the chains against the corrugated iron. Afterwards, the silence of this place.
I turn round and face the staircase in a warm nebula. I place a foot on the first step and feel as though a pile of soft people is bearing down on me. I advance clumsily against this unfamiliar density. Agitation forces me to stop and take a breath. I raise a hand to my forehead and am surprised by the sweat. As I rest on the first step, I breathe deeply and tell myself that such a tiny amount can’t have caused this much confusion. I forge on and immediately suffocate, my cheeks feel like balls of fire. I reach the flat on all fours.
Lying on my back, the ceiling runs away from me. Simón too, increasingly far from my feet. I close my eyes and my head starts spinning. Everything becomes a bottomless tank the colour of morphine, a yellow sea, dirty and bubbling. I touch the arm I injected but I can’t feel it, not the arm, or the injection, or the vein, nothing. Just a prolonged sleepiness and a multitude of particles coursing through my blood at the speed of light.
Nineteen
Grey day, with warm, fleeting showers, like rehearsals for a storm. Something of a relief amid such oppression. The zoo is almost empty, only a handful of people feel like trailing round with a raincoat or umbrella — defeated or desperate mothers, tourists whose remaining days are numbered. I stay at the back of the reptile house drinking maté with Esteban; if someone appears I intercept them on the path to ask for their ticket. Yessica had to go to cover someone in the children’s play area. Esteban tells me about the flat he’s renovating so that he can go and live with his girlfriend. He divorced a year ago, his daughters stayed with their mother. It was for the best, he says, so that things didn’t end too badly. He talks to me about sprung floors, about low units with worktops and sliding doors, for which he’s already paid a deposit, the electric grill he’s thinking of installing on the balcony, airtight PVC vents. As I listen to his monotonous, forced voice describing the spaces of his new house like the Stations of the Cross, living room, kitchen, utility room, I move my head rhythmically at intervals of six, seven seconds, so that he feels he’s being listened to, so that he doesn’t lose the thread, to justify my presence. He says that from the balcony you can see the tower in Parque de la Ciudad. Know where I mean? The train passes right in front, but since it’s on the thirteenth floor you barely notice. He tells me a neighbour says it’s just the occasional rumble and he gestures with his hands as if strangling an imaginary victim. I smile without understanding. I like the sound of trains, it’s like life … isn’t it? He answers alone, convincing himself: And you can get used to anything. He’s quite right about that, although I don’t know whether it’s more a case of everyone getting used to whatever comes their way, which isn’t quite the same thing. I keep the comment to myself, it doesn’t contribute much. The good thing is that they can’t build anything to spoil my view, it’s state land. It really gets the sun, he says in a fit of optimism, his arms open as if about to hug me but without following the gesture through. Now he’s drinking maté. He sucks the straw and, with a final smack of the lips, he informs me: Come March, it will be exactly twenty years until I pay off the mortgage, fixed payments with fairly reasonable interest. The sprung floor, the futon, the slat blinds, the girls’ room, the train tracks and the neighbour, the loan signed in the notary’s office, the new girlfriend and the ex-wife, in my mind all these things accumulate in the three rooms, which I imagine to be sad despite all the sunlight. Esteban smiles, he doesn’t stop smiling, he wants to be happy again. And from the way he looks at me, stretching his eyelids wide, he’s waiting for my approval, a word of encouragement I don’t manage to utter. Luckily, three successive beeps come from my mobile, arriving just in time to rescue me.
Message from Eloísa: By myslf, y dont u cum over? Excuse me, I say in order to move away from Esteban. Halfway between the tortoises and the exit, I stand for a while contemplating the boa constrictor, which seems to be dreaming with its eyes open. I’m at work, I finally write. Eloísa again: make something up dont be such a spoilsport. A diminutive Chinese couple trot up to me under a cape the shape of a bat. I check their tickets, they look at each other, they smile at me. Opposite, at the food stand, a typical family, father, mother, boy, girl, are waiting under the awning for the rain to stop, each with an ice cream in their hands. The distance and the curtain of water won’t allow me to see whether all four ice creams are the same.
It’s exactly a month today since I started work. I’ve never missed it, I’ve never arrived late, I’ve never objected to any task, even mopping the aisles of the reptile house one day when the cleaning staff was on strike. I think of a plausible excuse to escape: feeling unwell, toothache, an urgent matter. I can say that Simón has a fever, that’s believable, Esteban witnessed my phone beeping. Better to say I’m feeling dizzy, it’s vague yet convincing, you never know what it might be a sign of. I leave it fifteen minutes, a reasonable time for the symptoms to appear. Eloísa doesn’t persist with the messages. I suppose I have to speak to Esteban but I’m not sure, perhaps I need to see someone else, a supervisor, head of personnel. Yessica appears, back from the play area and in a state of pure ill humour. There are girls who shouldn’t be allowed to breed, she says. They should have their uteruses forcibly removed. I tell her I’m not feeling well. She raises her brows distrustfully, hand on the walkie-talkie, she avoids looking me in the eye. She exposes her gums like an angry mare. She must sense my escape plan and is objecting in advance. It takes me a while to find Esteban, before I recognise his voice on the other side of the wall. I go round and see him chatting to the polar-bear keeper, still the same subject, his only subject. This time it’s the transparent screen he’s thinking of putting in the shower. Think it’ll be expensive? he finishes saying as I interrupt the conversation, craning my neck forward with my hand raised. Is something wrong? Esteban asks. Unintentionally, I come out with a voice that is subdued, an invalid’s voice. No, it’s just that I don’t feel very well. And he, with an unworried gesture, almost affectionate, touches my shoulder without it quite being a caress and tells me to go to the sickbay. Go and see if they’ll give you something. There’s nothing for it but to do as he says. I repeat Esteban’s words in front of Yessica: I’m going to see if they’ll give me something. I don’t give her time to answer, I leave her chewing on her foul mood.