The sickbay is attached to the office where I had my first interview. The idea of bumping into the man from human resources isn’t a pleasant one. I only saw him the once but every time I remember his oily face, spiky hair and dark-circled eyes like a goblin’s, my repulsion grows. He seemed a poisonous type. As I approach, I slow down, I think several times about turning round, disappearing for a short wander and then going back to my post. I can say my dizziness passed on the way or that they gave me something and that’s that.
I knock on the sickbay door, once, nothing, second time too, the third time it opens. I’m received by a tiny woman in a white apron who can’t be more than five feet tall, wet hair, long-suffering eyes and round glasses. It’s hard to tell whether she got caught in the rain or whether she’s just had a shower and hasn’t dried herself properly. From the way she picks up the pen, but mainly from the way she drums her fingertips on the desk, I can tell straight away that she’s not going to be friendly. I’m listening, she says after asking my name and ID number. I’m feeling dizzy, a bad headache, I invent. Since when? A few hours, I say. Anything else? Fever? Cough? Muscle pain? I shake my head. Is your vision cloudy? A little, I venture. She wants to know whether I’m taking any medication, antibiotics, antihistamines, sedatives. Nothing. She asks for my arm to take my blood pressure. She inflates and deflates it in silence and without raising her eyes from her notebook says: It’s fine, bottom number’s a bit high.
Do you think you might be pregnant? Impossible, I reply and for the first time she meets my eye. A sarcastic look, I don’t understand why. Then she starts writing and remains silent for a couple of minutes. She doesn’t examine me, it’s all just words, she doesn’t use the stethoscope on the desk, nor does she take my temperature. She drops the pen, producing a metallic clatter, and speaks again: Whatever you want. I can give you something for the headache, or I’ll write an order for you to go and have some tests. It’s your body, that’s what she says, and for the second and final time she shows me that pair of bloodshot grey eyes behind the lenses.
I leave the sickbay with an order for the laboratory. I try to decipher it under the drizzle: full haemogram, haematocrit, cholesterol and urine. And on a separate sheet, HIV: While we’re at it, so you can forget about it, that’s what she said. I raise my gaze and find myself looking at a bronze statue. I bend down to read the plaque: Eduardo Holmberg. Holmberg again. In a suit and hat, between an elephant and a dwarf giraffe, a monkey on his shoulder and a scorpion on his arm.
At the entrance to the reptile house, Esteban and Yessica are waiting for me. She sent me to get some tests, I say, holding up the papers. Now? interrupts Yessica, who has definitely discovered my ruse. Go, says Esteban. Take care and let me know if there’s anything I can do. Yessica turns into fifty-something kilos of hatred.
When I’m out on the street, I text Eloísa. On my way, give me the address. The reply comes in five seconds, as if she’s doing nothing but sending text messages. To find Axel’s house, I get my bearings from one of the stallholders at the zoo door, the one with the stuffed toys. He doesn’t send me on a direct route at all. If you don’t want a lot of traipsing you have to take the subway and a bus or bus then subway. Since it’s stopped raining, I decide to do the last stretch on foot.
Where Avenida de los Incas ends or begins, I cross under a bridge and walk uphill, skirting a small plaza stippled with young jacarandas. As I approach, I try to guess which will be Axel’s house. Is it the chalet with the palm tree out front, the one with the bare brickwork, a white one with creeper-covered balconies, or the one concealed behind a very tall fence, as high as a man standing on another man’s shoulders? Right enough, it’s the one that’s hidden from view, the grounds must occupy a quarter of the block. Before ringing the bell, I notice the two signs next to the entrance. The first says: Beware of the dogs. The other one is in English:
DON’T EVEN THINK OF PARKING HERE
Eloísa’s voice rings out from the future, robotised. There’s no Who is it? Come in, she says, through the garage. And the railing slides back on its own. First, a garden with curved beds, grass shorn to the ground and a path of paving slabs leading to the garage. To reach Eloísa, who is waiting for me on the threshold of a small, half-open door, I have to go round four cars: a pickup with tinted windows, a silver convertible, a jeep and a vintage car. Further along are three bicycles hanging from a rail and a red motorbike, one of those big ones. Eloísa embraces me and kisses me on both cheeks, as if we were meeting again after many years. We climb a spiral staircase that leads to a large kitchen, immense, like a train carriage, ending in a large window overlooking the park. A couple of pines, a magnolia tree and, at the back, a covered barbecue area with a straw roof. Finally, says Eloísa. It was an effort but you came, was it difficult? I shrug. I thought you’d got lost, she continues. No, I say and I’m about to relate the sequence in the sickbay but I check myself in time.
I was going to mix a Fernet, you want one? Each of us with a glass in our hands, we leave the kitchen and settle in the everyday dining room, too luxurious to be for every day. Each wall has its picture: a mappa mundi with cheeses instead of countries, a temple with a golden cupola and a field of sunflowers. In the middle of the table there’s a dish of fruits made of rubber or wax, I can’t tell which. I grab an apple, I squeeze it slightly and bring it to my nose as if I want to smell its aroma, Eloísa laughs. She laughs at me.
We spend a long time chatting about everything and nothing. Actually it’s she who talks, I listen and enjoy myself: a television programme she watches every afternoon, where couples argue live on air, the trips she’d like to make, a spot on her neck that won’t stop oozing pus, her constant horniness, that’s how she puts it, from when she gets up until she goes to bed, and once again, Jaime’s death. How did it happen. Was I sad, did I love him. Did he leave me any cash. I tell her about the accident next to the Camel sign. Yes, I totally remember. I don’t say anything about the eviction, I make up a story about the house being sold and me receiving a part. She insists: Tell me the truth, were you in love? Yes, I say, and her response: I don’t believe you.
Come on, she says to me presently, let’s go and see Axel, he’ll want to say hello. I stand up and follow her, thinking that she told me she was by herself. We pass the dining room, I brush the back of my hand along the edge of the table, glass, marble and gold edging, I fleetingly count a dozen chairs. Before we advance, Eloísa points out some towelling booties, like flat slippers, for me to slide across the parquet. Over the table hangs an enormous crystal spider. We cross the living room in a semi-darkness that suggests an uninhabited house. I can only see outlines, a horseshoe armchair fit for a small crowd, a coffee table with a ball of smoked glass in the centre, the rest, the ornaments, the pictures, the details, escape me. A few lines of light are just managing to defeat the lowered blinds.