We have lunch at a newly opened hamburger joint. The place is painted fluorescent green and attended by a family of women. Mother and three daughters, staggered in age, all very different, tall and thin, short and big-bummed, the youngest almost masculine. All four have the same arch above the chin. We sit at a table on the pavement and all the time we’re there we have to fend off a dog that insists on pawing at Simón’s legs.
At twelve, Herbert arrives with Sonia. I hurry to shut the iguana in the bathroom. Herbert already knows, I asked him to swear absolute silence. Sonia says, she finds it hard to tell me, you can tell by the preamble, that Herbert was sent home from school yesterday because his head is full of lice. He’s infected, she says and lowers her eyes as if afraid of wounding me. I look at her with a forced expression assuming there’s more to come. Finally she suggests that perhaps he’s contaminated Simón. You should check him, she says. Of course. She takes a step forward, she doesn’t trust me: Do you want me to take a look. I shrug. She approaches Simón, who is playing in a corner with a patrol car without wheels, she leans in, examines his head, her fingers moving very quickly among the hairs like a piano virtuoso. Then she raises her eyebrows, bites her lips, pulls an exaggerated face of fright: Come here, look, she says, I’ve never seen anything like it.
The rest of the day passes without incident until Iris calls me from her post in the aquarium. She comes out of her booth and, covering her mouth with her hand, says in my ear: I’m leaving. The whiff of sardines and my incomprehension make me take a step back. I question silently, with a nod. I’m leaving, I’m going back to my country. I ask for an explanation with both palms to the sky. My dad’s sick, pneumonia, he’s in a bad way, she says. Apparently what started as flu got more complicated when he was admitted with a hospital-acquired infection. He’s alone, someone has to look after him. Yes, I say, and at the same time I think I remember that her mother died the day she was born. She never mentioned the subject again, and I didn’t ask. Iris lights one of her white-filtered cigarettes and exhales, wrinkling her mouth. I’m going to use the money I’ve saved to pay for the ticket, she says with a melancholy that’s different from usual — it’s deeper, more theatrical. I have the feeling she’s keeping quiet about something, I try to enquire but I don’t get far. I ask her how she feels, whether she’s sad, if there’s something else. She frowns, shakes her head vehemently as if I’d insulted her. Sad? she repeats, hissing the ‘s’ as if to spit. She leaves, once again she doesn’t say goodbye.
Yessica tells me that Esteban is looking for me. She says it sarcastically, or jealously, I can’t tell. It takes me a while to find him, I come and go along the aisles of the reptile house until I notice the sign for the nursery and everything becomes clear. The theft of the iguana becomes my only thought. Why didn’t it occur to me sooner, it’s so obvious, sooner or later this was bound to happen. I feel stupid, I don’t even have an alibi. I knock at the door, there’s no answer, I stick my head in, Esteban is on the other side of the glass among the incubators wearing a surgical mask. I can make out Uana’s brothers and sisters in the distance, by now he must be crawling about the flat in search of a new hiding place to escape Herbert and Simón’s fanaticism. Esteban comes round to my side, removes the mask, greets me with a kiss on the cheek. We have a problem, he says. I stay silent. We’ve detected a virus, three turtles have died, we’re going to have to transfer them urgently for a general disinfection. I’m going to need you, he says and breathes in. But he isn’t finished. Oh, and another thing, he says, walking out. There’s an iguana missing, did you notice? How strange, I say and he nods twice with an old-womanish expression.
At the exit, Iris is waiting for me. She raises her hand, she beckons me, she wants us to walk back together. The same subject as the afternoon, she adds details about the illness and her father’s deterioration, they sent her a terrible photo. That’s what she says, Terrible. I come out with a stupid phrase of consolation, Well, I’m sure it will do him good to see you. A few blocks in silence, we say goodbye at a corner. We must have a leaving do, I say. I don’t like goodbyes, she hurries to answer.
I spend half the night hunting lice with a fine comb. Simón’s hair is soaked in cider vinegar. It fattens them up and they burst more easily, Sonia’s words. Well-developed adult lice, young lice that are difficult to trap, nits by the dozen, alive and dead, which I’m lining up on a sheet of newspaper soaked in alcohol. I wonder whether they organise themselves in some way, whether there will be parts of the head that are more attractive than others, whether there’s any kind of hierarchy or government. Whether they’d be trainable, even sacred to some past or future civilisation. To begin with, I kill them without hesitation, squishing them between my fingertips, making them explode nail against nail, tst, tst. But with repetition, a certain interest is awoken in me and I start studying their behaviour. I try to mutilate them, keeping them alive, so that they can’t escape from my sight. It’s not easy. I follow their final steps attentively, guiding them to meet other cripples. They find themselves forced to pass through a labyrinth built of the corpses of their fellows. What must it be like to experience all this, their own agony and the death of the rest, with no awareness of pain, tragedy or killing. Lice, fleas, bedbugs. Life forms that, in planetary terms, are perfectly equatable to ours. When I finally finish, at least I think I’ve finished, I have in front of me a real cemetery of tiny bugs. A scaled-down extermination camp. The hunt leaves me as exhausted as I am excited. Sleepless, I clean the bathroom, I run a cloth over the floor, I soak all the socks I can find in the washbowl, most of them missing a partner, also my three pairs of knickers, including the ones I’m wearing. I go to bed at half three, naked, annoyed at I don’t know what. Eyes closed, a row of morphine phials appears to me, floating against a black background like dancers in the darkness.
Twenty-seven
Excursion to Open Door. It’s Eloísa’s idea, she wants to go and see what it’s like these days, she hasn’t been back since her house and the shop were demolished. She suggests the two of us go alone, but I add Iris and Simón to the group, which she eventually accepts with a reluctant: If there’s no other way. In fact, inviting Iris is a way to give her the send-off she doesn’t want. It takes a couple of chats to convince her: A day in the country, I tell her, to clear your head. She answers sarcastically but finally agrees.
We arrange to meet at Once station at half ten in the morning. Eloísa arrives forty-five minutes late. Simón and I kill time with a hot dog each for breakfast, Iris watches us in disgust. As we wait, I realise I’m making the assumption that they’ve seen each other before, the time Eloísa came to get me at the zoo. I was never able to tell whether that was the case or not, but anyway, the thought of an encounter between the two intrigues and excites me. But when Eloísa arrives, our hurry not to miss the train allows no time for introductions, everything happens at a run.
We sit on a group of seats facing each other and after Eloísa’s excuses, saying that she sent me about six messages even though I didn’t receive one, and Iris’s monosyllabic complaints, we enter a long tunnel that silences us for a while. We each retreat into our own little world. Eloísa, who has only slept for two hours, covers her hangover with a pair of Carey sunglasses, disproportionately wide for her face; Iris looks out of the darkened window, full of distrust; Simón is too lively, kicking my knees to mark his boredom. I distract myself comparing noses and ears. Pointed, twisted, flattened, piggy, like magpies, like plug sockets, porous and smooth, mousy, funny, ridiculous, endless. Ears with noses.