“The countryside is pretty,” Junior said. “You could raise animals, live near nature. Ninety percent of the gauchos just fuck the sheep.”
“What are you saying, you degenerate? Are you sick? Why did they shave your head? Are you Russian? I saw a movie once with a Russian whose head looked like a bowl, just like yours. Did you have ringworm? Are you from the country?”
“Yes,” Junior said. “From the town of Gualeguay. My old man is the foreman at the Larrea cattle ranch. He was, that is. A drunk worker killed him, betrayed him, stabbed him with a knife when he was getting out of a sulky.”
“And then?” the woman asked. “Go on.”
“That’s all,” Junior said. “He had it in for him because my father had called him a bum at a dance once. He waited for his chance and finally paid him back. They’re all drug addicts, out in the country. Always hallucinating.”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s what I’m saying. I can’t sleep out in the country. Wherever you look there are drugs and trash.”
She walked toward an old armoire with a crescent-shaped mirror in the rear of the room. Junior managed to see the reflection from the mirror that broke the semi-darkness when she opened the armoire, then a mattress that was rolled up and tied with wire, and an empty hanger. The woman stood on her toes and searched the upper shelves. From behind she seemed very young, almost a girl. When she turned around she had a bottle of perfume in her hand. English Cologne La Franco. She opened it and took a drink, raising her face toward the ceiling. She wiped her mouth and looked at him again.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“Another thing about the country,” Junior said, “are the locusts. Short-horned grasshoppers. You have to make noise so they won’t land, horns, shots, my father would even blow the siren on the boat. Or else with smoke, burn the cane thickets, the dry grass. That’s why I like the city — no locusts. Just mosquitoes and cats.”
The woman left the armoire open and walked toward the center of the room with the bottle of perfume pressed against her stomach. She moved slowly and looked at Junior with a suspicious expression on her face.
“And why was it that you wanted to see him?”
“I have something to ask him.”
“He told you to meet him here? If you want to see him, why don’t you go look for him at the Museum? Tell me, you wouldn’t be a friend of Fat-Man Saurio’s?”
“Calm down, shhh. .,” Junior said. “Silence in the night. Fuyita asked me to come here. Now. . if you say that he’s in the Museum.”
“Me?” The woman started to laugh nervously. “What did I say, kid?” She lifted the bottle of perfume and took another drink. Then she put a few drops on her fingertips and patted herself behind the ears. Junior could smell the perfume’s mild fragrance mixed with the closed-in smell of the room.
“Maybe he’s in the Museum, maybe he’s not. If you’re such good friends with Fat-Man Saurio, you must know something. Why don’t you have him tell you about Deaf Girl.” She started to laugh again, as if she were coughing. “Tell me the truth, is he with her or not?”
She had started to cry and could not stop. She pressed her closed fists against her eyes. Junior felt sorry for the woman and asked her not to cry.
“How can you ask me not to cry, do you want to tell me that? With what he’s done to me!”
“Here, take this,” he said, and handed her a handkerchief. “Calm down, don’t cry. Where are you from?”
“From here, I’ve always lived in the hotel, I’m the girl from the Majestic. But I come from far away, from the interior of the country, from the south. From Río Negro. Look, I stained it all,” she said, and tried to fold the handkerchief, smiling. “Do you think it’ll show?” She was touching her bruises with her fingertips.
“No,” he said. “No. But why don’t you clean yourself up a little. Come here, let me see.”
He moistened the handkerchief with the eau de cologne and cleaned her bruised face, which she allowed him to do with her eyes closed.
“That’s enough,” she said. “That’s enough. Hold on, let me turn on a light.” She went up to a lamp with a pleated ruffle lampshade. It gave off a bluish light when she switched it on. Then she looked at herself in the mirror. “Mother of God, I look like a monster.” She began to fix her hair. She looked at one of her legs. “Anyway, I’m full of wounds and it doesn’t hurt, I don’t feel much, see?” She lifted her shirt and showed him the scars. “This was done by a motorcycle, this by a dog that bit me, here I sort of ran into a wall, I didn’t see it. But it doesn’t hurt. Most complain about every little bruise. I’ve been knocked around by that brute. People are afraid of pain, but not me, right now I don’t feel it at all. It has to do with endorphins.”
“With what?” Junior asked.
“Endorphins. It’s scientific, kid, they explained it to me at the clinic. It’s a natural sedative made by the body. If you do heroin, the body quits making endorphins. Just stops. That’s why when you quit everything hurts, because you don’t have enough endorphins. In my case, I think it made too much and things don’t hurt like they should. That’s why I drink, anyway. Alcohol. Out in the province there’s a lot of heroin, in the country, in the valley, everyone can get it, they carry it on the sulkies, the Italian farmers hide it in their boots.”
“Do you have any now?”
“Never. I don’t buy it, I left that shit behind. When you’re on horse you don’t feel anything. Anyway, your body changes — you don’t shower for a week but you don’t stink because you don’t secrete anything. You don’t cry, you don’t pee, you don’t feel cold or hot, you barely eat. You can be a heroin addict your whole life, they know that you don’t die from it, unless it’s of very poor quality, the worst of the worst, which would poison you. But you have to be a millionaire to afford pure heroin. And one thing’s for sure: the day you skip a dose, the withdrawal symptoms kill you.”
“You can’t quit.”
“What do you mean you can’t quit? You’re crazy. You have to go somewhere where there isn’t any, where you can’t get it even if you’re dying. I left the small town, where they sell it even in kiosks, and came to the capital, and locked myself in a bathroom for three days. When you quit heroin everything is reversed. You sweat a lot, I was always all sweaty, they’d lift me from the tiles and I’d be totally wet. It’s terrible, because you’re supernervous and lethargic at the same time. Besides, you cry over anything. I’d look at an ashtray and cry. I started drinking then. At first, I remember, I drank Ocho Hermanos Anisette.”
“It’s better.”
“It’s the same shit. In order not to be an alcoholic you have to avoid drinking by yourself. Now I wake up in the middle of the night, drink a little bit of gin and go back to sleep.”
Junior looked at the woman, who was touching up her face. Her skin was taut and shiny as if it were made out of metal.
“Come here,” he said. “I want you to look at this picture.”
It was a snapshot of a young woman wearing a plaid skirt and a black turtleneck sweater.