There’s a book in the drawer too: Dying with Dignity by Hans Küng and Walter Jens. Andrés can’t help feeling a slight tremor. Where would his father have got that book? The top right-hand corner of page thirty-five is turned down. That’s as far as he must have got. Perhaps he stopped on that very page last night. Andrés reads the chapter heading: “Euthanasia discussed: the merciful death.” He closes the book and the drawer. The fact that his father has it hidden away in there means that he doesn’t want anyone else to see it. And anyone else means Andrés.
His father and Merny have made a pact. Or, rather, he has imposed a pact on her. They both reached crisis point one afternoon, when they were alone together in the apartment. He was having a really bad reaction to the chemotherapy. The immediate aftereffects were ghastly: he felt dreadful, his blood pressure was low, he was feeling dizzy and nauseous, and he was taking epamin to avoid possible convulsions. He’d had a chemo session earlier that morning. At lunchtime, Merny had served him what the nutritionist had recommended. He ate reluctantly, muttering and protesting.
“It all tastes the same,” he said.
Merny did not respond. She wasn’t having a good day either. Willmer had been out all night. She hadn’t been able to sleep. He’d been behaving oddly for some time, and she knew something was wrong. The neighbors said her son was getting into bad company, that he’d been seen with boys from another barrio.
“Not good,” thought Merny.
Not good meant crack, guns, police, prison, and cemeteries. Willmer finally got in at six in the morning. Merny wanted to slap him, but didn’t dare. Jofre didn’t either. After all, he wasn’t the boy’s father. Willmer went straight to his room, without saying a word, he appeared to be under the influence of drugs. Merny left for work, because she has to work, because she can’t miss a day, because now more than ever she needs money to get Willmer out of the barrio. That’s the only solution. Send him somewhere far away from there. To her sister in the country, for example. That, she thinks, is the only way to save him.
The old man leapt out of bed and ran screaming to the bathroom. He just had time to kneel down by the toilet bowl, but it was too late, he had already vomited his guts up on the way there. The corridor and the bathroom floor were a real mess. In the washbasin, too, there were the remains of his lunch mixed up with other fluids, saliva and dribble, remnants of Javier Miranda’s own body. He stayed hunched over the toilet bowl, trying to withstand the retching. He let out a low roar. Everything the body expels stinks, is disgusting and shameful, repellent leftovers no one wants to see, that should be swiftly cleaned up, covered up, erased. That’s what Merny’s there for.
But Merny had her own crisis. She vomited up her existence in another way. She exploded. She screamed. She’d had enough. She took off her apron and flung it down. She couldn’t help it. There she was, just about to leave, having left everything spotless. She had her own dirt, in her own house, far away, in another world. She didn’t want any more work to do. For a moment, the scene seemed utterly incomprehensible. The old man hugging the toilet bowl, coughing and groaning, and Merny standing nearby, beating the wall with her fist, shouting and crying. They remained like that for a while, two bodies furiously flailing and protesting, until gradually they calmed down, not looking at each other, not touching, each in their own place, letting their breathing return to normal.
Between them, they cleaned it all up. They had to put bleach on the floor and the tiles. The fetid smell had invaded the apartment. It was like a second skin tattooed on every object. The apartment was like the belly of some infected animal. Javier invited her to go out somewhere for a drink. Merny declined, embarrassed, saying she really should go straight home. In the end, he made her go with him. They went to a nearby café. She didn’t want to order anything, so he ordered them each a coffee. When they finally felt able to talk, the first thing Merny did was to apologize. The old man had a hard time convincing her that it wasn’t necessary. It was even harder to get her to open up and tell him what was going on in her life. That was when they made their pact. Javier Miranda offered to give her all the money she needed to send Willmer off to Los Andes, where one of Merny’s sisters lived. In exchange, they would have a private agreement, behind Andrés’s back.
“No more special diets, alright? No more of that disgusting grilled chicken with no salt. I want olive oil, I want butter, I want sweet things.”
“But Dr. Andrés says that. .”
“It doesn’t matter what my son says. Merny, look at me. Do you really think I don’t know I’m going to die?”
“We’re all going to die, Señor Javier,” she said, lowering her voice and looking away.
“Yes, we’re all going to die. But I’m going first. I’m dying already.”
The name of the dry cleaner’s is De Luxe. This was all Andrés could make out on the half ticket he found in his father’s bedroom. Then it was simply a matter of calling information, getting the telephone number, phoning and asking for their address. Now he’s standing outside the shop. He’s spent days pondering that woman’s voice. On at least two occasions, he’s tried to have a conversation with his father about love and marriage. Once, he even attempted to probe deeper into his private life.
“I can understand you not marrying again, but have you never even had an affair?”
“I’ve never been one for affairs,” his father replied vaguely.
“Didn’t you even occasionally go with a prostitute? What did you do with your sex life all those years?”
This line of questioning got him nowhere. Javier Miranda merely smiled faintly, almost ingenuously, a mere gesture, barely completed, and said nothing more. As the days passed, the voice of that woman on the phone kept gnawing away at Andrés. He began to hear it more and more often, to stumble over the sound of it again and again. It was the only clue he had. That voice. And a dry cleaner’s.
He’d done his research almost innocently, without giving it much importance, but now that he’s actually outside the shop, he can’t help feeling a certain unease again. He’s thought it all through, but is unsure quite how to proceed. There’s a number written in red ink on the left-hand corner of the ticket, presumably the customer reference number. That should be more than enough to track down the woman he’s looking for. All he has to do is come up with a plan, carry it out and get what he wants. That’s the next step. For example: Andrés could go in, looking around him with a crazy, hesitant expression on his face.
“Good morning,” he could say, smiling shyly and going over to the young woman at the till.
“Good morning.”
“I have a bit of a problem.” Initially, Andrés would linger over the pauses, then babble furiously, trying to confuse the woman. He would heap her with words and endless stories, creating an overwhelming sense of confusion. “And all I have is this,” he would say at last, showing her the half ticket. “Could you possibly help me?”