Open Door E-Book

Iosi Havilio

• Herausgeber: And Other Stories
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 267

Beschreibung

When her partner disappears, a young woman drifts towards Open Door, a small town in the Argentinean Pampas named after its psychiatric hospital. She finds herself living with an ageing ranch-hand, although a local girl also proves irresistible. This evocative book makes a quiet case for the possibility of finding contentment in unexpected places.

Leseprobe

OPEN DOOR

Iosi Havilio

Translated by Beth Fowler

Afterword by Oscar Guardiola-Rivera

CONTENTS

Title Page

OPEN DOOR

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Epilogue

Afterword

Copyright

ONE

When the owner of the veterinary surgery told me to go to Open Door to examine a horse, I didn’t argue with her. The idea appealed to me. Open Door. It sounded strange.

I left Plaza Italia at around nine in the morning, with a sun as hot as midday overhead. First I took a long-distance coach, nearly an hour and a half of slow progress with a thousand interruptions, as far as the bus station at Pilar. It was full of people, the air conditioning was broken and there was a strong smell of ammonia. Someone showed me where to catch the local bus, which didn’t leave for a good half hour. On the road again, open country to the right, open country to the left, a roundabout, then another forty minutes until we reach Open Door. Outside the bus window, the plains, the gated communities and the cattle pass by.

The bus left as I crossed the railway lines. It was ten to twelve. A girl with plaits and chubby cheeks was watching me wide-eyed. As if she were there to welcome me. She was standing by the window of a house-cum-kiosk, under a green and white striped awning, half her body in the shade, the other half in the sun. She watched me as she chewed her gum with concentration, lips pursed.

I smiled at her but she didn’t react. She hardly blinked. I averted my gaze, looking in no particular direction: an unpaved street, straight and long, which eventually lost itself in the distance, where it was starting to cloud over. It was going to rain: sooner or later, it was going to rain. On the other side of the tracks, I was surprised by three giant silos, which looked as though they had been dropped there by a fleeing helicopter, three concrete monstrosities, apparently useless, but still standing. To my right was an area of intense green undulating woodland, threaded with zigzagging paths, like snakes. A few blocks away, a man on a bike appeared from a side street, his head covered by a pith helmet. As he turned, he raised a cloud of dust which followed him for a few metres and then faded away.

Could it be here? I have no idea. I turn round and the girl stops scratching at the earth with the points of her sandals, which reveal her tiny, overlapping toes.

Is this the way into town? I say out loud. The girl doesn’t answer and I don’t know whether to continue. Perhaps she’s deaf, I don’t know. I persist: Excuse me … Yes, this is it, she concedes unwillingly. She speaks with her back to me, seeming to watch me with the nape of her neck. She enters the house and reappears ten seconds later inside the window, stretching her thin arms across its full width, between the frame and the display of sweets.

Do you need a taxi? she asks. No, I say. The silence lasts as long as I can endure, but inevitably I start talking again: I’m being picked up. And her: Oh, good, she says and continues watching me, her eyes wider than ever.

There was another silence and I asked again, just to annoy her: Does the train pass by? Every now and then, but it doesn’t stop, just keeps going, she replied and immediately pursed her lips again and set about chewing her gum, determined not to utter another word.

The conversation ended there and although I made my way off along the edge of the road, for a long time I could feel the soft breeze of her gaze behind my ears. Those eyes bothered me.

It was already midday. The heat was becoming too much. And a light summer headache gripped me, ran through me, coming and going, from temple to temple. Just in time, I heard a rasping hum, somewhere nearby, but out of sight, as if someone had cleared their throat to begin talking. Like a purr.

Jaime is going to turn onto the street bordering the railway tracks in his truck or rastrojero, his pick-up, he’s going to stop in front of the house-kiosk, he’s going to get out, he’s going to look at me, dejectedly, and he’s going to wave hello.

We recognised each other immediately, it wasn’t difficult. I’m late, he says, or apologises, I don’t know which. It’s five past twelve, I say and, judging from the look in his eyes, with their mud-spattered lids, he doesn’t know whether I’m reproaching him.

As soon as Jaime starts the engine, the girl with plaits appears at the window of the house. I can see her in the rearview mirror.

Jaime grasps the gear stick and yanks it roughly in all directions, to free it I suppose. His hand is thick, with the rough skin of a reptile. He steps on the accelerator and the engine groans, gives a start and then dies. Jaime clenches his fist and hits the steering wheel gently, puffing through his pitted nose. He manhandles the truck once more and, after another false start, it stops protesting and begins to move.

This is the main street, Jaime explains to me, raising his voice to drown out the barks of the two or three dogs that are struggling to catch our wheels as we drive the first few metres. This is the shopping centre, it closes at half twelve, then no one opens up again until after siesta, half four. Here’s the school.

We covered what must have been the ten or fifteen blocks that made up the main street and, where the tarmac veered off, Jaime took a dirt road, the natural continuation of the previous one. Some five hundred metres ahead we turned right onto a narrow, single-track road, perpendicular to the one we had been following, guarded on one side by an endless line of almost uniform wire fencing, and on the other by a row of very tall poplars concealing a polo field flanked by low stands. Jaime stopped the truck in front of a gate and, without getting out, explained the confines of his land.

Straight ahead, behind the stable, there’s an olive plantation and on this side there are a few ranches, most of them abandoned. Further along this road there’s a shop, opposite there’s the polo field, and behind, where the fence ends, is the lake. Jaime got out to open the gate and paused for a minute looking towards the lake, the latch in his hand.

On the way to the stable, Jaime tells me that the horse is called Jaime, like him. He blushes a bit as he says it. He falls silent, regretting having mentioned it. He opens the stable door, but doesn’t go in, pointing out the horse from a distance, saying that he’ll wait for me here. I tell him he doesn’t have to, that he can come with me if he wants. Jaime fixes his eyes on his packet of tobacco and concentrates on rolling a fat cigarette. I don’t insist. I’ll go and examine him, I say, and Jaime responds with a long drag. He waits at the entrance, one foot inside, one out.

The other Jaime is a Creole-Spanish cross, aged between eighteen and twenty, a fairly common horse, with no distinguishing features. I listen to his heartbeat, the rhythm is normal. His pupils are stained a pale yellow and there’s the start of a burst blood vessel at the bottom of his left eye. He looks anaemic. But there’s something else, something conclusive. He watches wearily, docile, with the same expression that the other Jaime must be wearing behind me. I examine the tail to confirm a hunch: nodules between two and three centimetres in diameter spread along its length. I tell Jaime, who comes closer, I ask if he wants to touch. They’re melanomas, I say. He doesn’t ask anything, either he knows or he doesn’t want to. I go on: It’s a tumour that affects the tail and it’s common in Spanish horses. A tumour, repeats Jaime. As long as it doesn’t spread or reach any vital organ it can be treated, I explain. Jaime says nothing, he’s moved round to the other side of the horse and is stroking its back. He doesn’t look at me. I continue: There is medication that can delay the process, corticoids. But it’s irreversible, replies Jaime. I don’t know whether he’s asking or telling me. Yes, sooner or later, I say, but not immediately. There are cases where the tumour dissolves with no explanation. One in a thousand, I add so as not to give him false hope. The light is very dim and the horse’s mane appears darker than it must be in reality. The reddish tone of the head distinguishes it from the rest of the body. We’ll need to do a scan to give a more precise diagnosis, I say and Jaime raises his gaze with mild, almost imperceptible annoyance, as if I’d been hiding something from him. Equine scans are very expensive and I don’t feel it’s worth it, I think to myself without saying anything. Jaime’s eyes melt into those of the animal, becoming straw-coloured and sickly.

It’s one forty-five. The bus driver told me that instead of returning to Pilar I’d be better taking a local bus to Luján, and from there catching the train or the Luján coach service.

Are you hungry? asks Jaime and comes back round the horse. We go outside and the harsh sunlight hurts our eyes, just like the blinding light in cinema foyers when the film ends. In the sky, a tiny light aircraft crosses the horizon and leaves a soapy trail that fades at the tip. A white foam, whiter than the clouds. It’s like being somewhere else.

He used to race cuadreras, says Jaime as he cuts salami into thin slices, gesturing towards the stable with his chin. Now I can see him up close: the flat face, clean-shaven, and the very hairy neck and chest. Jaime must be married, he must have a wife and two or three children, but there’s no sign of them.

An oblong window covers a good part of the kitchen wall and looks out onto open country. My eyes close. I resist for a while, until I begin to doze. I come and go, between sleep and the green world on the other side of the window. Jaime stays quiet, he doesn’t intervene. I can feel his presence nearby but it’s as if he weren’t there.

At some point a dull thud rouses us and forces us to pick up the conversation. He talks, I listen.

Jaime tells me that he has a scythe and, now that he doesn’t have a fixed job anymore, he’s devoting his time to weeding the plant nursery at the colony. I have no idea how many years it’s been abandoned, it’s practically a forest, he says. I wonder what the colony could be but Jaime changes the subject:

‘It’s carnival next week. We still celebrate it here,’ he says, and I smile.

It’s gone five and I don’t understand how it got so late. Jaime takes me to the Luján bus station in his truck. So that you’re not too late, he says. Where the dirt track meets the road Jaime turns left and a few metres on, he slows down. There’s the entrance, the nursery is over there at the back, he says, pointing out a large iron arch with a sign in the middle: Dr Domingo Cabred’s Psychiatric Hospital Colony. It’s like a village within a village, says Jaime with a half-smile on his lips, the first I’ve seen him give.

We pass the rest of the journey in silence, the lights of nightfall staining the windscreen. Before saying goodbye, I ask Jaime why he didn’t call a local vet. He shrugs and climbs back into the truck, which purrs away again as it did at midday.

From a public telephone in the bus station, I call Aída’s number. I didn’t have a good day, I’m low, she says from the other end. She wants to talk, to chat. I tell her that I want to go to the cinema like we said. She hesitates, I insist. We arrange to meet at quarter to eight in the bar on the corner of Avenida Córdoba and Montevideo, half a block from her house.

The return journey seems quick, drifting in and out of a sleep that mingles with flashing images of the motorway: a shopping centre that looks like a mock spaceship, a service station just like the shopping centre, various toll barriers so similar that I get confused, and a silver-coloured tower that flashes past too quickly for me to work out what it is.

Aída is waiting at the door of the bar. She sees me arriving, I’m about fifty metres away, diagonally across the street. Aída looks the other way and lights a cigarette, pretending not to notice.

‘You have to be honest with me …’ she begins to say, but she’s interrupted by the waiter. We order a beer. Aída is about to speak again, but I cut her off with the first thing that comes to mind. I tell her the hamster story, a true story. Aída lights a fresh cigarette, looking like she has something to say, but she resigns herself, swallows two aspirins, and listens to me.

It was a few weeks ago, at the end of December, a Saturday morning, and the owner of the surgery had gone away for the weekend, between Christmas and New Year. It was almost one o’clock and since I was alone, I closed up a bit early. I’m dealing with the till, the cash, the receipts and all that, when I hear someone shaking the door handle trying to get in, I play dumb and hide behind the counter, so that they don’t see me. I’m not about to open up. I count to thirty. They’ve gone, that’s it, I get back to what I’m doing. But soon I hear a knock at the door. Hard, desperate knocking. I go to answer it, I have no choice. On the other side of the grille, there’s an old woman with a tiny face staring at me. I tell her that we’re already closed. I don’t care, she says rather hoarsely. I want to see the owner, she says. I tell her that the owner isn’t here, to come back another day. That won’t do, it has to be now, she says and it’s as if her voice is giving out. From her small, old-lady’s handbag, she produces a package wrapped in newspaper. She opens it slightly, just enough for me to catch a glimpse of hamster, stiff, rather crushed, on its back. I’m revolted, by the animal, by the old woman, and most of all by that little package, and I tell her that it would be best for her to come back on Monday and speak to the owner. But it’s too late, the old woman gets mad. Some kind of spasm takes hold of her, her eyes cloud over, her veins swell up, she looks like she’s about to explode. And she shouts: The lousy thing didn’t even last a day. I try to calm her, but that makes it worse. Drop dead, cheap bitch, she says to me and sticks her hand through the grille, dangling the hamster in the air.

Aída bursts out laughing, coughing a bit between drags. We compose ourselves and look at each other again. She says: See, we have a laugh together, don’t we? And I nod, to humour her.

Afterwards we went to the cinema and saw a really bad film.

We ate in a Creole fast food restaurant of the most decadent kind and got drunk on the worst wine possible. We slept together, naked and embracing.

The next day, Aída disappeared.

TWO

In the dark, Aída looked a certain way. In the daylight that look changed and she became sad again. The light exaggerated the angles of her face and her natural pallor. In the half-darkness, as she was when I met her, surrounded by other bodies, Aída struck me as an attractive woman, tall, sinuous, with bony shoulders and a wide forehead. When I saw her up close, as she spoke to me, I began to focus on her details: the tip of the sharp nose, the slightly uneven teeth, the broken, desperate eyes. Aída almost didn’t have skin it was so fine, like silk paper, laying bare her veins.

We met by chance in a bar on Calle Reconquista on the first day of the year. I had gone in without planning to, partly because of the rain and partly because I’d been wandering for quite a while and was starting to get bored. I ordered a glass of wine and settled myself at a corner of the bar, right in front of the till. In a while, a foreigner with a heavyset face and freckly nose sat down next to me and offered to buy me a couple of drinks. He was twenty-something and smiled a lot, too much. He wasn’t bad, but definitely not my type. In a moment, he said in that kind of bad Spanish that some foreigners speak: ‘Acá, todavía es mejor.’ I laughed, of course, and he stared me in the eye, almost serious. I’m going to the toilet, he said in English and didn’t return.

The rain had stopped and I’d decided to move on when Aída appeared, elbowing me so hard that I spilt what was left of my wine down my blouse. I also took a little bite out of the glass. A strange sensation, rather unpleasant. Aída whipped round quickly, appalled, slightly drunk, and I think she spilt some of her drink on my trousers too. From that moment on, Aída didn’t stop talking. How awful, was the first thing she said. She grabbed my hand and led me to the toilets, barging her way though the crowd. She took a cotton bud from her handbag, wet it with alcohol, and brushed it several times across my lower lip, which was only bleeding slightly. It’s nothing, just a tiny cut, she was saying. She offered me a cigarette and we smoked in front of the mirror. Me, sitting on the edge of the toilet with my legs swinging; her, leaning against the wall. She asked me everything at once and I replied to some of her questions.

Aída tells me that she doesn’t know why she comes to these parties, that they’re always the same in the end, people crushed up against each other, barely able to move. I didn’t know, I say, that it was a party. When we left the toilets, Aída brushed her fingers over my lips again. She didn’t need to. Come on, let me buy a round and we’ll forget the whole silly incident. The silly drink, she corrects herself and laughs.

Aída repeats three times that she’s a photographer and works freelance for a couple of fashion and decorating magazines.

‘What about you?’

‘I was going to be a vet, but now I just work for one,’ I say and she immediately takes an interest. She tells me that she has a twelve-year-old dog called Diki whose paw had to be amputated last November because it got caught in the spokes of a bike.

‘I’m going to catch a taxi, can I take you anywhere?’ Aída asks after a pause. I tell her no, thanks anyway, I still don’t know where I’m going. She insists.

‘Why don’t you come for a drink at my place while you decide?’

I let her lead me. The rain, which has come back with renewed enthusiasm, convinces me.

Aída’s place was a two-room affair in Calle Montevideo, half a block from Avenida Córdoba. An old building with a very tall door of black iron, two or three stairs covered with a red carpet and a traditional lift with a rectangular mirror at the back.

When she opened the flat door, Diki jumped up at her, pawing at her legs. Aída bent down to cuddle him and Diki responded by licking her cheeks. I had seen many dogs in my time, but never one like this, ugly as well as lame.

‘Do you like anisette?’ Aída asked. ‘I love it,’ she answered herself and filled two small glasses decorated with gold crescent moons. Two Turkish glasses. Anisette seemed like an old-fashioned drink to me, and now that I could see her clearly, under lamplight, it felt appropriate: Aída had something old-fashioned about her too.

She raised her glass, I raised mine and we clinked them. I don’t quite know how Aída ended up massaging my neck, and my back, her hands like pincers. She did it very well, like a professional. She poured me another glass, and, as she unbuttoned my blouse, she asked:

‘You don’t mind, do you?’

We spent a long time on the sofa, listening to music, talking nonsense, initially without touching each other, then later, on her initiative, playfully intertwining our legs. Aída’s were long and slim. Another glass of anisette and Aída leant her head against my shoulder. She asked me to stroke her. To the touch, Aída’s skin confirmed something that had caught my attention when she was near me in the lift. Her cheeks were covered in little transparent flakes, like puff pastry. Aída suggested we lie down on her bed. We’ll be comfier there, she said.

Clothes always lie. Or rather, if they don’t lie, at the very least they conceal. Aída undressed. And if she had seemed a fairly normal girl before, well formed but normal, when I saw her naked, straight on, I was surprised by how small her tits were, like toys, as if they were only there because anatomy demanded it. She sat down on the bed and started rolling a joint. Get in if you want, she told me, and when I saw her from behind, I found her tiny knickers hilarious.

Then she embraced me and I let myself be embraced. She wanted to kiss me on the mouth. Not today, I stopped her, maybe another day. She didn’t protest. And all that time, as we smoked in silence, until I fell asleep, I couldn’t stop thinking about Aída’s skin, which changed every other minute, which she shed like a serpent.

That same week, without giving it too much thought, I moved into her flat.

THREE

On Sunday we woke up at half two in the afternoon. Why don’t we go out for a bit of air, said Aída from the bedroom, her voice still not clear from last night’s cigarettes. I was sitting on the toilet, flicking through one of those women’s magazines that published Aída’s photos. By some miracle, I didn’t have a hangover.

OK, I said, let’s go. Aída came into the bathroom, looking wide awake. I’ll make coffee, she said, stroked my forehead and left. I stayed in the bathroom for some time, engrossed in an article about a new equestrian style in women’s fashion which had been all the rage in Europe for years and which, according to the journalist, was going to land here at any moment. One photo, filling a quarter of a page, showed a blonde model, practically albino, her hair pulled tightly back like a ballerina, posing with her mare. I immediately thought of the moribund horse in Open Door and his owner, the two Jaimes, whom I had met the day before. I imagined them together, lying on the straw, keeping each other company right now, while Aída was making me breakfast.

I took the magazine into the kitchen to show Aída. Look, I say to her and she makes a contemptuous gesture with her hand. It was a joke, to piss her off, she didn’t like horses, even in photos. As a girl she’d had dreams, dreams of horses that she’d never tell me about. She called them dreams, but they must have been nightmares. I persisted anyway: I didn’t tell you about the horse from yesterday, I said, the one I went to examine. Poor animal, I think it’s got cancer. Aída pulled a disgusted face. And you know what? I said between sips of coffee, it has the same name as its owner: both of them are called Jaime. Aída laughed, thinking it was a joke.

Afterwards, while Aída showered, I had a second cup of coffee, black, no sugar, to wake me up a bit more.

Shortly before seven, I saw her for the last time. She was wearing faded jeans and a black T-shirt, she’d put her hair up in a kind of bun. She seemed happy, normal. Her breath was bitter, from an empty stomach.

We had gone to La Boca. We were bored, the walk had been a failure. Too many people around, too many noises all at once and nothing much to do.

At some point Aída went into a bar. She gestured with her hand, she barely moved her lips, she seemed to say I’ll be right back, or something like it. I lit a cigarette. With my back to the street, I caught my reflection in a long and narrow mirror with traditional painted designs around the edge. People passed to and fro and I disappeared and reappeared between them.

A blond boy stopped in front of me. He had a cigarette hanging from his mouth. He smiled at me and mimed lighting it with an imaginary lighter. I gave him mine. He couldn’t have been skinnier, or dirtier. He was that type of blond whose hair is the only blond thing about him. A tough street kid, tanned skin, full lips, theatrical stare, aged about fourteen or fifteen. He lit his cigarette with the tip of mine and lingered longer than necessary in handing it back. He had a scar snaking between the knuckles of one hand. He didn’t take his eyes off me. He looked at me the way some brats do, unintentional and yet intense.

‘Fancy a smoke?’ he said bringing his face closer, all his teeth on show. I just looked at him, a bit lost.

Do you want to or not, the boy pressed me and, because it was Sunday, because I was bored and because Aída still hadn’t come out, I hunched my shoulders as if to say: Why not? The boy jerked his head for me to follow him.

First I glanced into the bar and amongst the crowd I saw Aída going into the toilets. What had she been doing all this time? It didn’t surprise me, Aída did that sort of thing, disappeared, played hide and seek. The blond boy was waiting for me at the corner.

We took a diagonal lane and came to a yard that doubled as a basketball court, a few parked cars around the edges. The blond boy guided me to an out-of-sight corner where there were two other boys, even rougher looking and much younger. One was rather chubby with the look of an obedient dog, his face camouflaged in the hood of the tracksuit he was wearing. The third boy was much taller than the other two, wearing denim from head to toe, a proper show-off. Did you get it? the blond boy asked the one in denim, who immediately took a long, fat joint out of his pocket, twice the size of a normal joint. The blond boy lit up, took two deep drags and passed it to me. We smoked, each taking our turn, in perfect harmony. They asked me my name and I asked theirs. They told me that they lived round here and that they played in a band. They wanted to know where I was from. From far away, I replied.

Drugs don’t always act the same way, it all depends on the person and the circumstances. The lad in denim, who had struck me as the most laid-back of the three, was retreating into himself. The fat one, on the other hand, had taken down his hood and was getting more and more excitable by the minute. The blond boy, like a good leader, didn’t seem to be affected.

‘We want you to suck us off,’ the little fatty said out of nowhere, projecting the not-yet-fully-formed voice of an overweight adolescent.

The blond boy released a smoke-filled laugh. The one in denim turned pale, then red. All the blood rushed to the fat boy’s head, enough for the three of them. And he laughed too, through clenched teeth. As I didn’t say anything, didn’t even move, their nerves finally got the better of them and they passed me the joint again. The round continued without comment. When the joint had finished, we said goodbye with a kiss on the cheek, like good friends.

FOUR

It was getting dark. After my adventure in the yard, I went back to look for Aída at the door of the bar. I went in, checked the toilets, looked around the tables, but nothing, not a single clue as to where she might have gone. I crossed the street and sat down on a bench on the riverside. I lit a fresh cigarette and, with the smoke inside me, the effects of the joint revived. I felt good.

I noted the time on my watch, five to nine, and started walking along the river. Up ahead, at the foot of the old bridge, not quite in focus yet, I make out a small crowd of people and a series of intermittent lights, now illuminating, now concealing them. I draw closer to find out what’s going on.

The police have set up a cordon to contain the fifteen or twenty onlookers pressed up against the railings at the riverbank. Most of them are probably there because they’ve seen other people stop first. In the street, next to a patrol car, there’s a fire engine and an ambulance with the doors wide open and a stretcher spilling halfway out onto the asphalt. All the lights are flashing: those on the patrol car very quick and blue, the fire brigade’s lazy and red; the lights on the ambulance aren’t revolving but flash intermittently, green and white. Together they merge, ricocheting off the opaque water, colouring the iron skeleton, creating sparks on the rust. The sirens are silent.