Ясмина Реза - Babylon

Danielle’s mother agreed to take Eduardo. We arranged to bring him to her at Sucy-en-Brie the next Sunday. Meanwhile, I had settled something that was bothering me. After careful examination of the front of our apartment building, I went up to see the sixth-floor tenant, Monsieur Aparicio, a retiree from the Postal Service, not much of a talker.

As I passed the door of the Manoscrivis, I saw the wax seals and the yellow notice form where the line “Infraction” was filled out: “Intentional Homicide.” Monsieur Aparicio is mostly bald but the remaining hair at the back of his head is caught in a little bow. A touch of modernity that gave me courage. I told him my plan, which was to hook up a hose with a pistol nozzle in his apartment so that the Manoscrivi plants could be watered from above, from his balcony. “I’m not asking you to do it, Monsieur Aparicio,” I said. “I’ll come myself to take care of it, if you allow me, twice a week, at whatever time might suit you, early morning or evening.” Several minutes later, and after hearing my long-winded plea, he let me come in. We went into the living room, he opened the window. We leaned out over the parapet, I said, “You see how pretty it is, all their plantings. The rain can’t get to even the mimosa.” On his own balcony there was a bicycle, a table, and some tools. As to greenery, a couple of vaguely soil-filled pots and an old fern. Where would the hose be hooked up? he asked. In the kitchen, I said.

“Gotta get at least a twenty-yarder.”

“Yes, of course!! Thank you, Monsieur Aparicio!”

He never offered me a coffee, and our exchanges remained limited to meteorologic matters. I am doubly grateful to him. First, for never having fussed about the drama itself (including the day when the police extended the investigation to all the neighbors), and second, for not taking over my role as irrigator. I bought an excellent expandable hose with a universal hookup and a variable nozzle that made it possible to water from a distance. Aparicio himself attaches it to his faucet and starts the flow before I arrive each time. He could do the job at any hour he chose and free himself from the servitude of our appointments. He must have sensed the fetishism that binds me to this task and has always respected it. Since his eviction to our flat, Eduardo had immured himself in a state of hostile moroseness. He would wander from one piece of furniture to another, crouching underneath them or clinging to the shadowy corners. He did agree to eat, and Pierre managed to get the last Revigot 200 pills into him, crushed in some tuna-fish mash. On my return to the apartment, the night before our excursion to Sucy, I witnessed the following scene: The fishing pole was twitching from inside the bathroom, and in the corridor Eduardo kept a dull eye on the caprices of the leopard tail.

At the sight of me he fled, while Pierre, seated naked on the toilet, focused on his magnetic chessboard and its manual, went on waving the pole with one hand. In Deuil-l’Alouette, there’s a Raminogrobis shop that does cats and dogs. To carry Eduardo to Danielle’s mother, I bought a travel container in hard plastic. I took the mid-range one at thirty-nine euros so he’d be more comfortable. In the front hall, everything stood ready: Jean-Lino’s canvas bag and all the accessories, including the T-shirt, the litter box, and the brand-new cage with its grille door open, awaiting only its occupant. The minute he saw it, Eduardo detested the travel cage. He tried to flee, but Pierre grabbed him, shouting “Close the doors!” He positioned the cat at the opening and tried to keep him there. We pushed, the cat resisted, his front paws rigid and overextended, he slipped a little on the floor, the cage slid away at the same time. We tried to persuade him by talking to him, I even think we managed a few Italian-style words. Eduardo tried every means to escape, squirming and biting Pierre’s arms as Pierre yelled at me. Once or twice he lost hold and we had to start over. We put toys into the case, the Feliway diffuser, some fish patties. The cat would have none of it. After twenty minutes of exhausting battle, Pierre thought of standing the cage on end, with the open door on top. Pouring with sweat, in a fury, he caught Eduardo and dropped him in vertically, headfirst through the opening. There was a weird moment when I saw that the head and the front paws were inside. Pierre was holding the cage, he said, “Help him in, help him!” I shoved him down as best I could with my eyes closed. We slammed the gate shut. The cage was strewn with smashed fish patties. Eduardo howled, but he was howling from inside.

The aunt didn’t recognize me. She was seated beside her walker, with a bib around her neck, in a windowless annex cafeteria, alone before a plate of fish and mashed potatoes. I hadn’t expected her to be at dinner at six o’clock. It’s a great effort for me to adjust to that terrifying schedule. I see it as a means of disposing of people. The only people you can cause to eat dinner at that hour are the vulnerable ones you want to unload into bed (at hostels people are already there). I introduced myself, said I had come once before with Jean-Lino. She looked me over carefully. There’s sometimes a certain icy authority in the gaze of the old. Her name was Benilde. I learned that at the front desk—Benilde Poggio—but I didn’t dare pronounce it. The receptionist had said, “Oh the lady from the Dolomites!” I know the Dolomites from Dino Buzzati books. Denner was reading “Mountains of Glass”: portraits of alpinists, laments for the destruction of nature, for the slopes the writer would never walk again. It was so to speak Denner’s bedside book. He used to read me chapters aloud. Some of them were masterpieces. I remembered one piece on the conquest of Everest: “In the old fortress, atop the highest tower, there was still one small room where no one had ever gone. The door was finally opened. Man entered in, and he saw. There is no mystery left.” The woman from the Dolomites has long hands that are thick and a little callused. The fingers all move together as if they were glued. With her fork she deboned the fish, which was already deboned. I asked if I was disturbing her; I said, You may want to dine quietly? She made a kind of carpet of the potatoes which she then brought to her mouth. I thought her head shook less than the last time. She watched me as she chewed. Occasionally she lifted the bib to her lips. I thought the hairdresser had overdone the mauve tinting. And the curl too. They must have a coiffeur in the home. I no longer understood what I was doing there. What is the point of this fantasy of benevolence that consists of visiting a woman who’s a stranger to you and who doesn’t even know who you are? She was wearing a long sweater with pockets. She felt around in one of them and pulled out a little plastic packet tied with a string and held it out to me. In an unknown language, she told me to smell it. It smelled of cumin. Is that cumin? I asked. Sì, cumino. She wanted me to sniff again. I said I liked cumin a lot. And coriander, too. She gestured that I should open the packet. The knot was fairly tight and she couldn’t manage with her swollen fingers. When I opened it she signaled me to pour a bit of cumin into the hollow of her hand. By means of trembling movements she indicated that it need be only a pinch. She had me smell the grains again in her hand and, laughing, she scattered them onto the fish. I laughed too. She said something I didn’t understand completely but in passing I caught Lydie’s name. And I thought I understood that it was Lydie who had given her the packet. I’d never made the connection between the aunt and Lydie. How stupid of me. She was Jean-Lino’s wife, how could she not have known the aunt? She set before me, with the spoon, the lemon yogurt from her tray. We could hear sounds of voices in the corridor, sounds of doors, of things rolling. Without knowing how, one knew these were the sounds of evening—contained sounds, that would not be heard anywhere else. I thought of the visit I’d made with Jean-Lino, when she had talked about her chickens coming into the house and settling everywhere. This time the aunt spoke neither of chickens nor of cowbells. She had taken on other habits far from mountain life, a thousand leagues from the great shadows that swell and shrink. She had got used to the smooth walls and the wooden railings, she had agreed to watch time melt away no matter where.