Andrés Neuman - The Things We Don't Do

After some initial awkwardness, I confess that the conversation became pleasant and, at times, jovial. As the hours went by, we even allowed ourselves to joke about our old quarrels. Melchor was droll, and unusually loquacious. To the point where I would even say that Ariel felt sick with jealousy and desperately sought my approval. Rubén maintained his guarded manner, though that didn’t stop him from being friendly and polite. Nora veered between pensive silence and fits of unbridled euphoria. During one of these, she made as though to kiss me. She corrected her own gesture without my having to recoil, and ended up planting her lips on my cheek.

In the early hours, slightly the worse for drink, I drew the attention of my four guests. I raised my arm and declared a toast to all those who truly know each other, that is, without innocence. Melchor, Ariel, Rubén and Nora seconded my toast amid applause. We continued opening bottles. Nora and Rubén started to dance, pressed against each other. It startled me to see them. Ariel sat down beside me and spoke in hushed tones about academic disputes. Melchor started browsing through my books and records. I smoked until I had a hole in my throat.

A little later, I don’t recall exactly at what time, I announced I was going down to buy cigarettes. Nora walked over to me, draped her arm round my neck and, putting on one of her sad little faces, asked me to bring her a packet as well. I said I would. I smiled. I looked at them all. Melchor, Ariel, Rubén, Nora. Then I left the house and locked the door.

VÁZQUEZ CLEARED his throat, rolled up his right sleeve and slammed his knuckles into Rojo’s forehead. Rojo’s head disappeared for a moment, seemed to touch the back of the chair and bounced into place with an elastic shudder.

“Go easy,” Artigas warned.

“He’s a sonofabitch,” retorted Vázquez.

Artigas looked straight into Vázquez’s bulging eyes.

“Yeah, but go easy,” he said.

Vázquez gave a heavy sigh and examined his knuckles, which had begun to sting. He had forgotten to take off his wedding ring. Vázquez had just separated: he had been forced to teach his wife a lesson, and then leave her, the whore. He made to strike Rojo again, but Artigas intervened, gently raising his hands. Vázquez observed Rojo’s half-open bleeding lips. He whispered into his ear:

“Sonofabitch, I’m going to pull your teeth out one by one, you piece of shit.”

Contrary to what Artigas was starting to suspect, Rojo had heard that last remark as well as all the previous ones. He had noticed, as his face became disfigured by the punches, that his hearing had grown more acute. While the bridge of his nose, his throat, tongue and cheeks were becoming a shapeless pulp, Rojo heard with perfect clarity Vázquez’s raucous abuse and his hawking, the rushing sound of his own blood, the pounding of his veins, the electric buzz of the lamps trained on him, Artigas’s measured interventions, his own muffled groans, the endless alarm clock in the house which had gone off at seven o’clock sharp as it did every morning and had not alerted him to the danger. Behind the blinding haze of the lamps, he heard Vázquez’s voice:

“This piece of shit can’t hear a thing any more, Artigas.”

Rojo understood that Artigas responded in the affirmative and agreed they should finish things off, although he no longer recalled what it was they had to finish off, nor was he capable of connecting what they were saying to himself. He knew they were talking, talking about someone who had to talk and hadn’t talked, someone they had to beat up and find out, or find out and beat up, or something of the sort. What were they talking about? They were shouting so loud and he could only just see out of one eye. He tried to open it more, felt the pain of a seam being pulled off his eyelid and then the stab of real light, from the lamps, not his memory of the lamps. He saw Vázquez’s hulking back, and, above his shoulder, peeping out as from on top of a wall, Artigas’s perfectly shaven face, eyebrows and lips moving. Now the sound had gone out of everything. The room was like a television with the volume turned down. Closing his eyelid again, Rojo discovered Beatriz’s face offering comforting, healing words. For a moment his ribs no longer ached and he felt like smiling.

Suddenly Vázquez turned towards him. His shirt and tie were spattered with stains. What had Vázquez hurt himself with? Why was he shouting so much?

“Playing the tough guy, huh, Rojito?”

The sound had come back.

“Anyone would think you’re enjoying yourself, sonofabitch.” Rojo felt a grenade explode next to his mouth, somewhere soft. He tasted the bitter-sweet density of the blood and spat some of it out. Another grenade exploded on his chest: his throat became a spiralling corkscrew. The lamps dissolved and Rojo was on a very high swing, daydreaming, his face turned towards the sky, as if he were about to fall asleep. The sky was overcast and his mother was calling out to him. Then, for a split second, his mother had Beatriz’s naked form, her generous breasts. Then someone turned on the two lights and the ceiling came together again. Artigas was speaking to him very slowly:

“Listen, Rojo, we’re going to have to kill you.”

Vázquez was leaving the room.

“Believe me, I’m sorry,” Artigas added. “It goes with the job, you know that better than anyone.”

Rojo had a sudden flash of clarity. He opened his good eye, raised his head as much as he could and recognized Artigas’s sharp nose, his clear blue eyes, his perfect shave.

“Where’s Vázquez?” Rojo burbled.

Artigas grinned. He placed a hand on Rojo’s shoulder.

“Does it hurt a lot?” he asked; Rojo shook his head and Artigas grinned again. “You’re one of a kind, Rojo, one of a kind. You don’t miss a trick, do you? Vázquez went for a piss. That’s why I’m being honest with you, Rojo: it pains me to see you like this. I would have preferred to mow you down with the car when you left the house, but that idiot got it into his head we could worm something out of you if we were patient enough. Everyone has their breaking point, it’s just a question of finding it, Vázquez told me, he’ll have to spill the beans some time. And I replied: You don’t know Rojo, Vázquez, you don’t know him. And you can see, I was right.”

During Artigas’s speech, Rojo had recovered his sense of time and, above all, the awareness of what was being said to him and why. Absurdly, he remembered it was Sunday the 16th and that the following day the pet dog he had as a child, an enormous Saint Bernard, would have been thirty-seven. Instantly his mind returned to the room: Vázquez and Artigas were going to kill him. His old partner, and his old partner’s new partner were going to kill him because he hadn’t talked. If he had talked they would have killed him anyway, but have felt more gratified. Fuck their curiosity then. While his goon was taking a piss, Artigas was apologizing, and he was a motherfucking sonofabitch and a true professional. It was understandable that they wanted revenge, Rojo reflected, but it was absurd to try to humiliate him as well by turning him into an informer. They had tied him to a chair in the living room, they had broken his wrists on the same table where two days earlier he had made love with Beatriz, they had blindfolded and unblindfolded him several times, they had kicked his knees and his shins, they had burned his ear lobes with a lighter and they had asked him the same question a thousand times. A thousand times Rojo had said nothing, not out of bravery: he was simply aware that it made no difference if he confessed. He was familiar with his old partner’s methods, and so had decided to give himself the satisfaction of messing up their business. He too was a professional. A far better one than Vázquez, needless to say. Perhaps not much better than Artigas, although certainly more resolute. Artigas liked to take his time over everything.