Ricardo Piglia - The Absent City

Junior leaned over the cat, who breathed with a kind of quivering, and petted it on the back.

“He’s nervous, see? He understands everything, he doesn’t like the smell of tobacco. Can you feel how he breathes?”

“My name is Junior,” he said. “I need to see Fuyita.”

“And?” the old man asked with his little suspicious smile.

“Do you know if he is in?”

“Mr. Fuyita? I couldn’t say. You’ll have to speak with the manager.”

“Nice cat,” Junior said and grabbed the cat by its nape with a quick move. He pressed him against the counter. The cat shrieked, terrified.

“What are you doing?” the old man asked, covering his face with his hand to protect himself.

“Give me the number,” Junior said. “I work in the circus.”

The old man had fallen back against the wall and was looking at Junior as if he wanted to hypnotize him. His eyes were two small quail eggs in his wrinkled face.

“That animal is the only thing I have in the world,” the old man begged, “don’t hurt him.”

Junior released the cat, who jumped and left, meowing like a baby; then he took out a 1,000 pesos bill folded in half.

“I need the room number.”

The old man tried to smile, but he was so nervous that he just stuck the tip of his tongue out. “An iguana,” Junior thought. He reached for the bill and put it in the small front pocket of his jacket with a furtive move.

“Two twenty-three. Room two twenty-three. Fuyita is Christ,” he said. “They call him Christ, get my drift?” He stuck his tongue out twice and turned around toward the key rack. “Go on up,” he said. “I’m not here, you didn’t see me.” He was sticking his tongue out and in, facing the wall so that no one would see him.

The elevator was a cage, its ceiling full of inscriptions and graffiti. “Language kills,” Junior read. “Viva Lucia Joyce.” He looked at his face in the mirror; it looked as if he were trapped in a spider web — the shadow from the wall’s gratings covering his shaved cranium, his melancholic skull. The hallway on the second floor was empty. The yellow walls and the carpets drowned out the harsh rumblings from the street. Junior rang room two twenty-three. The buzzer seemed to ring somewhere else, outside the hotel, outside the city even.

“What is it?” a woman’s voice said after a while.

“Fuyita,” he said.

The woman opened the door just a crack. Junior thought that maybe Fuyita was not a man. “Fuyita Coke, the Japanese Dame.”

“You’re Fuyita,” he said.

The woman laughed.

“Language kills,” he quoted blindly. The woman was a pale outline in the room’s semi-darkness.

“Who are you? Did the Deaf Girl send you?” she murmured. Then she raised her voice: “Say, why don’t you go to hell? Who in the world are you?” There was a brief hesitation, a deep breath. “He’s not here.”

“Calm down,” Junior said. “My name is Junior.”

“Who?” she said.

“Junior,” Junior said, pushing at the door. It opened gently, without any resistance from the woman.

“Asshole,” she said. “Get out of here, you son of a bitch.”

She spoke in a low voice, as if she were shouting in a dream.

The room was dimly lit and the air smelled of camphor and alcohol and cheap perfume. The woman headed back toward the bed. Junior followed her slowly, trying not to lose track of her in the thick shadows cast by the furniture.

“You better not touch me or I’ll scream,” she said. “If you touch me I’ll scream.”

He finally became accustomed to the greenish light in the room and was able to see her face. She had been a blond, she had been hit, her lips were swollen, her mouth cracked, her skin full of welts. She wore a shirt that barely covered her breasts and a man’s pair of shoes without shoelaces.

“Why did he hit you?” he asked.

The woman dragged her feet as she walked. She sat down on the bed and rested her elbows on her knees absentmindedly.

“And who are you?” she asked.

“I’m going to help you.”

“Yeah, sure,” she said. “Did Fuyita send you? Are you Japanese? Come here, let me see.”

She lit a cigarette lighter. The flame illuminated the mirror on the dresser.

“I came to see him,” Junior said. “He told me to meet him here.”

“He left. He’s not coming back. Poor guy.” She started crying without making any noise. Then she leaned down and looked around for her bottle of gin. She was not wearing anything other than the shirt and you could see her breasts, she did not try to cover herself up. “Shit,” she said, tilting the empty bottle. “He can die for all I care.” She made an effort to smile. “Be good and go buy me some more.”

“In a moment. First we’ll talk, then I’ll go and get you some gin. Turn on a light—”

“No,” she cut him short. “What for? Keep it as it is. Give me a cigarette.”

Junior handed her the pack. She opened it avidly and started smoking.

“Tell me if he isn’t rotten? He took my clothes so I wouldn’t go out. What did he think? That I was going to run after him?”

“He left,” Junior said. “He put your clothes in a suitcase and left. Fuyita Coke. Do you want some?”

“I don’t do coke,” she said. “It’s been years. Do you come from La Plata? Are you a narc? It’s Deaf Girl’s fault, she’s a mare, a drug addict. I’m sure he’s with her.” She leaned forward to speak to him in a low voice. Up close her face looked as if it were made of glass. “He wants to leave me for that shrew. Leave me for that bitch.” She stood up and started moving around the room. “After I. . do you know what I did for him, what I did for that man?” She stopped to one side, in front of the chair where he had sat down. “If you could see what’s become of me,” she said, and lifted her shirt to show him her legs, and brought her feet — in the rubber-soled shoes — together. “Don’t you see? I danced in the Club Maipo, I did. I’d come down completely naked, wearing feathers. Ms. Joyce. It means happiness. I sang in English. What does she think, that nobody? I’ve been lead dancer since I was sixteen and now that bitch comes and takes him from me.” Junior figured that the woman was going to start crying. “He decided to send me to Entre Ríos, can you understand that? He says that I’m too stifled here. But do you understand what he wants to do to me, that he wants to bury me alive?” Desperation made her move in place and breathe heavily. “What would I do if he sent me to Entre Ríos? What would I do there, answer me that?”

“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.