Ricardo Piglia: The Absent City

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“Another thing about the country,” Junior said, “are the locusts. Short-horned grasshoppers. You have to make noise so they won’t land, horns, shots, my father would even blow the siren on the boat. Or else with smoke, burn the cane thickets, the dry grass. That’s why I like the city — no locusts. Just mosquitoes and cats.”

The woman left the armoire open and walked toward the center of the room with the bottle of perfume pressed against her stomach. She moved slowly and looked at Junior with a suspicious expression on her face.

“And why was it that you wanted to see him?”

“I have something to ask him.”

“He told you to meet him here? If you want to see him, why don’t you go look for him at the Museum? Tell me, you wouldn’t be a friend of Fat-Man Saurio’s?”

“Calm down, shhh. .,” Junior said. “Silence in the night. Fuyita asked me to come here. Now. . if you say that he’s in the Museum.”

“Me?” The woman started to laugh nervously. “What did I say, kid?” She lifted the bottle of perfume and took another drink. Then she put a few drops on her fingertips and patted herself behind the ears. Junior could smell the perfume’s mild fragrance mixed with the closed-in smell of the room.

“Maybe he’s in the Museum, maybe he’s not. If you’re such good friends with Fat-Man Saurio, you must know something. Why don’t you have him tell you about Deaf Girl.” She started to laugh again, as if she were coughing. “Tell me the truth, is he with her or not?”

She had started to cry and could not stop. She pressed her closed fists against her eyes. Junior felt sorry for the woman and asked her not to cry.

“How can you ask me not to cry, do you want to tell me that? With what he’s done to me!”

“Here, take this,” he said, and handed her a handkerchief. “Calm down, don’t cry. Where are you from?”

“From here, I’ve always lived in the hotel, I’m the girl from the Majestic. But I come from far away, from the interior of the country, from the south. From Río Negro. Look, I stained it all,” she said, and tried to fold the handkerchief, smiling. “Do you think it’ll show?” She was touching her bruises with her fingertips.

“No,” he said. “No. But why don’t you clean yourself up a little. Come here, let me see.”

He moistened the handkerchief with the eau de cologne and cleaned her bruised face, which she allowed him to do with her eyes closed.

“That’s enough,” she said. “That’s enough. Hold on, let me turn on a light.” She went up to a lamp with a pleated ruffle lampshade. It gave off a bluish light when she switched it on. Then she looked at herself in the mirror. “Mother of God, I look like a monster.” She began to fix her hair. She looked at one of her legs. “Anyway, I’m full of wounds and it doesn’t hurt, I don’t feel much, see?” She lifted her shirt and showed him the scars. “This was done by a motorcycle, this by a dog that bit me, here I sort of ran into a wall, I didn’t see it. But it doesn’t hurt. Most complain about every little bruise. I’ve been knocked around by that brute. People are afraid of pain, but not me, right now I don’t feel it at all. It has to do with endorphins.”

“With what?” Junior asked.

“ Endorphins . It’s scientific, kid, they explained it to me at the clinic. It’s a natural sedative made by the body. If you do heroin, the body quits making endorphins. Just stops. That’s why when you quit everything hurts, because you don’t have enough endorphins. In my case, I think it made too much and things don’t hurt like they should. That’s why I drink, anyway. Alcohol. Out in the province there’s a lot of heroin, in the country, in the valley, everyone can get it, they carry it on the sulkies, the Italian farmers hide it in their boots.”

“Do you have any now?”

“Never. I don’t buy it, I left that shit behind. When you’re on horse you don’t feel anything. Anyway, your body changes — you don’t shower for a week but you don’t stink because you don’t secrete anything. You don’t cry, you don’t pee, you don’t feel cold or hot, you barely eat. You can be a heroin addict your whole life, they know that you don’t die from it, unless it’s of very poor quality, the worst of the worst, which would poison you. But you have to be a millionaire to afford pure heroin. And one thing’s for sure: the day you skip a dose, the withdrawal symptoms kill you.”

“You can’t quit.”

“What do you mean you can’t quit? You’re crazy. You have to go somewhere where there isn’t any, where you can’t get it even if you’re dying. I left the small town, where they sell it even in kiosks, and came to the capital, and locked myself in a bathroom for three days. When you quit heroin everything is reversed. You sweat a lot, I was always all sweaty, they’d lift me from the tiles and I’d be totally wet. It’s terrible, because you’re supernervous and lethargic at the same time. Besides, you cry over anything. I’d look at an ashtray and cry. I started drinking then. At first, I remember, I drank Ocho Hermanos Anisette.”

“It’s better.”

“It’s the same shit. In order not to be an alcoholic you have to avoid drinking by yourself. Now I wake up in the middle of the night, drink a little bit of gin and go back to sleep.”

Junior looked at the woman, who was touching up her face. Her skin was taut and shiny as if it were made out of metal.

“Come here,” he said. “I want you to look at this picture.”

It was a snapshot of a young woman wearing a plaid skirt and a black turtleneck sweater.

“And who is this?” she said, grabbing the picture with both hands.

“Have you ever seen her?”

The woman shook her head no.

“Did they take her away?”

“She died,” he said.

“Who did her in? Fuyita?”

“Do you think he did it?”

“Me? Are you crazy, kid? I don’t know anything.” She leaned over on the bed and started filing her nails. “Don’t pay any attention to me. You better watch out, too, because I’m half-crazy. And who knows this little cutie, anyway?” She raised her face. “Deaf Girl is always running around with women. Have you been to the Museum yet? There’s a machine, do you know or not? There’s something very strange in all of that.”

“Nyet.”

“Everything is scientific. Nothing evil. I met a Russian guy once who had invented a metal bird that could predict rain. This is the same. Pure science, no religion.”

“No,” Junior said. “Is the machine a woman?”

“She used to be a woman.”

“They locked her up.”

“She was in a clinic for a year. Don’t tell him I told you because he’ll kill you, Fuyita will. Don’t let him know you came here. He’s jealous as a snake.”

“In the country I used to kill them with a pitchfork. Like this,” Junior said, and made the motion of stabbing something on the floor. “The small snakes. Is your name Elena?”

“Not mine, hers. I’m Lucia. I used to live in Uruguay, I sang in the Club Sodre, that should tell you everything. That’s where I first saw her, they used to display her in a dance hall behind glass. She was full of tubes and cables. All white.”

“Is she in the Museum?”

“Yes. Fuyita fell in love with the machine, and I’ve lost him, I know it. She lives in the Museum. He thinks that in Entre Ríos I’m not going to find out, but they know about her everywhere in the country. He always loved me, he did. He gets angry because he’s desperate.”

Through the window could be heard the soft echo of a song that was lost in the rumble of the city.

“ You and I , who loved each other so much,” Lucia sang. “ We must go our separate ways. . you and I.”