Iosi Havilio - Paradises

We get to the buffet restaurant at around half nine. The place is already full. Two or three large families, several couples alone and a group of young boys whose features, gestures and tans betray them as foreigners — Australians or North Americans. They are the quietest at the start of the night, the most uninhibited by the end. We sit by the window, a bit of a squeeze, but it’s fine. The tables are decorated with streamers, paper serviettes with Christmas motifs, rubber mistletoe and a tiny tree that keeps falling over. For the duration of the meal, Iris or I will keep trying to stabilise the little tree by propping it up in every way possible, using breadcrumbs as a base, spearing it to the tablecloth with toothpicks, wedging it between two glasses. Later on, as the alcohol takes effect, the toppling or perhaps just twisted pine becomes a source of amusement rather than annoyance. We see who can keep it standing for longest until Iris comes up with the ultimate solution: sticking it to the table with a bit of gum which she chews rapidly between courses.

The food is arranged in two large display counters facing each other. On one side, all the hot food, on the other, the cold cuts and salads and, a bit further along, the desserts. The abundance, the shape of certain items and the colour of some of the sauces is amazing at times, even repulsive. There’s lamb, rabbit’s foot, frogs, squid rings, octopus tentacles, all kinds of schnitzels, an obscene amount of chips. I wonder where they got the frogs, whether they have a breeding tank out back. I eat with relish, like never before. Steaks, a colourful cabbage salad, whitebait and a cheese roulade, palm hearts and olives. I help myself to seconds as if I had been fasting for a week. Iris is more daring: without hesitating she fills her plate with half a dozen frogs, piled in a pyramid. Simón, on the other hand, doesn’t want to experiment at all, he limits himself to some cheese and ham empanadas and, three times, makes me bring him a stainless steel dish of red jelly cubes. We drink white wine; Iris takes it upon herself to order one bottle after another.

Without saying much, we devote ourselves to chewing, to joking about the decorations, laughing at people, that’s how our Christmas Eve unfolds. When we can’t go on, Iris releases a burp which Simón laughs at and attempts to imitate. A very young waitress in leggings that reveal the line of her arse and the folds of a camel-toe — May as well be naked, Iris says — collects our empty dishes, a mountain of bones and cartilage.

We start chatting about people from the zoo. We criticise almost everyone, we share gossip, we list physical defects, as work colleagues tend to do when others aren’t there. I talk about the few I know, Yessica, Esteban, the polar-bear keeper, the old woman in the office and the guy from human resources. He’s a troglodyte, says Iris and I can’t believe she uses the word troglodyte, I don’t know where she can have learnt it and even less how she manages to pronounce it. We also mention Canetti, she gets to her feet to imitate him, lame and stooped, mouth twisted, just like Quasimodo.

Iris is out of control, almost euphoric. She takes a breath and hurries to empty her glass; she has another anecdote, something she’s never told me. On her second day of work she almost died. That’s what she says: I almost died. It seems that a woman, a fat lady, she explains and mimics her by spreading out her arms, got her footing wrong as she was crossing the hanging walkway in the subtropical rainforest; she broke a plank in two and got her leg stuck between the wires. In mid-air, she says, and continues describing the scene, which provokes one of her distinctive cackles, shaking the table and beyond. Iris recomposes herself and tells me how she almost had a fit, the plump lady swearing from on high and herself unable to move for laughing. I thought they’d throw me out right then and there, she says. I’ve never been in the famous rainforest, I’ve only seen the building from a distance, so I have to imagine the situation from Iris’s descriptions. The vines, the tarantulas, the recorded monkey shrieks and a woman trapped in the middle of this artificial jungle. And of course, I can’t help laughing along with her. Apparently, because of the risk of the bridge collapsing, they had to bring in a stepladder to rescue her. When they finally got her down, Iris disappeared, she hid in the bathroom until everyone left.

Midnight arrives. The countdown begins at the tables to either side, there are arguments over who has the exact time, one taps the glass of his wristwatch with an index finger, another shakes his mobile as if it were a rattle. The waiters, some Chinese, some of Hispanic descent, hand out plastic flutes among the tables. You can see the chips in them; they aren’t new, they’ve been used for some other celebration, last Christmas or a birthday party. We make a toast. Iris and I with our extremely light glasses, Simón with his fist clenched. But I can’t drink much, the champagne is acidic, like old-fashioned cough syrup. Either it’s really bad or I’m just not used to drinking and it’s a matter of taste.

Surprise, says Iris and takes a bag containing two packages out from beneath her chair. One long and curved, for Simón, the other small and narrow, for me. We unwrap them at the same time: for me, a fan with dragons on it, for Simón, amazed, the samurai sword from the Chinese shop. Thanks, I say, and it’s inevitable that I feel inadequate. It didn’t occur to me to buy any presents, not that anyone is going to reproach me for it.

After the toast, there’s a commotion. People are abandoning their tables and congregating by the entrance, some out of anxiety, others just following the crowd. The door becomes a bottleneck. Although my plan is to stay where I am and watch through the window, Iris and Simón force me to get up. The fireworks, Iris chides me. Sure enough, the restaurant staff have prepared a small fireworks display that puts a silly smile on every face.

Once the excitement is over, after the arsenal of rockets brought out by one of the Chinese men, the eldest, who spent all night behind the till, everyone apart from the teenagers and the foreigners sits down again. Simón stays outside, on the window sill, back leaning against the glass, legs dangling. Another bottle of white wine and I’m not sure whether it’s the second or the third. In her drunkenness, Iris passes from euphoria to melancholy in minutes. First she tells me she met a man online. A systems analyst. A strange guy, solitary type, with a moustache. They saw each other once, they went to the cinema, then to a motel, says Iris and in her mouth the word motel sounds deep and serious, like a mythological character. When they were in the room she asked him to take a shower and the guy slipped getting out of the bath and split his septum on the towel rail. He spent the rest of the night with a piece of toilet paper stuck in his nose to stop it bleeding. They slept together that once and never called each other again. Then her tone changes and she returns to telling me more details about the story I heard the first day, how she met Draco, what a great time they had over there in spite of everything, how he convinced her to come here, how difficult it was at the start, the uncle and the tyre business, the way he was gripped by racehorse madness, the fights and the separation. The whole time, it looks as though she’s going to cry but she never cries, it’s deeper than that; at times the sadness turns to hate and she looks like she’s on the verge of throwing a chair across the room. Until the calm arrives and it’s all held back in her watery eyes.

Ok, I say before she loses it, it’s an old story, it’s in the past. My words must have some effect because she proposes another toast. We drink. Iris is pensive, gazing outside, with the whistle of the last rockets in the background. And what about you, she throws at me suddenly, coming off her cloud, do you fancy anyone? I shake my head and smile; she does too, as if saying she doesn’t believe me at all.