Iosi Havilio - Paradises

On the way out of the restaurant, Iris wants to walk me to my building. I pick Simón up when he starts dozing off after ten steps. We take it in turns to carry him, one block each. On the way, at corners, in front of bars, in the square where the nativity scene was, people are getting together, beeping horns, two men are shouting from one car to another, their heads sticking out. Come here and say that to my face, arsehole, shouts one who is driving in a Father Christmas costume. The other replies by threatening him with a fist. The light turns to green and they both shoot off at the same time. I can’t work out whether they were genuine insults.

Three blocks further on we cross the avenue and turn down a passageway the celebrations haven’t reached. No noise, no shouts, no firecrackers. Because Iris can barely stand, it’s me who ends up carrying Simón most of the way, and if at first it feels like he’ll break my back, I adapt as we go and that annoying kick between the ribs becomes just another part of my body. Like everything, once the novelty has passed, things stop hurting or making you happy.

At one point, Iris stops short, using a tree trunk to prop herself up, she doubles over, mouth open, as if she’s going to vomit but she doesn’t. She takes a deep breath, rearranges herself and as she starts walking says: She won’t be able to look after him any more. She says it like that, in the third person, as if she were talking about someone else. Five disconcerting seconds before she explains. She’s been offered shifts at the zoo, manning the cash desk for the sea-lion show in the afternoons. I won’t be able to look after the boy any more, she says and stumbles on a broken paving stone. She looks at me askance, gauging my reaction. She’s going to work ten- or eleven-hour shifts, depending on the day. It seems like a lot to me, but I say nothing, all the same she justifies herself. She says she wants to buy a plane ticket so her father can come and visit her. She makes some calculations, babbling figures: in five months she’ll have enough to pay for the trip. I tell her I think it’s really great, not to worry. The thing is that from the second of January, I won’t be able to count on her any more. I’m sorry, she says, and starts crying all of a sudden, like a child, not because of this, of course, but because of so many other things I couldn’t even begin to suspect. With Simón on my back, I can’t hug her as I would have liked to. I pat her on the back, she leans her head against my free shoulder and the tears fall harder.

The building’s entrance is occupied by merrymakers. Iris stays at the fringes, she wants nothing to do with it. I tell her to wait for me a moment, I’ll take Simón to bed and walk with her for a few blocks. She shakes her head: No, no, no, she says, I’m fine. I insist: I’ll be back in a minute. Entering el Buti, there’s a commotion in the corridor, I push my way through carrying Simón. Tosca’s door is open, I try to pass undetected but if she can’t see me, she can smell me. Come in, girl, she murmurs. I’m about to feign deafness but somehow I can’t and I go back. I lean in, wave with my free hand and show her Simón sleeping on my back. Put him to bed here, come and drink a toast, girl, she insists. Later, later, I promise. On the staircase I bump into some familiar faces, we exchange silent greetings, without stopping. Canetti too, who invites me into his flat for a drink. I’ve got chilled cider, he says quietly, so as not to wake Simón. I tell him maybe later.

When I finally put Simón to bed and open the window to let in a little air, I remember Iris. I go downstairs quickly, dodging bodies. I walk to the corner, nothing, not a trace. I wait for a while in case she comes back, unable to decide whether to follow her steps back to the Fénix. In the end, neither happens. Back in el Buti, I linger at Tosca’s; she’s very animated, with a bottle of spumante on the desk. She pours me some, we clink glasses: You think I’ll make it to the end of the year, girl? Let’s bet on it. And Benito? I ask. He’s with his father’s family, that’s how it is every Christmas. It’s going to be a struggle to get out of here, she doesn’t want to be left alone. To keep me there she constantly refills my glass with that delicious wine. A touch more? And she talks ceaselessly. She also sings opera arias, a trio of tarantellas and the Italian national anthem.

I won’t be able to sleep with the unstoppable racket in and outside the building, the cumbia music, the shouts, the explosions. I think about Iris, about her extremely pale face like an old-fashioned porcelain doll’s, about her eyes always full of amazement, about her fortitude and fragility, about how if Jaime hadn’t died, if what happened with the house hadn’t happened, if we hadn’t arrived on the day of the floods, if we’d been accepted at the first hotel we tried, I would never have met her — it makes no sense. The idea saddens me. The alcohol is getting the better of me too. If it hadn’t been for Simón in my arms, instead of consoling Iris with those cold pats on the back, I’d have given her a real embrace. And a kiss. It would have been the most natural thing to do.

The twenty-fifth dawns with a tremendous hangover. The stairs of el Buti smell of vomit and urine or, at best, of spilt alcohol. The events of the previous night flood back to me with the rhythm of an unpleasant reflux, a mixture of food, white wine and that bad champagne. And with each retch, as if I were also bringing up leftovers of memory dissolved in the body, Iris’s face appears to me, her sudden mood swings, from ecstasy to tears and back to her cackle, her stories, the parade of dishes I’d like to erase from my mind, the fried frogs, the roulades, the cubes of jelly that wouldn’t stop wobbling, as well as the party on the street — these were all the images that had stolen into my dreams.

My head hurts so much that my only relief comes from complete immobility; I barely change position, even millimetres make it explode. I stay like that, face up, watching a corner of the ceiling where there’s a bend in the pipe that leads nowhere. It takes me a few minutes to make out two large beetles camouflaged by the grease covering this iron elbow, one on either side of it. They must be between four and five centimetres long. They are so still that anyone would think they were drawn on. It’s a strategy, as if they are studying their next step. Just as I’m starting to think they’re not going to move at all, at least not until I stop watching them, one of the two, male, female, impossible to tell, takes the initiative and begins to turn in circles like a dog chasing its tail. But it goes beyond that, it makes a decision and flies over the pipe to join its lookalike, as if to surprise it. But no, it was waiting. Each knew about the other, they scented each other, one supposes. They play, hyperkinetically, their legs clash until they freeze once more, this time both on the same side but facing in opposite directions. I can no longer tell which is the adventurer. All I know is that while one keeps moving its antennae, the other plays dead. Simón sleeps until half eleven.

My nursing duties aren’t suspended in spite of the holiday, but the timing is a bit more relaxed today. Tosca is in a bad mood, she regrets having had a drink. I’m stupid, she says but she doesn’t look that bad, she just likes complaining. She offers me a piece of sweet bread that falls apart on the way to my mouth. As I prepare the syringe, Benito, standing in front of the television, releases a seguidilla of farts. It’s not the first time he’s done it, nor does it particularly annoy me, but today, because it’s just occurred to him, or could it be that he’s beginning to trust me, instead of hiding them as he usually does, he amplifies them, duplicating them with his mouth in a counterpoint that’s as funny as it is repugnant. At the third or fourth fart, which is actually between six and eight, if you count the echo, Tosca, who didn’t even appear to notice, lets out a shout that makes everything shake: Benitoooo! But he pays no attention, and she doesn’t seem too bothered, it was just a shout, the necessary closure for the series of double farts.