Iosi Havilio - Paradises

From Open Door she moved to a place near La Plata, the name of which she can’t remember; she was there for a few months staying with a boy she met in a bar. Half musician, total dope-head. Until she found out that the guy took part in Umbanda rites. He was a real nutjob. She kept wandering, a long summer in Misiones, a season in Uruguay, too quiet for her, and finally she ended up in Buenos Aires. Lots of nightlife, lots of weirdos. I hooked up with a thousand guys, she says. I smile. What didn’t she do. She repeats twice: What didn’t I do. She worked at just about anything I could imagine: bars, restaurants, telephonist, a motorbike place, a service station, even as a hostess in a high-class brothel. Only a hostess. Legs, you know it? Then she spent about six months working as a promoter for a mobile-phone company in Liniers, a bunch of sharks. And she began sleeping with a forty-something photographer, a cool guy who got her work at events. Parties, presentations, stupid little things. She met Axel at a wedding, she was waitressing, tray-carrying, as she calls it, and started telling him how pissed she was. Then, hearing his name, Axel raises his eyes from the screen for the first time and nods twice in confirmation. He has a strange face, a false square, his eyes not entirely in line, the nose reddish, scaly, covered in blackheads, the mouth large, dry lips. Seeing them together, their features, the clothes they wear, their way of talking or staying quiet, it’s hard to think of two more different people. At first glance, it seems as though a kind of mutual pity must have brought them together.

The Fernet and chips force Eloísa to take a pause but she immediately picks up where she left off. She talks to me about the neighbourhood, my neighbourhood, which she knows well through a very good friend who has a second-hand-clothes shop. I’m distracted by an Uuuhhhh coming from a nearby table. Two old men sitting next to each other, drinking some kind of aperitif with soda, have started pulling at the remote control. The television is right above us on a high wall mount. It’s showing a football match and one of them clearly wants to change channels, the other resists but ends up giving in. Now the screen shows a ship sinking at sea, a group of helicopters hovering over it like flies.

ECOLOGICAL DISASTER

300 TONNES OF CRUDE OIL IN

THE PERSIAN GULF

Eloísa goes to the toilet. I’m left alone with Axel who, without letting go of the phone, pressing keys blindly with his thumb, suddenly smiles at me, but says nothing. Since he doesn’t sustain eye contact, I focus on a large, recently squeezed spot that’s perfectly equidistant between his brows, a third eye. A fine scab is forming at the edges, the still fresh blood coagulating in the centre. The slight difference in skin tone between that area and the rest of his forehead makes me suspect he is wearing some kind of make-up. I’m not sure.

I take advantage of the interlude to look around me. The thing that grabs my attention most is the cabaret-style bar with gold studs, dark wood, the deep-red cushioned edging making you want to sink an elbow into it. The drinking-den effect is continued with a row of burgundy-coloured stools and the bottles multiplied by the mirrored walls behind the counter, liqueurs, wines, whiskies, grenadine. Further along, built into the wall, there’s a grill, as large as a double bed. From a distance, I can make out a couple of chickens and a piece of steak, that’s all. A grill of that size must have functioned to its full potential at some point, or perhaps not, it could be a project that failed in the attempt. Even more disconcerting is an arrangement of vines, garlands and pineapples, somewhere between Caribbean and Amazonian, swinging above the bar. Another jungle.

So, how’s the city treating you? Axel is speaking, he surprises me. I turn to look at him at the same time as he discards his phone on the table, opening and closing his hands as if the muscles have cramped from so much tapping. Yeah, I say, it’s fine. And the zoo? It must be something spending all day there, isn’t it? Like a film. Yes, just like a film. He wants me to tell him an anecdote about animals, but everything that comes to mind involves humans, Iris in the jungle, Canetti deliberately turning to shit, Yessica and her fake tits. I invent something about a goose that tried to escape and was caught crossing the road. Axel laughs loudly, grunting like a pig, a piece of burger in his mouth.

Meanwhile, a man with no legs enters the bar, travelling on a kind of skateboard, but square, like a mobile platform. He’s wearing glasses with green lenses, like jam-jar bottoms; rather than seeing better it’s as though he doesn’t want to see at all. He stretches out his hand. He passes us and Axel pulls a face of repulsion, he clenches his fists as if he were in pain too, it’s unclear why, whether it’s the legs, the misery or the stumps. Something is torturing him. In his hurry to get rid of the poor fellow, Axel puts his hand in his trouser pocket and instead of taking out what he was looking for, he spills a load of coins on the floor, some notes too. The cripple devotes himself to collecting it all, moving with amazing dexterity; Axel makes as if to bend down but aborts the movement halfway. Perturbed, he plugs his mouth with bread, chewing as best he can, jaws full, and refuses energetically when the man gestures to hand back everything that fell. He tells him with signs to take it all, that he wants nothing more than for him to get out of his sight quickly. The process leaves Axel exhausted and sweating, fists clenched on the table, not even craving his mobile. I’ll be right back, I’m going to buy cigarettes, he says, and flees.

Eloísa takes advantage of Axel’s absence to tell me about him. He’s really quite alone, she says, confirming my intuition about how the couple got together. It’s highly likely that Axel would say the same about her. Pity for pity’s sake, that sounds about right, after everything. You have no idea of the money they have, not a clue, she continues. Axel’s parents live in Miami, they left after a kidnap attempt on his sister. Eloísa saw her once: An aberration. Axel wanted to stay because of his girlfriend, Débora, another moron. The boy handles the family’s money, but as for doing, he does nothing. Did I tell you they own a jeweller’s? They’re shit-deep in money but really stingy. Stingy, I repeat, surprised to hear Eloísa use that word. Stingy, she repeats: Tight-fisted, penny-pinching, miserly. And she continues: As you can see, he’s a real druggy. I’ve seen him out of it hundreds of times, practically dead. But I love him — pah, I don’t know if I love him; I like him and we have fun. I live at the back of the house, we see each other when we want to and when we don’t, we don’t. Seeing him return, Eloísa pretends not to notice and says in a whisper, as if it were another confidence: Can you imagine what Miami must be like?

They drop me at the door of the building. Eloísa asks me what my work schedule is like. She says she’ll drop by some day so we can go for a beer. She notes down her mobile number for me again, on a piece of paper this time. Before saying goodbye, she takes out a half-smoked joint and hands it to me. A little present. Getting back into the car she sticks her head out of the window again. Axel says goodbye too, with two short, sharp beeps. They disappear and I’m left like an idiot holding the door with my ankle so it doesn’t shut on me. I think about everything we said, everything we didn’t, I think about the past, everything that is no longer and never will be again, I think about how each of us had to devise our truth in relation to the other, a comparison of before and after. And that’s the reason for all the affectations, the smiles, the embarrassment, the surprise, the And you? This is mad, and I promise. All those words.