Iosi Havilio - Paradises

We spend a long time chatting about everything and nothing. Actually it’s she who talks, I listen and enjoy myself: a television programme she watches every afternoon, where couples argue live on air, the trips she’d like to make, a spot on her neck that won’t stop oozing pus, her constant horniness, that’s how she puts it, from when she gets up until she goes to bed, and once again, Jaime’s death. How did it happen. Was I sad, did I love him. Did he leave me any cash. I tell her about the accident next to the Camel sign. Yes, I totally remember. I don’t say anything about the eviction, I make up a story about the house being sold and me receiving a part. She insists: Tell me the truth, were you in love? Yes, I say, and her response: I don’t believe you.

Come on, she says to me presently, let’s go and see Axel, he’ll want to say hello. I stand up and follow her, thinking that she told me she was by herself. We pass the dining room, I brush the back of my hand along the edge of the table, glass, marble and gold edging, I fleetingly count a dozen chairs. Before we advance, Eloísa points out some towelling booties, like flat slippers, for me to slide across the parquet. Over the table hangs an enormous crystal spider. We cross the living room in a semi-darkness that suggests an uninhabited house. I can only see outlines, a horseshoe armchair fit for a small crowd, a coffee table with a ball of smoked glass in the centre, the rest, the ornaments, the pictures, the details, escape me. A few lines of light are just managing to defeat the lowered blinds.

Eloísa guides me by the hand to a door on a different level. She opens it without knocking, Axel jumps and almost drops the headset he’s wearing, earphones and microphone in one, but he has quick reflexes and manages to rescue it in time. On the computer screen I can see the face of a girl or a guy, it’s not clear, moving like a spastic doll. Axel blushes, as if we’d surprised him naked. I move closer to greet him and he tries to stand but halfway up he is tugged back by the cable of the earphones, which, out of apathy or because he’s very engrossed in the conversation with the girl or guy, he doesn’t think to remove. The kiss takes place in the air, without contact. Axel covers the microphone with his hand and murmurs: She’s driving me crazy, I don’t know how to get rid of her. Fuck her once and for all, then delete her from the chat room, Eloísa tells him and Axel responds by spitting out a laugh that spatters us both with saliva. A laugh of embarrassment, his own and someone else’s. Axel is one of those people who never makes eye contact for more than a second or two. He gives the impression that if he did, he would immediately come apart. His strength lies in appearing nervous, upset, always somewhere else.

In Axel’s room, everything is the opposite of the rest of the house, neither spacious nor luxurious. He has another room on the first floor, Eloísa will explain to me, the real one, but he never uses it, he moved downstairs because he feels alone up there. He spends all day on the computer, he’s a freak, says Eloísa. As well as the computer — there are actually two of them, one black, the classic kind, another small and portable — there’s a single bed, a television, shelves with books and CDs, some recently bought, never opened, still wrapped in cellophane, various bottles of perfume and a cork board with photos: Axel with friends, Axel and his family, Axel skiing, Axel looking wild against a black background, Axel and a blonde clinking glasses on the deck of a cruise liner. Next to the window hangs a painting: a man in a suit and tie walking a bulldog on a leash, each with a third eye. Like Axel’s everlasting spot. It’s one of Débora’s paintings, I find out later from a magnetic postcard on the fridge door. Scenes of daily life, drivers, bank tellers, families leaving the cinema, street sweepers, all kinds of people, common and clairvoyant. Mystics, that’s what the series is called.

Back in the living room, I bang my knee against the foot of a grand piano camouflaged in the half-light. I can only see it now that Eloísa has switched on a candelabra with seven artificial candles, flickering bulbs that give the illusion of flames. Oh. Shhh, she says, pointing out a mahogany-coloured urn. It’s Axel’s granddad, she says arching her eyebrows, her index finger forming a cross with her lips. We shouldn’t wake him.

Another Fernet and Eloísa takes me to the basement: Come and I’ll show you the bunker. Beneath the garden there’s a tunnel that links the games room and gym with the barbecue area, where Eloísa’s room is. It’s a narrow passageway, all concrete, with fire extinguishers and exposed pipes. About halfway along, Eloísa moves ahead of me, types a code into a keyboard and the wall opens. A secret door. Remember, in case the world ends, she says and whispers: Four three two one, j k l m. A trap for idiots. For five seconds, the time it takes Eloísa to find the switch, all I can see inside is a solid black hole. The neon tubes flicker and light up one by one: an underground house. To one side, there are two rows of truckle beds with pillows and blankets. Between the beds, oxygen tubes with masks hanging by the mouth. In the centre, a folding table, a mini library, a small television and a sofa bed. The kitchen looks new: electric oven, extractor fan, a washing machine and a power generator. Look at everything his parents keep down here, says Eloísa as she opens the larder, they’re totally bonkers. Tins of sardines, soups, pre-cooked meats, dehydrated chocolates. Eloísa grabs a vacuum pack of peanuts. Before we leave, she leads me to the bathroom, which is quite ordinary, except for the shower, a cylindrical cabin with a mixer tap.

We return to the surface and Eloísa explains the underground shelter in her own way: It seems that Axel’s old man has a bee in his bonnet about the war. The granddad, the one in the urn, was in a concentration camp and they went for something like twenty years thinking he was dead. They found out he was alive pretty much by chance, through a bank account or something like that. And since they got it into their heads that the Nazis were coming back to bomb Buenos Aires, utter nonsense, they’ve been really unhinged, says Eloísa, tapping her temple with her index finger. We skirt the barbecue area along a path made of tree-trunk rounds, dodging the pool and the deckchairs. Grill, showers, hammocks, another kitchen and a small room with cane furniture, a reed curtain and a mattress on the floor. Eloísa’s room, just like a beach house. My bed, she says, and flops on her back. More chat, more Fernet and a joint as we watch a programme about couples, the one she told me about a while earlier. Hang on while I have a shower, I’m disgusting, says Eloísa at one point and I think that sooner or later we’re going to kiss again and see each other naked. There are times when it’s all I wish for and then I don’t even want to think about it.

It’s getting on for eight, I think about Simón and Herbert. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I take advantage of Eloísa still being in the bathroom, I gather my strength and decide to leave. I’m going to leave her a note but I can’t find paper or anything to write with. Anyway, she’d never understand me, better to leave like this, without telling her. I jog across the garden, pass quickly through the kitchen to the garage door. Between the cars I realise that I’m trapped. With no keys or buttons in sight, I have no way out. I’d like to disappear, to teleport myself, to never have come. But there’s no way out. I go back inside, perhaps Eloísa is still in the shower, that would simplify things quite a bit. I stick a foot in the kitchen and with a short, sharp Ohh of true fright, Axel raises his arms in shock like a trainee ghost. Sorry, I say, and he juggles so that crisps don’t fall out of the packet onto the floor. No, no, I’m sorry, he says, I was somewhere else. And Elo? he asks. I point out back. I was leaving, will you open up for me? Yes, yes, he says distractedly and passes in front of me, his trousers hanging low with the crack of his arse on show. White and green skin, a vision that reminds me of the slogan of the Evangelical church: Helmet of Salvation , I murmur imperceptibly.