Iosi Havilio - Paradises

For a while the party is left without music. Eloísa replaces the boy at the bar but no one wants anything any more. I sink between cushions, drunk like never before, wanting to disappear. I close my eyes and fall into a spiral that spins with exasperating slowness. Yet I’m very much here, alert. I catch distant phrases with incredible clarity. Speculation about who it was that kicked Débora; lots of people name Andy, who was really out of it. Slowly, timidly at first, gradually more decisively, the DJ starts playing music again in order to move past the incident. Background music that carries on until the end at a medium volume that discourages dancing. Eloísa wakes me up with a slap on the leg and takes me by the hand to the garden with a bottle of beer. I want to leave but confusion keeps me. Near the pool there’s a group of bodies doing I can’t tell what. We move away from the party for good and settle in the deckchairs at the barbecue area without saying anything else, faces to a sky full of weak stars.

I wake up I don’t know how much later with a stitch that twists my stomach. A device, a robot, something that sneaks into my dream and as the minutes pass becomes too real, unbearable. Something lodged in my gut, a giant parasite. Tic tac tic tac. In passing from sleep to this partial vigilance, I fantasise that I’m going to live with this thing beating inside me forever. Perhaps vomiting will relieve me. I have to try. Eloísa is still in the deckchair next to me. She’s sleeping with one hand on her forehead and her mouth half open. Fighting the migraine that suddenly erupts, I measure the steps separating me from the basin next to the grill. I stand up in three slow movements, extremely slow, and walk along the brick path but I don’t reach my destination, I stop at the foot of an outdoor shower. I barely lean over, the retches come out by themselves until I’ve released everything, like a saturated sanitary towel. Just like the night before Jaime’s wake. Unstoppable vomit. I try to aim for the grating but that’s worse, I soil my skirt. I grab tightly on to the shower pipe, trembling with cold despite the heat. I breathe deeply, consciously, and gradually start to revive. I turn on the tap and the cold water on my face, in my eyes, running down my throat, completes the resurrection. I have no strength to change, I carry my clothes rolled into a ball, like a stolen baby.

My journey home is eternal. Three quarters of an hour at the bus stop without being able to make the decision to walk. I arrive at daybreak, the sun filtering through the holes of the city. Torture. At the entrance to the building, my medallion belt gets caught on a bolt and I’m stuck for a while unable to unhook myself. I climb the stairs in slow motion. From the landing on the second floor I can make out Mercedes with a cigarette in his mouth next to the door of our flat. I pause in search of an explanation, but since I can’t find one, I keep climbing. He sees me, and when I’m close he throws me a nod, raising his chin. Like a priest, a mafioso. Sonia also welcomes me with a hard gesture, of concern or reprimand. I raise my eyebrows to find out what’s going on and she steps aside. The first thing I see is Herbert standing squeezing his chin with a frightened expression and then Simón, lying naked, his forehead covered with a damp cloth, body like a leaf. Sonia speaks quietly behind me, warming my ears: His temperature’s soaring.

It takes a moment for the penny to drop. The scene is disconcerting: Simón is on his back, shivering; Mercedes is smoking by the door; another woman is spying from the shadows; Sonia is scaring me; Herbert is pale, back against the wall. Everything is spinning, inside and outside too, the wardrobe, the faces, the bucket, the light bulb hanging from the ceiling which blinds me for an instant whenever I look at it. Blind, stupid, lost. Finally I react and kneel down. I take Simón’s hands, cold and clammy, I say: Simón, Simón. I remove the damp cloth, I kiss his eyes, his forehead, he’s boiling. I pick up the sheet, wrinkled at his feet and I’m about to cover him but Sonia steps forward and shakes her head from above. Best not, she says.

I look at her with annoyance, as if she were guilty of something. I can’t stand the fact that she’s giving me instructions. I can’t stand myself, dirty, worn out, mouth like a swamp. Impossible to disguise the stink of alcohol on me. I’d like to go back in time. Sonia tries to make Simón drink some water. I’m grateful for her good intentions, her care, I regret having given her a dirty look. I gradually find out what happened. Herbert says Simón woke in the middle of the night crying like a baby. Having nightmares. And because he felt so hot, he was concerned and went up to call Sonia. When the two of them returned, Simón was shivering and had vomited on the pillow. Sonia immediately realised he had a high fever and undressed him, changed the drenched sheets and opened the windows to allow the air to flow. Simón vomited again twice, the last time just a thick, white paste. That’s what Sonia tells me, she’s kept a bit on a cloth to show me. She also says she thought about making him a herbal tea to calm the pain, sure that he had an upset stomach, but she preferred not to do anything. Herbert brought a thermometer from their place and they took his temperature. He was as high as forty, they wrapped him in wet towels and brought him down to thirty-eight. They also gave him half a teaspoon of Novalgin. I’m about to ask why they didn’t call me to let me know, but I stop myself in time, I didn’t leave them the number of the mobile I didn’t even have with me. I’d prefer not to know whether they tried to find me. I venture a hypothesis: It could be the heat, sunstroke. Sonia insists: I think it’s a stomach upset, we can make a herbal tea from burro or common rue, it won’t do him any harm, at worst he’ll just throw it up. I look at her in silence, unconvinced. For the time that follows, a long time full of doubts and suppositions, I stay by Simón’s side, without touching him so as not to make him hotter. Dozing, at times he half opens his eyes and looks at me from his feverish sleep, silent, interrogating me: What is happening to me, what is this thing that’s coursing through my body, this new thing I’ve never felt? It’s the first time I’ve seen him really sick; until now he’s only ever had coughs, colds and scrapes, never anything serious.

We need to bring his fever down, says Sonia, then we’ll see, and she passes the damp cloth for me to cover his forehead again. In contact with the cold fabric, Simón shudders, tenses his muscles and my head fills with dark thoughts. The minutes pass, the thermometer shows 39.3, the vomiting starts again. More cloths, more towels, more water, and when there finally seems to be an improvement, Simón starts to shake uncontrollably on the bed, showing the whites of his eyes, demonic. Sonia shouts at me: Put him on his side. And when I don’t react, she pushes me away and does it herself.

The convulsions pass, we calm down a bit, I decide to take him to a hospital. Agitated, upset, Sonia starts pacing the room until I see her bend down in a corner and hear her say as if enlightened: That’s it. She comes over to me and shows me the little ochre ball she’s holding between her index finger and thumb. He must have swallowed a poison bead, she says with the excitement of someone revealing an enigma. Ask him, she orders, as if it has to be translated into another language. I don’t really understand what she’s talking about, I try all the same but Simón is gone, in another reality. I insist a couple of times and finally he nods his head. Yes, he ate one of those little balls which I now see are scattered around the bedroom floor like old, unexploded ammunition. Sonia says we need to find out how many he put in his mouth. She asks Herbert. It certainly wasn’t with me, perhaps it was before I arrived, he says and looks at me. I can’t remember having seen anything either. Sonia suggests I consult a healer, she doesn’t call her a healer, but a woman who knows how to cure this kind of thing. I’d prefer to go to hospital.