Iosi Havilio - Paradises

I head for the zoo at one, arriving early is a way to compensate for my absence. Yessica looks at me distrustfully, as if she doesn’t believe in Simón’s illness. Yesterday I had to stay till the end, she snaps at me at one point; I ignore her. I bump into Esteban, quite the opposite of Yessica, he’s glad everything’s ok. Come with me, he says, and I follow him to the nursery. He wants to show me the green iguanas that were born a week ago. He tells me about a conservation project for endangered species, about illegal trafficking, also about eggs and gestation periods. His excitement grows. Impossible not to associate the image of those little animals with the faces of the children in hospital.

Canetti comes to look for me and invites me for an ice cream. He’s furious, he rants and raves about half the world. When he’s not overwhelmed by pain, in his back, his legs or head, everything else gets to him. He says they want to screw him over with his holidays. Those ignorant slave drivers don’t know who they’re dealing with. I let him talk without paying much attention until I tell him about the poison beads. He nods several times, as if he already knew: This city is full of those shitty paradises.

I check sixty-nine tickets and stop counting. In the lulls of the afternoon, in the clear light of day, I return to the moments I still remember of Axel’s birthday party, just like that. I confuse, invent, transform many of the faces. I superimpose features and costumes onto one single body, big-headed and colourful. Eloísa almost always appears out of focus, half monstrous.

Yessica makes me pay for my absence and leaves me alone to close up. I come and go along the aisles watched by the snakes who, after an hour, seem to look at me with different eyes. Conspiratorial, yet lying in wait. Before I leave, I take a turn round the nursery. The twenty-odd clumsy beings moving uncoordinatedly seem to lay bare the failures of creation. Like the death rattle of someone in agony. Minimal, spasmodic shakes. Like an organ that ticks out of time, or the opposite, that switches off under orders from the brain. Forceful to begin with, lazy near the end. I stay for a while watching them from the other side of the glass and suddenly a thought occurs to me that doesn’t remain idle for long. The door, which I assume is locked, gives way. I plunge a hand into the incubator and grab a tiny lizard. A baby iguana which I enclose in my fist and sink into my trouser pocket until I reach the zoo exit.

I cross the street and enter the botanic gardens. On a bench at the edge of the path, I take out the iguana, which jumps from my hand and starts to crawl up my arm. I wrap it in a hanky and put it in my rucksack, safe from prying eyes and cats. On the way, I feel slight pangs of regret, but it’s too late, there’s no going back now. I justify myself as best I can. I think of something relating to freedom and captivity, although I end up in a muddle. I simplify things: a present for Simón to help him recover from the fright. I revise what I can remember about iguanas’ diets: leaves, flowers, fruits and some small animals, slugs, spiders, worms, insects in general. They are very good swimmers and almost always walk alone. The adults reach two metres in length. I imagine it in the flat biting its tail, but that’s a long way off. I go for the first option and buy a celery plant, the greengrocer won’t agree to sell me any less than that, as well as a couple of green apples which it will surely like.

On the corner of el Buti, two guys are arguing and shouting, calling each other Coward, Son of a bitch, followed by Wimp and Retard. They are positioned in such a way that they are blocking the entrance and I don’t dare say excuse me. The fight is taking place in an imaginary ring and they come to a truce by the kerb. Only now do I see a badly parked car and a motorbike thrown down on the pavement. I guess the source of the argument without knowing which belongs to whom.

I push open the flat door. Simón is on the bed, covered up to the nose, breathing noisily. By his side, Herbert is staring at him. It was obvious. A relapse, I feel stupid, I shouldn’t have left him alone. Herbert speaks quietly and informs me of what I can already see: He fell asleep, he says. I crouch down and realise it’s just tiredness, the trip to the hospital, the injections, the interminable night. I stroke his forehead, fresh, not a touch of fever.

I pay Herbert for the week and before saying goodbye I wonder whether to share the novelty I’ve brought home. I stay quiet. I don’t know whether the need to hide the iguana stems from a fear that the robbery will be discovered and it will reach the ears of someone at the zoo or because pets aren’t allowed in the building. I close the door properly and unpack the animal, which I hold in my hand for a while, unable to decide where to make a place for it. In the base of the wardrobe I find a flattened shoebox which I reshape by folding up the edges. I make up a mattress with pieces of toilet paper, I place the box between the toilet and the pipe for the bidet that was never installed. I leave the bathroom door ajar and join Simón’s siesta. Sleep sucks me up like a black hole.

We wake at around nine, hungry. So much so that I forget the iguana and the desperation of having nothing to eat sends us out to the street. Friday night, there are already families queuing at the pizzeria on the main road. We sit on the last free bench at the counter. The television is showing a football match which Simón follows as if he’s really interested. Herbert’s influence. Then, as I chew, my brain reproaches me over the iguana. All at once: Esteban’s enthusiasm, the other beasts, its blood brothers, the celery and the apples that are still in my bag. I hurry and encourage Simón not to eat in such a leisurely fashion, at least not today.

My fears are confirmed, the iguana has abandoned the home I proposed for it. I search in the corners, between the sheets, in another box, the one with Simón’s toy cars, under the wardrobe, behind the gas cylinder, through the cracks in the skirting board, I even uselessly check the corridor. It doesn’t occur to me to track it right there, thirty centimetres from its basket, next to the grille at the foot of the toilet. It was semi-abandonment. I pick it up gently and call Simón, who drags his feet, head drooping. I cover the animal with my hand and when I uncover it Simón freezes. He baptises it Uana. I tell him it’s a secret between us two, I show him the little house I made. I chop a piece of apple and a stalk of celery which Simón puts in a bottle lid. We spy on it eating, fascinated, as though in the presence of a being from another planet.

AM OUTSIDE, COMING? Eloísa writes like that, in capital letters, as if shouting to me from the street, at half six on the dot, when I’m already in the changing room getting ready to leave. I catch sight of her from a distance, very small, she doesn’t see me, she’s acting as though she doesn’t see me. She’s standing at the entrance with a giant bag of popcorn, sunglasses, flowery blouse and denim shorts, in between the pony and a purple dragon, or is it a dinosaur, handing out balloons with its snout. As I approach, now that she’s waving at me with her free hand, I remember the last time I saw her. At the end of the party, lying in the deckchair, awake but gone, exhausted from always having to be the same. So theatrical. And yet again, as in the past, as with her adventures in the country, my attention is grabbed by that capacity of hers to re-emerge as though nothing has happened, burying everything, without blame or remorse, like an animal. The difference is that now, while the attitude is the same, behind her eyes, in her teeth, underneath her skin, you can tell that eternity is gradually wearing her down.