Gonzalo Torne - Divorce Is in the Air

Though she pulled the weapon out stained with the fibers and threads of my flesh, the Butcher of Montana repeated the operation, and any way you look at it, that’s aggravation. But she must have used up all her strength, because — as they told me later — this second attempt didn’t go as deep into my back. And they had to tell me about it later, because I collapsed before I’d really understood what was happening, what she was doing to me. Helen must have thought she’d killed me, maybe felt a tingling of horror in her hands; she ran out and took the weapon with her. From the width and depth of the wounds, she could easily have used ordinary scissors, but somehow I’m sure the object she drove into my flesh was the marble letter opener that disappeared when I kicked her out. It was Bicente who called the paramedics and climbed into the ambulance, which held up traffic as it carried me over damp streets, warm and blue, to the Hospital del Mar. They dumped me straight into a bed because they were afraid (because of the wound’s location, because of my heroic faint; the doctor congratulated me for having fallen so well, I barely even bit my tongue) that I had a perforated pulmonary vein.

Under the heavy smell of chloroform, I wanted only to live. Lying between sheets that smelled of bitter fruits, I realized that dying is a pretty immodest affair. If Helen had hit my pulmonary wall, if she’d popped my consciousness like a balloon, I would have left behind several half-watched films, wet clothes in the machine, an unfinished tube of hand lotion, coffee dregs in cups, financial reports still to be deciphered, the bank account with an overdraft I was putting off resolving, a modest collection of more or less personal objects to be catalogued and which no one would ever use again…not to mention all the days that none of my senses would brush against, a mind-boggling luxury for other people to enjoy…not to mention the ideas ambushed by the primitive emotions, warm like stables, that overtake us as we sink into decrepitude. I’m not surprised Dad didn’t think about how he’d end up with his calluses exposed.

I could barely move under the weight of the painkillers. I tried to protest — by now I wasn’t going to die by Helen’s hand, but if they went on like that they’d annihilate my immune system. And I was far from sure that my roommate, Mr. Ponç, a blind man who twisted with laughter at the jokes on TV, was free of viruses. Hospitals finish people off, you’ve got all kinds of microbes that breed in decomposing organs let loose in the air. Those bugs are just looking for a fleshy opening so they can lace up their boots and get to work, but try telling that to the surgeons with their white coats and sadistic flair for cutting and sewing. The patient is only there to keep quiet until he gets bedsores in his crack, and if you must know, I was too tired to argue. So tired I let Bicente approach the foot of my bed, and from there that toad — I picture him covered in slimy scales — told me in a soft, confessional voice how Helen wouldn’t get out of bed, how she couldn’t get over the idea that she would have to live with a murder (that she was a murderer!). Depressed and drugged, what a novelty. The only surprise was that she’d had the energy to chase me down and stab me. But still, he was so dejected, so weak, that I promised him I wouldn’t press charges.

And the reason I made that promise was not a magnanimous one, oh no! I did it precisely to annoy my sister, who in the meantime had appointed herself the representative of the fragmented Miró-Puig family. Mother certainly wasn’t going to leave her living room for anything less than six stab wounds, and my father remained stubbornly dead, so it was Madame Popo who parked her bulging backside on my bed each and every afternoon to offer advice, pampering, and admonitions. She hadn’t exactly grown a triple chin — she’d be what your Grandma Rosa permissively calls “chubby”—but she’d definitely suffered a big jump in her calorific intake. The increase in body mass had blurred the wavering line of her self-esteem. She was entering a phase of bottom-feeding for affection.

Of course she reproached me for having married a murderer, and for being profligate, but I didn’t hold it against her — her brain was too slow to realign her language with her new objectives. I could hear the goodwill in her tone, in the warmth of her speech:

“You’re an absolute idiot, Juan.”

Best of all is that she showed up with one of those green cardboard folders that have charted the progress of my growing poverty. She’d summoned the Passgard people (though now they were Passgard & Helsengør) in order to confess that Dad had left her an apartment, a secret London flat: another love nest for that crow, or an expensive way of protecting my sister from our indifferent mother, who with or without the pills was capable of leaving everything to me. She told me that Dad had summoned her before she’d left for Boston. They hadn’t gone to the replicant flat, but rather to a bar that was like a fried-food sauna.

“It was like having a conversation on a grill. I felt like crying. I didn’t know what to make of his plan. I put off signing the papers, he kept insisting — he’d never paid so much attention to me before. He was waiting for the deal to close before he did it . I could have kept him alive longer.”

She told me the flat had made her feel guilty, that her property secret shamed her, and her aggression toward me had been an effort to shake off that burden. And she added that things were going to be different now, that she would arrange the papers so we shared the flat, she’d take care of me with her own two hands (and the combination of these words and her pinched little smile revolted me, as if they were extracting a live creature from my neck). She said I could use the place, go and live in London.

“It’s beautiful there in spring. You’d be so happy starting a business there. The Catalans just don’t appreciate you.”

I squirmed in my bed, making a frightening noise with the cables, the catheter, and the collapsible breakfast table, and I told her I was sick of having Mother ever-present in my head, of feeling Dad looming no matter where I went. I told her I’d just gotten rid of Helen and I couldn’t possibly feel better, and I didn’t want anyone dictating the rhythm of my days. I was done with following other people’s demands, and I was going to take the reins of my own life.

“You’re really not that good when it comes to taking the reins.”

OK, so that was pretty impolite, but she said it with a sweetness that ruled out clawing at each other’s eyes: beneath the words stirred currents of sisterly concern, and I felt fine.

“You should have dragged that psychopath to court.”

I swallowed it all until the end; it was a stupendous performance. She made her only mistake when she got up to leave: the gold necklace, the marble pants tight around her flabby haunches, the brand of her sunglasses easily legible on the arm, and the princess diamond sparkling on her left index finger. People can’t just shed their skins; they may think they’ve cut something loose, but their old selves survive. My sister hadn’t given up on competing in attractiveness (women of her size have a very faithful fan base); it was only a passing disenchantment: the most repulsive aspects of her character would come crawling right back into place sooner or later. Her animosity was too deep-seated to be soothed with a salve of fat. My sister belongs to that class who only lift a finger the better to slap you; she can’t help it, she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it.

The fact is that when Helen called and begged to visit, I encouraged her and let her come. Not because she swore she wouldn’t see Bicente again (what a strategy), but because she had managed to emerge from the garbage can where she’d spent almost a year with only her Daddy for company. I was testing her, because it’s one thing to hear how a woman’s passion is more imperative, no wells of cynicism or safe distances, and it’s quite another to see a girl scrape her initiative off a floor slippery with low self-esteem, then cross the city to fight to keep you.