Iosi Havilio - Open Door

‘At the bottom of the river, at the foot of the bridge.’

Yasky hails a taxi.

‘I’ll keep you informed, as soon as there’s any more news.’

I still have a lot of questions, but I’ll keep them for another time. It’s so hot I could die.

The last weekend in February was the end of the carnival. We ate early, lentil stew, which I made myself and turned out a lot better than I expected. Exquisite, said Jaime after the first mouthful and he devoured the rest in one go.

As he did every day, Jaime started talking about the horse. It was his favourite subject, his only subject. Over the last few days, the other Jaime had made a noticeable improvement, it was difficult to explain. And, even though the nodules were still there, they’d magically decreased in size. Jaime fantasised about riding him again.

It’s a miracle, he was saying, and the animal looked at him with his enormous eyes, with a mixture of helplessness and scepticism. Jaime repeated the word, with all the excitement of someone who suddenly believes in miracles for the first time.

‘It’s carnival,’ I say presently, to interrupt him, ‘let’s go along for a bit and see what’s happening.’

Jaime didn’t refuse, but he didn’t say yes either. He crushed his half-smoked cigarette into his plate next to the scraps of food and went to put on his boots straight away. He was an odd man, almost always decent, but he would change suddenly and become terse, ill-humoured. I was getting to know him.

I stuck my head out onto the veranda. A light, slanting drizzle was falling, swirling about to form thousands of razor-sharp droplets. Like fake carnival snow. Jaime brought the pick-up right to the door so that I wouldn’t get wet. On the way to the village we didn’t say anything, silenced by the thrum of the engine, or by the excitement of zigzagging over the wet mud to leave fresh tracks.

The fiesta took up five blocks on Avenida Cabred, the heart of the village. First of all, there was a parade of floats, each recognisable by the sound of their chosen anthem, repeated ad nauseam on loudspeakers. Each song played over the next, composing a kind of diabolical meta-melody. The floats were themed. Girls in dresses of fake sequins danced on top, making the rickety structures tremble. It was impossible not to think an accident would happen at any moment.

Alongside the floats passed jugglers, flame throwers, a giant caterpillar, the young and the young-at-heart exchanging jets of foam sprayed from bottles in the shape of Rey Momo the carnival king, a gaggle of internees from the hospital wearing unrecognisable costumes, families, single men and women, the two village transvestites and a small group of inoffensive drunks at the tail of the parade. Jaime parked the truck widthways across the street, parallel to the railway tracks, right in front of the abandoned silos at the entrance to the village. All kinds of vehicles had sneaked in behind the endlessly circulating floats: motorbikes, cars, a fire engine, sulkies and a cloud of bicycles that entered and exited the darkness like swift ghosts. Jaime bought a couple of cans of beer and we sat on the pavement, our legs hanging down into the ditch. And even though I was what you would call a recent arrival, some faces, still mostly nameless, were becoming familiar to me.

At one point a row broke out and Jaime became uneasy. We couldn’t see much, but from a distance it appeared that two guys were about to come to blows. We moved closer and recognised Boca from behind, throwing himself on top of someone else who stumbled. Jaime signalled for me to stay where I was and pushed his way through the crowd, broke the circle of goading onlookers and shook Boca by the shoulder. It took him a good while to cool Boca down, all the blood had risen to his head and his gin-breath reached across the street. Jaime’s intervention wasn’t well received by a public hungry for a fight but you could tell that the other man, Boca’s rival, wasn’t entirely sure about fighting anyway because he didn’t protest the matter for a single second.

Boca calmed down and at once acted as if nothing had happened. He talked a lot, we understood very little. He kept repeating that carnivals were old-fashioned.

‘There’s too much noise here,’ he said at one point, fixing us with his tiny eyes. Jaime shrugged and I smiled.

Boca proposed going to buy more beer. Jaime stood up and gestured for me to go with him. I’ll wait for you here, I said and Jaime smiled at me in the way that boyfriends do when they’re parting from a girlfriend they’ve just started seeing.

The drizzle persisted, still swirling, still with thousands of tiny drops of moisture pricking at my cheeks. Everything seemed so strange to me, so new and fleeting. It was a bit like being on holiday, visiting a distant relative, the kind you never miss but who seem indispensable when they are close by.

Suddenly, a small hand rested on my shoulder. I jumped slightly and turned my head at once to see who it belonged to. It was Eloísa, the girl from the shop, who was already moving away with short steps, surrounded by other girls, looking at me out of the corner of her eye, with a mocking or conspiratorial little laugh, I never knew which.

I lay down on the wet grass, closed my eyes and Aída’s face came into my mind, blurred by the smoke of the cigarette she calmly inhaled and exhaled. I began to drop off.

Boca’s booming voice returned me to what was left of the carnival. Jaime sat down at my side, happy to find that his girl was still there. We shared a final can of beer, while Boca resumed his monologue. He was no longer talking about the carnival, now he was saying something about some guy who swore he’d seen a flying saucer in a nearby field.

Jaime and Boca had gone out early to buy building materials. It was a day of clear blue skies and fluffy, starched clouds. I was washing down the veranda when the telephone rang. Yasky’s voice trembled slightly, it was hoarse, unclear.

‘No, there’s nothing new,’ he says and pauses before continuing. ‘It was just that, I wanted to let you know, I thought you’d be waiting … I’ll call again when I have some news.’

That was it.

I continued mopping the veranda tiles until I couldn’t go on and I lay down on the grass. Lying like this, my hands scratching at the dirt, my eyes duelling with the harsh rays of the sun, as if I were somewhere else, I let myself be taken by a delicious lethargy, which is violently interrupted by a sharp jolt that shakes me so hard I’m lifted a couple of millimetres off the ground. A powerful blow from within the earth. The echo of the tremor lasts for a few seconds. Then it fades, without explanation.

At lunchtime, Boca took over the barbecue again. I stayed with him for a while as he prepared the fire. A boy of about twelve or thirteen, with curly hair and a big mole at the base of his nose, was loitering around us. He kicked at broken pieces of brick with a grumpy face. He was entertaining himself in his own way. Later on I found out that his name was Martín and that he was Boca’s nephew.

Although it was autumn the midday sun still warmed the skin. Boca was talking about the different cuts of beef, his hands smudged with charcoal, his eyes red as usual.

‘Are you a believer?’ he asked suddenly. Since I didn’t know how to reply, he hunched his shoulders, pursed his lips and arched his eyebrows, all at the same time, but he didn’t say anything else.

After eating, I started raking the path that leads from the house to the stable. When I opened the stable door I had a bad premonition. A short-lived premonition. The other Jaime was sprawled out, his head crushed against the back wall, his gums on view, tail mingling with the straw. The horse’s eyes said it all: death had arrived suddenly.