Iosi Havilio - Open Door

Yasky opens the door just in time. He purses his lips, he can sense something. We repeat the same ritual as before but it’s quicker this time. We take our places. We’re a team. The body is uncovered for three seconds. I shake my head.

‘This isn’t her either,’ I say, thinking that at least she’s more like her than the first one was. Yasky is embarrassed, the other man almost laughs.

Not everyone says Open Door in the same way. Some say Open Door, others Open Door . Eloísa says Open Door, Boca and Jaime say Open Door . I haven’t decided yet. It depends on the moment and who I’m with. In general I say Open Door, but to tell the truth I don’t know which of the two I prefer.

The calendar hanging on the handle of the larder door is showing the wrong date. Nobody has pulled off the leaves since the second of March and we’re up to the twentieth, or is it the nineteenth of April, I don’t even know any more. I don’t have anyone to ask. It’s the middle of the night, there can only be a few hours until dawn. Jaime is snoring in the bedroom: it’s not a strong snore, but it is persistent. It never switches off. At times it builds, moves from high-pitched to low, becomes angry, then abates before immediately catching breath and accelerating. When it’s not a snore, it’s a whistle, and when it’s not whistling, it blows. In a certain way it talks, it says things in that fundamental, universal language, difficult things, fragments of something that Jaime carries deep inside, in his guts, and releases at night without realising it, so that I can hear it and understand him a bit better, or so that I can start to despise him. I’m wide awake and more inclined to hatred than to understanding.

Now, in the kitchen, I take sips of gin to help me sleep. Then I see this calendar that I’ve never noticed until today and whose leaves nobody has removed for a long time. I pull them off one by one, from the second of March to the nineteenth of April. I’m about screw all the days into a ball and throw it in the rubbish bin but a discovery stops me. On the back of each leaf is a phrase in quotation marks. They are signed by celebrities, writers, artists, philosophers, statesmen, men and women of note, at first glance a lot more men than women. Each is something along the lines of a motto with which to face the new day. Some are confused or badly translated, most suggest impractical behaviour, there are Chinese proverbs, Creole phrases, Bible verses, fragments of universal literature. One of the most frequently recurring themes is avarice. Another is the relationship between body and soul.

I keep two quotes, one for its ingenuity, the other because it made me think. The first is by Schopenhauer, or at least the calendar attributes it to him, and it says: ‘ Woman is an animal with long hair and short ideas .’ Horace puts his name to the other: ‘ Not to bring smoke from fire, but light from smoke .’ I love it, I don’t know why.

Jaime finally felt better and went back to work. He leaves at seven, returns for lunch, we sleep a siesta together and every now and then we make love. At around half four, he goes out again, not returning until eight. In the morning he does building work with Boca on one of the small farms or estates in the area. He plans the refurbishments, buys the materials and deals with clients, while Boca provides the manpower. After our siesta, he goes to the hospital.

My routine is much more sedentary. I sleep late, eat breakfast alone, do a bit of tidying, listen to the radio, have a bath and kill time until half twelve when I start cooking. I’ve started to live like a housewife, without quite realising it, instinctively. In the afternoons, I walk in the woods or go into town for a bit of distraction. On the way there or back, I often bump into Eloísa on the road. Yesterday she invited me to watch television.

‘Do you want to come to mine to watch telly for a bit? My brother and my folks aren’t in, they went away for a few days,’ she said.

Eloísa’s house is attached to the shop, it’s a kind of annex, accessed through a separate door. Straight away it’s clear that it’s a makeshift construction, the proportions are unusual and there are lots of spaces without any obvious use. There’s a hole for the window, but the window isn’t there: in its place is a wooden board that can be removed and replaced. The only glimpse of the outside world comes through the skylight in the bathroom. There are two bedrooms and a multi-purpose room that includes the kitchen. The television occupies the centre of the house; all the furniture is arranged around it. One of the walls, the first I see when I go in, is papered with an enormous map of the world that, judging from the darts stuck in some countries, also serves as a target board.

We are sitting on the sofa-bed, it must be about six in the evening. Eloísa tells me they have sixty-six channels, as she runs through them all from one end to the other, over and over. She doesn’t seem to tire of it. She asks the same question repeatedly: Shall I stick with this one? She asks me, but answers herself because she immediately skips to the next channel. And suddenly, without explanation, she switches off the set, throwing the remote control onto the floor. She crosses her legs, hugging a cushion, and looks at me face-on with an anxious smile.

‘Do you want a smoke?’ she asks and, from a little wooden box painted with a cat, she removes a fat joint. ‘Here, you light it. My brother has, like, six plants hidden behind the henhouse, so it’s free here. He takes care of them like they’re made of gold, but if you ask him, he’ll give you all you want.’

Two drags each, the joint passes back and forth. Eloísa stretches out her legs and kicks off her trainers, spinning them through the air. I look at her sidelong, my head lolling against the back of the sofa. She looks me straight in the eye.

‘Will you show me your tits?’ she asks quietly and laughs loudly. She says it completely naturally, with impunity, she doesn’t give me time to react. ‘Go on, just for a second.’

I say nothing, neither no nor yes. I laugh along with her, I close my eyes for an instant and when I open them, Eloísa has her t-shirt rolled up with her tiny tits on show, upturned like two drops of water. Ready for me to examine her. She shrugs. She wants to know if I like them.

‘They’re very nice,’ I say. Eloísa stretches out her legs, stroking my knees with the soles of her feet.

‘Don’t you want to touch them?’ she asks but gives me no time to respond and touches them herself.

The rain began suddenly, with hail and everything. First, two claps of thunder made the walls of the house vibrate and immediately water began to pour down in torrents. The corrugated iron roof made a terrible noise, like bursts of machine gun fire.

‘Youcan’t even think aboutgoing out in this,’ says Eloísa, frenetically changing channels again. ‘You’ve got no chance in this rain, the road must be a river,’ she insists. She’s right. It’s almost eight and Jaime must be about to get home.

‘I’ve got to let him know,’ I say.

The phone is in the shop so I have no choice but to go outside and walk round. I’ve barely crossed the threshold and I’m soaked from head to toe. I follow Eloísa’s instructions to get into the shop but I struggle so much that I almost give up. There are three padlocks, each tougher than the last. I eventually manage to gain entry. I pick up the receiver and I might have known: the phone is dead.

When I returned to the house, Eloísa was out of sight. She called me from her bedroom and found me a towel to dry myself.