Iosi Havilio - Open Door

‘Later I’m going to call Guido and tell him that we ran out of fuel and we’ve got no readies …’ she said, drowning the last word in a first noisy drag. ‘Then we can go home when we want.’

I laughed. I don’t know why. She did too. We smoked the joint in less than three minutes, without speaking. We were in a hurry.

The rest of the journey was a wild race, a race with certain obstacles that Eloísa took great care to avoid, as if it were a matter of life and death. Cars, lorries, barriers, traffic lights and even the signals of a policeman at a road patrol: Eloísa kept going, braking only when she had to, it was all a matter of looking ahead.

We went through the centre of Pilar in search of a bar that Eloísa knew. She had been there once, but she couldn’t remember exactly where it was.

‘Of course, I was very drunk when I left,’ she explained and let out a cackle as she turned to face forwards again.

Eventually we found it. The place was a long corridor: on the right, a string of tables seating two or three, on the left, a bar with a series of swivelling stools attached to the floor and, at the back, a circular dance floor. A blackboard announced happy hour until midnight. It wasn’t even ten, we had more than enough time.

‘Two fernet and cokes,’ said Eloísa without asking me.

There was a basketball game being shown on the telly, which, as we discovered later, was the world final. For a good while, as the drinks flowed, we followed the ups and downs of the game quite attentively and it turned out to be much more entertaining than I would ever have thought.

We got drunk quickly. Meanwhile, the bar emptied and, in less than an hour, filled up again with new people. Couples, groups of three or four boys, groups of girls, more numerous, up to five or six, mostly teenagers. Eloísa was excited by what was going on around her and didn’t ever call Guido to tell him about the bike. At some point, two lads of no more than eighteen approached us, without much conviction. Hi, said one. Can we sit down, asked the other. And Eloísa, who’s an expert in these things, sent them packing with three words: We’re fine, thanks, she said. The boys looked at each other, they laughed and left.

A few minutes before twelve, Eloísa drew a circle in the air around our drinks with her index finger, then pointed upwards. The barman understood immediately: another round of fernet, just in time to make the most of happy hour. The barman was almost completely bald, twice as old as the oldest person in the bar at that moment. Tanned skin, a ring through his left earlobe, bulging, green eyes, spanned by one single brow, and a faded denim shirt that he surely must have worn when he still had hair.

We spent a good while discussing whether Eloísa should stay in Open Door or move to the capital. Both options had their pros and cons. I was losing the thread of the conversation a bit. Every so often, the barman approached us, throwing some comment in the air for our entertainment. Initially Eloísa was aloof, but eventually, I don’t know exactly when, she began to laugh at the guy’s nonsense.

I went to the toilets to sober up a bit. I spent something like ten minutes sitting on a lavatory with the cubicle door locked shut. Three girls of fifteen or sixteen had installed themselves in front of the mirror to touch up their make-up, fix their hair and do some lines of coke. And they talked about it, about how they felt, about the drug, about what it did to you. One of them, the quietest, had never snorted cocaine. The other two convinced her with all kinds of arguments. That nothing bad would happen, that it was like a buzz, that she would feel different, really alert. I didn’t want to leave my cubicle. I didn’t want to see their faces, or surprise them, so I decided to wait until they left.

In the bar, Eloísa and the barman were arm wrestling. For an instant, I didn’t know whether to join them or keep going. I kept going. I sat on a chair near the entrance, next to a table filled with empty beer bottles. I needed some air. I closed my eyes for a while, without falling completely asleep. Until I fell completely asleep.

When I woke, the place was full. Around me, I saw only pieces of bodies, backs, arms, legs, all squashed up against each other, like on a Japanese metro.

I left the bar. It was gone four-thirty. The motorbike was still there, chained to a lamp post. I settled myself on the seat, resigned to giving her all the time in the world. But no: Eloísa appeared in a few minutes. She came from behind and covered my eyes with her hands.

Bet you can’t guess where I’ve been, she said, but I was too tired and left her hanging.

Without a helmet and the wind full in my face, the return journey seemed much shorter than the way there. At the roadside, a dense layer of mist overshadowed the countryside: pure phantasmagoria.

Arriving in Open Door, as the combination of the joint, alcohol and exhaustion was conspiring in my head and my only concern was finding something to swallow to lessen my headache and getting to sleep as soon as possible, Eloísa accelerated and turned round to give me a kiss. We were at the level crossing. She kissed me, and we went flying.

I opened my eyes, scratching at the dirt in the deep ditch. I was shaking. The first thing I saw were the giant silos silhouetted in the night, too close. I wanted to take off the helmet but I wasn’t wearing it. It was my head that weighed so heavily. I bit wet grass and filled my lungs with cold, corrosive air. I had the feeling that if I stretched out my arm I could grab the handlebars of the motorbike, fallen on the tarmac. The bike blocked my view of everything else. I pulled myself up slightly. What I hadn’t been able to see was two bodies. Two inert bodies, one close by, the other further away. Two bodies instead of one. The body closest to me began to move, right in the middle of the road, encased in black leather. The other raised its head and part of its chest above the edge of the ditch, in a perfectly straight line in front of me. Eloísa finished raising herself and sat where she was, her gaze lost in the direction of the colony. I brought my legs together very slowly and drew them in towards me, tentatively, as if they were someone else’s. My right knee was skinned to a fiery red. Now I understood the word burn.

We got up at the same time, lacking the courage to look at each other and, together, we approached the other, unexplained body. It was an older man, about Jaime’s age, or more. The little hair he had was tousled, his arms hidden under his chest, his shoes submerged in a pool of mud and his mouth half open in a rigid, disgusted grimace. Eloísa hugged me, sobbing, reminding me that she was just a girl.

The man was breathing. In truth, he was blowing and each gasp shook the blades of grass that were moulded onto his face. Suddenly he let out a thin whine followed by a convulsion. He opened his eyes. Two deep wells, injected with all the blood in his head. He stared at us, embarrassed. He was short and solidly built. He was in a bad way, on his last legs. He couldn’t have been drunker. When he tried to stand, he nearly lost his balance and fell. But he righted himself immediately, standing firm with his feet on the bed of the channel, and rummaged in his trouser pockets for a crushed packet of cigarettes, which he patiently moulded back into shape. He removed one, asked for a light with a clumsy gesture and took a couple of drags, looking around him aimlessly. Eloísa peeled herself off me, calm once more. The man was about to speak. Eloísa looked for her own packet of cigarettes, she asked me for a light as well and the two glowing embers gave us a little light.

Huret. Lunatics, work and play.