Iosi Havilio - Open Door

‘It’s just a joke,’ she said in my ear, ‘don’t get annoyed.’

Now the ghost speaks, she says things, incongruous things, sometimes she complains, other times she laughs, it’s a forced laugh, wasted on alcohol. There’s something different in the timbre of the voice, but it’s her, as if in flesh and blood. I try to ignore her, to convince myself that it’s just my imagination, a demented, perverse game, that my subconscious is subjecting me to tests to keep me on my toes, and yet it’s so convincing, so real, that I don’t want to even think about stretching out my arm: what if I touch her?

I wonder whether it wouldn’t be a good idea to talk to someone about it, but with whom, it’s madness, just think of Jaime’s expression if I told him.

On Saturday morning, Jaime goes to Luján to buy a new scythe. The other one is no good anymore, he says, I can’t even sharpen it. I go with him. He parks the truck in the centre of town, in front of the basilica. We agree to meet back here in an hour, at half twelve. If you want, we can grab something to eat afterwards. In the doorway of the church, there are two or three stalls brimming with effigies of the Virgin Mary. There are wooden virgins half a metre tall, hard plastic ones, wax versions with a wick at the top, plug-in virgins with long cables and bulbs inside, paper virgins, and lots of predictive virgins, like toy barometers, that change colour depending on the weather. Blue: good. Violet: changeable. Pink: rainy. Most of the virgins, except for one or two that must be broken, are violet and yet the sky is overcast with clouds that are closer to black than grey and look ready to burst at any moment. Without my asking, as I study one of the statuettes to try to discover its secret and its fault, the stallholder explains that the little virgins, as she calls them, also work inside. Great.

It’s almost twelve, I head towards the truck. First, I drop into a vet’s surgery and ask for a bottle of ketamine. They look at me strangely and ask for a prescription. I show a credential, which I have with me by chance.

Later, Eloísa confesses what I already knew. She tells me that she slept with little Martín, that she did it because she felt sorry for him. She wants to know if I’m annoyed.

‘It’s very strange, I know that it makes no sense, but it’s starting to worry me more than it should, and I need to tell someone about it …’ I say to Yasky as we walk around the polo field; I choose my words carefully so that he doesn’t think I’m crazy. I break off, I pause, I’m not entirely sure about telling him, there’s still time to backtrack and invent something else. But no, I tell him all at once, to take the weight off my shoulders and exorcise the ghost.

‘For a while now I’ve been having a kind of vision, very tangible and real … Aída, my friend, the girl from the bridge, appears to me every now and then, anywhere, and she speaks, she talks to me …’ I finish speaking and cover my mouth to stop myself laughing.

Yasky leaves without saying anything to placate me. I feel lost.

The Romanians’ ranch was burnt down. I find out from Boca. The police scour the surrounding area but there’s no one left. They’re used to fleeing, they’re gypsies in spirit. I wonder what will become of Loti, whether we’ll see him again. I hope not.

We spend the whole night taking ket, like two madwomen. Talking ceaselessly, without listening to each other, coming and going to the bathroom. Hard like two hard mares. We drink half a demijohn of wine. Without touching each other, or kissing; in another world.

When we began to run out of air, Eloísa opened the door of the storeroom slightly and the morning hit us in the face, just the same as every other morning, except that, for the first time, it was spinning like a giant, straying top. We went outside for a walk. We crossed the sleeping village, as far as the train tracks. Elo said that she didn’t feel well. My heart’s beating too fast, she said. Her breathing was agitated. Her forehead was covered in droplets of sweat. I touched her back. You’re soaking wet. What are we going to do? It’s, like, nine and I’ve got to call home, I say. And her: Stop fucking about. You’re going mad, that house is murder. Eloísa started walking in no particular direction with her heart leaping out of her body. I stayed where I was, weak and sleepless. I remained like that for some time, my mind blank, until the truck appeared and filled my eyes with dust. The door opened and Jaime waited patiently until I decided to climb in. The entire way home without talking or looking at each other, the radio on. I shut myself in the bedroom and slept until ten at night.

•

Now we’re in the kitchen and the situation is confused, the furniture has changed places. Yasky speaks, explaining the facts. I settle down behind him, in the rearguard, I don’t want to take charge. Jaime listens seriously, his fingers intertwined, pressing his thumbs together. One of his cigarettes hangs from his mouth, he expels smoke through his nose, with a defeated look on his face. He’s not surprised by what he hears, he’s annoyed. In spite of him, the talk is of ghosts and supernatural matters. Yasky says he has the solution, he proposes a session.

‘There are methods,’ says Yasky. ‘Fairly effective methods, if you both agree, I can raise a request and ask for authorisation, or perhaps we don’t need to, we could always organise a session between us, a conclave, in secret, right now.’

In addition to Yasky, there are two other men, one blond with earphones, the operator, and a tall, skinny guy, the witness, who will remain standing and silent throughout the session, lighting a fresh cigarette with the butt of the previous one.

We congregate around a strange device, like a portable mixing desk. Jaime, Yasky, Eloísa, the operator, the witness and me, in that order, in a clockwise direction. When did Eloísa appear? And what is she doing sitting on my knee? I have no answer to that. She seems happy, eager to find out what might happen. The operator presses a button, turns some knobs, the machine starts up. I’m well aware that we are in the presence of a ghost-catcher, the kind you used to get in the old days. Now, except for the witness, we’re all wearing earphones like the operator’s, although not quite so sophisticated. Jaime becomes tangled in the cables, he struggles to manoeuvre the equipment and Eloísa laughs in his face. She’s stoned, it shows in her eyes, she must have smoked a joint on the way over. Now that I look closely, her blouse is undone, her tits on show, but nobody notices, it doesn’t attract anyone’s attention. The girl has no limits. The operator puts on some thin gloves, very fine and surgical-looking. Eloísa wants to touch all the buttons, I have to hold down her hands, she behaves just like a child, the operator looks at us furiously. But deep down he likes her, he’s charmed by her.

We spend the whole night waiting for some kind of sign, a gesture, but since nothing happens, or else the machine isn’t working, Boca, who all this time has been guarding the kitchen door with his gun in his hands, ‘shooting ducks’, as I thought I heard him say at one point, gets impatient and joins the witness who is setting out glasses to begin an old-style séance. Eloísa has fallen asleep under the table, curled up at my feet. Yasky tries to encourage us, Jaime has lost patience and every so often bangs the useless machine gently but nervously. The operator is confused, he feels small, he recognises his failure.

But the wait is justified. When we had already abandoned hope and were playing at making the glasses move around the tabletop, a sudden, painful, ultrasonic hum revives everyone’s enthusiasm.