Iosi Havilio: Open Door

Someone wanted, I say, to throw himself off the bridge.

From the smells, the creaks and the mechanical, laboured breaths multiplying around me, I knew it was the middle of the night. The middle of the night, in one of those strange pre-dawn hours, and I knew that if I wanted to I could open my eyes again. And right away I knew they had been closed for much longer than I could imagine. I could open my eyes if I wanted, but not yet, I resisted. I was returning from a deep and pleasant sleep, my body warm and my head spinning. Everything weighs more than usual, my eyelids, my jaw, my ears, especially my ears, they’re throbbing too hard, echoing a painful humming that starts in my temples, a cross between a lullaby and altitude sickness. Then, before anything else, before my conscience begins to string together the things I’m starting to take in here and there, a phlegmy voice, partly distorted and forming flecks of saliva, asks my name.

He says I fainted on a bus on Sunday night. He’s a young guy, not more than thirty, with two-or three-day-old stubble, a touch of grey lightening the lank hair around his forehead. He’s wearing a white coat but he doesn’t look like a doctor. He asks me if I remember what happened. I tell him yes, perfectly, up until I fainted I remember everything. He asks if I want to tell him anything. Not now, I say, maybe later. He asks if I know what day it is. Monday? He shakes his head with an inexplicable hint of satisfaction. Today is Tuesday the thirteenth of February. Tuesday the thirteenth, he repeats. Anything else? the guy asks me, his slanting eyes narrowed, yet shining intensely because of his contact lenses. I raise myself up, look him in the eye and he holds my gaze for a few seconds, then gets annoyed. I want to know when I can go home. He says it’s nothing to do with him, I’ll have to wait until the duty head finishes his rounds and anyway, I should be taking things easy. That’s fine. Right, I’m going, he says, hanging his stethoscope, which he had put in the pocket of his white coat, round his neck. Why wouldn’t I take things easy?

I’m surrounded by another ten trolleys, most of them occupied. Bodies passing through, like me, waiting to be discharged. My eyes close and I sleep again for I don’t know how many hours.

In full daylight, a nurse wakes me up to take my pulse. She says that the duty doctor won’t pass by for about an hour. I ask if I can make a phone call.

The owner of the veterinary surgery is all worked up when she answers, she says this isn’t the way things are done, that if I had some kind of problem she’d understand, but that I have to let her know, that’s what phones are for after all, that yesterday afternoon she missed an important meeting with those people who want to start a rabbit-breeding business, the Dutch folk who don’t speak a word of Spanish, all because I left her hanging and didn’t let her know, didn’t I realise? It’s four in the afternoon on Tuesday, she complains, sighs, and repeats herself in more or less the same words as before. My call time is running out. Before we’re cut off, she remembers that I didn’t call her to tell her how I got on with the horse in Open Door either. You just disappeared, she persists. There are ten seconds left and I don’t have any more coins, if I want to speak it has to be now, right now, five, four, three, I manage to say: I don’t know what happened, and the line goes dead. I was going to tell her that I was in hospital and that apparently I fainted on a bus on Sunday night. She wouldn’t have believed me.

I hang up the phone and it gives me back more coins than I put in. That’s hospitals for you. I slot them all back in and dial.

Aída’s voice answers, recorded on the machine: This is Aída, I’m not here right now, say what you want or call back later, bye . I hesitate for a second but I don’t leave a message. There’s too much to explain.

They discharged me at six in the evening. Before I left, the duty doctor asked me if I took drugs.

As soon as I opened the flat door, Diki threw himself on top of me, making a superhuman effort to support himself on his single back paw. He was like a wild beast, or at least as wild as a disabled dog confined within four walls could be. It was a struggle to get him off me, but I managed to calm him down at last with some rice I found in the freezer. He was really hungry.

Everything was just the way we had left it on Sunday when we went out. In the kitchen, the dirty plates were piled in the sink and a bowl of peaches in syrup was now covered with a film of mould. The bedroom was the same as ever; the bathroom much dirtier, and the whole living room had become Diki’s latrine. Either Aída hadn’t been home or she’d abandoned herself to absolute neglect.

I sat on the sofa in front of the blank television screen, which reflected my whole body in scale. I looked a bit like an X-ray, ghostly, with no identity. I listened to the answerphone messages in an attempt to work things out. There were seven. The first two, blank: they hesitate then hang up. The third is from Beba, one of Aída’s aunts who lives in Asunción, the only one of her relations I know of. She says: Aída, it’s Beba, I arrived a few hours ago, you must be working, so, I’m going to walk around for a bit and I’ll phone you later. I left my case at the bus station, so don’t worry, I can get about easily. Can’t wait to see you. Love, Beba. She spoke as if she were writing a letter, with full stops and commas. In the fourth message, I hear the voice of a man, who introduces himself with his full name, leaves his number and wants Aída to phone him tomorrow before twelve. He doesn’t say why. The fifth is Beba again: Well, Aída, it’s ten o’clock, you’ve not been in all day, you must have forgotten I was coming, never mind, we’ll talk tomorrow, I’ll see if I can get a cheap hotel in the centre. The sixth and seventh are blank: they breathe and hang up. One of them is mine.

I have a sleepless night, partly because I’ve already slept a lot and partly because I’m expecting Aída to arrive at any moment and surprise me. I feel like an intruder in a bed I’ve barely used. I try to empty my mind, I think about Jaime, the horse with the nodules on his tail, about the girl with plaits spying on me from behind the piles of sweets in the kiosk window. I think about anything to stop myself thinking. The bridge invades my thoughts, it’s inevitable.

The phone wakes me at seven. It’s Beba. I explain that I’m a friend of Aída and that I’ve been living in her flat for a while now. And Aída? I tell her that I haven’t seen her since Sunday and that it doesn’t look like she’s been home since. That can’t be right, I spoke to her on Friday and told her I was coming to visit. I don’t know what to tell her. I’m coming over, she says and hangs up.

Beba’s name suits her, despite her age. Her complexion remains so impossibly soft, so polished, like a newborn baby. Iridescent glasses, a silk scarf round her neck, magnificent nails, neat mouth, and yet so old.

It’s just not possible, she says, nobody disappears overnight. We’ll have to find her somehow. I have to go to work, I say. Beba tells me not to worry, that she’ll take care of everything and we’ll see each other tonight.

I arrive at the surgery at ten to nine, like a model employee. The owner is already there. She greets me with a grumpy look. I don’t understand why she’s so annoyed.

We need to talk seriously, she starts to say from the other side of the counter, but she breaks off when a guy, a bit of a punk, comes in carrying two enormous boxes that half cover his face. The owner gestures for me to take care of receiving the merchandise and locks herself in the bathroom. I sign the slip and the guy goes on his way. It’s two packages of disposable syringes. The owner shoots out of the bathroom, even more furious than before.