Iosi Havilio - Open Door

‘We have an understanding,’ she says, ‘a pact of trust.’

I listen without listening while I focus all my attention on checking the order. She doesn’t tire of talking. The thing is that she gets on well with me and she doesn’t want to fire me but I have to pull my socks up, because the foundation of work is mutual respect, so she told me.

‘It’s a two-way street, I place my trust in you and vice-versa.’

I don’t know how many times she repeated the word trust. At one point she even became friendly, she came round the counter and seemed to be about to hug me. She scared me.

In a while she left. The rest of the morning passed without incident, the same routine as usual: an anti-rabies vaccination for an English Cocker Spaniel, two consultations on Siamese cats displayed in shop windows, a young salesman in suit and tie who left me free samples of a nutritionally balanced pet food that was due to come onto the market over the next few months, and a woman worried about her Great Dane’s continual vomiting. White, lumpy vomit, she specified, excited by the rarity of the case. I told her to bring him in so we could examine him.

Without intending to, just to kill time, I started flicking through the appointments book and, partly by chance, partly because that’s the way things happen, it fell open at J. The name Jaime jumped off the page at me. Just Jaime, no surname, and in parenthesis, ‘opendoor’, strung together, in lower case. I dialled once and there was no answer. I dialled again and heard Jaime’s voice, which I recognised immediately despite the background noise.

‘It’s me, the girl from the vet’s. I just wanted to know how the other Jaime was getting on,’ I say and something tells me that this pleases Jaime at the other end of the line, he must like me speaking to him like this, in this familiar way.

‘Just the same, lying down half the time.’

The silence that follows lasts for several seconds and is filled by ambient noise from both ends of the line: from here, the hum of the fan mingling with street noise, from there, the wind sweeping through the house.

The conversation is minimal, monosyllabic. The truth is that I don’t know why I called, it’s ridiculous, it’s as though I’m flirting with him. But Jaime, when I’ve already said goodbye, see you, and I’m about to hang up, decides to say something else.

‘Another examination wouldn’t hurt,’ he says and we agree that he’ll call the surgery next week.

Aída’s flat looks like new. The floors are shining, the kitchen spotless, as is the bathroom, the bedroom feels like a hotel suite, and even Diki gives the impression of being a relatively normal dog. By the looks of things, Aída has come home with renewed enthusiasm.

It’s half eight, I make myself a cup of tea, change my clothes and flop down on the bed in the dark. Ten or fifteen minutes go by and sleep is beginning to overcome me when the doorbell rings so hard and suddenly that it makes me spasm as I imagine an epileptic would. I’m given no time to react before the bell rings again, this time supplemented by a couple of sharp knocks on the door.

It’s Beba, she’s upset and ignores me completely as she comes into the flat. She is escorted by two uniformed policemen, caps in hand. Beba sits on the sofa and lights a white filter-tip. She smokes using a cigarette holder. The policemen settle themselves on either side of the television, guarding it. They look at me, they look at one another, we all look at each other.

‘Something terrible has happened,’ says Beba, expelling smoke through her nose and mouth at the same time. She breaks off, making the most of the pause to take a drag, and continues:

‘It could be that Aída’s dead.’

The only thing that comes to me is to contradict her. It’s not possible, I say and I become aware that I’m only wearing a blouse, no bra, very provocative. And immediately, or simultaneously, I realise that the two policemen realised this much earlier than me.

‘I’ll be right back,’ I say out loud, to everyone and no one in particular.

I put on the first thing I find, tracksuit bottoms and one of Aída’s jumpers with wooden buttons, and once more I’m back on centre stage with no time to analyse things first. One of the policemen, the less officer-like of the two, takes the floor.

‘Apparently there’s been a suicide,’ he says in a bored tone, and the topic proves to be to be a familiar one. Beba waits for my reaction, rocking on the edge of the sofa, almost falling off it. The policeman proceeds with his report.

‘Last Sunday an individual jumped off the old bridge in La Boca and, according to the firemen’s statement, the description of the victim fits that of the missing young lady.’

Beba breaks down, bursting into tears. She stands up and I have to take a step backwards so that she doesn’t collapse on top of me. But she reaches her arms out to me, she grabs me by the shoulders and lowers her head in search of consolation near my chest. Her nose is running. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to think. I prise Beba off me as best I can.

‘It can’t be true,’ I say, ‘I was there, I saw it all.’

In the police station we have to take a number. There are at least four people waiting ahead of us to make their statements. Beba managed to calm down on the way over here but doesn’t utter a word to me at any point.

This part of the police station comprises a series of desks in a row and, behind them, an internal patio roofed by hanging ferns lit up with halogen lamps. Apart from one, which serves as a resting place for three piles of folders on the verge of toppling over, the desks are occupied by policemen concentrating hard on their official duties. Only one is using a computer, the rest make do with primitive typewriters in a military green. On one of the walls hangs a vast map of the city divided into different zones by thick, red lines. In a corner, in full view on a white, triangular shelf fixed to the wall, a plaster Virgin Mary with a neon halo watches over them.

Our turn comes and we’re landed with a fat official. Beba takes it upon herself to explain the situation and the guy listens impassively, uninterested. Now I have to give my version of events. I don’t know where to begin. I tell him about Sunday, that we went out at about four, that we went for a walk by the riverside, that at some point Aída went into a bar to pee and that I went for a wander. That afterwards, I went to look for her but never found her. The official types everything I say but he has to go back several times to make corrections because his fat fingers don’t fit the keys and he presses two at a time.

Now that I look properly, I see that the plaster Virgin Mary is plugged in via a long cable that comes out of the back of her robes.

Beba nudges me, she wants me to talk about the bridge. I give a blow-by-blow account, as I experienced it, including all the details, up until I got on the bus. After that I fainted and slept for almost thirty hours in the care of the hospital, I say. They look like they don’t believe me.

We are told that an as-yet-unidentified female threw herself into the river from the old bridge in La Boca at 9.45 p.m. on Sunday 11th February, that the duty magistrate has already intervened and due to adverse weather conditions the recovery of the body by the coastguard’s divers has been postponed until further notice. What’s clear is that, for the time being, Aída is still missing.

After walking several blocks in silence, we arrived at the door of the flat. By mutual agreement, Beba slept in the double bed in the room, and I took the sofa. Despite everything, I fell asleep straight away. That night I didn’t dream.