Quim Monzó - Guadalajara

“They left some time ago.”

“We were waiting downstairs, and we’ve not seen them.” The firefighter with the oversize mustache, who’s talking, opens a folder, so he too can fill in a report.

The man invites them in and sees that his neighbor’s door is half open. As they walk in, the firefighters take their helmets off. Did the last two do that? He hadn’t noticed. The man with the really oversize mustache asks if two firefighters had come to see him. The man nods. He asks him to describe them. The man can’t. He hardly looked at them.

“It’s a routine question. We need to find out whether the physical description of the individuals who visited you matches our colleagues.”

Through his half-open door, the man can see his neighbor is still looking at him from hers, while she pretends to clean the gold-colored spyglass. He waves, indicating she shouldn’t shut her door. He speaks to the firefighters, “Excuse me for a moment. I’ll be back right away.”

He leaves his apartment, gently closes the door, and crosses the landing, with the protection (he intuits) of his neighbor preventing it from transforming into his hallway. The neighbor opens her door. He asks her to let him check something. She invites him in. He goes in. Would she let him climb out of her window for a moment? His neighbor is thrilled to bits and says he can do whatever he likes.

“I can see you’ve got an apartment full of firefighters,” she says while bringing him a three-rung ladder. His neighbor’s son immediately stops doing his homework, chews his pencil, and watches them. The man smiles, nods, and climbs out of the window. Keeping close to the wall, he walks slowly along the ledge, as far as the window to his apartment. Down in the street, the crowd is pointing at him again. Near his window, he strains his neck, looks inside, and sees the firefighters holding their helmets. Looking at each other and now and then at the door to see if he’s coming back. The crowd in the street had shrunk since his last sally, but it was on the increase again. His neighbor puts her head out of the window. The man walks back slowly.

“Everything’s in order.”

He pulls himself up. He jumps in, thanks the woman, and they walk towards the hallway. On the landing (here’s confirmation: whenever he is with someone, the landing never turns into a hall), he thanks her again, and before closing her door, rather than entering his apartment, he runs downstairs. He reaches the ground floor and goes into the street. A cold wind is blowing and sweeping up sheets of newspapers that fly over the ground until they catch on benches, dumpsters, and the legs of passers-by. He joins the crowd looking up at his apartment.

Half an hour later, the firefighters who went up still haven’t come down. One of the two firefighters who stayed in the truck goes up to look for them. The minutes tick by. The flashing light revolves silently on top of their truck. The firefighter, who is now by himself, looks tired. He’d like to be home. Today, there are greens and fish in breadcrumbs for supper. He’d wear his slippers and maroon jersey, and after dinner he and his wife would argue about what to do to relax. Ten minutes later, the three firefighters who went up to get the first two appear in the front entrance to the block, together with the last firefighter to go up. No sign, however, of the first two. Before they reach the truck, the man discreetly moves away in case they recognize him, feeling a guilt he finds altogether unjustified.

•

The extremely fat firefighter closes the book, pants, and puts the book on the coffee table in front of the sofa and plants his feet there too. The comparatively thin firefighter re-arranges the flowers in a vase on the cocktail bar. He moves two steps away, scrutinizes them, and walks back to re-arrange them yet again.

“This guy’s not coming. I think we should go.”

“There’s no rush. We can at least take a break. I’d rather be here than go back to the station and have to go out on another job. Get me another whisky.”

“It will be obvious if we drink anymore.”

“So what? He must have disappeared three quarters of an hour ago. The least he can do is offer us a whisky. I’ll get more ice from the kitchen.”

The extremely fat firefighter gets up and goes into the kitchen.

“We really should be going down, I don’t give a fuck where he’s gone,” says the thin man. “Let’s do the report and get downstairs.”

“The longer we wait, the more likely they’ll have repaired the elevator. This is an eighth floor plus the mezzanine.” The fat man comes in from the kitchen with two glasses full of ice. The thin man is about to suggest they should definitely go down, when he looks through the window and sees their truck start up and begin to move off.

“They’re leaving!”

The fat man runs to the window. They both watch the truck drive downhill, its flashing light revolving non-stop. The two firemen grab their helmets in a rush and leave the flat. They press the button to the elevator, just in case they’ve repaired it in the meantime. They see that’s not the case and head down the stairs.

When they’ve been going down five minutes, the comparatively thin man stares at the sign on the wall: they’ve only reached the sixth floor. They stop. It can’t be true. They’ve been going down for such a long time: they should have reached the ground floor ages ago. They’ve walked down fourteen or fifteen floors, how can they still be on the sixth? They go down one more. The sign says FIFTH. They go down another. But, after the fifth, the floors have no signs. They keep walking down: one, two, three, four more floors. No signs. That’s to say: there’s a mark where a sign used to be, a rectangle that’s lighter than the rest of the wall and the holes where screws must have secured the sign. On the next floor, there is another sign: FOURTH. The floor beneath doesn’t have one. The next one doesn’t either. Nor the next one. The next one has a sign. The fourth again. They rest for a moment. The extremely fat man suggests knocking on a door and asking permission to call the station. The comparatively thin man points theatrically at the signs, as if to suggest that all their effort is in vain. But the other man doesn’t understand his gesture.

There are two doors on each landing. They put their ears to the nearest door. The one with a two at the top. Number two on the fourth. But they can’t hear anything. They run to number one on the fourth. They can hear a television. They look at each other. They don’t need to say a word; they both think it’s ridiculous for two firemen to be knocking on a door to ask permission to call up the station to get someone to fetch them. They go down another floor. It’s the fourth again. They put their ears to the nearest door. In number two on the fourth they can hear several people laughing. A family reunion? A party? At number one on the fourth they can hear the clacking of a typewriter. Who on earth can be typing in this day and age? They go down another floor. It’s a landing without a sign. They hear a couple arguing behind the door to number two. The later it gets, the more disheartened the firefighters feel. The truck shouldn’t have gone without them. When they get to the station, what excuse will they have for abandoning them? Did they decide to leave because they were taking their time? The sound of someone playing a piano reaches them from a distant apartment. They both imagine it’s a woman. She’s playing a cheerful tune—badly. La, la, la, do, mi, mi, re, do, B flat, re, do, do, do, do . . . They try in vain to remember the tune’s name.

The extremely fat firefighter goes down the stairs, followed by the comparatively thin one. They’ve decided to knock at a door—the pianist’s. They prick their ears up, trying to discover which flat the piano music is coming from. They can hear it increasingly clearly. They finally reach the door through which the music is coming. Not only can they hear it very clearly: some notes are escaping under the door. The extremely fat firefighter looks at the thin one, who nods and knocks. The piano continues to tinkle away. The firefighter knocks again, more insistently. The piano goes quiet. Can they hear footsteps? They glue their ears to the door. If the piano has gone silent it’s because they’ve been heard. But nobody comes to open up. They knock again. Suddenly, the door opens. A woman’s head appears in the gap created by the security chain and gives them the once over, from helmets to boots. Perhaps she is the pianist? Both had imagined her being much younger. The firefighters greet her and say they need to call the station, to tell them to come and pick them up. The woman gives them the once over again, this time from boots to helmets. They feel absurd. The woman closes the door for a second, removes the security chain, opens it wide, and invites them in. They go in. The woman shuts the door and points to her telephone. The thinner firefighter picks up the receiver, puts it to his ear, and dials.