Juan José Saer - Scars

— Someone named Tomatis came looking for you, she said.

— Did you ask what he wanted? I said.

— No. Since you weren’t here, he left, my mother said.

Then she went back to her room. I got in bed and turned out the light, but couldn’t manage to get the sheets warm. It was like being crammed between two blocks of ice. Around ten I heard my mother leave, and when I realized that I was completely alone in the house, I felt worse. I went to my mother’s room and got in her bed, in the dark. It was a little warmer than mine, but I had to force myself to stay awake for fear that she’d find me there when she got back. I stayed there about two hours, then went back to mine. It was like stepping into an ice box. If someone had come by and amputated my feet, I wouldn’t have felt a thing. They could have chopped them off and thrown them in the trash and I wouldn’t have realized it till the next day, when I tried to put my shoes on. Then I fell asleep enough to see the shrunken body fall a million times and hear the glass shattering a million times in Ernesto’s office. I woke up and looked at the clock — it was five in the morning and colder than when I had gone to sleep. I made a cup of coffee and brought it to bed. Two minutes later I vomited. I realized I was sick and wouldn’t be going to work that day. I put the thermometer in my armpit and left it there five minutes. When I took it out I saw it read 38.2. I stared at the transom, watching the light change color — black to blue, then a pale green and eventually gray, where it stayed — until the sun came up. I slept. When I woke up again the room was filled with a weak light, and the gray transom was shining brightly. I heard my mother in the kitchen and I thought I was going to die. It was ten in the morning. I called my mother.

— I have a fever, I said when she came in.

She had on red pants and a black sweater, and she’d put a handkerchief on her head. A cigarette was dangling from her lips, and her round face was washed clean.

— You’re soaked, she said. She was silent a moment, then asked, Were you in my room last night?

— I was looking for cold medicine, I said.

— Don’t leave your nasty handkerchiefs in my bed, my mother said.

— Do you have anything for the fever? I said.

She left without saying anything. A little later she came back with a pink pill and a glass of water. I sat up and swallowed the pill with two or three sips of water. I retched but didn’t throw up the water or the pill. My mother saw the vomit on the floor and came back with a rag and a bucket of water. She crouched down and cleaned it up. Then she fixed up the bed and disappeared.

At exactly one she brought me a plate of soup, but I barely touched it. I asked her to call the paper and tell them I was sick, then heard her leave for the corner store to make the call. When she came back and opened my door, I pretended to be asleep. The sweats had started and the bed was getting hot, and an hour later, when I could feel my clothes sticking to my body, I called my mother again and asked for a towel, then dried off and put on fresh clothes. I put the thermometer under my armpit again, and when I took it out five minutes later I saw that I didn’t have a fever. At six I heard the doorbell ring, then my mother’s voice coming down the corridor toward my room, talking to someone who was cleaning his feet on the doormat. My door opened and Tomatis came in, followed by my mother. Tomatis pulled up a chair, very close to the bed.

— I’ve come to hear your last words and persuade you to include me in your will, said Tomatis.

— You can all eat shit. Those are my last words, I said.

— Don’t be gross, Angelito, my mother said.

— That’s what I call disregard for posterity, said Tomatis.

— Can I get you a drink, Mr. Tomatis? said my mother.

— Don’t worry, I’m fine, said Tomatis.

— I’ll get you a coffee, Mr. Tomatis, it’s easy to make, said my mother, and left.

— What’s wrong with you, said Tomatis. Yesterday you were fine.

— I couldn’t sleep all night and this morning I woke up with a fever, I said.

Tomatis put his hand on my forehead.

— It’s gone now, he said, taking his hand away.

— It passed, I said.

— Gloria is on her way here, said Tomatis. We were going to meet downtown, but I told her you were sick and I was coming to see you, so she said she’d come by too.

— I hope you didn’t come here intending to get me out of bed so you could use it for all the filthy things you’re into, I said.

Tomatis laughed.

— Wouldn’t dream of it, Angelito, he said.

— The guy threw himself out the window, I said. He jumped up and disappeared from the face of the earth.

— I heard, said Tomatis. What were you doing there, if I might ask?

— I crashed the inquest. I wanted to see him up close, I said.

— Romantic delusions, said Tomatis. And how did you get into the inquest, if it’s illegal?

— I told the judge that the paper was very interested in the matter and since I was a law student and wanted to specialize in imprisonment, I had double the interest in attending the inquest, I said.

— And you convinced him? said Tomatis.

— Apparently I did, I said.

— Who’s the judge? said Tomatis.

— López Garay, I said.

— Right, said Tomatis. I know him.

— So Gloria’s coming here? I said. Haven’t you told her this is a respectable household?

— I told her, said Tomatis. Strange that López Garay let you come to the inquest just like that.

— He bought it up, I said.

— He’s not stupid, said Tomatis.

— No. He doesn’t seem it, I said.

My mother came in.

— Will you have a little gin with your coffee, Mr. Tomatis? she said.

She’d painted her face and changed her clothes; she had on a fitted skirt and a multicolored shirt.

— You don’t even need to ask, I said.

— I asked Mr. Tomatis, not you, my mother said.

— If it’s no bother, said Tomatis.

— None, said my mother. Just the opposite.

Just then the bell rang and the most extraordinary piece of ass in the world walked in, accompanied by Gloria. She had the afternoon paper with her and was dressed exactly the same as the night at Tomatis’s, but now she had a blue umbrella, folded. I remembered the woman with the blue umbrella I had seen cross the Plaza de Mayo at a diagonal the previous afternoon. Gloria gave me a kiss and then took a package from her handbag and gave it to me.

— It’s a gift, she said.

I opened it. It was a cheap edition of Thomas Mann’s Tonio Kröger .

— I was deciding between this and a book on etiquette, said Gloria. Finally I picked this one because I figured that you are impossible to educate.

— I’m surprised you didn’t bring me a smut novel, I said.

— I don’t want to perpetuate the decay of your imagination.

— She talks like my mother, I said, looking at Tomatis.

— They all have a little mother in them, and a little slut, said Tomatis.

— It hasn’t stopped raining all day, said Gloria.

— It’s gotten dark, said Tomatis.

My mother served coffee and gin for Gloria and Tomatis and a straight gin for herself, then she brought me a cup of warm milk. She stayed with us more than half an hour, then she went to her room. Gloria suggested we play poker, and I sat up in bed and pushed my back up against the wall; they brought up their chairs and we used the bed as a table and played. Gloria won again. Around nine, Tomatis said he would go out and buy something to eat, but he ran into my mother in the corridor and she told him she was making something, so Tomatis went into the kitchen with her and after a while he came back with a plate full of cheese and another with sardines. My mother came in behind him with bread and a bottle of wine. Then my mother announced that she was leaving and said that whatever we needed we could get from the fridge. Then she said goodbye from the corridor, and a short while later we heard the sound of the street door opening and closing.