A Crack in the Wall (10 page)

And then, with Pablo still considering the concept of a “rip-off artist”, Borla started giving instructions on the way to proceed: that they should keep Jara calm, telling him that he would soon have an answer, and that in the mean time Marta should press on with plans to lay the concrete.

“The only risk here is that Jara goes to the municipality and leans on some jerk to get the work stopped,” Borla observed. “Which can also be sorted, you know, but that costs money, and I confess that I'm heartily sick of people dipping into my pockets, Pablo” – and as he said this he put his own hands into his trouser pockets as though there were something to protect there. “Keep him quiet until we've got the cement in; once we've covered the foundations and laid the slab, nobody with half a brain will listen to this loser's gripe.”

Marta's job was the easiest: she just had to speed up the work. There was no magical art to that – it was a question of ringing the contractors, demanding longer hours, bulking up the teams, ensuring that everybody was working to maximum effect and praying that it would not rain, as it was raining now, three years later, over Buenos Aires. On that day Marta looked up a weather forecast on the computer, confirmed that no rain was expected all week and committed to having the cement ready in four days. Pablo Simó's part of the deal was quite a bit more involved.
How do you keep a “rip-off artist” like Nelson Jara quiet? Pablo began with the most cowardly of strategies: trying to avoid him until the concrete was ready. But, hoping to pre-empt Jara counter-attacking with one of those surprise visits he liked to make, the following day he sent a note to his house that read:

Pablo Simó was gambling on this brief missive being sufficient to stop Jara getting annoyed at the lack of an immediate response and taking his complaint to the municipality, but he knew that it wouldn't stop him indefinitely: a man like Jara wouldn't sit around twiddling his thumbs for long. He would want to see, to ask questions, to hustle, to insist, to negotiate. Pablo didn't feel able to go along with Borla's plan and meet this man face-to-face, knowing that at some moment Jara was bound to sniff out the ruse and see that he was being deceived. For that reason whenever the phone rang Pablo let the call go to answerphone and picked up only once the speaker had identified himself and he could be sure that it wasn't Nelson Jara calling. Jara did in fact leave two messages, which went unanswered, and Pablo reckoned that another two or three calls, which were cut off before anyone spoke, were also from him. And although Pablo Simó was powerless to prevent him dropping into the office at any moment, changing the hours at which he arrived and left – upsetting though he found this upheaval in a day that depended on methodical daily rituals – gave him a certain guarantee against finding Jara stalking him in the corridors.

For all his efforts at avoidance, the same day he sent the note he heard somebody, with a voice that could have been Jara's, shout “Simó” as he was going into the underground. Quickening his step, he plunged into the crowd without turning back to see whether or not Jara was behind him. Another day he thought he saw Jara among the people swarming down the stairs onto the station platform, just as the doors of the carriage in which Pablo was travelling closed and the train moved away – but again, he couldn't be sure. The indisputable encounter occurred two days later, as Pablo was returning from lunch, when he saw Jara standing at the entrance to the building where their architectural practice was, his plastic bag, bulging with files, held on the floor between his legs as he swayed back and forth, the way he had a few days previously as he sat on the other side of Pablo's desk. At the risk of being spotted, Pablo watched him for a time from the opposite corner to where Jara stood vainly waiting for him to arrive: he saw how the man kept checking his watch at minute intervals; how he once more rang the concierge's bell and waited while nobody came to answer the door; how he chewed off the loose skin at the sides of his nails; how he put one hand to his face and rubbed his jaw worriedly. Without seeing it, Pablo could also guess at his furrowed brow, the pain at his waist from standing such a long time, the sweat, the raw skin around his fingernails, the anxiety. Pablo was tempted to cross over the road, stand in front of him and say:

“Don't waste any more time, Jara.” He would address him for the first time with the informal “you”.

He felt as if he could speak like this to Jara, frankly, as you might speak to a friend, a schoolmate or someone you played football with on the weekends. An equal, that's what he thought, with that word: equal. It was at that precise
moment that Jara was waiting for him at the door to the studio, while he spied on him from the other side of the road, that Pablo Simó felt himself and Nelson Jara both to be members of a particular species to which not everyone belonged; two men who had come from the same place and were heading for the same destination. That if every man had a label fixed to some part of his body defining what he will or will never be, he and Jara had the same tag. And this thought, far from troubling him, far from showing him something he didn't want to see, relieved him; it made him feel that he wasn't alone. He had never thought of himself as the equal of Borla or Marta, even though they were colleagues and had all shared an office for twenty years. He wasn't Laura's equal, either: he always had the impression that his wife brought more energy, willingness and effort to the conjugal partnership than he did, and that difference in contribution – it was only fair to recognize it – tipped the scales in her favour. And yet he did, oddly, feel the equal of that man who, rising from the ugliest pair of shoes Pablo had ever seen, rocked back and forth, as though cradling himself, that man who held a bulging plastic bag between his legs, waiting for something that would never arrive, while he spied, like a coward, from the opposite corner. In that place and at that moment, Pablo knew that Jara and he were, in some sense that he couldn't define, the same thing.

And yet, despite that epiphany – or because of it – having seen clearly where each of them belonged, Pablo Simó looked at Nelson Jara once more, as if by way of a farewell; then he turned and went, quickly, almost at a run, with no destination in mind. For a long time he wandered in circles around the city, and once he was sure nobody was following him, he found an excuse to stop off at an estate
agency run by people known to him and decided to spend the rest of the afternoon there. It was there, in fact, that Pablo wrote his second note:

After that he spoke to Marta for confirmation that in less than forty-eight hours cement would be filling the foundations of the building, and only then did he call a courier and hand over the note for delivery to Jara. At that point he knew with the certainty of someone waiting for thunder after a lightning bolt that he, Pablo Simó, was no better than vermin.

He repeats that word “vermin”, like a mantra, like someone counting sheep to help themselves get to sleep. And he goes to sleep. And yet, aided by a strange oblivion that is sometimes the mysterious gift of night, not long afterwards he wakes up thinking of Leonor. Or rather, thinking of the buildings he has promised to choose for her. Even in the middle of the night, on the left-hand side of the bed, still listening to the rain on the other side of the window, he's confident that he won't need to look in architectural magazines, or search through those old notes and books from his student days – which, in spite of Laura's complaints, he still keeps stored in the box room – nor does he need to look on the Internet, or to go out blindly searching for buildings around the city. He doesn't know if he dreamt of Leonor, because he can't remember – he doesn't think so – but what's certain
is that when he wakes up, having slept a little more than three hours, Pablo opens his eyes before the alarm goes off and passing in front of him like the closing credits of a film is an endless list of buildings in Buenos Aires that are worth looking at. Trying to commit them quickly to memory before they go out of his head, he repeats the names, reciting them under his breath and then quickly jumping out of bed to find his notebook so that he can write them all down. There are far too many, he realizes as he writes – he can't give the girl so many options. Leonor asked only for five. So he crosses out the Kavanagh, the old offices of the
Diario Crítica
, the Obras Sanitarias building on Avenida Córdoba, the Banco Nación and the Olivetti, facing Plaza San Martín; it's not that they don't deserve to be on his list but that, to different degrees, they are emblematic of this city's architecture, buildings that anyone might choose, and he doesn't want to be anyone. He wants to surprise Leonor with options that she may never have heard of. “The buildings in Buenos Aires that the architect Pablo Simó likes best,” as she put it.

He underlines, on the other hand, the building designed by the Italian architect Mario Palanti at number 1,900 on Avenida Rivadavia, the art-nouveau façade that so obsessed Tano Barletta on Rivadavia at about 2,000 – or was it 2,100? Virginio Colombo's building on Rivadavia at 3,200 and two by the same architect on Hipólito Yrigoyen at 2,500, one opposite the other. Are they exactly opposite each other? He had better check that this morning on his way to the office; they are only a few blocks from his house and he hasn't looked at them for a long time; he can't even remember how long. He adds to the list the housing complex on Calle La Rioja, designed by architects at the Solsona studio; the rationalist building on Alsina and Entre Ríos – on which
side of Entre Ríos, though? – and the Liberty building on Paraguay at 1,300, which he marks with a big asterisk because he suspects it's the one Leonor will like most. The best balcony railings in Buenos Aires are on Avenida Riobamba, close to Arenales; the neat building with the small windows is on Beruti at 3,800. He counts them: one, two, three, plus two more is five, six, seven, eight, plus railings makes nine, ten. He'll have to cross a few more out: he can't give Leonor a list of ten buildings unless he wants to spend all Saturday afternoon with her. Will he go with her on Saturday? He doesn't know yet. Saturday afternoon. He crosses some out anyway. He leaves Palanti, the art nouveau, the three by Colombo which, cheating, he counts as one, plus Liberty and the railings: that's five. A sneaky five, but he reckons that's OK. He draws a line under his list, pulls the page out of his notebook and puts it under his pillow, and then he does manage to sleep a little more. Half an hour later the alarm goes off; Laura's out of bed and having a wash. He gets out his list and looks over it again.

“What are you doing?” Laura asks, coming out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel.

“Looking something over,” he tells her.

“What is it?”

“Nothing important, Laura. Last night I wrote down a few ideas to do with work and now I'm crossing out something that doesn't apply.”

The explanation seems to satisfy Laura, whose attention shifts to selecting the day's clothes from her wardrobe and laying them out on the bed. Pablo says, without looking at her.

“You may need to go to the supermarket on your own this Saturday. Borla's asked me to go and look at some things.”

“Oh, what a shame. I thought we could go to the cinema after we did the shopping. We haven't been for ages.”

Pablo wonders why, if they haven't been to the cinema for ages, his wife has to choose precisely this moment to propose it for Saturday.

“Will you get back in time to go to the cinema?” Laura asks, drying her hair with a hand towel.

“I'm not sure,” he lies. “Can I let you know this evening?”

“Sure, tell me later. There's no hurry.”

She combs her hair, and once all the tangles are out she lets the towel around her body drop and finishes drying herself in front of him: first she lifts one leg onto the bed and dries her calf, her thigh and crotch. Then she does the same with the other leg. Pablo watches her and says:

“You were snoring last night.”

Unflinching, towel in hand, she says:

“That's a nice thing to say, isn't it? And well timed! I'm standing naked in front of you and that's the best you can think of?”

“I didn't realize you were naked, Laura,” he says, by way of an excuse.

“Well that's even worse! What were you looking at, then? The towel? You don't notice when I'm naked, but you do notice when I'm snoring.”

Without waiting for an answer, Laura begins to dress.

“I don't know, Laura,” he replies. “I was looking the other way, or I was thinking of something else. I don't know why I remembered just now that you were snoring last night. I just did. Don't analyse it too much. Snoring isn't a capital offence, is it? I snore too, after all.”

His wife doesn't answer or even look at him, and Pablo, worried that he's making things worse, says, “I'm tired, Laura. I slept badly.”

His fatigue seems not to bother her. She steps into her shoes, checks that she has everything in her bag, puts on a blazer and gets ready to go out, but not before saying to him:

“It's very ungentlemanly, Pablo. I mean, don't worry. I know you and I don't require you to seduce me, but it's just as well you're not at a stage in your life when you need to go out impressing girls, because I don't think you'd know where to start.”