Rage (14 page)

"Something up?" she asked him.

"And you're asking me..." he replied.

She blinked. She recognized his tone as a battle cry
and, even while she didn't yet understand what he was
referring to by his "and you're asking me", accepted the
rebuke.

"Are you annoyed?" she enquired.

Senor Blinder stopped and stared at her.

"Of course I'm annoyed," he said.

"What are you talking about?" Senora Blinder asked,
with genuine sincerity.

"The toilet," he said.

"What's up with the toilet?"

"And you're asking me?"

Senora Blinder paused once more. She looked sideways, then let her eyes slide back to look at him again:

"What sort of nonsense is this?" she said. "I'm asking
you what's going on in the toilet. What is going on?"

"Go and see for yourself if you want," said Senor
Blinder, his tone sounding both ironic and fed up.

Senora Blinder didn't move. The only thing she did
was to take her eyes off her husband and fix them on a
spot on the wall, thinking deeply. Then she rose and left
the bedroom.

When she returned, she looked as if she'd witnessed
a crime.

"Do you think I did that!" she said.

"Why not? Did I do it?" Senora Blinder replied sarcastically.

Senora Blinder clenched her fists.

"Have you gone mad?" she asked.

"Go on, Rita, pull the chain and let's go to sleep, it's
getting late," he said, and sat down on the bed and
pulled off his shoes.

Senora Blinder took three steps towards her husband.

"In the first place, it wasn't me. Secondly, let's not
hear anything about `let's get to bed': it's seven-thirty
in the evening, and we have guests. You're going to take
a shower, and we'll all have dinner together. Where on
earth did you get the idea that I could have left a thing
that size in the toilet?"

"Rita, until this point in our conversation, I was merely
joking. But if you carry on like this, you'll end up really
infuriating me. Pull the chain and let's change the
subject."

"I tell you, it wasn't me!"

"OK, it was me. Can you please now go and pull the
chain?"

"No!" replied Senora Blinder, and crossed her arms.

"Why are you shouting?" asked Senor Blinder, wrinkling his nose in disgust, as if his wife's voice was
unbearable to him.

"Marcos, if you're annoyed about what happened
today with Ricardo, don't take it out on me, it's not fair.
Even less when you pick a fight about something like
this," went on Senora Blinder, waving in the direction of
the toilet. "We're grown-ups."

"I don't want an argument..."

"I do! By this stage I absolutely do need an argument!"

"Then have it with yourself. If you want to argue with
me, first go and pull the chain. I want to take a shower."

"Unbelievable."

"My opinion entirely."

"What's your problem with Ricardo, what's up with
you? He's your daughter's husband! He's been married
to her for nine years, he hasn't just parachuted in from
the skies above. You know him. You know what he's
like. The other fellow... well, all right he really was an
idiot."

"But he's the children's father..."

"Only of one of them!"

"The best one of them..." Senor Blinder said in a low
voice.

"You're so unfair," his wife reproached him. "Those
children are also your grandchildren."

"I've nothing at all to say about them! What does
bother me is seeing how they put that lad down. It
annoys me. What do you want me to do? Esteban loves
him, he's his father and needs to see him... he has the
right to see him..."

"He's a drug addict."

"That's a lie!" announced Senor Blinder. "They want
to get rid of him. Hans would never touch drugs!"

"Come off it, Marcos... he was put in prison, in Holland too. You know perfectly well that you have to be in
possession of a pretty large quantity to get put inside in
a country like Holland, don't you, eh?"

"They framed him."

"That's his story..."

"And I believe it. It's political. Politics is the same the
whole world over."

Senora Blinder made a suggestive pause.

"They released him. They must have their reasons,"
went on Senor Blinder. Under the Argentine military
dictatorships he had endlessly reiterated his ideas based
on no more than "they must have their reasons"; now the country was a democracy, he was saying "they must
have their reasons". Denial of personal responsibility as
superior mental entelechy.

Senora Blinder had lost her appetite for an argument.
She marched out of the bedroom and did not return,
but Senor Blinder and Maria heard her pull the chain.
Maria was convinced that Senora Blinder had given in
to her husband through a process of attrition, while
deeming it impossible to deal with a man like him. He
was also certain that Senor Blinder loathed her, even if
not quite as much as she detested him.

14

When Alvaro arrived, Maria was hidden in the kitchen
annexe, observing a conversation taking place between
Esteban and Rosa. It was eleven o'clock at night. The
Blinders had finished their dinner and were taking their
coffee in the living room, while the younger children
were playing Tetris on a laptop.

Esteban had installed himself in the kitchen. Every
time Rosa returned from the dining room (she went to
and fro bringing back dirty plates and setting the table
for the midnight toast), Esteban exchanged a few words
with her.

Maria monitored the two situations at first hand, slipping from the kitchen annexe (where he could overhear without watching the exchanges between Esteban
and Rosa), to the first floor (from where he could both
watch and hear - at least in part - the scene involving
the Blinders). He recognized a degree of complicity
between Esteban and Rosa, in consequence of something that must have occurred quite a while back when Esteban was only ten or twelve years old; the issue was
that now the lad was rather more grown up, he seemed
set on converting complicity into union. And Rosa was
leading him on, laughing under her breath and agreeing
with whatever he said.

Despite his jealousy, Maria stayed watching the scene
being played out by the Blinders. Alvaro absorbed all
his attention. He despised him. Alvaro was unusually
- miraculously - sober, and to begin with, Maria found it
hard to single him out: his voice sounded like someone
else's.

The first thing Alvaro did was to serve himself a brandy.

"Have you eaten?" enquired his mother.

"Like a pig," replied Alvaro.

He explained he'd been to dinner at the house of a
group of Alcoholics Anonymous members, and laughed
as he related how they'd chased him around the table
in order to gain access to his hip flask. They'd got hold
of it. It now seemed, however, as if he was overcoming
this setback with a vengeance: inside of ten minutes he'd
downed two glasses of brandy. Protests from his mother
and sister ensued, then faded to silence between the
first and second glasses. They knew him, and there was
nothing to be done.

Half an hour later Alvaro had regained his customary
tone of voice, discussing English football in short sentences, emphasizing the word hooligan, which didn't
bother Ricardo, but did bother his father. Senor Blinder
just sat there, his mouth open and his gaze fixed on an
indeterminate point between his wife and daughter, who
were leafing through a photo album.

It was midnight. Christmas Day. Everyone rose and
filed into the dining room. Alvaro wobbled over to the
table in a series of zigzags; Ricardo uncorked a bottle of champagne while his wife shook their daughter, who
had fallen asleep. Esteban reappeared just a minute
before midnight, following Rosa, bearing a tray with
the glasses on it. Senora Blinder invited them to clink
glasses with her; afterwards they were free to do as they
liked.

"I told Claudia I'd come round to celebrate a bit at
her place..." said Rosa.

"If you want, you can phone and wish your mother a
merry Christmas..." offered Senor Blinder.

"Thank you very much, Senor. I'll ring her in a
moment."

Maria took the opportunity offered by the toast to go
to the kitchen and help himself to dinner. Tonight he
was generous to himself: he took several pasties, a large
slice of roast meat, potatoes, ham, bread and a banana.
He'd eaten nothing for the entire day. As he was about
to withdraw he spotted a couple of empty wine bottles
on the sideboard, sitting next to a half-dozen unopened
bottles. Would Rosa notice if one went missing? Most
likely she wouldn't; he took a bottle and set off for the
attic. He carried the bottle in his left hand; in his right
he bore the plate with everything else on it, including a
knife and fork.

Once in his room, he levered the cork out of the
bottleneck with the knife, took a small sip of wine from
the bottle, swilled it around his mouth, and swallowed
it.

"Merry Christmas," he told the rat, and took a larger
swig.

Next he settled himself down to eat. His plate held
a heap of muddled food: the ham beneath the roast,
with a pasty in the middle, the potatoes on top of the
banana, altogether the result of too much hurry. He picked up the piece of ham and raised it to his lips.
It was difficult to swallow. He was hungry, but Alvaro's
presence effectively shut down his windpipe. In so far as
he had managed to retain Alvaro in his line of vision, he
hadn't taken his eyes off him for a second; he'd stared
at him from the shadows with such fixation, it seemed
extraordinary that Alvaro hadn't noticed him.

He set the plate down to one side and pushed himself back on the bed with his heels, so that his back
was shoved up against the wall. He felt nauseous. An
electric shiver which ran downwards from his shoulders and another which rose from his waist met in the
pit of his stomach, as if that were where his rage and
his relaxation had chosen to clash. He half-closed his
eyes.

Then he heard a car horn, the voices of kids on the
street, and felt his eyes must have closed in sleep a
long, long time ago. He was confused. The rage he'd
experienced towards the foreman that distant afternoon
was as nothing compared with what he now felt towards
Alvaro, and he wondered how he could have fallen
asleep. He recalled having put a scrap of ham under the
wardrobe for the rat... He had barely drunk a few sips
of wine... He shook his head, and rapidly descended to
the first floor.

He had no idea of the time, but it had to be late: there
was no one in the dining room, and the lights were
turned off on the ground floor. He ran towards Rosa's
room. He didn't dare open her door, but either heard
- or believed he heard - her breathing, and knew she
was asleep in there.

The night had closed in; not a ray of light infiltrated
from outside. Maria felt his way across the room from
memory, reaching the Blinders' bedroom, and half-saw two motionless mounds in the bed, each completely
separated from the other.

The kitchen clock showed twenty past three in the
morning. He returned to the living room. He was tired,
as if the hours he'd spent asleep had worn him out. He
collapsed into an armchair.

On Alvaro's last visit, Maria had overheard him saying
that it was now six months since he'd had a cigarette.
Yet there was definitely the smell of nicotine in the air.
He leaned slowly forwards and felt around several butts
in an ashtray on the rattan table. All had been smoked
down to the filter except one. He picked it up and,
rolling it between his fingers like a blind man, noted
there was still an inch or two of cigarette left, and that
it hadn't been stubbed but left to burn out: the paper
was smooth, without rips in it. He lifted it to his lips.

He didn't think of smoking it there. He put it between
his lips intending to feel its shape, but what he felt was
more nausea: the filter was still wet with Alvaro's saliva.
He let it drop, curling his fingers in disgust, anxious
only to cease physical contact with it.

Suddenly he was aware of heavy breathing, almost
snoring. He got up, then froze to the spot. A man was
asleep in the armchair opposite him. He was at least five
yards away, across the rattan table, all of a heap, his head
lolling to the left. On the back of the chair, somewhat to
the right of his head, his coat was dangling; one of the
coat sleeves rested on his leg.

Maria hauled himself up an inch at a time, and went
over to the armchair; the minute hand on the kitchen
clock moved faster than he did.

It was Alvaro. Maria controlled his own breathing.
Since the man was so undeniably Alvaro, he was on
the point of leaving, but decided to give him another chance: he leaned forwards and put his hands to his
throat. Alvaro shrugged his shoulders as if some minor
nuisance - a fly, a draught - were bothering him.

Maria applied more pressure. Then Alvaro opened
his eyes and saw a totally nude stranger with his hands
around his neck. The mixture of sleep, alcohol and the
oddity of the situation raised a vague smile. He attempted
to stand, but Maria knelt on his legs, immobilizing him,
and increased the pressure on his throat.

"Hello," he said.

He pressed so hard he could hear the sound of small
bones breaking.

His attention was caught by Alvaro's docility, his utter
lack of resistance, as if he were in a deathly trance,
while preferring to believe he were only in a dream.
A few moments later, Alvaro closed his eyes and his
face disappeared. Maria assumed his face had turned
so black that it had faded into the darkness. Then he
suddenly released the pressure.

He was sweating. A bead of perspiration dropped
from the end of his nose; his hands and his arms were
trembling. Now that he had killed Alvaro, he loathed
him even more.