Rage (18 page)

He felt such intense loathing as he recognized the
man, and not because he was wearing one of his
hideous rugby shirts. Maria had forced himself to
believe it wasn't actually Israel, but some other man.
The shirt, it had to be said, made his hackles rise and
obliged him to confront reality: Israel, his enemy, the
provocative idiot who aeons ago had hit him in front of
Rosa, this was the "fat guy", the "big boy". His attitude
- the attitude of the two of them - stopped there in the
doorway to the tradesmen's entrance, left no room for
doubt: romance was in the air. The smiles, the flirtatious
manner in which looks were raised or dropped shyly
downwards...

Maria ground his teeth and his eyes filled with tears.

Israel gave Rosa a kiss on her cheek and started to
move off, still saying something to her, no doubt "I'll
call you" or "let's talk about it later", that would fit the gesture he was makingwith his hand, with his little finger
and thumb spread over his face. Rosa nodded. Then
she closed and locked the door, and walked back a few
yards, staring thoughtfully at the ground. Maria wanted
to believe that Rosa was pondering whether what she
was doing was the right thing... Rosa must have decided
that it was, since a smile suddenly lit up her face, and
she ran the remaining distance to the kitchen skipping
like a teenager.

It was horrible, the worst possible betrayal. Now, just
when he had come to understand everything, he could
believe none of it. He decided to disappear, disappear
into the interior of his own disappearance, before he
met Rosa. He didn't hate her. But he could never forgive
her the relationship with Israel. From that moment on,
he would really and truly lock himself away. He wished to
know nothing more about her.

A few days earlier, Rosa had scattered rat poison
throughout the attic rooms. It was in cubic granules,
like large grains of rock salt, laid out in little mounds in
every corner. He had gathered them all up and scattered
them in the toilet grating a few days later, to give the
impression that the rat had eaten them. During the
days he lived with the poison in his room, he had never
noticed its smell. Not a single grain of poison remained
in sight, but now its smell pervaded everywhere.

21

His isolation was almost complete. In the ground-floor
living room there was a stereo system with a radio,
but he obviously couldn't switch it on. The Walkman,
lacking headphones, was of no use to him, and the Blinders didn't subscribe to a daily newspaper. The only
publication which arrived regularly was Selections from
the Reader's Digest, which on one occasion he had leafed
through in the Blinders' bedroom without any of what
he read catching his attention.

He knew who was president because he'd heard his
name used, but this was now so long ago he was unsure
whether he was still in power. There were three television
sets in the house: one in the ground-floor living room;
another in Senora Blinder's bedroom; and the third
in Rosa's room. Senor Blinder always switched on the
living-room television, and the only thing he watched
were Argentine and European football matches. Senora
Blinder watched films in her bedroom, and Rosa watched
soaps and all kinds of celebrity-gossip programmes, but
he had never felt secure watching television behind
closed doors, because the sound would have prevented
him hearing whether Rosa or Senora Blinder had left the
building. That meant the only news he had heard from
the outside world was that emanating from the livingroom television set.

There Senor Blinder watched almost nothing but
football matches. On one occasion, Maria gathered that
the United States had attacked Iraq, and that a woman
in a country house somewhere in Buenos Aires province,
an upper-class woman, had been murdered, possibly by
a family member, although an extensive investigation
had thus far failed to find the assassin. The war and the
rural crime - with all the interminable discussions and
conjectures they elicited - were the only subjects which,
in the course of many years, had proved substantially
more attractive than football.

Perhaps Senor Blinder was a lawyer, or a doctor, and
read the paper in his office or his surgery. If that were not the case, you might conclude that Senor Blinder
had turned his back on the world, reducing it to a series
of football stadiums. On whom was he turning his back,
then? On the house and on Rosa.

He spent the greater part of the day (and all night)
locked in his room. With the penknife he had stolen
from Ricardo, he began to carve and construct boats
and planes and some animals, using matches and soap.
They were tiny sculptures measuring three to six inches
in height, which took him days to complete, and which
he hid in the attic when he had finished them.

He let his beard and his hair grow long, as well as the
nail on the index finger of his right hand, which he used
to make the soap sculptures. From time to time he went
out to get some light and air on his face - a pyramid of
glass in the middle of the floor - and there he lay down
with his eyes closed, as if on a sun lounger. Susceptible,
dumb, naked.

After months of nudity, without the constant friction of the rough, poor-quality materials he had worn
throughout his life, his skin was softer than it had ever
been. Nor had his fingers ever been more sensitive.
How many millions of blows and small cuts to the hand
had he endured in the daily tasks which he now set
himself? How may pounds of chalk dust and earth had
he inhaled? When he was wearing boots or shoes his
heels were covered in a tough layer of skin, almost like a
slipper. Ever since he had been going barefoot, forever
walking on marble, polished wood or on carpets, the
hard patches had diminished and almost disappeared.

He repressed the imaginary conversations with Rosa,
yet she reappeared frequently in his dreams. One night
he dreamed they were both off to the Mar del Plata, and
on another that they were on their way home, as if in dream worlds there could also be a continuity between
one thing and the next, one dream and the next, until
the holidays vanished in smoke and only the travel
remained. In the same way, his sexual life had reduced
to the maximum degree. One night he dreamed he
was making love with Rosa, but in later dreams she only
appeared making love with Israel. Israel was tattooed
with the image of a life-sized eagle on his back, the tips of
its spread wings nudging the backs of his thighs.

Gradually rage gave way to disappointment, and finally disappointment stopped pressing the magic button of
desire, extinguishing it: he stopped masturbating, either
in his dreams or in reality. (Only once did he dream he
was masturbating. Such an image had never previously
entered his dreams).

However much against his will, it was inevitable that
a certain amount of information would filter through
to him about what was going on in the house. These
were really more in the way of references or signs, and
fairly minor ones too - the slam of a door, long hours
of total silence, someone calling a name in a loud voice
- permitting him to form an overview - however little he
intended to do so - a bird's-eye view, really, of the course
the Blinders' marriage was running (from bad to worse)
and the state of Rosa's spirits (good). This information
irritated him, for the least amount of it evoked awkward
questions. Was Rosa seeing Israel every day of the week now?
Was she in love with him? Didn't it count that Israel was a
poor little rich kid, who probably just wanted to take her
to bed, but with whom there was no future relationship,
and who was bound to make her suffer? Didn't she realize
that no doubt Israel was laughing at her behind her back,
in the club with his other crude friends from the barrio,
telling them every last detail of "the titbit I've nibbled"?

The same applied to her future at work. One morning
he had overheard a shouting match between Senor and
Senora Blinder: they were in deep financial trouble.
The villa had been up for sale for years now. But, unless
some country wanted to buy it up in order to install their
embassy there, it was, given its incredibly high value,
virtually impossible to sell. Did Rosa realize her workplace
was up for sale? One time long ago, when they had visited
a bar after a trip to the cinema, they had talked about
the number of new countries appearing on the world
map. Rosa failed to understand how it was possible for a
country to arise out of nowhere, with territory, inhabitants,
a judicial system and a flag, a national anthem and a
president. "It's not out of nowhere," he had told her,
"they're becoming autonomous. The land and the people
are already there, all they have to do is to compose an
anthem and elect a president." Was Rosa aware that at any
moment someone could turn up and buy the villa as the
ambassadorial residence of one of these new countries?
What would then become of her? Or of him?

He had already been over this question a number of
times. Whenever he started thinking of her, he ended
up thinking of himself. But Rosa would have good
references, that was beyond doubt; she could obtain a
job in some other grand mansion, or maybe even here
in fact, the embassy of that new country, only in this case
she would have become a foreigner in her own country.
Could foreigners work in the embassy of another land?
And what would happen if they took on and employed
Israel's parents? That would be terrible. Rosa might
become pregnant by Israel and repeat his own personal
history...

Over four decades earlier Maria's mother had worked
as a domestic servant in the house of Governor Castro's intendant. And people muttered under their breath
- although their whispering had reached as far as him
- that her son was really fathered by the intendant.

The man whom Maria had always called "dad" was
blond, freckled and short; nothing about one of them
resembled the other. Nor did he in any way resemble
his mother. When the rumour reached him, he was
already grown, and the intendant had died years
earlier, so he could hardly go and meet him and make
the comparison. For years the subject had gnawed
away at him, but he had never dared to mention it.
From time to time in the village he'd meet an elderly
and aristocratic lady, who would look at him oddly:
she always went about with a vacant expression until
she set eyes on him. Then she would seem to pull
herself together and wake up. She was the intendant's
widow.

The very same day his mother went off with another
man, Maria went into his father's room and put the
question to him. Well, he didn't put it directly: first he
went in and hung around awhile, saying nothing.

A few minutes later, his father - who was stretched
out on a couch staring at the television set - averted his
gaze and looked at him:

"What are you crying for?" he asked.

Maria was crying because his mother had left. But
he answered that he was crying because he'd heard he
wasn't really his son.

The father raised himself up on his elbows.

"Who told you that?" he asked angrily.

"The kids. They say I'm the son of the intendant...
Is that true?"

"No."

"So why do?..."

"You tell those kids to stop talking rubbish," interrupted his father, rolling over onto his back on the
couch once more.

He hadn't thought about it again since then. He
remembered the incident because of Rosa, but also
because it was his birthday: his forty-first birthday.

He wasn't sure of the precise date. He had taken up
residence in the villa on the 26th or 27th September, so
today could as well be the 9th or the 10th April....

He uncorked the champagne he had stolen over
Christmas, and had concealed in the attic, and drank
about a third of the bottle in tiny sips, without ceremony,
his eyes fixed on the wall across the room.

It began to turn cold. He remembered what he had
told Rosa about the sea temperatures... It was already
two weeks since the cold had descended on the city.
People were going out dressed in their overcoats and
were hurrying on their way. The trees down in the garden
were starting to shed their leaves. The lawn had stopped
growing and, all along a lane which extended like a long
black thread, the ants were hastening along with their
enormous bundles of sky-blue, yellow and red.

He hadn't seen anything of all this. Yet he knew it was
exactly like this.

22

Love wears a woman's face... The Catwoman... The Fugitive... Combat... View over Biondi... those were some of
the programmes which, in another era, his parents had
fought over. These weren't merely arguments over who
would watch which, but actual fights. They always started
with an argument; then, almost always, they'd turn into shouts and, more than likely, sessions of pushing and
shoving. His father listened to records by Perez Prado.
His mother to Leonardo Favio. His mother smoked. His
father didn't. His mother worked. His father didn't. One
point in his father's favour: he cooked. But his mother
disliked the stews on which his father expended such
considerable efforts.

Television, music, work, cooking, anything could become
the pretext for a fight. The drawback (if one could call it
that) was that the fights weren't a means of staying together,
as in those relationships where love has transmuted into a
permanent safety valve. His parents' battles were born of
nothing more than mutual intolerance, mutual antipathy.
They hated one another, full stop.

His father slept an enormous amount, by day or night.
His mother was an insomniac...

It was years since he'd last seen either of them, but at
least he knew where to find his... if he truly was his father.
What on earth did this matter to him now?