Rage (24 page)

He banged on the floor with the flat of his hand, but
the rat didn't make a move.

"Come here..." he whispered, "let me take a look at
you..."

He stretched out an arm in the intention of catching
it, going so far as to stretch out his fingers in the shape
of a spider, trying to get near to it... right up close until
he touched it. At that instant he felt an icy burning in
his hand. The rat had bitten him.

"Me?" he asked incredulously. "You've gone and bitten
me?"

Between his index finger and thumb there hung
a piece of flesh and skin. The wound, which had just
started to bleed, was in the shape of a smile.

He collected up the poison, went to the bathroom,
threw it into the toilet, before washing the wound
with alcohol. As he left the bathroom, he saw the rat
slithering down the corridor, weaving back and forth in
confusion. It had no idea which way to go. Maria paused
and waited for the rat to decide. Only when it finally did
so did he start moving forwards again.

34

"How lucky that you rang, and just in time! We're just
about to leave for the Mar del Plata!"

Maria was up to speed with the Blinders' intentions to
leave the city behind (they were closing the windows and
securing the doors), but he'd had no idea where they
were off to. Maria had had no chance to ring her until a
minute before they were due to depart, and it was more
an act of daring than a lucky chance which caused him
to do so then, for the Blinders were close at hand.

"Are you off?" he asked her in a low voice.

"Yes! At first I thought of staying put, but then..."

"You'll get to know the sea..."

"Yes."

"And Joselito?"

"Well, naturally he's coming with me."

"Buy him a bucket... teach him how to build sandcastles..."

"Yes."

"How very nice..."

"Neither the Senor nor the Senora are too keen on
going. It seems as if they don't much like the Mar del
Plata, but a married couple they know asked them along
and they didn't really know how to refuse."

"How long are you off for?"

"I think it's for a week..."

"And they're going to leave the house empty?"

"Well, there'll be a watchman here, a policeman in
fact. I overheard them hiring a guy..."

"And he'll be living in the house!?"

"Who?"

"The watchman..."

"Are you mad? He'll stay outside, of course! They've
hired someone to be there day and night, outside on
the pavement. Did I tell you that I've got the impression
that their financial matters aren't all as smooth as they
could be, if you catch my drift?..."

"Yes."

"Well then. It seems in fact they're going from bad to
worse, so that..."

"And is Joselito doing well?"

"Divinely well."

"Does he still follow you around doing those odd
things you told me he did, wanting to have you at his
side, then looking for you all over the place?..."

"He hardly does that any more at all..."

A severe blow, this.

What else should he have anticipated? Children can
forget anything at the speed of light... One week in the
life of a child Joselito's age had to be like a decade in
the life of a man of his age...

"Tell the Senora to buy him a bucket..."

"I'll buy him one myself!"

"Fine. Better still. And buy him a spade while you're
about it. Do you know what's best to do? Build him a
castle at the edge of the water, with a moat around it,
and you'll see when the tide comes in that it'll wash into
the moat and, if you make a door in the castle wall, the wave will come right inside and wash it away. You can
even stick some twigs in the roof too, like flagpoles...
But keep an eye on him all the time Rosa, so you don't
lose sight of him - you know a beach is like an anthill
and if you let him out of your sight you might not be
able to find him again, eh?"

"Don't scare me..."

"No... OK. Or rather yes. Yes, I want to scare you.
You can never be too cautious. It's the same with the
water: waves look so pretty but beneath them there's
always a current."

"You've no idea how much I'd like to be there with
you..."

"One day we'll go there, all three of us."

Then, suddenly, Maria heard the voice of Senora
Blinder somewhere behind Rosa, coming down the
phone line:

"Come on Rosa, do please pick up those suitcases.
Whoever are you still talking to?"

"With Claudia, Senora," replied Rosa, "we're just
saying goodbye." And she turned her voice back to the
phone to speak to him: "Fine, Claudia, give me a ring
when you're back..."... "Oh I didn't mean that, what
am I saying?" she hurriedly corrected herself. "I mean
I'll give you a call. Fine, a goodbye kiss."

She hung up.

They left a half-hour later.

And they took ten days to return home, not a week.

Maria found himself alone in the villa for the first
time ever. It was desperate, he missed Rosa and Joselito
so much (he even managed to miss Senor and Senora
Blinder!), but also because they'd left such a minimal
quantity of provisions behind them. Not a single
perishable foodstuff remained at all. In the larder there were tins of sardines and tuna, some jars of jam and
sweet chestnuts, two bags of rice, three packets of beans,
one box of crackers, some tea and herbal infusions and
coffee, and little else. He found a heel of bread in a bag
hanging on the wall, and under the table was a case of
six bottles of wine. The fridge was unplugged and empty
(other than a half-dozen eggs and a couple of stock
cubes), its door left open. Anything he ate in the course
of this week would be clearly obvious at the end of it.

But this was not the worst of his worries. From one of
the first-floor windows he could observe the policeman
standing on the street corner, his back to the villa. He
was in uniform and without a moustache. Maria was not
thinking of going out, not that he was now in any sort of
a position to do so... The policeman was clearly working
to a timetable: from eight in the evening until six in the
morning. That only left Maria the option of leaving the
house in broad daylight. Impossible.

The street lamps outside the house remained switched
on around the clock, the same as the kitchen light.
Other than that, the rest of the house was in darkness.
Maria couldn't be certain he would remain unseen
from the outside if he put on the living-room light - or
one of the others in any of the other rooms - and so
he made sure never to do so. But he fell into the habit
of sitting in one of the library armchairs, or of settling
down wherever else inside the house the light entered
- to read or at least leaf through their box of files and
papers, even watch television.

The first time he watched television he felt a degree
of strangeness, because what they were talking about
was exactly the same as years earlier, except that now
he no longer recognized any of the personalities
appearing on screen. And those who were still there years later, and who looked game to remain there for
many more years, were phenomenally old, as if an
incredible quantity of time had elapsed since the last
time he saw them.

He slept for three or four nights in Rosa's room.
He left off doing so when he began to smell his own
odour in her pillow. On the first night he ran a fever,
his body felt like an anthill, and he noted a degree of
insensitivity in the hand bitten by the rat. He observed
that certain of the muscles were painfully contracted:
the involuntary contractions affected one muscle at a
time, each one an individual fibrous filament, on one
occasion in his biceps, on another in a thigh... In the
morning he checked over the entire room. Rosa didn't
store any secrets there (no letters addressed to her or
written by her). In the bedside-table drawer he found
the star-shaped rattle which he'd managed to deliver to
her as a first-birthday present for Joselito. Above it and
on one side hung a sketch in blue ink, possibly scrawled
in Rosa's own hand, on the wall above the skirting.

He opened the wardrobe. How few clothes she possessed! Joselito may just have arrived in the world, but
he owned more outfits than she did. Children's bodies
grow at such a rapid rate; even so, children always seem
to own more clothes than they can possibly wear. But
as an adult, when a body has grown as much as it can,
if you want to put it like this, then one is obliged pretty
much always to go about in the same clothes.

This was hardly the case for Senor and Senora Blinder.
Their wardrobes were well full to bursting. However,
it was noteworthy that they too kept no secrets stored
there, or at least - like Rosa - nothing written down on
paper. Not one thing he uncovered during those first
three or four days alone in the house was of the least interest in terms of disclosing secrets. Or else perhaps
the Blinders kept them extremely well concealed or
Maria was already fully informed about them. In the
end it was disheartening: a lifetime, two long lifetimes
which, up until now, had failed to produce more than a
ghost could discover in the course of a few short years
(a ghost able to employ no more than one sense, the
sense of hearing, at that).

Nonetheless, he was able to corroborate or complete a
number of details regarding the Blinders: Senor Blinder
was a solicitor, suffered from high blood pressure, and
was unhappy and obsessive. At some point in her life,
Senora Blinder had set up an art gallery; she was a
"social" alcoholic (there was not one single photo of
her in which she didn't appear with someone at her
side and a glass in her hand, despite the fact that in the
villa she only drank at night and in bed); she used any
number of face creams, adored pastel colours and in all
probability maintained a secret lover, to judge from a
variety of overly coquettish designer garments relegated
to the back of the wardrobe. The most interesting thing
he found in the Blinders' bedroom was simultaneously
perturbing and disturbing: one of his little matchbox
aeroplanes.

The miniature plane was in the top drawer of a chest
facing the bed. No doubt little Joselito had abandoned
it somewhere, and Senora Blinder had picked it up and
deposited it there. Or perhaps Rosa had cleared it up
off the floor, and assumed that it was a gift that either
the Senor or Senora had brought him... Nobody said
anything about the miniature plane: it was he who had
learned of its existence there. Objects which nobody has
brought to a given place, and yet exist there at least as
a topic of conversation, carry a great potential within themselves by their very existence, even if they are
generally relegated to the rubbish bin without anyone
having given them the least attention. The world, the
entire planet, is filled with things which nobody has put in
the right place. He left the miniature aeroplane where it
was and shut the drawer.

One night (he was now sleeping in the Blinders' bed)
he was awoken by a strange noise. He got up hurriedly,
bent on discovering the cause. It crossed his mind that
a burglar must be trying to get into the house. He went
over to the window and opened it a crack: the policeman
was there, still standing with his back to the villa. Next
he went down to the kitchen. He found an empty wine
bottle had fallen over beside the dustbin lid, which
had also tumbled over, upending it. That was what had
caused the noise he'd heard. Rosa had forgotten to take
out the rubbish... He studied the bin bag: it was tied at
the top, but there were slashes in it, as if it had been
clawed or bitten. Who had done this?

The rat.

He ran a hand through his hair and over his face,
relieved, and went back to sleep.

He was hungry. The overlooked bin bag served him
from then on as a source to raid for the remains of what
little was left and which he had no further choice but to
consume: a tin of tuna, another of sardines, three egg
shells, a packet of rice, the wrappers of a couple of stock
cubes... He opened the bin bag, threw out the remains,
and closed the bag up again. On occasion, when he was
particularly hungry, he'd try and cheat his stomach with
a slug of brandy. Or he would prepare coffee or tea for
himself. What he liked best of all was mate tea, but he
could hardly drink a whole packet of the stuff if Rosa
was not drinking it at the same time. So he took up the habit, after using a reasonable quantity out of the tea
caddy, to dry the used leaves on the window sills.

He had begun having difficulty swallowing. He wondered if he might be suffering from angina, or the flu,
but his throat didn't actually hurt him in the least: it
was more like muscle spasms up and down his trachea,
as if it were seized by an alien hand, holding him down
by force and preventing him from swallowing normally,
even from breathing at times. The fever came and went,
rising and falling like a tide, and each time, when he
retired, it left him with a different experience: unease,
anxiety, more sensations of a crawling anthill...

He was irritable. One afternoon he broke the picture
frame containing the portrait of Alvaro with a violent
punch. He propped it down on the floor, knelt over it,
and unleashed his full force behind his fist and against
the glass. On another day he began running up and
down stairs at full tilt, until he was exhausted. He had
clenched his jaw so tightly in the process that his face
ached.

At still other moments he was afraid. He had never
been so alone in his entire life. Dr Dyer's description
of a free man in the erroneous zones (combining an
unusually high level of energy, a harnessing of the mind
in creative diversions to overcome the paralysis that
results from a dearth of interest) - in which he fully
believed he saw himself described - fell apart without
a sound. The silent footfalls of his bare feet wandering
about the house aimlessly were in the end the only
sounds he could hear.