The Manual of Darkness (32 page)

And don’t forget to turn off the tape and take it out. Or maybe not. Let it run, what does it matter? The footsteps you hear now are your mother’s. You can also hear her voice: ‘Martín? Martín!’ This is the last thing on the tape; after that comes silence. Do you remember? You were still out on the landing. No one stopped the tape. Until the following day, no one noticed that your father had turned the tape recorder on. The tape simply ran out. And you were lucky that it stopped at that moment. If it hadn’t you would hear your own footsteps, the footsteps of a seven-year-old boy, your laugh when you found your father’s body lying on the floor, your surprise to see he was not moving, you would hear the word ‘cockroach’ and the past would bury you like an avalanche. It’s better that you do not hear any more. Or that you learn to interpret
any sound, whether it be the sigh of a clarinet or a buzzing you cannot understand, as an echo of the army of the future that is preparing to lay siege to your city.

H
e connects the phone only for a few hours on Monday mornings so he can answer when the supermarket calls. He doesn’t need to talk to anyone. He doesn’t want to change his gas supplier, he doesn’t want a flat-rate contract, and if someone called with a survey all he could tell them would be no, never, nothing. This is why, at seven o’clock in the evening, when he hears the first ring, Víctor curses himself for forgetting to disconnect the phone that morning.

He picks up the receiver and brings it to his ear, but does not say anything.

‘Hello? Hello? Anyone there?’

Víctor is about to hang up when he hears his name.

‘Víctor Losa?’

It sounds strange, his name on a woman’s lips. He wants her to go on. He wants to be able to listen to her without having to say a single word.

‘Is that Víctor Losa?’

‘Yes.’

This is as much as he is prepared to concede: a monosyllable, the minimal possible confirmation, though all she hears is the phlegmatic timbre of a throat scarcely used. The woman introduces herself: Alicia. Just Alicia, no surname. She tells him she is calling from ONCE, though she does not use the acronym but gives the full name: Organización Nacional de Ciegos de España. She tells him she is to be his Rehabilitation Technician. Víctor can hear the capital letters in her voice. He finds the job title amusing, as though blindness were an addiction from which he might be rescued. Alicia offers her apologies that he has had to wait a whole year, tells him what a tremendous pleasure it will be to begin working
with him and asks whether he has any free time tomorrow so she can visit and make initial contact. These are the words she uses: initial contact. Víctor listens as though this were someone else’s conversation, a recording. Initial contact. Like the spark between electrical poles, he thinks. Or between neurons. Contact. He says yes. A very useful thing, this monosyllable. So far, he has said nothing else. An awkward silence follows. Perhaps she is hoping for something more enthusiastic, less passive, something more akin to a conversation. Eventually, in a strangled voice, she asks whether 9 a.m. would be convenient. Yes.

Víctor hangs up, stands next to the telephone, then takes a step back and says: ‘A year.’ His head jerks round like a wary bird’s, as though the voice he has just heard was not his but someone else’s. He frowns. He is not thinking about the darkness, the depression, the seclusion, about the constant fear, the bruises, the dozens of times he has burned himself, hurt himself during that year. He is not thinking about the loneliness, the unremitting exhaustion that has made it possible for him to get through it, as though only by doing as little as possible, keeping his body lifeless and his mind anaesthetised, can he forget the pain of not seeing.

One year without sex. This is exactly what he is thinking. He has only just realised the fact, and cannot quite believe it. As though the terrible pain of all the things he has been forced to give up has prevented him from noticing this one.

He says her name aloud: Alicia. He can find no way to sink his teeth into it. He closes his eyes and tries to imagine her. He still does this. Even after a year, he still closes his eyes. The first thing he sees is a pair of lips. Nothing remarkable about them: just lips. He raises his hand and allows it to hover in the air. Mmmm, he thinks. This is the sound inside his head: mmmm. It is as though, over the past year, the eagle inside his brain has devoured every vestige of articulated speech. He presses his tongue against his palate, as though he has just eaten his first late-season cherry.

He goes back to the phone and calls directory enquiries. Three times he dials the wrong number, but the fourth time a woman answers, young, to judge by her voice. He asks her for the number of an agency.

‘I’m afraid agency on its own is too general a term,’ the operator
says after a brief silence. ‘Could you be more specific …?’

‘An escort agency.’

‘An escort agency,’ the woman repeats, her tone absolutely neutral. ‘In Barcelona city?’

‘Yes.’

‘Let’s see …’ A smile flits back and forth across the telephone line. It is as if both of them have decided to behave as though he has asked for information about a china shop. ‘Let’s try under massage parlour … ay, there are a lot of listings. Do you have any preferences? Sorry, I mean about the area?’

‘Whichever one offers home visits.’

‘Home visits … there’re quite a few.’

‘How about in the centre of town?’

‘OK, have you got a pen …’

‘Just a minute,’ Víctor interrupts. ‘If you don’t mind, could you just read the number twice. And very slowly, please. It’s just … I don’t have anything to write with.’

‘No problem, sir.’

The operator repeats an 803 number twice. Víctor thanks her and hangs up, repeating the number aloud to himself, then tries to dial it immediately. Though he can easily imagine the keypad – 1 at the top right corner, 0 at the bottom – his fingers seem unable to follow through. He strokes the keys as though reading a text in Braille. Several times he dials the wrong number. Eventually he gets through to the massage parlour and asks for a home visit. This is his first time, but he finds it no more difficult than he does ordering peanuts from the supermarket. Without any shame, or guilt, or embarrassment. He is asked to repeat his address then asked at what time he would like the appointment.

‘Now,’ he answers.

‘Now … I have Irina available.’

‘Irina.’ Víctor repeats the word, as though it were a brand name. ‘Irina. That’s fine.’

A
s she walks, she thinks that it’s a strange time for an appointment. It’s only just after 7.30 p.m. She has been doing this for two years now and it still seems strange to her that there are so many men who want to fuck in the middle of the afternoon or early evening and who are prepared to pay for it. She puts it down to a statistical anomaly. Maybe it’s just that all the strange guys pick her? Not that she’s complaining: the timing suits her, it means she can drop her son Darius off with a neighbour and save on a babysitter. Though money isn’t a problem. She makes a good living.

She takes a piece of paper from her bag and checks that she has the right address. She presses the button on the intercom and is not surprised when the door immediately buzzes to let her in. It makes sense. They’re always waiting for her.

She is sorry to see there’s no lift, not so much because she has to climb six floors as because there’s no mirror so she can touch up her make-up. Just as she arrives on the top-floor landing, the light in the stairwell goes out. A tiny indicator light, a red dot in the darkness, makes it possible to tell where the switch is. She steps towards it, her arm out, feeling her way. Her fingers are only inches away now. She stretches out her hand.

‘Don’t turn it on.’

The voice is barely a whisper, but it carries the weight of authority. So much so that she obeys, draws her hand away. But it is a friendly voice. In spite of her apprehension, Irina does not think of running, she is not afraid that the owner of this voice might harm her in any way. A sixth sense tells her if she takes another step, she will come to the door, that the door is ajar and that he is behind. Whoever he may be. There is no light on inside the
apartment either. She says nothing. Waits for instructions, but what comes is a question.

‘Irina?’

She hesitates before answering. Now she feels something like a threat. Here, whispering in the darkness, the name is charged with intimacy. As though she were standing in front of a mirror, she stands up straight, smoothes the creases from her dress, brushes away the wisp of hair that has fallen across her face. The questions sounds like an examination. As though today she will be judged not by eyes looking her up and down, or by a hand stroking her body as a way of a greeting, but by something as arbitrary as her name.

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I’m Irina.’

The name sounds different in her mouth. The first ‘I’ is longer, almost liquid. The rest sombre. Irina, a Romanian whore. He is smelling her. She thinks he is smelling her.

‘Come in,’ the voice says, still serious though a little farther away, as though the owner has moved away slightly, or turned his back.

Irina takes a step forward, her arm out, and touches the door, which yields to the pressure without a sad whimper of its hinges. Another step. She is inside the apartment. Without realising it, she has closed her eyes, as children do when they’re hiding in the dark. She leans back against the door, pushing it slowly until it closes. She opens her eyes. There doesn’t seem to be a single light on in the apartment, nothing but the dying embers of evening, barely enough to make out the dimensions of the hall and the corridor down which the man disappears. She follows him and, as she turns the corner, sees him for the first time, from behind. He is naked, barefoot. He walks down the hallway with his back very straight, the reach of his arms a little wider than his body. Short steps. He brushes the wall with his fingers as he walks. Without turning, the man says:

‘My name is Víctor, Irina.’ She says nothing. What could she say? Pleased to meet you? ‘Your money,’ he says as he comes to the end of the corridor.

Once in the living room, he holds out his hand, waving it so she can see it is empty. He makes a fist, brings it up behind his neck,
then opens his hand again to show her a hundred-euro note. As though he has plucked it from his ear or from behind his neck: a child’s magic trick. Without lowering his hand, Víctor rubs the banknote between thumb and forefinger, fanning it out so she can see that in fact there are three of them, two hundreds and a fifty. He sets them on the living-room table and carries on walking. At the door to a room, he stops, opens it and goes inside without turning on the light.

Irina stands next to the table. She does a quick calculation. It is €20 too much, but in this situation nobody expects you to give them change. She is about to say thank you. Not for the tip, but for sparing her from having to ask for the money up front. She puts the notes in her purse and, as though doing so signals the beginning of her professional assignment, she slips off her shoes. She puts her bag on a chair, places her shoes under the table. She opens the zip that runs down one side of her dress, pushes the straps off her shoulders and lets it fall to the floor. Quickly, in a single movement, as though removing an outer shell. Her bra is expensive but elegant, a hint of lace supporting her breasts. She takes it off too. Slowly she goes into the bedroom; she feels extraordinarily relaxed as though she were not approaching this vast white bed to do her job, but to get some sleep. He is lying face down in the middle. Irina lies down next to him and places her hand on his back. She doesn’t speak. On the contrary, she is grateful to Víctor for his silence, she almost holds her breath in support. She is waiting for him to turn over. Perhaps then she will know the reason for the strange, shadowy welcome – some embarrassing deformity, a harelip, an old scar, the ravages of smallpox.

Víctor turns over. He raises his hand as though to caress her, but leaves it hovering, suspended, hesitant. Irina looks at his beard and it reminds her of a rabbi, a tramp, a castaway. She thinks he is trying not to look at her because his eyes barely graze her, as though something, something she cannot see, a few inches from her face, demands Víctor’s attention.