The Sickness (8 page)

Andrés was astonished. He imagined that body full of sea, full of water that came and went, that made noises, that went round and round, unable to escape. He thought of it as a secret room, in which the water could circulate freely. That morning, Andrés thinks, marked his initial curiosity about bodies, the discovery of the existence of an order distinct from words, more physical, more tactile, less invisible. His father had to drag him away. The boy wanted to wait for the pathologist to come, he wanted to know what would happen next. His father, of course, feared that the incident would lay bare the very loss he was trying to conceal. One death calls to another. A stranger's body lying on the sand was also the body of the mother, floating and turning between them, surrounding them, drenching them.

Andrés cannot remember there being any further consequences. He can't, for example, remember if it was that same day that he spoke with his father about the death, about the plane exploding in midair; he can't remember if his recurring dream came before or after that morning spent hunting for jellyfish on the beach. He merely pinpoints that moment, almost fancifully, as a first image of
his vocation. At seventeen, when he finished high school, he decided to study medicine—in a rather childish way, as is always the case at that age—and he still felt driven by that same curiosity, by the desire to find out what went on inside our bodies.

It's seven o'clock when he comes down from the mountain. There's no one else in the cable car. He feels that chance has handed him a rare privilege. The journey back to the city reveals an extraordinary landscape. The illuminated lines of the highways, the lights of the suburbs and the barrios, draw a different map in the darkness, that of an unfamiliar, almost unreal city: a stationary landscape, bereft of movement, a Caracas conjured up in that very moment that will surely disappear as soon as he enters it again. Suspended in the air, almost hanging above the distant precipice that is now the city, Andrés makes a decision, rings his father's number from his mobile and says:

“Hi, Dad. How do you fancy coming to Isla Margarita with me?”

 

In its heyday, the bar had been an old-fashioned Spanish
tasca
. Legs of Serrano ham hung from the walls and customers were always offered a little snack, a
tapa
, with their drink—some bread and a sliver of potato omelet, a few grilled sardines, some olives. Now, all that's left of that Spanish heritage is its name: Las Cibeles. It's just a bar where the people who work locally take refuge after six o'clock. Office workers, secretaries, administrators, and low-grade civil servants meet up to exchange the
gossip of the day with the help of a few beers. The whole place is filled with a beery torpor, a chemical smell that even indicates the way to the toilets. At one end of the bar, Adelaida and Karina have had to wait until evening to finish their after-lunch conversation. Ernesto Durán's latest letter remains the juiciest dish on the menu.

“I couldn't say anything to Dr. Miranda because he rang in early and said he was canceling all his appointments. He said he wouldn't be coming in this afternoon. As you know, he's worried about his father, who's in a really bad way apparently.”

Adelaida barely has time to nod. Karina seems so resolute, she's speaking very rapidly and with great determination. She has thought of nothing else all afternoon.

“This has gone too far,” she says now, nervously smoothing her blouse. “If not today, then I'll have to do it tomorrow, because this is something I really must tell the doctor about.”

“There's no need to make such a drama out of it, Karina. It's hardly the end of the world.”

“But what if the guy really is crazy?” asks Karina, genuinely concerned.

“He only followed him once, for one morning. He's desperate. He needs to see his doctor.”

“Please, Adelaida, I'm being serious.”

“So am I.” She gives her friend a sly look, shifts closer to her and says softly: “We've all done crazy things in our time. Do you remember when I asked you to come with me to follow Cheo, and how we ended up in that awful place on Avenida Lecuna?”

“Yes, you wanted to find out if he really was playing dominoes with his friends!” says Karina. Adelaida nods sagely and flings her arms wide as if to underline the absurdity of the whole experience.

“Well, wasn't
that
a crazy thing to do?”

“God, yes, it was real dive, full of whores and drunks,” says Karina. “You had a kind of hunch that he was two-timing you, cheating on you, but you needed proof.”

“If anyone had seen the two of us there, at that moment, at that hour of night, in that place, tailing my husband and trying to catch him out, what would they have thought of us, what would they have said?”

They look at each other for a second. Is this what's happening to Ernesto Durán? Does he need proof and is he trying, however ineptly, to find that proof as best—or worst—as he can? He doesn't care, he's lost control. As we all do sometimes, as anyone can: it's not so very hard to lose control; it happens when you least expect it. Just as Adelaida had had her suspicions and needed some evidence to back them up, so too, perhaps, Durán feels the same need to find out the truth, which is what he's trying to do. He can't go on living without knowing what's really wrong with him. Sickness is a form of disloyalty, an unacceptable infidelity.

By the time she's on her third beer, Adelaida has an idea.

“And what if
you
answered the letter?”

“
What
?”

“Why don't you write to him as if you were Dr. Miranda?”

“You must be out of your mind, Adelaida! How could you even think of such a thing?”

“What's wrong with the idea?”

“Everything. Dr. Miranda is Dr. Miranda and Karina Sánchez is Karina Sánchez. Besides, you can't just play a trick like that, you—”

“Wait, wait. Listen.” Adelaida interrupts her and moves her stool closer. “Just think about it for a second. If you tell Dr. Miranda everything, if you show him this e-mail, what do you think will happen?”

Karina hesitates for a moment. She imagines Andrés, grave-faced, standing before her, holding the printed e-mail in his hands, reading it. But the scene dissolves at once, it goes no further.

“I don't know. I haven't a clue. He could react in all kinds of ways.”

“Exactly.” Adelaida draws still closer. “He might laugh it off and do nothing at all. Or he might phone the police. He could get this Durán guy into a lot of trouble.”

“But—”

“Wait, I haven't finished. Look, I'm not suggesting you commit a crime, Karina. You know the doctor well, don't you? How long have you been working for him now?”

“Seven years.”

“Longer than many marriages. Right then: you know his style, know more or less how he writes and what he might say to a patient like Durán.”

“But I'm not a doctor. I've never studied medicine.”

“That doesn't matter. All that matters is that you write to him, that you reply.”

“You don't know what you're saying.”

“Of course I do. I think what that man needs is for someone to speak nicely to him, to listen to him, to give him a little attention.”

“And I think the beer is going to your head, Adelaida.”

“Just try it. Write to him once. Even if only to make him stop following the doctor, so that he has one less thing to worry about. That way, you'll be helping them both.”

Karina again hesitates for a second, a second into which all her questions fit and into which slips the possibility that, yes, she really could do it. All temptations rely on such seconds. It's all they need.

“What have you got to lose?”

The truth is she has nothing to gain either. But the temptation is still there, waiting for her. Why? Is it that she has a crush on Ernesto Durán? That first time, when she saw him come into the office, she had perhaps liked the look of him, but there had been no chemical charge, she hadn't felt an immediate, unnameable attraction. Durán first began to touch her heart with his e-mails. She has got to know him more from having read those than from having seen or spoken to him. Through writing and reading she has begun to develop a kind of melancholic complicity that was now becoming a tension, a risk. The man behind the words interested her more than the man she'd seen or with whom she'd spoken on the phone. It was as if they were two different men, and she didn't yet know which was more real, more authentic. Was that what tempted her?

“Alright,” said Karina, with a faint smile. “I'll do it once. Just once.”

When Andrés told Karina that he would be taking a few days' vacation on Isla Margarita with his father, she saw in this the hand of God, and sensed behind or beneath
this unusual turn of events the invisible fingers of a far superior force. Her boss's sudden absence also proved to be her muse and gave her the push she needed to reply to Durán's letter. It took her a while. She tried to put herself in the doctor's place, she experimented with various tones and wrote several rough drafts before arriving at the definitive version. In the past, Dr. Miranda had asked her to write the occasional short message, usually in response to the sales departments of pharmaceutical companies. These had been concise letters of only a few lines, in which she had politely thanked the sales people for certain medical samples they'd sent, but never anything memorable or personal, and certainly nothing that presented her with a stylistic challenge that sent a shiver of excitement through her, the fascinating twinge of anxiety she felt when confronted by the blank computer screen: being able to choose had aroused in her an indescribable sensation, a kind of thrilling void in her mind. She felt she was as likely to sit paralyzed for a few seconds as to feel an urgent, unstoppable need to write a stream of words, extravagant and uncontrollable. Being able to choose, for example, which word to use for “Dear”—
Estimado
or
Apreciado
—was a revelation to her. Karina spent almost an hour turning over each word, savoring the sharpness of the consonants, the rotundity of certain vowels, weighing up the effect that each might have on Durán. It was no small matter: it was, after all, the first word that Dr. Miranda had addressed to him in a long time. In the end, she opted for
Estimado
, partly because it seemed to her more formal, more cautious, and partly, too, because
she liked the e. However hard she tried, she could find no other reason, no other cause. She simply liked beginning the letter with an
e
. And that was that.

As regards his other patients, Andrés had spoken to Miguel, who promised to attend to them in case of emergency. Maricruz Fernández, another doctor at the hospital, had also undertaken to step in if necessary. He met with no objections from his family either: Mariana thought it an excellent idea, and the children, after some initial resistance, soon had to admit defeat: their father and grandfather would be traveling during the week, and the children couldn't possibly miss school. His father was somewhat suspicious at first, but Andrés soon clarified any doubts he might have by saying that the trip was strictly a business matter: a company on the verge of bankruptcy was offering him a house in lieu of payment, and, thinking it might be a good investment, he'd decided to go and take a look at it, and then remembering the journey they'd made there together all those years before, he'd thought: why not repeat the experience?

Now he's on the deck of the ferry looking back at the port. It's so similar and so different from the image of himself in that same place and in that same position all those years ago. He has a faint smile on his lips. He's amused by his own silliness, by the childish ploy of inventing a house and a bankrupt company; there's something about the lie that delights him: it's the blithe uncertainty, the not knowing how or when he will continue the lie or make it real or where he will find such a house, and just how he will disentangle himself from the fantasy that is
serving as the reason for the trip. Andrés rests both arms on the ship's rail and watches as the port of La Guaira grows gradually smaller. The horizon is the only reliable measure of speed, and that horizon, growing ever more blurred and diffuse, is the only sign of reality he now has. The boat is too large a piece of machinery for him to be able to tell whether it's really moving or not, or if, like a dog, dizzy with salt and seawater, it's going round and round in circles on the waves. Only the horizon changes, by disappearing.

“What are you thinking about?” His father has come back from the bathroom and joins him at the rail.

“Oh, nothing. I was just looking at the sea. Would you like a beer?”