Pink slime, p.9
Pink Slime, page 9
‘Four hundred if you wait for me and then take me to Clinics,’ I said.
The old man did a few calculations and flashed me a row of small, yellow teeth. I sat in the front seat and slid the bag of food between my legs. The dense, dull fog parted as we drove through it, slicing the darkness in two.
‘Looks like rain,’ I said, and immediately felt myself flush with embarrassment. So naïve, as if the old man’s presence had suddenly turned me into a child. ‘I mean, that would be something, right?’
‘It’s nice, the smell of rain,’ he said.
‘It is.’
‘And the sound of it. Especially in the summer. Best time for making fry bread.’
His gaunt cheeks folded like an accordion when he smiled. He drove with his torso angled over the wheel, peering into the gap in the fog.
‘I mean, I don’t make it anymore. Got a lazy stomach these days. But back then …’
‘And watermelon,’ I said. ‘A good sweet one.’
‘Or a slice of pastafrola. Would you believe, last night I dreamed I was eating an empanada. Heaps of real meat, well seasoned. Not like the ones you get now.’
‘Meatrite,’ I said. ‘Meat for all.’
‘It was so real in my dream I could smell it.’
We fell silent. After a while, he blurted out:
‘Doesn’t cost anything to dream.’
He told me that before the epidemic he’d had a stall at the Sunday market, where he sold pets. Canaries and ornamental fish. That’s what he called them: ornamental. What happened to all those fish that lived in aquariums? I didn’t ask him, but I did think back to when Delfa and I used to go to that market. I’d help her carry the shopping bags and always looked forward to the moment we reached the animal stalls. I’d stare at the rabbits, all huddled together, and the goldfish trailing their delicate veils among bubbles and castles and treasure chests.
‘It was nice work,’ said the old man, ‘but tough. Kids were always poking their fingers in the cages, getting the animals sick. But when those canaries would sing early in the morning, that sure was nice. I’d take my maté out in the yard and listen to them. Then I’d go cage by cage, cutting their nails. I made sure never to get near the vein. They stop singing right away when they’re sick. I noticed they were looking kind of shaky a while before the first storm. Then the diarrhea started and their feet swelled up.’
‘What happened to them?’
‘What do you think?’ he said, and that seemed to end the conversation. He asked me who I was going to see at Clinics and I told him about Max.
‘He’s in chronic care.’
The old man glanced at me; it was only a second, but it was enough to recognise the wistful look I’d seen in so many eyes before.
‘He won the lottery,’ he said.
‘We’re divorced.’
‘Kids?’
I shook my head.
He had a daughter in critical care and a granddaughter inland.
‘Boarding schools are getting more expensive by the day,’ he said. ‘And harder to get into. You have no idea what people are willing to do to send their kids there.’
I didn’t, but I could imagine. I could also imagine the scrawny old man negotiating with mercenaries selling gas on the black market and chewing dry seeds, trying to save every last peso. Did they sell canaries on the black market, too? Ornamental fish? I couldn’t bring myself to ask him that, either.
‘Have you ever heard of the butterfly paradox?’
‘Sweetheart, my head’s foggier than this here street. Go easy on me.’
‘The caterpillar, while it’s busy being a caterpillar, can’t be a butterfly.’
The old man’s face took on a serious expression.
‘Okay, explain it to me,’ he said after a while.
‘It’s a paradox. You understand it and you don’t.’
‘You understand something or you don’t. They taught me that much in school.’
‘Then a paradox is something you don’t understand,’ I said, but I wasn’t so sure anymore and wished I could ask Max. ‘At least, it’s not something you understand with your mind.’
We arrived in Los Pozos and parked in front of my mother’s house. I had a terrible feeling. The fog pressed in through the open windows like a serpent eating its tail. I knocked but no one answered, and I heard no movement inside. The whole neighbourhood had gone silent. I stuck my head in through one of the windows and saw my mother on the sofa: arms crossed loose over her belly, mouth hanging open, thin hair fanning across half of her face, a book propped against her legs. I tried the doorknob. The door wasn’t locked, and when I opened the door she gave a start that sent her book tumbling to the floor.
‘Don’t fall asleep with the windows open,’ I said. ‘Can’t you see this weather isn’t normal?’
‘How did you get here?’ she asked, disoriented.
She was a mess; her face was all puffy and her robe looked like an old bedspread.
‘There are no taxis. No one will say what’s going on.’
She leaned forward and touched her shins.
‘I fell asleep.’
‘Yeah, inside a cloud. You looked like a little angel. Is that what heaven’s like?’
‘Could be worse.’
She struggled to her feet and came over to see what I was doing.
‘Where did you get all that?’
I laid the provisions out on the table. I thought I saw her look at me with approval, but in retrospect I’m not so sure.
‘Mauro’s parents will arrive in a few days. Have you heard anything about Valdivia?’
‘Not a word.’
She walked over to the window onto the back yard and closed it.
‘Everyone is leaving. Marcela says she doesn’t want to leave me here alone, but the agronomist is building her a little house inland.’
She walked around closing the windows one by one, trapping the fog inside with us.
‘She’s insisting I go along.’
‘You should listen to her.’
When she reached the window facing the street, she lingered for a while, looking out. It was hard to recognise her like that. The outline of her broad frame against the light. The vanity she had shed like dead skin.
‘Whose car is that?’ she asked.
‘I can’t stay long. Mauro’s home alone.’
‘He’s old enough.’
‘You don’t know what he’s capable of. He could cut his finger off and not even notice.’
‘He’s lucky, then.’
‘What are you talking about, Mum? Could you try for just a minute to put yourself in someone else’s shoes?’
She was still at the window with her back to me, in that robe faded from so much washing.
‘There you go again, aggressive and irritable. You won’t go far like that.’
‘I don’t want to go anywhere.’
She nodded, in silence.
‘Why don’t you accept Marcela’s invitation? She’s going to need an audience out there. Or do you think the agronomist is going to listen to her play the piano?’
My mother shrugged, drawn to the old man’s car like a magnet, to its promise of escape.
‘She was one of those who said they’ll die in Los Pozos, and now look.’
‘Why don’t you go with her?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘They’ve got the plant running at half capacity until the storm passes. They can’t transport the animals. When do you think the storm will pass?’
‘If it does.’
‘They’re certain it will. I mean, can you imagine? All that money they’ve invested, for nothing.’
‘It’s immoral,’ I said.
‘It’s just wasted money, that’s all. They’re caught between a rock and a hard place, that’s why they go around pressuring workers like Valdivia.’
‘Marcela told you that?’
‘She plays dumb. But come quick, look at this.’
She waved me over to the window.
‘Speak of the Devil.’
Across the street, the schoolteacher was talking to a man with a leather briefcase.
‘That’s the agronomist.’
We laughed. His German respirator made him look like he was wearing a ski mask with his business suit. It was an old-fashioned suit: pants cut too wide and creased too sharply, square-cut blazer with shoulder pads.
‘We’re all in the hands of that eyesore,’ I said.
The schoolteacher was in a white dressing gown with lace accents; she looked like a little girl from another century on the way to her First Communion.
‘He has a driver,’ said my mother as we watched a big, fancy car stop next to them. ‘He brings her provisions from inland, but he charges her what we pay here. Can you believe that? He makes a profit, even with her.’
There was rage in her voice, as if the agronomist was responsible for the life we were living.
‘Charges her for every last grain of rice.’
The man set his briefcase on the back seat and got in beside the driver. The schoolteacher waved goodbye until the car turned the corner, then she hurried inside.
‘Poor Marcela,’ said my mother. ‘We’re going to be up to our ears in that Meatrite crap. And you? How long until you’ve saved up enough?’
‘Not long. A few months.’
‘A few months. You say that like it’s not a lifetime. It’s the child, isn’t it?’
‘I’m saving up. I almost have enough.’
‘You’re sacrificing yourself for nothing. You’re not his mother, you know.’
‘I have to go. We can talk later.’
My mother walked over to the television and turned it on, ignoring what I’d just said to her. It was a huge unit, and it rested on a kind of cart, like a geriatric walker with little wheels.
‘Did you hear about this lunatic?’ she asked. On the screen was an image of one of the State’s biologists. Saavedra, or Saravia. ‘They’re sending him to an asylum. He came up with this whole story about how the algae isn’t algae, it’s tiny organisms or something … Can you believe it?’
‘I saw the news this morning.’
‘Mental health is no laughing matter. But there are plenty of crazies out there who’ll buy into his nonsense.’
‘Do you remember the rabbit you gave me once?’ I asked.
‘What rabbit?’
‘The rabbit. It was Delfa’s idea.’
‘It was my idea. Worst one I ever had.’ She leaned over and turned up the volume on the television. ‘Look at that. They’re going to pay him a pension for the rest of his life.’
‘I have to go, Mum.’
‘Fine, fine,’ she said, irritated, waving her hand as if she were shooing away a fly. ‘Go on, go ahead.’
She turned off the television, but continued to stare at the black screen, or maybe at her reflection in its convex surface. I headed for the front door but changed my mind before I turned the knob. I went back into the living room. I took out my bundle of cash and removed enough for the taxi.
‘Here,’ I said. ‘If Marcela offers, use this to buy food from the agronomist. Pay him whatever he’s asking.’
‘I’d rather die,’ she sniffed, shaking her head and trying not to look at the money I’d left on the table so she wouldn’t be tempted to count it.
‘There are faster ways to go than by pride,’ I said.
‘You think I can’t get what I need on my own? That I’m going to ask that mafioso, that slug, for favours? When did you ever want for anything?’
‘I was calling you for two weeks. I thought you were dead.’
‘Serves you right,’ she said. ‘What can I tell you.’
‘Please, Mum.’ It wasn’t an appeal, but rather the verbal expression of a weariness so complete it extended beyond my body, beyond my physical and mental existence; an exhaustion embedded in time itself. ‘Let’s not fight today. If Marcela offers again, you’ll take this money and you’ll buy what you need. Okay?’
She rejected the money. She lifted the bills from the table, folded them in half, and held them out to me without even looking my way.
‘I’m not leaving you alone in all this,’ she said.
‘I’m already alone in all this.’
She clicked her tongue.
‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’
I leaned toward her and whispered again that I needed to go. I told her that soon, really soon, the two of us would be leaving for Brazil. I’m almost there, okay? I took the money from her limp hand and set it back on the table. Gravity was pulling me downward: my head, my lungs, everything was being flattened, on the verge of sinking to the depths. I rested my hands on her shoulders, but she resisted my embrace. She was being defensive; stiff and distant, she let herself be pulled backward by the weight of her indignation. I hugged her anyway, and as I did I wondered what I’d been looking for in her all those years. In the end, she and Max were so alike. Nearly my whole life spent waiting, begging … for what? It’s not even that they refused to give me something, they simply didn’t have it to give, and I stubbornly kept fumbling around in an empty well.
‘Do you want to help me, Mum?’ I said, pressing my lips to her forehead. It wasn’t exactly a kiss, more like the sensation of her cold, oily skin on mine. ‘If you want to help me, don’t make me take care of you, too.’
The old man had fallen asleep in his car with the seat reclined, and he gave a start when I opened the passenger side door. His body was in such bad shape that he needed to sleep for two minutes for each minute he spent awake.
‘Look,’ he said, pointing ahead, ‘the fog is lifting.’
‘Impossible. The alarm didn’t sound.’
‘Stranger things have happened, and the radio’s out.’
Every word seemed to take an oversized piece of him with it, leaving him deflated and coughing. The old man reached over to turn the dial on the radio but all we heard was the crackle of static. I rolled the window down and stuck my arm out. The temperature hadn’t gone up, but there was a new smell in the air, violent and acrid. I could see a fine, greasy substance stuck to the windshield.
‘Was this here before?’ I asked. The part of my finger I’d run across the glass was all black. ‘Dry rain.’
‘Soot,’ he said. ‘Something’s burning.’
He started the engine. I looked back at the house and thought I saw my mother in the window, her frame a dark shadow. She made no gesture, and neither did I. That was the last time I saw her. The old man drove off. The streets of Los Pozos were deserted; thinking of the people shut away in their houses reminded me of his canaries singing at dawn.
A little while later a fire truck sped past in the opposite direction with its siren off, followed by two patrol vehicles that didn’t even flash their lights at us.
‘They’re certainly in a rush,’ I said.
‘There’s a toldyouso burning their britches,’ laughed the old man, speeding up a little more. ‘But seriously: something big is on fire.’
We thought the alarm would sound at any moment, but when we parked in front of Clinics, people were still out in the street like normal. The old man looked up at the building’s windows; it was like a giant honeycomb, and whoever entered ran the risk of getting trapped forever in its sticky liquid. I handed the old man his four hundred pesos; he slid one of the bills under the seat and the other into his shirt pocket.
‘Better safe …’ he said.
Outside, three or four people were piling up, getting ready to fight over the cab.
‘What’s your daughter’s name?’
‘Adelina. I’m Victor Gómez. Nice to meet you.’
He reached out his cold, bony hand, and I shook it.
‘Nice to meet you.’
The old man gave me one last look and then peered through the dirty windshield at the passengers waiting their turn.
‘Look at that, kid. You brought me luck.’
Do you remember that day?
Which day?
That day. I watched you through the window as you left.
Liar.
You walked like you were on a balance beam.
Balance was never my forte.
Was it because of that woman?
You met her?
Yes.
What was she like?
She had the neck of a bird.
It took me over half an hour to reach the front desk. The receptionist had an identification card hanging from her jacket pocket. In the photo she was smiling, but in person her nose and mouth were hidden behind a blue surgical mask. The women who worked these government jobs had been transformed into strange odalisques of the State by their facemasks. She watched me, her eyelashes artificially curled above the blue line that divided her face, while I spelled out Max’s name.
‘They’re not letting anyone in,’ said the man after me in line. ‘Ask anyone. This is the third time I’ve lined up today.’
‘He’s in chronic care,’ I said.
There was something in those words that immediately softened the disposition of any bureaucrat, and the odalisque typed away on her keyboard. Then she spun around in her ergonomic chair and her quick nails flicked through her card box until she landed on mine.
‘Second elevator, tenth floor,’ she said, handing it to me.
The line immediately swelled with a groan, moving like a boa constrictor, and spat me out to the side.
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘I want to see someone else. Miss Adelina Gómez.’
The man behind me, who had already moved up, stepped back into line with an angry snort. His face was freckled and distraught, his double chin as soft as Mauro’s. I heard him talking with the others, heard him say: I got here at nine in the morning, and they couldn’t find my card. The odalisque exaggerated the clacking of her acrylic nails on the keyboard and kept her eyes glued to the screen.
