They started off by telling me that everything was going fine-that her wound didn’t worry them in the least. Whenever I tried to find out why she spent so much time sleeping, they always found somebody to come put his hand on my shoulder, to explain how they knew what they were doing.
From the moment I passed through the door of that fucking hospital, I felt like a completely different man. I was seized by a dead anguish that all but knocked me down. I had to struggle against it with all my might. Once in a while, a female nurse would take my arm and guide me through the hallways. The male nurses never lifted a finger. They must have known that any relationship with me would end up stormy. My brain ran in slow motion, as if I were watching a slide show-swallowing up the pictures without comment, the meaning escaping me.
In such a state, it was easy for me to pull a chair up next to her bed and just stay there, immobile and silent, without noticing the time pass-not drinking, not smoking, not eating-like someone marooned at sea, with nothing in view, no other choice but to hang onto the plank. The nurse with the flat behind occasion ally poured some honey on my wounds.
“At least when she sleeps, she gets her strength back,” she told me.
I kept telling myself that. Over and over-I was becoming a blithering idiot. When she did open her eyes, it was nothing to jump up and down about. It was like there was a steel bar running through my stomach-I had to be careful not to fall off my chair. I looked deep into her one good eye, but I could never see the spark. I carried on one-sided conversations. Her hand would dissolve in mine like a marshmallow. She’d look right through me, my stomach growling so loud it was embarrassing. Every day at visiting hours I would come, hoping that she’d be waiting for me. But every day no one was there. Nothing but the Great White Desert. I was a silent zombie, walking circles in the wasteland.
“You sec, what has us worried is her mental health,” the good old doctor finally said. But I think he’d have done better to worry about mine; he could have saved wear and tear on his dentures-that’s how obvious things were soon to become. He was a bald guy, with a few tufts of hair on the sides-the kind of guy who slaps you on the back and shows you the door. You and your ignorance, your trembling knees. You and the stupid look on your face.
Yes, it would be only a few days before the bubbles finally popped the cork.
As soon as I got out in the fresh air, I felt better. It didn’t seem like it was Betty I was leaving in the hospital- rather, something I couldn’t get my mind around. As if she’d just left one morning without giving me a forwarding address. I tried to keep the house in order. Luckily, writers aren’t dirty. I just vacuumed a little around the table, emptied the ashtrays, and threw away the beer cans. The heat had already killed two or three people in town, precipitating the end of the already weak.
I stopped opening the store. I quickly realized that the only restful moments I had were those I spent with my notebooks, and that’s how I passed most of my time. It was ninety-three degrees in the house, even with the shades drawn. Still, it was the only place I still felt alive. Otherwise I was numb, as if I’d contracted sleeping sickness. Being inside the coals, I couldn’t feel the fire. All it took was a small breeze to stir the flames, though. A question of time, no more, no less.
One morning in particular things got off to a bad start. I was turning the kitchen upside down, trying to get my hands on some coffee, sighing deeply from the bottom of my soul, when Bob showed up.
“Hey,” he said. “You know that your car is parked right in front of my house?”
“Yeah, I guess it is…” I said.
“Well, there are people who might think there’s a body in the trunk, if you get my drift…”
That’s when I remembered the groceries I’d been bringing home the night I passed Betty on her way to the hospital. I had completely forgotten about them. Given the sun, the temperature inside the trunk must have been a hundred fifty degrees. I thought that I’d already had my share of this sort of thing, but no, there were still a few left-it was enough to make you sick to your stomach. I considered just sitting down and never getting up. Instead, I drank a big glass of water and followed Bob out into the street. As I was closing the door behind me I heard the telephone ring. I let it ring.
I hadn’t been taking the car to go see Betty. I walked every day. The exercise did me good. I came to see that life had not come to a complete halt. The young girls’ dresses were like a rain of flower petals. I forced myself to look at them, avoiding the old and ugly ones. It is ugliness of the soul, however, that really disgusts me. During these walks, I practiced my deep-breathing exercises. The car was the furthest thing from my mind-but things you forget come back to haunt you.
The stink was unbelievable. Bob was curious to see what it looked like, but I told him to forget it. I’d rather not know.
“Just tell me the shortest route to the dump,” I said.
I opened all the windows and crossed town with my hellish cargo. In places, the tar was almost melted-long, shiny, black grooves striping the pavement. Perhaps it was Darkness itself, coming up into the world-nothing surprised me anymore. To keep from getting too spooked by such thoughts, I turned the radio on: OOH BABY, HOLD ME BABY, TIGHTER, TICHTER, IUST ONE MOOORE KISSSS…!
I parked in front of the garbage dump. All you could hear was flies, and all you could smell was something that resembled the atomic bomb. I had just gotten out of the car, when here comes the neighborhood troglodyte, a pickax slung over his shoulder. It took me a while to figure out where his mouth was.
“Lookin’ for somethin’?” he said.
“No,” I said.
The whites of his eyes were almost supernatural-like in detergent commercials.
“Takin’ a walk?”
“No, I’m dropping off two or three things in my trunk.”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, then, forget it.”
I leaned in to get the keys out of the ignition.
“If you don’t have anything for me, forget it,” he said. “Copper, for example. Like yesterday I turned around, and what do you know, this guy unloads a washing-machine motor.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t go in for that,” I said.
I opened the trunk. The food seemed to have doubled in volume. The meat was multicolored, the yogurt was swollen, the cheese was running, and all that was left of the butter was the foil. Generally speaking, everything had fermented, exploded, and oozed-it all formed one rather large compact block, more or less soldered to the carpet on the trunk floor.
I grimaced. The bum’s eyes lit up. It’s always the same story.
“You gonna throw all that away?” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t have time to explain. I’m not feeling too hot-I’m unhappy.”
He spit on the ground and scratched his head.
“Hey, we all do what we can,” he said. “Look, fella, you mind if we sort of unload it easy-like? I’d like to take a closer look…”
We each took an end of the carpet and lifted the plaster-like wad out of the trunk. We put it down to one side, at the foot of a garbage-bag wall. Like iron shavings to a magnet, the flies-blue and gold ones-dove into it.
The bum looked at me, smiling. He was obviously waiting for me to split. In his shoes, I’d have done the same thing. I got back in the car without a word. Before taking off I glanced in the rearview mirror. He was still there, standing in the sun next to my small hill of food-he hadn’t moved an inch. He was smiling like he was posing for a souvenir snapshot of one helluva picnic. On the way home I stopped at a bar. I ordered a mint cordial. The oil, the coffee, the sugar, and a big box of chocolate powder those he’d be able to salvage. And the razors with the pivoting heads. And the antimosquito strips. And my box of Fab.
It was about noon when I pulled up in front of the house. The sun was like a hissing cat with its claws out. The telephone was ringing.
“Yes, hello?” I said.
There was static on the other end of the line. I could hardly make out one word.
“Listen, hang up and call back,” I said. “I can’t hear a thing!”
I threw my shoes into a corner. I ran my head under the shower. I lit a cigarette, then the phone rang again.
