The President’s Room. Ricardo Romero

president visited hides, but I hide in the attic.

      There’s no proof and nobody’s asked him about it, but I’m sure what people say is true: that the president went to the boy’s house. At school events or when the headmistress is making her speeches, at moments when we all have to be quiet and pay attention, I’ve seen him, I’ve watched him, and I’m certain that while we’re all sitting there, bored stiff, our minds wandering, he’s thinking only about one thing. He’s thinking about the president. There’s a worried look on his face, as if it’s suddenly become the face of an adult. Because he’s thinking about the president a lot, much more than we are.

      The house changes at night. Sometimes, I walk around it while my family are sleeping. The change has nothing to do with the darkness, or with the temperature. It’s as if the house changes its relationship to what’s outside it, and so being inside means something else. I press my ear against the walls, the doors, the floors, the terrace. I walk barefoot. I never go into the president’s room.

      There are, in the house, at night, more inhabitants than there are during the day.

      But it does have something to do with the darkness, and it does have something to do with the temperature. More with the temperature than with the darkness. The first floor is a more pleasant temperature than the ground floor. It’s always colder in the corners of the rooms than in the middle. The warmest place of all is the attic. On the stairs, the air is always still.

      That’s during the day. During the night, the only temperature in the house is that of my body.

      The laurel tree in front of our house is tall and leafy. Every time someone comes to visit us for the first time, they tell us it’s the tallest laurel they have ever seen. It’s been there since before they built the house, since before the neighbourhood was even a neighbourhood. Just like in the attic, inside its foliage the rays of sunlight become visible. I know this because I used to climb it, though now I don’t. Now I go to the attic. Or the terrace. Because there are times when I don’t go into the attic and I stay on the terrace, looking at the roofs of the neighbouring houses, the tops of the trees on the block, the motorways on the horizon and the buildings in the centre, an approaching storm or the cloudless sky. When there are no clouds, there’s so much light that it’s as if I can’t breathe. The afternoon sun bounces off the white floor of the terrace, blinding me. The only thing I can see then is the top of the laurel tree appearing several feet above. Dark. And the question arises, and I panic a little. I imagine myself taking a run-up and jumping, trying to reach the laurel tree and falling with my arms open wide. However hard I try, whether with my eyes shut or with them half-closed, squinting against the sun’s glare, I can never imagine myself reaching it. I can never imagine myself landing on the branches. The question goes unanswered and I’m left feeling slightly dizzy, sensing that I was about to feel something new. What I can feel is me hitting the pavement. A dry thud that judders and stuns. Like when my grandfather used to spank us. But my grandfather’s no longer here and the laurel tree is.

      When the afternoon sky is very blue and I’m out on the terrace, I can hear music. It’s being played by someone, one or more people, on real instruments. I haven’t managed to work out where it comes from, which house, or who’s making it or listening to it. It drifts in when the breeze drops, mingling with the sounds of the city, which are fewer than you might think. It comes from far away. The city’s far away. It’s like the city’s always somewhere else. There’s always a moment when all you can hear is the music, trembling alone in the air, and that’s the exact moment before it disappears.

      My little brother has a fever again. He’s been in bed since yesterday. Right behind me, all wrapped up, watching as I sit writing at my desk. ‘What are you writing?’ he asks. ‘I’m writing that while I’m writing you’re watching me write’, I say without turning around. ‘I’m not watching you’, he replies. I turn around and see him watching me, his eyes wide and shining with fever. If we were good brothers, we’d both laugh at this point. But we’re not good brothers. We don’t laugh together. I can’t remember if we’ve ever laughed together, at the same time. We never give each other the giggles, any more than we give each other our illnesses. My big brother doesn’t count, because he doesn’t laugh or get ill.

      Before my brother started getting bouts of fever, it was my grandfather who used to suffer from them. The difference is that my grandfather would get angry. He would never let anybody near him. He would shout. He would talk to himself, cursing and swearing. My little brother, on the other hand, stays quiet most of the time. He spends days like that, until the fever leaves as suddenly as it came. My little brother never knew our grandfather, but when I see him like that, wrapped up in his blankets, glassy eyes staring fixedly at a point on the ceiling, I think what he’s doing is listening to our grandfather. He’s listening to him shouting and talking to himself, he’s hearing him swearing and cursing. One of them is alive and the other is dead, but they both have a fever.

      My mother is the one who goes into the president’s room the most often. Naturally, because she’s the one who cleans the house; the one who cleans the room. Once a week she goes in and cleans, and while she’s in there she leaves the door slightly ajar. When she’s finished, the door stays slightly open like that for a few hours so the floor can dry, because my mother prefers not to open the window. That’s when the lurking begins. My younger brother and I find any excuse to walk past the door and peek inside. It’s not that we’re forbidden from going in, but if we went in and were found out, we’d be subjected to the inevitable questioning, and we both want to avoid that. The long, tedious interrogations during which our parents look at one another every time we answer, and take notes (my father’s the one who writes the notes). Whatever answer we give, there’s always a seriousness to those occasions that scares us. It’s impossible to tell what we’ve done wrong. It’s impossible to tell if we’ve done anything wrong. There are never any consequences. So we stick to lurking, sneaking glimpses of the sliver of room we can see through the crack in the door. The same bookcase with the same books and objects on it, the edge of a desk, the coat stand in the corner, always bare. Nothing very interesting. Nothing new in the way things are arranged. And yet, once a week, every time our mother cleans the president’s room, my little brother and I succumb to temptation. We lurk. And at the same time, we avoid each other. This means we’re spying on each other as well as lurking. The spying is unnecessary, seeing as we’re not even there for the same reason. My brother is attracted to the things that have been accumulating in the president’s room since the time of my grandfather. What attracts me is the room itself. The desire to see it without furniture or ornaments. The president’s room just as it was in the beginning.