Taking her last sip of coffee, she noticed that a guy at the counter was looking at her. He was young and wearing a pair of beige trousers. At first it bothered her, his stare, but she soon joined in the game. Kezelman understood that she was the main character in a story. The light shone on her directly, brought out her nose, made her look pale. As soon as she realised this, she shifted. She sat with her back as straight as possible and touched a finger softly to her lips. She pretended to be distracted by the movement of the afternoon, the passing cars and people. Once in position, she checked the man’s reaction. He was talking with the bartender but still paying attention to her. Standing at the counter, he was like a fish in water. He fulfilled his allotted role without objection. Marina Kezelman reminded herself that you should never give everything away. She swallowed a morsel and mentally reviewed all her son’s activities. She toyed with the idea of infidelity. This guy was uncharted territory. She checked her phone. Not long ago she’d downloaded an I Ching app that she consulted from time to time. She wanted to face the future in the best possible conditions. She took her time to formulate the question, but the reply threw her. She wasn’t familiar with the set of symbolic codes, the visuals, the ideas. She ordered another coffee, black this time, and re-read the text three times. She was still stuck with a couple of images she struggled to interpret as the moment of truth approached.
What shall I do? she wondered. She went for the stable option. She paid with her Visa card and left a banknote as a tip. She tore outside like a whirlwind. The chances of the guy following her were negligible, but just in case, she donned her grimmest expression. She hurried for two blocks, her heels clicking, and went into a hardware store. She asked for ant poison. Give me the strongest one you’ve got, she said. She was shown a gel bait and an ivory-coloured powder. The shop assistant claimed that this combination was foolproof. Persuaded, she purchased both. She felt certain that, over the afternoon, things – as if of their own volition – had lined up in her favour.
At fourteen, Amer had raised a cigarette to his lips and swallowed the smoke. He’d been told not to, but at that age he was stubborn and wanted to try everything. His chin sported a few sparse hairs. Every so often he would stroke them, checking on them, keeping them alive. It was the first evidence of puberty. Literally, on that day, he had swallowed smoke. Then, he’d stepped away to cough. Truth be told, he was the one who’d been swallowed up. For a moment, he thought he was going to die. Simple as that. And he had accepted it with a certain peace. It was two in the afternoon. Spring. Mild weather. He was in a plaza, under the shadow cast by the bust of Eloy Alfaro. From that day until he turned fifty-four – with a few interruptions – Amer had smoked. Way too much. Now his legs would get heavy, he’d get short of breath. He had to quit; there was no getting round it. A doctor made the decision for him. A couple of his arteries were blocked, the doctor determined. Percutaneous coronary intervention. As he talked, Amer was distracted by the dust particles suspended in a ray of sunshine. He tried to think back: it’d been a year since he’d left the city limits.
The campaign began. He searched online for places that dealt with addictions, but none of them persuaded him. The answer came from somewhere unexpected: a forum for taxidermists that took place once a fortnight. A guy from Córdoba who lived in Buenos Aires told him he had the same problem. Sharing a self-help group would be a good solution.
One Tuesday, they went together to the Tobar García psychiatric hospital for children. They were met by a doctor with a Basque surname – Eizaga – who wordlessly obliged them to sit in a semi-circle with other people. The smell of floor cleaning products was overpowering. At first, Amer felt awkward. He wriggled in his chair, his legs itched. To his right, a 150-kilo guy breathed heavily. He gave off a sweet odour, like that of a nectarine compote, which mixed with the aroma of disinfectant. Eizaga said that an adult inhales and exhales between five and six litres of air per minute. This fact was essential to what he went on to explain, yet Amer lost the thread immediately. He didn’t catch a single word. He was elsewhere. A woman across from him was biting her nails. Her image, even when still, was dynamic. She shifted from one geometrical plane to another with utter spontaneity, as if her desire depended on this exhaltation. Amer couldn’t grasp what he was seeing. And so, as always, he veered towards simplification. I am interested in that woman, he said to himself, which put an end to the issue. He simply erased it and moved on to something else. At the end of the session, he learned that the woman’s name was Clara and that she was ten years younger than him.
The guy from Córdoba gave Amer a ride home. They drove down Ramón Carrillo Avenue and talked, among other things, about what they had just experienced. Each elaborated on his point of view, which didn’t fully coincide with the other’s. But they both agreed that good judgement was no match for the hegemony of pleasure.
The Colombian disappeared into the subway. Karl walked down Corrientes towards Pueyrredón. He was taller than everyone else. He crossed Uruguay Street and stopped short in front of a bookshop. His eye roved over the window display before he carried on. Marina Kezelman was turning forty in two weeks and he wanted a gift that would surprise her. They had met in a bar in Madrid a decade before. Everything had happened very quickly. Moved by desire and, above all, an exaggerated sense of honesty, they’d made their decisions.
Packing up his personal mythology, two suitcases and an oboe, Karl moved to Argentina. Those were tough times, although their intimate harmony gave them the best outlook on the world, the most benevolent one. Their relationship in those days – its complexity, its refuge – made them indestructible. They sensed this and made the most of it: they found work, moved to a central neighbourhood and had a son, Simón. Now Karl wanted to give Marina Kezelman something that would be worthy of their mutual understanding. But nothing occurred to him. He meandered round town for longer than he had planned and, almost without realising, he arrived at Callao Avenue. It was a strange day for Karl. More than ever before, he felt the city had changed him; at the same time, he noticed that the change hadn’t affected the core of his personality. In other words, Karl was someone else but also himself. This fact – so obscure that he found it hard to put into words – materialised in a blurry and seemingly unfounded sorrow which was hard to shake off. He stopped by a newspaper stand to wait for the green light, and when it came, he carried on walking. Halfway across the avenue, an image of barbecued short ribs flashed into his mind, neither overcooked nor rare. This image made him instantly and voraciously hungry. Karl knew himself well: his appetite was boundless. To some extent he liked this trait of his; he saw it as a positive part of himself – joyful, celebratory even, to describe it somehow. For a second, he thought about making a stop at a pizza place, but settled for something much simpler. He bought two chocolate bars at a corner store and wolfed them down. From that point on, his pace slowed ever so slightly. Food, as per usual, started him on a meditative path. This time, it proved fruitful: he hit on the perfect gift for his wife. I’ve got it, he said to himself. He checked his phone and confirmed he was at the right place. He walked two blocks down Corrientes and entered a sex shop. He browsed for a while. Despite knowing exactly what he wanted, he felt confused. The solution came when a sales assistant volunteered the necessary information. He left the shop with an orange vibrator offering twelve and a half centimetres of penetration.
Once back on the street, the atmosphere had changed. Everything was charged with a certain immediacy. Karl walked quickly, as if he were late, and with two strides leapt onto a bus. He knew there was no one at home (Marina Kezelman had taken their son to swimming lessons). Even so, he entered cautiously. He chewed on three coffee beans and started to pace, his thoughts whirring, partly distracted and partly worried. He decided to hide the vibrator in his son’s room. He unwrapped it and placed it in a plastic box they used to store cast-off toys. He made a cup of tea, squeezing half a lemon into the cup, and Skyped a friend in Germany. He learned that in Olching, a town of 25,000 people west of Munich, it had been raining for a whole week.
She pushed. She pushed with all her might and succeeded in moving the fridge twenty centimetres. Marina Kezelman was gifted with an extraordinary physical strength. She’d been into athletics as a teenager. Athletics had toned her legs – her abductor muscles were perfectly defined – and taught her to ration her energy. Her stamina was exceptional.