“And what would I have to do?”
“You such a chickenshit, my brother. I ain’t even started.”
“No, no. I’m just asking.”
“Let’s go, Sparrow. Listen good, get your brain in gear.”
“I’m listening, Hobo.”
“We gonna take out an armoured truck. You just help them get away with the bags, that’s all. You’ll be on lookout; you grab the bags with the cash, and the same day you’re back home with the loot, no problems.”
“And who’s organizing it? You? From inside?”
“Don’t be an asshole. I ain’t got the tools for a job like that. Less questions. I’ll tell you who the boss is later. First, I’m gonna tell you where you fit in. Come closer, little prince.”
The paw squeezes Diego’s shoulder even tighter, the mouth presses against his ear. He is invaded by the sickly heat of a rainy summer, although we’re at the end of autumn.
“The Candyman was gonna help me but there were problems; the stupid prick fucked up.”
“Fucked up how?”
30“With the money from the coke; he tried to cut me out. And I don’t take that shit. The son of a bitch is gonna pay for it, I swear.” Ricardo forms a cross with his thumb and index finger and kisses it. “I swear he’s gonna pay for it.” Diego nods. And trembles. He knows he cannot allow himself to faint. He feels an almost physical disgust that makes him squeeze his lips closed; dazed by fear, he leans against the wall. A freezing wind blows from the north and Diego continues sweating like it’s the middle of summer.
At this time of year dark comes quickly, like in the tropics, like an eclipse. Like death.
Far away in the capital, Captain Leonilda Lima shifts uncomfortably in her seat, attributing her unease to Saturn’s unfavourable aspect in Taurus today.
The Hobo pronounces words that brook no argument; he raises his voice, whispers the name of the guy at the top, asks, demands, and Diego accepts. A circle has just closed. Diego is sweating; he looks at the clock and remembers it’s always the same time in here.
31
Ursula seems to have had a bad night. She has bags under her eyes and an expression that puts the neighbours off talking to her, puts them off even saying hello. She looks at the elevator, which has been broken or temperamental for years, and curses in a way that would be obscene if anyone could hear her. The elevator is out of order again, and at any other time this would just be a minor setback, maybe she’d postpone her outing or even cancel it, but today the setback becomes a tragedy because there’s no question of postponing; it’s already late, she’ll have to deal with the situation, walk down five flights of stairs and hold at bay the feelings of anxiety that arise when she thinks about having to climb back up those stairs this evening.
She’s in a hurry but she doesn’t rush, she doesn’t race down the stairs but takes them one step at a time, planting first one foot and then the other, gripping the banister firmly, tightly even.
No doubt she is thinking, as always, that her extra weight could cause her to trip or to lose her balance, to tumble and fall, rolling clumsily from floor to floor until she reaches the bottom. Perhaps she thinks that if she trips then her body will plummet, bouncing off the worn marble steps, her head smashing against the edges and corners of the bronze-and wrought-iron banister. Perhaps she even imagines the sound of soft flabby flesh hitting the floor, the sound a veal cutlet 32makes when hammered with a tenderizer. Maybe she sees her wrecked and bleeding body, finally still, forever still down there, in the hallway, at the end of its descent. Stair after stair, on her slow march she imagines curious passers-by peering through the glass of the entrance hall, their noses pressed against it for a better view of the spectacle, the red trail of blood on the marble, because people are morbid and nothing attracts an audience quite like disease or pain or death. Or sex.
Her father’s voice warns her to take care when she’s going down the stairs: You’re fat, Ursula, with all that extra weight you shouldn’t exert yourself, your heart could give out. Don’t tell me that now, Daddy, I’m in a hurry, I’ve got lots to do. Look at yourself, Ursula, you need to do another slimming treatment, for the good of your health. I told you to shut up, I’m in a hurry. And remember I’m not that little girl any more, Daddy.
She shakes her head in annoyance and carries on down the stairs, carefully, one foot after the other; he knows, Daddy knows when to talk to her and what to say to make her soul shrink to the size of a lentil.
We observe her pausing on the second floor, stopping as if to rest or to get her breath back, but then Ursula turns sharply and walks quickly over to the apartment closest to the stairway, number 201. The residents are a couple – students or bank clerks, she’s not sure. Silently, she touches the door, presses her face against the wood, first her cheek, then her mouth, then her ear. It seems she wants to listen to something. She stands quite still for a few moments, and we don’t think she’s heard anything: at this time of day, the couple in number 201 must have gone out a while ago. But she doesn’t give up; she tries again with her right ear and then again with her left, and only after a while does she 33let up. A little put out, she continues her descent, step by step. She reaches the final stretch, the entrance hall and, against all her own predictions, makes it to the main door safe and sound.
From inside you can barely hear the nervous echo of the outside world: the roar of the Old Town is muffled, wrapped in insulating material, the racket is scarcely audible and this silence accentuates the almost womblike atmosphere of the building in which she lives.
Every day for just over a month, Ursula López has followed a military routine: she sleeps, gets up at six, has a bath, eats breakfast, leaves the house, makes her way to the place where the woman lives, the other Ursula, and keeps watch until she sees her go out for a run. Sometimes she follows her, sometimes she just watches her disappear, sometimes she waits for her to return. All to a precise timetable that she implements every day, without fail. It is the timetable of her revenge.
Today she walks down Calle Sarandí, hurrying the short distance to Plaza Matriz among artisans and tourists, yuppies wearing clothes that scream lawyer, accountant, manager; among beggars with huge coats and misshapen caps, gay couples holding hands, diligent and carefully made-up bilingual secretaries, delivery boys, shivering prostitutes, uniformed teenagers. And as she walks among these people, she hears the cathedral bells tolling eight o’clock. Eight o’clock on the dot.
The sound causes her to halt, rooted to the spot, unsettled; the eight chimes of the cathedral remind her, as they do whenever she hears them, of the time at which her father used to open her cell door. Ursula knows she can’t afford the luxury of trembling; there are some things better 34kept in a wooden box, and that box should be kept inside another one, and everything inside an even bigger one made of iron, bound with steel cable and dropped to the bottom of the sea.
One day she’ll have money and she’ll be able to move out of the Old Town, buy a house in Carrasco with a swimming pool and a maid and a fancy car and forget all about her past. Forget about Daddy, for example, leave that house with all its memories. Actually, if it wasn’t for that woman she should already have her house in Carrasco and much more. She feels the pull of hatred, of revenge. No, now is not the time: she’s afraid of getting lost in the labyrinth of her thoughts, and she forces herself to keep going.
She enters the square. Today is one of those pale sepia days when everything makes you feel like crying. Despite the cold air, the nape of her neck is sweating, her armpits are already soaked and there’s a nagging pain between her ribs.
Sebastián, the bookseller, the kid who rents out the garage where she parks her car, approaches from the opposite direction;