A Crack in the Wall (11 page)

She walks out, leaving him alone in the room. The wet towel Laura just used to dry her body lies on the floor at his feet. Pablo picks it up, feels the dampness, smells it. Then he turns and looks at himself in the mirror: he's still in boxers and the T-shirt he uses to sleep in, holding in one hand the list where he scribbled down the addresses of some buildings he hopes to go and see on Saturday with a girl he hardly knows and, in the other hand, his wife's discarded towel; he's unwashed, his hair still ruffled from the previous night, his chin stubbly and his penis – which seemed so moribund a few hours ago – stirring and threatening to emerge from his boxers.

Without moving, he considers his reflection in the mirror. He doesn't put a name on what he sees, he doesn't think of a precise adjective, but he knows exactly what his wife would call him if she could see him.

That afternoon Pablo gets his hair cut. Instead of going to his usual barber, he looks for another close to the studio and finds a unisex salon where they assure him that the woman with dry dyed-white hair who's going to see him specializes in men's styles. He is seated beside a customer whose hair is separated into different sections, around which are wrapped foil squares in green, orange or yellow, alternating in an order Pablo supposes may have some aesthetic significance, but which he cannot begin to decode. The woman smells terrible and he guesses that the stink is coming from her head; she's reading a magazine and seems neither surprised nor concerned about her smell or about a man seeing her in this strange and unflattering guise. The stylist suggests Pablo might like a change, asking his permission to find a way of teasing his hair onto his forehead and the back of his neck. Pablo agrees, but the woman has made only one snip before he changes his mind and says:

“Actually, just cut it the way I have it now, but a little more modern.”

“Exactly, more modern,” the stylist says and continues to wield her scissors as she sees fit.

Ten minutes later the cut is finished, but before drying his hair, the woman sticks claw-like fingers into Pablo's head
and gives him a capillary massage. He sees in the mirror how she half-closes her eyes in different ways, depending on the intensity of effort applied to his scalp. She presses and relaxes, presses and relaxes, then makes quick, circular movements with her hands in a symmetrical motion on both sides of his head. The woman leaves Pablo's head for a moment and looks questioningly at him in the mirror; he feels as though something up there – presumably his scalp – is throbbing. Then the stylist repeats the whole process and Pablo feels powerless to prevent her.

“Good, huh?” she asks.

“Yes,” Pablo says, with difficulty, his voice shaking to the rhythm of the woman's exertion on his head.

The haircut ends with circular massages on his temples.

“Thank you,” the woman says, as though Pablo had given her the massage, not the other way around. Then she gives him a blast of the hairdryer, pouring onto his head some oil which, she assures him, will impart a youthful shine to the ends of his hair, and finally she offers to give him a manicure.

“No thanks,” Pablo says, without further explanation. But after he has paid the bill he asks, “Do you sell that oil that makes the ends more youthful?” And he buys a pot of that.

After the hairdresser, he goes to buy clothes. He wants jeans and a new sweater. When was the last time he bought his own clothes? Everything he's had in the last few years was bought by Laura: socks, shirts, trousers, pants, T-shirts, sweaters, swimming trunks, even the suit that has rarely been used and hangs in the wardrobe in his room. Laura insisted on Pablo buying a suit for the fifteenth birthday of the daughter of a cousin they hadn't seen for years and won't see again until the girl gets married. Pablo buys only
his shoes for himself because Laura never gets the size exactly right. It's as though Pablo's feet, after so many years of marriage, are the only part of his body he has managed to keep to himself.

The sales assistant pulls out some sweaters to show him. Pablo says:

“Nothing on the grey spectrum, or beige or blue.”

He could swear that in his own wardrobe there have never been sweaters in any other colour. Beige for Pablo Simó is a “residents' association” colour – the colour of consensus; when there are as many opinions on what colour to paint a landing as there are apartments, inevitably the default choice is a shade of beige: dark, light, milky tea,
café au lait
, maté. Once a client assured him that there was a tone called “Mediterranean beige”, which Pablo never managed to find in the catalogue of any paint shop in Buenos Aires. He remembers that Borla told him:

“Make her up a sample of shitty beige – I'm sure it will do the trick.”

And Pablo doesn't remember if it did, but whenever he gets a new colour chart he looks among the beiges to see if anyone has yet dared call “shitty” by its name. So not beige, because it's a consensus colour, and not those blues and greys that Pablo associates with large groups of people: the mass of commuters coming out of the underground at rush hour, or marchers on a demonstration; even the fans who fill the stands at a football match – if the eye were capable of separating out the flags and football strips, blue and grey would predominate. For that reason Pablo repeats to the assistant, while she looks on the shelf for his size in each of the available styles:

“Not beige, grey or blue.”

“Yes, yes,” she says, turning to him with a pile of garments.

Pablo rules out a pink sweater, another in lilac and one in red, without commentary (after all, he was the one that requested different colours) and takes to the changing room a yellow one that is neither “canary” nor too strident, with a zipper at the front instead of buttons, as well as one in mint green in a soft, fine wool he has only to touch to know it must be worth a fortune. Since when has he known so much about colours not destined to paint a wall? When he was a boy they had even thought he might be colour-blind because he made everything brown so as to avoid sharpening the other pencils.

“Cardigans are very popular at the moment,” the sales assistant says, approving his selection.

She suggests he start trying on the sweaters he has already chosen, while she looks out two or three styles of jeans “that would be right for you”. The words stir in him a fear that this girl may be seeing him a certain way – old, dated, pathetic? – but the fear turns out to be unfounded because she comes back a few minutes later with three models, one classic and the other two full of slashes and pockets. These Pablo rejects without even trying them on. The first pair he does try, and knows instantly that Laura will disapprove of them. They can be as classic as they like, but the jeans he sees in the mirror are of an indigo that is almost black and his wife believes – and at an end-of-year office party she even argued this point with Marta Horvat, who disagreed – that on building sites the dust that is raised before the cement goes down shows much more on a dark background than on a light one. When she sees these, Laura will say something along those lines, even though he no longer visits sites pre-cement. There's no need, that's not his job: he is a designer, draughtsman, administrator, responsible for any of the studio jobs not
specifically assigned to someone else in the team. For that reason he avoids the cement without feeling the need for explanations; just as he avoids, whenever he has notice of it, any other situation that might cause him to revisit – as a pair of simple dark jeans has caused him to now – the open footing waiting to be cemented, where Jara's body is trapped forever.

Even though in those days it wasn't his job to do it, and nobody had asked it of him, the afternoon before Jara's death Pablo Simó had dropped in on the site in Calle Giribone. It was probably because he wanted to see Marta, who hadn't been at the office for days. Or because he wanted to confirm, with his own eyes, that the pit would be cemented over the next day and that he, vermin or otherwise, would no longer have to worry about Jara. Perhaps it was fate that led him there and placed him on that stage to be a witness. He can't remember any more the real reason, only that he was there that afternoon. Everyone was working on schedule, making the final necessary arrangements before the cement was poured in the following day: the open footings at base level; the reinforcement bars in position in each column and bent to the degree specified in the plans; the area clear so that, when the cement mixer arrived the next morning, the truck would have a clear path to the point at which the mixture had to be tipped; the on-site team instructed in the procedure for the following day. Marta was surprised to see him:

“What are you doing here, Pablo? Is something up?”

“No, nothing. I need to visit a site a few blocks from here,” he lied, “so I thought I'd drop in to see if everything was OK or if you needed anything.”

“For this to be over – that's what I need,” she said, and turned her attention to the shuttering of a beam.

Marta looked tired, but she still seemed even prettier to Pablo than when she was dressed as an executive for the office: her trousers tucked into low-heeled boots, a long, tight polo neck that emphasized her waist, hips and breasts. An outfit doubtless chosen to allow free movement on irregular terrain without sacrificing that sensuality that Marta liked to flaunt, even in a place like this, full of men who didn't mind eyeing her up even if she was their boss, and clearly they had no qualms about it that day as they boldly ran their eyes over her, even when Pablo stood glowering next to Marta Horvat, as though he enjoyed sole rights to this woman. Marta went to speak to the foreman; from where Pablo was standing, it looked as though they were going over a task list together, checking that everything was going according to plan. The man showed her some forms, which she read and signed with a ballpoint pen – blue? – every so often holding it between her teeth. When she had finished with the forms, Marta returned to where Pablo was standing, took him by the arm and led him behind a wall of hollow bricks that had been piled up near the party wall.

“Come, I want to tell you something,” she said.

The confined space forced a proximity on them that made Pablo nervous, as it always did to have Marta so close.

“He's spent the whole day watching.”

“Who?” Pablo asked.

“Jara. He stood there, behind the fence, next to the site board, and looked right inside, cool as a cucumber. Nothing fazes that guy. He made notes in a file and took photographs; I sent the foreman over to tell him that taking photographs of the work wasn't permitted and to frighten him a bit. He spoke to Jara for about ten minutes, but it made no difference – he didn't care. He said that the street is public and that if we didn't like him watching, it
must be because we had something to hide, ‘a dirty arse', he said. ‘Dirty arse',” repeated Marta. “I wouldn't like to know what that old man's arse smells like. He was here for nearly an hour, taking folders out of his bag and putting them in again; I don't know what he was up to – reading, making notes, all rubbish, I expect. What else would you expect from a man like that? The foreman said he even tried talking to him about football – that got rid of him. Have you got a cigarette?”

Pablo took a moment to answer because he was thinking that, although he had never liked women swearing, hearing Marta say “dirty arse” made him feel mildly excited. She patted his jacket pockets, feeling for a cigarette packet, first the breast pocket and then the sides. Only when she had finished touching him did Pablo say, “I don't smoke, Marta.”

“Right,” she said. “I'll go and ask the boys.”

And off she went. Pablo followed her with his eyes and so did the other men; it seemed to him that some of them even stopped or at least slowed their work as she walked past. Finally someone offered her a packet and she took a cigarette, lifting it to her mouth; the foreman stepped forward with a lighter and lit it for her. Marta inhaled and blew out hard – harder than necessary, Pablo thought – as if hoping to expel all the tensions of the day in a puff. Somebody rolled a tin drum over to her and turned it on its end, offering it as a seat. One of the workmen must have made a joke, because Marta laughed, then she said something and laughed again, the men who had gathered around her laughing too. Marta Horvat gestured with her hand for him to join them. Pablo walked over to the group and stood as close to Marta as he could. As he had thought, they were telling jokes. A playful duel was taking place between a builder from Córdoba and a pitman from
Tucumán who they called “King Mole” and who headed the team that had excavated the base level and opened the footings ready to receive the cement. Pablo thought the duel would be won by King Mole, whose years digging earth had given him strong arms and who was very funny besides. He would have been happy to listen to King Mole tell his jokes, but Pablo's eyes were drawn to the side wall of Jara's building and he couldn't help counting the floors to the level he guessed must be his. He stood staring at that window which, as so often, had been opened up in the wall in contravention of building regulations. If he had realized before that Jara's apartment had an unauthorized window, he would have used that argument to reverse the burden of proof and assure the man that the true cause of his crack was there, in his illegal window. But he doesn't need any new arguments now. Tomorrow it will all be over. The side wall was dirty, like the rest of the building, and from where he was standing it was impossible to distinguish the crack. But Pablo Simó could imagine it. Just as he imagined each of the things that Jara had described to him: the table, chairs, the fridge, the boiler, his markings on the wall. And Jara, too, spying on them from behind the curtain, wondering why they were laughing, as though no one ought to laugh at such a short distance from his wounded wall. Pablo looked down and spotted the glowing butt of the cigarette Marta had smoked and was now stamping on with the toe of her boot, grinding it until it was out.