A Crack in the Wall (7 page)

“We have been putting up buildings for years and we've never had a wall fall down. The probability of serious structural damage in your apartment is either extremely low or zero.”

Jara laughed, but this time it wasn't a salesman's laugh – it wasn't contained or studied but genuine, nervous and even angry; for the first time this man addressed Pablo by his surname, not by his first name or position.

“Señor Simó, the life of a person like you or me can't be reduced to a question of statistics. A wall only has to fall down once to finish someone off. Or do you have seven lives, like a cat? No, don't kid yourself that you do. You're not understanding me because you don't see what it is that really frightens me. Shall I tell you? It's not being flattened by falling masonry, because that – death, I mean – would be the end of the story and I wouldn't know anything about it. What does scare me is the thought of the wall coming down when I'm not there – do you see? – that today, this
afternoon, or some time soon, when I'm on my way home, just about to arrive, as I pass your site, I'll look up to my window, as I always have done for years and, there in the distance, I'll see the chairs around my table, the table itself still with the cloth that covered it this morning at breakfast, and behind that the door through which I enter my home from the fifth-floor landing, my fridge, my boiler, my whole life,
arquitecto
. And you know why I would see those things? Because the wall that covered the little I own wouldn't be there any more, protecting what's mine.”

Jara repeated the words “what's mine”, then paused for a moment, gazing blankly at the papers he had strewn over the desk until some impulse prompted him to move, imperceptibly at first then gradually faster, and soon he was rocking back and forth in his chair again. Jara seemed to have been set in indefinite motion, but then, as though suddenly remembering something important, he came to an abrupt halt and started looking among the files with renewed enthusiasm, until he alighted on a newspaper cutting that showed a large photograph of a building in which somebody seemed quickly or carelessly to have erased the side wall. It looked like a doll's house, with even the smallest details of the exposed rooms visible. The photograph had the caption “Fatal Collapse”.

“You understand me,
arquitecto
, don't you, right? Of course you understand me.”

Jara took a handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and dabbed at his forehead with deliberation, repeating the action on both sides. Then he crossed his legs, folded his hands in his lap and once more rocked back and forth in his chair, waiting.

The truth was that Pablo did not entirely understand what Jara wanted, but he decided that the only way to find
out was to be as direct as possible. Before saying anything, he retrieved his Caran d'Ache pencil from the edge of the desk, placed it diagonally across his notebook again and tidied up some of the disorder caused by Jara's files – not much, but enough to establish that he was once more in charge of his own domain. Once he felt ready he leant back in his chair, stretched his arms upwards and brought them down behind his neck, interlacing his fingers for support; he looked Jara straight in the eyes and only then did he say:

“So Señor Jara, tell me, what is it you want?”

Just as he had expected, Jara acknowledged the question, but discreetly, without surprise, as though he had been waiting for it. And he was equally direct.

“Money,
arquitecto,
” he said. “Money to pay for all the trouble that this is causing me. And all the eventualities. Because if it were just a question of rendering a small crack, I could do that myself without bothering you or your people. But there may be a structural problem here that ends up affecting other apartments too, and my silence has got to be worth something, don't you think?” He didn't wait for an answer to the question. “Money,
arquitecto
, that's what I want: money.”

Once again they sized each other up, watching each other in silence. Pablo smiled briefly and nodded, several times, communicating to Jara with this gesture that yes, he finally was beginning to understand.

“And how much would we be talking about?” Simó asked.

“Don't make out like you don't know,
arquitecto
. You're the one who deals with this sort of negotiation, not me. Name a figure, I leave it to your discretion.”

But Pablo didn't name a figure or say anything else for the moment. Then Nelson Jara began to put his things away
in the bag. He took time over the operation, not in order to stow the papers neatly away, but to maintain the level of tension he had succeeded in creating. Only now that he seemed confident of getting what he was looking for did he offer his hand to Pablo, and as they shook hands he said:

“I'll be waiting for your call,
arquitecto
.”

And then he slid his card onto the table, a white card printed with thick black letters that set out his name and telephone number with a shiny calligraphy in which some letters – the “t” and the “f”, for example – extended exaggeratedly high or low in relation to an imaginary base line.

Pablo took the card, read it and was surprised to see that Jara's telephone number shared the same last three digits as his own: two, eight, two. It was a sign that he and Jara, who seemed so different, had something in common. Even if all they shared was those three numbers. He wondered whether it was Kabbalah, fate, chance or coincidence as he put the card into his wallet.

On his feet and loaded down once more with the papers that confirmed the existence of the crack and the validity of his claim, Jara said goodbye, adding:

“I trust you
arquitecto
, I trust that you will know how to put yourself on the right side.”

And he left.

Only a week after their chance encounter in that café Pablo Simó never usually goes to, Leonor calls him at the Borla studio. He's surprised by this unexpected contact. He had persuaded himself, as a way to forestall disappointment, that their exchange of telephone numbers had been nothing more than a formality, a kind of courtesy. Pablo had told Borla as little as possible about his meeting with Leonor: only that he had run into the girl, that she was living in the area but – and this was what should really matter to the Borla studio – that she was no longer looking for Jara. However, Borla didn't seem completely convinced.

“You didn't ask her why she was looking for him in the first place?”

“There was no need – she's not looking for him any more.”

“Ask her anyway, if you see her again,” Borla said before closing the subject with one of his favourite maxims, “A warned man counts for two.” Then he went, leaving Pablo to ponder what it was like to be a warned man, how much two men would count for and if any two men would count the same as any two others, if he and Jara would count the same as himself and Borla, how much Borla and Jara would count for – and a few other combinations besides.

When he answers the telephone and hears “Hello, Pablo?” he doesn't immediately know who is speaking, just that he has an agreeable sensation, as if this woman's voice evoked some happy memory that has been long buried under the weight of the endlessly repeating days that make up any man's life. It's a voice that seems to leap – like a person leaping from one rock to the next to avoid getting wet while crossing a stream at some shallow point – with a tone that glides from one vowel to the next as though she were reading them off a song-sheet. Pablo knows immediately that this enthusiastic “hello” is entirely different to the “hellos” of any of the other women who might have reason to call him. If he had to hazard where the true difference lay, he would say: this “hello” is
alive
. Very different to Laura's muted “hello”, presaging a list of complaints and reminders. Very different to Marta's – a harsh, biting “hello” that has the strange ability to dry the throat not of the person uttering it but of the one hearing it, and which in most cases leaves Pablo speechless, as though even the sound of that five-lettered word confirmed that Marta Horvat wasn't willing to speak to him any more than was strictly necessary. Different, too, to Francisca's “hello”, which is sucked in, a prisoner of her mouth, a “hello” weary of giving explanations.

“Hello,” he says. “Who's speaking?”

“It's Leonor. Do you remember me?”

Yes, Pablo remembers: the backpack, the jeans, the ponytail secured at the nape of her neck, the smiling, caramel-coloured eyes. And Jara. He had told her to call if she needed anything and for that reason he asks:

“What do you need?”

“Five buildings,” Leonor says.

“Five buildings?”

“Well, actually just the front of five buildings.”

“What for?”

“To photograph them – didn't I tell you?” the girl says.

She hadn't told him – he is sure of that, he would remember otherwise – and this worries Pablo, though it pleases him, too, that she thinks they spoke for longer than the brief exchange that day in the café that he never usually goes to. Then Leonor explains, apparently in the belief that she is doing so for the second time; she tells him that she is finishing a photography course – “I told you, remember?” – and that when different subjects were proposed for the final practical assignment, she immediately chose “building façades” because she knows a bit about buildings and because she knew that he would be able to help her.

“So can you?” she asks him.

“Yes, I think so. What sort of façades are you looking for?”

“The five that you like best, the city's five most beautiful buildings, according to the architect Pablo Simó.”

He stops to think.

“Hello?” she says.

“Yes, still here.”

“So which would they be?” Leonor asks again.

“Let me think it over, five buildings with sufficient architectonic merit —”

“Architectonic merit? What's that?”

“Design values, qualities that make them stand out when compared to other buildings.”

“No, no,” she interrupts, “I'm just looking for the five façades that you
like
best.”

“And what value is there in someone liking something?” Pablo asks.

“It's important to me that somebody likes the photos I take,” she says.

“That doesn't give them a value. My mother liked the house of an aunt who lived in San Martín and I can assure you that the house was a veritable eyesore.”

“But you are not your mother, you are somebody presumed to know about architecture. If these buildings have your approval, that's enough for me.”

“It shouldn't be enough, though,” Pablo insists. “You shouldn't be content with somebody else's taste. Taste isn't objective – you'd never catch an art critic saying that he
likes
a painting, or a literary critic saying he
likes
a novel.”

Pablo feels anxious. He realizes that in his cowardly insistence on precision and objectivity he's in danger of losing an opportunity to see Leonor again. In fact, how much does it really matter what values a building has, what the architectural features are that make it stand out in the middle of a fast-expanding city, or even whether or not he likes it, when set against another chance to see this girl whose voice is dancing down the line? The chance to see Leonor again. But a chance in what sense, exactly? What is he thinking of? Simply of an opportunity to ask the girl those questions Borla wants answered, he tells himself, rescuing his line of thought from its deviant course. The answer placates him and he tells her:

“Very well, if you need five building façades, I shall find you five building façades. I don't know if they will be the ones I like best, but at least they will be worth photographing. Does that sound good?”

“Fantastic. Which would they be, then?”

Her clamour for instant answers takes him aback. He searches his mind as if riffling through a mental card-index, agile fingers flicking through the entries, but whenever the fingers alight on one and pluck it out, the card is blank. Either nothing's written on it, or what was written there
has been crossed, torn or rubbed out. So he tries to think of an excuse.

“I'd like to take a bit of time before making my selection. There are too many buildings in Buenos Aires with different virtues” – did he really say virtues? – “and it's not that easy to choose just five. When do you need this by?”

“Well, I have to go out and take the photos by Saturday at the latest, so I haven't got very long to get the project together. I have to hand it in the next week. I think that, so long as you can let me know your favourites by Saturday, there's enough time. Or even better,” Leonor says, and then asks in that rock-leaping voice, “Would you like to come with me?”

“Where to?” he asks her, like an idiot.

“To take the photos,” she says, laughing.

“I don't know if I'd be able to this Saturday,” he says and a picture comes to mind of him and Laura doing their fortnightly shop in the hypermarket where they go every other Saturday. “I'll let you know whether or not I can go with you nearer the time,” he says, and he feels something intangible when he says the words “go with you”. “Call me the day after tomorrow, and if I can't go along I promise to have the addresses of the five buildings you need ready by then.”

“Great,” she says.

“Is that a plan, then?” he asks.

There's a brief silence on the line, which worries him.

“Hello?” Pablo says.

“Yes, yes, I'm here,” Leonor answers. “I was just thinking.”

“What about?”

“Shall I tell you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I was thinking, how odd it is – no?”

“How odd what is?”