The Heart and Other Viscera Page 16

  As if the act of hanging the dripping wet coat on the hook were a kind of cue, Mingorance I the Irresolute leaped from his chair and hurried over to the window. He would suffer, he knew, but he couldn’t tear himself away from the scene that should have been his: through the window, he watched his neighbor divest the woman of her dripping coat, offer her a seat, hand her a towel. And all those apparently harmless gestures, which were the same ones Mingorance II the Intrepid was carrying out behind him, seemed in his rival to be links in an implacable chain repeated endlessly, a strategic deployment of pieces with the sole aim of pouncing on her. He moved away from the window when his neighbor appeared with the coffee. He had already seen what would come next a thousand times on television: the coffee spilled on her blouse as if by accident, his handkerchief at the ready to fix the problem. Cursing his luck, he sat down next to the young girl drying her red hair with his towel as she shouted, “Three sugars,” in the direction of the kitchen. Mingorance II the Intrepid silently cursed his lack of forethought as he contemplated the dregs in the sugar bowl. He scraped it together carefully, just about filling the third teaspoon with that brown sugar that always sticks to the sides, a gesture that made him feel shamefully stingy and reaffirmed his desire to be a different person, better than any uplifting example from the Bible. Everyday reality demonstrated that Mingorance II the Intrepid was a terribly practical person, one of those men who only fill the sugar bowl when its depletion has become a reality rather than an illusion. Similarly, for example, on the rare occasions when he went out partying with his friends, he never carried an extraneous object in his wallet. Taking a condom with him seemed to him like something a Boy Scout would do, a supremely pretentious gesture, and no woman had ever managed to persuade him otherwise. And yet, faced with the unhappy incident of the sugar, he had to admit that he would get nowhere with this kind of behavior, much less be the equal of his ineffable neighbor, whose drawers were probably brimming with prophylactics and spermicides, and who doubtless stored sachets of sugar in jars, beneath the carpet or taped under his armpits, because you never knew when an emergency might crop up.

  While a tormented Mingorance I the Irresolute imagined returning from the kitchen with two piping-hot cups of coffee on a stylish-looking tray to show the woman that he was a sophisticated sort who kept up with the latest trends, Mingorance II the Intrepid returned to the living room with two Duralex cups on a moldy tray he had dug out of the bottom of the cupboard, and Mingorance scanned the newspaper for a crime of passion to brighten up his morning. He was looking for tragedies in the lives of others that made his own seem better in comparison, or that would at least keep him entertained: a nurse commanded by God to poison her patients; a domestic argument resolved with a hammer blow; a dog that had trailed its master all the way to the Andes—anything would do. But the newspaper was dull, proving that the previous day had been an interval of sorts, a kind of religious holiday for rapists and murderers. Oblivious to his lust for tragedies, the redhead picked up her coffee, cheeks flushing as she took a long, deep, one might say fervent, sip accompanied by a darkly intimate sigh of satisfaction. Mingorance II the Intrepid picked up his cup, also attempting to evoke coffee’s legendary ability to create closeness—something he knew about from advertisements rather than from personal experience. However, he failed miserably, swilling the coffee around in his mouth for too long as if he were gargling, and then ending with a yelp of hemorrhoid pain more intimate than he had intended. The fortuitous, suggestive return of their two cups to the tray sparked off a conversation that began meanderingly with the usual faltering questions and hurried, clichéd replies, confused comments that were abandoned in midstream for being overly intricate, but that, to Mingorance II the Intrepid’s astonishment, soon began to flow easily and even pleasantly. For once, talking to a woman seemed to him relaxing and enjoyable, and he soon discovered that she possessed a ready laugh, which bubbled over at the slightest witticism on his part, a natural laugh that both surprised and reassured him. It inspired in him a flowery lyricism and a flamboyant piquancy, brought out a subtle, inventive humor he didn’t know he possessed. Amid laughter and sips of coffee, with the patter of rain creating an even cozier atmosphere in the living room, they decoded each other to the point of discovering that they were completely opposite, not to say opposed. Her name was Claudia. She had studied piano and had traveled all over the world as a member of a philharmonic orchestra, leading a nomadic, rewarding life filled with dramatic events, a life she had recently renounced so as to ground herself, exhausted and with a lot of emotional scars that had left her cynical and cautious. For his part, he remembered having once gone on a school trip to Granada, and now he worked in an office nearby. He liked to take a stroll in the evenings, but was careful never to stray from his neighborhood. He ate dinner at the Chinese restaurant on the corner and went fishing on the weekends, to distinguish them from workdays. He admitted all this without realizing it, too immersed in the conversation to think of making up lies, to create an imaginary existence that didn’t seem so pitiful, but what was done was done, and she was observing him with entomological curiosity, possibly wondering where the catch was, or—Mingorance II the Intrepid dared to hope in a sudden flash of optimism—imagining what it would be like to be loved by a man like him, capable of revealing himself with a candor so brutal it verged on the obscene; someone straightforward and without a mask, with a heart seemingly new to love. And, while they were on the subject, he might have added that she only need ask and he would love her with a devotion that would erase the bleakness of all those disastrous nocturnal liaisons in foreign lands that haunted her gaze. But he didn’t have the courage for that. Instead, he let himself be examined by Claudia’s expert eye, which appraised him with, he thought, a certain eagerness, as she might a rare, exotic butterfly that was suddenly within reach of her net.

  Oblivious to his thirst for happiness, Mingorance I the Irresolute debated whether to spend his Saturday sprawled on the sofa, or to cross the street to his neighbor’s apartment and reclaim what was his, before the neighbor laid his grubby paws on her. He imagined himself pounding frantically on the door, interrupting the idyllic scene taking place inside with a rambling, cliché-ridden speech about missed opportunities—an approach that, according to the teachings of the television, women found romantically irresistible as well as profitable. In the end, though, he rejected the idea, which on consideration seemed too foolish.

  However, Mingorance III the Brave leaped to his feet and ran downstairs. At heart, he was a lover of lost causes. He paused for a few moments in the street, watching with disgust the amorous advances of his neighbor, his supple, feline precision as he stalked his quarry, ready to pounce. After nearly half an hour watching in the rain, the courage Mingorance III the Brave needed finally flared up inside him, mighty and invincible, on par with the flu virus that was taking hold, though far less conspicuously. He ran up the stairs and pounded on the door with calculated frenzy. No sooner had it swung open than he launched into his speech aimed at softening the young woman’s heart. She gazed at him in shock, too astonished to hear what he was saying, which at best was rather garbled. Mingorance III the Brave realized then, with the inestimable help of the full-length mirror in the hallway, that some romantic gestures can appear ridiculous if not performed with sufficient conviction. He was incensed when his neighbor started to nod and clap him on the shoulder, like someone trying to pacify a dangerous lunatic. Before he knew it, he found himself being propelled toward the stairs by an apparently friendly pair of hands, which nevertheless displayed a profound knowledge of martial arts each time he tried to turn around. These kindly claws forced him to make a last effort to shake himself free. The unexpected gesture took his neighbor by complete surprise. He teetered on the edge of the stairwell for a few nail-biting seconds before plunging downward. Mingorance III the Brave watched him bounce off the steps with what seemed to him excessive flamboyance, until he reached the landing below, wher
e he came to a lifeless halt, his neck and limbs forming the oddest of angles, as if to show off their double-jointedness. The monstrosity of the situation paralyzed Mingorance III the Brave. But not the girl, who assimilated what had happened before he did, and even managed to interpret it in her own way, as she fled, terrified, down the stairs. Uncertain whether or not he should try to stop her, Mingorance III the Brave watched her step over the body in disgust, a reaction he found pleasing despite the horrific circumstances, before continuing her flight. When the clatter of her shoes had dwindled in the distance, all he could hear was the rain beating down and giving the city a blurred, ghostly appearance.

  Meanwhile, Mingorance had decided to have lunch at the Chinese restaurant. Unaware that part of him had killed a man, he leaped clumsily over the puddles in his yellow raincoat, like something from an incongruous parody of a bucolic scene, until he found himself standing outside the restaurant. He placed his hand on the red double doors, flanked by a pair of elaborate ornamental dragons, and paused before disturbing the shrine-like silence that exists inside Asian eateries. In fact, he realized suddenly, he was in no mood to enter the artificial universe awaiting him on the far side of the door, or to surrender with infinite patience to consuming one of those seemingly endless dishes of chopped food. But, more than that, he was in no mood to do so under the scrutiny of the elderly Chinaman who never took his eyes off him as he sat in the lotus position on his patriarchal cushion. If the waitresses treated him with perfunctory indifference, the old man fixed him with a cold stare that seemed to Mingorance brimming with dark, ancestral condemnation. It was obvious that he considered Mingorance’s life idle and profane, utterly at odds with everything that surrounded him, and wholly dishonorable. And the truth was that, after being irradiated by those eyes for a while, Mingorance would briefly examine his own conscience and end up agreeing with the old man, and would invariably creep out of the restaurant like the lowliest of worms. And so now he turned on his heel and retraced his steps. Pausing before the entrance to his apartment block, he contemplated walking to the garage, climbing into his car, and driving aimlessly around the outskirts of the city, on a whim, simply to experience a world that beneath that heavy rainfall must seem as intimate as it did deserted. In the end, he rejected the idea as foolish. As he mounted the stairs, he made an astonishing list of the number of times in a day we have to make a decision, however trivial and insignificant it might be. And he wondered what consequences each decision entailed, whether the life we live in the end is better than the ones we reject.

  And as Mingorance IV the Abducted set off toward the garage, whistling as he went, Mingorance V the Untimely, who was in no mood for philosophizing and could have eaten a horse, resolutely pushed open the door to the restaurant. He contemplated the interior, resigned and dripping wet: the elaborate murals, the discreet Muzak, the empty tables due to the rain, and at the far end, as he had feared, the old Chinaman sitting calmly on his cushion. Except that today, unlike other days, leveled at his head was a gun, which a trembling hand was struggling to keep steady. It took Mingorance V the Untimely several seconds to realize that he had arrived in the midst of a holdup. The aggressor, a typical drug addict, was the only one who hadn’t noticed him walk in, as he was too busy threatening the old man and the waitresses and trying not to drop the gun. The three victims observed him solemnly over their assailant’s shoulder, concealing their delight at the arrival of this unexpected savior in such an advantageous position. Mingorance V the Untimely realized that he couldn’t exit the way he had come silently, as had been his intention. No, that was impossible. Presented with a situation that required a gallant gesture, he had no choice but to act the hero if he wanted to look himself in the face again, or continue to patronize the restaurant. The odds were in his favor, he concluded with a sigh. Even the arrangement of the tables offered a tempting, unobstructed pathway to the attacker, allowing a good run-up should he decide to charge rather than sneak up behind the man. And so Mingorance V the Untimely, noticing the old Chinaman’s expectant eyes upon him and realizing he hadn’t the necessary audacity for a catlike approach, launched into a mad dash toward the felon, who scarcely managed to turn around before being knocked to the ground by this fellow who had appeared out of nowhere. They rolled about on the floor, entwined like a pair of impassioned lovers. When the world stopped spinning, Mingorance V the Untimely found himself in the arms of a scrawny, malodorous body, which he wasn’t quite sure what to do with. Such was his feeling of unreality that he only attempted to wrangle the gun from the man when he tried to point it at him. They struggled awkwardly, with none of the spectacularism of motion pictures, more like a couple of kids fighting over a toy: constipated grunts and a tangle of fingers around the cold, slippery metal object.

  Mingorance V the Untimely gritted his teeth to contain a howl of frustration: the frenzy overwhelming him was due more to his fear of not giving a convincing enough performance in his role as defender than the prospect of being shot, which in his delirium he hadn’t even considered. Suddenly, a series of sharp kicks rained down upon his adversary’s face, and Mingorance V the Untimely realized that the waitresses had finally decided to intervene. He found himself holding the gun and, gasping, saw the shambling figure of his adversary as he fled the restaurant. He rose laboriously to his feet, wondering if the man would remember his face and devote the rest of his life to leaving dead cats outside his front door and systematically raping all his progeny regardless of their gender, and he feared for his mother, languishing in an old people’s home with easy access, oblivious to the enemies her son was making in his life of violence. Then he had the impression of being plunged into a basket of freshly laundered towels: the waitresses had begun covering his face in a flutter of friendly caresses; one of them expressed concern over his split lip in staccato Spanish, possibly the same idiot who had aimed a kick at him in the heat of the moment, because he was nearest to her. Before he had a chance to react, Mingorance V the Untimely found himself seated at a table where, with a rapidity that defied the norm, plates of sweet and sour salad began to arrive, followed by fried rice, chicken with oysters, pork curry, and a thousand other courses, which were served up relentlessly, and which, to the delight of the appreciative employees, he did his best to demolish, grinning at them, with one swollen cheek, where someone had placed a dab of ointment. But the climax of all this madness came from the old patriarch, when Mingorance V the Untimely was wincing as he downed the small glass of liqueur he had been offered. To his astonishment, the old man rose from his cushion, and approached the table with spiderlike movements, stepping out of his purely decorative function. Looking straight at him with a determination that gave Mingorance V the Untimely the feeling of a hook picking the lock of his soul, the old man uttered a few muffled whispers and put a large ebony box down on the table. From it he extracted a katana, the blade of which was inscribed with a few characters. He bowed and placed the sword in the hands of Mingorance V the Untimely, who accepted the gift with a novice samurai’s smile, even as he wondered whether from then on he would open the door of his apartment each morning only to find the old man keeping watch on the landing next to the milk.

  Distracted at the window, Mingorance III the Brave didn’t notice him cross the street on his way back to the apartment, brandishing the katana in the air. He was waiting with a kind of morbid anticipation for the police to arrive, not knowing whether the girl had reported him or not. But mostly he was trying to rid himself of the impression of death, which was clinging to his hands after he had been forced to carry his neighbor’s corpse back to his apartment, where he had installed him on a chair. He could think of no way to atone for the man’s death other than to remove him from the stairway. The gesture had been a rash one, a kind of posthumous affectionate gesture, and now that he was calmer, he had begun to fret over the fingerprints he must carelessly have left all over the apartment. But why was that worrying him now? He struggled to decide whether it had been
a cold-blooded murder or a tragic accident, and wondered whether, if he decided the latter, he shouldn’t remove all signs of his presence there, rather than cleaning up the crime scene. Yes, perhaps he should do his best to make the accident look like an accident. Then he started to sneeze, and was overcome by a general feeling of lethargy, which in turn made him even more indifferent toward the possible outcome of his involuntary crime.

  Sitting on the sofa behind him, Mingorance was channel-hopping to dull his hunger, because, having ruled out the Chinese restaurant, he had decided to skip lunch—after all, who knew what horrors might be lurking in the refrigerator of a bachelor who was in the habit of eating out? However, Mingorance I the Irresolute, compelled by a spirit of self-destruction, which he had been cultivating for years and had finally decided to bring to fruition on that stormy Saturday, was spreading out on the kitchen table the scraps of food from his fridge, all of which were well past their sell-by date and in an advanced stage of putrefaction. After reflecting at length, he reached the conclusion that the life we lead depends entirely on us, that we create or destroy it with the decisions we make, and that if, as had been proven beyond doubt, he was incapable of steering his existence toward happiness, he could at least send it careening into the abyss. He needed to find out whether he could take control of his own life or was merely a puppet, callously manipulated by someone else. More than anything, he needed to see death up close, smell its fetid breath. The only way to give his life meaning, he thought, was to risk losing it: the so-called compensatory power of loss. And so, he began to devour determinedly and even pleasurably his macabre picnic of rancid yogurt, moldy pâté, half-decaying oranges, and rotten sardines, as well as a large number of as-yet-unidentified varieties of mushroom. And if that didn’t send him to his grave, it would at least cause him to view each day as a clean sheet where anything could happen, from losing his heart to a stranger amid cloudbursts and coffee, to being caught in a holdup, the only limitation being his imagination.