The Heart and Other Viscera Page 8

  Little Furry Animals

  Although she began work at nine in the store beneath her apartment, Laura usually got up at seven, when the day was still untouched. Throwing herself out of bed with a supreme effort of will, wrapped entrancingly in a pink negligee that only served to enhance her generous curves, she would head slightly unsteadily for the bathroom, emerging a short while later in a green tracksuit and with her hair in a tight ponytail that made her head look as aerodynamic as a shark. Then she would go downstairs to run around the block a couple of times, jogging in a flexible, elegant way that delighted the handful of early risers starting their day at first light.

  From the paper man in his kiosk to the baker, not to mention the gaggle of pensioners perched on the avenue’s benches for that very reason. No one could take their eyes off Laura’s harmonious movements, the divine oscillation of breasts and buttocks that were a true sight for sore eyes, a sure sign that God cared for those modest, hardworking devils. With the wild lack of self-awareness typically displayed by splendid women who don’t get caught up in their own reflections, Laura aroused the neighborhood’s male population by showing them that goddesses also perspire.

  Afterward, she would return to her apartment and go back into the bathroom, leaving a trail of sweaty clothes across the floor, like a mollusk abandoning its shell. Turning on the shower, she plunged under the jet of water, letting the icy stream cascade down her precious pink body as she leaned against the tiles, short of breath but pleased—not because she had once more prevented the undesirable accumulation of cellulite, but for the feeling that came after a run that made her feel more alive, uplifted, and tuned in to the world. Then she would soap herself slowly but carefully, voluptuously lingering with the sponge on an intimate area that I suspected every man in the vicinity would die to lather for her.

  Eventually, she would reemerge wrapped in a towel, her damp hair hanging loose to her shoulders, and stand in front of her closet to choose the clothes destined that day to lie concealed beneath her store assistant’s coat. This never took her long. She would lay the chosen garment on her bed and then, with a knowing, mysterious expression on her face, plunge into the realm of disturbing softness that was her underwear drawer in search of a suitable combination, a thong or more baroque garment that she donned unceremoniously, with those routine gestures women employ when no man is looking—as if my telescope didn’t count.

  I had been observing her for months from the building opposite, immortalizing on my retinas every instant of her life, from her most private moments to those in the public domain—like the eight busy hours she spends behind the counter at Maika’s pet store, where my indomitable gaze could also reach, if I bent over far enough. Risking a slipped disc, or inventing ways of setting up various mirrors, I registered her daily routine, the wasting away of an existence that seemed to have been created for something more constructive than endless days spent selling feed for hamsters or goldfish.

  Her daily habits were so well established that, after having a glass of milk—semiskimmed and calcium-enriched, according to the zoom on my telescope—Laura always unbolted the front door of the store at precisely one minute to nine. This was the signal for the morning air to tremble with an animal Babel and an acrid smell of cages and creatures in heat, against which the smell wafting from the next-door bakery could do nothing. It stirred my emotions to see the excitement that gripped the animals as she went through the store switching on lights, calling to them and running her manicured fingernails against the bars of the cages in a languid greeting as she made her way to the stand from which hung the white coat that would restrain her shapely form for the rest of the day. This was the moment for me to abandon my position at the window and start my own life, one that even though it had been devoted for a long while to spying on hers, still involved a few more prosaic tasks I was obliged to carry out, such as translating Dickens and feeding my own animals in the poor excuse for a zoo that had been growing dangerously in my apartment since I began dedicating myself to pursuing her.

  At this point, I should admit, even if a quick glance round my apartment would seem to contradict the claim, that I have never liked animals. Now, as a result of my inability to woo someone, they filled every corner; were crammed into cages or fish tanks; scampered about or lay listlessly in heaps; wrapped themselves around me; choked me, singly or in flocks; as if they were the stock of a muddle-headed Noah on a dry plateau. Birds, tortoises, dogs, snakes, cats, and other domesticated species lorded over my apartment, lulled by the gurgling of the aquarium giving off the same sharp smell and mosaic of shapes that enveloped Laura, and contemplating in astonishment how each day, after swooshing myself with Brummel cologne and reciting audacious, imaginative declarations of love in front of the mirror, I inevitably returned from the street with a new companion to add to the pile. Of course, this collection of failures demanded almost complete dedication on my part: there was always a cage to be cleaned, an animal to take to the vet, another one to take out to poop in the middle of the sidewalk. As a result, I had long since reduced my tasks for the publishing house to those I could do from home, so that now I earned barely enough for their upkeep by translating the English classics.

  Every morning before sitting at my desk, I undertook the laborious ritual of the daily feed: I would fill the trays of Well, they say it’s going to rain this afternoon, a diamond turtledove that stared at me fascinated from its orange-ringed eyes; of How nice your hair smells, a cockatoo that staggered constantly up and down its cage like a drunkard; of She’ll never notice a guy like me, a Gloster Fancy canary that nodded thoughtfully, its crest flattened like a latter-day Beatles fan; plumped up the straw for Do you like French cinema?, a chinchilla that let the days go by rolled up in a dark gray pompom, sleeping so solemnly and determinedly it seemed to be caught up in a labor of cosmic dimensions, possibly that of dreaming the world containing us all; and filled the bowl of Oh, to hold you in my arms . . . , a squirrel that, to judge by the impetuous way it looped the loop within the narrow dimensions of its cage, seemed to suggest I was feeding it cocaine. I gave a daily dose of worms to Today I dreamed of you again, a statuesque basilisk lizard constantly stuck to the glass of its tank with the slenderest of fingers like struts on an umbrella; and sprinkled plankton on the aquarium, where, performing like a troupe of seasoned folklore dancers, Tomorrow, tomorrow, a hyperactive wasp fish, and Keep the change, a guppy that draped its tail’s embossed mantilla across the aquatic stage, lived. And finally, though only when necessary, I became the implacable demigod of my miniature universe: I would pick up the hamster that had been fattening all week long and lay it as an offering in the terrarium of I’ll take it because I need someone to give me a hug at night. Aha, that’s a joke, a python, that soon began to slither toward it and perform its cruel morning rite—the grim warning that reminded all the other animals that there was a harsher world outside, a ruthless, dangerous one they would do better to remain ignorant of.

  My rounds complete, I would collapse into my desk chair, but scarcely had time to get my breath back before I felt the avid licking on the palms of my hands of my seven dogs, clustering around me in the hope of that day being the one I would choose to take for a walk. Exhausted, unable to move, I contemplated the increasingly elaborate wriggling of It’s true, it didn’t rain in the end, a dachshund that squirmed around the floor like a rolling pin, trying to ingratiate himself, the rascal, to get a walk out of me rather than a smile. I glanced at all the other animals looking back at me sympathetically, as if this life outside a cage seemed even more sad and inconsequential than their own.

  Their ridiculous nicknames were the encrypted history of our nascent romance, our incomprehensible, tortuous love story. They were both my memory and my frustration. Each of them represented a failed declaration, an attempt at imposing myself that came to nothing, a humorless joke. Inopportune phrases, thoughts formed in the dark silence of my shyness, snatches of conversation that my lack of courag
e and my ineptness at courtship prevented from securing a date.

  I looked again at the dogs, resigned to responding to those ludicrous names that sounded to them like suspicious passwords when I muttered them in the middle of the night. They patiently awaited my verdict. I chose the dachshund. The others accepted my decision in a dignified manner, although one or more of them could not contain a sorrowful moan. Only Are you really happy?, the Doberman, stayed aloof in a corner, as though deaf to the complaints of the common crowd, sure in the knowledge that he would be chosen for the evening stroll. His martial, sadistic air would be what his timorous master wanted at the end of the leash. Patrolling the darkness with that hunk of a dog protected me from the taunts of the young skinheads sprawling all over the benches on the avenue, keen to demonstrate how effective their switchblades were.

  With the dachshund, of course, things were different. His ridiculous gait meant I only ever took him out by day, when the only others out walking their dogs were the little old ladies with their groomed poodles, from whom the charming waddle of It’s true, in the end it didn’t rain elicited tender, motherly smiles, and occasionally a question as to his sex, sniffing the prospect of obtaining a cross with their own pet, a cuddly circus aberration they could display on their laps and astound any visitors with. I usually deposited the dachshund on the sidewalk just long enough for him to lessen his longing for wide-open spaces, but that morning, feeling a nostalgic twinge, I decided to offer us a few more minutes prowling round Laura’s shop. Hiding discreetly behind a lamppost, I watched her hard at work beyond a window full of tortoises and parrots, in the midst of whom there was usually some exotic animal that the passersby gawped at with a mixture of bewilderment and surprise, as if it were some alien creature acting as a scout for some high command winging its way through space toward us. I sometimes thought Maika brought these oddities exclusively for me, just so that every day I would discover a fresh reason to go into her shop and continue my protracted courtship, which always ended up benefiting her when I purchased her latest extravagance, be it a toucan or a tarantula.

  At that moment, I always felt a stab of injustice: yet again, it seemed to me Laura had wasted her life, that she could have a glorious or at least more worthy fate, a reasonable destiny that perhaps we could go in search of together. But I soon stumbled across the image reflected in her window of a funny-looking guy with a sausage dog and asked myself what providence could have planned for such a loser as him, what he was expected to do or bring to the world’s frenzied activity. And I ended up asking myself for the umpteenth time—fleeing from the particular to the general, which was much less painful—whether we really were guaranteed at birth an interesting and convincing destiny, or if we all came into the world without any concrete mission imprinted on our chromosomes, simply to make up the numbers, to get in each other’s way, with the result that it was those few who did manage to do something with their lives for the common good that were the anomalies, the castoffs of a God who loathed any kind of coherence.

  Whenever I reflected on people’s destiny, I ended up recalling Hurtado, the publishing house’s martyr. Hurtado was one of the firm’s most brilliant translators, a big, jolly fellow whose head was bald apart from a few tufts, and who had the moustache of a Mexican dictator. Everyone predicted a brilliant future for him, a life that would benefit many others, for which reason his mother, whom I imagined as larger-than-life and fun-loving as him, had torn him from her womb with a proud gesture of maternal pride, mixing groans with curses. This was why we were so taken aback when Hurtado demonstrated so personally and graphically that his destiny was none other than to choke to death during the firm’s New Year’s Eve dinner. The translator initiated this macabre revelation over the hors d’oeuvres when he cleared his throat several times in a way that led his neighbor at table to give him a few half-hearted taps on the back, almost absentmindedly. But Hurtado, not content with this meager show of politeness, continued with a crescendo of increasingly noisy, desperate coughs, accompanying them by flinging his arms about and knocking over a couple of glasses. This caught the attention of the other dinner guests, who broke off their conversations and glanced at him curiously, as if trying to work out what kind of party trick the translator was performing, and if it was really worth sacrificing the glassware for. A few made to stand up when Hurtado began to go red in the face and to throw what looked like an astonishingly real fit, but the laughter that others egged him on with left them in two minds. All of a sudden, after a tremendous whistling sound, the translator collapsed across the table, facedown in the punch bowl, like an animal arriving at a water trough. A sepulchral silence crystallized in the room. We all turned our eyes toward Don Vigueira, the publisher. Urged on by our stares, he rose from the head of the table and approached his collapsed minion with great caution, as if afraid that Hurtado was planning suddenly to spring upright and top off his silly joke by putting the wind up his boss. It was only when Don Vigueira’s fingers found no pulse on Hurtado’s carotid that he seemed to relax. Hurtado had fallen off his perch, just like that, in mid-dinner, despite all the many appointments in his diary. Later we were told that all that effort had burst a blood vessel, flooding his lungs with blood. The translator’s sudden death meant that the dinner was suspended, and most of the guests left somewhat shaken to welcome in the New Year somewhere less doom-laden. Only the executives and a few curious bystanders with nothing better to do stayed on to await the ambulance. As it made its way through the traffic, I was observing Hurtado, who had been laid out on the sofa with a handkerchief covering his face, either to preserve him from our rude scrutiny or to protect us from the ghastly grimace that distorted his features. This absurd end to his days led me to wonder about our role in the universe’s complex intrigues. How could it permit a man to construct his life, to plan his existence so carefully and hopefully, without warning him of such an unexpected, grotesque end? Was that why Hurtado had come into this world—to choke to death at a party, giving the other guests such a spectacular demonstration of the precariousness of existence? There, face-to-face with the translator’s corpse, I began to imagine a more just world, where the newborn, after receiving the doctor’s slap, would be handed over to a fortune-teller to accurately predict their future so that those whom the whims of fickle fate did not allow to attain a fulfilled existence could decide how best to administer the fleeting time they had on this Earth. It was obvious that if the fortunate ones that ended their fertile days dying in bed were carried off by a majestic, hooded reaper with a scythe, Hurtado had been summoned by death dressed as a buffoon, a hunchback with bells on his cap. After that, the idea that everyone came into the world with a joyful destiny under his arm seemed to me a romantic illusion.

  Seen from this point of view, anything might happen to Laura and me, but I trusted that in spite of everything our destinies, whatever they might be, would merge at some point along the way. I was so convinced of this that, even though the wait was seriously undermining my current account and I could sense that sooner or later there was bound to be an animal I was allergic to, I cheerfully accepted it, telling myself whenever I became impatient that it was the years of aging that guaranteed the quality of the wine. Therefore, our slow-motion falling in love comforted rather than frustrated me. Neither Laura nor I needed any third person to come along and speed things up.

  Segismundo could just as well have stayed home. But he had to appear, with his mop of hair and his beard, his threadbare jeans and his T-shirts with their ecological slogans, to parade through the neighborhood with his commitment to grunge and hand out his awareness-raising leaflets to all and sundry. Until finally, when perhaps he caught sight of the beauty that looked after the repugnant pet store, he burst into the shop as if in a trance, disembarking in Laura’s life knowing he was expected, like some biodegradable Prince Charming determined to make her hair stand on end with his dramatic tales of animals on the verge of extinction.

  I never found out where h
e built his lair, but I began to see him increasingly often in the pet shop, leaning on the counter like a barfly, telling the customers—but especially Laura—about his environmental battles. Not even if I had overcome my shyness or trained my tongue in the art of oratory would I have been able to rival the seductive images Segismundo conjured up before the eyes of the assistant and anyone else that cared to listen. He looked so scrawny and insignificant, but then went on to describe the time when he was part of the crew of the Rainbow Warrior, the Greenpeace boat that used to sail between the whaling ships and their prey; how he had spent days clinging to the anchors of countless boats carrying nuclear waste, slowing down with his stubbornness the world leaders’ underhanded games. Of course, it went without saying that he had also been in Kenya protecting elephants from ivory poachers; had fought in the Amazon on the side of the trees; had seen, like someone watching television, how a lioness gave birth to her cub on the grasslands of the savannah; and had freed a grizzly from a trap, so that now he had a blood brother three meters tall and four hundred kilos in weight that fished salmon with a swipe of his paw in some corner of Alaska; and with his heart in his mouth he had witnessed the amazing sight of hundreds of young penguins leaping off the edge of an iceberg into the icy waters in search of a mouthful of food or death from starvation. In other words, he had seen everything the animal world had to offer and everything the world of man did not. As described in Segismundo’s alcohol-sodden voice, the planet was a bigger place, a vast expanse, a constant surprise package where marvels and tragedies coexisted in an inharmonious harmony, the joke of a God that a handful of crusaders like him were at pains to defend.