A Crack in the Wall (15 page)

The taxi stops on Riobamba and Arenales, as instructed by Pablo; he pays and they get out. Leonor tries out different corners to find the best angle from which to photograph the balconies: black ironwork railings covered in flowers that are open like perfect Spanish fans or like Manila shawls. Out of curiosity, while she's taking the photographs, he walks around the corner looking for the granite block where the architect's signature should be engraved. He wonders if anyone, if any of the few pedestrians walking past them on
this Saturday evening cares who made this building, who thought of it, imagined it, who drew it on paper like Pablo Simó draws his eleven-storey north-facing tower; who, in contrast to him, put it up. First he finds the name of the building: Camerou, and then on another stone block, the name of the architect: P. Pater. The same one who designed the Tigre Hotel, he thinks, and instinctively he looks for Leonor, to share his discovery, then thinks better of it: she said that she didn't want that sort of detail now; “another day” she said, and he wants her to admire him, to see how much he knows, to see that he can teach her all kinds of things – but he also wants that other day to exist.

From there they carry on up Paraguay to 1,300 and to the building that Pablo chose specially for Leonor, standing as it does for Liberty and for femininity. It surprises him, annoys him in fact, to see that a dry-cleaner has taken over the ground floor. He can't remember what used to be in that space, if he ever knew, and, even though it's closed for the day, there is someone working inside and Pablo Simó feels that the smell of warm fabric and dry-cleaning chemicals don't go with this building. Until recently, the majority of buildings in Buenos Aires were designed to accommodate commercial premises on the ground floor, so the look of the building at street level was determined by luck, misfortune or the highest bidder. Often an art deco building, or one that's rationalist, art nouveau or some other style, ends up in the care of greengrocers, electricians, hairdressers, bars and betting shops; the
coups de grâce
are the boxes of merchandise going in and rubbish bags coming out, the parade of customers, the curtains that open or close depending on the time of day. Pablo definitely doesn't like the presence of a dry-cleaners here; the steam emitted by the machines every so often makes the building feel clammy and heavy,
oppressive in a way that doesn't chime with that clear, almost white façade on which a sequence of tiles evokes a striking but peaceful image of the country.

“I'd rather any kind of business on the ground floor than the utter lack of respect for pedestrians with which buildings are put up in this city today, Pablo.” It's Tano Barletta again. “Nobody cares any more about pedestrian identity. Walk past these great towers set back from the road and you could be in any part of the world. São Paulo, Miami, Madrid – it's all the same.”

Although Pablo Simó definitely doesn't like the dry-cleaners stuck in there, he also does not want, in the middle of his walk with Leonor, to get into an argument with Tano Barletta, especially not about architecture. He wants to be alone with her, strolling through the city, seeking out interesting places, holding her rucksack while she takes photos, touching her – accidentally? – as they walk, looking at her. Tano Barletta, right now, is out of place. Could he have a conversation with Leonor about the city's lack of respect for pedestrians? He doesn't think so, but it doesn't matter. He hasn't talked much to Laura either about architectural matters during all their years of marriage, or if he has it was only under the heading of “work”, as another man might talk to his wife about his day at the office, in a bank or in an operating theatre. He has talked about architecture with Marta:

“Have you noticed that new buildings in Buenos Aires today are made to be looked at from a passing car?” he said to Marta one day when they were in a taxi negotiating the slopes of Belgrano, on their way to the showroom that had just opened in one of the most recent projects by Borla and Associates.

“So?” she asked.

“It's a shame. Buenos Aires used not to be like that. Buenos Aires was a place for walking.”

“It is a place for walking if you don't have a car. You don't have a car, right?”

But this isn't the day to be thinking of Marta, either.

“Do you like it?” Pablo asks Leonor quickly, to get Barletta, Laura and Marta Horvat out of his head.

Leonor doesn't seem to hear him. She's moving her lens over the façade covered with tiles brought specially from Milan and the high, narrow balconies with their ornate white railings, looking for her next shot.

“Do you like it?” he asks her again.

“It's a bit naive, isn't it?” she says and surprises him, not only with the observation, but by suddenly turning the camera on him.

“Why me?” says Pablo, covering his face.

She laughs, takes another picture of him and says:

“Because.”

Leonor moves in front of Pablo, experimenting with different angles while he plays at hiding, at putting on silly faces, sticking out his tongue, and finally he grabs the camera and takes a picture of her, and then another, and another until Leonor is posing for him as naturally as Pablo sketches a building.

“You seriously think it's naive?” says Pablo, and when he gives back the camera he lets his hand cover Leonor's for a moment, without caring whether the girl realizes it's not accidental.

“Yes, I seriously do. I don't know – isn't it a bit silly? If I had to choose between this guy with a bull or the other one with lilies in his hair, I think I'd choose the other one.”

“But they're not men,” he says. “They're sculptures and mosaics.”

“The thing is that I don't know anything about sculptures and mosaics,” she says, looking at him intently.

Stupid, stupid man, Pablo tells himself, before Barletta says it for him, and while the girl takes her last photographs he turns his attention to the picture formed by the tiles: a peasant woman and a man herding an animal, one on each side of the balcony. A few of the original tiles are missing and he wonders how they came to be replaced by plain ones that wilfully disrupt the composition. Leonor seems not to have noticed this. He knows that Tano Barletta would also have detected these hiccups in the imagery and that it would bother him equally – but Tano Barletta is barred for what little remains of this city walk. It would have been better not to fill the gaps revealed by the missing tiles, he thinks, to show that there was a loss it wasn't possible to make good, rather than deceive the onlooker by covering them with any old thing.

“That's it,” says Leonor. She puts the camera away with a decisiveness that makes it clear there will be no more photographs that day; then, without prevarication, with a spontaneity he has come to expect of her, she adds:

“Do you want to come back to my place for a bit?”

Pablo freezes for a moment, wondering if he heard correctly but, looking at her, he sees that she is waiting for an answer. Yes, he heard right.

“The two of us?” he asks her, immediately berating himself for saying something so stupid, a man of his age to a girl seventeen years his junior.

“If you want to, yes: I'm inviting you,” Leonor says.

And he wants to, of course he wants to, it's what he wants more than anything.

Following custom – whose custom? – Leonor gets into the taxi first and for that reason, when she directs the driver to Giribone and Virrey Loreto, Pablo Simó, who's settling into his seat and about to close the door, hears only “Loreto”. That name, being all he hears, isn't enough for him to make an association between the place where they're going and the studio where he works. The sun has set now, but the streetlights are not yet on, and that penumbra between the dying afternoon and the coming night makes him feel strangely giddy. He's sitting very close to her, too close – he hears her breathing, hears her laughter and watches her unpainted lips; and beneath the lips the teeth, white, young. And still looking at them, Pablo remembers that she has invited him to her house without specifying what the invitation is for. She didn't say it was “to have a coffee”, “to eat something”, not even “for a chat” or to “watch a film”, and that lack of certainty gives him vertigo. He remembers her words clearly, because she said them only a few minutes ago: “Do you want to come back to my place for a bit?” Just like that.

Pablo glances out of the window then back at her; she has closed her eyes now, as if wanting to rest after a long day. He looks out of the window again; he can't really
believe that he's going with this girl to her house, can't imagine what will happen once they get there, and as if in need of confirmation that he deserves none of this, he mentally replays the fatal moment in which he asked “the two of us?” – and that makes him feel insecure and foolish.

As they get closer, Pablo picks out certain streets, recognizes places, reads illuminated signs he has read before. However, none of this is sufficiently familiar to ring alarm bells, because for years he has been going to work underground, crossing the city beneath its surface, changing twice in a journey that is shaped like a narrow horseshoe and re-emerging only when he reaches the corner nearest to his studio. Nobody understands why he chooses this route, which is longer than the journey he would make by bus, but Pablo Simó likes it. So what he sees now, although it prompts in him that feeling you get when you meet a person you know from somewhere but can't recall where, doesn't actually surprise him, and Pablo still makes no connection between the view through the window and their destination.

He steals another glance at her. First the face, and as she is still asleep, or at least has her eyes closed, he dares to let his gaze drift downward, past Leonor's neck, her breasts, her waist, her stomach. Her thighs are squeezed into tight jeans and he knows now with a certainty that he would like to undress them, touch them, move his hand up between her legs and leave it right there, touching her for as long as she will let him while he feels the thrum of his own stubborn blood surging up through his legs.

Only as they pass the bar where he and she met for the first time outside the studio does Pablo fully become aware of his surroundings. Even then, despite a slight consternation,
he reminds himself that that day, in the bar where he never usually goes, she had said:

“I live near here. I've moved into the area.”

The relief doesn't last long. As the taxi drives right past the Borla and Associates studio it slows down and Leonor, as though responding to an interior alarm bell, opens her eyes, looks outside and says:

“Just a few yards further on.”

“This all right for you?” asks the taxi driver, coming to a stop in front of the building where Nelson Jara used to live.

“Yes, perfect,” she says.

Then the girl waits for Pablo to take out money to pay for the trip, but he doesn't – he's distracted, his mind somewhere else, struggling to fathom whether what has happened is the product of chance or fate. The taxi driver repeats the fare and Leonor, not waiting any longer, opens her rucksack and takes out a few notes, but Pablo reacts just in time:

“No, please, let me,” he says, and pays.

They enter the building and walk through the hall towards the lift. She catches sight of herself in the mirror, makes some comment about her hair and laughs; Pablo tells himself that they aren't going to 5C, that they can't be going to 5C, the flat where Nelson Jara lived, the one that he, Pablo Simó, still reproaches himself for never having entered in order to see the crack that man told him so much about – and he tries to focus all his attention on Leonor, on some part of Leonor's body, her perfume or her smell, on what it will be like to touch her, kiss her, caress her, and he promises himself that Jara will not ruin this moment. But when they are inside the lift she pushes the button for the fifth floor, and even though the action causes her to rub against him, exciting him, Pablo feels that once again, he is fighting body-to-body with Jara. The
floors stack up underneath them, one by one, until the lift stops at the fifth floor. Pablo opens the door, Leonor steps out; the corridor is dark and the girl fumbles for the light, bumping into Pablo and laughing. He laughs too, not out of amusement but because he is so nervous. The light goes on, she looks at him with a certain provocation (does she look at him with a certain provocation?), she walks ahead of him and, even though Pablo is silently praying that she won't do this, that she won't stop in front of door C and put the key she's playing with at the moment into the lock, Leonor stops there anyway, in front of this door, her back to him while he follows in a daze. He waits behind her while the girl gropes for the lock, puts her key into it, and some difficulty in turning it makes her lean back, scarcely bending from the waist, but it's enough to bring her body even closer to his and she rubs against him again. Then Leonor opens the door and motions him inside. Pablo nods, but gestures for her to go in first, then he follows her inside.

They go in together, very close to one another. She puts on the light and he immediately looks for the crack in the wall. He can't see it – has it been covered perhaps? If so, when? And by whom? He doesn't know. Leonor smiles at him; she puts down the rucksack and he suddenly realizes that the crack may be hidden behind an Indian cloth that is attached to the side wall, like a hanging or a false curtain. Leonor takes off her jacket and he discovers all over again her neck, the hands arranging her hair, her firm breasts which are coming towards him, which are definitely coming his way, which stop in front of him and wait. And Pablo's breathing becomes agitated, his thighs harden and his hands prick; he thinks he has to do something, knows he must do something, and just as he is about to decide what exactly
he will do, Leonor kisses him. Simple as that, without asking permission: standing in front of him, looking into his eyes, she lifts her arms to encircle his neck, barely opens her mouth while looking at his, pauses for a second then kisses him. And he lets himself be kissed and kisses her, and holds her, pressing this woman's body against his, running his hands up and down Leonor's back as though looking for something, feeling her breasts against his chest and her pelvis against his pelvis and his thighs between her thighs. He kisses her, his tongue running over her lips and probing her mouth, going in and out – God forbid he should be clumsy – until Leonor finally pulls away from him and, without taking her eyes off his, lies down on the floor and beckons to him, pulling him down to lie on top of her. And when Pablo lies on her and moves his face close to hers to kiss her again, the girl puts her mouth to his ear and says: