Open Door (6 page)

It’s Monday morning and Jaime is feeling much better, although he still has a touch of fever. I prepare a mug of maté and take it to him in bed. It’s best, we agree, that he doesn’t go out until his temperature drops. I suggest calling a doctor, but he’s almost annoyed by that. It’s not serious enough to call a doctor, he says.

‘Don’t you have to go back?’ Jaime asks, beginning to sense that I don’t, and hurriedly adds:

‘You don’t need to worry about me.’

He asks me to go to the hospital to drop off some papers at the office. They’re time-sheets, he explains without my asking and adds: So that I get paid. He gives me the keys of the pick-up and a few instructions about how to get there.

As I’m leaving, he stresses, in case I’m in any doubt:

‘You can take all the time you want.’

I pull up in front of the barrier at the hospital entrance and wait my turn. The guards are registering a car that’s leaving, checking the boot and confirming the identity of the people inside, they’re very strict. It’s like crossing a border in wartime.

One of the guards approaches, walkie-talkie in hand, and asks for my details. I fill out a form while the guy casts his eye over the back of the pick-up. His expression suggests that he has everything under control. He almost smiles at me and raises the barrier.

I’m met by a long drive of about eight hundred metres, shimmering in the sun’s rays, tall trees like sentries on each side, leading to a roundabout with a pergola surrounded by palm trees at its centre. Road signs come into view at the end of the drive, to help visitors familiarise themselves.
Slow, Patients Crossing
, says the first, and further ahead:
Block 8 Sub-Acute Care and Surgery
. And in the middle distance I catch a glimpse of my first loonies, dressed in orange or blue. One passes close by, an enormous yellow rosary hanging round his neck.

I accidentally circle the roundabout twice, then park the truck next to the other cars, between the main building and a pleasant-looking kiosk with a tiled roof.

With Jaime’s papers under my arm, I climb the wide steps that lead up to this kind of castle. Management to the right, administration to the left. I follow the arrow. I knock on the door and wait for a response. A pale-faced girl answers, her black hair in a bowl-cut, her white blouse buttoned to the neck. Catholic or trendy, I can’t tell which. She is wearing a thin gold chain but whatever is hanging from it is hidden beneath the fabric. I give her the papers and she recognises them straight away. She smiles, touching the tip of her nose.

Outside, a day of brilliant sunshine beckons. I smoke a cigarette underneath the pergola. This place is incredible, it makes no sense.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, three guys appear. They come towards me. They walk close together, shoulder-to-shoulder. Denim jackets, black trousers, white trainers and sunglasses: from a distance they look identical, as if in uniform. They’re loonies, I suppose, and yet they don’t look like it, dressed like that, so streetwise. They approach, surrounding me. They don’t seem surprised to see me. They ask me for a cigarette, I don’t have any. So they try for a peso:

‘Can you spare a peso?’ they ask. Another no. They move on. One of them glances back at me and murmurs something that makes the others laugh.

It’s after one o’clock when I get back to the farm. Jaime is in the kitchen making lunch, he looks much better.

‘Good as new,’ he exaggerates and asks happily: ‘How did you get on at the loony bin?’

I tell him a bit about my impression of the place and ask him what’s at the back, on the other side of the roundabout, where the three loonies emerged in their sunglasses, looking like three ordinary guys.

‘Rehabilitation, drug addicts,’ he says, his voice changed, as if he were talking about extra-terrestrials.

The phone rings. Jaime answers, it’s for me.

‘A Yasky,’ he says, ‘from the court.’

And in the five seconds before I take the receiver from him, a thousand suspicions pass through my mind. Most of them horrible.

‘I need you to come to the Judicial Morgue at eight tomorrow,’ Yasky says, without preamble. I don’t know how to answer him, the idea leaves me frozen. He explains that he hasn’t been able to contact Aída’s aunt, who is the only family member they are aware of, so I’m the only suitable person to identify the body.

‘Are you sure it’s her?’ I ask in a whisper.

‘I’ll expect you tomorrow,’ answers Yasky.

I stand with the receiver still in my hand, shaken. I don’t know how Yasky managed to get this number. Jaime complains because he doesn’t like being disturbed by the phone while he’s eating. I wonder where Beba could have got to.

That night, fear overtook me, and with fear came insomnia. I dream wakefully, lots of nightmares all together, each worse than the last. Aída appears in almost all of them. I wet the bed, I can’t help it.

In the morning, Jaime asks me whether I want to bring my things here, to be more comfortable. Don’t I need them? No, I tell him, I’m fine like this. Jaime insists. He says he could bring the pick-up and help me. I don’t have any things, I say and he doesn’t ask again.

The Judicial Morgue is in Calle Viamonte, behind the School of Economic Sciences. I present myself at the entrance. A thin policeman tells me without looking at me that I have to wait. Until someone from the court arrives. I ask him whether he can’t tell someone I’m here anyway. There’s nothing to tell. He also asks me, this time to my face, still not looking me in the eye, but addressing me to my face, to wait in the street so as not to get in the way. I oblige.

Others who, like me, must be here to identify a corpse, file past under my nose: alone, in groups of two or three or four, depending on the circumstances, civilians or police officers, some hurried, some sorrowful, some embarrassed. Silent accomplices to the situation, some ignore me, while others look directly at me, by chance or on purpose, wondering: what is she doing? What’s she waiting for? Who can have died?

An old woman with tinted tortoiseshell glasses, the kind that are coming back into fashion, gets out of a patrol car with the help of a fat man who takes her arm. He is wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. She approaches in slow motion, pausing at a lamp post close to my shoulder to catch her breath. Wait here a moment, I’ll be back in a tick, says the fat man, but the woman pays no attention to him. Very faint, fine lines cover her face, like a teenager who’s been up all night. She exaggerates a noisy sigh, to attract my attention. I look at her. She’s waiting anxiously for me to say something. She speaks first.

‘This is hell. Could someone tell me when this damned summer is going to end? And they say that winter will be even worse. And to top it all …’

The old woman unfolds her arms to her sides, as far as her well-used joints allow, in a gesture of complaint. She takes a deep breath and continues.

‘They tell me I’ve got to be strong because the body has decomposed quite a bit … it was in the flat for almost a week without them realising …’

The old woman leaves a deliberate, dramatic pause. Then she becomes anxious and speaks again, her voice scratchy and rather sinister:

‘Apparently the poor thing suffocated on her own vomit,’ she says and squeezes my wrist as if to say something else, something that she swallows at the last minute, when the fat man appears and takes her arm. The sun is burning my forehead, I feel ridiculous.

Yasky arrived forty-five minutes late. He apologises twice and adds laconically, by way of explanation:

‘Such terrible weather.’

I don’t understand how he can wear a jacket in this heat. A fat file is squeezed under his armpit, a lawsuit. I wonder what the brief could be.

The corridors of the morgue are much less gloomy than I expected. In fact, they’re quite the opposite, a strange hybrid of a hospital and a university on a quiet day. The walls have been painted recently; they shine.

Yasky walks briskly, his fleshy body swaying, and I follow close behind. Now that I can see him properly, Yasky is just an ordinary guy, sometimes refined, sometimes distinctly average, the type who likes collecting things in his spare time, by era: stamps, vinyl records, pornography.

‘We’ve been given an impossible case,’ he reveals, without looking at me. ‘Three bodies, no weapon, no motive. A whole family.’

We stop in front of a door with a bronze plaque with the word
Administration
marked out in relief. Yasky knocks twice, there’s no immediate response. He turns slightly and contrives a kind of quick smile, out of obligation, or nerves. The door opens and the man who answers must be two metres tall, ginger from top to toe, an enormous head, his flat face peppered with a thousand freckles. His arms and cheeks are equally hefty. He must be about fifty and looks to me as though he has Irish roots. He takes no notice of me, but lets Yasky in and shuts the door. Five minutes later, it swings open and Yasky sticks out his head.

‘There are a few formalities to take care of, we’ll just be a moment,’ he says and during this new wait, a question consumes my thoughts to the point of obsession. It’s a question I haven’t asked until now, a stupid question that doesn’t change anything, but I can’t help it. Was Aída looking at me as she fell?

Yasky comes out again, this time followed by the massive redhead who ignores me completely when I try to catch his eye to greet him. He’s a sullen type. His freckles give him a candour that openly contrasts with his character.

This time Yasky and I walk next to each other, the ginger man leading the way, along the same corridor as far as a double door. The redhead lets us into a room with three trolleys welded to the floor and lots of drawers with handles along the far wall. The atmosphere is cool, much more agreeable than outside. On the trolley to the right, the nearest to the door, there is a shape, a body, its extremities protruding slightly, covered by a polythene sheet. The first thing I see is a pair of feet, not yet entirely blue, falling to either side, thoroughly dead. And I find it hard to believe that these are Aída’s feet.

Yasky gestures for me to follow him. We position ourselves on either side of the trolley. The man talks to Yasky, but it’s aimed at me:

‘The body isn’t in very good condition,’ he says, taking his position at the head, like in the films. He moves unhurriedly, he knows the score, he’s an expert in dealing with corpses, you can tell. For a few seconds, Yasky and I just observe the out-stretched plastic. Aída comes to my mind, her long face, the prominent nose, the curly hair, caressing me with moist hands, and then moaning, then smoking.

‘When you’re ready,’ the man says to both of us, as if Yasky were part of the family. Yasky deflects the question to me with his eyes, nodding slightly, and I must make some gesture that the other man takes as agreement because he whips back the sheet in one swipe, without warning, revealing much more of the body than is necessary, as far as the middle of the abdomen: the skin is opaque, the eyelids sealed, the mouth slightly open, expressionless, her parts seem put together by force, as if in a collage, the breasts falling to either side like the feet, the hair like dried seaweed.

I shake my head and avert my gaze, swallowing a lot of saliva.

‘Are you sure?’ asks Yasky, a bit hoarsely.

‘Completely sure,’ I reply and I don’t know why I add: ‘Nothing like her.’

The ginger giant wants to give me another chance and instead of hurrying, he takes his time covering up the unknown woman’s head. I can’t help looking at her again: a corpse, the first I’ve ever seen close up, so horrible and so simple, no mystery. It’s not so bad. How many times have I seen living beings who are much more broken? In my mind’s eye, I can conjure up dead animals of all species. I thought that this would be different, but no, it’s the same. I feel strong, I’ve just faced death in flesh and bone and I’m still standing, whole and unaffected. A morbid fascination grips me, I want to see more, but the body is covered again and Yasky is following the giant to the door. Did I disappoint them?

The same scene is repeated: Yasky and the other guy disappear into the office again, I remain outside. Perhaps Aída is locked in one of the drawers, unable to say: Here I am. Five, ten minutes go by, I get bored. I wander off, away from the exit, to see what I find. There’s not a soul to be seen. On both sides of the corridor there are further doors, all closed and nameless. What do morgue employees do? Talk on the phone, do the filing, organise meetings, make plans for the weekend, like normal public servants. At a corner, where the corridor turns and narrows, there’s a coffee machine. I slot in two coins and press a button: espresso, medium-sweet. The machine launches into action. Across the screen runs the word:
Preparing
. I wait with folded arms. Behind me a door opens and closes. I turn round and a boy with a knot of snakes tattooed on his forearms comes and stands next to me. Hi, he says and I notice how the open jaws of the snakes bite at his wrists. I return his greeting and it strikes me that the morgue is like a small village where everyone knows each other and an outsider like me has to pretend to belong to the tribe. The only thing I can think of to say is that it’s very hot today. Yes, he responds enthusiastically and adds: And the air conditioning isn’t working. The machine announces that my coffee is ready.
Preparation complete
, it says. I grab my cup and I don’t know whether to wait for him to get his. Coffee makes me feel the heat less, he says and explains: It must be because the body heats up as well and the temperatures match. I don’t know what to say.

Yasky appears at the other end of the corridor and beckons me. I raise my hand to say goodbye to the boy, he smiles at me, and only now do I see a piercing at the tip of his tongue.

Yasky has gone on ahead, he’s waiting for me on the pavement, blocking the sun with one of his files. He’s perspiring all over.

‘I’m very sorry,’ he says, ‘these things happen sometimes. That’s why this place exists.’

Everything seems to indicate that we’re about to say goodbye. Before we do, I decide to ask:

‘I’m curious about something. That woman, where did you find her?’

‘At the bottom of the river, at the foot of the bridge.’

Yasky hails a taxi.

‘I’ll keep you informed, as soon as there’s any more news.’

I still have a lot of questions, but I’ll keep them for another time. It’s so hot I could die.