Elena Knows Page 6

  Elena would’ve liked to be a grandmother. If she had a grandson, she wouldn’t be walking alone down this platform smelling of old fryer grease, making a trip she hoped would lead her to a body that could help her. Because if she had a grandson she’d be talking to him about Rita, explaining what she was like at his age, what she was like before. And he would ask questions, and she’d make up stories, she’d embellish her memories, invent the child that Rita never was, all for him, for that little boy, the boy who would give her a name, Grandma, even though Rita was dead, and then the smell of grease would vanish. But it doesn’t vanish, it fills her nose and envelops her bent body, it sticks to her clothes, it saturates her, as she shuffles along. The loudspeakers announce a delay, the people around her complain loudly, they whistle, and Elena is there, in the midst of the whistling, with no grandson and no daughter. She still hasn’t decided whether she’ll take the subway or a taxi when she gets out of the station. Because it’s eleven o’clock and it won’t be time for another pill until after noon, a little while after she’s eaten something to make sure the medication will be assimilated as it should be, nothing with too much protein. Dr Benegas told her not to eat protein at lunch, something like the cheese sandwich she carries in her handbag. She gets in one of the lines and lets herself be pulled along by the crowd. She imagines this must be what it’s like at the football stadiums when there’s a big game. She’s never been to a stadium. Rita neither. Maybe, if she’d had a grandson, she would have taken him. She moves as fast as she can. The man taking the tickets urges the crowd along and the people pushing against each other without anyone thinking it’s odd that they’re being prodded by people they don’t know beyond the fact they’re sharing the same narrow route. It’s Elena’s turn, standing next to the man taking tickets she puts her hand in her pocket and rummages wildly with her fingers; she feels along the seam but she comes up empty-handed. The line doesn’t back up because there’s no one left behind her, but another train is pulling into the station and soon the gates will once again fill with hurrying travellers, anxious to push her or anyone else out of their way just to get wherever it is they’re going more quickly. It’s fine, go ahead, says the ticket-taker before she can find her ticket and he waves her through but she keeps looking. Go ahead ma’am, go ahead, he insists. Elena looks at him without lifting her head, straining her eyeballs up to look at him from beneath her forehead, from between her brows. Her eyelids and her cheeks hurt, but she keeps looking at him as she takes her hand from her pocket and holds out the ticket so that he can see it.

  2

  Inspector Avellaneda is another person who never wanted to see, Elena thinks. You need to get your eyes checked, Inspector. Benito Avellaneda accepted the criticism with the same resignation he’d accepted the task assigned to him under precise orders: meet with the mother of the deceased, but make it clear that as far as the police and the courts are concerned the case is closed, it was suicide. If necessary, offer to arrange psychological assistance for her, Avellaneda, the inspector had told him, but Avellaneda never had the nerve, for him, a mother, his own or anyone else’s, was sacred, and he couldn’t just brush her off. Avellaneda wasn’t, and never had been an inspector, he was just an officer and the task of dealing with Elena was a punishment, a kind of unofficial probation after being caught in the vault of the Provincia Bank, where he’d been assigned to guard cash transfers, with his pants around his ankles and his penis in his hands, aimed at a female bank teller who was waiting half-naked against a wall of security deposit boxes. For fuck’s sake, Avellaneda, next time be more discreet, said his superior, and he put him on office duty. Verifying changes of address, taking down noise complaints, filing car thefts, sending complaints to the corresponding authorities, minor violations, background checks, and not much more until Elena’s case came up, or rather Rita’s, or both. Tell her you’re an inspector, officer, you have my permission, the chief told him. That way the lady will think her case matters to us. I feel sorry for the old bird, Avellaneda, you will too, but the case is closed, even if she wants to keep dredging it up and she won’t let it go. We’re doing enough already, don’t you think? We’re not obliged to assign an officer to listen to her; we’re doing it strictly out of humanitarianism.

  Her meetings with Avellaneda on Mondays, Wednes-

  days, and Fridays quickly became the thing Elena looked forward to most. At ten o’clock sharp she’d walk into the station and wait for him to arrive. You’re too relaxed for a police officer, Inspector, you’re going to be late to the crime scene. That must be why they don’t promote me, ma’am, he said turning red as he remembered the vault at the Provincia Bank where his career had ended, and not because of a lack of punctuality. Avellaneda must have either gained weight or his jacket had shrunk, because he couldn’t button the blue blazer he wore with the Buenos Aires Provincial Police shield on it. The collars of all his shirts were frayed. If Elena had seen them she would’ve offered to turn them over for him like she’d done with her husband’s shirt collars, but her range of vision, sitting across the desk from him, didn’t extend above his second unbuttoned button. At first Avellaneda felt uncomfortable with the woman staring at his belly, until he realised it wasn’t personal, that even if she’d wanted to, Elena couldn’t see any higher than that, so as the meetings continued, he learned to suck in his stomach, to hold his breath, or to sink down in his chair so that their faces were at the same level and he could see her face, sitting that way for so long that his back ached.

  The first few times they met, Elena had demanded explanations, whether there were any leads in the investigation, expecting answers to questions no one had asked. She didn’t go there to kill herself, Inspector, the rope was already there in the belfry, the chair she was standing on was there, she didn’t plan that, someone did it for her. And Avellaneda just nodded like someone talking to an elderly aunt they visit from time to time, following the conversation without really listening, just there to spend a little time with her. At first they argued. The thing is that as far as the police and the courts are concerned there’s no doubt that it was a suicide, ma’am. But it was raining, Inspector, she responded, and Avellaneda had nothing to say about the fact that it was raining because for him and his people that was of zero importance. Soon Avellaneda learned to respond, Yes, ma’am, it was raining, not denying the rain, but also doing none of the things Elena had hoped he would. In order to pass the time during those interviews he read her pages from the report, sometimes accidentally rereading pages they’d already argued over weeks before. Elena quickly realised that there couldn’t have been any leads because there was never even any investigation. So she started bringing in her own clues. Rita’s diary, which no one had asked to see, her address book, a list of all the people who knew her daughter, written out in her handwriting, distorted by the illness. If there’s anything you can’t read, let me know, Inspector. Don’t worry, ma’am, I can read it, the officer replied as he held the piece of paper Elena had given him and wondered how long it had taken the woman to get all those twisted blue letters onto that sheet of lined notebook paper. A list of the last places her daughter had been on the days leading up to her death. To Roberto Almada’s house, the Catholic school, the supermarket, Roberto’s mother’s hair salon, the offices of the health insurance company where she’d gone, once again, to demand a reimbursement for a renal exam Elena had done two months prior and which they still hadn’t authorised. Let’s see if we can get you to stop smelling like piss, Mum. To Dr Benegas’s office, Avellaneda added. When was my daughter at Dr Benegas’s office? Two days before her death, didn’t you know? No, she didn’t tell me about that. She might not have told you but she was there, Elena. But she wasn’t sick. She didn’t go for herself, she went for you. I didn’t even have an appointment with Benegas. She went to talk about you, Elena. Inspector, you don’t suspect Dr Benegas, do you? No, of course not, I’m just saying that if you want to make a list of all the places your daughter
went before her death you have to add that she went to see Dr Benegas, if you want it to be complete. Of course I do, Inspector. Maybe she said something to him, to the doctor. You do suspect Dr Benegas, don’t you Inspector, don’t lie to me. No, Elena, I’m just saying that your daughter was also there, if you want I can add it, if not I’ll leave it out. You can add it, Inspector, you’re the one who has to investigate, that’s your duty, I’m just a mother. Whatever you think is best, Elena, the officer answered, but he didn’t seem to have any desire to add anything to the list. So Elena took the page from his hand, she leaned across the desk to pick a pen from the pencil holder, and she added Dr Benegas’s office to the bottom of her scribbled list. Then she gave the list back to the officer. Here, Inspector, she said, do your job, and do it properly.

  3

  Elena decides she’ll take a taxi; she crosses the busy station blindly dodging obstacles. Like a swimmer who can only see the bottom of the pool, she tries to stay in the lane she’s staked out for herself. But the others don’t see her lane and they cross into it, coming and going from all directions. The more observant ones stay out of her way, the unobservant bump into her. She continues on, as if no one else existed, just like she feels no one else knows she exists. But they do exist, they pass in front of her, they move away, so many pairs of feet. And Elena keeping to the lane that only she can see. Someone crashes into her and apologises without waiting for her response. Another person steps around her but the backpack hanging from their shoulder smacks into her, brutal and uncaring. A group of feet form an imperfect circle a few yards outside her path. Poles that probably hold signs, or banners or flags. Poles that hold up demands. Unpaid salaries, firings, street vendors who don’t want to be displaced, Elena doesn’t care, she holds a sign with her complaints on it too, it’s just that no one sees it. Someone shouts through a megaphone, and the circle applauds. Someone mentions God, some god, and the Son of God. Another long line of shoes, shoes worn by people waiting for a slip of paper to verify that the train they arrived on was delayed, once again, so that their wages won’t be docked. A taxi will be better than the subway, she thinks, as she’s enveloped by the imperfect circle of shoes and the voice speaking into the megaphone, and the people applauding the voice, or God, or his Son. A taxi will be better than the subway. Not because the subway only goes as far as Carranza and from there it’s still ten blocks, like they told her at the private car service on the corner of her street. A taxi will be better than the subway because in half an hour she won’t be able to get up from the seat, any seat, whichever one she’s settled her body into. And she doesn’t want that to happen in the subway tunnel. Even though it’s been a long time, years, since she’s ridden in a taxi, she still remembers how to do it. She recalls having watched the empty subway cars disappear into the tunnel at the terminal, before another train appeared on the opposite platform, ready to make the return journey. She doesn’t know if it was the same train. She’d never cared before, but now she might sit down and not be able to stand up again when she wants to, so now she cares. She knows that the train will eventually come out of the tunnel that swallows it because otherwise the subway system would get backed up with trains. But after how long? Later that afternoon? At the end of the day? Before the next pill starts to take effect? Or after? Elena’s time is different from the time kept by trains, running underground from one station to another. She doesn’t have a timetable. Her time is measured in pills. The different-coloured pills she carries in her handbag, in the bronze pill box with several compartments that Rita gave her for her last birthday. So you don’t mix them all up, she told her and set the box on the table. It wasn’t wrapped, just stuck inside a clear plastic bag, with no name on it, like the kind you get at the grocery store, but thinner and without any label. What about the candles? Elena had asked. So Rita rummaged in a kitchen drawer until she found a used candle, the ones they kept in case the electricity went out, lined with drips of wax, filthy with grime from being forgotten so long at the bottom of a drawer, stunted, cracked in half but held together by its wick. Rita pulled the blackened wick upright, brushed it off with her fingertips and lit it. She held it out to Elena and said, Blow. And Elena blew, twisting her head and lips to the side to reach the candle, drooling onto the Formica table top. How is it possible that you can’t keep your handkerchief with you, Mum. The flame flickered slightly, Blow again, Mum, and Elena once again pursed her lips to one side, tried to inflate her cheeks and gather more air into her mouth, to aim for the target, to stretch her neck a little closer to the candle, and she would have blown it out this time, but a drip of wax fell onto Rita’s hand at that moment, Goddammit, her daughter said, shaking the candle in the air, one, two, three times until it went out, and Elena just swallowed all that air.

  If she couldn’t stand up when it was time to get off the subway, she would disappear into that black tunnel where she doesn’t know what goes on and, what’s worse, where Elena doesn’t know how time is kept. That other time so different to that time she keeps without clocks. Like a state of limbo, she thinks, a place where nothing goes either to heaven or to hell. Either heaven or hell would be preferable to being stuck there halfway, it always seemed like the worst option to her. Limbo or purgatory, she can’t remember the difference between the two but she knows there is a difference, and that she, at one time, knew it. She wonders whether today, on her way to Isabel Mansilla’s house to talk about her dead daughter, if the fact that she can’t remember is significant. The word purgatory sounds funny to her because she purges, every day, her body is a walking purgatory, that sometimes, for brief periods, walks. She has to purge herself with laxatives, ever since Herself made her intestines lazy. It’s not that your intestines aren’t working, Dr Benegas said when she complained about the number of days she’d spent without being able to go to the bathroom, Parkinson’s patients have lazy intestines, Elena, but it’s nothing that can’t be solved with some prune juice every morning or a nice plate of greens for lunch. Purging. That’s why, even though she doubts whether heaven, hell, or purgatory even exist she wants to take a taxi. She exits the station and looks for a taxi rank. She asks in a newspaper kiosk. Which way are you going? the newspaper seller asks her. And Elena can tell that the man has looked at her and has understood. Because it doesn’t matter which taxi rank will send her off in the direction she needs to go. What matters is finding the closest one. As close as possible while her body can still respond, can still shuffle along. Before it turns off and leaves her stranded alone and immobile in this strange city. Alone, without a body. What can you do if your body won’t obey? Elena wonders this as she drags her feet in the direction the newspaper seller indicated. What’s left of you when your arm can’t even put on a jacket and your leg can’t even take a step and your neck can’t straighten up enough to let you show your face to the world, what’s left? Are you your brain, which keeps sending out orders that won’t be followed? Or are you the thought itself, something that can’t be seen or touched beyond that furrowed organ guarded inside the cranium like a trove? Elena doesn’t subscribe to the notion that a person without a body is a soul, because she doesn’t believe in the soul or in eternal life. Even though she’s never dared to admit that to anyone. She barely even admitted it to herself, once she was unable to lie anymore. Because Antonio, her husband, had been a practising Catholic, and he wouldn’t have understood, and on top of not understanding he would’ve been upset, all those years working at the Catholic school, not only as the porter but also as the theology teacher, and finding out that his wife, the mother of his child, didn’t believe in the soul or in eternal life. Foolish, Elena now knows he would’ve called her, because that’s what Father Juan called her the day of her daughter’s funeral, her or anyone who looked at death as final, as if there were nothing else after our earthly life. Maybe that’s why Rita had been so ambivalent and cold towards her faith. Because she was raised by one fervent Catholic, and one who only pretended to be. That’s why R
ita wore a cross around her neck but skipped mass if it was raining, because she was more afraid of lightning than of the double offence she was committing by lying and not going to mass. And she didn’t confess all her sins, just some of them. And she didn’t pray every night. There are days He doesn’t deserve my praise, she said. But she visited seven different churches every Good Friday, and she fasted and abstained not only on Good Friday but also on the Thursday, and on Ash Wednesday, and every Friday of Lent. She wore a new pair of pink panties every Christmas even though she knew that it didn’t have much to do with the Church’s precepts and the Gospels, and she bought a pair for her mother, too, but Elena always ended up exchanging them for black ones, Why would you think I can wear pink panties, Rita? What’s the big deal, no one besides me is going to see them, Mum. She never went into church with her shoulders uncovered. She never bit the communion wafer. She fasted for an hour before taking communion. She always arrived at mass before the Creed so that it would count. She made the sign of the cross every time she passed a church. As if her religion were based more in the rituals, in the folklore and traditions, than in the dogma or faith. Rita, in her way, had God, a God of her own who she put together like a puzzle with her own rules. Her God and her dogma. Elena didn’t. Then why do those words that aren’t part of her prayer still float around inside her head? Why does she keep thinking about heaven and hell, about resurrection, the Creed, forgive me my Lord and I am repentant, penitence, sin, and in the name of the Father? Words yes, but not God or dogma. There’s not even a body, now, she thinks, and she’s thinking about herself but also about Rita, buried underground. Two dead bodies. Hers, and that other that was once inside her, feeding off her, breathing the air that she breathed. A body made of dust and turned again to dust, like it says in the Gospels. The body of her daughter. If only she could believe in the soul and in eternal life, and that we are all of dust and to dust we must return, she thinks, but Elena knows that the only dust we will return to, time and again, is the dust covering her shoes as she climbs into the taxi and says straight down 9 de Julio to Libertador, down Libertador until it turns into Figueroa Alcorta, and then straight on to the Planetarium and left to the Spanish Monument, and then retake Libertador to Olleros. And even though she doesn’t give the exact address the taxi driver knows where to go, or at least he knows enough, because without asking any questions he leans over the passenger seat, almost as clumsy as her, to turn on the meter and he puts something away in the glove compartment. Elena knows this because even though she can’t see him she hears him move and because her vision is suddenly darkened like a cloud has passed in front of the sun shining through the front windscreen. The man sits back in his seat ready to set off but stops, just in time, because in the rear-view mirror he sees that the back door is still open. Elena has just finished settling her handbag into her lap, but she hasn’t shut the door yet. She’s only got one of her legs inside, rumpling the paper floor mat from the carwash the man took his taxi to. She can’t get the other one in, she hasn’t been able to move it, she points her knee outward, her foot hovering in the air waiting for Elena to place it on the floor using both her hands. The man gets impatient, Do you need help? No, that’s not necessary, says Elena, and using the leg that’s already inside as leverage, she lifts the other one in, rotating it at a right angle like a turnstyle and then she pushes hard down on her thigh until her foot hits the floor. Then she knows she’s in. The taxi driver asks if she’s ready and she stretches a little further, grips the handle and pulls the door towards her body with all her strength, as if it were the rope she used to stand up every morning. Ready, Elena says, let’s go. She imagines the taxi driver looking at her in the rear-view mirror, looking at the roots of her hair speckled with grey and the little flecks of dandruff that Rita complained so much about, Use the dandruff shampoo, Mum. Embarrassed, she makes an effort to raise her head and look at him. But time, Elena’s time, has stopped. There’s no more levodopa to help her move. Nothing. Elena knows. She knows she has a wait ahead of her, a few minutes until she can take the next pill and then the time it takes the medicine to dissolve and begin to move through her body. The wait, that time that is measured without clocks, with her prayer to keep her company. The prayer about Herself, and the messenger, and the dethroned king, and the naked emperor, the streets between her house and the station, and the others that still lie ahead of her, the train stations she’s just left behind, levodopa and dopamine, the muscle, and then again Herself, the king, the dethroned king without a crown, naked.