Fish Soup Read online

  I had never been to Seattle. I had never flown anywhere in the United States other than Miami. But I knew the country off by heart, thanks to the Pato Banton song Go Pato. Sometimes I used to recite the names of the states when I was in the shower. When I got to the apartment I called the airline and asked if they needed any reserve staff. We’re full, they told me. I shut myself away in my bedroom: 54, 53, 52, 51… There were cracks in the ceiling. Milagros had a French boyfriend. The Captain had been calling me a lot lately, we had gone out once, without much success. The Captain was from one of the provinces, and I didn’t like people from there because they spoke slowly and way too formally. But those were hard times, so I called him: we arranged to meet at a little Italian place, in the city centre.

  The Latin American style is one of cliché, he said to me halfway through dinner, after I’d told him the story of my brother, the wedding with cameras on the tables, the white fairy lights and perfumes in the toilet and the “Baby boy”. I thought it was quite a clever observation and I thought that my future child wouldn’t have it too bad, with 1) a decent set of neurons, and 2) a tolerance for heights. That night we stayed at his, an apartment in El Laguito, with a panoramic window overlooking the bay. It was very beautiful, but it was still here.

  The Captain was genuinely in awe of my ass; it’s more beautiful than I imagined, he said.

  But I didn’t get pregnant. Not that time, or any of the following times. I went to the gynaecologist to ask if there was something wrong with me. I was fine, it had to be him. It was going to be hard to ask him, the man thought I was on the pill.

  Have you got any children? I asked him one evening, smoking a cigarette, looking out at the bay. The lighthouse had already come on, the rotating beam passed over us like brushstrokes on a mural. I enjoyed that moment. I hoped he wouldn’t answer, but it was too late. The Captain didn’t have children. Would you like to, one day…? Halfway through the question I already regretted it. Years ago, said the Captain, I had a vasectomy for medical reasons. Medical reasons! I felt betrayed, taken for a fool. The Captain looked at me, baffled. I put my clothes on and left.

  I walked along the boardwalk, first around the edge of the bay, then the sea, then the sea walls, then a heap of rubble on a deserted beach. There, I sat down and cried. The evening was red, it was the most beautiful sky I had seen in years. From the Captain’s window it must have been just spectacular. I found a payphone and called him. He didn’t answer. I tried again, nothing. I hailed a taxi and went home.

  The beak of the illuminated sign for the fried chicken place had burnt out and was dark.

  And it started raining again: in a town near the Magdalena river even the dogs drowned. In a hamlet close to the Ciénaga de la Virgen, four children and a teacher died. They were trapped inside a Social Welfare centre that got swept away by the current. On the radio, they were talking about the Submarine Outfall again: a Dutch company was going to start building it. The national government tendered the work out to foreign companies because the national ones had already stolen the money three times. But the Dutch didn’t steal.

  Johnny sent me an email: I miss you, baby. And another one, in English this time: I miss u, beibi.

  I thought of going to see Gustavo. The last time had been about six months earlier, a bright, sunny day, and it went like this:

  I sat down at the worktable and the smell of fish made me feel sick. I suggested we go for a walk to get a change of air. As we walked, he told me that Olga had gone: her sister had come to get her from Venezuela. I couldn’t believe that anyone would choose to go to Venezuela. Even a slut like Olga could surely aspire to something better than going to Venezuela. She’d be better off here. We walked along the beach for hours, and finally sat down in a canoe that was falling to pieces and filled with crabs. I was thirsty. I asked about Willy. He died, said Gustavo. Of what? He shrugged. And Brígida? She died. Liar. I don’t know about Brígida, he said after a while. What about Willy? Or him.

  This time I had brought him an umbrella and a small arsenal of vices: cigarettes, beer, rum, some weed. He rolled a cigarette and poured a couple of rums. He was wearing long trousers; I couldn’t remember ever seeing him in long trousers. He was going bald. He was getting old. The rain stops me from working, he complained, gesturing at the churning waves. Me too, I said, looking up at the clouds. Gustavo’s pool was filled with stagnant water; there were dead fish floating on the surface. The larger creatures must have been lurking somewhere in the depths. The tarpaulin was ripped in various places and water was streaming through it. The driest place was the double wooden seat, although it was also damp. Water and wood are not good friends, I said to Gustavo. We sat down.

  Tell me a story.

  I’ve already told you all of them.

  Tell me a story with me in it.

  Gustavo sighed heavily and shook his head. It’s a sad story.

  I don’t mind.

  I curled up next to him. I laid my head on his scrawny, smelly lap. He began stroking my hair.

  Once upon a time, there was a sweet, noble princess who had only one flaw: she couldn’t tell the difference between what was good and bad, beautiful and hideous, diabolical and heavenly, perverse and pure…

  I fell asleep.

  11

  The next flight to Miami was hell. And the ones after that. The Captain was avoiding me and now seemed more interested in Susana who, as she had no ass to speak of, had started sporting a very revealing push-up bra. I couldn’t care less because I had my Johnny, who was becoming more attentive and affectionate; he’d given me a laptop, so we could chat. I told him about the city: that in the centre they were building mansions that were filling up with celebrities. Julio Iglesias, Caroline of Monaco, Mick Jagger, Lady Gaga – they all had houses there. Johnny didn’t seem very impressed. All Johnny wanted was for me to turn on the webcam and talk dirty to him while I touched myself. And I did, but not always. I thought: one day Johnny will come to his senses, he’ll know what to do.

  Johnny was becoming flaky.

  The last time I saw him, he took me to the same dive bar with the buffalo wings, in Kendall. He was distracted, sullen, eyeing up the Dominican slut, who appeared to have developed huge matronly hips overnight. At some point, a well-dressed woman stood at the doorway and surveyed the place. Johnny said, she doesn’t think it looks clean enough for her to sit her bony ass down. He sounded bitter, resentful. Then he fell silent again. What’s up? I asked him. He said there was nothing wrong. We went to a motel, we fucked, he lit a cigarette and went silent again. I switched on the TV, nothing happened, it was broken.

  On the flight back, Susana avoided me. I said to her: Johnny’s going to ask me to marry him and she said, Great! But it sounded false.

  Then one day, Johnny stood me up. I was waiting in the lobby of the hotel. I was all dressed up to go salsa dancing: hair in a ponytail, shiny trousers, jangly metal bracelet. Suddenly I felt ridiculous. I called his home phone number, his wife answered, and before I’d finished asking for him, she was shouting at me, holly shit, you fokin puta! Then she threatened to shoot me three times in the pussy. There was a pause, during which I suppose she was catching her breath to start insulting me again, and I seized the opportunity to say: look, lady, Johnny knocked me up. And I hung up.

  Going back was miserable. When I got to the apartment, I collapsed on the living room sofa, staring out the window: the chicken sign wasn’t lit up. It wouldn’t be until later. I didn’t eat, I didn’t go to the toilet, all I did was think about Johnny and stare at the grimy window pane. 19, 18, 17, 16…

  Johnny didn’t appear online. I sent him three hundred and seventeen emails. Nothing. I never heard from him again. And with time, the sadness passed, but I was filled with pity. Firstly, for him, because he must have lost everything: his car, his unemployment benefit, his Ecuadorian wife, his VIP passes, his dignity. Then for me, because I’d lost my drives around Miami, the lobster and champagne, the sunsets in Mallory Square,
the good life that Johnny had got me used to. And then for me, again for me, for the many times in my life, for every time I’d lost someone I didn’t even care about.

  12

  I took some time off once and didn’t know where to go. They made me take time off because, according to my boss, I had never taken any holiday and I had to. Why? Because it’s a new policy. I thought that there was something wrong with this new policy, and I told her as much, but she took no notice. It was a very small airline and they were tendering to move up a category, to get more routes. During those days off I visited my mother and the first thing she did was show me photos of a boy aged three, four years old, dressed as a cowboy, dressed as Snoopy, dressed as Tarzan. Who’s that? I asked. Who? That child. She shot me a furious look: Simón, your nephew! I didn’t know what to say. While my mother grumbled away, I realised that she had become an old woman: she had grey hairs and wrinkles, and the stale breath that comes with age.

  I stayed for dinner.

  My father had finally given up the taxi business for good, but he was still complaining: nobody takes cares of things that aren’t theirs. A letter came for you, said my mother. When? She squinted and said: it was over a year ago. Why didn’t you let me know? I don’t have your phone number. Yes, you do. She waved me away with her hand: pah!

  I got back to the apartment at midnight. I opened the windows; it was hot. A breeze wafted in, smelling of sludge.

  The letter was from Maritza Caballero, my teenage friend. She said she hadn’t heard from me in a long time, and as she only had that address for me, she had taken a chance on writing to me there, although she presumed I had probably moved. For a while we used to write letters to one another, but then I stopped replying. I got bored. According to what she told me, Medellín was a shitty city. It was neither cold nor hot, pretty nor ugly, rich nor poor. Medellín was nothing. Anyway, she didn’t live in Medellín anymore, but in Panama. Her father had been posted to Peru many years ago. She had gone back and forth many times, and now she had settled in Panama with her husband, who worked on the Canal, and her children. She enclosed a photo of her; she looked the same but with crow’s feet and a guy next to her, a girl and a boy sitting at their feet, like pets. Her phone number, in case I ever went to Panama, was… I scrunched the letter up into a ball and hurled it at the fried chicken, right at the beak, but it didn’t quite make it. It landed in the middle of the street.

  I lit a cigarette.

  I didn’t go to Gustavo’s because I didn’t feel like it. I didn’t go anywhere. I called the Captain, he didn’t pick up. I called again. A woman answered. Hello? Susana? Who is this? I hung up. But it wasn’t Susana, she had a funny accent.

  On Friday, Milagros invited me to go to the islands with them. Her French boyfriend and some friends had rented a couple of cabins. I shaved my legs, packed a bag and then waited with Milagros for them to pick us up. A car with a driver came to collect us and dropped us off down at the quay. Then a boat came in, full of foreigners and hookers. I looked at Milagros, who shrugged. What were you expecting? I thought for two or three seconds. I realised I wasn’t expecting anything. We went aboard. A Frenchman sat down next to me and asked me if I had my life jacket on properly. I said Oui. When we arrived at the beach there was a buffet of juices and drinks. What are you drinking? asked the Frenchman. Negroni. He looked at the table: I don’t think they have it. Cuba Libre, I said. He nodded and went to get some ice.

  We were in a hut filled with wicker sofas. Some of the men had gone off to the beach with their hookers; Milagros and her boyfriend were smooching in one of the cabins. There were two Frenchmen left, who were touching up a girl who couldn’t even have been eighteen. She was laughing. She seemed nervous, but she was hiding it well.

  My Frenchman returned with the drinks. We sat down on a sofa and he put his arm around my shoulder. It was limp, cold, toad-like. I shrugged his arm off and said: I’m expensive. Very expensive? Yes. I don’t care. Okay: I held out my hand, palm up.

  We came back on the Monday, badly hungover. I still had a week of holiday left and I didn’t know what else to do. Spend the money from the Frenchman, but on what, where? I would have been totally justified in spending it on a rent boy who could actually give me a good seeing-to. I called the Captain, but the same woman answered. I hung up. It wasn’t like the Captain was even that good in bed. Then I called Tony’s house. His mother told me that he’d moved years ago, and when I insisted, she gave me his mobile number. Hello? He answered. I miss you, I told him. He was silent for a minute and then said: I don’t. I bought you a present. What? You’re going to like it. I don’t want it. Are you sure? What is it? A surprise: if you come I’ll give it to you, if not… you’ll never know. I don’t know… Come. I got married. I don’t care. I do. I’ll see you in an hour.

  I had bought him a Calvin Klein fragrance. He stayed for the rest of the week.

  13

  Simón fell ill and, as my parents did not have a visa to go to the US, they asked me to go and see him. They begged me: they came to my apartment for the first time ever and they begged. I told them: I’ve already taken all my holiday. Them: it’s a family emergency, we’ve never asked you for anything, he’s our only grandchild. My boss pursed her lips: didn’t you use all your holiday? It’s a family emergency, I’ve never asked you for anything, he’s my only nephew. She granted me ten days of unpaid leave.

  My mother had become obsessed with the idea that God was punishing her for what happened with Xenaida’s child, and she got some concoction made up by a “specialist” who my aunt knew. She gave it to me in a bottle, so I could rub it on the little boy’s chest. It smelled like dead rats. It made me want to vomit, so I poured it down the toilet and threw the bottle in the bin. I washed my hands thoroughly and covered them in the Victoria’s Secret antibacterial gel we’d been given by the airline for Christmas.

  Before I left, I dropped in at Gustavo’s shack. It was not raining, but he was not fishing. He hadn’t fished for days because one of his legs hurt and his bones ached, he said. I told him I was off to Los Angeles and that maybe I was going to stay there. That if my brother hinted at it, I would stay. Why not? Maybe I would meet someone. Someone who would give me what I deserved. Gustavo asked what it was that I deserved. I stared at him: his white hair had become wiry; his skin, a paper-thin cloth draped over his bones. How old was Gustavo? A thousand? I had never asked him his age. I shrugged. He poured two small glasses of rum. The bottle was nearly empty. He handed me one, raised his glass up in front of him, to the sea:

  We’ll always have this view, kid.

  I knocked back the rum in one go: Goodbye.

  In Los Angeles it was raining too, and this was unusual. A miracle, according to Odina. Hadn’t I seen Chinatown, she asked. No. Well it’s just like that, she said, dry as limestone.

  It sure hid it well.

  It rained a lot, but nobody there drowned: least of all the dogs, who were dressed up like children in little hooded raincoats. Odina worked long shifts at the hospital, and when she came home, she complained about her feet being swollen. Then she would look in the mirror: I’m a fokin whale! she shouted, angry, nobody knew who with. I looked elsewhere, as if I hadn’t heard her. My brother had a job driving a delivery truck. Delivering what? Fruit, vegetables, local farm produce. Eat local, stay local, it said on his grey shirt. How’s Julián? I asked him one night. He was flicking through the channels. Odina was on a shift; Simón was asleep. He didn’t know what Julián was up to. And Rafa? Rafa who? That friend of yours who… But he was glued to the screen, a baseball game was on. His perfect abs were buried under a big belly. It must’ve been because of all the beer he drank. It must’ve been because of marriage. I wonder what happened to Xenaida’s child? I said after a while. My brother didn’t reply, perhaps he hadn’t heard me, or perhaps he just didn’t give a shit.

  Simón was looked after by a very young girl who spent the whole time chewing gum and listening to music on oversized wir
eless headphones. The house was made from wood, like the ones in the movies. It was comfortable, but it was no mansion. Sure, there were household appliances everywhere you looked, and the fridge was overflowing with food. All the food looked succulent and appetising, but it tasted of absolutely nothing. Macaroni and cheese? A disgusting sham.

  In fact, all of Los Angeles was a sham. You couldn’t go anywhere on foot. Not on your own. I spent my time sitting on the porch, thinking that I would never go anywhere definitively, that I was doomed to come and go, come and go, and that was the same as never having left. No, it was worse. Like the woman in Gustavo’s story who opened a door, went into her house, killed her children and went out, not back into the street but into her house again and killed her children and went out, back into her house again, and so it went on, over and over. It was the worst story he had ever told me. During those days in Los Angeles, I thought that perhaps the time had come to invent my own formula for escaping myself, for killing my self-awareness with a bottle of pills.

  The street looks like a mirror when it’s wet, my nephew Simón said to me one day. He was sitting beside me on the porch, slouched, watching the rain falling on the road. The water made no sound when it fell, because the road was as smooth as an ice rink.

  One day we all piled into my brother’s truck and went to Universal Studios. We looked at it from outside because it was expensive to go in. Odina didn’t even step out onto the pavement because her feet hurt.

  Don’t you ever go to school? I asked my nephew one morning when we were sitting on the porch. He shook his head.

  Why not?