Fish Soup Read online

Because I’m ill.

  I thought about the concoction my mother gave me. I wondered what it was made of.

  How old are you?

  Five.

  He looked about fifty, with that serious face of his.

  What’s wrong with you?

  Asthma: he showed me his inhaler.

  That’s no excuse for not going to school, no sir, I told him, and he looked at me with his gigantic eyes, like two black billiard balls.

  That afternoon we had a strawberry milkshake and some little guava cakes that his maternal grandmother had sent over from Puerto Rico. That evening, Simón told me he was scared of spiders. I told him a story:

  Once upon a time there was a king…

  What was the king’s name?

  Gustavo. He was a wise king who traded his kingdom for a shack in front of the sea.

  Which sea?

  The Caribbean Sea, you can’t see it from here. Back in his kingdom he was rich and had a virgin wife for every night.

  What for?

  For every night.

  And then I didn’t know how to go on, because I didn’t know that story, or any other stories, and Simón kept looking at me expectantly. What happened then? Nothing. Nothing?

  I started over:

  Once upon a time, there was a face…

  A face? Simón laughed.

  A face with big eyes, like black billiard balls. Above the face there was some hair, and under the face, a neck, and lower down, a little body that liked to slouch. And all of this made up a boy.

  What was the boy called? Simón was looking at me as if this was a really great story; his laughter held back, a smile playing on his lips.

  He was called Simón, and to get to sleep, he would count sheep backwards.

  Backwards, like on their backs?

  No backwards, like this: 100 little sheep, 99 little sheep, 98…

  Didn’t he know how to count?

  Yes, but he counted in a different way.

  Why?

  I don’t know.

  14

  I was on the last flight back from Los Angeles. The airport shops were already closed; the taxis rapidly filling up with tourists coming from Miami, where they caught their connecting flights. I walked to the apartment, which was six blocks away, dragging my heavy suitcase. When I arrived at the building, I sat down on the front step and lit a cigarette. As I stretched out my neck, I looked up, and was dazzled by the fried chicken sign. They had finally mended its beak.

  I went up to the apartment. Milagros was staying with her French boyfriend, her message on the answering machine said. The French boyfriend was staying in a “boutique” hotel in town, a colonial mansion with only a handful of rooms… It’s not often you get a chance to see those kinds of places, said Milagros, cheerfully, and the message ended. I cracked open a beer and leaned out of the window. There was no breeze. Then I watched a film about a woman who made it in New York as a bartender.

  In the early hours of the morning, my mobile rang. Hello. It was the hospital: Gustavo had fallen and dislocated his hip, he would have to use crutches for a while. He needed someone to help him leave the hospital, take him home, wash him, give him something to eat. But I’m not a relative, I said. Do you know any of his relatives? No, they’re all dead, they were thrown into the sea. Excuse me? said the nurse. I don’t know of any relatives. We’ll put him down as homeless. Okay.

  But in the morning, I called the airline, extended my leave and went to the hospital. The nurse filled out a form which I had to sign so they could release him: Name and surname. Maritza Caballero. Relationship? Daughter. I took him back to his shack.

  I’d brought him a Los Angeles Lakers cap. I put it on him. I asked him whether I should stay to look after him. He didn’t say yes or no. He looked distant, bewildered. He didn’t speak until dinner time, when he said, Do you like cloves? Me: not really. Round here people eat a lot of cloves, he said, and hauled himself into the tiny kitchen, took a couple of things out of the fridge and started cooking.

  The days that followed went like this:

  Gustavo would get up at five in the morning when it was still dark. He’d put on his cap, grab his crutches and fling open the door to the shack. In came the smell of salt and dead fish, which I found unbearable for the first few days. Then I got used to it. Anyway, I told him he really needed to get that pool emptied, that there was no longer any use for it, all he was growing in it was fungi, tadpoles, mould, decay. And that giant shapeless fish with the bulging forehead. It was a mutant fish, a sea monster capable of surviving in that black water, eating the leftovers that Gustavo chucked in there.

  One morning I got up and the fish had mutated into a pig. It’s not a pig, said Gustavo. But it looked like it. The fish was an enormous ball of pinkish flesh that opened its big gaping mouth when you went near it, like it was yawning.

  Gustavo and I ate underneath the tarpaulin. Gustavo had stopped using the crutches after three days and had gone back to fishing. He was still wearing his cap. I went with him because he found it hard to walk, to move easily; he was quite lame. We went out at seven, in a rickety boat called Everything is for you. Why’s it called that? I asked him. Because it’s true. We didn’t do much fishing, but this didn’t matter because Gustavo had no customers anymore. In the evening, at sunset, I would leave him cleaning the fish and go for a walk along the beach, to lie down on my back in the sand, and look at the sky.

  Up and down, up and down, I touched myself, thinking about Tony. And about Tony’s wife. And about his children’s children, and his grandchildren’s grandchildren. Lost causes, all of them.

  Then I came back, and Gustavo had prepared some spicy, sickly stew. We ate some of it, then threw the rest into the pool for the pig-fish. Then we sparked up a joint. We lay in the hammock and watched the sky growing dark and filling up with stars, the moon, a handful of clouds. Gustavo told me stories that I already knew. Sometimes he told them wrong and I had to correct him. Sometimes he invented new, absurd, irrelevant parts. And I let him carry on. Until, one day, I stopped listening to him. It was easy, instead of hearing his voice assembling long, rambling sentences, I heard the sound of the waves and the wind: a cold, piercing howl that after a while, turned into a deafening hum. Then I focused on the horizon, which by that hour was empty.

  PART II

  WORSE THINGS

  LIKE A PARIAH

  That advert was on TV, the one with the fat guy who had lost weight by drinking some tea or other: My son didn’t want me to go to his football match and I asked him why – are you ashamed of me? The former fatso cried and asked them to stop filming. They went on filming anyway. Inés always welled up at that commercial. She was not fat, had never been fat. But for some reason, this guy’s story hit a nerve.

  That morning she had tried to talk to Michel. Since the day of the move, she’d heard nothing from him. She’d dialled his number, but he didn’t pick up. Maybe he was working. She had called him again just now, but still no answer. It wasn’t even midday yet and she was exhausted, the previous night she had dreamt about her toes falling off. Lately, her feet hurt, and sometimes she felt as if they were gangrenous. It was a feeling like the one she had that time in Boston, when her legs had frozen up altogether. Michel was studying for his master’s and she had gone to visit him; it was winter. The doctor there told her she had serious circulation problems. ‘Like any damn highway, then!’ replied Inés, trying to lighten the tone, but neither the doctor nor Michel laughed at her joke.

  The ex-fatso had changed location and wardrobe. Now, wearing a black suit, he was posing on a balcony overlooking a city full of lights: I hadn’t seen my own penis for years.

  ‘Penis’, mused Inés, ‘what an ugly word.’

  ‘Good morning, señora.’ The cleaning woman was standing at the door to the study. She was wearing a dress buttoned up to the neck, even in that heat. Inés turned the TV off.

  ‘Good morning…’ she couldn’t remember her name. It was
only the second time she had ever seen her.

  ‘Glenda, señora.’

  Inés nodded. Glenda nodded too, came into the study and handed her an envelope that had been in the letterbox.

  ‘Thanks.’ Inés sat up, smoothed her hair with her hands. It felt rough, like a man’s stubble.

  ‘I’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything.’ Glenda turned and left. She was a large, dark-skinned woman with a very deep voice.

  Inside the envelope was a card reading “Brunch”. It was from the new occupants of the Las Palmeras condo and was addressed to Gerardo and her, using their full names. She wondered how they’d found out their surnames. They had barely been there a week.

  She went out of the study, card in hand. She crossed the living room and opened the blinds, and the light burst into the room like a jet of water. She squinted. The workmen had just arrived; they had come to fix a rusted pipe. The garden stank. It was an old country house, passed down from an unmarried aunt of hers, and nobody in the family used it. Inés’ sister had suggested that she move there temporarily, while she convalesced. Michel helped her move. Even Gerardo helped her. They all wanted her far away. ‘It’s cancer, not leprosy,’ she had told them. They looked at her, offended.

  She sat down on the sofa. If she went to the brunch, she would have to cover her head somehow.

  On the small coffee table lay a copy of Health! magazine. Michel had brought her a few to keep her entertained; on the cover was an older woman, nibbling on some nuts like a squirrel.

  She thought she should go to the brunch and meet her neighbours, after all, she was going to be living there for a while. A year. That’s what she had told them all. Michel, Gerardo, her sister. She fanned herself with the magazine and looked outside: the workmen were slowly unpacking their tools.

  ‘Señora.’ It was Glenda. The magazine fell out of Inés’ hands and onto the floor. The woman had appeared out of nowhere. ‘Are you going to have breakfast?’

  ‘No thank you.’

  ‘Have you taken your medicines?’

  ‘No, I’ll do it later.’ Inés ran her hands over her hair, picked up the magazine and put it on the table. Why did she have to ask her that?

  ‘I think you should eat some breakfast, señora, you can’t take those medicines on an empty stomach.’

  ‘No, I don’t want any.’

  Glenda cleared her throat. ‘Very well.’ She turned around and wobbled through the kitchen.

  Inés shook her head. She left the sofa and slowly climbed the stairs. She looked through her clothes to find something to wear.

  A hat. She would have to wear a hat.

  *

  It was like something out of the movies, the stereotypical Californian condo. As if it belonged to a down-at-heel mafioso: curved balconies and tall palm trees planted symmetrically, one next to the other, forming a circle around an artificial lagoon. Then on each side, there were rows of houses, all identical, with their terraces out the front. Inés was on one of these terraces, sitting in a wicker chair. A guy in white Bermuda shorts and a sky blue shirt had sat down next to her. He sipped his drink. In between the two chairs was a blue hat.

  ‘Mother makes a fantastic fruit daiquiri,’ said the guy. Inés nodded.

  Mother? Who the hell talks like that?

  The guy was called Leonardo and he must have been around forty. He worked in real estate, he had told her. The host was his mother, Susana, who was making her way towards them with two new colourful drinks. She held one out.

  ‘Would you like another?’

  Inés raised her face to look at her. Susana was silhouetted by the sun: a glowing halo surrounded her hair, which was dyed cherry red.

  ‘Thanks.’ She accepted the daiquiri, which, they had told her, was a blend of citrus juices. The doctor had told her she couldn’t drink alcohol yet. ‘Not even a small one?’ Inés asked him. ‘That’s a bit mean.’ Then he told her that she could have a small one, but that she shouldn’t drink too much, because her body’s defences were still low.

  Susana sat on her son’s lap, stirred her drink with the straw and downed it in one. Inés tried hers. It was far too sweet.

  ‘Did Inés tell you where she lives, darling?’ said Susana. Leonardo shook his head. ‘In that house, the one that was falling down, but which now Inés and her husband, who works in…’ Susana frowned and looked at her; she was wearing blue eyeliner. ‘What exactly does your husband do?’

  Inés looked down at her sickly-sweet drink. How could she answer that? One: he wasn’t her husband anymore. Two: she had never understood what he did for a living. She never had an answer prepared, like most married women do. She’d heard those replies: it should never be a complete sentence like ‘my husband works in…’; that was too vague and gave the impression that you needed too much time to think about something you should be able to reel off instantly. In those games of questions and answers, the way you formulated your answers could lose you valuable points: ‘Crustaceans are animals that have the following characteristics…’ It was a trap. The possible answers to Susana’s question should be direct, short, efficient. ‘What exactly does your husband do?’ ‘Soil mechanics’ or ‘Computing manuals’ or even ‘Acrylic fish tanks’.

  Susana had turned to her son. ‘Anyway, so Inés and her husband fixed up that house and it looks immaculate now. That’s what they say. Isn’t that right, Inés?’

  Inés nodded. Who could possibly have said that?

  She thought about the rotten pipe running through her garden. Then her mind replayed the ad of the ex-fatso crying: I felt like a pariah.

  ‘…it’s a very solid and attractive detached house, although…’ Now it was Leonardo who was talking.

  Inés sipped her drink; the cold liquid ran quickly down her throat and she wanted to cough but managed to control it. She suddenly felt poorly dressed: it was the hat, she must look like a real hick.

  ‘…it has some problems with the pipework and electrics.’ Leonardo was balding, and sweat accumulated each side of his widow’s peak, out of reach of the handkerchief he used to wipe around his face every so often. The sweat glittered in the sunlight, making it look as if rays were emanating from his head. But he was not unattractive: he was tall, with blondish hair and one of those large, straight noses that give some guys an air of refinement. Michel had a small nose, but a lot of hair on his head.

  ‘Having said that’, Leonardo went on, ‘I don’t understand what made you move here, instead of finding a more comfortable option, given the circumstances.’

  What circumstances?

  Susana stood up abruptly and let out an idiotic laugh. She looked embarrassed by her son’s question.

  ‘Darling,’ she said with her hand on her bust which, although drooping, was still rounded thanks to the implants. ‘You can’t ask Inés that, for God’s sake.’

  Susana was wearing flat sandals, blue, like her eyeliner, like the hat, like Leonardo’s shirt. She must have been sixty-something. Inés was fifty-seven, but she felt about a hundred. She finished off the dregs of her drink. In the pool, a few people were floating around on lilos. Inés couldn’t decide if she liked swimming pools or not. Gerardo hated them – once you’ve dived in and had a splash about, then what do you do?

  Susana was still clumsily apologising for her son’s indiscretion. Inés tried to focus on looking beyond the palm trees, which marked the course of the river, then disappeared out of sight down a sloping hillside. A waiter came up with a tray of daiquiris: this time there was also a whisky on there. Inés grabbed it. ‘I think I’ll move onto this.’

  *

  The verandah was the coolest part of the house, but it stank to high heaven. The builders were working out front, and the smell of the rotten pipes was overpowering. Glenda had come up with the idea of placing torches in the garden, and it worked quite well: she had wrapped stakes with rags soaked in citronella. The sweet, lemony oil repelled the mosquitos. She had soaked other cloths in jasmine essence an
d the resulting scent was penetrating and acidic, interspersed with occasional wafts of sickly-sweetness. A horrendous smell, but more bearable than the broken pipes.

  That morning nobody had lit the torches yet. The workmen must have lost their sense of smell because there they were, sitting on the lawn, eating the bowls of food that Glenda had brought out to them, and breathing in that stench.

  ‘Will you be taking lunch, señora?’ Glenda startled her. She always did that. It was a mystery how a woman so huge could sidle right up to her without making a sound.

  ‘Why haven’t you lit the torches?’ Inés asked.

  ‘I’ll light them now,’ said Glenda. She always had a look of slight disgust on her face. ‘Would you like me to serve you lunch?’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘One o’clock. Shall I serve up?’

  ‘What did you cook?’

  She huffed. ‘Roast chicken and cornbread. That was all you had.’

  ‘That’s fine, thanks.’

  ‘There’s no food left, señora.’

  ‘I’ll tell Michel to do a shop for me.’

  ‘This came for you.’ Glenda took an envelope out of the front pocket of her apron and held it out. Inés opened it: it was another invitation from Susana. The following day she was having a get-together to celebrate the Day of Our Lady of Carmen. Glenda was still standing there, looking disdainful, her hand furtively covering her nose.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Inés asked her.

  ‘Nothing.’ Glenda went into the kitchen and immediately returned with a tray that must have been sitting there, ready to bring out. She put it down on the table: anaemic chicken with a congealed yellow mass next to it. It all looked cold and dry. Inés felt like she was going to throw up: she put a napkin to her mouth to cover the sound of the acidic belch that burned her throat. This had been happening to her since she had drunk those whiskies at the condo, a couple of days ago.

  ‘I guess you know I won’t be coming in until Tuesday, señora’, said Glenda, who was still standing there, stiff as a corpse.