Among Strange Victims (6 page)

I switch on the
TV
just to feel its noisy presence, which seems to be adding backing vocals to the gas sellers' cries, confirming my theory about Mexico and the decibels of noncommunication. The picture is fuzzy: the rabbit-ear antenna has been broken for a couple of months. I make a mental note to do something about it later on, although I suspect, given my idleness, this “later on” could become several months. The sound of the television, in contrast, issues relatively sharply from the speakers. A woman with an unpleasant voice is announcing the winners of a competition and silencing any form of declaration on their part with her laughter of feigned enthusiasm. Despite all this, I leave the
TV
switched on and sit on the bed to look out the window, to watch the dark clouds looming over the vacant lot. Then it occurs to me that if it rains, the hen, that uncomplicated friend who has been clucking among the shadows for the last two weeks, will die of cold or the famous flu—the ailment that returns periodically to the front pages of the world's newspapers. It is indeed the first time rain has threatened in the whole year, and I can't let a storm do away with the local biodiversity, including its wildlife.

Disposed to save the hen's life, I decide to construct a shelter for it from a small wooden table I never use for anything. “Wrapped in plastic shopping bags, the table will make a good place of refuge for the hen,” I think. When I've finished my task and the table is covered with the impermeable material, I realize I haven't considered the next step: how to get its new home, its planned refuge, to the animal. I dismiss the possibility of entering the lot in person since the distance from my window is too great—I live on the second floor—for me to drop down from here, and I don't want to get into arguments by climbing the wall from the street like some errant drug addict. Only one idea occurs to me: if I had a rope, a fairly long piece of rope, using the appropriate knots, I could lower the table from my window into the vacant lot and position it right on top of the pile of sand by the wall of my building.

As far as I can see, there are a two problems: how to get the rope back once the table is in place, since there would be no one down there to untie it. The other matter still to be considered is how to let the hen know it should shelter under the table when the rain starts. This second issue is the most difficult to resolve, as it involves a question my encyclopedia of biology doesn't address. I have little faith in the animal's instincts, and its mental powers don't inspire much confidence, either: the hen, while I ponder its means of salvation, continues as usual, walking around in semicircles and pecking the ground, possibly more quietly now, hardly giving a cluck, perhaps intuiting, via some not just avian but—to cap it all—feminine sixth sense, that her—she's female, after all—luck might change at any moment.

A third problem hinders my progress: I haven't got any rope. I've looked all over the apartment, and the only vaguely similar thing I've found is an electrical extension cord that isn't long enough. I should leave my Saturday seclusion and find a hardware store to buy a good four or even five yards of strong rope, but to tell the truth, the idea doesn't appeal to me, given the possibility that it's going to rain soon. So I decide to throw the table out the window, hoping it doesn't break on impact, then, from the sidewalk, climb the wall surrounding the lot, overcoming my fear of public opprobrium, and position the table in the correct place. If anyone sees me
climbing into the lot, I can always say that, due to some difficult-to-explain mishap, a small table wrapped in plastic bags fell from my window, and I'm trying to retrieve it. However unlikely the story sounds, the table will be there in the undergrowth as undeniable proof of my tale.

I proceed as planned. I throw the table out the window and, to my surprise, it doesn't break. With this happy confirmation, and seeing how sturdy the table is, I think that maybe I should have kept or sold it. But no, the table is no longer a table but a fortified rainy-season refuge for hens, and it is my duty to go down to the vacant lot and position it correctly.

Outside, standing by the lot, I scan the street for cops or curious idlers who might shout out when I climb over the wall, but the streets are empty and only the noise of a distant airplane disturbs the charged air of this Saturday. “The rain will wash everything clean,” I think. Before that, of course, I have to save the hen. I jump lightly up onto the wall (feeling myself infinitely more agile than I'd expected), and once perched atop it, I look down; I don't want the hen to be passing underneath when I decide to jump and, in my rescue bid, end up killing her (this possibility brings to mind Chinese sayings about the wisdom of immobility). But I jump down toward the weeds and land on solid earth. Now inside the lot, I decide to take a look around to get a detailed idea of all the things I've so far only seen from my window, so I carefully make my way through the shrubs, managing to step on the protruding stones and avoiding the areas littered with trash.

In a clearing in the thicket—to use the very widest possible acceptance of the term—in the middle of the lot, I discover a supermarket bag. The central location of this object seems to me deliberate, in contrast to the random placement of the ordinary bags people toss over from the sidewalk, so I go to inspect its contents. The bag is tied with a tight knot, but there's a hole in one side and I decide to examine it. Something seems to be leaking out, and as I peer into the hole I see that it's an organ, something like a cow's intestines, dripping blood and crawling with maggots. As if my sense of smell had, until that moment, been blocked, I suddenly note the strong stench of putrefaction and feel revolted. It's a repugnant sight, and everything
becomes tinged in a violet tone, like in a splatter movie. My visual field registers a hyperbolic, astringent disquiet. I run back toward the wall and with the same agility, if not with equal prudence, leap. On the other side, across the street, two women under a flowered umbrella are staring at me in astonishment. My expression can't have inspired much confidence in them, because they drop their eyes, walk more quickly, and turn off at the first corner. I drop down into the street and, just as quickly, go back into my building.

Later on it starts to rain heavily. I think the table discarded in the vacant lot will be ruined by the water. I avoid looking out the window for the rest of the day. I also avoid thinking about the hen.

8

Since Saturday I haven't been able to get the image of the entrails poking through the supermarket bag out of my head. The strength of that memory, its persistent purity, is such that I haven't even felt like having my black tea after work, and my collection of tea bags stapled to the wall has stopped growing. And neither have I gone down to the bathroom in the museum with lascivious intentions to unfold my pornographic magazine clipping, nor listened to the clucking of the hen in the adjacent vacant lot. I imagine, mournfully, that she has died of pneumonia.

I write letters. I compose the speech Isabel Watkins is going to give tomorrow to a group of bureaucrats from the Ministry of Culture. Every so often I slip the odd exaggeration into the speech that will show up my boss before the most widely read in the audience but be, otherwise, simply epic, even worthy of applause. Things like “while we are working, we must not, for a single second, forget that the word
museum
should return to its etymological roots, evoking the Muses.” I consider putting in something even more stupid but am afraid of being fired. I imagine Ms. Watkins reading the speech, her technical pauses, her expression of frustration and terror when she gets to a line that says, “And for this reason, we have
decided to knock down all the walls, even if it means a lawsuit with the Commission for Historic Buildings, and convert the museum into a place of sexual diversion, over which I will preside as the Matron Superior.” But no, I can't write that, nor can Ms. Watkins read it tomorrow to the bureaucrats, all of them prepared to be bored until she comes down from the platform and they're able to take a discreet look down her plunging neckline.

Rapt in these perverse thoughts, I don't realize that, momentarily, a grim smile has twisted my lips. Cecilia, the secretary, looks at me distrustfully from her desk. Her expression shakes me out of the state of deep abstraction into which I had sunk, and I feel as if a great noise has suddenly been silenced. I have the sense of having spoken aloud but can't say if that sensation has any manifestation in interpersonal reality. Apparently not, since only Cecilia has her disapproving eyes fixed on me, while my other colleagues are getting along with their routine tasks, almost without noticing me.

This happens to me sometimes: I come back—as if from a distant, parallel world—and have no idea if I've spent a long while in silence or absentmindedly speaking aloud. The sensation doesn't generally have a high enough level of reality to alarm me, but at times like this one, the fine line between what I imagine and what exists is blurred and I panic.

Cecilia has stopped staring at me because Ms. Watkins has called her into her office. To respond to this call, the secretary has to pass very close to my desk as the space is limited and I'm the one who is nearest to the director (physically, that is, because in relation to this institution's organigram of power, there are only two levels: Ms. Watkins and everyone else). As she approaches me, Cecilia turns as if to make sure no one is looking and leaves a folded note on my desk, giving me, as she does so, a suddenly complicit, deeply disconcerting smile. Wasn't she some sort of working-life nemesis, perpetually embittered and ready to do her all to ruin the day of any fellow employee, especially me? The note lies there before me on the desk, and Cecilia is already in Ms. Watkins's office, but I don't dare read its message.

9