Read Online A Crack in the Wall by Claudia Piñeiro - Free Book Online Page B

out when compared to other buildings.”
    â€œNo, no,” she interrupts, “I’m just looking for the five façades that you like best.”
    â€œAnd what value is there in someone liking something?” Pablo asks.
    â€œIt’s important to me that somebody likes the photos I take,” she says.
    â€œThat doesn’t give them a value. My mother liked the house of an aunt who lived in San Martín and I can assure you that the house was a veritable eyesore.”
    â€œBut you are not your mother, you are somebody presumed to know about architecture. If these buildings have your approval, that’s enough for me.”
    â€œIt shouldn’t be enough, though,” Pablo insists. “You shouldn’t be content with somebody else’s taste. Taste isn’t objective – you’d never catch an art critic saying that he likes a painting, or a literary critic saying he likes a novel.”
    Pablo feels anxious. He realizes that in his cowardly insistence on precision and objectivity he’s in danger of losing an opportunity to see Leonor again. In fact, how much does it really matter what values a building has, what the architectural features are that make it stand out in the middle of a fast-expanding city, or even whether or not he likes it, when set against another chance to see this girl whose voice is dancing down the line? The chance to see Leonor again. But a chance in what sense, exactly? What is he thinking of? Simply of an opportunity to ask the girl those questions Borla wants answered, he tells himself, rescuing his line of thought from its deviant course. The answer placates him and he tells her:
    â€œVery well, if you need five building façades, I shall find you five building façades. I don’t know if they will be the ones I like best, but at least they will be worth photographing. Does that sound good?”
    â€œFantastic. Which would they be, then?”
    Her clamour for instant answers takes him aback. He searches his mind as if riffling through a mental card-index, agile fingers flicking through the entries, but whenever the fingers alight on one and pluck it out, the card is blank. Either nothing’s written on it, or what was written therehas been crossed, torn or rubbed out. So he tries to think of an excuse.
    â€œI’d like to take a bit of time before making my selection. There are too many buildings in Buenos Aires with different virtues” – did he really say virtues? – “and it’s not that easy to choose just five. When do you need this by?”
    â€œWell, I have to go out and take the photos by Saturday at the latest, so I haven’t got very long to get the project together. I have to hand it in the next week. I think that, so long as you can let me know your favourites by Saturday, there’s enough time. Or even better,” Leonor says, and then asks in that rock-leaping voice, “Would you like to come with me?”
    â€œWhere to?” he asks her, like an idiot.
    â€œTo take the photos,” she says, laughing.
    â€œI don’t know if I’d be able to this Saturday,” he says and a picture comes to mind of him and Laura doing their fortnightly shop in the hypermarket where they go every other Saturday. “I’ll let you know whether or not I can go with you nearer the time,” he says, and he feels something intangible when he says the words “go with you”. “Call me the day after tomorrow, and if I can’t go along I promise to have the addresses of the five buildings you need ready by then.”
    â€œGreat,” she says.
    â€œIs that a plan, then?” he asks.
    There’s a brief silence on the line, which worries him.
    â€œHello?” Pablo says.
    â€œYes, yes, I’m here,” Leonor answers. “I was just thinking.”
    â€œWhat about?”
    â€œShall I tell you?”
    â€œYes, of course.”
    â€œI was