lots of nightmares all together, each worse than the last. Aída appears in almost all of them. I wet the bed, I can’t help it.
In the morning, Jaime asks me whether I want to bring my things here, to be more comfortable. Don’t I need them? No, I tell him, I’m fine like this. Jaime insists. He says he could bring the pick-up and help me. I don’t have any things, I say and he doesn’t ask again.
ELEVEN
The Judicial Morgue is in Calle Viamonte, behind the School of Economic Sciences. I present myself at the entrance. A thin policeman tells me without looking at me that I have to wait. Until someone from the court arrives. I ask him whether he can’t tell someone I’m here anyway. There’s nothing to tell. He also asks me, this time to my face, still not looking me in the eye, but addressing me to my face, to wait in the street so as not to get in the way. I oblige.
Others who, like me, must be here to identify a corpse, file past under my nose: alone, in groups of two or three or four, depending on the circumstances, civilians or police officers, some hurried, some sorrowful, some embarrassed. Silent accomplices to the situation, some ignore me, while others look directly at me, by chance or on purpose, wondering: what is she doing? What’s she waiting for? Who can have died?
An old woman with tinted tortoiseshell glasses, the kind that are coming back into fashion, gets out of a patrol car with the help of a fat man who takes her arm. He is wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. She approaches in slow motion, pausing at a lamp post close to my shoulder to catch her breath. Wait here a moment, I’ll be back in a tick, says the fat man, but the woman pays no attention to him. Very faint, fine lines cover her face, like a teenager who’s been up all night. She exaggerates a noisy sigh, to attract my attention. I look at her. She’s waiting anxiously for me to say something. She speaks first.
‘This is hell. Could someone tell me when this damned summer is going to end? And they say that winter will be even worse. And to top it all …’
The old woman unfolds her arms to her sides, as far as her well-used joints allow, in a gesture of complaint. She takes a deep breath and continues.
‘They tell me I’ve got to be strong because the body has decomposed quite a bit … it was in the flat for almost a week without them realising …’
The old woman leaves a deliberate, dramatic pause. Then she becomes anxious and speaks again, her voice scratchy and rather sinister:
‘Apparently the poor thing suffocated on her own vomit,’ she says and squeezes my wrist as if to say something else, something that she swallows at the last minute, when the fat man appears and takes her arm. The sun is burning my forehead, I feel ridiculous.
Yasky arrived forty-five minutes late. He apologises twice and adds laconically, by way of explanation:
‘Such terrible weather.’
I don’t understand how he can wear a jacket in this heat. A fat file is squeezed under his armpit, a lawsuit. I wonder what the brief could be.
The corridors of the morgue are much less gloomy than I expected. In fact, they’re quite the opposite, a strange hybrid of a hospital and a university on a quiet day. The walls have been painted recently; they shine.
Yasky walks briskly, his fleshy body swaying, and I follow close behind. Now that I can see him properly, Yasky is just an ordinary guy, sometimes refined, sometimes distinctly average, the type who likes collecting things in his spare time, by era: stamps, vinyl records, pornography.
‘We’ve been given an impossible case,’ he reveals, without looking at me. ‘Three bodies, no weapon, no motive. A whole family.’
We stop in front of a door with a bronze plaque with the word Administration marked out in relief. Yasky knocks twice, there’s no immediate response. He turns slightly and contrives a kind of quick smile, out of obligation, or nerves. The door opens and the
In the morning, Jaime asks me whether I want to bring my things here, to be more comfortable. Don’t I need them? No, I tell him, I’m fine like this. Jaime insists. He says he could bring the pick-up and help me. I don’t have any things, I say and he doesn’t ask again.
ELEVEN
The Judicial Morgue is in Calle Viamonte, behind the School of Economic Sciences. I present myself at the entrance. A thin policeman tells me without looking at me that I have to wait. Until someone from the court arrives. I ask him whether he can’t tell someone I’m here anyway. There’s nothing to tell. He also asks me, this time to my face, still not looking me in the eye, but addressing me to my face, to wait in the street so as not to get in the way. I oblige.
Others who, like me, must be here to identify a corpse, file past under my nose: alone, in groups of two or three or four, depending on the circumstances, civilians or police officers, some hurried, some sorrowful, some embarrassed. Silent accomplices to the situation, some ignore me, while others look directly at me, by chance or on purpose, wondering: what is she doing? What’s she waiting for? Who can have died?
An old woman with tinted tortoiseshell glasses, the kind that are coming back into fashion, gets out of a patrol car with the help of a fat man who takes her arm. He is wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. She approaches in slow motion, pausing at a lamp post close to my shoulder to catch her breath. Wait here a moment, I’ll be back in a tick, says the fat man, but the woman pays no attention to him. Very faint, fine lines cover her face, like a teenager who’s been up all night. She exaggerates a noisy sigh, to attract my attention. I look at her. She’s waiting anxiously for me to say something. She speaks first.
‘This is hell. Could someone tell me when this damned summer is going to end? And they say that winter will be even worse. And to top it all …’
The old woman unfolds her arms to her sides, as far as her well-used joints allow, in a gesture of complaint. She takes a deep breath and continues.
‘They tell me I’ve got to be strong because the body has decomposed quite a bit … it was in the flat for almost a week without them realising …’
The old woman leaves a deliberate, dramatic pause. Then she becomes anxious and speaks again, her voice scratchy and rather sinister:
‘Apparently the poor thing suffocated on her own vomit,’ she says and squeezes my wrist as if to say something else, something that she swallows at the last minute, when the fat man appears and takes her arm. The sun is burning my forehead, I feel ridiculous.
Yasky arrived forty-five minutes late. He apologises twice and adds laconically, by way of explanation:
‘Such terrible weather.’
I don’t understand how he can wear a jacket in this heat. A fat file is squeezed under his armpit, a lawsuit. I wonder what the brief could be.
The corridors of the morgue are much less gloomy than I expected. In fact, they’re quite the opposite, a strange hybrid of a hospital and a university on a quiet day. The walls have been painted recently; they shine.
Yasky walks briskly, his fleshy body swaying, and I follow close behind. Now that I can see him properly, Yasky is just an ordinary guy, sometimes refined, sometimes distinctly average, the type who likes collecting things in his spare time, by era: stamps, vinyl records, pornography.
‘We’ve been given an impossible case,’ he reveals, without looking at me. ‘Three bodies, no weapon, no motive. A whole family.’
We stop in front of a door with a bronze plaque with the word Administration marked out in relief. Yasky knocks twice, there’s no immediate response. He turns slightly and contrives a kind of quick smile, out of obligation, or nerves. The door opens and the
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