Humiliation. Paulina Flores
She looked at the girl, at her head tilted up at the sky, her eyes always fixed on nothing.
“My things are upstairs,” Claudia replied.
“Go get them,” he said, caressing his daughter’s hair. “We’ll wait for you.” She looked him in the eye and immediately forgot herself, as she’d done so many times before. What time was it? Did she have something to do? Nothing mattered, she would dance in the palm of his hand.
“Sure. I’ll be right back.”
In the library she put her book and notebook in her backpack, and said goodbye to the musician who always sat next to her at the study table.
“Not feeling inspired?” he asked.
“No,” she replied. “I gave it a shot, but it wouldn’t come to me.” They both laughed, and she felt her face turn red.
When she came out of the library, the man was waiting for her already astride the bike. The girl was standing behind him, her arms around his shoulders, her belly swaying with straightforward delight, like the naturally sensual curvature of any plant stem.
They took a couple of turns around the park. There were adults and young people jogging, others walking their dogs or their children, schoolkids drinking and smoking in the grass, kids playing on playgrounds, older men and women trying out the municipal exercise machines. So much vitality! she thought, with nostalgia or excessive seriousness. She had played some of those roles in the past. She was at the age now when you’ve already done one thing and another.
The little girl had sat down on the rear rack and rested her head on the seat. He was guiding the bike from one side. Claudia walked beside him without saying a word. She wanted to know more, ask if the girl was his daughter, but she didn’t dare. She walked nervously, diminished. She didn’t even feel capable of turning her head a little to scan their faces or gestures for the answer to their relationship. It was as if they shone, as if it were dangerous to look directly at them. She also felt as if she were crossing a boundary, that she was finally acting in accord with the messages thrown into the sea. A man had told her once, “You waste the impulse, desire is fleeting.” She’d found his phrasing grandiloquent and replied that the problem was that it was never fully satisfied. Desire. But she said it to get him away from her, because she wasn’t sure about taking a risk on him. Maybe now she would manage to find out a little more. She began imagining what he would be like, how he would act, and then his voice interrupted her.
“And your name is . . .?”
“Teresa,” she said with a certain coldness. Without looking at him, and resuming the silence.
“And I’m Bruno,” he said with a hint of irony, showing her he was aware of all the things she was hiding.
A black dog approached them and started to bark. At her, not at the bicycle wheels, as dogs usually did. As she walked, it barked and followed her at a distance, with hatred, fearlessly.
Dogs bark at ghosts or thieves, she thought. Which was she?
“Why do dogs bark at you, Teresa?”
“They know I’m thinking bad thoughts.”
“That’s right, I’d forgotten dogs can tell that.”
“They’ve sort of forgotten, too.”
“Dogs just ain’t what they used to be,” he said. And then Claudia could finally look him in the eyes again. They were blue, and they sparkled.
The dog stayed behind with a pack of strays all sniffing one another. It barked one last time.
Claudia took out a cigarette and offered him the open pack.
“I don’t smoke in front of her.”
“Right.”
“You want to have onces with us? I live around the corner.” His tone was still decisive, but it didn’t sound calculated. Not entirely. If he had presumed to have total confidence in his suggestion, she would have left right away.
“Sure,” she said, and they began an awkward conversation.
“Where do you live?”
“Not so close.”
“Sure. What were you doing at the library?”
“Nothing.”
“Sure.”
“I was reading.”
“Reading what?”
“The civil code.” It was what almost everyone read at the library. It sounded realistic.
“Sure,” he said again.
They reached the door of an old building. “This part’s going to be a little harder,” said Bruno. “It’s on the fourth floor,” he added, hefting the bike with one hand and arching his eyebrows.
What was he doing with a bike, anyway? And if they lived so close, why had they gone to the bathroom at the library and not at their own apartment? Was that the whole point of the outing?
Above them shone the Monarch stockings sign. Neon shins. When she was little and took the bus with her mother, that sign had let her know that she was far from home. Seeing it had filled her heart with something like joy. She couldn’t remember at what point she’d grown up and realized that billboard was right in the center of Santiago. So ridiculously and inoffensively close.
The little girl held on to the bike while Bruno dug his keys from a pocket of his snug jeans, then opened the first door. There were two more to get into the building. In each doorway there was a sign that read, “Keep door closed. Crime prevention is every resident’s responsibility.” How dramatic, she thought. A slogan of the right.
The floor and stairs were green marble lined with gold metal; they were the best-conserved part of the building. The rest: a dark hallway with dirty walls, suspicious doors, broken glass.
The little girl went up first, wielding the keys, then Bruno with the bike. Claudia followed behind, taking care the back wheel didn’t hit her. After climbing the last step she found the door to apartment K open. She waited, indecisive, raising her hand to her mouth and biting a nail. She could still turn around and leave.
“Come on in,” he called from inside.
She did what she always did in such situations, which was repeat the advice she’d read in a horoscope when she was fifteen: “Leap into the unknown and have faith.” She took the next step.
Bruno’s voice called again from the next room: “You can leave your backpack there.”
She dropped it where she was standing. It didn’t seem to matter, given the apartment’s decoration: nonexistent. Except for a collapsible table, some plastic stools, a mirror, and two square wool mattresses on the floor, there was nothing there. No photos or pictures, no ornaments, no waste. It was disconcerting that a guy who seemed so concerned about his appearance would live in an empty house. And it intrigued and astonished her in equal measure. She wondered who he really was, who the two of them were.
The walls were high, with rounded moldings. The only window in the living room looked out onto the building’s inner courtyard. It didn’t let much light in, and the view consisted of clothes and towels hung out to dry on the balconies of neighbors across the way.
Above the mattresses, some numbers were written on the wall. They looked like a phone number. Scratches on the parquet floor bore witness to furniture that had once been there, and was dragged away.
For a second she thought Bruno would shout from the other room that they’d just moved in. Although in any case that wasn’t the answer she was looking for, and it wouldn’t explain the apartment’s enigmatic precariousness. Despite the lack of personal expression, and the fact that there wasn’t a single object that would give a clue about the person or people who inhabited the space, she got the feeling