Please Talk to Me: Selected Stories

A QUESTION OF DELICACY

Señora Brun had almost finished getting ready to visit her friend Silvina when she noticed a little water coming from the spout in the bidet. She tried firmly closing the taps, but that didn’t help. Then she opened them fully so as to close them again with more force, but no matter how hard she tightened them, hot water kept jetting out, now with enough pressure almost to reach the rim. She tried opening and closing the hot water tap again, to no avail: the flow was undiminished. Now the floor was wet and the bathroom full of steam and she herself was soaked so that there was no option but to turn off the hot water at the stopcock, change her clothes, and set about finding a plumber.

Not easy. The one who usually came to her house had jobs lined up for the next three days; the one the Neighbours’ Association used couldn’t come until the following afternoon. Finally, a plumber whose number was given her by the doorman in the building next along said he could be there in half an hour.

Señora Brun went downstairs to ask the doorman if the plumber was trustworthy.

‘I don’t know him, Señora,’ said the porter. ‘But these days you can’t even trust your own mother.’

That was hardly reassuring but what choice did she have? She rang her friend Silvina and explained the setback.

‘It’s probably nothing and I can come later on,’ she said.

As a precaution, she locked away her wallet and jewellery; she also rang her husband to tell him about the incident and to let him know that an unknown plumber was about to come to the house. Her husband would know what to do if anything untoward should happen.

The plumber, a wiry man in his fifties, arrived half an hour later, as promised. To Señora Brun’s consternation, he wasn’t alone, but accompanied by a large youth with long curly hair gathered in a pony-tail.

‘Oh I didn’t realise you would need to bring an assistant,’ she said, very pleasantly. ‘It’s such a simple little job…’

‘We haven’t seen it yet, Señora,’ the plumber said curtly.

He seems rather short-fused, Señora Brun thought. She led both the men to the bathroom and explained the problem.

‘Where’s the stopcock?’ asked the plumber.

‘Do you need to open it?’ The plumber’s expression was withering. ‘Of course, of course, bear with me,’ she said quickly, ‘I’ll go and do it.’

She went to the kitchen and opened the stopcock. Water started gushing out again. The assistant was turning something with a kind of spanner while the plumber gave him instructions.

‘Oh dear, the whole bathroom’s getting wet,’ Señora Brun said.

‘It’s water, Señora,’ said the plumber. ‘It will dry.’

She sighed.

‘Do you think that…?’

‘Now we need to turn off the stopcock,’ said the plumber.

She ran to the kitchen, turned it off and came back.

‘I’ll need a cloth,’ said the plumber.

She went to look for a cloth. When she came back with it the plumber was working. ‘Dry this up a bit,’ he said to the assistant. To Señora Brun he said, ‘It’s the washer in the hot water tap, but the transfer valve is broken, too. Did you know that it was broken?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s always worked perfectly.’

‘Perfectly?’ said the plumber. ‘Could you switch from the central spout to the side jets?’

‘No, not really.’

‘So it wasn’t working perfectly. It’s the transfer valve.’

‘And will it take long to fix?’

‘About half an hour. But I am going to need to turn the stopcock on and off a few times. It’s probably better if you tell me where it is.’

The plumber’s brusque manner made her uncomfortable but she decided that it would be better not to put up any opposition. You never know, with these people, she thought that she would say to Silvina when she recounted the incident later on, and she led him to the kitchen. She waited. The plumber opened the stopcock, shouted something to his assistant, who shouted a reply, then closed it again.

‘Shall I go with you to the bathroom?’ asked Señora Brun.

The plumber looked coldly at her.

‘I think I know the way,’ he said.

She waited for him to walk away then went to the study from where she could at least see the bathroom door. She felt like ringing her friend Silvina to tell her how unpleasant the plumber was but finally decided that it would be better not to call: with the door open the men were sure to overhear her and if she closed it she wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on the bathroom door. One doesn’t want to be on top of them, she pictured herself saying to Silvina; I don’t like to keep monitoring people as they go about their work, but this plumber is such an odd character, and bringing that assistant, too — tell me, did the man really need to bring an assistant? You should have seen how he insisted on being the one to control the stopcock — what was I supposed to say? So now I’ve got him here, wandering around my house as if he owned the place.

She went to the bathroom.

‘How’s it going?’ she asked cheerfully.

‘Well,’ said the plumber. ‘It’s nearly done.’

‘Oh, thank goodness. I’ll have time to visit my friend, then. She’s laid up with a sprained ankle, poor thing.’

Neither the plumber nor his assistant had anything to say about that, so Señora Brun waited a little before deciding to go to her bedroom to get her clothes ready: she was going to change as soon as the plumber left so that she could go straightaway to her friend Silvina’s house. She took the earrings she was going to wear out of her jewellery box and it was at that moment that she remembered the chain with the teardrop pendant: she had left it in the bathroom cabinet as she always did before getting into the shower. She tried not to panic: there was no reason why the plumber would open the cabinet.

She went to the bathroom and paused in the doorway, not wanting to appear anxious.

‘So, everything all right?’ she asked. ‘You’re nearly finished?’

‘That’s right, Señora,’ said the plumber.

‘And is it home for a rest after this?’

‘Not yet,’ said the assistant.

‘What a difficult job,’ said Señora Brun, ‘always some last-minute emergency. Could you excuse me a moment? I need to get something.’

She stepped into the bathroom and opened the cabinet. A shiver of fear ran through her body: the teardrop wasn’t there. Helplessly she glanced around her to see if it had been left on the vanity top or on a shelf or sill. Nothing. On the floor? Nothing.

‘Oh no,’ she cried involuntarily.

The plumber looked at her.

‘Is something wrong?’ he asked.

‘No nothing, I just suddenly remembered something,’ she said, and went out of the bathroom.

Of course I am sure, she imagined herself telling her friend Silvina, I always put it there before I have a shower (but just in case, she was checking her jewellery box, the chest of drawers, the bedside table). I make a point of putting it into the cabinet so that it can’t fall down the drain — imagine how awful that would be, a three-carat diamond. No of course I don’t wear it every day, do you think I’m mad, with all the insecurity there is these days? I keep it for special occasions and only if I’m going out with Ricardo. That’s precisely the reason I wear it at home, where there are no risks. Otherwise when would I ever wear it? And I adore that teardrop.

She had looked in every conceivable place without finding it. What should she do now? Obviously I can’t march up to him and say ‘you stole my teardrop,’ she imagined herself saying to Silvina. It’s a question of delicacy, you know, one can’t simply accuse someone of being a thief, without any proof. Besides, his character is quite… What if he sees red and thumps me on the head? Things could turn really nasty. And there are two of them; I’m lying there unconscious and in five minutes they clean out the house and no one will be any the wiser.

Señora Brun was standing in the middle of the hall, wondering how she ought to proceed; generally she favoured a delicate approach, but she couldn’t allow the plumber to walk off with her diamond just like that. Most likely the man wasn’t actually a professional burglar: he had spotted it in the cabinet, realised that it was valuable and pocketed it there and then. At that moment Señora Brun began to see a clear course of action: she must give the man an opportunity to return it. She let out a scream. The plumber had suddenly appeared before her eyes.

‘Where are you going!’ she shouted at him.

The man stared at her with surprise.

‘To open the stopcock,’ he said.

‘Ah yes, of course, I’m sorry: my mind was somewhere else,’ said Señora Brun.

She walked towards the bathroom thinking over what she was going to say. The boy with the curly hair was fiddling with the diverter tap.

‘Turn it on,’ she heard the plumber shout from the kitchen.

The boy turned the hot water tap. Water flowed out in a respectable stream. He turned the diverter tap: water came up from underneath. He turned it off: the flow of water stopped.

‘Isn’t that wonderful,’ said Señora Brun. She pretended to be looking for something on the vanity top.

‘Everything in order?’ asked the plumber, who had just come into the bathroom.

‘Yes,’ said the boy.

‘Oh my God!’ cried Señora Brun. The plumber and the boy both looked at her. ‘I could swear I left it right here,’ she said, in an anguished tone; she waited for them to ask her to elaborate, but no. ‘I’m so absent-minded, it’s terrible. I don’t suppose either of you has seen a little pendant on the countertop?’

Both of the men said that they had not.

‘Oh, I could shoot myself! It has enormous sentimental value for me. My husband gave it to me when we got married. It had been his mother’s, poor thing, she died so young.’

‘Could you have left it somewhere else, Señora?’ asked the plumber, a little impatiently.

‘No, I’m sure I didn’t.’

‘Well, you can have a good look for it in a moment,’ said the plumber. ‘We’re finished here.’

The man’s got no shame, Señora Brun imagined telling her friend Silvina, but she had already thought this all out; the important thing was to give them an opportunity to return the necklace.

‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘it couldn’t have fallen down the plug in the basin, could it?’

‘If you’re asking can it, then yes it could,’ he said. ‘It all depends on the size.’

‘It was very small,’ Señora Brun said quickly. After all, if the man had it in his possession he was hardly going to say ‘no, Señora, I happen to know that it’s enormous.’

‘Well then it could,’ said the plumber.

‘Would you be so kind as to have a look? I can make you both a coffee in the meantime.’

The plumber exchanged a glance with his assistant that did not escape Señora Brun’s eye.

‘Something cold will do fine, Señora,’ said the plumber.

She went off to the kitchen. It was a shrewd move on her part to leave them alone, she felt. The thing was to give them time. If they weren’t professional thieves maybe they would feel remorseful and when she returned with the drinks would say, Here it is; it was in the drain.

‘And?’ she said, returning with the drinks.

The man had taken the little grille out of the plughole in the basin.

‘I can’t see anything there,’ he said.

‘But what a disaster!’ said Señora Brun. ‘Please tell me it hasn’t completely disappeared.’

The plumber looked at her with open hostility.

‘No Señora,’ he said. ‘Nothing can disappear completely in this world.’

‘So it must be somewhere,’ said Señora Brun.

‘Evidently,’ said the plumber; he looked at his watch.

‘Where?’ asked Señora Brun. ‘Where do you think it could be?’

‘Well if it was washed down the drain it could be in the trap.’

‘Oh, and couldn’t you have a look there?’

‘Look where?’ asked the plumber.

‘In the trap.’

The plumber heaved a sigh.

‘It can be done, Señora. But it means removing the whole basin unit.’

‘Never mind,’ said Señora Brun. ‘You can’t imagine how important that little necklace is to me. I would be so grateful.’

‘Señora, let’s get this straight: you don’t have to be grateful to me. I’ll do what you ask and then I’ll charge you for it. It’s my job.’

‘Of course, of course it’s your job. That goes without saying. I’ll keep out of your way. Take out everything that you need to. It’ll probably turn up when you’re least expecting it. I’ll be close by. If you need me, give me a shout.’

And what else could I do, she imagined herself telling her friend Silvina, once things had got to that point — I had to give them one last chance, didn’t I? Besides, the man looked like he wanted to wring my neck… One never knows how these people are going to react.

She paced anxiously between the study and the living room, listening to the banging. She was dying to go into the bathroom, but no: she had to give them time to talk about it together, to reconsider: she had read somewhere that even the worst criminals are capable of some feeling.

When the noise of banging had stopped, she went into the bathroom: her beautiful vanity counter with its marble top was on the floor and there were holes in the tiles.

Señora Brun pressed her palms together, as though in prayer.

‘Please tell me you found it,’ she said.

‘Unfortunately not, Señora,’ said the plumber.

She was furious then; this was going beyond a joke, she thought.

‘But that’s impossible!’ she said severely. ‘I left it here, on this countertop! Look again, carefully — it must be somewhere!’

‘Yes, certainly. It’s got to be somewhere,’ the plumber said calmly.

The man’s perverse, Señora Brun thought that she would tell her friend Silvina; he obviously enjoys tormenting me, but I’m not giving in so easily.

‘So, what would you suggest as a solution?’ she said.

The plumber, now without the slightest dissemblance, fixed Señora Brun with a cold, cruel stare.

‘We can rip up the bathroom until we reach the drain box, if you like, to see in which section of piping your little pendant finally appears.’

He wants to kill me, Señora Brun thought. He looked at me with the eyes of a murderer, she imagined herself telling her friend Silvina, and I realised that if I tried to cross him, he would kill me.

‘Yes, rip it up, rip it up,’ she said. ‘If you can guarantee me that my pendant’s going to turn up.’

‘Yes, Señora, it’s going to turn up,’ said the plumber with a controlled savagery. ‘Sooner or later everything turns up.’

Señora Brun looked at him fearfully.

‘But what if you don’t find it even then?’ she asked in desperation.

The plumber fixed his eyes on her.

‘If we get down to the drain box and still don’t find it, do you know what we can do?’ He paused. Kill you, Señora Brun thought the plumber would say. ‘We can carry on ripping things up until we reach the river. Because, if it isn’t here, it must be in the river, right? The important thing is to find your little pendant.’

‘The river, yes you’re right, the river,’ said Señora Brun, drunk on her own terror. ‘If it’s not here it’s bound to turn up in the river,’ she was surreptitiously edging towards the door. ‘Rip it up, please, go down as far as the river. But quietly, please, very quietly because I’m going to have a nap. Help yourselves to drinks. My husband will pay you when he gets back.’

As she closed her bedroom door the banging started. Señora Brun took a sleeping pill and stretched out on the bed. In the moment she lay down her head she remembered that she had hidden the diamond teardrop there, under the pillow, hurriedly because the plumber had rung the doorbell just as she was taking it out of the jewellery box. It was a fact that, if the teardrop was there, her husband would never understand the need to rip up the bathroom, so she got up, went out onto the balcony, and threw the pendant far enough away that it would never be found. She wondered whether she would tell her friend Silvina this.

The banging was getting louder and louder, so before lying down again, she put in earplugs. Now they could smash things up as much as they wanted. Until they reached the drain box, or until they reached the river, or until nothing remained, not one stone upon another, of the safe and comfortable world Señora Brun had enjoyed.