Shantytown

IV

From the fifth floor, Jessica had seen Vanessa crying by the phone and this made her so curious that she went back to the kitchen to question her mother. What had Vanessa said when she called? Why did she want the name of the people on the third floor?

“How should I know?” said her mother, who was making stuffed zucchinis. “I already told you I didn’t ask. I gave her the name and she hung up.”

“And how do you know their name?”

Just the sort of question a teenager would ask: she was so absorbed in her own little world she couldn’t imagine how anyone would know the neighbors’ names.

“But darling, why wouldn’t I? We’ve been here fifteen years. I always have a chat with the lady when I see her downstairs or in the elevator. .”

“And you asked her name?”

“Of course not, but it’s on the list of co-proprietors, the bills, her mail, lots of places. You just end up knowing these things in a condo; it’s not like you have to investigate.”

“Which one is she?”

“Huh?”

“That lady, the one from the third floor.”

“You must have seen her thousands of times; she’s the one with wavy, dyed-red hair, who walks slowly and always wears really high heels.” Jessica tried to place her, but couldn’t. Her mother sighed: it was hopeless. “She’s called Élida, her husband’s a fat, pasty-faced guy with glasses. They have a white Duna, and their carport is right next to ours.”

“Cars are all the same to me.”

“You should pay more attention.”

“And why did Vanessa want their name?”

“Where’s your head?! How many times do I have to tell you I don’t know!” Jessica’s mother regretted this outburst immediately. But the girl was trying her patience with those childlike questions. “Call her and ask.”

“But we’re not talking.”

“Well, she called you.”

“No. She called you.”

“No. She called you. She said: Is Jessica in? I said: No, she’s gone out. She’ll be back in a minute. Ah, she said, Can you do me a favor then? The people who live on the third floor in your building, what’s their name? Gandulla, I said. And then she hung up straight away. I’ve got no idea why she wanted to know!”

“Maybe to look up the name in the directory and call them.”

“What directory? The telephone directory? Yes, maybe. But no. Because I didn’t give her the first name, just the surname, and there must be lots of Gandullas in the directory.”

They thought about this for a while. Jessica shook her head despondently, but then a possibility occurred to her mother:

“She could have used the address.”

“How do you mean used the address?” asked Jessica. “Are there addresses in the directory?”

“Yes. Haven’t you ever noticed? You’re so vague, it’s incredible.”

“But if she was using the address to find the number, why did she need the name?”

Her mother took a deep mental breath and explained:

“In the directory the names are arranged in alphabetical order. She found the name Gandulla, then she looked for the Gandulla who lives at this address. Do you get it now?”

“Yes.”

“Anyway, you’re just guessing that she looked in the directory. Maybe she wasn’t trying to call them; maybe she needed the name for some other reason.”

“No! She must have called them! I saw her crying like anything right next to the phone.”

Jessica’s mother turned to look at her, intrigued.

“Seriously?”

“Yes! She was crying with her face in her hands, like this.”

“How do you know she was crying? You saw her from across the street, through the windows, with all the reflections. How can you be so sure? Maybe she was laughing.”

“No, I know her.” Her tone of voice had changed, as if a thought had occurred to her. Jessica’s mother noticed this; she knew her daughter well. She also knew that there was no point trying to make her say what it was. Meanwhile, she’d had a thought of her own. To get the lay of the land, she said:

“Maybe she wanted to tell them that something had fallen onto their balcony or that something was hanging out a window, or whatever. Something she’d noticed. I mean she does live directly opposite, on the same floor. .”

Jessica was lost in her own thoughts and it took her a while to process this conjecture. But her reaction, when it came, was impatient:

“No. What would she care? Why would that make her cry?”

“Maybe they were rude to her on the phone. It’s awful when you’re just trying to help and someone tells you to mind your own business.”

“Come on, Mom, that makes no sense!”

Jessica’s mother concentrated on her zucchini for a moment. The sky had clouded over, and the light coming into the kitchen was gentler. The cream-colored tiles went right up to the ceiling and everything was tidy and spotlessly clean. Eventually she decided to say what she was thinking:

“Listen, Jessica, I don’t know what’s going on — you know I’ve never liked Vanessa — but I suspect she’s up to something.”

“Why?” said her daughter defensively, almost too defensively.

“You must have heard us, your father and I, talking about Mr. Gandulla (though you were probably daydreaming); anyway, this Gandulla, Élida’s husband, has a series of big properties scattered around Buenos Aires, and some evangelical church uses them for worship. One day your father tried to pump him, and he said he just rented the buildings to the ministers and had nothing to do with the church himself. But then he said that he was buying properties in strategic locations, and fitting them out, and that he also had a fleet of buses to transport the congregations, and houses and sports fields for church activities. So he’s involved; he’s not just renting a few properties. Did you know that?”

“No, I had no idea.”

“What about Vanessa?”

“No, no way.”

“But she might have found out and maybe that’s why she wanted to talk with the Gandullas.”

Jessica could not have been more completely or sincerely surprised. The mere idea that Vanessa might be taking an interest in religion left her speechless. But her mother still had an ace up her sleeve:

“What I’m thinking is, one of the church’s projects is a rehabilitation program for young addicts. They have at least two rehab farms on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. It’s supposed to be a charity, but who knows what kind of operation they’re really running out there. Mirta from the second floor is good friends with Élida, and she’s told me all sorts of things. For example: Gandulla is buddies with the superintendent at the police station across the street, so whenever they pick up kids on drugs they send them straight to one of those farms.”

“And what’s this got to do with Vanessa?”

“That’s what I’m wondering, darling. The state she was in when you saw her crying, it must be something serious. You don’t have any idea?”

“What? How would I know? You’re crazy! You never give up, do you?”

“I’m going to have a word with Vanessa’s mother and warn her. Next time I see her I’ll say something. . After all, I don’t know why you two aren’t talking anymore.”

Jessica got up and stormed out, yelling:

“I’ve had it up to here with you! Always sticking your nose in. .!”

She went to her bedroom, slammed the door behind her, rushed to the sliding glass doors that opened onto the balcony and looked out. The windows of Vanessa’s apartment were dark and empty. Since she was looking down from above, all she could see was a strip of floor. When their friendship had been running smoothly, Vanessa used to come to the window, and they would talk on the phone, looking at each other. The circumstances that had led to Jessica’s decision to go out shopping and therefore caused her to miss the call filled her now with an irrational hatred. She felt powerless in the face of time, paralyzed, yet deeply unsettled. It was almost as if her whole life had been one big mistake, and there was nothing she could do to correct it. Her mother’s suppositions weren’t even worth considering; they were too ridiculous, too fictional. She could make a better job of it and come up with something far more realistic: all she had to do was to think and react in her usual way, in other words, be herself. Because deep down she and Vanessa were the same: each was capable of anything the other one might do. And yet, strangely, when she set about testing this method of “being herself,” she didn’t feel herself at all.

Vanessa, she thought, had obviously wanted to talk to her. She’d been impelled by some mysterious but irresistible desire. Not because she wanted to make peace, or negotiate, or continue the quarrel with fresh accusations, but for some other reason unknown to Jessica (neither of them knew, nor could have known, what it was). When she hadn’t been able to get through, she’d made up any old excuse to justify the call, the first thing that came into her head: asking for the name of the neighbors on the third floor, whose apartment was right in front of her. And when she’d hung up and realized that the call had been a fiasco, she’d broken down crying. Jessica could understand that too, especially since she felt that she was about to burst into tears herself. None of it made any sense, even if she could make sense of it.

She was standing there looking at the façade of the building opposite. The two buildings were mirror images of each other. They had been built by the same construction company and were identical down to the last detail, not just on the outside, but in the internal layout of the apartments too. The balconies were full of plants, with big festoons of foliage spilling down to the balconies below. The windows reflected the building across the street: Vanessa’s building reflected Jessica’s, and vice versa. And an attentive observer with a sharp eye would no doubt have been able to see a reflection within the reflection, and so on ad infinitum, as with mirrors set up face to face.

To think that when Vanessa called, she was coming up in the elevator! It was such a close thing, a matter of seconds! And the way Vanessa had burst into tears, she knew the feeling exactly: an overwhelming surge made up of all the situation’s little details. That’s what life was always like: miniscule, intangible accidents combining to form an immense emotion bigger than life itself. And that was the transcendental justification for the girls’ notorious frivolity; if her mother had been able to understand this, she wouldn’t have had to come up with such far-fetched explanations.

Suddenly, Jessica’s heart stopped. Her breathing too, and her thinking. She froze like a movie still, pressed against the glass, all eyes. Across the street, on the third floor, Vanessa had appeared. When someone you’ve been thinking about intensely appears and is there in front of you, it seems incredible, at least for the first moment, before you begin to communicate, and the mind is otherwise occupied. On this occasion, however, there was no communication because Vanessa didn’t look at Jessica but left her in a state of pure contemplation, trapped, that is, in the initial moment, confined within herself. Nobody likes being left out. An involuntary expression of horror came over Jessica’s face.

Vanessa didn’t look up once. She was staring straight ahead. It was Vanessa all right, but somehow — and this was the scariest thing — it wasn’t. She was very pale, “white as a sheet,” except her nose and around her eyes, where the skin was a bright carmine color. She looked like a clown with her face painted white and red. And the face, although still hers, was not a face: it had no outer surface, it was hollowed or sharpened, almost concave. The eyes were independent of it, staring straight ahead, like those of a robot. Her body seemed to be hanging from her gaze, and its stiffness suggested a superhuman determination, as if thought could no longer act upon it, only gravity. For a moment, Jessica had the horrific impression that she was about to jump. “She’s going to jump!” And there was nothing she could do! That tiny shift in time was going to be what killed her. Jessica looked away in anguish, not to find help but because her eyes were the only part of her body that she could move. And she saw a little black figure in the glass door that opened onto the balcony of the apartment just above Vanessa’s. The size of this figure intrigued her: it was too small. A little human figure making gratuitous circular movements, as if performing a strange dance without music, in a space where it didn’t belong, midway between floor and ceiling. It took Jessica a while to realize that what she was seeing was a reflection of someone in her own building.

She half-closed her eyes, keeping them fixed on the unidentified figure, who must have been below her, on the third floor, and was, she now realized, the object of Vanessa’s spellbound stare. What her mother had said about that mysterious third floor came back to her like a tidal wave and swept all her earlier thoughts away. But what was she doing, that woman in black, moving back and forth within a tiny space, as if she were inside a bubble? Was it Élida, the lady her mother chatted with? No, it was a girl. . and those little steps backward and forward, opening and closing her arms. She looked like a doll in a music box. Finally Jessica worked it out: they were the movements of someone who is cleaning a room: making the bed, tidying up, vacuuming. The room must have been full of light, and she was wearing black; that’s why only her figure was visible. And that explained who she was: the maid. And perhaps it also explained why Vanessa was watching her with such interest. But why would Vanessa care about how that room was being cleaned? What did that have to do with religion? Maybe it was true that she had tried to call that apartment. For some deeply mysterious reason involving religion and housekeeping. And then the crying, the captivated stupor. .

Jessica looked at her friend again. Vanessa was still there, frozen. She lifted her gaze to the reflected figure, then let it drop back to Vanessa. She was beginning to breathe again. The horror was gradually receding, but deepening as well and expanding enormously. Up until now she had been assuming that she was Vanessa’s secret. Her interpretation of this strange scene had been entirely based on that assumption. But nobody owned the secret: it could detach itself from individuals and take over the world, and then there’d be no hope of understanding anything.

She couldn’t make out the face of the girl in the reflection, but she didn’t need to. Her silhouette, her movements and her general aura were as unique as the features of a face. And they reminded Jessica of someone, irresistibly. She knew who it was: Cynthia, the girl who got killed, Cynthia Cabezas. Poor Vanessa! She’d seen Cynthia from her apartment and panicked. But how could a dead girl be there, on the third floor, making the beds? And not just that: the really unbelievable thing was that Cynthia, a student at Misericordia, like them, was working as a maid, even if she was dead. But if the owners of that apartment belonged to an esoteric cult, maybe they were using dead people as slaves. . Vanessa had discovered their secret, and now she didn’t know what to do. Jessica resolved to intervene, though she wasn’t sure how. It had to be something properly planned, she couldn’t simply improvise. In spite of everything, she almost smiled to see how fragile reason was: Vanessa’s crumbled at the first blow, all she’d been able to do was reach for the phone, like a castaway grasping at a plank.