Julieta looked pale and exhausted. She walked over to me and gave me what looked like a business card. ‘Come and see me in my studio, if you like. I live in Carboneras.’
I was still puzzling over this when Gómez entered the room, followed by his white cat, Jodo. The stripe in his hair matched Jodo’s white fur. The cat was plump and serene, purring loudly at her master’s feet.
‘How is your physiotherapy, Mrs Papastergiadis?’
‘Call me Rose.’
‘Ah yes, it is good to let these formalities go.’
‘If you forget things, Mr Gómez, write them down on the back of your hand.’
‘I will,’ he said.
Julieta told her father she had taken the first case history and now she was tired and would like twenty minutes to have a coffee and a pastry. Gómez lifted his hand and smoothed down his vivid white streak. ‘There is no such thing as tired so early in the day, Nurse Sunshine. The young do not rest. The young must be up all night with the lighthouse keepers. The young must argue till dawn.’
He asked her to repeat to him the relevant sections of the Hippocratic oath. She walked to the recording device and turned it off. ‘I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgement and never do any harm to anyone,’ she said gloomily.
‘Very good. If the young are tired, they must improve their lifestyle.’
It seemed as if he was chastising her in some way. Had he somehow seen the kick his daughter had lashed out at the wheelchair?
Gómez’s attention was entirely focused on my mother. He was taking her pulse but from a distance it looked quite intimate, as if they were holding hands. His voice was gentle, even flirtatious. ‘I note you are not using the car yet, Rose.’
‘No. I will need to practise before I drive Sofia on these mountain roads.’
His fingers pressed lightly on her wrist. They were still, but moving. Like a leaf. Like a stone in a stream.
‘You see, Sofia Irina, Mrs Papastergiadis is concerned for your safety.’
‘My daughter is wasting her life,’ Rose replied. ‘Sofia is plump and idle and she is living off her mother at quite an advanced age.’
It is true that I have shape-shifted from thin to various other sizes all my life. My mother’s words are my mirror. My laptop is my veil of shame. I hide in it all the time.
I tucked it under my arm and walked out of the physiotherapy room. Jodo followed me for a while. Her paws were soft and soundless, and then she disappeared. I must have taken a wrong turning because I was lost in a labyrinth of milky marble corridors. I began to feel smothered by the veined walls, as if they were closing in on me. The echo of my heels hitting the marble floor reminded me of that first visit to the clinic, when I heard the amplified echo of Julieta’s heels as she ran away from her father. Now I was running away from my mother. It was a relief to find the glass exit, to at last breathe in the mountain air and stand among the succulents and mimosa trees.
In the distance below the mountain I could see the ocean and a yellow flag planted in the coarse sand on the beach. It was like a haunting, that flag. Where would the Medusa’s case history begin and end? Was she shocked, devastated, appalled to discover she was no longer admired for her beauty? Did she feel de-feminized? Would she walk through the door labelled ‘Ladies’ or the door labelled ‘Gentlemen’? ‘Hommes’ or ‘Femmes’, ‘Caballeros’ or ‘Señoras’? I began to wonder if she had more power in her life as a monster. Where had I got to in my own life by trying to please everyone all the time? Right here. Wringing my hands.
A blast of fine sand lashed my cheeks. It was as if the sky had opened and it was raining sand. I saw a flash of white fur as Jodo ran for cover under the silver leaves of a succulent that was shaped like an umbrella. A male cleaner in overalls and a protective eye shield was hosing down the wall near the exit to the clinic. After a while I realized that it was not water pouring through his hose. He was sandblasting the wall. As I walked closer I saw that three words had been spray-painted in blue on the walls. They were fading now, so the cleaner had obviously tried more than once to remove them. Was this the graffiti that Gómez had referred to a few days earlier? But it did not say ‘QUACK’. I could clearly see the shape of the letters, despite the effort that had gone into erasing the paint. Gómez had obviously wanted to demonstrate that he knew my mother thought he was a quack. As if the thought had already committed the crime and defaced the walls of his clinic. The blue grafitti was not one single word.
It was three words.
SUNSHINE IS SEXY
She wears a sombrero some days, drifting around. No one to row her in a boat to the smaller bays, no one to hear her say the water’s so clear here oh wow I’m going to dive for that sea star. It has come to my attention that she has two credit cards to help her get through the month. Maybe I should offer to lend her some money?
Hunting and Gathering
‘Why do you want to kill a lizard?’
Ingrid was crouching in an alleyway near the pizzeria that is owned by a Romanian taxi driver. At first I couldn’t work out what she was doing and then I saw she was holding a miniature bow and arrow. It was so tiny it could fit in the palm of her hand. She was aiming the arrow at a lizard that had just flashed out of a crack in the wall. The arrow hit the wall and fell to the ground.
‘Zoffie! Your shadow distracted me. My aim is usually right on target.’ She picked up the arrow, which was sharpened to a point the size of a pencil, and showed me the little curved bow with its taut nylon string.
‘I made it myself from bamboo.’
‘But why do you want to kill a lizard?’
She prodded the white cardboard box I had left near the wall.
‘It seems like I’m always freaking you out, Zoffie. What’s in your box?’
‘A pizza.’
‘What kind of pizza?’
‘Margarita with extra cheese.’
‘You should eat more salad.’
Ingrid’s long hair is pinned up on top of her head. She looks like a statue, strong and toned in her white cotton dress with its criss-crossed straps. Her plimsolls are white, too. When the lizard scuttled out of the crack again, she gestured for me to get out of the way. It had a green tail and blue circles on its back.
‘Move! Go away, Zoffie, I’m working. Have you freed Pablo’s dog yet?’
‘No. He sacked one of the Mexican painters this morning. Pablo still owes him money.’
‘He’ll never get paid, Zoffie. Get a thicker skin, like our friend the lizard.’
I asked if I could take a photo of her with the bow and arrow.
‘Go ahead.’
I took out my iPhone and aimed it at her head.
Who is Ingrid Bauer?
What are her beliefs and sacred ceremonies? Does she have economic autonomy? What are her rituals with menstrual blood? How does she react to the winter season? What is her attitude to beggars? Does she believe she has a soul? If she does, is it embodied by anything else? A bird or a tiger? Does she have an app for Uber on her smartphone? Her lips are so soft.
I pressed the time-lapse icon, then Slo-mo and then just Photo. Through the lens I could see her opening the box and taking out the pizza. She frowned at the congealed orange cheese and threw it to the ground.
‘I would rather eat the lizard. Have you finished taking the photo?’
‘Yes.’
‘What are you going to do with it?’
‘I will remember August in Almería with you.’
‘Memory is a bomb.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘What are you going to do with the lizard when you catch it?’
‘Study the geometry of its patterns — they give me ideas for my embroidery. It will come out of the wall soon. Move! Move!’