I closed my notebook and left the coffee shop. From a window in the corridor I looked out at the city. Over it there hung a heavy curtain of fog, the smoke from fires, the smell of fuel, the thick air of war. In the distance, on a flat roof, I saw an old lady moving about, taking clothes off a line and putting them in a basket. At that exact moment a voice echoed in my brain: it’s time to start writing again. I went to my room, ordered a Diet Coke and a chicken sandwich and started writing, quickly, not rough notes now but a narrative, everything I had lived through since I had received that invitation from the ICBM.
I had been scribbling away for just over an hour when there was a knock at the door. It was easy to guess who it was, and in fact, when I opened it, Marta gave me a hug and said: I need something strong, and I’m referring to alcohol. What happened? I asked, and she said, wait, wait, let me catch my breath, or rather, let me drink this, and she drank a miniature bottle of vodka in two gulps, and, having recovered her breath, muttered a few words of Icelandic, then said, you’ll never guess what I saw this morning, something really heavy, really heavy, and I said, what did you see, Marta? and she said, I saw Maturana’s body! I was in the morgue of the hospital, the Notre Dame de France, and I saw it, his arms with the cuts on them, his skin like a parchment, his mouth in a fixed grin, his face all sunken and expressionless, as if the flesh had been sucked in to his cheeks, I’d never seen a dead body before, do you think the bodies of people who’ve killed themselves are the same as those of other dead people? I don’t know, I said, perhaps they have an expression of relief or sadness, but what made you think to go there, and how on earth did you manage to get in? Oh, my friend, we journalists have ways we can’t reveal, even more if you’re a woman journalist, so I said, I respect your reticence, would you like some more vodka? I opened the minibar, took out another little bottle and she said, you’re a friend, I really don’t mind if you know, so here’s the story:
I found out that some bodies qualified as “select,” those that have nothing to do with the war, go to the morgue at the makeshift Notre Dame de France hospital, and so I went there this morning, on foot, because it’s not far from Agrippa Street. I arrived, walked all around the outside of the building, and when I saw it was a bunker I realized it wouldn’t be easy to get in the normal way; I was just pondering this when I saw a doctor walking toward one of the side entrances and had a brainwave, something that came to me out of the blue: I screamed as if something had happened to me and the doctor rushed to me and said, what’s the matter, miss, and I said, I’m in great pain, I’m sorry, and started to collapse and of course he immediately caught me, and then I said, I have pains in my uterus, doctor, I can’t move, I’m a journalist, I write for a newspaper in Iceland. I pretended to faint, which provoked an even stronger reaction, and he said, calm down, take deep breaths, come with me; he helped me walk to the door, and we went inside and along a corridor until we came to an empty office. He sat me down on a chair, but I said, do something, please; I pulled my jeans and my panties down to my knees, and the man, who was about forty, came closer, touched me, and said, take a deep breath, hold it, then let it out slowly, I’ll see if you have any lesions. .
He put his head between my thighs and discreetly explored the area; after a while he said: superficially at least, I can’t see anything unusual, apart from that silver ring, are you feeling any better? It’s easing off a bit but it’s still there, like a stitch that keeps coming back, a dormant pain, and he said, I’ll give you a pill, come, but I insisted, how can you prescribe something if you haven’t even touched me? His face changed and he said, what is it you want? The moment had come to take the plunge, and I said: what I want most, only you can give me. He blushed, gave a smile, and said, well, you’re in luck, ask me what you like, and he laid his hand on my belly. You may think that what I’m going to ask you is a bit strange and you may refuse, but he insisted, tell me, remember I’m a doctor, I live with the dark side of things, with life and death, pleasure and pain; then I raised my pelvis a little and said, I want you to take me to the morgue to see the body of the man who killed himself at the conference, I know you have him here.
He was surprised when he heard that, of course, and drew back a bit. I had already realized that the doctor wanted to fuck me, I told you I can smell pheromones, didn’t I? and in fact, there was frustration all over his face, but he pulled himself together and said, I don’t know if I can do that, remember this is a military hospital and the deaths are confidential, but I moved again and my mound of Venus sent him a signal, so he said, I could try, I’d do anything to ease the pain of a beautiful Icelandic woman; we went back out into the corridor and walked for a while, up and down stairs, until we came to an iron door. It’s through here. We entered a dark, damp room, with a kind of spooky atmosphere, all tiled, and with a slight smell of formaldehyde. He gave me a mask and said, put this on, you’re going to need it, and it’s compulsory anyway. We came to another door, and there was a fat male nurse there who must have been guarding it, reading a magazine. They said something to each other and we went through. There were huge concrete tables and other tables of iron where they did autopsies.
That was when I saw him, from a distance. They’d pulled back the cloth covering him and I recognized his face, his white beard; we had to wait so as not to bother the people who were with him, but they soon left, so we went closer. I saw his open forearms, two violet colored wounds, his expression of calm or indifference, anyway, it was heavy, really heavy, that’s the only word I can find to describe it.
Marta fell silent, looking at the wall. And what about the doctor? Ah, the doctor, his name is Amos Roth, he’s a very well-mannered and attractive man. He’s invited me to dinner tonight.
Then she asked, were you writing? Yes, I said. She seemed a bit disconcerted. I’m sorry, she said, I was thinking to ask you the same favor as yesterday, that you let me work here, to tell the truth, I prefer to be close to the conference and the people in it, I may have to go out and check some information, you don’t mind, do you? I could put my laptop under the bed, but I said, it’s no problem, I can go out and work on the balcony, I write by hand. By hand? she cried, wow, I’ll never understand you writers, all that spiel about the manuscript and being close to the text, my God, I’ll never understand it, and she took out her Dell Inspiron, switched it on, and started typing.
I went out on the terrace, thinking about Marta’s visit to the morgue, and suddenly something occurred to me, so I went back and asked: you said there was somebody with the body, who was it? I don’t know, she said, two people, maybe three, it was very dark, the only light was over Maturana’s body and I was concentrating on that, why do you ask? It just seems odd to me, did they look like people from the hospital, from the police or something like that? but she said, I couldn’t say, they were wearing masks. Would you say they were a woman and a man? two women? two men? Let me see, wait, I need to concentrate, she said, and closed her eyes. One of them was definitely a woman, I remember the noise of high heels, I heard them long after she’d gone out, they were echoing in the distance, what are you thinking? Well, I said, it’s odd that José Maturana should have visitors in the morgue, don’t you think? It could have been somebody from the hotel, said Marta, or from his embassy, or the police, or from the conference. Did you notice what language they spoke? They didn’t speak, said Marta, they were just looking at him in silence. Would you say it was a sad scene? Yes, it was: a dead body, not much light, the smell of formaldehyde, that’s a pretty sad scene, wouldn’t you say?