“It certainly hasn’t. And in the end all the unknown factors were explained.”
“The X and the Y.”
“The X of Mr. Smith and the Y of Ismael.”
“But how odd that two such different unknowns should end up in the same equation!”
“That’s life!” exclaimed my friend with the theatricality he always gave to such phrases.
But the speed I had to drive at did not favor conversation and we traveled the rest of the way in silence, listening to music on the radio. We reached the station with just two minutes to spare before the train left.
“Well, that’s that. Back to work tomorrow,” my friend said with a sigh as we sat down on a bench on the platform.
“There wasn’t any sign on Ismael’s hut, was there?” I said. The image of that repellent hospital for lizards had just resurfaced in my mind.
“Why mention that now?” he asked, looking me in the eye.
“Oh, nothing. I was just remembering what Ismael told us. About him belonging to a special society and all that.”
My friend looked bemused.
“Don’t you remember? He said he was a member of a society for the protection of animals. But what intrigues me now is that there wasn’t some special sign on the hut. I don’t know. It seems logical that there would be something, don’t you think?”
“What are you trying to say? That the second unknown hasn’t yet been fully explained? Weren’t you listening to your uncle? Ismael himself explained it all in graphic detail.”
The station loudspeakers announced the arrival of the train. I didn’t have time to go into subtleties.
“All right, all right. But I’d still like to find out about that sign.”
“What possible importance can it have? Even if Ismael did lie to us, so what?” cried my friend, embracing me warmly. “Promise me one thing. That you won’t go and see if that wretched hut has got a sign on it or not! I know you too well and I’m sure that’s what you intend on doing.”
“Here’s the train,” I said.
I must confess that most of my life has been dogged by obsessions and that never, not even as a child, have I been able to muster the strength of mind to expel from my head those harmful, disagreeable “tenants.” Any idea, however strange, can settle in my mind and live there, for as long as it likes.
My friend had asked me not to go to the hut and part of me demanded the same thing: that I abandon that story once and for all and go to bed.
But it was no use. The idea was inside my head and refused to leave. I had no option but to go to the hut and find out if there was a sign or not.
I returned to Obaba at the same speed at which I had driven to the station a quarter of an hour before and, passing my uncle’s house, I parked the car next to the stone steps by the church.
Before going on, I had a moment’s hesitation. Did I really want to go to the hut? Why was I still suspicious of lsmael? Did I perhaps hate him? In the end, as my friend had said, what importance could a sign possibly have?
They were all worthwhile considerations but none of them could hold me back. That evil tenant had made himself master of the house. He was the guide and instigator of my actions.
“I know what brought me here,” I thought as I walked through the colonnade by the church. “It was the parallelism between the lizard story and the story about Sacamantecas. That’s what set me on the trail. And my sixth sense tells me that I should go carefully, that I should not forget that Sacamentecas was a murderer.”
My original intention was to go as far as the barbed wire fence and have a look from there. But as soon as I reached that point, I realized that was impossible. The moon gave very little light and the hut was engulfed in the darkness of night. If I wanted to find out if there was a sign or not, I would have to go closer.
“I’ll have to jump over the fence,” I thought. A moment later I was standing by the hut.
“There’s no sign here,” I deduced after running my hands over the surface of the door. Then I heard a noise. It came from inside the hut.
“Who’s there?”
I didn’t have time to run away. The door flew open and a thin figure appeared on the threshold. It was Ismael.
For some moments neither of us moved.
“Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?” shouted Ismael when he’d recovered from his surprise.
I tried to say something but I couldn’t utter a word. I was dumbstruck.
“What’s wrong with you? Have you gone mad?”
He grabbed me by my shirt and shook me.
“You’d better not hit me,” I warned.
He didn’t hit me, instead he gave me a shove and pushed me into the hut. My hands touched the rotting vegetation on the floor.
“Since you’re so interested in finding out what happens in this hut, you can have the whole night to do just that!”
He let out a curse and shut the door. I heard the key turn in the lock.
“Open the door!” I shouted, getting up and going over to one of the useless little windows. But my efforts were in vain. lsmael had left by the outer door and was striding away. When you’re angry, you feel only your anger: You see nothing, hear nothing, smell nothing. The fire burning inside monopolizes all your senses and prevents you from establishing any relation with your surroundings. But that moment passes, the fire goes out, and the surroundings, ignored until then, begin to make themselves felt with a strange intensity. They seem to have become bigger, stronger, more painful. You have never before been so intensely aware of sights, sounds, smells. If you had any strength left, you would get angry and start shouting again. But you have none and must resign yourself to your suffering.
That was the process I went through in that hut. At first I was very agitated, yelling and raining down curses on Ismael, or blaming myself for having acted as I did. But the worst came later, when I began to comprehend my situation.
I was sickened by the stench given off by the lizards and my anxiety only grew every time I heard the muffled crunching noise they made as they munched on the rotting vegetation.
“I can’t stay here!” I said to myself each time my eyes caught sight of the silhouette of the lizards clinging to the wall. But there was no point whining like a child. I had to stay there.
Standing up by one of the windows, I tried again and again to forget that filthy prison. I absorbed myself in contemplation of the moon shining in the sky and wondered why it was yellow. Why did it change color? Through what process did I receive its light? Why did it have such an influence on the cultivation of vegetables? And when I had exhausted the subject, I scoured the corners of my mind for another. And when that too was exhausted, I relived journeys I had made throughout the world or distracted myself with sexual fantasies.
But trying to forget the presence of the lizards was an impossible task.
I spent two or three hours locked in that battle, until I could no longer stand the pain gripping my knees and I decided to sit down.
“But I won’t go to sleep!” I exclaimed to cheer myself up.
I knew I would be unable to resist though. No, I couldn’t stay awake, I would sleep and once I was asleep a lizard would come along and crawl into my ear and then… but how could I think such nonsense? Or didn’t I trust what my uncle had said? Wasn’t Bill — the poor lizard — the kindest and most unfortunate of all the animals to appear in Lewis Carroll’s books? Was I perhaps in South America? No, I was in Obaba. And the lizards of Obaba had nothing to do with any kind of irreversible mental pathology.
The unease these reflections produced in me kept me awake for another two hours. Then I fell asleep.