“He thinks he’s a cop,” the fat man said. “He thinks he’s a police inspector.”
“If he’s an inspector, I’m Carlos Gardel.”
“The jockey murderer should have hung himself from a bonsai.”
“Exactly. Hanging like a little cake toy.”
Croce stopped next to a barred window and grabbed Renzi by the arm. The other two patients stopped with them and kept talking.
“Nature has forgotten us,” the fat man said.
“There is no nature anymore,” the thin man said.
“No nature? Don’t exaggerate. We breathe, we lose our hair, our freshness.”
“Our teeth.”
“And if we hang ourselves?”
“But how can we hang ourselves? They took our shoelaces, they take away the sheets.”
“We can ask this young man for his belt.”
“Belts are too short.”
“I’ll tie the belt around my neck and you can pull my legs.”
“And who would pull me?”
“True, a logical dilemma.”
“Sir,” the thin man said, looking at Renzi. “I’ll buy a cigarette from you.”
“You can have one.”
“No, I’ll buy it,” the thin man said, and handed him half a one-peso bill.
Immediately the fat man gave Renzi the other half of the bill for another cigarette. The two men stood to the side and began a different routine, one which they had apparently also repeated many times before. They took turns smoking their cigarettes, crossing their arms to hand their cigarette to the other’s mouth. When the thin man blew out his smoke, the fat man would wait until he was done and then he would smoke and exhale, blowing rings. The two men smoked back and forth in this manner, without pausing, in a continuous chain. Hand, mouth, smoke, mouth, smoke, hand, mouth. They stood side by side and raised their hands to bring the cigarette to the mouth of the other, who would in turn smoke facing forward. The routine was repeated until the cigarettes were smoked down to their ends. They came back with the butts and sold them to Renzi, who returned each their half of the one-peso bill. With a few leftover crumbs of flour they had stashed in an old cookie tin, they made a paste and stuck the two halves of the bill back together until they had the whole peso again. Then they each laid down on their bed, face up, motionless, their arms crossed and their eyes open.
Croce resumed speaking with Renzi, softly.
“They’re brothers, they say they’re brothers,” he said, nodding toward the two patients. “I live with them, here. They know who I am. Outside I would have been killed, like Tony was killed. I’m waiting to be transferred to Melchor Romero. My father died there. I used to go visit him, he’d tell me about a radio that had been installed inside his head somehow, On the inside of my skull, he used to say. Now I believe I can hear the same music.”
Renzi waited while Croce sat down again, facing the window.
“Listen carefully. Cueto wanted to redirect the money, the Old Man was right about that, but Luca didn’t want anything to do with it, he doesn’t even want to see his father, he almost killed him one night, he blames him for the collapse of the factory, the Old Man sold the shares and when Luca found out, he went over with a gun. He blames him for the collapse.” Croce suddenly grew quiet. “You better go now, I’m getting tired. Help me with this.” They stretched his mattress out and Croce lied down. “It’s not bad, no one can mess with you in here.”
The thin man came over.
“Say, will you trade me this bill for a new one?” he asked, and handed Renzi the bill stuck together with the paste. Renzi handed him another one-peso bill and put away the repaired bill, with one half of Mitre’s (or was it Belgrano’s?) face upside down. The thin patient looked at the new bill, pleased.
“Let me buy a cigarette from you,” he said.
Renzi’s pack was nearly empty, he only had three cigarettes left. The fat man came over. Each took a cigarette and they split the third one in half, carefully. Then they split the new one-peso bill in half and started smoking and passing the half-bill back and forth. Pass the half-bill, smoke, pass the half-bill, smoke. They did everything in a very neat manner, without any hesitation, following a perfect order. Croce, lying on his bed, had fallen asleep.
Renzi walked outside. It was almost nighttime, he had to hurry if he wanted to catch the last bus back to town. Croce seemed to have entrusted him with some kind of task, as if he always needed someone to help him think clearly. Someone neutral who could be sent into reality to gather facts and clues, from which he could later formulate his conclusions. He could come visit him every afternoon and discuss with him what he’d found in town, while Croce could make his deductions without having to leave the place. Renzi had read so many detective novels that he already knew how the mechanism worked. The detective always has someone with whom to discuss his theories. Now that Saldías was no longer around, Croce had fallen into a crisis, because when he was alone, his own thoughts were the end of him. He was always rebuilding a story that wasn’t his. He doesn’t have a private life and if he’s given a private life, like now, he loses his mind. He goes out of his mind, Renzi heard himself say as he was getting on the bus heading back to town.
The houses on the outskirts were like all the houses in the low neighborhoods on the edge of any town or city. Handwritten signs, partially finished construction sites, kids playing ball, tropical music sounding from the open windows, nearly antique cars barely crawling along, country folk galloping on horseback on the ditch along the cobblestone road, a cart with empty bottles and cans pushed by a woman.
When the bus entered the town, the landscape changed and became a mock-up of suburban life, a series of houses with yards out front, windows with security bars, trees on the sidewalks, packed dirt alleys. Finally, coming onto the main road, which was first cobblestoned and then paved, the two-storied houses, the entry hallways with the tall doors, the television antennas on the roofs and terraces. The center of town was also the same as that of other towns, with the central square, the church and the municipality building, the pedestrian block with the shops and the music stores and the small markets. This monotony, this endless repetition, was what the people who lived there probably liked.
Renzi imagined that he, too, could move to the country, dedicate himself to his writing. Take walks around town, go to the Madariaga Store and Tavern, wait for the newspapers that arrived on the afternoon train, leave his useless life behind, become somebody else. He was in a state of waiting, he felt that something was about to change. Maybe it was his own feeling, his false wish not to return to the routine of his life in Buenos Aires, to the novel he’d been writing for years without success, to his stupid job at El Mundo, writing reviews or going out into reality every once in a while on special assignment to investigate some crime or plague.
Night had fallen over the house. They were still sitting on the chairs, out on the back porch, mostly in the dark — except for a small lamp behind them, in the living room — looking out over the peaceful back gardens and the lights beyond. After a while, Sofía got up and put a Moby Grape album on the turntable and started to move, dancing in place to “Changes.”
“I like Traffic, I like Cream, I like Love,” she said, and sat down again. “I love their band names and I love their music.”
“I love Moby Dick.”
“I’m sure you do. Take your books away from you and you’d be buck-naked. My mother’s the same, the only time she’s relaxed is when she’s reading. As soon as she stops reading, she’s a nervous mess.”