The police had arrived, by chance, at the same time Ricardo Laverde usually came home, and Consu, thinking it was him, opened the door before they knocked. She found herself facing two officers, one with grey hair who lisped when he spoke and another who stayed two steps behind and didn’t say a single word. ‘You could see the grey hair was premature, who knows what that man had seen,’ said Consu. ‘They showed me an ID card and asked me if I recognized the individual, that’s how he put it, the individual, what a strange word for a dead man. And the truth is, I didn’t recognize him,’ said Consu, crossing herself. ‘The thing is he’d really changed. I had to read the card to tell them yes, the man was called Ricardo Laverde and he’d been living here since whatever month. First I thought: he’s got himself into trouble. They’re going to put him away again. I felt sorry for him, because Ricardo complied with all that stuff since he got out.’
‘What stuff?’
‘Things convicts have to do. When they get out of prison.’
‘So you knew,’ I said.
‘Of course, dear. Everybody knew.’
‘And did you know what he’d done, too?’
‘No, not that,’ said Consu. ‘Well, I never tried to find out. That would have messed up our relationship, don’t you think? What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over, that’s what I say.’
The police followed her to Laverde’s room. Using a hammer as a lever, Consu shattered the aluminium semicircle, and the lock landed in one of the little ditches in the central patio. When she opened the door she found a monk’s celclass="underline" the perfect rectangle of the mattress, the impeccable sheet, the pillow in its unwrinkled pillowcase, without the curves and avenues that a head leaves over the course of the nights. Beside the mattress, an untreated wooden board on top of two bricks; on the board a glass of water that looked cloudy. The next day that image, that of the mattress and the improvised bedside table, came out in the tabloids beside the smear of blood on the pavement of 14th Street. ‘Since that day no journalist sets foot in this house,’ said Consu. ‘Those people have no respect.’
‘Who killed him?’
‘Oh, if only I knew. I don’t know, I don’t know who killed him, when he was so nice. One of the nicest people I’ve known, I swear. Even if he might have done bad things.’
‘What things?’
‘That I don’t know,’ said Consu. ‘He must’ve done something.’
‘He must’ve done something,’ I repeated.
‘Anyway, what does it matter now,’ said Consu. ‘Or is finding out going to bring him back?’
‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘Where is he buried?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I don’t know. To pay a visit. Take him flowers. What was the funeral like?’
‘Small. I organized it, of course. I was the closest thing Ricardo had to a relative.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘His wife had just been killed.’
‘Ah,’ Consu said. ‘You know a few things too, who would have thought.’
‘She was coming to spend Christmas with him. He’d had this absurd picture taken to give to her.’
‘Absurd? Why absurd? I thought it was sweet.’
‘It was an absurd picture.’
‘The picture with the pigeons,’ said Consu.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The picture with the pigeons.’ And then, ‘It must have had to do with that.’
‘What did?’
‘What he was listening to. I’ve always thought that what he was listening to had something to do with her, with his wife. I imagine maybe a recorded letter, I don’t know, a poem she liked.’
For the first time, Consu smiled. ‘You imagined that?’
‘I don’t know, something like that.’ And then, I don’t know why, I lied or exaggerated. ‘I’ve spent two and a half years thinking about that, it’s funny how a dead person can take up so much space even when we didn’t even know them. Two and a half years thinking about Elena de Laverde. Or Elena Fritts, or whatever her name was. Two and a half years,’ I said. I felt good saying it.
I don’t know what Consu saw in my face, but her expression changed, and even her way of sitting changed.
‘Tell me one thing,’ she said, ‘but tell me the truth. Did you like him?’
‘What?’
‘Were you fond of him?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I was very fond of him.’
That wasn’t true either, of course. Life hadn’t given us the time for affection, and what was driving me was neither sentiment nor emotion, but the intuition we sometimes have that some events have shaped our lives more than they should or appear to have. But I’ve learned very well that these subtleties don’t cut any ice in the real world, and must often be sacrificed, tell the other person what the other person wants to hear, don’t get too honest (honesty is inefficient, it gets you nowhere). I looked at Consu and I saw a lonely woman, as lonely as I am. ‘Very much,’ I repeated. ‘I was very fond of him.’
‘OK,’ she said, standing up. ‘Wait here, I’m going to show you something.’
She disappeared for a few moments. I could follow her movements by their sounds, the shuffling of her flip-flops, the brief exchange with her tenant — ‘It’s late, papito’; ‘Ay, Doña Consu, don’t stick your nose into what’s none of your business’ — and for a moment I thought our chat had finished and the next thing would be the boy with the sparse moustache asking me to leave with some affected phrase, I’ll see you to the door or Thank you for your visit, señor. But then I saw her coming back looking distracted, glancing at the nails of her left hand: once again the little girl I’d seen at the door to her house. In the other hand (her fingers made themselves delicate to hold it, as if it were a sick pet) she was carrying a football too small to be a football and that very soon revealed itself to be an old radio in the shape of a football. Two of the black hexagons were speakers; in the top part was a little window showing the cassette player; in the cassette player was a black cassette. A black cassette with an orange label. On the label, a single word: BASF.
‘It’s just side A,’ Consu told me. ‘When you finish listening to it, leave it all beside the stove. There where the matches are. And make sure the door’s closed properly when you leave.’
‘Just a moment, one moment,’ I said. Questions were flooding my mouth. ‘You have this?’
‘I have this.’
‘How did you get it? Aren’t you going to listen to it with me?’
‘It’s what they call personal effects,’ she said. ‘The police brought me everything Ricardo had in his pockets. And no, I’m not going to listen to it. I know it off by heart, and I don’t want to hear it any more, this cassette has nothing to do with Ricardo. And really it has nothing to do with me either. Strange, isn’t it? One of my most cherished possessions, and it’s got nothing to do with my life.’
‘One of your most cherished possessions,’ I repeated.
‘You know how people get asked what they’d take from their house if it was on fire. Well, I’d take this cassette. It must be because I never had children, and there aren’t any photo albums here or anything like that.’
‘The boy I met at the door?’
‘What about him?’
‘He’s not family?’
‘He’s a tenant,’ said Consu, ‘like any other.’ She thought for a moment and added, ‘My tenants are my family.’
With those words (and with a perfect sense of melodrama) she went out the front door and left me alone.