This is intolerable, growled the departmental head the first time he saw him walking naked along the corridor. It’s true, agreed Aristides, everyone here is horribly dressed.
Since that was in spring, we assumed this situation would last at most until the start of autumn, and that afterwards the weather itself would return things to their normal course. And in November, the waters of the rivers, the rain in the ditches and the lizards in the marshes did return to their normal course, but nothing changed about Aristides, apart from the slight shiver in his shoulders when our working day was over and we went out into the street. This is unheard of, exclaimed the departmental head wrapped in his raincoat. To which Aristides responded in his offhand way: It’s true, it hasn’t snowed yet.
Gradually our mutterings gave way to hero worship. We all wanted to go round like Aristides, to walk like him, to be exactly like him. But nobody seemed keen to take the first step. Until one sweltering morning, because some things are always bound to happen, one of us walked into the office with no clothes on, trembling. Not a single laugh was heard, but rather a profound silence, and then after a while a smattering of applause. Watching this naked body parading along the corridor, many of us pretended we hadn’t seen a thing, and carried on working as if nothing had happened. However, a few weeks later, it was the exception in the office to find anyone dressed. The last to surrender was the departmental head: one Monday he appeared before us in all his hairy, flabby glory, touchingly ugly, far gentler than usual. At that, all of us employees felt relieved and powerful. We passed each other in the corridor giving whoops of joy, slapping each other on the buttocks, flexing our biceps for one another. And yet whenever we sought out Aristides’s approving eyes, all we met with was an unexpected grimace of disdain.
I know it won’t be easy to withstand the winter, which is only a few days away. The skin on my back tells me so, as do my shoulder muscles, which contract when I leave the office. Despite these drawbacks, what most torments me is how ridiculous I feel recalling all those years I spent with my clothes on. Apart from that, I am prepared to stay like this for as long as it takes the others to recognize my courage, until I am the last naked body in the office.
Even so, for some reason I still don’t feel that when I come to work I am the same as Aristides. Let’s just say that I try every morning. And no, it’s not the same.
EMBRACE
THE WORST IS OVER. I am calm now. Lisandro brings me a cup of tea and asks me if I am all right. I nod, as the long, warm hand of liquid traverses my chest and settles in my stomach. I start to feel sleepy. Lisandro takes an exquisite amount of time to do each thing; with his one arm he looks after me better than anybody else could. I am very grateful to him. All we have to do is wait for me to recover completely so that everything can go back to how it used to be.
With hindsight, that night provided us with all manner of warnings about the impending disaster, but we were too sure of ourselves to notice those small details. It cannot be denied that the moon was spinning like a frenzied disc, or that the cold wind in Granada was more hostile than usual, too cutting for August. Lisandro was walking with his chin sunk between the lapels of his overcoat, so that the smoke from his cigarette mixed with the vapour from his breath the way a harmless gas would with another, lethal one. I had opted for my grey scarf, and was inhaling a smell of soggy wool. We didn’t talk. Even with less alcohol blurring our awareness, it would have been hard to see any sign in the shadows obscuring the caryatids, giving them the appearance of headless figures. As always, we went via Carrera del Darro. Despite being low, the river sounded strangely lively amid the mud and rocks. The cold and our thirst driving us, we took swift strides and looked down at the cobblestones. Paseo de los Tristes was almost deserted save for the odd drunk German or Englishman, a couple on the verge of having a quarrel, one or two scooters, the habitual beggars. I asked Lisandro if he wanted to eat. He said he wasn’t hungry, but that we could get a sandwich if I wanted, and he repeated that he wasn’t hungry. I understood, and told him not to worry if he hadn’t any money. Then Lisandro asked me if I wanted to smoke his last cigarette.
We dined on three portions of cured meats and smoked cheese. We drank two glasses of Lagunilla, four Riojas, two Palo Cortados and a few Ribera del Dueros. For dessert Lisandro had an espresso, but I wanted an ice cream. In this weather? he asked quite sensibly. I replied pretentiously that one could only truly appreciate the taste of ice cream on a cold night. We paid the bill and walked outside. I remember the waiter at the tavern kept staring at us while he was drying glasses behind the bar. Where shall we go? Lisandro asked, rubbing his hands and exhaling a white vapour. Where they’ll give us an ice cream, I said, and started walking towards Café Fútbol. At this time of night Café Fútbol will be closed, he predicted. I didn’t answer. Lisandro followed me, muttering between gritted teeth. Don’t you have any cigarettes left? I asked spitefully. Afterwards we carried on walking in silence.
I could have done a bit more than I did when those two guys stopped us at the top of Calle Pavaneras. We were very drunk, Lisandro explains to everyone. That might convince him, but not me. I remember perfectly, with complete clarity, their faces, their clothes, their voices. Lisandro, on the other hand, barely recalls what colour hair the man who stabbed him had. I saw them coming from the corner opposite, and I noticed how they crossed over and started approaching. Lisandro saw nothing, or the little he saw he misinterpreted: he asked me, when it was almost obvious they would stop in front of us, whether I thought they might give us a cigarette. Stupidly, the moment they blocked our way I thought about my ice cream. Also about how small the two guys were, about shouting at them to go to hell, about kicking out to defend ourselves. I thought of hundreds of things, but not about handing over the banknotes I had in my jeans’ pocket. Lisandro took it all as a joke. It was pathetic to see him laughing as he grappled with the bald guy in the black leather jacket, and to see myself meanwhile not moving a muscle, timidly asking them to stop until I contemplated, terrified, the fair-haired mugger slicing the air with a switchblade.
They operated on Lisandro that same night. The most humiliating thing for me was having had to change one of my banknotes in the bar to pay the taxi driver who took us to the hospital. The duty doctor there examined him and told me I should call the police and report an attempted murder. Lisandro, blood pouring through the bandages strapped around his left shoulder, began to howl like a dying beast as they wheeled him into the operating theatre suffering from arterial bleeding. The doctors spent several days trying to stem the infection in his penetrating wound.
They did all they could to save his arm. Because of the bacterial infection he had contracted, amputation was recommended if they wanted to reduce the chances of his dying to zero. Lisandro’s mother wept on my shoulder, howled at me, swore at me, hit me, embraced me, thanked me, and then fainted in the waiting room of the operating theatre, moments before Lisandro’s bed was wheeled inside for the third time. When I next saw my friend, sprawled on his back in a bed on the fourth floor, he was a one-armed man trying to smile.
While Lisandro was getting better and the police investigation was running its course, my condition grew steadily worse. I was suffering from anxiety, loss of appetite alternating with the impulse to devour everything, my head ached continuously, and, worst of all, I couldn’t sleep for more than two hours at a time without suddenly waking up with palpitations. I would dream about the arm: Lisandro and I were walking down the street when all of a sudden he exclaimed: Hey, you, I bet you don’t dare take your arm off! with which he began biting into his forearm until he managed to tear it off in one piece. Curiously, in my dreams there wasn’t a single drop of blood. The wound was clean, as if he was a detachable doll. Instead, Lisandro’s mouth was red and moist as he spoke to me excitedly. I would wake up with a start and run into the kitchen where I would torment myself in silence, with the lights off. I would think not only about how miserly I had been telling those guys we had no money, not only about my cowardly refusal to get involved in the fight, but above all about my terrible good fortune. Why had they stabbed Lisandro first instead of starting with me? And why had Lisandro, bleeding as he was, about to lose consciousness, still tried to defend me when the fair-haired mugger threatened to jump on me?