Читать книгу Fate - Jorge Consiglio - Страница 11

At fourteen, Amer had raised a cigarette to his lips and swallowed the smoke. He’d been told not to, but at that age he was stubborn and wanted to try everything. His chin sported a few sparse hairs. Every so often he would stroke them, checking on them, keeping them alive. It was the first evidence of puberty. Literally, on that day, he had swallowed smoke. Then, he’d stepped away to cough. Truth be told, he was the one who’d been swallowed up. For a moment, he thought he was going to die. Simple as that. And he had accepted it with a certain peace. It was two in the afternoon. Spring. Mild weather. He was in a plaza, under the shadow cast by the bust of Eloy Alfaro. From that day until he turned fifty-four – with a few interruptions – Amer had smoked. Way too much. Now his legs would get heavy, he’d get short of breath. He had to quit; there was no getting round it. A doctor made the decision for him. A couple of his arteries were blocked, the doctor determined. Percutaneous coronary intervention. As he talked, Amer was distracted by the dust particles suspended in a ray of sunshine. He tried to think back: it’d been a year since he’d left the city limits.

The campaign began. He searched online for places that dealt with addictions, but none of them persuaded him. The answer came from somewhere unexpected: a forum for taxidermists that took place once a fortnight. A guy from Córdoba who lived in Buenos Aires told him he had the same problem. Sharing a self-help group would be a good solution.

One Tuesday, they went together to the Tobar García psychiatric hospital for children. They were met by a doctor with a Basque surname – Eizaga – who wordlessly obliged them to sit in a semi-circle with other people. The smell of floor cleaning products was overpowering. At first, Amer felt awkward. He wriggled in his chair, his legs itched. To his right, a 150-kilo guy breathed heavily. He gave off a sweet odour, like that of a nectarine compote, which mixed with the aroma of disinfectant. Eizaga said that an adult inhales and exhales between five and six litres of air per minute. This fact was essential to what he went on to explain, yet Amer lost the thread immediately. He didn’t catch a single word. He was elsewhere. A woman across from him was biting her nails. Her image, even when still, was dynamic. She shifted from one geometrical plane to another with utter spontaneity, as if her desire depended on this exhaltation. Amer couldn’t grasp what he was seeing. And so, as always, he veered towards simplification. I am interested in that woman, he said to himself, which put an end to the issue. He simply erased it and moved on to something else. At the end of the session, he learned that the woman’s name was Clara and that she was ten years younger than him.

The guy from Córdoba gave Amer a ride home. They drove down Ramón Carrillo Avenue and talked, among other things, about what they had just experienced. Each elaborated on his point of view, which didn’t fully coincide with the other’s. But they both agreed that good judgement was no match for the hegemony of pleasure.