Читать книгу Fate - Jorge Consiglio - Страница 12

The Colombian disappeared into the subway. Karl walked down Corrientes towards Pueyrredón. He was taller than everyone else. He crossed Uruguay Street and stopped short in front of a bookshop. His eye roved over the window display before he carried on. Marina Kezelman was turning forty in two weeks and he wanted a gift that would surprise her. They had met in a bar in Madrid a decade before. Everything had happened very quickly. Moved by desire and, above all, an exaggerated sense of honesty, they’d made their decisions.

Packing up his personal mythology, two suitcases and an oboe, Karl moved to Argentina. Those were tough times, although their intimate harmony gave them the best outlook on the world, the most benevolent one. Their relationship in those days – its complexity, its refuge – made them indestructible. They sensed this and made the most of it: they found work, moved to a central neighbourhood and had a son, Simón. Now Karl wanted to give Marina Kezelman something that would be worthy of their mutual understanding. But nothing occurred to him. He meandered round town for longer than he had planned and, almost without realising, he arrived at Callao Avenue. It was a strange day for Karl. More than ever before, he felt the city had changed him; at the same time, he noticed that the change hadn’t affected the core of his personality. In other words, Karl was someone else but also himself. This fact – so obscure that he found it hard to put into words – materialised in a blurry and seemingly unfounded sorrow which was hard to shake off. He stopped by a newspaper stand to wait for the green light, and when it came, he carried on walking. Halfway across the avenue, an image of barbecued short ribs flashed into his mind, neither overcooked nor rare. This image made him instantly and voraciously hungry. Karl knew himself well: his appetite was boundless. To some extent he liked this trait of his; he saw it as a positive part of himself – joyful, celebratory even, to describe it somehow. For a second, he thought about making a stop at a pizza place, but settled for something much simpler. He bought two chocolate bars at a corner store and wolfed them down. From that point on, his pace slowed ever so slightly. Food, as per usual, started him on a meditative path. This time, it proved fruitful: he hit on the perfect gift for his wife. I’ve got it, he said to himself. He checked his phone and confirmed he was at the right place. He walked two blocks down Corrientes and entered a sex shop. He browsed for a while. Despite knowing exactly what he wanted, he felt confused. The solution came when a sales assistant volunteered the necessary information. He left the shop with an orange vibrator offering twelve and a half centimetres of penetration.

Once back on the street, the atmosphere had changed. Everything was charged with a certain immediacy. Karl walked quickly, as if he were late, and with two strides leapt onto a bus. He knew there was no one at home (Marina Kezelman had taken their son to swimming lessons). Even so, he entered cautiously. He chewed on three coffee beans and started to pace, his thoughts whirring, partly distracted and partly worried. He decided to hide the vibrator in his son’s room. He unwrapped it and placed it in a plastic box they used to store cast-off toys. He made a cup of tea, squeezing half a lemon into the cup, and Skyped a friend in Germany. He learned that in Olching, a town of 25,000 people west of Munich, it had been raining for a whole week.