Читать книгу Fate - Jorge Consiglio - Страница 14

He woke up late, ten minutes after eleven, very unusual. He had toast spread with honey for breakfast. In his throat and at the top of his lungs – right in the hollows of the alveoli – he felt the need for a cigarette. He imagined – and for a moment he saw the scene in sharp detail – the bronchial tubes like a disputed territory, a war zone. The Gaza Strip in the middle of his chest.

He took a shower, hoping that the water might restore his sense of well-being. It was the right decision. He stepped out of the bathroom smelling of coconut soap and filled with a powerful rush of urgency: he had to crack on with the day, act fast, make decisions. Time was of the essence. Any delay would mean a critical waste.He had to get on with something, although he wasn’t sure what. The anxiety was backfiring. His performance dropped to zero.

At 2 p.m. he opened his laptop. He pressed the ON button and waited for the operating system to initiate. The living room curtains rippled before him. It was Tuesday and the sun was barely grazing the edge of the planet. A certain splendour, almost a shimmer, emanated from earthly matter. That afternoon, the world was translucent, barely flickering. On his desk – it’d been exactly a week since he’d polished it – were three objects: a miniature horse, a postcard with a Chinese engraving and an adjustable lamp. Amer checked his emails. He deleted some spam and audited the personal messages. He paused on one from the National History Museum of La Plata. When he opened it, the rhythm of his breathing shifted. Work, the mere mention of the word, foisted a new dynamic upon him. Now, suddenly, without rising from his chair, he was climbing a mountain. They were offering him the chance to head up a team of taxidermists. An elephant was on its way from Africa, loaded in the hold of a ship, inside an extremely high-tech cold chamber. There wasn’t much time to organise everything and they were relying on him wholeheartedly, on his anatomic knowledge, on his aptitude with polyurethane. Two months earlier he had worked miracles on an antelope. Everyone knew about it.

Amer stroked his chin and considered smoking. For fifteen seconds, he was lost in thought. The cigarette was a powerful, indispensable link in the chain. Without tobacco, he was half a man. He stood up abruptly and went towards the bathroom. Determined, he opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out a box of Xanax. He swallowed a pill, coaxing it down his throat with the water he drank straight from the tap, bent over the sink. He returned to the computer in a different mood, but now his mind was elsewhere. He googled brown bears. He browsed until he came across an article in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. In 2015, a 180-kilo bear had killed three farmers in a small village in Asturias. We are not animals, said Amer, staring at the screen. The article included an image of a bear – apparently the culprit – standing upright on two legs. Its head was like a planet: huge, round and tilted slightly to the side, with two small ears towards the back, pricked up in alertness.