 Half an Hour
Enrique Ferrari
Translated by Graham Thomson
"Nothing was solved when the fight was over,
but nothing mattered"
C. Palahnuik
Twelve noon. Every minute is a kick in the ass.
I’m ten thousand kilometres away from all the
people and all the places I care about, in a ball-breaking job I don’t know how to
do, with false papers, surrounded by bosses and co-workers who talk the brutalized slang
of a language I can barely stammer, in temperatures that might suit a lizard but not human
life.
Thirsty, tired, disgusted. An unbearable sun, huge,
white, dirty. And the heat. Hell.
Twelve noon.
I wipe the sweat off my forehead and start up the
machine again. I feel the motor judder. It feels like my arm is about to come off.
It was a few months ago, just before I fled Buenos
Aires, and the rack rents and the nights with no dinner, that I had the accident.
After almost a year without work, since they fired me
from the publisher’s, I had got a start driving a taxi. A Peugeot 504 in not bad
condition.
I was cruising around looking for fares that
didn’t exist, slow, bored. Tabaco was on the radio. I had almost crossed the
junction of Humberto 1 and Gálvez when I felt the impact. A rich kid going too fast in a
blue Fiat had misjudged and crashed straight into the rear wheel of the 504.
Fuck, I thought.
I had my right arm draped on the wheel and my left arm
hanging out of the window. I lost control. The Peugeot rolled over twice and ended up on
its left side, on my arm.
Eight in the morning. Panic, broken glass, pain,
hospital, X-rays.
Severed tendons? Just a bone broken? Gangrene? Smashed
muscles?
Can you move your fingers? Will we have to amputate
below the elbow?
The doubts went on for a couple of weeks. When they
were sure the infection wasn’t going to affect the bone they operated.
Twenty stitches, a platinum plate, eight screws. Pain,
pain, pain.
A few days before leaving, as she was taking out my
stitches, Dr Splitz warned me emphatically not to make any effort until the arm had
completely recovered.
And when is that going to be? I asked.
It’s going to take some time. When you feel
that the damaged arm is functioning as well as the other one, you’ll know, don’t
worry.
But necessity, as popular wisdom tells us, has the
face of a heretic. And here I am: still without enough strength in my left arm to lift a
beer bottle and working this bastard machine that weighs three hundred kilos.
Half past twelve. Lunch time. Half an hour.
I pull off my T-shirt and go across the street.
Nothing.
Nothing, I repeat.
Nothing makes sense and I don’t know what the
next play is or where to find the strength to make it. Until last night I was jiving away
my troubles with music, beer, and the expectation of her imminent arrival.
Until yesterday.
Half past ten at night. Beer with whisky, always a
brutal combination. A record, then another and another and another.
Only a handful
of dirty stories,
afternoons at the track
and nights with whores
I was slumped in the armchair, eyes well open, the
glass of poison in my hand, singing.
Terrible jobs,
crazy loves,
loneliness, sadness,
hangover and bad luck.
The telephone rang. Static and echo on the voices.
They refused my visa, she said.
At least six months, she said.
I don’t know what to do, she said and she cried.
I love you.
I love you, she said.
I love you.
Eleven p.m.; eleven o’clock at night and ten
thousand kilometres. Loneliness, sadness, hangover and bad luck.
Now I’m going into the supermarket. I go to the
counter where they make the sandwiches. Sandwich-with-everything-that-can-go-in-it. There
are four people waiting.
Tic-toc
Tic-toc
Three.
Tic-toc
Two.
Tic-toc
Tic-toc
One.
At least for a few minutes the air conditioning
screens me from the heat. My turn, my sandwich. I look for a pack of chewing gum and a can
of Heineken.
Check-out for less than six items. Three people in
front of me.
The first is buying two cans of peas, a box of
hamburgers, ketchup. Got some problem with the debit card, can’t remember the number
or something.
I wait.
Tic-toc
Tic-toc
After a while they get the card to work.
Next customer. I can’t believe it. This lady is
some incalculable age, a good few years more than anyone would admit to and a whole lot
more than the recommended maximum. Her purchases: milk, two toothbrushes, shampoo, mints,
a pot of cream.
Eight fifty-seven.
The lady doesn’t understand or isn’t in
agreement, she argues about every one of the prices, shows some discount vouchers.
Eight fifty-seven.
She doesn’t accept the explanations, waves her
coupons in the air.
Eight fifty-seven.
My half-hour for lunch is evaporating like a puddle of
piss on the concrete.
Eight fifty-seven.
Somehow they convince her. She pays.
Another person. My kind of woman. Under twenty, to
start with. Black hair, mussed up, very long, looks sleepy and sullen. Two sachets of
alka-seltzer, a bottle of Coke. Her T-shirt is inside out, sunglasses, frayed cut-off
jeans. Hangover and in a hurry.
But it’s time to change cashiers. They count
coins, converse quietly, they separate the bills into two envelopes and write something on
a time sheet.
Tic-toc
Tic-toc
Tic-toc.
The girl with the hangover manages to pay and runs
out, I imagine to hide in the dark. And I want to go with her.
My turn.
Sandwich, two forty-nine.
Beer, one twenty.
Chewing gum, twenty-five cents.
Tax, twenty-three cents.
Total four seventeen.
I pay with a five. The cashier is nervous, he gets
mixed up with the receipt and the change. He looks new, maybe it’s his first day or
maybe he’s just subnormal. He’s got red hair and a face covered in freckles and
pimples.
I’m never going to get out of this place, I
think, this is the hell my seventeen personal demons had lined up for me: waiting in a
line, forever.
Eighty-three cents your change, sir, acne-face
says, have a nice day.
I leave the supermarket and submerge myself in the
empire of the sick whitish sun.
Twelve fifty-three. In seven minutes I have to be
working again.
I cross the parking lot diagonally, to save a few
seconds. In any case my steps are slow, my boots feel heavy, the heat of this tropical
hell, the prospect of a rushed luncheon and another four hours’ heavy work, the
absurdity.
Sun, tedium, nothing.
Nothing.
Without having noticed it I’m in the way of the
cars trying to leave the parking lot. I walk across their path diagonally without looking.
The guy is blond, he’s fat, he’s
exaggeratedly American. He’s wearing a baseball cap that says Marlins, he’s got
his two kids in the back of a grey Mustang, this year’s. Six cylinders in Vs, air
conditioning, compact player for six CDs, Bose speakers, air bag, power steering,
five-speed automatic shift, electronic windows.
He doesn’t insult me, he doesn’t yell at me
to run, he doesn’t sound the horn.
No.
He revs the engine to a roar and bucks the grey
Mustang —fully-equipped— threatening to run it over me.
The sun shines on my tired body. I can feel the
disbelief and the hate building up in my chest, I can feel the blood thicken in my veins.
I launch a nicely aimed kick that smashes into the
grey fender. The fender is dented, the balance is broken; I’ve just annulled a form
of perfection.
Five to one. Nerves, tension, rage. I start to shake
and my arm hurts. I clench my jaw.
The fat guy tries to get out. Another boot —on
the door this time— leaves him trapped, sandwiched: the door against his chest, his
back against the body of the Mustang.
I let go of the bag and the can of Heineken makes a
dull noise on the asphalt. When I open it, it’s going to shoot a load of foam, I
think.
The first right connects full in the contorted blond
face. Time for the left. I hit and it hurts, the rage swells under the arrogant white of
the sun.
The face of the guy from the Mustang disfigures and
changes. Now it’s the former economy minister, father of the plan, one of the visible
faces of the recession and the unemployment, a punch. Now it’s Zapata, the supervisor
who fired me from the publisher’s, another punch. Now it’s every one of the
people who trashed me when I was looking for work, another punch. The cartilage loses its
shape and there’s blood. Now it’s the speeding kid who crashed into my taxi,
punch. Now it’s the consul refusing her a visa, another punch. The old woman who
didn’t understand eight fifty-seven, the red-haired cashier with the acne, me. Punch,
punch, punch.
The face is an amorphous red mush. My arm hurts a lot.
The guy falls down.
I kick the door again and hear the crunch of bones
breaking and a moan. Tough luck, his hand must have got caught in the door.
But the crunch brings me back to reality. I see the
kids crying in the back seat, the swollen face, the flaccid livid hand. I see the
stupidity of it all.
I take stock of the situation: my visa expired three
days ago, I’m working with false papers —for nine hours a day I’m somebody
else, I’m Scott Zambrano— I’ve just broken the hand and nose of an American
citizen. Eighteen to thirty-six months in the shade, then deportation.
I look around and don’t see any gawkers. It was
pretty quick, in any case.
I pull on my T-shirt, cross the street fast and go a
couple of blocks before sitting down in the shade of a tree to eat my lunch.
Three minutes to one. Nothing has happened and
everything has happened.
I’m going to be late back to work, I think.
Maybe they’ll give me a warning.
Maybe they’ll suspend me.
Maybe they’ll fire me.
I open the can of Heineken. It isn’t cold any
more and it shoots a load of foam. It doesn’t matter.
I take a slug. Nothing matters. |
Enrique Ferrari was born in
Buenos Aires in the grey winter of 1972, which might explain a few things. His work has
been published in Buenos Aires No Duerme 98 and in the magazines La Bota
Literaria, Epopeya and El Cuento as well as on the websites Zapatos Rojos,
La página de Charles Bukowski de Sergi Puertas, Perro Negro , El Ciruja and El
Correo del Zar, among others. He is a regular contributor to the literary newsletter Sensibles
del Sur.