A Crack in the Wall by Claudia Piñeiro Page B

“You asked a moment ago how wide the crack was and I couldn’t say. I confess you got me there, arquitecto , but now I do know; while you were in the lavatory I took the liberty of calling my building’s caretaker, and he went and measured it. Will an inch and one-eighth do?” he repeated, and sat waiting for Pablo’s reply with his rictus smile.
    â€œIt will do, it will do,” Pablo answered, increasingly persuaded that this man would have made an excellent tie salesman.
    â€œShall we proceed, then, or would you prefer to take some time to evaluate the situation more fully?”
    Pablo, who had hoped to dispatch this problem in one day and was quite sure that he couldn’t stand to have a second meeting with this specimen, said:
    â€œLook, Señor Jara, as I said earlier, Borla and Associates do not believe that the crack that has appeared in your apartment necessarily has any connection to our work.”
    â€œAnd I say that it has, that your practice is responsible,” Jara quickly interjected, but Pablo didn’t let himself be cowed by this fighting talk or, if he did, he didn’t let it show. Instead he said:
    â€œWe have been putting up buildings for years and we’ve never had a wall fall down. The probability of serious structural damage in your apartment is either extremely low or zero.”
    Jara laughed, but this time it wasn’t a salesman’s laugh – it wasn’t contained or studied but genuine, nervous and even angry; for the first time this man addressed Pablo by his surname, not by his first name or position.
    â€œSeñor Simó, the life of a person like you or me can’t be reduced to a question of statistics. A wall only has to fall down once to finish someone off. Or do you have seven lives, like a cat? No, don’t kid yourself that you do. You’re not understanding me because you don’t see what it is that really frightens me. Shall I tell you? It’s not being flattened by falling masonry, because that – death, I mean – would be the end of the story and I wouldn’t know anything about it. What does scare me is the thought of the wall coming down when I’m not there – do you see? – that today, thisafternoon, or some time soon, when I’m on my way home, just about to arrive, as I pass your site, I’ll look up to my window, as I always have done for years and, there in the distance, I’ll see the chairs around my table, the table itself still with the cloth that covered it this morning at breakfast, and behind that the door through which I enter my home from the fifth-floor landing, my fridge, my boiler, my whole life, arquitecto . And you know why I would see those things? Because the wall that covered the little I own wouldn’t be there any more, protecting what’s mine.”
    Jara repeated the words “what’s mine”, then paused for a moment, gazing blankly at the papers he had strewn over the desk until some impulse prompted him to move, imperceptibly at first then gradually faster, and soon he was rocking back and forth in his chair again. Jara seemed to have been set in indefinite motion, but then, as though suddenly remembering something important, he came to an abrupt halt and started looking among the files with renewed enthusiasm, until he alighted on a newspaper cutting that showed a large photograph of a building in which somebody seemed quickly or carelessly to have erased the side wall. It looked like a doll’s house, with even the smallest details of the exposed rooms visible. The photograph had the caption “Fatal Collapse”.
    â€œYou understand me, arquitecto , don’t you, right? Of course you understand me.”
    Jara took a handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and dabbed at his forehead with deliberation, repeating the action on both sides. Then he crossed his legs, folded his hands in his lap and once more rocked back and