silence on the floor. Out here, I could pray; I could ask God to enter into Alfredo’s hands and save your life. I’ve prayed only once before, a long time ago, when I realized I had lost and I didn’t want to give up. I raised my stained hands to heaven, and I summoned God to help me, because I knew that if the creature under my scalpel died, everything else would die with her: the trees, the dogs, the rivers, even the angels. Everything in creation.
5
I saw them too late, when there was no more chance of escape. I felt afraid, and then I saw them. Halfway down the corridor, just a few steps from Radiology. Two policemen standing next to a door. Arms in gray uniform shirts, pistols in holsters. They were listening to a third man, who was in street clothes. He was speaking in a low voice, barely moving his lips, which were so dark, they looked as though he’d been eating licorice. It was summer; the hospital was empty. The man’s eyes moved toward me. They looked like little glass spheres; they pounced on me there in the corridor. He was practically taking aim, staring at me, and then one of the policemen turned and looked at me, too. The elevator was at their backs, a few steps past them on the other side of the hall. I kept walking, but I felt hollow, like a puppet. A week had passed since the atrocities of that other afternoon, when I’d had too many drinks on an empty stomach.
I didn’t have a clear memory of what had happened—it was as though everything had taken place under a layer of glue. But she couldn’t have forgotten. Not her. I’d left her huddled up against the wall in the darkness, a heap of beaten limbs. Used and tossed aside, like a rubber. I thought, Maybe she’s behind that door the cops are standing in front of. Maybe they’ve brought her here to identify me. Now, when I’m just about to walk past that repulsive person with the olive skin, she’ll come out into the open. Short, faceless, with hair like a raffia basket on her head, she’ll stretch out her arm toward me:
It’s him. Grab him.
Her cockroach legs have carried her out of the distant suburbs, scurried through the better neighborhoods, and brought her to me. The cops are going to arrest me. They’ll do it unobtrusively, the way it’s done in a public place, so as not to create panic. A tight grip on my arm, and a calm voice saying,
Please come with us.
But instead, Angela, nobody so much as grazed me. With my finger on the red button, I waited for the elevator doors to open. The others were still there; they hadn’t moved. I didn’t look at them, but I saw them, three dark shapes in the corner of one of my eyes. By the time the elevator arrived, I was no longer myself. With my shirt sticking to my back, I smiled at a lady and a little girl who were going up with me. “After you,” I said, like a stupid brute.
I haven’t done anything,
madam. Can’t you see that? I’m a nice man. Please go downstairs,
walk up to those nasty-looking fellows, and tell them so.
Meanwhile, we were flying up past the floors in a metal box.
While I made my usual rounds, visiting the beds of the patients I’d recently operated on, I exchanged glances with no one. Eyes down, squinting professionally through my bifocals at the medical charts, at the gold Mont Blanc pen I used to adjust sedative levels. Then I headed for the operating room, and on the way my shoulders trembled like wings. I made my customary entrance, kicking the door open, holding up my sterilized hands to a nurse, who slipped on my gloves. I’ve got my hands up like a criminal, I thought, and I managed a small smile. Then peace descended, the serenity of work. Iodine solution, cold scalpel, blood. My hands were as calm and precise as always—no, even more so. It’s just that they weren’t mine; they were the hands of a man I was looking at, an impeccably professional man whom I no longer admired. I looked at myself the way an entomologist looks at an insect. Yes, now
5
I saw them too late, when there was no more chance of escape. I felt afraid, and then I saw them. Halfway down the corridor, just a few steps from Radiology. Two policemen standing next to a door. Arms in gray uniform shirts, pistols in holsters. They were listening to a third man, who was in street clothes. He was speaking in a low voice, barely moving his lips, which were so dark, they looked as though he’d been eating licorice. It was summer; the hospital was empty. The man’s eyes moved toward me. They looked like little glass spheres; they pounced on me there in the corridor. He was practically taking aim, staring at me, and then one of the policemen turned and looked at me, too. The elevator was at their backs, a few steps past them on the other side of the hall. I kept walking, but I felt hollow, like a puppet. A week had passed since the atrocities of that other afternoon, when I’d had too many drinks on an empty stomach.
I didn’t have a clear memory of what had happened—it was as though everything had taken place under a layer of glue. But she couldn’t have forgotten. Not her. I’d left her huddled up against the wall in the darkness, a heap of beaten limbs. Used and tossed aside, like a rubber. I thought, Maybe she’s behind that door the cops are standing in front of. Maybe they’ve brought her here to identify me. Now, when I’m just about to walk past that repulsive person with the olive skin, she’ll come out into the open. Short, faceless, with hair like a raffia basket on her head, she’ll stretch out her arm toward me:
It’s him. Grab him.
Her cockroach legs have carried her out of the distant suburbs, scurried through the better neighborhoods, and brought her to me. The cops are going to arrest me. They’ll do it unobtrusively, the way it’s done in a public place, so as not to create panic. A tight grip on my arm, and a calm voice saying,
Please come with us.
But instead, Angela, nobody so much as grazed me. With my finger on the red button, I waited for the elevator doors to open. The others were still there; they hadn’t moved. I didn’t look at them, but I saw them, three dark shapes in the corner of one of my eyes. By the time the elevator arrived, I was no longer myself. With my shirt sticking to my back, I smiled at a lady and a little girl who were going up with me. “After you,” I said, like a stupid brute.
I haven’t done anything,
madam. Can’t you see that? I’m a nice man. Please go downstairs,
walk up to those nasty-looking fellows, and tell them so.
Meanwhile, we were flying up past the floors in a metal box.
While I made my usual rounds, visiting the beds of the patients I’d recently operated on, I exchanged glances with no one. Eyes down, squinting professionally through my bifocals at the medical charts, at the gold Mont Blanc pen I used to adjust sedative levels. Then I headed for the operating room, and on the way my shoulders trembled like wings. I made my customary entrance, kicking the door open, holding up my sterilized hands to a nurse, who slipped on my gloves. I’ve got my hands up like a criminal, I thought, and I managed a small smile. Then peace descended, the serenity of work. Iodine solution, cold scalpel, blood. My hands were as calm and precise as always—no, even more so. It’s just that they weren’t mine; they were the hands of a man I was looking at, an impeccably professional man whom I no longer admired. I looked at myself the way an entomologist looks at an insect. Yes, now
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