possible. He spoke while he moved the pen like a pointer. Let’s see, a broken hip isn’t anything serious, as I told you. It’s a common thing, we consider it an epidemic of old age. Every year in Spain we treat forty thousand broken hips in the elderly, particularly women. So that’s incidental.
Leandro felt fear. He feared the moment the doctor would start to talk about what wasn’t incidental. The problem is that with these type of fractures sometimes they’re the first clue to a general debilitation. We are going to send your wife home, but we are going to do some serious tests on her, aside from the fact that she has advanced osteoporosis she was already being treated for … Leandro stuck his hands into the pockets of his jacket. He was cold. I had no idea, he said. The doctor smiled, opened the folder with Aurora’s information. You know how women are, they keep their problems to themselves.
Yeah, replied Leandro. The doctor talked to him about densitometry and degrees of mobility, he named other tests that he was going to perform, but he never seemed to get to the point. Leandro asked him about rehabilitation after leaving the hospital. The important thing is to not let her get too frustrated, was all the doctor said. It’s just part of old age.
The conversation languished. Confused, Leandro walked through the hall on the way back to Aurora’s room. His ineptitude for domestic tasks infuriated him. Up until that point, Aurora had taken care of the house. For Leandro the washing machine may as well have been a refrigerator that washed the clothes. He took care of the financial stuff, the bank’s itemizations, paying the bills, buying the wine, attending the miserable building meetings, but he didn’t attend to the inner workings of the house. He knows that on Sundays Lorenzo and Sylvia come for lunch and there is almost always rice soup and batter-fried hake. And that on Thursdays when Manolo Almendros shows up at midday Aurora always invites him to stay and offers him his favorite chocolates for dessert. But he doesn’t know how she manages to have them on hand. Itupsets him to think of his wife disabled in a house that isn’t prepared.
In three days, we’ll be at home, he announced to Aurora, who was reading in bed. Then he sat close by her and opened the newspaper. They were both silent, reading almost in unison. Perhaps they were asking themselves similar questions, but they didn’t say anything to each other. Mugshots of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. The death of Yasser Arafat. The recent elections in America.
Osembe had come down to find him. Leandro sees her through the glass. She smiles and they kiss on both cheeks, yet she conveys the same absent air of their previous encounter. She brings him upstairs to a different room, somewhat larger. The window opens onto the backyard and the blinds are not completely lowered. The afternoon light streams in. Different room, he says. It’s better, she says. The bathroom is bigger, with pale yellow tiles. Above the sink is a fixture with three oval mirrors. Leandro notices that it is almost identical to the one in his apartment, which unnerves him. She sits over a bidet and soaps up. Leandro feels a stab of disgust at the idea that she was underneath another client just a minute ago. He runs his fingers through his hair and looks in the mirror at the blotches on the skin of his forehead and cheeks. His is the face of an old guy. There’s a Jacuzzi, you want to go in? asks Osembe. Maybe later, replies Leandro.
When he sits down to undress, he looks out into the back garden. He sees a half-filled pool and a white seesaw with rusty axles. Take off your clothes, Leandro tells Osembe. She places herself in front of him and undresses, without adding any intention to the purely mechanical act. She is slow to take off her lastpieces of underwear, as if she wants to seem modest. She looks at herself and tenses the muscles in her thighs and buttocks.
Leandro felt fear. He feared the moment the doctor would start to talk about what wasn’t incidental. The problem is that with these type of fractures sometimes they’re the first clue to a general debilitation. We are going to send your wife home, but we are going to do some serious tests on her, aside from the fact that she has advanced osteoporosis she was already being treated for … Leandro stuck his hands into the pockets of his jacket. He was cold. I had no idea, he said. The doctor smiled, opened the folder with Aurora’s information. You know how women are, they keep their problems to themselves.
Yeah, replied Leandro. The doctor talked to him about densitometry and degrees of mobility, he named other tests that he was going to perform, but he never seemed to get to the point. Leandro asked him about rehabilitation after leaving the hospital. The important thing is to not let her get too frustrated, was all the doctor said. It’s just part of old age.
The conversation languished. Confused, Leandro walked through the hall on the way back to Aurora’s room. His ineptitude for domestic tasks infuriated him. Up until that point, Aurora had taken care of the house. For Leandro the washing machine may as well have been a refrigerator that washed the clothes. He took care of the financial stuff, the bank’s itemizations, paying the bills, buying the wine, attending the miserable building meetings, but he didn’t attend to the inner workings of the house. He knows that on Sundays Lorenzo and Sylvia come for lunch and there is almost always rice soup and batter-fried hake. And that on Thursdays when Manolo Almendros shows up at midday Aurora always invites him to stay and offers him his favorite chocolates for dessert. But he doesn’t know how she manages to have them on hand. Itupsets him to think of his wife disabled in a house that isn’t prepared.
In three days, we’ll be at home, he announced to Aurora, who was reading in bed. Then he sat close by her and opened the newspaper. They were both silent, reading almost in unison. Perhaps they were asking themselves similar questions, but they didn’t say anything to each other. Mugshots of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. The death of Yasser Arafat. The recent elections in America.
Osembe had come down to find him. Leandro sees her through the glass. She smiles and they kiss on both cheeks, yet she conveys the same absent air of their previous encounter. She brings him upstairs to a different room, somewhat larger. The window opens onto the backyard and the blinds are not completely lowered. The afternoon light streams in. Different room, he says. It’s better, she says. The bathroom is bigger, with pale yellow tiles. Above the sink is a fixture with three oval mirrors. Leandro notices that it is almost identical to the one in his apartment, which unnerves him. She sits over a bidet and soaps up. Leandro feels a stab of disgust at the idea that she was underneath another client just a minute ago. He runs his fingers through his hair and looks in the mirror at the blotches on the skin of his forehead and cheeks. His is the face of an old guy. There’s a Jacuzzi, you want to go in? asks Osembe. Maybe later, replies Leandro.
When he sits down to undress, he looks out into the back garden. He sees a half-filled pool and a white seesaw with rusty axles. Take off your clothes, Leandro tells Osembe. She places herself in front of him and undresses, without adding any intention to the purely mechanical act. She is slow to take off her lastpieces of underwear, as if she wants to seem modest. She looks at herself and tenses the muscles in her thighs and buttocks.
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