The Foreigners - Maxine Swann [53]
eighteen
I was walking along the wall that surrounds Chacarita, the municipal cemetery. I liked this walk. Usually I came here later in the day, around dusk, and walked under the brown light of the lamps. But on this particular day, the sun was still high. The wall cast a delicious cool shade. Animals and people rested in its shelter. Street kids played alongside it in the grass. Occasionally, a street dog crossed my path, trotting busily or loitering, the Buenos Aires street dogs like street dogs everywhere, mutt mixes, fox-like, on the small side, with German shepherd coloring.
I crossed the railroad track and, farther on, where the wall curved, glanced down to discover a flattened dog head, ear, eye, muzzle, all impeccably preserved, only half an inch thick. A pace or so away was the more mangled body.
I walked on, and about a hundred meters ahead, as I was taking the next curve in the wall, I saw a live street dog, unusually large, about three times the size of the standard street doglets, his German shepherd traits more pronounced, only something was wrong with him. He was missing all his fur, except for on his head and around his feet. Instead, the surface of his body was smooth dark gray skin. He was browsing through the garbage on the grass island between the two sides of the road. He shoved at a garbage bag with his nose, glanced up, saw me and headed my way, trotting at a diagonal carelessly through traffic.
I looked around. No one, nothing. The sidewalk on my side was entirely empty. There was no other explanation—he was coming for me. I began to walk quickly, looking over my shoulder. He was approaching from the traffic side. On my other side was the wall. What to do? Scale the wall? At least with a human being, you could talk, try to seduce or scare him with your words.
The dog had crossed the street and was coming up behind me, trotting. I was now covered in sweat. I was being pursued by an unscrupulous animal. I imagined the murder scene. He’d leap at me, knock me over—he was big enough—knock me out, start eating at my head, then slowly rummage down through the rest of my body, eating at his leisure. Would anyone see? There were hardly any cars passing. The sound of his breath, his footsteps ceased. Was he poised to attack? Would he spring? I stiffened, stopped breathing, preparing myself too. When nothing happened, I glanced back.
The dog had indeed paused. He was looking at me, waiting. As if coming to a decision, he turned and trotted back across the street the other way. He’d decided to spare me this time.
Miguel was back. M
“Okay,” Leonarda said. “Now I want to do something real.”
“Like what?” I asked.
We were standing on the street outside his house, cars parked in front of us. Her look was elated.
“I want to put a virus in his brain,” she said. “I want to make him ill, very ill. Will you help me?”
The proposition was so drastic, a crack opened in my vision. I saw Roman Coliseum entertainments, Francis Bacon scenes, a carcass placed on furniture in the center of a room.
At the same time, I pictured myself shouting, again this other register, high drama, “Hold, hold, enough!”
We pranced in together, paraded, danced, breezing past the doorman—of course he knew her—having just made out together against the wall across the street, everything a provocation, childish, yes, adolescent.
The floor had just been polished. I slipped. We giggled. We skated. There was a fat pillar. We twirled around it. His door was behind the pillar. There was a little grate on it.
“Hide, hide,” she said.
I hid behind the pillar. He was expecting her, not the two of us. She was changing postures by the minute, now