Paradises

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Jaime died at the start of spring. Someone who didn’t see him, or who caught sight just too late to swerve and avoid him, ran him down as he was changing a tyre at the side of the road. From the skid marks, it was thought to have been a lorry, but it could have been a bus or one of those big four-by-fours. And he was left there, lying between the tarmac and the verge for several hours, until around midnight, when a family collecting cardboard to make a few pesos discovered him and notified the police. And even though I saw him in the coffin just the other day, I have a clear picture in my mind that he was found on his back, eyes wide open, looking more drunk than dead.

I didn’t have to take care of anything. Héctor, Jaime’s brother, dealt with it all. He went to the morgue to identify the body, dropped in to the police station, took care of all the formalities for the insurance, arranged the wake and transport of the body with the funeral parlour. All very swiftly, as if it had been planned. First, a policeman who had known Jaime since childhood notified Héctor, who in turn called me at dawn, the time of day when this type of news tends to arrive. It’s terrible, he said, I can’t believe it. I didn’t know how to reply, having forgotten about the possibility of death. Not Jaime’s death or mine, or that of anyone in particular, but Death as a whole. Hello, hello, Héctor repeated and then I let out a Yes, it’s terrible, my eyes on Simón as he slept sprawled out in Jaime’s place. Then I kept still, as still as a person can be, looking without seeing, at the furniture, the high ceiling, the spiderwebs, getting nowhere with the questions about life that were filling my head.

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