Nevada Days Read online

  King Kong lost his footing, and only the aerial on the Empire State Building saved him from falling. The end was near. Sara, our nine-year-old, began weeping silently, as if to herself, and would continue to do so for the rest of the film.

  King Kong suddenly realised that his final moment had come and he made one last noble gesture. With his dying breath, he carefully leaned down and deposited the girl on the ground. Then he fell. The screen showed him lying in the street, and we heard a voice saying that he had been killed not by the planes, but by beauty. And the film ended. Sara’s tears, however, did not, for she was weeping inconsolably now.

  There was no way of reassuring her, and we began explaining:

  “You have to understand. They did hurt him, it’s true, but he hurt others too.”

  Still sobbing, Sara answered:

  “Yes, but he didn’t know what he was doing, and they did.”

  We couldn’t argue with that, and so we took her off to bed in the hope that Queen Mab would bring her dreams that would make her forget King Kong’s fate.

  SUPPER AT TACOS

  We went shopping in the mall at the junction of Northtowne Street and McCarran. As it was growing dark, around seven o’clock, we put our shopping in the boot of the car and went to have supper at a fast-food place, part of the Tacos chain. It was right there, on the other side of McCarran, on a hill.

  You could see into the kitchen, which was only separated from the restaurant by a long counter, and the employees, all of them Latinos, were slaving away, preparing the food and putting it on metal trays like the ones you get in self-service places. The numerous customers would either collect their food in a bag from a window that opened onto the car park, so that they didn’t even have to get out of their car, or at the counter itself. For people who preferred to eat in, there were about ten tables.

  It wasn’t an entirely run-of-the-mill place. It had a huge window that faced onto McCarran, framing the glittering, diamond-bright city as if it were a painting.

  The girls chose the first table next to the door, just a few feet from a particular customer who had caught their eye. He was a young Latino, weighing about 280 pounds.

  “Wouldn’t you rather sit by the window?” I asked.

  No, they wanted a table that gave them a good view of the young man. They were at once frightened and fascinated by his huge, round, shaven head, encrusted like a ball into a neck twice the size of any normal neck

  The fat man kept glancing over at the kitchen. At one point, he got up and went to talk to one of the girls preparing the food orders. I assumed he must know her or that he was another employee on his break. He certainly wasn’t a customer, because he wasn’t eating anything. Apart from the girl in the kitchen, he only seemed interested in his telephone. He was constantly tapping at the keys, as if he were playing rather than actually making a call.

  As soon as I sat down, I realised that my hands were dirty and so I walked over to the bathroom, just a short distance away. However, the toilet was occupied, and so I went back to our table.

  “They’re not really dirty,” Izaskun said. “You’ve just got some of that Halloween make-up on them.”

  They called us to collect our trays, and before I did, I tried the toilet door again. Still occupied. A moment later, my hands were even dirtier than before, because the tray I picked up was sticky with grease.

  “Why is this so dirty?” I asked one of the women serving.

  Without a word, she gave me a clean tray and a handful of paper napkins.

  There was a new customer in the restaurant now, standing by the door. He was dressed like a cowboy, in a fancy purple shirt with white piping. I guessed that he must have been the person occupying the toilet, which meant that I could now wash my hands. I was right. This time, the door opened.

  There was toilet paper scattered all over the floor and a wet rag blocking the sink. I washed my hands thoroughly, doing my best not to touch anything. As I was leaving, I noticed that the wastepaper bin had fallen over, scattering bits of food, sweet wrappers and more toilet paper.

  About ten people were now waiting at the counter. The last two were policemen. They had their caps tucked under their arms and looked rather humble, as though they were in a chapel rather than a fast-food outlet; however, the blue of their uniforms and the guns at their belts had the expected effect, and the other customers became strangely alert and silent.

  The two policemen only stood in the queue long enough to observe the female employees, and ended up going over to the one who had been talking to the fat man. She pointed outside.

  I thought perhaps a car was blocking the exit and asked Ángela if we had parked ours properly.

  “You worry about everything,” Izaskun said. “First it’s your hands, and now it’s the car.”

  The police left the restaurant as discreetly as they had entered and, for a moment, everything was very calm and quiet, as if Tacos really had become a chapel. Suddenly, the fat man sprang to his feet and ran over to talk to the woman at the counter. He moved lightly, quickly.

  She was very offhand with him. Even though he was about eight inches taller than her and about 125 pounds heavier, she seemed to be the one looking down at him. At no point during their conversation did she stop filling plastic containers with food.

  The place was empty now. There was no-one waiting at the counter, and only we and the fat man were sitting at the tables. He was still busy with his cellphone. Izaskun was reading a comic. Ángela and Sara were trying out the different-coloured make-up on a napkin. Seen through the window, the red, fuchsia and green casinos looked like cathedrals.

  The door opened, and three policemen came in, the two from before and a third one, an older man. They went first to the toilet and then over to the counter and spoke to the offhand woman. In an attempt to understand the situation, I told the girls about the state of the toilet and about the dirty tray. Someone must have called the police to complain about the lack of hygiene. I remembered the cowboy in the purple shirt with white piping who I’d seen standing by the door.

  The fat man got up again and went over to the three policemen and the young woman. They were talking in low voices; then the fat man and two of the policemen went outside. The third one, the older man, stayed chatting to the woman. She kept pointing angrily at the kitchen and raising her voice. She wasn’t easily cowed.

  Izaskun could see what was going on outside through the glass door.

  “One of the policeman has put a little bag of white powder on the bonnet of the car,” she said. “It looks like sugar or flour, but it’s probably drugs.”

  We left the restaurant to go home and there was the fat man, sitting on the kerb, surrounded by policemen, with his hands behind his back in handcuffs. In that position, it was easy to see the tattoo that began on the back of his neck. A snake.

  There were about ten police cars in the car park, and we had to drive around them to get out onto McCarran. Sara asked if the fat man would go to prison, and we all agreed that he would.

  “For a month?” she asked.

  I thought it would probably be for years, so I answered only vaguely.

  “I don’t think there was much stuff in that little bag, so I should think they’ll let him out straight away,” Izaskun said.

  Just as had happened on the previous night with King Kong, the girls felt sorry for the arrested man.

  Lying awake in our bedroom in College Drive, I remembered the cowboy in the purple shirt with the white piping. He was probably a policeman. He had rifled the bathroom at Tacos looking for drugs, while his uniformed colleagues had surrounded the place. They must have followed the fat man there. Or somehow tracked him via his phone.

  I couldn’t quite follow the plot, but it didn’t matter. Thrillers were not as thrilling as they used to be. The main point now was the girls’ reaction: What connection was there between justice and compassion? How far should society go in order to protect itself? What should the city do with K
ing Kong?

  The questions went round and round in my head. They were like ghosts in the room. I fell asleep feeling hopeless. Not even Queen Mab, the mistress of dreams, could have come up with an answer.

  THE PAINFUL EYE AND THE VIGILANT EYE

  We were caught by a gust of wind as we were setting off for Mount Rose School, and Izaskun immediately felt a sharp pain in her eye. We could see at once that her cornea had been damaged.

  “There must have been some grit in the wind,” she said.

  We called our insurance company’s contact number in America and raced off to the clinic assigned to us. It was at 1441 McCarran, about six miles away.

  We had to wait half an hour in the waiting room because of a misunderstanding between the insurance company and the clinic. Then another half an hour, because the doctor had to cover the injured cornea with an orange liquid that was slow to take effect.

  “It’s a superficial wound and will heal on its own,” the doctor said at last, cleaning her eye.

  We dropped the girls off at school at about eleven o’clock in the morning, and five minutes later, we were back at the house, where we found an answerphone message from the police or some sort of security office informing us that Izaskun and Sara had not arrived at school at the appointed time.

  The frosted glass eye in our front door might be able to trap the image of the casinos in the town centre, but the other eye, the Vigilant Eye, was sharper still and could even see inside the houses.

  AUGUST 27, 2007

  MARY LORE

  Mary Lore Bidart was the director of the Center for Basque Studies (C.B.S.). She was about forty years old and had very pale blue eyes.

  “If you want us to do all the paperwork later, that’s fine by me,” she said.

  I was sitting immediately opposite her, but didn’t say a word. I was finding it hard to think.

  “I’m still jet-lagged. My head feels like it’s full of lead,” I explained.

  It took me almost fifteen minutes to fill in the forms that the University of Nevada required of visiting writers. Shortly afterwards, Ángela arrived and picked up the card that would allow her to use the library and access the archives.

  Before leaving the office, we gave Mary Lore the letter addressed to Robert H. Earle from the Bank of America, the one we had saved during our clearing-up session at College Drive.

  “So they’re still writing to him at that address,” Mary Lore said when she saw it. “He used the house as his study until he retired, but that was at least three years ago.”

  This explained the size of the house in College Drive. It was intended as a study, not as a family house.

  Mary Lore gave us more information. The house was a gift to the university from Robert H. Earle or “Bob” as he was known, and the C.B.S. was using it to store books and to accommodate writers spending time in Reno.

  “Bob lives in the big house at the top of your garden. Pay him a visit. He’d like that.”

  “We’ll go and see him as soon as we’ve recovered from our jet lag.”

  We left Mary Lore and started going down the stairs connecting the university offices with the library. Ángela said that I looked ill.

  “I’ve got a headache, but it’s not the jet lag, it’s Nabokov,” I said. “While Mary Lore was speaking, I was remembering that other Mary Lore, the nurse in Lolita. Don’t you remember? Nabokov has Humbert Humbert insult her, calling her “rumpy” and “a plump whore”. Then, again for no reason, he takes a sideswipe at Mary Lore’s father, some old joke about Basque shepherds having it off with sheep. It’s a vile passage.”

  “No, it’s the jet lag,” Ángela said. “I wasn’t thinking about Nabokov’s Mary Lore, but I’ve got a terrible headache as well.”

  DENNIS

  Mary Lore made all the arrangements with the university and found us an office. It was in the library, behind the shelves reserved for dictionaries and other reference books. It was small and windowless and fairly sparsely furnished, with two desks, two computers, a filing cabinet, and a phone attached to the wall. Still, it was a privilege to have a place to work in, and, during a brief “ceremony”, we were given the keys and our computer passwords.

  One of the university’s I.T. people came to see us in our office. At first, I thought he was a young man, because he was very slim and sported a kind of Beatles haircut, but he must have been at least thirty or thirty-five. He introduced himself to us as Dennis.

  “Everything O.K.? Computers working?” he asked.

  He sat down in front of one of the computers, tapped a few keys, then went to the other computer and did exactly the same. It took him all of thirty seconds.

  “Right, you’re in the system now,” he said, getting up and going over to the door.

  He left the office, but immediately came back. Five seconds, maximum.

  “I’ve been talking to Bob about security at your house. When can the exterminators come in?”

  We realised that “Bob” was our neighbour Robert H. Earle, but we didn’t know what Dennis meant by the “exterminators”.

  He was standing up, arms folded, one hand cradling his chin. He took a while to tell us what was on his mind.

  “The cellar is full of books, and there are a lot of trees and bushes around. There might be spiders,” he said at last. “Normally, that’s not a problem, but it’s best not to have them under your bed.”

  He pursed his lips before telling us the name of the spider in question: the black widow.

  “You wouldn’t mind staying home for one day, would you?” Ángela said. “That way the exterminators can come whenever they like.” She wanted to be in the C.B.S. archives first thing in the morning, whereas I had no timetable to keep to. We were in Reno because of my work as a writer, not for me to give classes or do research.

  “They can come tomorrow, if you like. The sooner we get rid of any black widows the better,” I said.

  “Great!” Dennis said, giving me the thumbs-up.

  We saw him walking briskly away through the library, taking short, quick steps. He was clearly a popular man. Several students, sitting at their computers, looked up and said hello.

  THE SPIDER

  In the images I found on the Internet the spider was black and shiny, as if it were made of a mixture of metal and plastic. It had a red mark like a diabolo on its belly. Its legs were long and strong and hairless, almost polished. Its body was no larger than a hazelnut.

  According to the article accompanying the image, the poison of the black widow was a neurotoxin, and its bite, which might seem innocuous at first, caused severe pain, like the pain of a heart attack or appendicitis, only simultaneously. It also caused tremors, faintness, dizziness, nausea and, worst of all, a sudden rise in blood pressure. The article emphasised, however, that the bite was rarely fatal, and was only really a danger to children and the elderly.

  TELEPHONE CALL TO MY MOTHER

  “I’m phoning you from the office they’ve given us at the university,” I told my mother. I had to speak standing up because the phone was fixed quite high on the wall. “I can’t phone you when I get home because that would be too late. How are you?”

  “It’s late enough as it is,” she said. “I’ve already had my supper.”

  “We’re going to have our lunch shortly. We usually go to one of the dining halls in the university, which is quite nice really, with a view over a lake with swans on it. Normally …”

  “What did you say? You’re going to have lunch? You mean supper, don’t you?”

  “No, we’re going to have lunch. We’re in Nevada, remember, in the United States. It’s twenty past twelve in the afternoon here.”

  “Twenty past twelve! That’s amazing! Here it’s twenty past nine at night. That’s why I’ve already had my supper. Normally, I have my supper at eight and by nine, I’m in bed.”

  “Don’t you watch any television? There are some good programmes on.”

  “I don’t like television. I pre
fer to go to bed. I’m in bed by nine most nights. I don’t necessarily go to sleep, but at least I’m lying down.”

  THE EXTERMINATORS

  “Here we are! The exterminators!” one of the two men said as soon as I opened the front door.

  If they had said it in unison, I would have thought they had come to advertise a variety show, or that they were two comics from the television. They seemed excessively cheerful, spoke very loudly and sang. They were wearing blue jumpsuits and red baseball caps, and carrying plastic cases and fumigation guns with long tubes attached.

  Talking all the time – I couldn’t understand a word they were saying – they went to their respective posts. The younger man, who seemed to be a trainee, went to the girls’ bedroom, and the boss, a big fellow of about sixty, went down with me to the cellar. He looked everywhere: in the corner where the washing machine and the boiler were, in the carpeted room that served as a junk room and play area for the girls, and, above all, in the garage, where the books published by the C.B.S. were stored on metal shelves. He moved from one place to another, his hands in his pockets, whistling and singing to himself. Every now and then, he would sigh and exclaim: “Terrible place!”

  He put the plastic case down on the floor and began taking out various containers. One was full of a yellow liquid; another contained a black powder like soot; the third a kind of green slime.

  The big man stopped his sing-song commentary for a moment and gave me his verdict. He repeated, in rather less prolix form, what Dennis had already told us. Our cellar was the perfect habitat for black widow spiders. And not just spiders either, but for a large number of creatures that the Bible deems beyond the pale: snakes, scorpions and so on. He would have to use some particularly aggressive substances.

  “Do you have a cat in the house?” he asked.

  I felt like saying that the only animal around was the raccoon in the garden, but the word “raccoon” escaped me and so I simply shook my head.