Tender is the Flesh(12)

When he rings the bell, a nurse answers. He can never remember their names, though they all remember his. “Se?or Marcos, how are you doing? Come on in, we’ll bring Don Armando over in just a moment.”

He made sure that all the employees at the home were nurses. Not caregivers or night attendants with no education or training. That’s where he met Cecilia.

The first thing he notices every time he walks in is the faint smell of urine and medication. The artificial odour of the chemicals that keep these bodies breathing. The home is impeccably clean, but he knows the smell of urine is almost impossible to get rid of with the seniors in nappies. He never calls them grandpas.

Not all of them are grandparents, or will be. They’re just seniors, people who have been alive for many years, and perhaps that’s their only achievement.

The nurse leads him to the waiting room and offers him something to drink. He sits down in an armchair facing a huge window that opens onto a garden. No one goes for a walk in the garden without protection. Some people use umbrellas. The birds aren’t violent, but people panic around them. A black bird perches on the branch of a small bush. He hears a gasp. A woman, a senior, a patient at the nursing home is looking fearfully at the bird. It flies off and the senior mumbles something, as though she could protect herself with words. Then she falls asleep in her seat. She appears to have been recently bathed.

He remembers Hitchcock’s The Birds, and how much of an impact the film had had on him when he saw it, and how he wished it hadn’t been prohibited.

He thinks back to when he met Cecilia. He’d been sitting in the same armchair, waiting. Nélida wasn’t there and Cecilia was the one who had taken him to his father. In those days his father walked, talked, was somewhat lucid on his visits. When he stood up and saw her, he didn’t feel anything in particular. Just another nurse. But then she began to talk and he paid attention. That voice. She talked about the special diet Don Armando was on, about how they were monitoring his blood pressure and giving him regular check-ups, about how he was calmer now. He saw infinite lights surround them and felt that her voice could lift him up. That her voice was a way out of the world.

After what happened with the baby, Cecilia’s words became black holes, they began to disappear into themselves.

There’s a TV on with no volume. It’s a rerun of an old show where the participants have to kill cats with a stick. They risk their lives to win a car. The audience applauds.

He picks up a brochure for the nursing home. It’s on a side table, next to the magazines. On the cover, a man and woman are smiling. They’re seniors, but not quite elderly. The brochures used to have pictures of seniors frolicking in a meadow, or sitting in a park surrounded by greenery. Today the backdrop is neutral. But the seniors are smiling just like they always did. Inside a circle, in red letters, are the words “Security guaranteed 24/7.” It’s known that in public nursing homes, when the majority of seniors die, or are left to die, they’re sold on the black market. It’s the cheapest meat money can buy because it’s dry and diseased, full of pharmaceuticals. It’s meat with a first and last name. In some cases, a senior’s own family members will authorize a private or state-owned nursing home to sell their body and use the proceeds to pay off any debt. There are no longer funerals. It’s very difficult to ensure that a body isn’t disinterred and eaten. That’s why many of the cemeteries were sold and others abandoned. Some still remain as relics of a time when the dead could rest in peace.

He will not allow his father to be cut up.

From the waiting room, he can see the lounge area where the seniors relax. They’re sitting and watching television. It’s how they spend most of their time. They watch television and wait to die.

There aren’t many of them. This was something else he’d made sure of. He didn’t want his father in a nursing home full of neglected seniors. But there also aren’t many of them because it’s the most expensive facility in the city.

Time stifles in this place. The hours and seconds stick to the skin, pierce it. Better to ignore its passing, though that’s not possible.

“Hi there, Marcos. How are you doing? It’s so nice to see you, dear.” Nélida has brought his father over in a wheelchair. She hugs him because she’s fond of him, because all the nurses know the story of the man who’s not only a dedicated son but who rescued one of the nurses and married her.

After the baby’s death, Nélida started hugging him.

He crouches down and looks his father in the eye and takes his hands. “Hi, Dad,” he says. His father’s gaze is lost, desolate.

“How’s Dad, any better?” he says, getting up. “Do you know what prompted it?”

Nélida tells him to take a seat. She leaves his father next to the armchair, looking out the window. They sit close by, at a table with two chairs.

“Don Armando had another episode, dear. Yesterday he took off all his clothes, and when Marta—she’s the nurse who works nights—went to look after one of the other residents, your father went to the kitchen and ate the entire birthday cake we’d set aside for a grandpa who’s turning ninety.”

He covers up his smile. The black bird takes flight and lands on another bush. His father points happily to the bird. He gets up and pushes the wheelchair close to the window. When he sits back down, Nélida looks at him with affection and pity. “Marcos, we’re going to have to go back to tying him up at night,” she says. He nods. “I need you to sign the authorization form. It’s for Don Armando’s own good. You know I don’t like to do it. But your father is sensitive. He can’t go eating whatever he wants, it’s not good for him. Besides, today it’s a cake, tomorrow it’s a knife.”