Money to Burn by Ricardo Piglia

Author:Ricardo Piglia [Piglia, Ricardo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-04-17T16:00:00+00:00

6

The garçonnière installed in flat number nine, on Julio Herrera and Obes Streets, is a small complex of near-empty rooms, painted a pale green. The door to the flat (the bell doesn't work so, to get in touch with its occasional inhabitants, it's necessary to do so via the intercom system down at street level) opens on to a narrow corridor where (the youth who wrote the police reports for El Mundo pointed out) the doors to other flats are also located. It's on the first floor of the apartment block, which has no lift, being only three storeys high. It is important to bear this detail in mind.

Once inside the flat, the first sight afforded to the viewer is that of a kind of living-cum-dining-room of some four metres by three, on whose left-hand side there runs a kitchen, in which there's finally a window giving on to an inner well intended to provide air and light. The kitchen contains a marble-topped counter with a sink in the middle and cupboards underneath. The visitor who enters this flat will meet with empty walls and scant living-room furniture. The door that ought to separate the living room from the kitchen is also missing.

Next in line, opening on to the living-room, there are three doors leading to the two bedrooms and to the bathroom.

The first of these rooms, overlooking the central well, is the alcove used by the dark-skinned girl from north of the River Negro and in it can still be seen a bed, a shelf and a small wardrobe, a wicker table with a glass top, and a chair. There was nothing else in there at all apart from a small lamp on the shelf and, also on the shelf, a photo of the country girl. The bare walls give the flat that atmosphere of precariousness which such places have.

The next room looks on to a second inner well (for light and air) and is also an alcove which was used by the subtenants of the flat, along with the numerous occasional visitors who came, by one way or another, to have the key to the apartment or to have access to borrowing it. There's a double bed in the middle of the room, a toilet to the left and a wardrobe to the right, facing the foot of the bed. To the right, in the middle of the room, another window opens on to the inner well (affording light and air). The basic difference between this bedroom and the other is that the one belonging to the dark-skinned girl from north of the River Negro has polished parquet flooring and its walls are whitewashed, in this room the reverse is the case. The room has no regular incumbents: nobody is bothered to keep it in even a minimum state of cleanliness.

Finally there is the bathroom, containing nothing but the usual fittings, just a General Electric boiler and a blue plastic curtain running around the bath. Above the bath there is a window that opens on to the inner well, affording light and air.

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