At number five Oriente Street, a woman gets married; a father and mother review an audition; A daughter lies and a man despairs. On the most colorful street in the neighborhood, the most traditional and messy, everyone has their party or their downfall, as long as the connection speed and phone updates allow it. Anyone would say that no locals live in that building: everyone comes from a different place and tries to cope with it with a suspicious fortitude, not to mention directly misanthropy.
Equipped in their captivity, surrounded by removable furniture that will probably not survive a second move and lounging in armchairs that stopped being padded a month after being purchased, the men and women of this fire-insured property gather around their devices. as their ancestors did before the fire.
They tell them everything. Worries, lies, anxieties, fears, loneliness, boredom, non-payments, reproaches, diagnoses, recipes, home remedies, expired passwords, pant sizes, blood sugar index, appointments to renew passport, urgent decisions, psychotherapy sessions, snacks and meetings with grandchildren who are growing up remotely, endless department meetings… What these people have plenty of is distance! And data, of course.
At the same time, even on different continents, everyone attends punctually, like someone who has dinner or insults each other as a family. FaceTime. Live. Google Meetings. Zoom. Skype. Telegram. Never has a telephone been used for so many things that had nothing to do with talking, that analog and junkyard practice, thinks Renato, the concierge of Oriente 5, while scrubbing the floor of the goal that for twenty years has depended on his diligence and good do. A little mopping and another time listening. To think that before, when people left messages, they did find out everything. “Not even that now,” he laments. Give it a little more mop and take advantage of the rinse to keep your ear glued to the stairs.
Those on the neighborhood council believe that he does not work, but who else if not him spends hours and hours listening to what strangers say to each other, information that could be sensitive to the safety of all the neighbors. As soon as he looks into the elevator shaft, he hears closely the lives of others and not to mention if he takes shelter behind the goal’s window. From there he can see his neighbors lying and pretending like bastards: wearing suits and ties from the waist down, refilling their mugs with beer instead of water, and making themselves surrounded by a set of spotlights that not even the lamp with which Herbert von Karajan lit up, his platinum hair reaching his height. Floor by floor, Renato sees everything. He knows everything.
“I can’t right now”. Inmaculada curls her eyelashes with a brush. Adrian, his roommate, kicks off his yellow patent heels and huffs, scratching his freshly shaved head. Today it’s time to do the laundry and he, who hates dirt, can only combat it by climbing on some size 42 stilettos that he bought on Carretas Street. That’s the deal, simple but inescapable: he sweeps singing Thalía and Inmaculada shakes until all the dust, ash and whatever strange goop remains from the weekend is removed.
-What, are you going out?
Inmaculada opens her mouth and looks up at the ceiling, to paint herself better.
-No -applies the mascara more forcefully to the eyelashes-. I’m going to talk to my mother on Facetime.
-Oops! -his roommate shakes his shoulders-. All good?
She nods.
-Paint yourself better. You have bags of alcohol.
Immaculate laughs.
-You are worse off. If you wait forty minutes…
She and her mother rarely talk for so long. Before, when his father was alive, he would sit in front of the screen and play the game. So it could take an hour or more. Now, she and her mother agree to spare each other’s lives. Immaculate because she doesn’t want to come home to take care of her and her mother because she doesn’t want to be made to feel useless. “You are emaciated.” Inmaculada nods the blow. His mother speaks from the dining room of the old house, framed in the lens of a mobile phone with a shattered screen. Inmaculada pretends not to have heard her and asks what time it is there. “There’s something wrong with this one,” they think of each other. But no one is willing to ask.
Never has a telephone been used for so many things that have nothing to do with talking, that analog and junkyard practice, thinks Renato.
“Emilio, hurry up!” María de Lourdes crosses the room with the tablet in her hand. “Hurry up, the bride is coming in and we’re going to miss it!” Her husband, who doesn’t care about the wedding, smiles half-heartedly and sits next to her, pretending that he sees and hears everything. «Yes, the bride is beautiful and he looks elegant. Don’t you think so, darling? Emilio receives a nudge from his wife, who has never liked her niece’s boyfriend, much less that she went after him to Panama, instead of coming to live in Madrid with her and the rest of the family. Deep down, it doesn’t matter, he hasn’t seen his sisters in five years, nor his brothers-in-law, much less his aunts. One more or one less, in different cities, at different times. That is why they have decided that the wedding will be celebrated that way, by Zoom and with a wedding list according to country of residence. When his niece is about to express her consent, the light flashes. Oh no! The connection has gone to waste.
Just at that moment, on the second floor of Oriente 5, Mariajo and Leoncio slam a cushion onto the floor. “Damn it!” he shouts, out of his mind and with the house in darkness. The light just went out. Now, right now, as your children are about to complete their audition for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “Fast! Look for the data spike! What under any circumstances would be an electrical breakdown on the block, for the Palominos is a transatlantic tragedy. Not one of his children showed up for the audition, but two! The major for concertmaster and the minor for solo viola. Mariajo, who because of her years as a musical director handles setbacks and misfortunes better, tries to find a solution. Leoncio, a hammer specialist in Mahler symphonies, flies into a rage and runs around the apartment moving his arms like blades. The cries, hysterias and neighborhood outbursts reach the lower right of the building. It couldn’t happen at any other time but at that time, when everyone needs to connect to the Internet.
Jairo, who drives a white Skoda for a living, arrives home with his headphones on. He never takes them off. He seems to be talking to himself, and sometimes he is. Five or six minutes may pass listening to just a background sound: dishes being washed, spoons knocking against a cup, or a door closing. A collection of domestic sounds furnishes the day, until Jairo asks a very brief question, announces that he is going to visit his grandfather, or reviews how many foods he has left in the refrigerator. On the other end of the line, his brother answers with one or two words, almost growling. More than talking, they monitor each other, they give each other a mutual belief in life, perhaps they accompany each other. Jairo spends all day on the phone. His brother needs him, or so it seems when he listens to them. The passengers in his taxi do not notice that Jairo is on the phone. They barely talk to him. They don’t wait for me to say good morning and since they barely look up from the screens, they make trips as if they were alone and sometimes they may even be alone. «Do you remember when we were looking for quinces in the town?» “Have you put away your winter clothes yet?” “Don’t you drink milk anymore?” Jairo gets a yes or no for an answer and waits a long time, again, listening to the sounds of a house that come through the horn.
Tonight, however, Jairo becomes restless. He can barely see anything on his lower right, he drops the keys, he can’t see the switch or the stairs. Everything has disappeared in a dark pot in which he is unable to know what is above and what is below. And while, on the other end of the line, a fork crashes against a plate and a faucet discharges a stream of water, at number five Oriente Street, a man stumbles down the stairs. Jairo walks through the fuse room with a flashlight. Three floors up, a woman dressed in white has not been accepted as a husband, two musicians are about to lose a place in an orchestra and a mother and daughter lose one of the five remaining conversations before one of the two enter the operating room. On Oriente 5 Street, life slides by touch, from phone to phone, several times, downhill towards the highway.
#East
