Neighbor
18 and 19 January 2012
A weary cry in the middle of the night: the immediate fear of a piercing sound we have been conditioned to fear since the beginning of time. I imagine prehistoric people huddled in a cave, suddenly waking in darkness to the same sound, fearing for their lives and the imminent presence of a predator among them. There was a predator among us that night. Adrenaline coursed through me as soon as the awful noise reached my ears. As if I had a spring in my back, I leapt from bed and stood in the dark. Without even thinking of turning on a light, I walked on tiptoe with my hands in front of me so I would not bump into anything, though I knew by heart the corridor from my room to the living room. I turned left and approached the door, trying to work out what was happening. The screams came from the hallway without pause, but were so loud I could have sworn they were inside my apartment. I stayed there, looking into the corridor from the safety of my home without opening the door, frightened and at once curious about what was happening outside.
I moved here when I was twenty-five. I remember it perfectly because I spent my first night here on my birthday. I had not meant to do anything special. Some friends tried to persuade me to at least go to a bar for a few beers, but the celebration I had chosen was simply the symbolic act of having my first apartment of my own at that equally symbolic age, a quarter of a century. When I came to this city for university, I lived in a boarding house for two years. Later I rented an apartment with three roommates, and then Francisco and I moved into an unfurnished place. Luckily he already had a refrigerator and some furniture; I only had to buy my bed and a chest of drawers. When Francisco decided to return to his hometown, rather than look for another roommate I decided it was finally time to live alone. It may not seem like much now, but that first night felt like a great achievement, as though I were beginning a new chapter of my life. Little did I know the macabre things I would witness in this building.
The hallway was empty. The shouting had to come from a floor above or below, yet it seemed to be right behind my door. I went out to investigate and discovered it came from the floor below. With the urgency of someone whose life depended on it, I ran downstairs and found a woman crying and screaming. The neighbor from 302 came out at about the same time to help her. It is strange how the mind works, because at that grave moment I remember my attention fixing on her legs: she had hurried out barefoot in gray cotton shorts. My conscience pulled me back to the situation. She held the woman and asked what had happened. It took me a moment to grasp the state of the woman from 303. She wore an oversized white T-shirt and underwear, and I felt slightly embarrassed, as if I did not belong there. Again I saw the woman from 302, barefoot in gray shorts and a light camisole, and wondered whether she slept that way or had put on the shorts before coming out. Another fright seized me: I had come out in only a T-shirt and boxers. Barely daring to look, I glanced down. Luckily, I was wearing my only pair with a button fly. Triumph flooded me, as though years earlier those boxers had entered my life solely so that I could wear them as pajamas before the neighbor from 302. For a fraction of a second I imagined a football stadium full of men cheering, with me among them, as though my chance choice of underwear deserved praise. The fantasy ended with the woman from 303 sobbing, “He’s dead, he’s dead! He’s dead!”
I did not know the woman from 303. I had crossed paths with her a few times in the elevator or at the entrance. All I had gathered was that she lived alone and that one day I suddenly saw her leave with a pregnant belly. I had never seen her with a man or seen anyone move in, so it was easy to assume the pregnancy had been accidental and she had decided to keep the child. Once I saw her half a block away, heavily pregnant and laden with grocery bags. I thought of waiting, opening the door, and helping her carry them upstairs because the elevator had broken the day before. I did not. I pretended not to see her and hurried inside. I do not know why; I think about it. Another day the elevator stopped on the third floor and she appeared holding a baby wrapped in a blanket. Her expression was different; she was radiant. I cannot explain it, but she looked at me with a mother’s gaze. She smiled and I tried to smile back. Seeing her happy moved me. Who knew why she had gone through it alone, but now she was happy with her baby. I wanted to say something but never know what to say in such situations: congratulations, what a beautiful baby, how old is he? We remained silent until we left the elevator.
“He’s dead, he’s dead! What happened to him?” she cried inconsolably. A woman from downstairs came up to see what was happening; the door to 304 stood ajar and a gray-haired man peered out. The neighbor from 302 held the woman and asked whether something had happened to her baby. The door to 303 was wide open and beyond it lay complete darkness. Something drew me inside like a magnet. I am not brave, but I was in a trance, afraid for the baby’s life and convinced an imminent threat waited in the darkness. Once inside I stopped, frightened. I did not know what I would find, but the thought that the baby I had seen weeks earlier might be in danger outweighed my fear. I suddenly felt taller and larger and advanced toward the bedrooms. The apartment was directly below mine, with the same layout reversed like a mirror. Light came from the main bedroom, but the hall and the rest of the apartment were dark. I moved carefully, sensed someone behind me, and turned to find the neighbor from 302. She had left the mother with the woman from downstairs and followed me in. She switched on the hall light, making me feel foolish for not thinking of it. We approached the main bedroom and saw a crib beside the bed. The mother’s cries reached us from the corridor. When the neighbor looked inside, she gave a small cry and immediately pressed her head to my chest, turning away and seeking protection. I held her. What we saw will follow us to our graves and will make me a light sleeper, more afraid of darkness than most, for the rest of my life. What should have been a baby’s body was an inert, almost unrecognizable lump. It did not look like a corpse but a mummy, as though something had sucked out everything within it, leaving skin glued to bones, leathery and dry. There seemed to be no muscle or anything else inside, only the tiny skeleton visible through skin like hide dried in the sun. Even the eyes had vanished into their sockets. The first thing that came to mind was an expression I must have heard somewhere as a child: a witch sucked him dry.
I have never written here about the first time I saw the neighbor from 302. I began this diary only a few months later and have merely mentioned that I sometimes hope to meet her in the elevator or at the entrance, leaving or arriving with her bicycle and helmet. The first time I saw her she was moving in. Two friends helped her carry boxes, and I thought all three were moving. On the way from the entrance to the elevator I considered offering help, perhaps to seem gallant, but imagined I would look as if I were hitting on them and ignored them. Something about her always attracted me, perhaps her complete independence. Though she seems young, perhaps a little younger than me, she appears entirely in control. She cycles to work in the mornings, wherever that is, and apparently leads a solitary life like mine. Sometimes I see her go out with friends and imagine her returning hours later to an empty apartment. Perhaps I project myself onto her, wanting to see qualities of mine that are not there. She is certainly attractive: short and brown-skinned, with dark hair and thoughtful eyes. More than physical attraction, though, she is a mystery I have wanted to solve. We are the building’s only two young people; oddly, almost everyone else is old, with the occasional person well into their thirties or forties… like the woman from 303.
We did not sleep that night. More neighbors emerged, the police were called, and some women took the dead baby’s mother into an apartment to calm her. Old men wandered the hallway trying to look useful without being so. Other neighbors peered out, learned what had happened, and retreated in horror. The police arrived and asked questions; they too saw the body and turned pale. An ambulance and a van carrying plainclothes police arrived. A man, perhaps from the public prosecutor’s office, questioned us at length. The investigation was slow and clumsy, nothing like the movies, and seemed futile: whatever had happened did not seem like something the police could solve. I repeatedly wondered whether shock had made me imagine the scene, but the faces of those leaving the apartment convinced me they had seen what I had. Dawn began, bluish light entering through a broken third-floor window. Wanting air, I went to the entrance stairs and saw the neighbor from 302 sitting there, now in sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Without hesitation I sat beside her. “Did you notice?” she asked. “What?” Her answer was like a light —no, a floodlight— switched on in my darkened mind: “The woman from 301 never came out.”
When I first moved in I noticed strange things. At the same hour every day, a delivery man from the torta shop three blocks away brought food to 301. Sometimes I came home for lunch and saw him arrive, ring, be buzzed in without a word, take the elevator —occasionally with me— and leave the bag at the door. Apartment 301 alone had no doormat, plant, or decoration outside, and the lamp beside its door was never lit. A delivery man from the corner grocery followed the same ritual. In two years I had never seen anyone enter or leave, not even during an earthquake. From the street, neither its windows nor dark curtains had ever been open. After watching the routine for months, I once joked to myself, a vampire must live there. Only when the neighbor from 302 said that the woman from 301 never came out did I learn a woman lived there.
The next day I felt like a zombie, both from barely sleeping since the screams woke me around three and from constantly replaying the night: the horror, the mother’s cries, the mummified body the neighbor and I had seen. What a terrible way to meet her —half meet, since she had not told me her name and I had neither asked nor offered mine. At the magazine I told no one. They had me writing a stupid article about the city’s ten best pulquerías, not why I studied literature, though at least it paid rent, fed me, and occasionally bought a book. I ordered lunch at the office, unwilling to return home and unsure what I would do that night. Exhausted after eating, I nodded off between fear of being caught asleep at work and fear of remembering the baby. In that state between sleep and wakefulness, a strange clarity brought a terrible realization: I should not fear the child’s body, but whoever left it that way. That person had been in the building, barely one floor and perhaps twenty or twenty-five metres from where I slept. Coworkers were going to a bar; I would have given anything to join them, but had no money to spend. I took the longest route home. The entrance seemed darker under the building’s shadow, especially at that hour when night fell early. The dim passage light welcomed me to the place I did not want to be, as though the building had been infected forever by the previous night’s pain. I summoned the slow old elevator, wanting only to reach my apartment. The dark stairs were faster, but the idea of passing the third floor terrified me. Watching the numbers descend —6, 5, 4…— I wondered what I would do if the doors opened on the baby’s mother coming down —3, 2, 1…—: greet her with a cold good evening as if nothing had happened, perhaps only nod? Luckily the elevator was empty. I spent hours trying to read at home but could not stop thinking. By eleven I knew I would not sleep and feared turning off the light. I put on sweatpants and a sweatshirt, took my keys, went into the hall, looked at the dark stairs, and went down. I knocked three times. The neighbor opened almost immediately and, unsurprised, said, “I can’t sleep either. Come in.” That night I learned her name was Susana.
Since graduating I have had no serious relationship. There were fleeting ones, none worth recording here. I have focused so much on “making it” that I have barely socialized. When I joined the magazine I thought I was about to succeed, but everything has moved slowly and I write nothing but nonsense. They only want material that attracts the most foolish readers, and most of my work never reaches print, only the website. Sometimes I feel I am on a sinking ship and my whole life consists of bailing with a bucket. Money is scarce, life expensive, and my youthful dreams —ridiculous to say at twenty-seven— already seem to fade. I feel alone. I am used to solitude but have never felt so lonely; even surrounded by people, I lack a connection. I should find a girlfriend, a girl with dreaming eyes who wants no money, only for me to write to her.
Unlike my badly arranged furniture and books everywhere, Susana had decorated her apartment. Her day had resembled mine: she had told no one at work —she worked at the Museo Nacional— and delayed returning as long as possible. Unable to sleep, she was watching a film. She offered me mezcal, but I did not want to drink. I sat beside her and, with the confidence of an intimate friend, she spread half the blanket from her legs over mine. We watched the end of a cable movie. Then I asked about her words: “The woman from 301 never came out.” Some things are better left unasked. Susana told me of strange incidents in the building, always somehow related to 301. She too had noticed deliveries from the grocery and torta shop, as well as sushi I had not known about. Once she stopped the grocery delivery man and asked about the resident. He said the woman had ordered for years, before he started working there, calling three or four times a week for cheap food and other items. She sometimes asked the owner to obtain things from the hardware store, haberdashery, or pharmacy. He had never heard her voice, though his boss said she sounded old and Spanish, and had never seen her. He rang, was buzzed in, and left the order outside. Without a knock, money slid under the door as though she waited directly behind it: banknotes, with the change slid back and always a twenty-peso tip. He found her strange, though less disturbing than another customer who sometimes answered naked.
That information made Susana determined to learn who the woman was. She tried the simplest thing, knocking and introducing herself, but received no answer at any hour. She questioned the tall, dark, surly man who cleaned three times a week, repaired things, and tended the entrance planters. He said he had never seen the woman, that residents were none of his business, and that problems should go to the administrator. Susana therefore spoke to don Chuy, the frail administrator, easily over seventy, who walked slowly and always wore a knitted vest, bow tie, and beret. His careful dress seemed futile for someone almost always shut inside; sometimes I saw him walk slowly to the avenue’s newsstand and return with a newspaper. He knew only that 301 housed a Spanish woman who spoke to and bothered nobody. She always paid maintenance on time because the apartment’s owner paid don Chuy directly each month. In fact, he owned 302 as well: Susana and the mysterious woman shared a landlord. “Ask the engineer,” don Chuy said. When Susana explained she was merely curious to know a neighbor who never answered, he replied, “Curiosity killed the cat.” Before closing his door, he added that he had seen her only once, just after she arrived: an old woman, seemingly in her eighties, with a wrinkled face. Something was wrong with her, he said, and closed the door without explaining.
Susana chose not to question her landlord, but began watching through her peephole, which faced 301. After a torta delivery she waited fifteen minutes for the woman to retrieve it, went quickly to the bathroom, and returned to find the bag gone. Next time, after a grocery delivery and thirty minutes of waiting, she tried something silly. She walked toward her bedroom as if the woman might be waiting for her to leave, then ran back to the peephole. The old woman had cracked open her door and extended an arm, her head, and half her body to inspect the bag. She was naked. As Susana looked, the woman seemed to sense her and stared straight through the door. Angry, she dragged the bag inside and slammed the door. Susana saw only tangled gray hair, a pale thin body, and, most notably, a large aquiline nose.
After angering the woman, Susana swore strange things happened. Two budgerigars in a balcony cage were found dead; her plants withered; refrigerated food spoiled as if unrefrigerated; objects vanished or changed places. As she spoke I discreetly noticed empty flowerpots. Migraines and terrible cramps also began after she crossed “the old woman,” as she called her. She learned to eat out or bring prepared food home and kept neither plants nor pets for fear something would happen to them. The moving objects were infrequent, but she begged me not to think her mad. She knew it sounded foolish, yet that old woman had something and had cast the evil eye on her.
Her last story frightened me. Weeks after “making an enemy of the old woman,” faint scratching began waking her, as though someone scratched a wall or piece of furniture. After several nights she followed it through the living-dining room to her front door. Someone seemed to be scratching the apartment door. Through the peephole she saw 301 ajar across the dim hall, its interior completely black. The scratching stopped. She returned to bed but dreamed repeatedly of a pale, thin arm reaching from 301, stretching several metres to scratch her door. The noise ceased for days, then returned. One night she crept to the door, afraid to see the long arm, gathered her courage, and looked. The naked old woman stood directly outside as if waiting to be admitted, visible only as a silhouette in the dark hall. Adrenaline gave Susana an instinct to fight. She stepped back and struck the door hard. Looking again, she found the hallway empty and 301 closed; she could not understand how the woman had crossed and shut her door in seconds. The scratching never returned. Months later, only migraines and occasional cramps remained of their enmity. When Susana finished, my first thought was how I would go into that dark hallway, pass directly before 301, and climb to my floor.
21 January 2012
I have not seen Susana. I hope she does not feel she shared too much the other day. It is Saturday and there is a gathering at one of the editors’ homes. I do not much feel like going out, but neither do I want to stay in the apartment. At times I feel foolish for being scared by Susana’s story, but when I turn out the light to sleep I am afraid.
Rereading earlier entries, I realize I sometimes write as though narrating a novel. I never continued the novel I claimed I would write. I should make a T-shirt saying, “I studied literature and all I have written is a stupid diary.” This diary was meant to be a daily narrative exercise, but I have not even been consistent at that. Some days, like yesterday, I simply cannot write anything.
24 January 2012
Susana just left. She came to say she had asked don Chuy about the woman from 303 and her dead baby, since nobody has seen her. Apparently she is staying with her sister, who came last week to collect things from the apartment. Someone from the public prosecutor’s office also came yesterday looking for the old woman from 301, the only neighbor on that floor they could not interview on the horrible night. They could not find her, so don Chuy gave them the landlord’s details in case he knew how to locate her. Fool that I am, as Susana left I told her tomorrow was two-for-one at the cinema, that I planned to see a film, and asked her along. She said she could not, said goodbye, and left. What an idiot; I rushed into asking her out.
27 January 2012
I am writing this Saturday, but it happened yesterday. Around midnight someone knocked. It was Susana, crying. I invited her in; she apologized and said she had nobody else to talk to, since I alone knew of her encounters with the old woman. She had again dreamed of the long arm emerging from 301, now entering her bedroom and strangling her. She woke terrified and ran upstairs because she did not want to be alone. I tried to calm her, saying it was only a nightmare. It was a very cold night and this building is always freezing. I gave her a blanket; she wore a T-shirt and pajama bottoms and was barefoot. Wrapped in it on the sofa, she declined a drink, then smiled faintly and nodded when I offered hot chocolate. I interpreted some tenderness in her reaction to my trying to warm her with both blanket and drink. We drank chocolate on the sofa. I apologized for having no television and offered something on my laptop, but she preferred to talk. Eventually we shared the blanket when she noticed I was cold. I do not know when we fell asleep. At dawn I woke as she stood. She declined my offer to escort her downstairs. I followed her a few steps to the door; she opened it, waved goodbye, then thought of something, returned, kissed my cheek, and left. I think I could fall in love with her.
2 February 2012
Susana said her landlord had failed to locate his tenant in 301 and would come today. The subject never arose yesterday at the cinema, but today it returned to torment us. I had no energy to write yesterday; we had a good time, nothing romantic, but the important thing is that we enjoyed ourselves. There is obvious attraction on both sides and a complicity born of all that happened. Her landlord called to ask what she knew about 303 and why the authorities sought the tenant in 301. After Susana summarized it, they agreed to meet so she could provide details and he could speak to the old woman or enter the apartment. I was glad Susana invited me to wait with her, still keeping me as accomplice or ally.
Around eight the landlord arrived with don Chuy, who lived downstairs and had followed all the gossip. They knocked at 301; Susana and I opened her door and the four of us exchanged conspiratorial looks. The landlord was tall and obese, breathing heavily as though every small movement demanded more energy than his lungs could supply. Receiving no answer, he took keys from his pocket but could not open the door: the woman had changed the locks. Susana suggested a locksmith, and half an hour later a young man opened them. The landlord paid and dismissed him, opened the door wide, and called for the woman as if she might still be inside. No answer. He motioned don Chuy in, then, to our surprise, let us pass. We had no reason to be there, much less enter, but had somehow joined the expedition. Perhaps the landlord wanted as many witnesses as possible.
The first thing we noticed was a dirty odor, like that of people living on the street. Some ceiling fixtures had no bulbs and the rest were extremely dim, as if the old woman avoided light or did not need it. Thick dark curtains covered the windows. The living-dining room held little, worn furniture, no two pieces matching, as though bought separately at garage sales or flea markets: no dining table, only a cabinet with drawers and shelves; a filthy armchair with worn, torn fabric; cardboard boxes in a corner, two dining chairs, a rustic wooden coffee table, and half-melted candles in several places. While the landlord and don Chuy ventured farther, Susana and I entered the kitchen. It looked abandoned. A frying pan, saucepan, and dirty wooden spoon on the stove seemed never to have met soapy water. Drawers and cupboards were empty apart from occasional discarded food wrappers. There was no refrigerator. A metal door led to an empty laundry room, and another to the maid’s room and bathroom. Inside was a pile of dirty clothes at least a metre and a half high, thrown together like rubbish, smelling foul. We did not touch it, but saw both men’s and women’s garments.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” don Chuy shouted. We hurried to the main bedroom, where he and the landlord had just turned on the light. The room was empty except for women’s clothing arranged on the floor as though a woman lay there: an old, almost period black dress with long sleeves and arms spread like a cross, stockings and shoes where legs and feet would be. It looked as though a woman from another time had lain down and vanished, leaving only her clothes. Where the head belonged was a large, battered black-and-white photograph of a woman with closed eyes, dark hair, very thin lips, and an enormous aquiline nose; the face was approximately life-size and its edges gnawed by age. The huge landlord looked comically frightened, rubbing his hands like a mouse. The dusty floor had one relatively clean strip shaped like a row of books once leaning against the wall. If the woman had fled, she seemed to have taken them.
Don Chuy strode to the closet and flung open its sliding door, as though exposing something. Inside was a small altar: a table with a black cloth and candles surrounding a stone figure, with a little metal dish at its feet. The figure, perhaps thirty-five or forty centimetres tall, had an upright robed male body, a goat’s head, a five-pointed star on its forehead, and one hand raised in a sign with index and middle fingers crossed. The other held a smaller seated childlike figure, also goat-headed and marked with a star. The image reminded me of the Virgin holding the child Jesus. In the dish were dark stains —dried blood, I imagined— and teeth and molars. The landlord refused to look closer; don Chuy seemed fascinated; Susana was pale; we remained silent. The other bedroom and bathroom were empty, the shower seemingly never used. We did not inspect further. All of us felt an urgent need to leave, afraid the old woman might return and find us rifling through her things.
We ended in don Chuy’s living room with coffee, silent and unsure what to say. Everything was too strange. Don Chuy finally said what nobody dared: “Clearly, a witch lived in 301.” We wanted to agree, though talk of witches in 2012 sounded ridiculous. We reviewed what we had seen and sought logic. The place seemed uninhabitable: no bed —did she sleep on the chair, or not sleep?— and no cooking despite the dirty pans. Whose teeth were on the altar? What did the clothes mean? Was the photograph her? Whose clothing filled the maid’s room? “People the witch ate,” don Chuy said. We had more questions than answers.
The landlord told us how she rented the apartment. Years ago, an older Spanish-accented woman called. She declined a viewing, offered a year’s rent plus deposit in advance, admitted she had no guarantor, and demanded the contract and keys that day. He accepted, asking only for identification. They met there; she paid cash and supplied a passport copy. Her name was Carmen Mendioroz Iturri, born in Zugarramurdi on 3 March 1933. I noted it in my phone, supposedly to investigate, though I did not know where to begin. He saw her only that once: dressed in black like a mourner, disheveled, without makeup, grave and severe. He disliked her for no specific reason, but welcomed the money. Every year afterward she paid in advance, never complained or requested repairs, and seemed an ideal tenant.
Don Chuy said this was not his first awareness of a witch. He came from Xalapa, Veracruz, and as a teenager lived two years with his family in Catemaco, known as the city of sorcerers because of its healers, shamans, fortune-tellers, and santeros. Most, he said, were frauds and fake gypsies charging a few pesos to read palms or coffee grounds, but near his settlement several people disappeared through the work of a local sorcerer. As he began the story, he fell silent, utterly lost in a grave memory. We watched and waited. Suddenly he returned to himself, apologized, and said it was late and he was tired and needed to lie down. Outside, the landlord, Susana, and I looked at one another doubtfully. Asked what he would do, the landlord said the witch had three paid months left; apparently she would not return, but he had to wait for the contract to expire before renting again.
10 February 2012
I have had no time to write; many things have happened. Susana and I are doing well, and tonight we are going to dinner. I am happy and excited. I think I may no longer need to keep writing this diary.
20 October 2017
I just found this diary in a box. How fascinating to read what I wrote almost daily for a couple of years. I would like to resume the habit. I probably will not, but I will preserve this as testimony to another stage of my life. Perhaps every few years I should revisit it and record what happened. So much has changed since the last pages that my life seems entirely different. Susana and I married and have a daughter. Two years ago we moved to Torreón, where Susana is from —not exactly Torreón, but neighboring Gómez Palacio. Through her uncle I found work at a newspaper and am quite happy. Despite no journalism training, I have written interesting investigations and am beginning to stand out. Susana works at the Museo Arocena and is happy. My thoughts and outlook have changed so much that these pages seem to belong to someone else.
The final entries coincide with meeting Susana and what happened with the witch. After much research and debate, we concluded the old woman really was a witch and had sucked the baby from 303 dry. Eventually Susana’s migraines and cramps ended, as though a shadow over us had lifted. The nightmares of the arm from 301 continued every two or three months and still sometimes return. When we were expecting Susy, we felt an imperative need to get as far from the city as possible and keep her safe. We have always feared the witch might seek us, though we did nothing to her. I try to drive these dark thoughts away, but finding the diary has brought them back. Who knows; perhaps I should burn it.