It was the whole matter of the gifts that made her think back to that night. Whenever they fought and he threw her out of the house, he always made her return the gifts he'd given her. The boots, especially, which had been her first birthday present from him. She remembered that time because, before locking himself on the balcony, Iván had thrown one of the boots out the window, and the next morning, when the doorbell rang and he'd thought immigration was coming for him, she'd accepted from a neighbor's hands a long, red boot that looked like one of those Christmas stockings you hang from the chimney and fill with candy. "Is this yours?" the man had asked, raising the boot he held between two fingers, as if insanity were contagious and he could catch it from her through that minimal contact. She thanked him. She didn't even remember the moment Iván had opened the living room window. Later, when she went to the supermarket, she found a bra discreetly hung from the building's fence. A white bra, soaked through by the recent snow.
Not that the blanket she had on the table now was strictly a gift, but still, it made her think back to that night and try to reconstruct the fight they'd had. It always started more or less the same way, though it didn't end the same. She saw—or heard—herself shouting through the glass door that led to the balcony:
"The last time they saw him he was running naked through the street and throwing himself at cars. He wasn't trying to kill himself, but he ended up dead. Pneumonia and cardiac arrest. Come on, Iván, get inside. Pneumonia is no joke!"
He brings a finger to his temple and signals to her that she's crazy. For a moment she thinks it's true, that there's no way she can be sane when for months now she's had a packed suitcase sitting next to the door, when she's already gone up and down the three flights of stairs countless times carrying that same suitcase that can hold all her belongings (not true: her belongings take up two suitcases; in the second one she has the less important things, the ones she wouldn't mind leaving behind if he threw her out again, or if, again, he started to break, destroy, and trample everything in his way while screaming that every screw in that house belonged to him, because he'd earned it with his talent. "Talent" is his favorite word. "Talent" and "mediocre." He has talent, while she is mediocre). She can't be sane, no, not when she's already dragged that suitcase countless times down the sidewalk thick with snow, between black streams of mud and grime that spatter the cars. The snow after the snow: what happens when the immaculate is besmirched, exhausted. Is that how everything ends up? Spat out and trampled? Just a week before, she'd gone down the three floors with her suitcase, lugged it to the subway—where there were more stairs—sat down on the metal bench, and let three or four trains go by. The cold of the seat started seeping through her leather jacket and she kept crying, not out of sadness but rage, rage that her eyes looked stubbornly toward the bridge, hoping he would come after her. "I'll count to ten and I'm gone." But then she counted to twenty, looked back at the clock with its fluorescent hands and let one more train go by, just one, because it was already getting dark and the freezing wind had made her cheeks go numb.
In the end she always got onto a train. She'd spend the night in a hotel or take a full trip around on the subway—the complete journey took an hour and fifteen minutes—and then she went back home. At first he wouldn't open the door for her, he'd say "go away" until she got tired of repeating that she had nowhere to go and begging him please. Other times, he was drunk and naked when he opened the door, chopping red chili peppers, the kind that deaden the mouth. If she tried to take the bottle from him he pointed the knife at her, but not the way a criminal would, no, just by accident, moving it distractedly in her direction while he said that it was his house, and in his house he had the right to drink all the whiskey he wanted.
"He's right, I am crazy." Then she remembers that he is the one who's naked on the balcony, and that it's five below zero outside. She's on the other side of the glass door holding a down quilt in her hand, showing it to him as if it were an angel's fluffy wings. He shakes his head no, latches the door, yells:
