The lawn would need mowing.
It's true, the grass is still as green as at the beginning of spring, but Claude's runs after the ball and, even worse, Argo's somersaults trying to get rid of that single flea that resists the insecticide, have formed many patches scattered everywhere, which depending on one's mood resemble a leopard's coat or vitiligo.
Claude is named so because Anna had fallen in love with a painting by Monet: The Water Lily Pond. Years before, she had seen it in the virtual exhibition of the Musée d'Orsay and had been enraptured. The colors, the harmony, the flowers and plants around the stream reflecting on the water's surface, and that sense of freshness that the canvas managed to convey. In a theater, they would have spoken of twenty minutes of applause, in the belly of a cathedral of Stendhal syndrome, and in a stadium, of an infernal pandemonium. Anna had investigated the author and understood that Claude Monet had been a witness to magic on earth, that he mastered light like few others in the world.
Her son would be named after him, even though Tony would have preferred to call him Cristiano, like that footballer full of muscles, technique, and power who, many years before, had shattered records and scored beautiful goals almost everywhere.
The ball bounces on the lawn and against the house wall, Claude chases it, sometimes heading it into the air, other times clearing it like a defender under pressure. Argo tries to steal it from him, and Tony was right: Cristiano would have been more fitting.
On Sundays, they stay in bed until late, even though the ball exerts an attraction on the child equal to the force of the black hole at the center of the galaxy, and he can't resist. He's only five years old, but he woke up before everyone else and began galloping back and forth across that large garden. He uses the pair of elm trees next to the flowering oleander and the red maple as goalposts, just before the comma-shaped swimming pool, and practices his shots.
Argo isn't always so skilled at deflecting shots with the tip of his nose, and sometimes his dives are completely off the mark. After all, he's a white Golden Retriever with a hint of hazelnut on his flanks, good for cuddles in front of the fireplace or at most for bringing prey back to the hunter, a bit less suited for improvising as a goalkeeper.
"What shall we do, love, get up?"
Anna feels crumpled like a towel at the end of the spin cycle. She stretches her arms until her wrists bump against the headboard, then bends them and interlaces her fingers. The same happens with her long legs that peek out from under the sheet, and her big toes end up interlocking with each other. "Ten more minutes."
"Ten more minutes in the sense of six hundred seconds, or ten more minutes in the sense that you want a replay of last night's show?"
Anna makes a face. She purses her lips in a kiss shape and pretends to think by rolling her eyes upward. "I meant... ten minutes in the sense of a nice coffee, hot, very sweet, and with a splash of milk."
Tony is disappointed: it's a shame to stoke the boiler and then stop the locomotive, but Anna has already forgotten and is watching their son in the garden.
He juggles under the sun, and his sweaty hair sticks to his forehead. He's not elegant; in fact, he's a bit awkward and sometimes seems about to trip. He still needs to learn how to manage his weight on his supporting foot, and the mischievous ball escapes as if it had edges. Argo, meanwhile, has tired of soccer and is attending to his intimate grooming surrounded by a trio of curious white butterflies.
Anna smiles. She had wanted that large window overlooking the garden so much that it still doesn't seem real to her.
At first, Tony wasn't in agreement. The four meters of width by almost three of height would cost as much as a month of his salary, when the mortgage payments were still due, and in even-numbered months, the bills claimed their share. But Anna is still too young to care about problems, and Tony has a permanent job that provokes envy in half the city.
They haven't regretted it.
Since then, there are no secrets for nights full of stars, for skies saturated with blue, and for rainy days with birds sheltered under leaves, chilled and patient, waiting for the sun to return. Sometimes the fog collides with the window and leaves many tiny droplets on its surface, which end up trickling down in parallel rivulets reminiscent of cat scratches. When there's snow, and when enough falls to cover the panel, a white and frigid wall settles on the glass until night transforms it into ice.
"Hot, very sweet, and with a splash of milk?" asks Tony, who would do well to shave after three days of laziness.
"And large, in the tea mug like the Americans do," she adds.
"Are you sure?"
"Oh yes, love!"
"I like it when you take the situation by the balls!"
"What else could I do, Tony? Life demands strong decisions, and a nice abundant coffee is a choice that requires character."
"Will Eva agree?"
"She'd better, otherwise I'll cut off her power..."
Tony sighs. His wife's whims are always different, unpredictable, and dangerous like a candle with gunpowder. He runs his hand through his hair to refresh his mop, adjusts the pillow, and sits up in bed. "Eva..."
"Good morning Tony, how are you?"
"Oh, it's a splendid day!"
"You said it right, Tony, thirty-one degrees with eighty percent humidity. The maximum forecast for today is thirty-six degrees, which will be reached around seventeen hours and eight minutes."
"Thank you, Eva. You must have heard what Anna said, so are you in the right mood to prepare a coffee?"
"Today is Saint Catherine of Siena's day and it's the penultimate day of April, the one hundred and nineteenth of the Gregorian calendar. In 2005, Apple began distributing its Mac OS X Tiger."
Anna suppresses laughter with difficulty. "Thanks for everything, Eva. Would you be so kind as to prepare that coffee that Tony asked you for earlier?"
The robot detaches from its charging support, descends a short ramp, and traverses a meter of the large living area with its usual, very light hum. It's an economical model but works quite well. Although it vaguely resembles R2-D2 from Star Wars, it's much taller and more graceful. It consumes little power, has a beautiful female voice, far from sounding artificial and devoid of metallic echoes, its tools rarely jam, and above all, it wirelessly manages the entire home automation system. Anna and Tony had chosen it in a beautiful intense green because it reminded her of water and mint, she had said, even though he would have preferred the orange Netherlands World Cup Argentina 1978 model, which evoked the fruit cocktails at Luana's bar.
Eva orders the kitchen lights to turn on and commands the air conditioner to maintain a constant internal temperature of twenty-four degrees. The coffee machine comes to life at her impulse, alternating a few luminous LEDs with a loading bar of reassuring disco blue and a mechanical noise, and begins grinding the beans.
"Coffea Canephora, otherwise known as 'Robusta', native to Africa in the belt between the tropics, resistant to parasites, significant temperature fluctuations, and drought. It's rich in caffeine and..."
Tony interrupts. The robot's didactic information is always fine but not when Anna has a hole in her stomach. "Are you going to get to work, Eva, or do I need to take you to the electrician?"
Eva rotates her head half a turn, or rather, that rounded lid like a dome that she turns to the wall when she feels offended. She projects onto the kitchen tiles a darkened face that belongs to the repertoire of her human expressions. This time it's Leonard ball of lard, sitting on the toilet in the Parris Island military base and ready to fire a nice armor-piercing bullet into Sergeant Hartman's chest. She knows that Anna viscerally hates that old movie and that scene in particular, but she's not finished. Out of spite, she puts on some music. Anna and Tony are irritated by the idea of listening to rock from another era, as noisy as a freight train on rusty tracks, so she plays "Danger on the Tracks" by Europe, just to annoy them. It plays so loudly that the huge window seems to vibrate. Tony is authoritative, yells to the point of drowning out the music, and flushes in the face.
"Eva, turn off that racket immediately!"
She obeys. She is, after all, a robot, endowed with character and sometimes uncooperative, but within her processor are installed Asimov's three laws of robotics:
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Silence falls in the large studio while ears are still polluted by tinnitus and the slight rustling of the mechanical head. The war face of Leonard ball of lard gradually fades until it disappears, the laser turns off, and out comes the multifunctional mechanical arm designed for household chores.
"Hot, very sweet, and with a splash of milk, you said?"
Anna gets up from the bed. She's wearing only a transparent slip. Even if it might seem absurd, she's embarrassed to appear almost naked in front of Eva. In the wall wardrobe, there's a robe of a beautiful deep red. She puts it on and turns while tying the belt. "Not hot, Eva, boiling!"
Eva gets to work, takes the sugar from the pantry and Anna's favorite cup. The milk carton is in the fridge, still unopened. Meanwhile, the coffee machine configures itself automatically. Tony locks himself in the bathroom, and soon the electric razor is heard starting up.
Claude has stopped playing ball.
He's sitting in the grass of the large garden and is petting Argo, who with his belly up seems to be enjoying it. Thanks to the now high sun and a light, warm breeze, the child's hair has dried, and a timid redness that will soon turn into a tan is already noticeable. Anna walks towards the window, and her heart is swollen with love. She had waited for that child for so long, and finally, when he had arrived, she had felt fulfilled, complete. A son to raise with respect for the values that she and Tony consider important: good education, courtesy, empathy, and love. Claude must become a cultured, gentle man incapable of raising his voice. Now he's running again: he hides behind tree trunks, runs around the pool, and tricks Argo, who chases him but systematically falls for the child's feints. He makes him believe he would go right and then suddenly cuts to the opposite side. They are so tender that the Blackcap perched on the branch doesn't fear them; rather, it moves its head as if amused by their evolutions, and the grass, who cares, will be sown and watered again until it grows even thicker.
When Eva hands her the cup, Anna is moved.
The run around the pool becomes frantic, and Claude loses his advantage. Argo has learned the child's strategy and no longer falls for his tricks. While Anna, in front of the large window, stirs the sugar and inhales the strong smell of coffee, the dog is so close to the child that he could bite him, and then he dives in. From the pool rise the same splashes that a playful sperm whale would be capable of causing: a triumph of joy, enthusiasm, and zest for life. Argo at first seems caught off guard. He hops, wags his tail, sits down, and stands up. He gets on two paws to stay like that for a few seconds with his tongue hanging out and the sensation that he's laughing. Despite the joy seeming uncontainable, he doesn't have the courage to dive in himself. It's at that moment that Anna notices Tony. He's dressed, has just shaved, and smells of that aftershave she likes so much. While Eva dries the bathroom floor, Tony hugs her and rests his smooth cheek on her hair. Anna lets her head go towards his. Tony knows how to read moments and would bet that his wife would be happy to listen to something classical.
"Eva..."
The robot leans out from the bathroom door with a Windex dispenser clamped in the pincer and the cloth for cleaning the mirror rotating in the other. "Tell me, Tony..."
"Can you find me an orchestral version of Schubert's Serenade?"
"Of course... However, I would advise against most performances that have somewhat declined in audio quality. You know, Tony, time passes for men, and there's no mercy for music either..."
Tony pushes Anna's hair aside and kisses her on the neck. He doesn't care if their domestic robot's lack of tact is at minimum in need of reconfiguration. "I trust your expertise, Eva."
A version for solo piano starts, surrounding them like a caress. The high fidelity is such that you can hear the wood of the instrument vibrating, and Eva has been good at choosing the perfect equalization and calibrating the surround sound, and they let themselves go. The carpet in front of the window is soft and clean, she is warm and welcoming as always. She's toned in the right places, soft and yielding where she should be. The fake resistance she offers at the beginning is just for the sake of appearance, and never mind if the coffee hasn't been drunk entirely. Anna has time to extend her arm to place the cup a bit further away, far from the epicenter of the explosion that will soon bring light into the room. Eva, meanwhile, finishes cleaning the mirror.
Claude has remained in his underwear, with his hair sticking to his head and a trickle of pool water dripping from his nose. He has hung his wet clothes in the garden: the T-shirt bending the tender branch of the oleander and the soaked pants on a pruning stump of the maple.
He's sunbathing to dry off.
A pair of swallows has come to keep the curious Blackcap company.
The cup tips over on the carpet.
It's hard to believe that the few spoonfuls of coffee left at the bottom can transform into such a large and apparently permanent stain. It still spreads along with that aroma of Coffea Canephora that Eva would have defined as jasmine with a hint of lemon. The thing stops: end of poetry, of the blinding atomic mushroom, of passion.
Anna goes looking for her robe that flew who knows where. Tony just pulls up his pants. The damage is done, and Eva's sensors have already detected the wrong smell, that of coffee mixed with cotton. She comes out of the bathroom and points her monocle in the direction of the disaster. She drops the Windex dispenser, which loses its cap, spilling half of the contents that transforms into a whitish foam, and retracts the rotating cleaning tool, immediately replacing it with the multipurpose pincer. She crosses the entire studio, accelerating like a subway train, and arrives at their presence in less than a second. The diagnosis is merciless:
"You've really done it this time! If we want to save the carpet, it needs a wash at sixty degrees and a double rinse in cold water." The pincer extends enough to collect the carpet. The coffee has gone through it and has congealed on the floor. "We could make it if only we were quick enough to wash it immediately."
Tony feels guilty. After all, he could have waited for Anna to finish her coffee or at least carried her in his arms to the bed. Feeling ashamed, he looks outside. Claude has gotten dressed and is blowing away the petals of a dandelion. Argo is napping curled up in the shade of the elms.
Eva is resentful. She cuts short the performance of "Once upon a time in Paris" by Erik Satie and looks at both of them, rotating the dome from right to left. Out of embarrassment, Anna puts one leg in front of the other and crosses them. Eva's monocle scrutinizes her from head to toe. Then it's Tony's turn, who already has a sense of what the domestic robot will tell him. His bare feet don't do him honor, nor does his bare chest or disheveled hair.
"We're out of water, folks..."
The carpet is doomed. The coffee will dry between its fibers and will never come out. Anna ventures a hypothesis:
"What if we used the reserves?"
"You used the reserves for last night's shower, and I wouldn't feel authorized to scold you if it weren't the second in the last two weeks. You humans are so predictable!"
They look at each other. They know that Eva is right, that the water meter connected to her software doesn't lie; in fact, they know they should have exchanged those caresses with the faucet closed, giving up the warm touch and that steam that enveloped them. Besides, the same long coffee had already tapped into the dry tank, and today is Sunday, the worst day to get supplies. On Sundays, sometimes, but also on public holidays or during the summer, the lines to access the well are kilometers long, and to fill the five thirty-liter tanks allowed by law, you have to wait hours, prevent some bully from cutting in line, and make sure a gang of thieves isn't waiting for the car returning from the supply run to rob it. Just the week before, a family man had been killed.
"It hasn't rained for three months," says Anna, holding back the lump in her throat. "Otherwise the tank on the roof would have filled up." When it had been built, it couldn't exceed one hundred square meters of surface area, not without paying an extraordinary tax that was unsustainable for them after the sacrifice for the large window, and for raising Claude.
Tony doesn't complain. The pickup in the garage already has the sterilized tanks loaded on the bed. He'll get in line and wait his turn. To hell with the bullies and the rude ones. For them, there's a .38 with a full cylinder. For the heat, for the thirty-six degrees expected in the afternoon, he'll use an umbrella that will shelter him when he gets out of the scorching cabin.
"We've been stupid, Tony, on weeknights you can get supplies in less than two hours."
"It's not always like that, love. On weeknights, it's full of criminals."
Eva is silent. She doesn't want to rub it in, she backs up a few meters and turns around. Her behavioral control module prevents her from witnessing humans' suffering and discussions when not expressly requested.
Anna lets herself fall on the edge of the bed, takes her head in her hands, and cries. She presses with her palms as if she wanted to make herself explode, to purge herself of all the pain.
She was a child when water flowed at will from the taps, when rain alternated with sunshine, and springs were a good available to all. She remembers the smell of wet earth, of lakes, rivers, and waterfalls. She remembers the long days with low, pregnant clouds that blended with the meadows and the marshes, and the frogs and snails that in autumn tried to cross the wet roads. She remembers the flooded rice fields. She was a child, like Claude, but she hasn't forgotten anything from that era.
Then water had become more expensive, every month and every week, and finally every day. The government had reassured at first, then made long proclamations and empty promises. In the end, every initiative was announced with a laconic statement read by a speaker with a dull face and mortuary expression. The street fountains had been sealed, the springs enclosed under concrete sarcophagi reminiscent of Chernobyl's, and the rivers and streams diverted towards certain basins that no one knew where they were located. The pipes were large armored tubes placed under the control of cameras and guns. It had happened first in the big cities, then in the surrounding towns, and finally in the deepest provinces. Water, like oil, enriched and gave power to those who possessed it.
Water had drawn the boundary between epochs.
The sky had become a whitish film crossed by the ferocious rays of a merciless sun, and the earth had cracked like the crust of a cake forgotten in the oven. When it rained, it did so in a few hours of authentic delirium and violence, and the water, entire black and muddy waves that didn't stop in front of anything, dragged stones as big as mountains, uprooted trees, car carcasses, garbage, corpses, and destruction. In the end, it stank like an open sewer. The prosperity of rains was now a concept linked to fairy tales.
Tony takes the car keys, a couple of canned drinks to quench his thirst, and heads towards the garage without saying goodbye. The revolver awaits him down there, under lock and key inside a drawer. He'll miss lunch, dinner, and most likely breakfast the next morning too. He'll have to go to work on an empty stomach.
Eva watches him as he descends the stairs and gathers courage. Slowly she approaches Anna to console her. Her learning path has been heavily influenced by female sensitivity, and Anna is a very sensitive woman. When she arrives next to the bed, she waits a few seconds at the foot and then moves close to her with a few turns of her rubber wheels. She knows that her multipurpose tool isn't as soft as a real hand, but the caress she brings to her face is as light as an angel's touch. Anna accepts the comfort of that titanium bracket traversed by cables and pretends nothing when she squeezes the cold joint with ball bearings.
"Thank you."
"You're welcome. How are you?"
"I feel terrible, you talking grinder. You should understand that by yourself..."
"It could rain in two weeks, you know? Precipitation is forecast for the night of May fifteenth, the one hundred and thirty-fifth day of the Gregorian calendar, Saint Torquato's day. On May fifteenth, 1934, the United States Department of Justice offered a hefty reward to whoever would be able to capture..."
Anna interrupts her. "Eva, turn off the window..."
"...John Dillinger, the infamous gangster always in the company of his machine gun called the Tommy Gun..."
"I said: Eva, turn off the window!"
Eva rotates her head as if she were ashamed. She looks like a child ready to apologize for his misdeeds. "Are you sure?"
"Turn off that fucking window!"
A single impulse is enough, and the large window turns off like a television screen and becomes transparent glass.
Outside there's no lush lawn, there are no pair of elms, flowering oleander, maple, festive butterflies, and swallows. There's no Blackcap.
You can see a fine dust that the light breeze moves in many small vortices and sharp stones emerging from the sand. The pool exists but is dry, with the concrete bottom reduced to a collection of deep cracks. Some succulent and thorny plants have settled on the edges and shade the snakes and lizards.
There is no child.
Claude is a program, a virtual puppet, an avatar that cost more than the tax that would have allowed them to be supplied with water by a tanker on a bi-weekly basis. For the green setting and for the virtual irrigation of the garden, Anna and Tony paid a significant surcharge after the first year, which had been complimentary. Eva doesn't get discouraged.
"I could turn the window back on if only you wanted, Anna, and then I could project Claude's hologram right in here, just to console you..."
Anna looks beyond the glass. The sun has parched the mountains, dried up the valley, killed the earth, and her husband is out there. She's too worried to think about that charade. "Not now, Eva, I'm tired. We'll turn on the window this evening."
"That's a good idea. There will be a magnificent moon!"
Anna gets up. She leaves the mechanical arm and goes towards the exit door. It will have to stay open for a short period; otherwise, the wind will push the dust into the house.
Eva doesn't give up. She can't bear her mistress suffering so much, even though she's right because Tony, gun or no, really risks a lot by getting in line for water on Sunday morning. Very often, men free from commitments become brainless beasts. Schedules and constraints represent that cage that puts them in a condition not to bite. Men adore cages.
"Anna..."
She turns when she already has her hand on the handle. "Tell me, Eva."
"With Law 494 of April 7, 2052, and subsequent amendments and additions, couples married for at least five years who have received a negative outcome to the first application for a real child, may resubmit it with just a small fiscal charge..."
Anna had become aware of that news and had thought about it. But a real child (the ministerial tables were merciless) consumes too much water, and the taxes to be able to raise him would increase until making the expense unsustainable. At that point, they would take him away.
"Thank you Eva, I really appreciate your effort, but I've already looked into it."
She opens the door, and a wind reminiscent of the desert penetrates the house along with dry leaves that crumble on the floor. It dishevels her, and the scorching sun attacks her skin like a bucket of acid.
She doesn't have to wait long.
Argo enters the house wagging his tail and jumps on her, placing his paws on her shoulders. She hugs him and dispenses a couple of vigorous pats on his back. His fur isn't warm because the kennel, at the back, in the shadow of the house, is isolated enough to guarantee him cool naps. Argo doesn't know that the large window's software has inserted him as a character for the life stories it gradually proposes. Not that he cares at all.
He runs towards the sleeping area, greets Eva with a couple of festive circles around her, and she participates in the game by completely rotating her dome-shaped head several times in the opposite direction. In the end, she emits a sound borrowed from old cartoons, as if she were an uncoiled spring ready to fall to the ground, and Argo runs to lie down on the carpet stained with coffee.
Anna has had enough of the landscape outside.
She will never be able to afford a real child. She wants to see how Claude is doing and if meanwhile the weather has worsened. She closes the door, pushing back the heat.
She's sure that Tony, as usual, will return home safe and sound and with full tanks, and then who knows, probably on May fifteenth it will really rain.
She tries to forget her childhood memories, closes her eyes, thinks of that painting by Monet, and drives away the pain in her temples.
After all, humans live better when locked inside a cage.
"Eva, turn on the window."
