My continued habitation in room four in Pension Perez is a miracle of faith. Initially, as the little lady led me to the building, I though her english accent impeccable. Only after trying to engage in basic stimulus response dialogue with her, did I realise that she was in fact repeating key phrases parrot fashion to me. Instead of replying to my questions, she would just smile. Like a museum audio guide made of flesh, she would ellocute perfect phrases when we reached points of interest.
“Toilet and shower here,” she gestured, “this is the front door key.”
“This is your single bedroom,” she said as we entered what could just about pass for an enclosed space containing a bed, and thus fulfill its contract with the word ‘bedroom’.
“Put your money here,” she indicated a space on the diminuitive stand next to the bed. Lummy, sounds more like a knocking shop than a place you pay to sleep at.
With no real interaction possible, she had no idea who I was, or how long I was staying. I wake each night surprised that my photo isn’t on the back of a milk carton, and my body in a shallow grave in the cemetery (“Where better to dig a grave?” I hear you ask). I tentatively put out some money on the table after a two days, and like the cheese from a defective mousetrap, it had vanished before I returned later in the day, with not a trace of any disturbance.
So it is with faith that I leave my room each day, expecting to find my possessions still there on my return. The arrangement by some unspoken contract with a grinning old lady. Most curious. I’m sure when I’m taken to flights of fancy on my fast, I shall imagine that I am being subconsciously willed to loosen my skin so that the people who run Pension Perez can cut off my face and wear it like a mask. Or maybe I’ve just been listening to the Bloodhound Gang too much.