THE BUILDING · Chapter 7 · Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Damián had maps everywhere.
Not hung on walls.
Stacked.
On the table, on the chairs, on the floor in columns that had developed their own filing logic — a system only he could parse. Graph paper, pages torn from notebooks, napkins with building plans drawn in biro. The apartment smelled of graphite and sealed-off time.
Hugo stepped in carefully.
“Sit wherever you can,” said Damián.
Hugo moved three sheets from a chair and looked at them before putting them down. Floor plans of the building. All different. All showing the same building drawn in slightly different ways — as if someone had been trying many times to capture something that shifted every time they looked.
“How long have you been doing this?” asked Hugo.
“Since I arrived.”
“When did you arrive?”
Damián looked at him.
“That’s a more complicated question than it seems.”
Hugo remembered Naia saying the same thing on the first night.
Damián cleared the table with one wide movement. Underneath: a large sheet, folded in four with the care of something consulted often. He unfolded it.
The building. Drawn with a precision the other sheets didn’t have — not a sketch but a plan, with measurements, proportions, every room on every floor in its exact position.
“This is the real building,” said Damián.
Hugo took out his phone. Found the official plan he’d downloaded from the property register three days earlier. He held them side by side and compared them carefully, moving from one to the other, looking for the point where they diverged.
The two plans showed the same building.
Almost.
“Here,” said Damián, pointing. “This space doesn’t exist in the official plan.”
Hugo looked. Between the third and fourth floors: a narrow band — not a complete storey, something in between — a space that in the official plan simply wasn’t there, as if the architect had skipped it without explanation.
“What is that space?”
“That’s where 4B is,” said Damián.
“How is that possible?”
“Because it wasn’t built with the building,” said Damián. “It was already there. The building was constructed around it.”
“The building was built in 1987. That date is 1963.”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
Damián pointed to another area of the plan.
“Now find yours,” he said.
Hugo found the third floor B in the official plan. It was there.
“Here,” he said.
Damián shook his head. Slowly.
“That’s not your flat.”
“It’s third floor B.”
“It’s one of the third floor Bs. In the real plan there are two.”
Hugo looked. In Damián’s plan, the third floor had four units as in the official version — but there was a fifth, also marked B, in a space that in the official plan formed part of the landing.
Damián pointed to the extra unit. It had a number beside it. A date. Older than 4B. Older even than the land on which the building had been built.
“What does that date mean?”
“There are spaces,” said Damián, “that exist before there’s anything to contain them. The building didn’t create those spaces. The spaces created the need for the building.”
“That’s more than two hundred years ago.”
“Yes.”
Hugo looked at the plan. His flat. Marked with a date two hundred years old. And beside it, in Damián’s small precise handwriting, a notation.
Two words.
Continuous occupation.
“What does continuous occupation mean?”
“That that space has never been empty.”
A pause.
“For two hundred years, there has always been someone in your flat.”
“Someone with my name?”
Damián went to one of the stacks of paper. Searched. Found a smaller sheet. Put it on the table.
A list. Names. With dates beside them.
Hugo ran his eye down it.
Every name was the same.
All of them said Hugo.
Until the last one.
Which had no departure date.
Only a blank space.
And beside the blank space, written in a handwriting different from Damián’s.
More recent.
Awaiting signature.
But below that name, lower on the list, in smaller letters and slightly lighter ink, as if added later, was one more name.
Damián.
No entry date.
No departure date.
Just the name.
Damián said nothing.
Hugo said nothing.
Neither of them moved.
End of Chapter 7
The next chapter has already been written.
But you haven’t read it.
Yet.
Some things disappear before you notice they’ve gone.
© Santiago Copí, 2026. All rights reserved.