Tuesday 28 May
She comes to have coffee with me almost every day. The general tone of our conversation is always one of friendship. At most, friendship and something more. But I’m making progress with that ‘something more’. For example, we sometimes talk about ‘Us’. ‘Us’ is that undefined link that now binds us together. But whenever we mention it, it’s as outsiders. I will explain: we say, for example, that ‘no one in the office has noticed what’s going on between Us yet’, or that such and such a thing happened before Us began. But, in the end, what is Us? For now, at least, it’s a kind complicity we’re faced with, a secret sharing, a unilateral pact. Naturally, this isn’t an affair, or an arrangement, or – much less – a betrothal. Nevertheless, it’s more than a friendship. What’s worse (or better?) is that she feels comfortable with this lack of definition. She talks to me with complete trust, humour, and I think even affection. She has a very personal and ironic point of view about her surroundings. She doesn’t like to hear jokes about the office people, but she has them all well catalogued. Sometimes, in the café, she looks around, and makes a well-informed, accurate and unsurpassable comment. Today, for example, sitting at a table were four or five women, all of them about thirty or thirty-five years old. She looked at them carefully for some time and then asked me: ‘They’re court clerks, aren’t they?’ Yes indeed, they were court clerks. I’ve known a few of them, at least by sight, for years. ‘Do you know them?’ I asked her. ‘No, I’ve never seen them before,’ she replied. ‘So then, how did you guess?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘I can always recognize women who are court clerks. They have very special characteristics and habits you don’t see in other professional women. They either apply lipstick in one hard stroke, like someone who writes on a blackboard, have an eternally sore throat from reading out so many documents, or don’t know how to carry their handbags because they’ve carried portfolios for so long. They speak haltingly, as if they don’t want to say anything that goes against the codes, and you’ll never see them gaze at themselves in a mirror. Look at that one, the second one from the left, she has calves like a runner-up champion athlete. And the one next to her looks like she doesn’t even know how to fry an egg. They annoy me, how about you?’ No, they don’t annoy me (moreover, I remember a court clerk who is the owner of the most attractive bust in this universe and its surroundings), but listening to her enthusiastic discussion of the pros and cons of something amuses me. The poor clerks – mannish, energetic and muscular – continued talking, completely unaware of the harsh critic that, one table away, continued to add new reproaches regarding their appearance, posture, attitude and conversation.
Thursday 30 May
Esteban’s friend is shifty. He’s charging me fifty per cent of my retirement bonus, but assures me I won’t have to work a single day longer than necessary. The temptation is great. Well, it was great, because I’ve already agreed to his terms. He reduced it to forty per cent, though, and recommended I accept this offer before he changed his mind. He said he didn’t do this with anyone; he never charged less than fifty per cent. He told me to just ask around, ‘because there are many abusive and unscrupulous people in my profession’, and he was giving me this special price because I was Esteban’s father. ‘I love Esteban like a brother,’ he said. ‘We played billiards every night for four years. And that makes you close, sir.’ It was then I remembered my conversation with Aníbal on Sunday the 5th, when I told him: ‘Now, someone who wants to obtain something legal also offers a bribe. And this means total disorder.’
Friday 31 May
The 31st of May was Isabel’s birthday. How far away she is. I once bought her a German doll that walked and moved its eyes for her birthday. I brought it home in a large and very stiff cardboard box. I placed the box on the bed and asked her to guess what it was. ‘A doll,’ she replied. I never forgave her for that.
None of the kids remembered her birthday; or at least they didn’t say anything to me about it. They have gradually moved away from paying homage to their mother. I think Blanca is the only one who really misses her, the only one who mentions her unaffectedly. Could I be to blame? In the beginning, I didn’t talk about Isabel very much, only because it was painful. Now I still don’t talk about her much, but it’s because I’m afraid to make a mistake; I’m afraid to talk about another person who would have had nothing to do with my wife.
Will Avellaneda ever forget about me in this way? Here is where the mystery lies: before beginning to forget she has to remember, she has to begin to remember.
Sunday 2 June
Time flies. Sometimes I think I should live hurriedly instead of trying to get the most out of these remaining years. These days, having scrutinized my wrinkles, anyone can say to me: ‘But you’re still a young man.’ Still. But how many years of ‘still’, do I have left? I think about it and start to hurry, and have the agonizing sensation that life is slipping away from me, as if my veins had opened and I couldn’t stop the bleeding. Because life is many things (work, money, luck, friendship, health, complications) and no one is going to deny that when we think about the word Life, when we say for example: ‘we cling to life’, we are likening it to a more specific, attractive and surely more important word: pleasure. I think about pleasure (any kind of pleasure) and I’m sure that’s what life is. From then on it’s the hurrying, the tragic hurrying of these fifty years which are fast on my heels. I still have, I hope, a few years of friendship, passable health, routine desires, and, all being well, some luck ahead of me. But, how many years of pleasure remain? I was twenty years old and I was young; I was thirty and I was young; I was forty and I was young. Now I’m fifty years old and I’m ‘young still’. ‘Still’ means that it ends.
And that’s the absurd part of our agreement: we say we’re going to take it easy, let time pass, and then, later, we’ll review the situation. But time passes, whether we allow it to or not, and each day makes her more desirable, mature, feminine and buxom, while, on the other hand, each day threatens me with becoming ill, worn out, less courageous and less indispensable. We have to hurry towards the encounter, because in our case the future is an inevitable non-encounter. All of her pluses correspond to my minuses and all of her minuses correspond to my pluses. I understand that for a young woman it can be an inducement to know that her man is someone who has lived, who exchanged his innocence for experience a long time ago, and who thinks with his head well set on his shoulders. It’s possible that there would be an attraction, but how brief would it be? Because experience is good when it arrives hand in hand with vigour; afterwards, when the strength is gone, one becomes a decorous museum piece, whose only value is being a reminder of what once existed. Experience and strength are contemporaries for a very short time. I’m now at that stage. But it’s not an enviable situation.
Tuesday 4 June
Great. The Valverde woman broke up with Suárez and the entire office is in upheaval. Martínez’s face was a poem. For him the break-up meant, plain and simple, the Assistant Manager job. Suárez didn’t come to work this morning, but showed up in the afternoon with a bruise on his forehead and a funereal look on his face. The manager called him over and reprimanded him loudly. That means it’s not just a simple rumour but in fact an official and authorized version.
Friday 7 June
Until now, we had gone to the movies together twice, but afterwards she would go home alone. Instead, today I accompanied her home for a change. She had acted very warm and friendly. Halfway through the film, as Alida Valli put up with the idiotic Farley Granger, I suddenly felt her hand resting on my arm. I think it was a reflex, but the fact is that afterwards she didn’t remove it. Inside me there is a gentleman who doesn’t want to force anything, but there is also another gentleman who obsessively thinks about hurrying.
We got off the bus at 8 de Octubre and walked the three blocks. It was dark, but simply the clear darkness of the night. The UTE, the old and dependable public utility compan
y, was giving me a blackout as a present. We were walking side by side, about three feet apart. But as I approached a corner (a corner with a department store that had a pool table illuminated by candle light on display), someone slowly appeared out of the shadow of a tree. Then, the three feet that separated us disappeared, and before I realized it she was giving me her arm. The owner of the shadow was a drunk, a harmless and defenceless drunk who was mumbling: ‘Long live the poor wretched and the National Party!’ Meanwhile, I felt she was stifling a little laugh and loosening the tension of her fingers on my arm. Her house is number 368 and is on a street with a name like Ramón P. Gutiérrez or Eduardo Z. Domínguez, I don’t remember. The house has an entrance hall and several balconies. The main door was closed, but she told me there was an inner windproof storm door reminiscent of stained-glass windows. ‘They say the owner wanted to imitate the stained-glass windows of Notre Dame, but I’m telling you, there’s a St Sebastian on that glass who looks like Gardel.’
She didn’t open the door right away. As she leaned gently back against the door, I thought about how its bronze railing must be digging into her spinal column. But she wasn’t complaining. Then she said: ‘You’re very good. I mean to say that you’re well-behaved.’ And I, who knows myself, lied like a saint and said: ‘Sure I’m very good, but I’m not sure that I’m behaving myself.’ ‘Don’t be cocky,’ she said. ‘When you were young, weren’t you taught that when one behaves oneself, one doesn’t have to acknowledge it?’ The moment had arrived and she was waiting for it: ‘When I was young I was taught that every time one behaves, one receives a prize. Don’t I deserve one?’ There was a moment of silence. I couldn’t see her face because the foliage of a damn municipal pine tree was blocking the light of the moon. ‘Yes, you deserve it,’ I heard her reply. Then her arms emerged from the dark and rested on my shoulders. She must have seen this move in some Argentine film. But I’m sure she didn’t see the kiss that followed in any film. I like her lips, I mean to say, their taste, the way they submerge themselves, open halfway, and slip away. Naturally, it’s not the first time she’s kissed someone. So what? After all, it’s a relief to kiss on the mouth again, with trust and affection. I don’t know how, or what strange step we must have taken, but the truth is, all of a sudden, I felt the bronze handrail sinking into my spinal column. I was at the door of number 368 for a half an hour. Lord, what progress. Neither of us said anything, but after this episode one thing was clear. Tomorrow I’ll think about it. Now I’m tired, or I could also say: happy. But I’m too alert to feel completely happy. Alert about myself, about my good luck, and about that sole tangible future called tomorrow. Alert, that is to say: distrustful.
Sunday 9 June
Perhaps I’m very fussy about the middle ground. Whenever I’m presented with a problem, I never feel attracted to extreme solutions. It’s possible this is the root of my frustration. One thing is obvious: if, on the one hand, extremist attitudes provoke enthusiasm, influence others, and are signs of strength, then, on the other hand, poised attitudes are on the whole annoying, sometimes even disagreeable, and they almost never seem heroic. In general, one needs plenty of bravery (a very special kind of bravery) to maintain one’s poise, but it can’t be denied that to some it will look like a show of cowardice. Besides, poise is boring. And, nowadays, boredom is a great flaw that people usually don’t forgive.
But what does all of this mean? Oh, yes. The middle ground I now search for has to do with (is there anything in my life just now that doesn’t have to do with her?) Avellaneda. I don’t want to hurt her, nor to hurt myself (first middle ground); I don’t want our bond to drag along with it the absurd situation of a betrothal headed towards matrimony, nor that it acquire the semblance of a common and vulgar affair (second middle ground); I don’t want the future to condemn me to be an old man disdained by a woman in full use of her senses, nor do I want, through fear of that future, to remain on the margin of a present time such as this, so attractive and inexchangeable (third middle ground); I don’t want (fourth and final middle ground) to roam from motel to motel, nor do I want us to create a home, with a capital H.
Solutions? First: rent a little apartment, but without abandoning my house, of course. Well, first and done. There are no other solutions.
Monday 10 June
Cold and windy. How foul. To think that when I was fifteen years old I liked the winter. Now I start to sneeze and lose count. I often have the feeling that instead of a nose, I have a ripe tomato, with that ripeness tomatoes have ten seconds before they begin to rot. As I sneeze for the thirty-fifth time, I can’t avoid feeling inferior to the rest of mankind. I admire the noses of saints, for example, those thin and unencumbered noses of, for example, the saints of El Greco. I admire the noses of saints because they (it’s evident) never had a cold, nor were incapacitated by a series of sneezes. Never. If they had sneezed in sequences of twenty or thirty consecutive outbursts, they wouldn’t have been able to avoid completely surrendering to cursing out loud or to themselves. And whoever curses – even during the simplest of their bad thoughts – is closing off their path to Glory.
Tuesday 11 June
I didn’t tell her anything, but I threw myself into the search for an apartment. I’ve got one in mind that’s ideal. Unfortunately, there are no bargains available on ideals, they’re always expensive.
Friday 14 June
It must be about a month since I last had more than a five-minute conversation with Jaime or Esteban. They come home grumbling, lock themselves in their rooms, eat in silence while reading the newspaper, they leave cursing, and then return at dawn. Blanca, on the other hand, is kind, chatty and happy. I don’t see Diego very often, but I recognize his presence in Blanca’s face. Indeed, I was not mistaken: he’s a good man. I know that Esteban has a second job. Someone at the club found it for him. I have the impression, nevertheless, that he’s starting to regret letting himself become completely ensnared. Someday he’ll lose his temper, I can see it already, and he’ll tell everyone to go to hell. I hope it’s soon. I don’t like to see him involved in an enterprise that apparently contradicts his old convictions. I wouldn’t like him to become cynical, one of those fake cynics who, when the time for reproaches comes, makes excuses for himself, saying: ‘It’s the only way to make progress, to be someone.’ Jaime, on the other hand, does work, and is good at his job. Also, they love him there. But Jaime’s problem is something else, and what’s worse is that I don’t know what it is. He’s always nervous and unsatisfied. Apparently, he has character, but sometimes I’m not too sure whether it’s character or a passing fancy. I don’t like his friends either. There’s something posh about them. They’re from the upper-class Pocitos area and perhaps deep down in their hearts they despise him. They take advantage of Jaime because he’s clever, clever with his hands, and he’s always doing something they’ve entrusted to him. And for free, too, as it should be. None of them work; they’re all daddy’s boys. Sometimes I hear them complaining: ‘Hey, too bad you’ve got to work. We can’t count on you.’ They say ‘job’ like someone who is performing a heroic deed, like a Salvationist who approaches a drunken beggar and, transfixed with disgust and pity, touches him with the tip of his shoe; they say ‘job’ as if after having said it, they would have to disinfect themselves.
Saturday 15 June
I found an apartment. It’s very close to what I had in mind and incredibly cheap. Still, I’ll have to tighten my budget and hope I can afford it. It’s five blocks away from 18th and Andes, near the Plaza Independencia, and has the advantage furnished for forty cents. But that’s just a figure of speech. Actually, I won’t have any other choice but to use my remaining balance of $2,465.79 at the Hipotecario bank.
Tonight I’ll go out with her. I’m not planning to tell her anything.
Sunday 16 June
However, I told her. We were walking the three blocks from 8 de Octubre to her house, this time without a blackout. I think I was stuttering as I invoked
our plan of absolute freedom, of getting to know each other and seeing what happens, of letting time pass, and then reviewing the situation. I’m sure I stuttered. It was a month ago she appeared at 25th and Misiones to claim that cup of coffee. ‘I want to propose something,’ I said. I’ve been on familiar terms with her since Friday the 7th, but she hasn’t been with me. I thought she was going to reply: ‘I know’, which would have been a great relief. But no. She let me carry the entire weight of my proposition. This time she didn’t guess or didn’t want to guess. I’ve never been an expert at preliminaries, so I opted for what was necessary: ‘I rented an apartment for us.’ It was a pity there wasn’t a blackout just then, because in that case I wouldn’t have seen the look on her face. Perhaps it was a sad look, what do I know? I am never too sure about what women mean when they look at me. Sometimes I think they’re interrogating me, and after a while I realize they were actually responding to me. For a moment, stationed between us, there was a word, like a cloud, like a cloud that began to move. We both thought of the word matrimony, and both understood that the cloud was moving away and that tomorrow the sky would be clear. ‘Without consulting me?’ she asked. I nodded yes. The truth was I had a lump in my throat. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, trying to smile. ‘This is how I have to be treated, through prepared scenarios.’ We were standing in the entrance hall. The door was open because it was much earlier than the other day. There were lights here and there. There was no room for mystery, only for that other thing called silence. I began to realize my proposition wasn’t a complete success. But at the age of fifty, one can no longer aspire to complete successes. And what if she had said no? I was paying a price for that absence of a negative, and that price was the uncomfortable situation; the unpleasant, almost grievous moment when I see her, silent, in front of me, somewhat bent in her dark jacket, her expression saying goodbye to various things. She didn’t kiss me, nor did I take the initiative. Her face was tense, hard. All of a sudden, without prior warning, it was as if all of her reflexes slackened, as if she had renounced an unbearable mask, and, like that, looking upwards, with her head leaning against the door, she began to cry. And this wasn’t the so-called famous tears of happiness. It was that weeping which occurs when one feels darkly miserable. When someone feels miserable, then yes it’s worth crying, with the accompanying trembling and convulsions, especially in front of an audience. But when, in addition to feeling miserable, one feels gloomy, when there is no room for rebellion, sacrifice or heroism, then one has to cry silently, because no one can help and because one is aware that such things happen and that, in the end, one will retains one’s balance and normalcy. That’s what her crying was like. No one can fool me when it comes to this topic. ‘Can I help you?’ I asked, even so. ‘Can I remedy this somehow?’ Foolish questions. Still, I asked another one, from the very bottom of my misgivings: ‘What’s wrong? Do you want us to get married?’ But the cloud was now far away. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’m crying because it’s a pity.’ And it’s so true. Everything is a pity: that there wasn’t a blackout, that I’m fifty years old, that she’s a good woman, my three children, her old boyfriend, the apartment … I took out my handkerchief and dried her eyes. ‘Is it all over now?’ I asked. ‘Yes, it’s all over now,’ she replied. It was a lie, but we both understood that she did well in lying. With a still convalescing look, she added: ‘Don’t think I’m always so foolish.’ Don’t think, she said; I’m sure she said don’t think. She expressed her familiarity with me just then.
The Truce Page 8
