I had never been close with my neighbors, because I found the idea exhausting. I preferred my solitude, my independence. Still, we greeted each other on the stairs, in the hallways, in the street . . . With the arrival of Moses and Gaspar, all of that changed. In every apartment we stayed in — which was never for very long — the neighbors developed a fierce hatred for me. There always came a point when I became afraid to enter the building or to leave my apartment. Returning home late at night, after having been with Susy, I thought I might be assaulted. I heard doors opening as I went by, or footsteps behind me, furtive, silent, someone’s breath . . . When I finally entered my apartment I would be bathed in cold sweat and trembling from head to toe.
Soon I had to give up my job; I was afraid that if I left them alone, they might be killed. There was such hatred in everyone’s eyes! It would have been easy to break into the apartment; or the concierge might even have opened it himself, because he hated them, too. I quit my job, and my only source of income was the bookkeeping I could do at home, small accounts that weren’t enough to live on. I left early in the morning, when it was still dark, to buy the food I cooked myself. I didn’t go out again except to turn in or pick up the ledgers, and I did this as fast as I could, almost running, so that I wouldn’t be out long. I stopped seeing Susy; I no longer had the time or the money. I couldn’t leave them alone, either by day or by night, and she refused ever to come back to my apartment. Bit by bit I began to run through my savings, and then through the money Leonidas had left me. I was earning a pittance, not even enough for food, much less the constant moving from place to place. So I decided to go away.
With the money I had left, I bought a small old farm outside the city and a few essential pieces of furniture. It’s an isolated house, half in ruins. There the three of us will live, far from everything but safe from ambush and assault, tightly joined by an invisible bond, by a stark, cold hatred and an indecipherable design.
Everything is ready for our departure — everything, or rather, the little there is to bring with us. Moses and Gaspar are also awaiting the moment when we will set off. I can tell by their air of anxiety. I think they’re satisfied. Their eyes shine. If only I could know what they’re thinking! But no, I would be afraid to plumb the shadowy mystery of their being. Silently they approach me, as if they wanted to sniff out my mood or, perhaps, to find out what I’m thinking. But I know they can sense it, they must, for it shows in their joy, in the air of triumph that fills them whenever I feel a longing to destroy them. And they know I can’t, they know I’ll never fulfill my most ardent desire. They enjoy it . . . How many times would I have killed them if it had been up to me! Leonidas, Leonidas, I can’t even judge your decision! You loved me, no doubt, as I loved you, but your death and your legacy have destroyed my life. I don’t want to think or believe that you coldly condemned me or planned my ruin. No, I know it is something stronger than we are. I don’t blame you, Leonidas: even if this is your doing, it was meant to be: “We could have circled around a thousand times and always ended up where we began.”
The Houseguest
I’ll never forget the day he came to live with us. My husband brought him home from a trip.
At the time we’d been married for almost three years, we had two children, and I wasn’t happy. My husband thought of me as something like a piece of furniture, one that you’re used to seeing in a particular spot but that doesn’t make the slightest impression. We lived in a small, isolated town, far from the city. A town that was almost dead, or about to disappear.
I couldn’t suppress a cry of horror the first time I saw him. He was grim, sinister, with large yellowish eyes, unblinking and almost circular, that seemed to pierce through things and people.
My already miserable life became hell. The very night he arrived, I begged my husband not to condemn me to the torture of his company. I couldn’t help it: he filled me with mistrust and horror. “He’s completely inoffensive,” my husband said, looking at me with marked indifference. “You’ll get used to having him around, and if you don’t . . .” It was impossible to convince my husband to take him away. He stayed in our house.
I wasn’t the only one who suffered because of his presence. Everyone in the house — my children, the woman who helped me with the chores, her little son — they all dreaded him. Only my husband enjoyed having him around.
From the first day, my husband gave him the corner room. It was a large room, but I never used it because it was dark and damp. He, however, seemed content in there. Being quite dark, it suited his needs. He would sleep until night fell; I never discovered what time he went to bed.
I lost what little peace I had enjoyed in that big house. During the day, everything seemed to proceed normally. I always rose very early, dressed the children — who would already be awake — gave them breakfast, and entertained them while Guadalupe fixed up the house and went out to do the shopping.
The house was very large, with a garden in the middle and the rooms laid out around it. Between the rooms and the garden there were corridors that protected the rooms from the harshness of the frequent rains and wind. Caring for such a large house and its garden — my morning activity each day — was hard work. But I loved my garden. The passageways were covered with climbing plants that flowered almost all year round. I remember how much I enjoyed sitting in one of those corridors during the afternoon, sewing the children’s clothes amid the perfume of the honeysuckle and the bougainvillea.
In the garden I grew chrysanthemums, pansies, Alpine violets, begonias, and heliotropes. While I watered the plants, the children entertained themselves looking for caterpillars among the leaves. Sometimes they would spend hours, silent and very intent, trying to catch the drops of water that leaked from the old garden hose.
I couldn’t keep myself from glancing now and then toward the corner room. Although he spent all day sleeping, I couldn’t be sure. There were times when, as I was cooking in the afternoon, I suddenly saw his shadow cast upon the wood stove. I would feel him behind me . . . I’d throw down whatever I was holding and run from the kitchen screaming like a madwoman. He would go back to his room, as if nothing had happened.
I think he was completely unaware of Guadalupe; he never approached her or chased after her. Not so with me and the children. He hated them, and he stalked me constantly.
When he left his room, there began the most terrible nightmare a person could endure. He always stationed himself under a small arbor in front of my bedroom door. I stopped leaving my bedroom. Several times, thinking he was still asleep, I would head toward the kitchen to make the children a snack, then suddenly discover him in some dark corner of the walkway, beneath the flowering vines. “He’s there already, Guadalupe!” I would shout desperately.
Guadalupe and I never referred to him by name. It seemed to us that doing so would lend greater reality to that shadowy being. We always said, “There he is, he’s come out, he’s sleeping — he, he, he . . .”
He only took two meals, one when he woke up at dusk and the other, perhaps, in the early morning before he went to sleep. Guadalupe was responsible for bringing him the tray; I can assure you that she flung it into his room, for the poor woman was just as terrified as I was. He ate nothing but meat; he wouldn’t touch anything else.
After the children had gone to sleep, Guadalupe would bring dinner to my room. I couldn’t leave them alone, knowing that he had gotten up or was about to. Once her chores were finished, Guadalupe went off to bed with her little boy, leaving me alone to watch over my children’s slumber. As my bedroom door was always left unlocked, I didn’t dare go to sleep, fearing that he could come in and attack us at any moment. And it wasn’t possible to lock the door; my husband always came home late, and if he found it locked, he would have thought . . . And he came home very late. He had a lot of work, he said once. I think other things kept him entertained as well . . .
One night I was
awake until almost two in the morning, hearing him outside . . . When I woke up, I saw him next to my bed, staring at me with his piercing gaze . . . I leaped out of bed and threw the gasoline lamp at him, the one I left burning all night. There was no electricity in that town, and I couldn’t have endured the darkness, knowing that at any moment . . . He dodged the lamp and left the room; it shattered on the brick floor and the gasoline quickly burst into flame. If it hadn’t been for Guadalupe, who came running when I screamed, the whole house would have burned down.
My husband had no time to listen to me, nor did he care what happened in the house. We only spoke when absolutely necessary. We had long since run out of words and affection.
I feel sick all over again when I remember . . . Guadalupe had gone out shopping and left her little Martín sleeping in a crate where she used to lay him down during the day. I checked on him several times; he was sleeping peacefully. It was almost noon. I was combing my children’s hair when I heard the little boy’s crying mingled with strange shouts. I reached the room and found him cruelly beating the boy. I still can’t explain how I wrested the little child from his grasp and hurled myself at him with a heavy stick I found at hand, attacking him with all the fury I’d kept pent up for so long. I don’t know if I managed to hurt him much, because I fell down in a faint. When Guadalupe came back from her shopping, she found me unconscious and her little boy covered with bruises and bloody scratches. Her pain and rage were terrible. Fortunately the boy didn’t die and he soon recovered.
I was afraid that Guadalupe would run away and leave me alone with him. If she didn’t, it was because she was a brave and noble woman who felt great affection for my children and for me. But that day a hatred was born in her that clamored for vengeance.
I told my husband what had happened and demanded that he be sent away, pleading that he could kill our children the way he had tried to do with little Martín. “Every day you’re more hysterical, it’s truly painful and depressing to see you like this . . . I’ve explained to you a thousand times that he’s harmless.”
I thought then about fleeing from that house, from my husband, from him . . . But I had no money and no easy way to communicate with anyone. Without friends or family to turn to, I felt as alone as an orphan.
My children were terrified; they didn’t want to play in the garden anymore — they wouldn’t leave my side. Whenever Guadalupe went out to the market, I shut myself in my room with them.
“This situation can’t go on,” I said to Guadalupe one day.
“We have to do something, and soon,” she replied.
“But what can the two of us do alone?”
“Alone, true, but with such hatred . . .”
Her eyes held a strange gleam. I felt afraid and overjoyed.
The opportunity arrived when we least expected it. My husband left for the city to take care of some business. He would be away for a while, he told me, some twenty days.
I don’t know if he was aware that my husband was gone, but that day he woke up earlier than usual and stationed himself in front of my room. Guadalupe and her son slept in my room, and for the first time I could lock the door.
Guadalupe and I spent almost the entire night making plans. The children slept peacefully. From time to time we heard him come up to the door of the room and pound on it furiously . . .
The next day we gave the three children their breakfast and then, so that we could work calmly without them interfering with our plans, we shut them in my room. Guadalupe and I had so much to do and were in such a hurry to do it that we couldn’t spare time even to eat.
Guadalupe sawed several large, sturdy planks while I looked for a hammer and nails. When everything was ready, we silently crept toward the corner room. The double door was ajar. Holding our breath, we closed the door, dropped the bolt, then locked it and began to nail the planks across it until we had completely sealed it shut. Thick drops of sweat ran down our foreheads as we worked. He didn’t make any noise; he was seemingly fast asleep. When it was all finished, Guadalupe and I hugged each other, crying.
The following days were awful. He lived for a long time without air, without light, without food . . . At first he pounded at the door, throwing himself against it; he shouted desperately, clawed and scratched . . . Neither Guadalupe nor I could eat or sleep — his screams were terrible! Sometimes we thought my husband would come back before he was dead. If he were to find him that way! . . . His endurance was great; I think he lasted nearly two weeks . . .
One day there was nothing to be heard. No more noises, not even a moan . . . Still, we waited two more days before opening the room.
When my husband returned, we greeted him with the news of his guest’s sudden and disconcerting death.
Fragment of a Diary
[July and August]
Monday, July 7
My neighbor Señor Rojas seemed surprised to find me sitting on the stairs. Surely what drew his attention was my gaze, conspicuously sad. I noticed the vivid interest I’d suddenly aroused in him. I’ve always liked stairways, with their people who go dragging their breath up them and fall dully down them in a shapeless mass. Maybe that’s why I chose the stairs to suffer on.
Thursday 10
Today I worked hard to finish my daily chores as quickly as possible: tidy up the apartment, wash my underwear, make lunch, clean my pipe . . . I wanted to have more time to draw up programs and choose themes for my exercise. The study of suffering — gradual and systematic like any discipline or art — is quite arduous. My neighbor watched me for a long time. Beneath the yellowish hue of the light bulb, I must’ve looked transparent and diluted. The daily exercise of suffering gives one the gaze of an abandoned dog and the color of a ghost.
Saturday 12
Once again Señor Rojas’s insistent stare fell upon me and the feared question arose. Useless to explain anything. I let him continue down the stairs with his question lingering. I went on with my exercise. When I heard footsteps coming up, a shiver ran through my body. I knew them well. My hands and temples began to sweat. My heart thumped desperately and my tongue felt like a piece of paper. If I had been standing, I would have collapsed like a marionette. She smiled as she went by . . . I pretended not to see her, and kept practicing.
Thursday 17
I was right at the 7th degree on the scale of suffering when I was cruelly interrupted by my ever-reliable neighbor, who went upstairs accompanied by a woman. They passed so close that their clothing brushed up against me. I was permeated with the woman’s perfume, a mix of musk and benzoin — dark, viscous, damp, wild. She wore a very close-fitting red dress. I watched her as they climbed the stairs, until they disappeared behind the apartment door. They were talking and laughing. They laughed with their eyes and their hands. They were passion in movement. Wrapped up in each other, they didn’t even notice me. And my pain, so pure, so intellectual, was interrupted — its clean essence contaminated by a dull itch. Dark and weighty sensations fell over me. My sorrowful meditation, the product of arduous discipline, had been frustrated and converted into a miserable fervor. Damn them! I battered their footprints with my tears.
Sunday 20
It was a true stroke of genius to measure suffering by degrees, to assign different categories and limits. Some say that pain lasts forever and never runs out; but I believe that past the 10th degree of my scale, all that’s left is the memory of pain, hurting only in recollection. At the beginning of my training I believed it was best to ascend the scale gradually. Very quickly I found this to be a poor experience. The knowledge and perfection of pain requires flexibility, a wise application of its categories and nuances, and an arbitrary rehearsal of its degrees. To move with ease from the 3rd to the 8th degree, from the 4th to the 1st, from the 2nd to the 7th, and then run through them in rigorous ascending and descending order . . . I hate to interrupt this interesting explanation, but there’s w
ater beneath my feet.
Monday 21
First thing this morning the landlord showed up. I still hadn’t finished mopping up the apartment. He shouted, gesticulated, said terrible things. Accustomed as I am to enduring injustices, foolishness, and mistreatment, I found his attitude to be like that of so many others. It would take a genuine artist to move me, not a mere monster in training. I didn’t attach the slightest importance to him. While he was shouting, I applied myself to trimming my nails, carefully and without haste. When I finished, the man was crying. That didn’t move me either. He cried the way anybody does when they need to. If he had cried as I do, when I reach my 7th-degree meditations! . . .
Saturday 26
With all humility I’ll confess that I am a virtuoso of pain. Tonight while I was suffering, balled up on the staircase, my neighbors’ cats came out to watch me. They were astonished that humanity could have such capacity for suffering. But I hardly noticed them there. Their eyes were like blinking torches, lighting up and extinguishing themselves. I surely must have reached the 10th degree. I lost all count, because the paroxysm of pain, like that of pleasure, envelops and clouds the senses.
Wednesday 30
I’m so somber, so thin and gaunt, that sometimes a stranger coming up the stairs becomes hysterical at the sight of me. I’m satisfied with the way I look. It is a faithful testament to my art, to its near perfection.
The Houseguest Page 2
