“You don’t look well, have you been sick?”
“Not exactly,” she says glumly. “Maybe it’s because I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Why don’t we go for a coffee, whenever you like, and we’ll have a good long talk and catch up. I’d love to do it today, but I have to look over a few things before my secretary leaves.”
He walks away in a hurry, but Marcela’s wilted face and her obvious self-neglect linger in his mind. He is troubled at his own behavior, feeling something like remorse for having forgotten about her, for seeing so little of her these past months. “It’s absurd how busy I’ve let myself get with work and obligations: I can’t even see the people I love anymore.” Just last year he’d still been getting together all the time with Marcela and Luis, almost every Saturday night, to empty a bottle or two while listening to music or immersing themselves in conversations about anything and everything . . .
“What’s going on with Marcela?” Sergio wonders again while he shaves. He thinks that perhaps this change is due to time — they aren’t twenty years old anymore, in fact they’re approaching forty. He wipes away the lather and contemplates himself in the mirror. “It’s not that. There must be something wrong, something must be happening to her.” And it hurts him to think it might be something serious, serious enough to have caused such a disastrous change, without him knowing anything about it. In the shower he recollects their high school years, when he and Marcela spent all their time together: they went to the same parties, they loved walking aimlessly around the city or spending long hours killing time at cafés. “She was so willowy, and maybe a little pale, but it gave her an interesting look, she hardly wore any makeup and pulled her long chestnut hair back in a ponytail, she was a pretty girl,” Sergio recalls. They’d been so close back then that it never occurred to him to wonder just what kind of affection it was that united them. Marcela was like a part of his very own self. Things became romantic once, but they hadn’t let it go any further than a few innocent kisses. Perhaps Marcela had been waiting for him to decide, perhaps she’d grown tired of waiting and one day she became Luis’s girlfriend, who knows . . . “Maybe she hadn’t slept yesterday, or she was a little sad and didn’t feel like fixing herself up, maybe it’s nothing; she’s the same as always, and I’m the one who’s blowing things out of proportion. How nice it would be if it were only my imagination!” And he starts reading the newspaper over breakfast until all thoughts of his friend evaporate.
He arrives at his apartment, tired after the workday, and since it’s still early he calls Marcela to set a date. One, two, three rings, he wants to hear Marcela’s voice, cheerful as always: “Oh, it’s you, Sergio, what a pleasure!” After one more ring Marcela herself answers, but it’s not the voice he knows — not the voice he’s hoping to hear, needs to hear. Of course she’s happy that he’s calling her, he feels it, he knows it for certain, but something is definitely wrong with her. They agree to meet the next day. Discouraged, he paces in the living room. It annoys him that Velia is out of town. At least he might have shared his concerns about Marcela with her. But the poor thing is so clueless sometimes; she could have come back by now, two weeks are more than enough to get a tan and flaunt yourself on the beach . . . He decides to read for a bit and looks for the book by Miller. He stretches out in an easy chair; his left leg aches a little, and he rubs it with his hand — it’s annoying that after all this time it still aches when it’s cold, Miguel doesn’t believe him when he complains about it and never prescribes anything. “What a hassle doctors are . . .” He remembers when he’d broken his leg. Marcela was the only person who regularly spent time with him during those long afternoons in the hospital, everyone else soon grew tired of visiting him; even Irene left to visit her mother in San Francisco. Marcela always showed up exhausted: “Luis is coming tonight. We bought you this book. Luis says it’s great and that you’ll like it . . .” She would sit down with difficulty — she was expecting her second child then — and tell him all the news, the gossip about their friends; she would plump the pillows or read to him, without pause, until the afternoon had passed and the nurse arrived with the tea trolley. Luis always came to pick her up, they would chat awhile longer, and then the two would leave holding hands, with their air of timid lovers that so amused him. The day they’d married, Sergio had been as nervous as the groom himself; maybe a bit more, since Luis was always so relaxed. He’d thought that Luis would never finish getting dressed, that they would arrive late — and then they lost the rings and once they were close to the church he ran a red light and they were nearly hauled to the police station; when they finally showed up they found everyone on edge . . .
A little after seven thirty that night, Sergio enters the Café del Ángel and finds Marcela sitting at a table in the back.
“Have you been waiting long?” Sergio asks, noticing that Marcela’s coffee is completely cold. “I can’t help it, I’m always late.” He takes one of Marcela’s hands and holds it between his own.
“Don’t worry,” she says, “I didn’t remember if we’d agreed to see each other at six thirty or seven thirty, so . . .”
“It’s almost normal for something like that to happen to me,” Sergio jokes, “but you, with that incredible memory I’ve always been so jealous of . . .”
Marcela says her memory isn’t the same anymore, that she forgets all sorts of things or gets them confused. Sergio stares at her, trying to figure out what’s wrong with her; but, giving up, he asks: “What is it, Marcela, what’s happened to you?”
She pulls out a cigarette and says nothing. Sergio calls the waiter and asks for two coffees.
“I don’t know, everything’s been so mixed up, so unexpected, like an awful dream, a nightmare. Sometimes I think I’m going to wake up and find that everything is still in one piece.”
She plays with her wedding ring, turns it nervously around her finger, takes it off, puts it on, takes it off again. Sergio suspects that it must have something to do with Luis, something painful that’s hard for her to say out loud. He’s uncomfortable too — the café is full of people, full of noise, it feels like the wrong place.
“I’m going to pay the check,” he says. “We’ll go to my house.”
Marcela doesn’t respond but accepts with her gaze. On the drive back, the two of them talk about things that don’t particularly interest them: have you read this book, have you seen that film, the nights are colder now, it’s getting dark early, the days are never long enough . . . Sergio switches on the car radio; Louis Armstrong’s deep, warm voice envelops them. Marcela watches the trees pass by on Avenida Tacubaya, as Armstrong sings “I’ll Walk Alone.”
“Do you remember,” asks Sergio, “when we used to listen to this record until we scratched it?”
Marcela nods, but he knows that he can’t bring her back to that time, he knows that she’s stuck in another moment that she can’t or doesn’t want to escape from. He thinks back on those Sunday afternoons: he and Marcela and Luis in his small student’s room, drinking rum and listening to Armstrong. Marcela sitting on the floor with her legs crossed and drawn up to her chin, swaying gently to the beat, Luis stretched out at her side looking up at the ceiling, and he directing an invisible orchestra, possessed, blown away by Louis . . .
“It’s cold,” says Sergio, as he begins to arrange logs to light in the fireplace.
Marcela sits curled up in an armchair. “At least she’s less tense now, but why doesn’t she talk, why doesn’t she tell me what’s going on?” He busies himself making coffee, and in a few minutes the aroma fills the living room. He pours the coffee and begins to feel oppressed by Marcela’s silence. It’s the first time in all the years they’ve known each other that he doesn’t know what to say to her. He asks if her coffee is sweet enough; she says yes. He offers her a cigarette and lights himself another. Marcela stirs her coffee, Sergio starts to blow smoke rings.
“Luis is cheating on me and everything between us is broken.”
Sergio looks at her without knowing how to respond.
“It’s been terrible, like suddenly finding yourself walking on a tightrope that’s gone slack, and you can’t situate yourself anywhere in time or space.”
“Are you sure, Marcela?”
“Of course I’m sure, I confirmed it myself. At first I was confused by how detached he was acting toward me — it became more and more obvious — and by his absences. I invented all kinds of excuses. I went around and around in circles, I didn’t want to see it.”
“It must be something temporary, a fling,” says Sergio, and goes hunting for a bottle.
Marcela shakes her head and holds out her cup to him. He fills it while thinking that women always exaggerate things. He feels cold and stokes the fire.
“I found out just a few months ago. Later I realized that it all goes back a long way, several years.”
The logs burn in great orange flames whose radiance lends an even more desolate look to Marcela’s gaunt face. Sergio settles himself deep in his armchair and lights a cigarette.
“Who is she?”
“A seamstress.”
He tells himself that even if Marcela is exaggerating, these things do exist and they have destroyed her, they exist like these flames dancing in the fireplace. All it takes is seeing her, hearing her; she’s as sad and lonely as a ruined, abandoned house. He takes a deep drink, seeing how defeated she looks — “Poor Marcela, the little girl with the ponytail!” — so much his, so much a sister to him, as if she were his arm, a part of his own body, that’s how much it pains him. He tries the best he can to bolster her spirits, to give her some hope . . . Only death is final, everything else has a solution, things can change, this will be temporary, a painful moment — but deep inside he feels that his words are hollow, that they’re good for nothing, that they’re only words, wishes that won’t work miracles.
He’d scheduled a business dinner, but at the last minute they tell him it’s been postponed. He has the night free but doesn’t feel like doing anything or seeing anyone. Marcela’s situation has been plaguing him. No matter how many times he turns the problem over in his head, he can’t figure out what to do to help her. Several times he’s made up his mind to talk to Luis but then decided not to. Everything seems useless to him, ineffective. “It’s up to them to work things out between themselves.” He knows that no one changes their ways based solely on a friend’s advice. He decides to go to his house and have something to eat there. When he arrives, he finds Marcela sitting on the floor by the fireplace.
“You, here . . . I never would have thought!” Sergio says, surprised and happy to see her.
“They told me you were going to come home late, but I had a hunch and waited.”
“I’m so glad you came!” Sergio says, leaning over to kiss her cheek. “You’ve had me very worried.”
“It’s my second cognac,” she says, pointing to the little glass next to her. “I’ve been feeling so cold.”
“Yes, it is a bit cold,” says Sergio, and goes to pour himself a drink. He comes back and sits by her side. “Have you talked with Luis — has he given you any explanation?”
“We’ve talked plenty of times,” says Marcela in a discouraged voice, “but it’s useless, he denies everything; he says I’m imagining it all, and each time it opens a wider gulf between us. We live in hiding from each other, like strangers, suffocated by silence.”
“Maybe with time . . .” Sergio begins, but Marcela doesn’t let him finish.
“There’s something else I didn’t tell you about the other day, that’s why I came today . . . she’s following me too.”
“Who is?” asks Sergio, wrinkling his forehead.
“Her. She harasses me night after night, without letting up, for hours and hours, sometimes all night long, I know it’s her, I remember her eyes, I recognize those bulging, expressionless eyes, I know she wants to finish me off and destroy me completely. I’m not sleeping anymore, I haven’t dared to sleep for a while now, I’d be at her mercy, I spend my nights lying awake listening to the noises from the garden, and among them I recognize her sound, I know it when she arrives, when she comes close to my window and spies on my every move; the slightest bit of carelessness and I’d be done for — I close the windows, I check the doors, I check them again, I don’t let anyone open them, she could come in through any one of them and get to me. The nights go on forever, hearing her so close, a torture that’s consuming me bit by bit until the day my resistance is worn down and she destroys me . . .”
“Take this, have a drink,” says Sergio, holding the glass out to her. He feels that he’s drawing a mental blank, that he hasn’t understood correctly, and he’d like to ask and clarify things, but she doesn’t give him the chance.
“When I found all of this out, I started having trouble sleeping, and I would spend all night tossing and turning in bed, hearing the sounds of the night — vague and faraway noises. I began to distinguish one sound that stood out among the rest, growing stronger and clearer, closer and closer until it reached my window, and there it would stay for hours and hours; then eventually it would leave, it would fade away into the distance, and the next night it would come back; that’s how it was every night, the same sound, it wouldn’t stop. Then one night I saw her — they were her eyes, I knew them, I’d followed Luis many times hoping that it was nothing but unfounded suspicions on my part, but he always went into the same building, Palenque 270, and hours would go by before he came out again; I knew that she lived there but I’d never seen her. One day they showed up together in Luis’s auto; I got a good look at her, her bulging, expressionless eyes, the same eyes I’d seen beneath my window in the grass . . .”
Marcela draws a hand across her forehead, trying to wipe away an image. She lights a cigarette. The clock strikes eleven; Sergio starts with surprise. He realizes it’s the clock, his clock, the one that’s been sitting above the fireplace for years, the one that always strikes at the hour, the same every time, but now it sounds different. He drinks a little bit of cognac, which also tastes like something else — it has a different flavor, it’s as if everything, including himself, has changed. “I’m stupefied.” This has all been so unusual, so confusing, that he doesn’t know what to think or how to comprehend it. A thousand thoughts invade his mind like disarticulated fragments, like the disordered pieces of a motor, and he can’t find the first piece, the starting point from which he could then assemble the rest. His mind is a snarled, tangled web.
“What would you do, Sergio?” Marcela asks suddenly. “Please, tell me.”
To Sergio she looks like a poor creature who’s been cornered and is about to bolt, and is pleading for help.
“You’re very nervous, you’re overwhelmed, and when you find yourself feeling that way, everything seems worse than it really is . . .”
“No, Sergio, it’s not my nerves, it’s her there beneath my window every night, that croaking and croaking and croaking, all night long . . .”
“What are we talking about, Marcela?” asks Sergio, anguished. “I mean, whom are we talking about?”
“About her, Sergio! About the toad that’s stalking me night after night, just waiting for the opportunity to come in — and tear me to pieces, take me out of Luis’s life forever.”
“Marcela, dear, don’t you see this is all just a fantasy? A fantasy caused by exhaustion, by insomnia, by being so wrapped up in yourself, by the pain you’re feeling . . .”
“No, Sergio, no.”
“Yes, dear, the toad doesn’t exist — or rather, toads do exist, of course, but not the one you think, not her. It’s just a normal toad that’s gotten into the habit of coming to your window every night . . .”
“You don’t understand, Sergio, everything’s so hard to explain, that’s why I hadn’t told you.
I didn’t, I still don’t know how to say it . . .”
“I understand you, Marcela.”
“You don’t understand me, you don’t want to understand me. You think it’s my nerves, or maybe that I’m crazy . . .”
“Don’t say that — I only think that you’re extremely nervous and you’re falling apart.”
Marcela, who has been sitting this whole time in the same position with her legs drawn up, rests her head on her knees and starts to sob. “It’s the same pose, the same pain as the night she found out about her grandmother’s death,” Sergio thinks, and silently he begins to stroke her hair. He can’t find the words that might soothe her; he feels clumsy and maimed, as if his inner reserves have suddenly been exhausted and all that’s left is a dullness, an overwhelming heaviness (he hears the doorbell), all he knows is that he’s suffering along with Marcela, as much as she is and for her sake (he hears the doorbell again); he who has always protected himself from suffering and has fled instinctively from everything that might hurt him — here he is now totally destroyed, reduced to shit (once more the doorbell). “Who could it be?” he wonders with annoyance.
“Someone’s ringing,” says Marcela, lifting her head.
“Yes,” answers Sergio.
“I don’t want to see anyone; I’ll go out through the kitchen.”
“Wait, we don’t have to open the door.”
The doorbell rings again and a woman’s voice calls Sergio’s name.
“It has to be Velia!” says Sergio, irritated. “She’s the only one capable of making such a racket.”
They decide the best thing to do is let her in before she wakes the whole building up with her shouting. Sergio opens the door and Velia rushes inside. She greets Sergio with a kiss, and then Marcela, who hasn’t moved at all. Like mute spectators, they watch her take her coat and gloves off while she explains that she wasn’t able to announce her arrival beforehand. While passing by his house she saw a light on in the apartment and decided to drop in for a surprise visit and, since he didn’t open, she started to get nervous and was worried that something had happened to him. “What could possibly have happened to me? We didn’t want to see anyone,” thinks Sergio, irked, and he’s about to tell her so, but then his eyes meet Velia’s green eyes, and his tension and bad mood subside: he simply says they didn’t think it was her. Velia notices that Marcela has been crying, and she tries to find out what’s wrong, but Marcela doesn’t have the heart to speak.
The Houseguest Page 4
