“I felt sad,” is all Marcela says; she excuses herself almost immediately and Sergio walks her down to her car.
“I’ll call you soon,” and he kisses her on the cheek.
He returns to the apartment, in no rush. Velia’s presence annoys him; it’s true he missed her and wanted her to come back, but not right at this moment when he needs to be alone with his jumbled thoughts.
“It’s so good to see you again,” Velia says, embracing him. Sergio gives her a light kiss and they sit close together.
“It’s been days and days,” says Sergio, just for the sake of saying something, and he indifferently strokes Velia’s tanned arm, thinking, “You could’ve come back last week, but you had to show up now, when I’m a mess and I’m not in the mood for anything, not even you.”
“What’s going on with Marcela?”
“She told you, she was sad and started crying.”
He fixes some drinks and hears Velia saying she thinks Marcela isn’t looking well at all, as if there’s a shadow hanging over her, as if she’s completely lost interest in her own person and in everything around her.
“Yes, it’s clear that she’s gone through something,” says Sergio, coming back with the drinks.
“And something’s going on with you too, something you’re not telling me . . .”
Sergio doesn’t answer. He sips his drink. How can he explain something that he himself doesn’t understand, something that’s going round and round inside him and that he can’t manage to pin down or put a stop to? Velia insists on knowing what’s happening and asks again and again.
“I’m worried about Marcela,” Sergio begins, and he ends up telling her about the entire problem — that is, what he’s been able to grasp of it: Luis is cheating on her and this has been an awful blow for poor Marcela — she’s taken it terribly; she’s stopped sleeping and her nerves are completely shot; she’s being tormented and haunted by Luis’s lover, but he’s sure it’s only in her mind. That’s all Sergio tells her — the story of a romantic triangle that’s roughly the same as a million other stories of the same genre. But he knows there’s something more to it, something he’s not even telling himself, and he wants to be alone so he can go back over his conversation with Marcela in his head, reconstruct everything she’s said to him. But Velia doesn’t leave, and the rest of the night must go on as if nothing had happened. They have a few more drinks, Velia tells him about her vacation: the weather was incredible, the water deliciously warm, everyone was there in Acapulco, it’s a shame Sergio didn’t go, he would’ve had a great time; he might not believe it, but he missed out on loads of fun . . . They prepare some supper, eat, and make love. Later, while Velia sleeps by his side, Sergio listens to the sounds of the night and thinks about Marcela again with distress: “Right now she must be living through another of those nights that are driving her insane.”
Sergio and Velia meet at a bar on Reforma where they often go. He looks disinterestedly at the people coming and going. The young women like carbon copies, their hair piled up a la italiana, their eyes heavily lined and their lips pale; the men with their bow ties and tailored suit jackets.
“And Marcela, have you heard anything from her?”
Sergio says he’s been very busy and hasn’t had a chance to get in touch.
“I think that with a little time she’ll get over it,” says Velia. “She’ll forget about everything, even Luis — don’t you think so?”
“Marcela lives in a very peculiar world, full of fantasies, that’s why I’m so worried about her.”
“But she’s not a girl anymore, Sergio. Fantasies belong to childhood, it’s absurd to be so cut off from reality at her age.”
Sergio lets her speak, recognizing that it’s the same thing he’s been saying for days and days. He’s the first to admit how preposterous the story Marcela has concocted is, but he also knows that this fantasy is completely destroying her, and this is what is driving him to despair; somehow he has to make her understand — wake her up from this absurd dream and bring her back to reality . . . He realizes that Velia is no longer talking and is watching him attentively.
“I got caught up thinking about Marcela,” he says sheepishly, and caresses her cheek.
She smiles with indulgence.
Very early in the morning, the phone rings. Sergio jumps out of bed as if bitten by a tarantula. Marcela apologizes for having woken him up, but she needs to see him, it’s very urgent. He can sense it, too, in her tone of voice, faltering and breathless.
“Come as soon as you can, right now.”
He jumps into the shower to wake himself up completely. He’d been planning to sleep in, like he does every Sunday, but he doesn’t regret it, once and for all he’ll speak with Marcela — and for as long as it takes. While he waits he makes coffee and toast, and calls Velia to make sure she won’t come looking for him. He’ll go find her after he finishes talking with Marcela.
When Marcela arrives, they sit and drink coffee by the window. “She looks awful,” Sergio says to himself.
“Last night,” begins Marcela, “everything almost ended, that is, it could have been my last night; someone, I think it was Lupe, left the door to the garden open, and she came in through it, I’d been listening to her croaking and croaking outside the window for hours, then the noise grew more distant until I couldn’t hear it anymore — I thought she’d left, which surprised me . . . I relaxed a bit and began to doze off, when suddenly I began to hear the sound of something thumping, every now and then. It was coming closer and closer, closer, I got up and ran to the door of my room, and there she was in the hall a few steps from my door, just one hop away from entering — staring at me with her huge eyes that seemed to be popping out of their sockets — about to leap on top of me, I know it because her legs were folded back, ready to jump, because she was inflating herself in fury before my eyes, out of her desire to destroy me . . . I immediately shut the door and turned the key; at the same moment I heard her smash against the door, croaking, croaking, moaning in her pain and rage. I was saved by one instant, a single instant. I turned the key again and waited, pressed against the door listening, she moaned painfully, then I heard her leave with that dull thumping, those short heavy leaps . . . I was sweating copiously, then I fainted, and when I came to, it was already daytime. I got into bed and tried to warm myself up, I was very cold and frightened, but it didn’t work. I kept trembling from head to toe, then I called you . . .”
With automatic movements Marcela brings the cup of coffee, which she hasn’t touched, to her lips.
“It must be cold,” says Sergio. “Don’t drink it, I’ll heat it up.” And he walks to the kitchen thinking: “How to begin, what do I say to her?”
He returns with the hot coffee, pours a cup for Marcela, and another for himself. The sun shines in and bathes the living room, it’s nine thirty in the morning on a Sunday in the month of October, everything is real, quotidian, as real as the woman sitting in front of him stirring her coffee, as real as he is, savoring his weekly day of rest. What is out of place, at this hour, are the words, the world that she is expressing.
“You’re letting yourself get carried away by your imagination and your worked-up nerves; stop, dear, it’s a very dangerous path, and sometimes it’s just one step, a step that’s very easy to take, and then . . .”
“How can you possibly say such things to me,” says Marcela with deep disappointment, “that you don’t understand? It’s not my imagination, it’s not a dream, it’s not my nerves as you call them, it’s a reality so terrifying that it’s driving me insane, it’s being so close to death that you start to feel its chill in your bones.”
“Sometimes without wanting to,” says Sergio, “without realizing it, we mix up truth and fantasy and fuse them together, we allow ourselves to get caught in their web — we give ourselves up to the absurd. It’s like taking a trip
to a city that never existed.”
“I know it’s hard to explain, hard to believe, but she’s real, and you don’t want to realize it; I recognized her eyes on that first night when I found her there among the plants below the window, I got a good look at her that day she was with Luis, with those same bulging, cold, expressionless eyes, the face too large for someone so short, stuck to her shoulders, with no neck . . .”
Sergio gets up and walks through the living room, then he leans his back against the window and says: “You have to realize how illogical this situation is, it’s not possible that this crazy fantasy created by your imagination could be real; you’re tired, you’re worn out, you’re suffering.”
“And the desperation of knowing that every night could be my last, I’ve told you that I was saved only by a split second, an instant, closing the door before she could jump on me.”
Sergio realizes that she is completely trapped in this obsession, she can’t break free, it’s distorting everything — whatever he says to convince her otherwise will be useless.
“And now what do I do? If tonight or tomorrow or the next night could be the last? What can I do, Sergio? Pursued, stalked relentlessly, night after night, minute after minute, without the relief of sleep, always alert, listening, following her movements like I’m a prisoner awaiting my final hour in a cell. Why this malice, this determination to finish me off? She already broke me to pieces by snatching Luis away, what else does she want? Croaking, croaking, croaking horribly all night long, without stopping, her croaking is there inside and outside my ears, her stupid, sinister croaking . . .”
Sergio watches her bring her hands to her head, attempting to cover her ears. He feels a powerful grief, a kind of raw tenderness that forms a knot in his throat; he knows he’s about to cry, and he turns toward the window so she won’t see him. Outside he sees the sunny October morning, he sees the cars pass down the avenue with its golden trees, people carrying picnic baskets to take to the country, he sees a flower vendor, a milkman, the mailman passing on his bicycle; he sees some young women walk by, almost girls, he remembers the girl with the ponytail, he’d like to go to the country, he would have liked to go yesterday, with that girl, his friend, his sister, that broken part of him covering her ears, he’d like to . . .
“I’m leaving, Sergio,” says Marcela, touching his shoulder. “I want to eat with the children.”
Surprised, Sergio watches her go, unable to say anything. He looks out the window again: he watches Marcela’s car pull out and disappear down the avenue. He dials Velia’s number and asks her to come over, but as soon as he hangs up, he regrets it. He’d rather be alone, but he doesn’t want that either, the truth is he doesn’t want anything; maybe he’ll feel better after a drink, perhaps, but there’s no peace for him now; he’s suffering over Marcela as if it’s a sickness he’s suddenly contracted, an unbearable malady that he can’t push aside because it’s fixed there, hurting him constantly.
Velia finds him downcast. They walk for a while through the park filled with children and balloons. He barely talks, he lets himself be led along. Afterward in the bar he tells Velia about his fears, the futility of his efforts and how much it hurts not to be able to do anything for Marcela. When they finish eating, Velia asks what he wants to do, where they should go.
“Wherever you want, it’s all the same to me.”
They drive through the city, deserted as it always is on Sunday afternoons, beneath a heavy, oppressive sky ignited by a premature dusk. They drive a long while in silence, aimless, until the cool afternoon air lashes their faces like an icy whip; Velia stops the car and puts the roof up. They continue driving in no particular direction. “I should go see the seamstress,” it suddenly occurs to Sergio. But what for? What would he say to her? . . . Maybe talk to her about the state Marcela is in, explain how serious the situation is, perhaps insinuate that she should leave the city for a while, that it might possibly calm Marcela down, knowing she was far away might make Marcela better . . . the idea seems harebrained, a charge he would never have accepted . . . Poor girl! Her only crime was falling in love with someone else’s husband. In the end, this kind of relationship has always inspired his pity — and why not say it? — his sympathy too: always living in the shadows without being able to show your face, embracing in the dark, on the sly, having a second-month abortion, grief-stricken and terrified, then finally cast off with the years like a sack of useless bones. Really he pities them. He thinks she must be a nice young woman, he thinks she’ll be moved to compassion when she hears about the state Marcela is in. Palenque 270 . . .
He asks Velia to take him to Palenque Street, where Luis’s lover lives. Velia looks at him, very surprised.
“But you, what’re you going to do there?”
“I don’t know, but I think speaking with her is the only thing left to do, and I’m going to try it.”
Velia drops him off at the corner of the building and waits for him there.
Sergio climbs up to the third floor and rings the door of apartment 15. No one answers. He worries that since it’s Sunday, she’s gone out. He rings again. A young woman of indeterminate age answers the door. Sergio knows it’s her, and he says he wants to speak with her. The young woman stands there looking at him, somewhere between surprised and fearful. Strange and muddled noises issue from the apartment.
“May I come in?”
She doesn’t respond and tries to close the door. Sergio stops her, pushing his way into the apartment. He now locates the strange sounds he’d heard when the door opened, coming from a radio. “It must be musique concrète or something like that, maybe Radio Mil’s Sunday program,” Sergio thinks, giving a quick glance around the apartment: a long cutting table, an electric sewing machine, a black dress form, a mirror, more furniture . . . The woman watches him attentively without offering him a chair. He takes a seat anyway. She sits too, placing herself in front of him, and from there she looks at him; he looks back at her in puzzlement, takes out a cigarette, and lights it. “Kind of a strange girl,” thinks Sergio.
“I came to talk to you about Marcela.”
“About whom?” she asks in a mellifluous and gelatinous little voice that makes Sergio choke.
“My friend Marcela, Luis’s wife,” says Sergio, annoyed by her stupid question.
A smile half forms on her face, somewhere between mocking and contemptuous; she says something that Sergio doesn’t quite manage to hear, but something along the lines of “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He can’t seem to hear her, because she’s speaking as though she were swallowing her own words, and because the unpleasant noises, like inarticulate screams, have risen in intensity. Sergio turns toward the radio, but she doesn’t lower the volume — as if the noise doesn’t bother her or she doesn’t even notice it. Sergio starts to talk to her about Marcela, doing his best to describe the pain his friend is feeling, her emotional collapse, her shattered nerves; he tells her everything he can — he explains, he explains again. He alone speaks: she doesn’t say a word — “there’s no communication, this doesn’t interest her at all, nothing moves her,” he thinks. She’s silent, but he knows it’s not an enigmatic silence, rather it’s the silence of someone who has nothing to say — and the music, that is, those feverish noises, grows louder, intolerably loud, like a violent assault, surrounding them, suffocating them . . . He starts talking again, explaining; he suggests that she should go away for a while, it would be the most convenient thing for everyone. She just stares and stares at him; occasionally he sees the same smile, the practiced masklike smile that stretches her lips even thinner, widening them. Sergio speaks louder and louder, to make himself heard; she looks at him as if mocking his effort; he can’t stop staring back — her face is too large for someone so short, she barely has a neck, it’s as if her head were stuck directly onto her shoulders . . . Now he’s no longer making suggestions, he’s openly asking, dem
anding that she go far away for a while and let Marcela recuperate; she looks at him with her bulging, cold, expressionless eyes; Sergio is almost shouting so as not to be overpowered by those sounds that seem to be coming from inside her: a sad, monotonous croaking and croaking and croaking, all night long. “Marcela’s right, her eyes are popping out of their sockets, her lips are a line drawn straight across her enormous head, she’s inflating herself with silence, with the words she hasn’t said, the words she’s swallowed, she’s inflated herself and she’s looking at me with cold, deadly hatred, while enveloping me in her stupid, sinister croaking and croaking and croaking, with that odor of mud emanating from her, that smell of putrefied slime that’s becoming unbearable; her limbs pull back, I know she’s getting ready to jump on me, swollen, croaking, moving heavily, clumsily . . .” Sergio’s hand seizes a pair of scissors and he stabs, plunges, shreds . . . The desperate croaking grows weaker, as if it were sinking into a dense, dark pool, while blood stains the floor of the room.
Sergio throws the scissors down and wipes his hands clean with his handkerchief; disheveled, he gazes at himself in the mirror and tries to fix himself up a bit. He mops off his sweat and combs his hair.
When he walks out onto the street it’s already dark; he turns the corner and sees Velia’s car with Velia waiting for him inside it. Before joining her, he stops in at a hole-in-the-wall shop; he buys cigarettes and dials a number on the telephone.
The Houseguest Page 5
