Chapter 23
Each time it had taken a combination of whisky and tango to create the mixture of courage and melancholy he needed to pick up the phone. Nostalgia and forlorn passion hung in the notes of Ástor Piazola and brought tears to his eyes. The whisky warmed him and armed him, but each time there had been no answer. Perhaps this was just as well. It was still too early. She was still too dangerous. These were the platitudes he fed himself over another warm, lonely, Buenos Aires night, as he tipped the last of the whisky bottle into his glass. The phone looked at him, tempting him, and then made him jump when it rang.
At first he thought it was some prank. All he could hear was breathing. Then a familiar voice coughed itself into being and the vehemence in its tones left no doubt as to who it was.
‘Have you been phoning me?’ Just like that, an accusation.
‘Hello Jenny.’
‘Forget the hellos. Just tell me.’
‘Well, yes, I have phoned you a couple of times, but you weren’t in.’
‘When did you phone? Which nights?’
‘Jenny, what’s got into you?’
‘For Christ’s sake, just think.’
‘Well, I phoned once last week. I think it was a Wednesday.’ He felt a twinge as he realised it had been a Wednesday, the day that would forever be associated with his marriage and his sense of failure. ‘And the previous week it must have been a Tuesday. Why, what’s the problem?’
But he couldn’t get a coherent answer from her, because she was laughing, laughing with an edge of hysteria, which raised the hairs on his back.
‘How about a drink to celebrate?’
‘To celebrate what, Jenny?’
‘Whatever you like. Freedom from masturbation! Paranoia exposed! My sanity!’
‘Which is where exactly?’
‘Why, with me, Doctor! Shall I come over?’
‘Here? Are you sure? Yes, yes, come over. Why not? I’ll give you the address.’
Chapter 24
The first morning after was painful. Not awkward, but loaded. I expected Ignacio to have pangs about the night before. What I didn’t expect was the assault my own past was lying in wait to make. When I awoke, the face I saw in those first blurred seconds was Johnny’s, and then remorse flooded my system in sudden revelation of how it must all have seemed to him, how I must have hurt him. Why did he surface now? There was something sick about it, and I felt it, glue-like, in the caresses Ignacio and I gave each other in an attempt to reassure ourselves that the previous night had been meaningful.
‘Who are you thinking about?’ Ignacio asked me over breakfast.
I told him about Johnny. I didn’t tell him that my goodbye had been a letter; that the way I had repaid his attempts to stand by me was to leave him suddenly, without warning.
‘So why did you break up?’
I sought for a way to put it into words. ‘He just . . . couldn’t reach me.’
‘And what was Argentina – a fresh start? Why Argentina?’
‘Ignacio, give me time.’
* * *
He did. He gave me time. Time and patience massaged my defences. We saw each other intermittently at first and the therapist in him must have told him that the best way to reach me was not to probe, not to force. Or perhaps this was the man in him. He was gentle, too, with how much he talked to me about his own life. I was grateful, started to feel ‘safe’ in his company, and allowed the affection which was growing between us to swamp the memories of Johnny that still continued to emerge.
Inevitably I began to spend more and more nights at his flat, and was honest enough to admit to Ignacio that I was partly motivated by the urge to keep away from the Blue Masturbating Machine. The light-headedness which had come with the realisation that it had not been him phoning did not take away the edge I still felt on the nights I spent alone in my flat.
One evening, over whisky and the city skyline, Ignacio surprised me. ‘English girl.’ He pulled my chair closer to his in the twilight that safely silhouetted his face. ‘I’ve been thinking . . .’
I felt suddenly nervous and needed to stop him going any further. ‘Well, that’s unusual. You should see a therapist!’
‘Listen.’ I realised how good he had become at ignoring me when it suited him. ‘I don’t know where this is going and I don’t think you do either.’
‘This – you mean our “relationship”?’
He ignored me again. ‘But I know that we like spending time together and we are doing more and more of that, so why don’t you move in?’
A moment of unfamiliar power flashed through me. Then I saw again the look of confusion and hurt on his face when I had pushed him away from the orgasm he could not control, and the power left me. ‘What do you think, Jenny?’ He cupped my face to make me look at him. It was a gesture that gave me comfort and strength.
‘Yes. Yes, please. I would like that. Thank you.’ It sounded as if I had just accepted a cup of hot chocolate.
I pondered my motivation for saying yes the next day, on a still autumn afternoon, walking along the vast brown river that cradles the belly of Buenos Aires. As I looked out across the thick water, it felt as if I had forgotten how to measure my own emotions, as if I was trying to remember a history lesson from primary school or how to make a long-forgotten favourite recipe. Was this just another lie? How much of my comfort with Ignacio was connected to the fact that our medium was Spanish, the disguise I could hide in? Should I worry more about whether he was ready for it? About what it meant for him? What did it mean for me? Did it matter that Johnny’s face was watching me? Why had I said yes so readily? My sister was silent, damn her.
For all the thinking that people do, decisions make themselves. Like the decision to leave without talking to Johnny. It made itself one morning over a cup of coffee in the fog of the aftermath. I knew that he would not be able to understand, and I did not feel strong enough to try and justify myself, so I poured a garbled explanation onto paper and left.
It is easier to be direct in a foreign language and Spanish lends itself especially well to that. Having agreed to move in, I warned Ignacio of my misgivings and of the lack of control I felt I had over my own emotions.
‘Does that justify whatever you do then?’
He had no idea how close that cut – or maybe he did. In any case, I moved in.
Chapter 25
Asleep, she looked like another person. The effort that lined her face during waking hours was gone and she seemed somehow timid, gentle in a way that could not be explained by the inevitably softening cloak of sleep alone.
It was clear that she had suffered some kind of loss, yet he wondered again and again what it was that had made her leave her country behind and come to Argentina. The brashness of their therapy sessions had receded and she seemed more honest and relaxed, yet there remained something unbalanced about her. Her mood swings were as vehement and unpredictable as ever. For all his awareness as a therapist of the lack of fixed identity in anyone’s make-up, he felt that he would never even have the illusion of really knowing her or being able to predict how she would react or feel in different situations. The habit which forms people’s sense of self seemed somehow absent in her. She seemed to lack an identity in the explorative way that adolescents often do, but in a way that was atypical for a person of her age. Even now, she clung to trivial rituals with a reverence which was almost distressing to watch.
In mellow moments he had tentatively suggested that she return to therapy (with someone else, of course), but she had turned on him like a street cat. In private moments he asked himself what he was doing with her. She allowed no room in this relationship for his vulnerability and yet he knew that he dared not go in too deep. He was still too raw and he knew that she would not be there forever.
One day she shocked him with a request, yet she didn’t ask openly; anticipating the reservations and misgivings he would have, she ambushed him. They had been out with Ana and Daniel for a meal a
nd, on their return, had stopped off at a bar in Corrientes. It was two in the morning, and the haze of smoke and tango muffled the voices around them.
‘Do you think people need to compartmentalise to get through everyday life?’
Ignacio laughed at her conversation opener.
‘Yes, I think to an extent we all need to, but the balance is what matters. If you over-compartmentalise, you start leading emotional double or triple lives and that puts you under pressure.’ Jenny was looking hard at him. ‘That’s probably why affairs never work in the long run. You can only separate different sets of feelings for so long.’
‘But there are times in your life, surely,’ she interrupted, ‘when it’s pragmatic to build emotional walls. Sometimes you have no choice.’
Ignacio sensed that she was talking about herself, but knew better than to confront her directly. ‘Sometimes it seems as though there is no choice,’ he hesitated, ‘but in the end the compartments will overlap. Even the tidiest person occasionally puts a sock in the wrong drawer.’
Jenny was boring into him with her eyes and he felt his muscles tense in expectation, but when she spoke it was not a revelation or confession about herself.
‘Then you won’t mind if I come with you on your next outing with your children?’
Ignacio’s immediate response was a mixture of anger and admiration. She waited for the pause she seemed to expect and held his eyes.
‘Why, Jenny?’ was all he could ask finally.
‘I’m not sure. I’ve never really been interested in your past or your personal life before.’ That blatant candour again, so at odds with her inability to talk about her own past. ‘But this is in the present and I know it hurts you. I think it might be easier if I went with you. It might make things a bit “lighter”, a bit more natural.’
‘So you want to do this for me?’
‘Yes, in a way, but don’t read anything into it.’
It was the first time that he had ever seen her make an overtly unselfish gesture and he knew he would have to agree.
The following Sunday they met at Recoleta. Carolina’s sister brought the children to the park as she normally did, and barely acknowledged Jenny’s presence as she rattled through Carolina’s instructions for the day. In the moment’s hesitation that should have been an introduction, she was gone.
‘OK, kids, how about we go for a walk and then go for a Coke?’ Ignacio ruffled Dani’s hair, but was shaken off.
‘Who’s that lady?’
Jenny beat him to it. ‘She’s a friend of your father’s and her name is Jenny. Who are you?’
‘My name’s Dani and I’m five.’
‘And who is the other lady?’
‘She’s not a lady, silly, she’s a girl. She’s only two.’
‘Does she have a name?’
‘Her big name is Alicia but you can call her Ali.’
They dawdled past the jewellery stalls and stopped where clusters of people gathered to watch the street displays of tango or magic or kung fu. They laughed at a white-faced clown who mimicked people in the crowd, and Dani laughed hardest of all when the clown caught Ignacio picking his nose. They had burgers and milkshakes and Ali fell asleep on Jenny’s lap.
After they had delivered them back to Carolina’s sister at the prearranged time and place, Ignacio pulled Jenny towards him.
‘Thank you, Jenny. Are you sure you haven’t got a few children stashed away somewhere? You made it seem so easy.’
‘That’s Jenny for you! Come on, I need a drink.’
Three gin and tonics and a bottle of wine later, she had another request. ‘This time I need you to do something for me.’
‘What’s that then?’
‘Come to Iguazu Falls with me. No questions and I’ll tell you no lies.’ She wagged her finger at him. ‘Just say yes or no.’
‘You are impossible. Yes, then.’
Chapter 26
The tickets sat on the coffee table in the living room and stared at me. ‘Austral,’ they said boldly. ‘Chicken,’ they whispered. I shuddered and tucked them from view inside the travel wallet, next to the vouchers for the hotel and a flyer with its picture. Jenny, do you recognise this?
We would fly up early Wednesday morning and return on Friday. Ignacio had, of course, suggested that we use a weekend rather than taking unnecessary days off work, but I insisted it had to be like this. I arranged to be at my flat on the Tuesday night and meet him at the airport. If that irritated him he didn’t show it. Was I a coward to have him come with me? Wasn’t this something I needed to do on my own? Where was my sister’s advice? She looked at me blankly with the shadow of a smirk, on account of Ignacio, I suppose, and said nothing.
* * *
Tuesday. Predictably, I slept badly. The hot bath, the hot toddy, failed to deceive my body and I felt my muscles rigid and alert beneath the sheets as I tried in vain to coax them into a state of relaxation. When I drifted off it was to a no-man’s-land between waking and sleeping; that impossibly grey area where you somehow know you’re dreaming, know what you’re dreaming and yet are unable to exert any conscious control. There is a horror in that, like the moment before you pass out under an anaesthetic and can see the surgeons putting on their gloves. ‘No, don’t cut me up, I’m still alive!’ you want to cry, forgetting with the fug of the anaesthetic that you’re about to sleep, not to die. I had a no-man’s-dream about diving off a cliff top into the sea and the sea turning into concrete just as I was about to hit the water. My consciousness jolted me awake seconds before the point of contact, but each time I drifted back I was pulled to the same cliff top.
With a sense of relief that daylight had come I got up, an hour earlier than I needed to, and went through the motions of a high-fibre, high-caffeine breakfast. Relief greeted me again when I saw Ignacio waiting at the check-in desk. His eyes told me that I looked terrible, and he looked down to stop himself questioning me. I could not have done this with Johnny. For all his generosity, he would not have been able to refrain from talking to me, from interfering.
When Ignacio saw me trembling as we took off, he took my hand but said nothing. As I stared through the window I felt my mind go limp. I remembered the brief, blissful emptiness I had felt on the mountainside after the tears that came after so long, prompted by the taste of unknown sperm. The emptiness now was negative: lack, absence, blank, void, vacuity. My mind reeled through a thesaurus of its own making and somehow the two-hour flight passed.
From Iguazu airport we took a tourist bus directly to the Brazilian side of the falls, where the hotel awaited us in extravagant ownership of a view to die for. Despite my heady state, despite all the pictures I had pored over, I was gob-smacked. A picture always limits. It cannot stretch from one blurred extreme of your range of vision to the other. It cannot sound and smell and engulf you. A picture, after all, is just a symbol, a metaphor for something that cannot be translated. I faced the panorama of the falls, felt the continuous rain of gentle spray and listened to the incessant crescendo of falling water, in awe of the masterly monotony of this living, breathing view.
Ignacio touched me gently on the shoulder to bring me round and I noticed for the first time that there were other people here. I beckoned to Ignacio to hold on and we watched the reactions of the new arrivals and the time it took before they snapped a photo or turned away. Inwardly I thanked Ignacio for not saying something like, ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ I knew he had been here before. I knew he was not the only one who had been here before.
In a dream we entered the hotel and in a dream we wandered the length of Brazil’s view of the falls.
Chapter 27
There was something lost and infinitely distant in the way Jenny moved silently through the day. Ignacio was at once sensitive to her need for silence and grateful, if bemused, by her need to have him there. He did not know what drama was playing in her head, yet it was clear that there was something deeply ritualistic – so typical of Jenny – in this vis
it. Her eyes were empty and evaded him, yet her hand sought his from time to time, and Ignacio basked in the patience and tenderness he felt towards her. Showered and cocktailed, sitting in the terraced bar of the hotel with the sunset unfolding before them, they had barely spoken all day.
‘I know this is not very fair on you, but I need to do this and I appreciate you being here.’ She was unusually soft, almost calm.
‘Jenny, have you been here before?’
She looked at him, into him. ‘No,’ she enunciated, as if the word weighed in her throat. ‘And yes, in a way . . . Ignacio,’ she intercepted him. ‘I will tell you. Part of the reason I asked you to come with me was because I wanted you to know, but in my own time, in my own way. OK?’
He nodded, wondering vaguely how they were to get through the evening if all conversation seemed taboo, and nervous of how she would react if he tried to make love to her that night.
They sat absorbed by the play of light and water, marinating in the warmth of evening and that uniquely modern phenomenon of utter comfort in the middle of nature. As the sky darkened, voices began to fill the spaces around them and, finally, the clink of cutlery and glasses from the dining room inside roused them to their table for dinner.
The wine seemed to relax her, and Ignacio pounced on the opportunity to fill the silence. They talked about the places they had travelled to in the past and their favourite kind of holidays. The pressure of the day lifted like a morning mist and wine oiled their conversation.
‘How much do you think you can tell about a stranger just by looking at them?’ she asked, taking in the room around them, now brimming with couples.
‘Quite a lot, I think, but I wouldn’t rely on any conclusions!’
‘Let’s play a game. It’s a game I used to play. It’s called Life on the Back of a Cigarette Packet. Do you want to play?’
‘Go for it.’
‘OK, you look around and pick out a couple, but don’t tell me who, then you describe them, but not physically. You describe their character or their pasts or what they have been doing and I have to guess who they are. Then it’s my turn.’
Twin Truths Page 6
