Hypothermia

by Enrigue, Alvaro

  Shortly after ten o’clock in the evening the bell rang. Terapia told us not to worry, that it was some friends of his with whom he’d arranged to go out on the town; they thought that the dinner would be over earlier. If we wanted to, we could accompany them. I sensed my producer’s alarm, and I whispered in her ear that we should take him up on this offer, it sounded like a good idea. She exchanged glances with her set manager and the other producers. The Argentine hastily said that it seemed like an excellent idea while the mulatto and I seconded him in the hope of getting the Swiss off our backs for once. The chief cameraman discussed it in a very low voice with two or three of his men then nodded his approval. My producer squeezed my leg under the table to show that she liked the idea, and I patted the back of her hand.

  In all honesty, the night became much more enjoyable the moment we got back on the bus, everyone by now half-buzzed and the overall mood relaxed by the sweet hint of decadence that inevitably marks everything people from Lima do. Their feigned but ferocious humor, the grace with which they move about without seeming to touch the floor, their irresistible smiles, which in other circumstances would seem stiff and artificial, were very well-suited to a night together out on the town.

  We went to a place quite nearby whose name I can’t possibly remember. It was a gigantic club, some kind of industrial hanger, possibly an old marketplace, with hundreds of tables crowded around a dance floor dominated by a bandstand. As one of the dolled-up women accompanying us explained—I was translating her words right into my producer’s ear, my hand on her naked, sleeveless elbow—it was a club where immigrants from Puno got together to revisit old times, dancing to the rhythm of bands that played a new type of essentially eclectic pop music: turntables and panpipes, charangos and rhythm boxes, synthesizer waltzes. On the weekend—it was Friday—there was also a series of intermissions with performances of some rather homey folk dances whose authentic innocence, the woman said, made them worth seeing.

  We sat at a gigantic table where they served us a complimentary Pisco Sour made from the strong Peruvian liquor of the same name, then filled the tablecloth with pint bottles of beer and some tiny glasses bearing the brewery name: Cuzqueña. By the time I realized it, I was dancing with the Swiss woman to the impenetrable Puno fusion. It seemed like my producer had never drunk more than a glass or two of wine. Now, thanks to the Pisco, she was noticeably relaxed. It was a sort of zero sum game: she’d never been treated as if her body was her most important asset, and I hadn’t stepped onto a dance floor in years. While avoiding the mambo—I was really out of practice—I taught her to dance some rhythms related to salsa and cumbia. I could feel the moment she loosened up for me: when the lower back muscles—the ones you press to guide your dance partner—start trembling, you know that whether a woman is Calvinist, Catholic, or Jewish, you can get her into bed.

  At this point it’s probably already clear that in spite of my efforts to live like an exiled saint, I also know how to get into trouble. It’s not easy these days to live like a monk, just as it wasn’t in the seventeenth century; achievement matters less than determination. One more or one less gringa bouncing on my mattress springs in no way reduces the symbolic valor of my effort, and the archaic consistency of my cooking suffers more if I’m haplessly wasting the divine substance of my semen jerking off than if I occasionally sacrifice my vital precepts. In all my many days of weakness, whenever I end up bringing some customer home to my cell, I’ve never felt that I was being unfaithful either to my way of life or to my tormented memory of Teresa. If one of them occasionally—or frequently—woke up in my bed the next morning, it was because we went to sleep together drunk. I’ve never offered them breakfast and I’ve never slept with the same woman twice. Like priests, more than being celibate, I try to stay focused on the ministry to which I’m bound.

  The Swiss woman and I had ended up at the opposite corner of the table from where Terapia was sitting. Nearly isolated, we were able to be more relaxed. During the set breaks, the folk dances, or the stretches of incomprehensible music, she chatted with the Paraguayan chef’s producer—whom I began to privately suspect had been invited simply to round out the diversity of our group—while I talked with one of Terapia’s friends. His name was Pablo and we were uncomfortably alike in height and complexion; the ten or fifteen years he had on me made him heavier, and his hair was quite gray, but we could have passed for brothers. He owned a very successful chain of coffee shops.

  He seemed, for reasons that escaped me, somewhat deranged; he made unbelievably insolent remarks about the poor local folk-dancers, insulting them however possible whenever they passed near the table. Between one savage comment and another he maintained long, guarded silences, his eyes fixed on a woman—also middle-aged, very blonde and extraordinarily good-looking—who spent the whole evening hanging on Terapia’s arm. Every once in a while he assumed an air of tremendous gravity, explaining to me with an anthropologist’s precision the regional motifs one should look for in a dance. In those moments he showed himself to be far more fragile than his bastardly attitude revealed the rest of the time.

  We got out of there around two o’clock in the morning, by which time I had the Swiss woman’s heart in the palm of my hand, like a fresh-squeezed orange. I no longer remembered that the idea had been to spend the evening with Terapia when he said goodnight to us all in the aisle of the bus, followed out by a long line of his friends. The café owner was last. He had the arm of the middle-aged blonde woman, who barely said goodnight to us, attentive as she was to every gesture from the star chef up ahead.

  Pablo told me he would call me early on Sunday, once the contest was finished, to show me around Lima: we’d ended up on friendly terms after I’d gotten totally fed up with his anthropological sentimentality: among the many dances that we saw, the one from Cuzco was the most peculiar because it had almost no traces of the Hispanic, African, and Chinese cultures which shaped modern Peruvian tradition. It was a leaping line of uproarious male dancers dressed in outfits with very wide sleeves. With each leap they made, they extended their arms and gave a harsh, ferocious, birdlike cry. With glassy eyes—whether from drunkenness or nostalgia for everything that we’ve all lost forever, I don’t know—my confidant told me that it was a dance of the fallen Incas, of princes to whom nothing remained but the memory that they’d once been condors. Recalling how invincible Teresa made me feel when she believed that I was the historian Mexico needed, I thought I might collapse there and then. I felt obliged to explain the sadness that came upon me so visibly—Pablo put his arm around me—saying how the defeat of the Incas, the bottomless pit, reminded me of the Mexicans’ own fall. Pablo told me not to worry, that people from Lima understood passion.

  IV

  I didn’t go to bed with the Swiss woman that night because it wouldn’t have been very ethical before the contest was finished—that’s what she told me, anyway, though the idea had never crossed my mind. I didn’t sleep with her the next night either because it would have been too depressing after my complete and utter defeat.

  I was knocked out in the first round. I didn’t even make it to the improvisations, which, given that I’m a methodical and insecure man, was where I thought I’d be disqualified. After the terrible moment when I found out that I’d been eliminated, the Argentine told me not to take it personally, that a Peruvian fellow like Terapia would never give the prize to a Mexican Creole like me. He said that both countries were too much alike, and that the Paraguayan was the one who was going to win: nobody had ever heard of his restaurant in Asunción, which would mean no new competition for Terapia. I don’t know about the accuracy of every element of his theory, but regarding who would emerge as the winner, he was speaking with the voice of a prophet.

  I didn’t want to wait for them to finish filming, so I said that I was stepping outside the studio to smoke a cigarette, then kept walking to the street. I caught a taxi back to Miraflores where I drank three vodkas in a row at the hotel bar. Aft
er taking a nap I went out looking for bookshops to see if I could find some titles about convent life during Peru’s viceregal era.

  When I got back to the hotel, now late in the afternoon, I found a message from my producer—she was mostly angry because I hadn’t been there to be filmed congratulating the winner, but still invited me out to dinner.

  We went to a restaurant located at the foot of the magnificent ruins that Mr. Hinojosa had driven me past the night I arrived. We chatted like old friends: every defeat, I’ve noticed, brings us closer to our fellow sufferers, bound by that fatal, dispassionate knot that joins the survivors of great calamities. I didn’t insist that she have a glass of wine. We talked a little bit about her job and a lot about mine; a little bit about her love life, absolutely nothing about mine.

  We said good-bye in the hotel reception area: she was flying back to Geneva via New York on Sunday morning and I was leaving in the afternoon. I slept well in spite of, or thanks to, the fact that my room had a real bed, not the hard thin mat that I’d been stubbornly sleeping on since Teresa left me.

  V

  In the morning the phone woke me up. It was Pablo, Max Terapia’s friend, who was inviting me to have breakfast at one of his coffee shops, after which he would take me to see the beaches so that I wouldn’t leave without getting at least a glimpse of them. I told him that I preferred to visit the Gold Museum. He said that he’d observed the other night that I wasn’t ready to see it, that it would be better if I visited it when I returned to Lima, wellcured of the sickness that was obviously tormenting me and which would not be helped by the sight of golden condors flying toward the sun all over the museum. Nobody had ever said anything so strange to me, so it sounded reasonable enough. I asked him to give me half an hour to get cleaned up.

  We had breakfast in one of his cafés, on a street that reminded me intensely of the Colonia Roma in Mexico City. There, many years before, a restauranteur friend of mine named Raul had started promoting some of the recipes that I’d unearthed to write my book about Spanish colonial cuisine. It was Raul who found me in my apartment, almost dead of starvation, who knows how many weeks after that fucking whore Teresa had run off with my student. The very same Raul gave me a job at his place when we found out that they’d fired me from the university. At first, my job consisted of sitting in a chair behind the cash register, but, little by little, and mostly from pure boredom, I started working my way into the business and the kitchens. Less than a year later my friend introduced me to the gringo who wanted to open a restaurant serving nouveau-Mexican cuisine in the United States.

  There was nothing spectacular about Pablo’s coffee shop, although the food, like everywhere in Lima, was good. Among the numerous banalities we exchanged during breakfast, he asked me if the Swiss woman was beautiful. What, I said. I don’t know, is she beautiful? How should I know, I answered him. Each to his own. So then you think she’s beautiful. She’s pretty, not lethal, I said, and he gave a start. What do you mean she’s not lethal? he asked me. She’s lived in Geneva her whole life, I told him, a city where you leave your bicycle parked on the street and nobody steals it. And if she moved to Lima? he asked me. I suppose after a while she’d learn how to style her hair, to steal her brother’s bicycle—to be lethal. A look of horror crossed his face. Oh, you’ve got it bad, he told me. Really bad.

  He took me around in his car to see a number of different places. We went to a couple of beaches and to a fantastic old bookstore owned by a Uruguayan—I walked out the door with a whole box of books. We ate lunch at a really expensive restaurant, even by Washington standards: built out on the water, surrounded by the ocean, and connected to the land by a long, narrow pier, it was called La Rosa Náutica. The idea was that you would feel like you were on a ship. Every so often he insisted on repeating his question, but by now he was answering himself: She was beautiful, wasn’t she? Could she ever be lethal? I ignored him and asked if we could talk about politics or Peruvian history, which were the topics where his sharp, crafty wit shone best. We went to one of his other cafés for coffee and brandy—all his places had the same name but this one was really nice, located near the hotel so that we wouldn’t waste time with the traffic and I wouldn’t miss my plane.

  The café was in a shopping mall with ethereal architecture: an extremely delicate structure that thrust out over the ravine. The café occupied the building’s central location, so that one was seated literally above the abyss, from which the customers were protected by a railing and a rather tall partition of heavy glass.

  I wore myself out praising the café’s setting. Pablo told me that he was thinking of selling it, that having to clean the salt off the glass every day was too complicated. He waved his hands around too much while talking; I’ve been criticized for doing the same thing. The mall had been designed by a Catalan, he explained, who had not taken into account the locals’ habit of leaping to their deaths. I had to install the glass myself to avoid negative publicity when someone ended up jumping off. And there’s no built-in way for us to clean it; we’ve got to do it with scaffolding, every morning. It’s super dangerous. I told him about my vertiginous fascination with Lima’s penchant for flight. He made some rather nervous references to pre-Hispanic suicide practices, and mentioned aerial hara-kiri. He asked me if it was love-sickness that was tormenting me. Obviously, I said. It’s the Swiss woman, isn’t it? So she is beautiful, kind of lethal. It’s not the Swiss woman, I told him. It’s a long story, from a long time ago, and I really don’t feel like telling it. Nobody, I concluded, can get so worked up over a Calvinist, believe me. You never know, he told me. My wife is Danish and I think she’s sleeping with Terapia.

  Glancing at his watch, he stood up abruptly, saying that he’d lost track of time, that he had tickets to take his kids to the soccer match, and would I please excuse him and catch a taxi back to the hotel. We shook hands with the tenderness of brother exiles. I stayed and ordered another brandy: I’d left my suitcases at hotel reception and I had a little extra time before Mr. Hinojosa would be coming by to pick me up.

  I paid my bill, despite the waiter insisting that Pablo’s friends didn’t pay at his establishments. Walking out to the street I saw that on one of the shopping mall’s balconies the management hadn’t bothered to install any safety glass. A whole crowd of people was gathering there, looking down. Once inside the taxi I heard the ambulance sirens: another condor, the driver told me. On Saturday they finished work on the Suicide Bridge, so now they’re coming over here.

  LAST SUPPER IN SEDUCTION CITY

  . . . and the siege dissolved to peace, and the horsemen

  all rode down

  in sight of the waters

  ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS

  Friday, March 20.

  As I saw the lights of Mexico City spread out below us before landing I caught myself mentally humming the tune of “Volver”—an unbearable affectation. Just as Carlos Gardel sings in that classic tango . . . the snows of time have silvered my temples. His turned silver because he was away for twenty years, mine because premature gray hair runs in my family: I’m condemned to suffer low-impact drama. I remembered my grandfather saying that Agustín Lara was a hick whose one single virtue was that he liberated us from the tango thanks to his impossible talent for composing boleros. Then I forced myself to think about Guadalupe Trigo, the later improviser of boleros, who says that at night the city dresses up like a mariachi. But that doesn’t really describe it: it’s more like the Milky Way, a sacred host of fire which you must swallow whole, without chewing.

  I wonder what Teresa would think if she could see me with so much gray hair. Since I bought a computer for my apartment and managed to get myself online, I’ve been back in touch with el Distrito Federal. They tell me that she’s been living in Mexico ever since she broke up with my student, that when she runs into one of our mutual acquaintances she always asks about me. I doubt that she’s weathered the silent ravages of time very well either.

  My mot
her and my sister picked me up at the airport. I will stay with them for the weekend and on Monday I’ll go over to Raul’s apartment: my family’s house is too crowded—there I’ll be better able to practice the monkish discipline to which I’m accustomed. They’re not happy with the idea, but they realize that it’s better than nothing. I’m going to stay with Raul through the week, then on Saturday and Sunday I’ll be back with them again.

  Monday, March 23.

  Too much family. At my mother’s house I was able to stick to my schedule, but the demand for socializing there is heavy: my brothers show up every little while with their wives and kids, and then my aunts and uncles come around, and then the visits with Grandpa who’s been sick forever.

  I’ll be better here. I’m staying in a room that seems much more like my apartment in Mount Pleasant: a bed—iron, perfect for a convalescent like me—a table, and a wicker chair; it even has a window. The kitchen is an abandoned wreck—being a restaurant owner, Raul only uses it for making coffee—but I’ll see what can be done. At any rate, I have enough business appointments the whole week to end up eating out every night.

  Today we’re going out to have a drink, for old times’ sake. It’s Monday, so I imagine we’ll take it easy. I have a lot to get done in just a few days. Some gallery owners from Colonia Roma want to make me a business proposal. I don’t feel quite ready to come back and live in Mexico City, but here I am, after all. Tomorrow I’m going to the Universidad Nacional to visit the archives at the History Institute. They’ve got a collection of women’s letters from the colonial era that I’ve never heard about before. If I want to capitalize on my run of good luck that started after doing Lard, it’s absolutely necessary for me to publish a cookbook: my tome about eating habits is too dense for the rather frivolous direction my life has taken, something I no longer really understand.