Bonsai

by Alejandro Zambra

That should have been the last time Emilia and Julio shagged. But they kept going, despite Anita’s ongoing complaints and the unusual disturbance Macedonio’s story had caused them. Perhaps to burnish their disappointment, or simply to change the subject, they turned exclusively to classics. They argued, as all dilettantes the world over have at some time argued, over the first chapters of Madame Bovary. They classified their friends and acquaintances as to whether they were like Charles or Emma, and they also argued over whether they themselves were comparable to the tragic Bovary family. In bed there was no problem, as they both made great efforts to seem like Emma, to be like Emma, follar like Emma, as doubtlessly, they believed, Emma shagged exceptionally well, and would have shagged even better in current conditions; in Santiago de Chile, at the end of the twentieth century, Emma would have shagged even better than in the book. The bedroom, on those nights, turned into a shielded carriage that steered itself, feeling its way through a beautiful and unreal city. The others, the people, jealously murmured details of the scandalous and fascinating romance that was taking place behind closed doors.

  But they could not reach agreement on other aspects. They were not able to decide whether she acted like Emma and he like Charles, or whether it was both of them who, without meaning to, played Charles’ role. Neither of them wanted to be Charles, nobody ever wants to play Charles’ role even for a brief while.

  When there were only fifty pages left, they abandoned the book, trusting, perhaps, that they could find refuge, now, in the stories of Anton Chekhov.

  They did terribly with Chekhov, a little better, curiously, with Kafka, but, as they say, the damage was already done. Since their reading of “Tantalia,” the end was imminent and of course they imagined and even starred in scenes in which their ending became sadder, more beautiful, and more unexpected.

  It happened with Proust. They had postponed reading Proust, due to the unmentionable secret that linked them, separately, to the reading—or to the lack of reading—of In Search of Lost Time. They both had to pretend that their mutual read was, strictly speaking, a reread they had yearned for, so that when they arrived at one of the numerous passages that seemed particularly memorable they changed their tone of voice or gazed at each other to elicit emotion, simulating the greatest intimacy. Also, Julio, on one occasion, allowed himself to declare that he only now truly felt that he was reading Proust, and Emilia answered with a subtle and disconsolate squeeze of the hand.

  Since they were intelligent, they did not slow for the episodes they knew to be famous: the world was moved by this, I will be moved by that. Before starting to read, as a precautionary measure, they had agreed on how hard it was for a reader of In Search of Lost Time to recapitulate the reading experience: it’s one of those books that still seems pending after reading it, said Emilia. It’s one of those books that we will reread forever, said Julio.

  They stopped on page 372 of Swann’s Way, specifically the following sentence:

  Knowledge of a thing cannot impede it; but at least we have the things we discover, if not in our hands, at least in thought, and there they are at our disposal, which inspires us to the illusory hope of enjoying a kind of dominion over them.

  It is possible but would perhaps be abusive to relate this excerpt to the story of Julio and Emilia. It would be abusive, as Proust’s novel is riddled with excerpts like this one. And also because there are pages left, because this story continues.

  Or does not continue.

  The story of Julio and Emilia continues but does not go on.

  It will end some years later, with Emilia’s death; Julio, who does not die, who will not die, who has not died, continues but decides not to go on. The same for Emilia: for now she decides not to go on, but she continues. In a few years she will no longer continue nor go on.

  Knowledge of a thing cannot impede it, but there are illusory hopes, and this story, which is becoming a story of illusory hopes, goes on like this:

  They both knew that, as they say, the end was already written, the end of them, of the sad young people who read novels together, who wake up with books lost between the blankets, who smoke a lot of marijuana and listen to songs that are not the same ones they separately prefer (of Ella Fitzgerald’s, for example: they are aware that at that age it is still acceptable to have recently discovered Ella Fitzgerald). They both harbor the fantasy of at least finishing Proust, of stretching the cord through seven volumes and for the last word (the word “time”) to also be the last word foreseen between them. Their reading lasts, lamentably, little more than a month, at a pace of ten pages a day. They stopped on page 373, and, from then on, the book stayed open.

  III. LOANS

  First came Timothy, a rice doll who looked vaguely like an elephant. Anita slept with Timothy, fought with Timothy, fed him and even bathed him before returning him to Emilia a week later. At that time they were both four years old. Every other week the girls’ parents made arrangements for them to get together, and sometimes they spent Saturday and Sunday playing tag, imitating voices, and making up their faces with toothpaste.

  Then came the clothes. Emilia liked Anita’s burgundy sweatshirt, Anita asked for her Snoopy T-shirt in return, and so began a solid commerce that grew chaotic over the years. At the age of eight there was the book about origami which Anita returned to her friend somewhat destroyed at the edges. Between ten and twelve they took bimonthly turns to buy the magazine Tú, and they exchanged cassettes of Miguel Bosé, Duran Duran, Álvaro Scaramelli, and the group Nadie.

  At fourteen, Emilia kissed Anita on the mouth, and Anita didn’t know how to react. They stopped seeing each other for a few months. At seventeen Emilia kissed her again and this time the kiss was a little longer. Anita laughed and told her that if she did it again, she would slap her.

  At the age of seventeen, Emilia enrolled at the Universidad de Chile to study literature, because it had been her lifelong dream. Anita, of course, knew that studying literature was not Emilia’s lifelong dream, but rather a whim directly related to her recent reading of Delmira Augustini. Anita’s dream, on the other hand, was to lose a few kilos, which did not lead her, of course, to study nutrition or physical education. Soon she enrolled in an intensive English course, and continued for some years to study in that intensive English course.

  At the age of twenty Emilia and Anita moved in together. Anita had been living alone for six months, since her mother had recently made a relationship official, for which she deserved—that’s what she said to her daughter—the opportunity to start over from scratch. Starting over from scratch meant starting without children and, probably, continuing without children. But in this account Anita’s mother and Anita don’t matter, they are secondary characters. The one who matters is Emilia, who gladly accepted the offer to live with Anita, seduced, in particular, by the possibility of shagging with Julio in the comfort of her own home.

  Anita discovered she was pregnant two months before her friend’s relationship with Julio dissolved completely. The father—the one responsible, as was said then—was a student in his last year at the law school of the Universidad Católica, a detail she emphasized, probably because it made her mistake seem more respectable. Although they’d known each other a short time, Anita and the future lawyer decided to marry, and Emilia was the witness for the ceremony. During the party, a friend of the groom tried to kiss Emilia as they danced cumbia, but she evaded his face, claiming she didn’t like that kind of music.

  At twenty-six Anita was already the mother of two girls and her husband was torn between the option of buying a station wagon and the vague temptation of having a third child (to close the factory, he said, with an emphasis that tried to be funny, and that maybe was, since people tended to laugh at the comment). That’s how well it went for them.

  Anita’s husband was called Andrés, or Leonardo. Let’s agree that his name was Andrés and not Leonardo. Let’s agree that Anita was awake and Andrés half-asleep and the two girls sleeping the night Emilia
arrived to visit them unannounced.

  It was almost eleven o’clock at night. Anita did her best to evenly distribute what little whiskey remained and Andrés had to run to a nearby grocery store. He returned with three small bags of potato chips.

  Why didn’t you bring a big bag?

  Because there weren’t any big bags left.

  And didn’t it occur to you, for example, to bring five small bags?

  They didn’t have five small bags left. They had three.

  Emilia thought that perhaps it had not been such a good idea to arrive unannounced to see her friend. While the skirmish lasted, she concentrated on an enormous Mexican hat that reigned over the living room. She almost left, but her purpose was urgent: at the school, she had said that she was married. In order to get a job as a Spanish teacher, she had said that she was married. The problem was that, the following night, there was a party with her co-workers and it was unavoidable for her husband to accompany her. After so many T-shirts and records and books and even padded bras, it wouldn’t be such a big deal for you to loan me your husband, Emilia said.

  All her colleagues wanted to meet Miguel. And Andrés could pass perfectly as Miguel. She had said Miguel was fat, dark, and nice, and Andrés was, at least, very dark and very fat. Nice he was not, she’d thought this from the first time she’d seen him, years ago. Anita was also fat and extremely beautiful, or at least as beautiful as such a fat woman can be, Emilia thought, with some envy. Emilia was rather coarse and very thin, Anita was fat and pretty. Anita said she didn’t mind loaning her husband for a while.

  As long as you return him.

  You can be sure of that.

  They laughed heartily, while Andrés tried to capture the last pieces of potato chips from his bag. During adolescence they had been very careful with regard to men. Before getting involved in anything Emilia would call Anita, and vice versa, to ask the standard questions. Are you sure you don’t like him? I’m sure, don’t be uptight, stupid.

  At first Andrés acted reticent, but in the end he ceded, after all it could turn out to be fun.

  Do you know why rum and coke is called a Cuba Libre?

  No, answered Emilia, a bit tired and thoroughly ready for the party to end.

  You really don’t know? It’s pretty obvious: the rum is Cuba and the Coca-Cola is the United States, is liberty. Get it?

  I knew a different story.

  Which story?

  I knew it, but I forgot it.

  Andrés had already told several anecdotes in that vein, which made it difficult not to consider him insufferable. He made such an effort to keep Emilia’s co-workers from figuring out the farce that he even let himself tell her to shut up. One supposes that a husband, Emilia then told herself, shuts up his wife. Andrés shuts up Anita when he thinks she should shut up. And so there’s nothing wrong with Miguel making his wife shut up if he thinks she should shut up. And since I am Miguel’s wife I should shut up.

  Emilia stayed that way, silent, for the rest of the evening. Now not only would no one doubt that she was married to Miguel, but her colleagues would also not be too surprised by a conjugal crisis, say, two weeks in length, and a sudden but justified separation. Nothing more: no calls, no friends in common, nothing. It would be easy to kill Miguel. I broke it off in one fell swoop, she imagined telling them.

  Andrés stopped the car and deemed it necessary to sum up the night, telling Emilia that it had been a very entertaining party and he really would not mind continuing to attend such gatherings. They are nice people and you look gorgeous in that cobalt dress.

  The dress was turquoise, but she didn’t want to correct him. They were in front of Emilia’s apartment and it was still early. He was very drunk, she had also been drinking, and maybe because of that it did not seem so horrific that Andrés—that Miguel—should pause awhile between one word and the next. But those thoughts were violently interrupted the moment she imagined her voluminous companion penetrating her. Disgusting, she thought, right when Andrés came too close and rested his left hand on Emilia’s right thigh.

  She wanted to get out of the car and he didn’t want her to. She said to him, you’re drunk, and he answered no, that it wasn’t the alcohol, that for a long time he had been seeing her differently. It’s incredible, but that’s what he said. “For a long time I’ve been seeing you differently.” He tried to kiss her and she responded with a punch in the mouth. From Andrés’ mouth came blood, a lot of blood, a scandalous amount of blood.

  The two friends did not see each other again for a long time after that incident. Anita never found out exactly what had happened, but she managed to imagine something, something that she didn’t like at first and that later produced indifference, being that Andrés interested her less and less.

  There was no car nor third child, but rather two years of calculated silence and a separation that, all things considered, was rather amicable, that with time led Andrés to think of himself as an excellent divorced father. The girls stayed in his house every two weeks and spent, also, the whole month of January with him, in Maitencillo. Anita took advantage of one of those summers to go visit Emilia. Her guilty mother had offered several times to pay for the trip, and though it was hard for Anita to accept being so far from her little girls, she allowed her curiosity to defeat her.

  She went to Madrid, but she did not go to Madrid. She went to look for Emilia, of whom she had lost all trace. It had been difficult for her to obtain the address on Salitre Street and a phone number that seemed, to Anita, strangely long. Once she got to Barajas she was about to dial that number, but she desisted, inspired by a puerile, atavistic leaning toward surprises.

  Madrid was not beautiful, at least not to Anita, to the Anita who that morning had to dodge, at the metro exit, past a group of Moroccans who were plotting something. They were actually Ecuadorians and Colombians, but she, who had never in her life met a Moroccan, thought of them as Moroccans, since she recalled that a gentleman had recently said on television that Moroccans were the great problem of Spain. Madrid seemed to her an intimidating, hostile city, in fact it was hard for her to select a trustworthy person whom she could ask about the address she had written down. There were several ambiguous dialogues between the moment she got off the metro and the moment when she finally had Emilia in front of her, face to face.

  You’ve gone back to wearing black, was the first thing she said to her. But the first thing she said was not the first thing she thought. And she thought many things when she saw Emilia: she thought you look ugly, you’re depressed, you look like a drug addict. She realized that perhaps she should not have come. She carefully examined Emilia’s eyebrows, Emilia’s eyes. She pondered, disdainfully, the place itself: very little floor space, a complete mess, absurd, overpopulated. She thought, or more accurately she felt, that she did not want to hear what Emilia was going to tell her, that she did not wish to know what she seemed in any case condemned to know. I don’t want to know why there’s so much shit in this neighborhood, why you came to live in this neighborhood full of caca, replete with cunning glances, with weird young people, with fat ladies dragging bags, and with fat ladies who aren’t dragging bags but who walk very slowly. She examined, once again, carefully, Emilia’s eyebrows. She decided it was better to stay quiet in regard to Emilia’s eyebrows.

  You’ve gone back to wearing black, Emilia.

  Anita, you’re the same.

  Emilia did say the first thing she thought: you’re the same. You’re the same, you’ve kept being like that, the way you are. And I keep being like this, I have always been like this, and perhaps now I will tell you that in Madrid I’ve come to be even more like this, completely this.

  Aware of her friend’s unease, Emilia assured Anita that the two men she was living with were poor fags. Fags dress very well here, she told her, but these two who live with me, unfortunately, are poorer than rats. Anita did not want to stay as a houseguest in the apartment. Together they looked for a cheap hostel, an
d one could say they spoke at length, although maybe not; it would be incorrect to say they talked as before, because before there was trust and now they were linked, rather, by a feeling of discomfort, of guilty familiarity, shame, emptiness. Just before the end of the afternoon, after making some urgent mental calculations, Anita took out forty thousand pesetas, which was almost all the money she had with her. She gave them to Emilia, who, far from resisting, smiled with genuine gratitude. Anita knew that smile from before, and for two seconds it reunited them and then left them again, alone, face to face, one of them wishing that the tourist would spend the rest of the week occupied with museums, Zara stores, and little cakes with syrup, and the other one promising herself that she would not think anymore about how Emilia would use her forty thousand pesetas.

  IV. SPARES

  Gazmuri doesn’t matter, the one who matters is Julio. Gazmuri has published six or seven novels that, together, form a series on the recent history of Chile. Almost nobody has really understood them, except maybe Julio, who has read and reread them several times.

  How is it that Gazmuri and Julio come together?

  It would be excessive to say they come together.

  But yes: one Saturday in January Gazmuri waits for Julio in a café in Providencia. He has just placed the final period at the end of a new novel: five Colón notebooks, completely handwritten. Traditionally, his wife is charged with transcribing his notebooks, but this time she doesn’t want to, she’s tired. She’s tired of Gazmuri, she hasn’t spoken to him for weeks, that’s why Gazmuri looks worn out and disheveled. But Gazmuri’s wife doesn’t matter, Gazmuri himself matters very little. So the old man calls his friend Natalia and his friend Natalia says that she’s too busy to transcribe the novel, but she recommends Julio.

  Do you write by hand? Nobody writes by hand these days, observes Gazmuri, who does not wait for Julio’s response. But Julio responds, he says no, that he almost always uses a computer.