That was it, but the other three wanted to watch, know what I mean, sweetheart?, seeing is believing, witness with their own eyes whether the flag was raised. No problem, I told them, that big window in my office is a two-way mirror with a full-screen panoramic view of the gym, so we can watch and they won’t see us. Amazing, a mogul like Spider, and he’s as choked up as if we were really setting him on the road to salvation, Don’t worry, Midas my boy, I won’t let you down, and I say, Count on me, Spider, I’ll arrange something deluxe with two first-class angels, and you just watch yourself lift off, and Spider, pathetic, embracing me, I’ll be grateful to you forever, Midas my man, you’re the best.
SOMETIMES THE HUNCH, or the presentiment, comes to me suddenly even when we’re not in the ceremony; in math class, for example, or some other class, or at Friday mass at school, when Ana Carola Cano, who has the highest soprano in the choir and who’s in Agustina’s class, sings the solo in the Panis Angelicus with that voice of hers that’s so soaring it gives everybody goose bumps and those eyes that always seem to be full of tears, especially if the chapel is crowded and the nuns and the girls hover on a cloud of incense and can hardly breathe in the stuffy air because so many people, so many candles, and so many lilies hardly fit in the chapel, and it’s there that the premonitory trembling comes over me most often, and so that no one will notice I bow my head and cover my face with both hands as if I’m burning with religious fervor, but what’s really happening is that the powers are sending her the First Warning Call, shouting that their father is going to hit Bichi that night. I spend the rest of the day with a horrible migraine and can’t pay attention in class because the echo of the Power that makes me act is still reverberating inside me, and it seems as if it will never be time for the four o’clock bell to ring so I can leave school, go home, and warn Bichi, since he’s my little brother, after all, and I’m the one chosen by the powers to protect him.
Sometimes the voice is so insistent, so harsh, that Agustina skips school in the middle of the morning, running from Seventy-first Street and Fourth Road, which is where her school is, to Bichi’s school, which is at Eighty-second and Thirteenth, just to tell him that my father is going to hit him, and since the guard at the Boys School won’t let me in during classes, I make up a lie, please let fifth-grader Carlos Vicente Londoño come out because his sister is here to tell him that his grandfather is dying, and a little while later, Bichi arrives at the guardhouse all confused because he was in the middle of a geography test, What is it, Tina, which grandfather?, and she, who realizes just then that what she’s doing is ridiculous, and that it would have been better to wait until both of them got home that afternoon, nevertheless says, It’s Grandfather Portulinus, the German one we never met because he went back to Europe, And what does that have to do with anything, Tina, did someone bring news that he was dying in Europe?, I guess they did, she lies, but never mind, go finish your exam, and when Bichi is already far away, she shouts, Lies, Bichito, Grandfather Portulinus has nothing to do with this, what I came to tell you is that tonight my father will hit you.
Once I’ve spoken these words I start back home, not paying the slightest attention to cars when I cross the street and not stopping even when I trip or step in a hole and then later at home, in the dining room, I sit at the table to have my chocolate milk and vanilla cookies with butter and jam that they always give me at five, and I make the little towers I like so much, cookie, layer of butter, layer of jam, cookie again, and back to the beginning until it’s a stack this high; Agustina eats her tower of cookies and when Aminta, the cook, comes in, she asks Agustina, What happened to you, child, your knees are a mess, and when Agustina looks at them she sees that they’re bleeding and that both knees are glistening with scrapes dotted with sand, scrapes that I don’t know how or when I got.
And then Bichi isn’t always grateful, because there are some corners of his life where he thinks he doesn’t need me. Like a little prince, he says cockily to his sister, Not now, Tina, not now. That’s enough, Tina, he yelled at her the last time, without coming to meet her, I don’t want to talk about this now, But Bichi, it’s for your own good and you’re at recess, Yes, but I’m happy here playing tops with Montes and Méndez. Other times I’ve said to him, Bichito let’s not eat in the dining room with everybody else tonight because the powers say that today for sure you’ll get hit; and those times we ask my mother permission to eat in my room with the excuse that there’s a television show we absolutely have to see, and my mother usually says all right, and makes Aminta bring up our food on the silver trays. When Agustina sees that Bichi’s eyes are closing because he’s so sleepy, she says, Now the danger is past, you can go to your room, but don’t do anything to make Daddy angry on your way, The problem is I don’t know what makes him angry, Tina, Everything makes him angry, Bicho, don’t do anything because everything makes him angry. Then my little brother is grateful because I’ve saved him and the next day at breakfast he whispers in my ear, If it wasn’t for you, Agustina, last night I would have suffered.
THE LAST THING I thought about my wife before I left, watching her set about the task of painting the apartment walls for the second time that year, was how useless she was, and yet how much I loved her. I’m often struck by that dual thought, maybe because I don’t feel she participates in my efforts to make a living in these difficult times; it’s not easy for me, with my doctorate in literature, to resign myself to delivering dog food, and I fault Agustina for her innate lack of interest in productive activities, which simply don’t suit her. She’s very active, or, as it’s fashionable to say now, creative; she’ll knit, embroider, bake, lay brick, shovel, hammer, so long as the end product has no practical or profitable purpose, and Wednesday, as always, when I left Agustina alone at home, she was busying herself at an arbitrary chore to disguise her inability to commit herself to a regular job, with her hair disheveled and gathered carelessly on top of her head in a way that always seems seductive to me even though it means that today once again she won’t be going out to look for work.
Her way of not fixing her hair means that she doesn’t want to be bothered with anything having to do with reality, and yet it fills me with desire and, like everything about her, makes me tremble at the privilege of keeping company with such a splendidly beautiful creature who so charmingly refuses to grow up, a refusal that each day deepens the sixteen-year age difference between us, she still so young and I no longer young at all. Shoeless in red tights, and still in her pajamas at eleven in the morning, she’s perched on a ladder with the brush in her hand, shouting, Ciao, amore, over the Rolling Stones at full blast, and then at the last minute she runs to the elevator to ask me for the millionth time whether I really think the moss green she’s chosen for the walls of our living room is a warm color. From inside the elevator I tell her again, Yes, very warm, yes, darling, it’s a very pretty, cozy green, and at that moment the two halves of the metal door close between us with the abruptness of a way of life ended, because upon my return four days later, a strange man in a hotel room gave me back an Agustina who wasn’t Agustina anymore.
I had called her Wednesday night from Ibagué to tell her that no, despite her fears nothing bad had happened to us, and yes, I really did think moss green was right for the living room, Thank goodness you like it, she replied, because it’s looking greener than a frog pond in here, and I hung up with the peaceful sense that all was well. The truth is, I didn’t call her again for the next few days, I don’t quite know why, I suppose so as not to neglect my children, or in order to prove to them that the time we had together now, at least, would be devoted to them unconditionally and without interruption. I returned to Bogotá on Sunday at noon, having promised Agustina that I’d be back by ten in the morning at the latest so that we could spend the rest of the day together as we usually did, but it had been impossible to get the boys out of bed early enough, so we’d left Ibagué a few hours later than anticipated.
But what’s importan
t is that by noon I was in town, that the city was rainy and deserted, and that I left my sons at their mother’s house, Hurry up and get out, boys, I said, betrayed by my impatience to see Agustina and give her the presents I’d brought her from the hot country, a sack of oranges, a bunch of plaintains, and a bag of arrowroot cakes. So that’s over, I told myself, these few days with my sons were wonderful, but here we are back again, and it’s Sunday. It so happened that my haste to return was due in part to certain questions sown in me by Baltasar and Blimunda, the Portuguese novel I’d just read about a woman who was also a seer, and those questions were, If Blimunda is a seer, why shouldn’t Agustina be? What would’ve happened to Baltasar’s soul if he hadn’t trusted in Blimunda’s powers? How is it that Baltasar can believe in his wife, and I can’t believe in mine? All I wanted then was my quiet Sunday afternoon at home with Agustina, because our best times together had always been Sundays, free of tension, the two of us sheltered from the rest of the world and luxuriating in a glorious combination of sex, naps, reading, cold beer, and occasionally some Ron Viejo de Caldas.
I don’t know why, but Sundays have always worked for me with Agustina; even at the rockiest moments they’ve been havens of concord and truce for the two of us, times when Agustina simply acts like what she is, a girl, a clever, pretty, naked, passionate, happy girl, and why Sundays? Well, according to her own explanation, it’s because it’s the only day I agree to shut doors and windows, unplug the telephone, and leave the rest of the world outside; she makes me laugh because she claims that if the universe were the size of our room and the two of us were its only inhabitants, her head would run as well as a Swiss watch. So after reading Baltasar and Blimunda, I couldn’t wait to get home and find my own Blimunda there, she of the future-seeing eyes, still in her pajamas and perched on the ladder, brush in hand and singing along with the Stones at the top of her lungs, out of tune as always, because god knows Agustina can’t sing to save her life and the funny thing is that she doesn’t even realize it, maybe her family never pointed it out to her, or maybe the problem is hereditary and all of them are tone-deaf, for all I know.
I was happy and lighthearted knowing that the downpour that was already loosing its first volleys would soon burst in full over the city and that when I got home I’d watch it through the big windows from bed, with my girl in my arms, or later sitting in my cane rocker beside the heater with my feet up on the leather chest, safe from the deluge, reading the paper, and out of the corner of my eye checking every once in a while on Agustina, who would be doing exactly the same thing she’d been doing four days ago, which was painting the walls moss green according to the recommendations of feng shui for couples like us. And now it surprises me to remember that when I opened the door to my apartment that day, I was absolutely certain that the moment of my arrival would mesh perfectly with the moment of my leaving, in one continuous motion. Maybe that’s why, although my first reflex was to lift my hand to press the buzzer, I changed my mind and decided to use the key, so as not to disturb what had been going on inside without interruption since my departure, which is why not finding Agustina made me so vexed and upset and even made me feel a stab of fear, and yet it wasn’t the fear of someone who senses misfortune but the fear of someone who’s been counting on a happiness that suddenly doesn’t seem so assured. Only four days had passed, four days of absence during which anything might have happened. When I left for Ibagué, there was only half a green wall in the apartment, and upon my return the whole living room was green, by which I deduced that my wife must have stayed at home painting walls not only all of Wednesday afternoon but also all day Thursday. By the time I picked her up on Sunday at the Wellington Hotel, her mind had gone to pieces, so what I have to find out is what happened on Friday and Saturday. Not four days, but two; forty-eight hours of life erased from every clock in existence.
WHO KNOWS WHAT the people of Sasaima must say when they see Nicholas Portulinus sitting at the café in a corner by himself, a wool scarf wound tightly around his neck despite the heat, his gaze lost in space. But is there really a café in rural, rainy Sasaima, a remote mountain village? Of course not, it only shimmers amid the memories of a foreigner from another continent; it’s probably a feed store or a bar, an ice-cream shop at best, and those who enter must say, It’s the German, or It’s the teacher, and then leave him alone with his bottle of beer in his hand, taking for granted that all Germans, or at least all German musicians, are like this, strange and unmoored.
Portulinus sips his beer slowly, his face puffy above his wool scarf, until Blanca comes for him and takes him away, angry at those who doubt his sanity and determined not to acknowledge his collapse before others. But in spite of her resolve, day by day the strangeness becomes plainer, the strangeness that’s an ambiguous gleam in Portulinus’s eye when he falls silent, a look as if he’s walking lost in worlds he shares with no one, a birdlike nervousness of movement, a restlessness of swollen hands that leave damp marks on the surface of the table, hair that isn’t quite right, as if he’s forgotten to run a comb through it after a nap. It’s also a kind of panic that comes from within and spreads like a minor contagion, but more than anything, Portulinus’s madness is pain, the great pain living inside him.
Now, all these years later, two photographs of Grandfather Portulinus sit framed on the mantel at his youngest daughter, Eugenia’s, house, one taken when he was twenty-nine and the other when he was thirty-nine, which make it possible to establish a before and an after, like in those advertisements for plastic surgery or weight-loss formulas, except that in this case instead of improvement there’s pure decline, and the juxtaposition reveals how, in the space of ten years, the musician succumbed to an odious biological rhythm, a rhythm that must have been linked to his growing spiritual disquiet. Before: pleasant and seductive, curls that fall softly around the face, a gaze that scrutinizes while still remaining dreamy, an intense but balanced inner life. After: a flabby and long-suffering face, features recast, a dark and confused gaze, the swollen eyelids of an ugly woman who has cried for a long time, dull curls plastered clumsily against the left ear. Before, everything was still to be won, and after, everything is lost; the record is of irreversible damage to the spirit, a poisoning of the emanations of the soul.
DAY AFTER DAY following the dark episode, I park for a while in front of the Wellington Hotel, far enough from the front door so that my beat-up van won’t rouse the suspicions of the doormen, and watch in the rearview mirror the movement of people on their way in or out, with or without suitcases, the flurry of bodyguards around some personage alighting from an armored Mercedes, the wariness of foreigners taking their chances on the streets of Bogotá, the bows of a bellboy in full regalia, the haggling of a street vendor selling sweets, the rapid steps of a woman crossing the street; in other words, the natural, predictable actions of all those who may be considered inhabitants of the land of the sane. They’re so lucky, goddamn it, I say to myself, and I wonder whether they can possibly be conscious of their enormous privilege.
I’m not sure what I’m waiting there for, parked outside the hotel. For Agustina’s lover to return, for me to recognize him, launch myself at him, and smash his face in? I suppose not. To demand an explanation of what happened to my wife, or the hurt he inflicted on her? Maybe. But the truth is that I don’t think the man will show up here, and anyway, deep down I don’t even believe that he’s her lover, since the only thing he did, as far as I know, was open a door; who’s to say he wasn’t the concierge. So I look out for vague signs, keeping watch with naïve and dim hope as if time might move backward and I could keep the dark episode from happening. Going over and over what’s past has become my principal curse, reexamining it in order to formulate it in new terms, to imagine different paths than the one already taken, to retrospectively alter the course of events and prevent them from leading up to this point of extreme suffering that Agustina and I have reached.
Sometimes I step into the hotel, making su
re that the older man with glasses who attended me the Sunday I came to pick up Agustina isn’t on duty, then I sit at one of the tables in the lobby and order a tea with milk that a waiter brings me on a silver tray and for which I’m charged an exorbitant sum. I lie there in wait, among people hurrying about, waiting for the right moment to approach one of the desk clerks to ask for the guest register for that weekend; if they’d let me see it, I’d at least have a list of names, and behind one of those names would be a person who could tell me what I need to know, but of course I’m afraid to ask for it because they wouldn’t give it to me, they’d tell me not to stick my nose into matters that don’t concern me. But it does concern me, I’d shout at them, it’s the only thing in the world that matters to me, though then they’d have even more reason to call security, seeing me as a potential kidnapper.
Although maybe not. Among the clerks on the night shift, I’ve noticed a girl with a lot of spirit, a fearless girl. I see it in the way she carries herself, like a woman fighting tooth and nail to make a living, in the way she has of looking people straight in the eye, in her skirt, four inches shorter than those of her fellow workers, in the brisk gesture with which her hand with its painted nails pushes back her ringleted hair. She shows every sign of being ready to ignore the hotel rules and risk her job in exchange for nothing, in exchange for helping someone in need; in fact she must already be irritating the manager with that disco miniskirt and nonregulation hairstyle, and all just because, because that’s how she seems to be, strong and staunch and used to doing as she pleases. This country is full of people like her, and I’ve learned to recognize them in a flash. But what if it isn’t true? I’m afraid of being wrong, and in the end I can’t build up the courage to ask her anything, though of course the main obstacle is really the conviction that as soon as I return to the scene of events, what happened will repeat itself in a kind of unbearable replay; what’s really holding me back, I mean, is the suspicion that those events are still pulsing in the place they occurred, and I’m afraid to face them. Tomorrow I’ll do it, I tell myself as I leave the Wellington, tomorrow I’ll be back, I’ll wait until the Fearless Girl finishes her shift, I’ll ask her to come with me to a café far from the hotel, far from the gaze of her supervisor, and I’ll interrogate her.
Delirium Page 5
