Delirium

by Laura Restrepo

  A few days after the denouement, I was introduced to her as we were leaving a film club. All I was told was, This is Agustina, and not making the connection with the Alaska story, I saw only an ordinary Agustina, though a very beautiful one, who couldn’t stop talking about how wonderful the film was and the first thing that occurred to me was, What a pretty girl, though she’s completely crazy. But the word crazy didn’t have negative associations for me at the time. In the days that followed I was able to establish that Agustina was sweet and fun, and, according to my son Toño’s theory, that she was crazy inside.

  Agustina dressed all in black, like a cross between a Spanish belle and a witch in lace mantillas, astonishingly short miniskirts, and cutoff gloves that left her long, gothically white fingers bare; Agustina made a living reading tarot cards, telling fortunes, casting the I Ching, and playing the lottery, or at least that’s what she said but she really lived on a monthly allowance from her family; Agustina had very long hair and smoked marijuana and traveled each spring with her family to Paris and hated politics and intoxicated her admirers with a bold, barbaric perfume called Opium; Agustina lived alone in an apartment with no furniture, but with candles and cushions and mandalas drawn on the floor; she rescued stray cats and was a disturbing mix of orphan and daddy’s girl, rich kid and Woodstock grandbaby. Whereas I, a middle-class professor, sixteen years her senior, was a Marxist of the old school and a dyed-in-the-wool militant, and therefore I scorned crazy chic in all its permutations and was uncomfortable with the phenomenon calling itself magic realism, so fashionable at the time, because I considered myself far removed from the superstitions and miracle worshipping of those around us, of whom Agustina was the prime representative.

  But it was enough that she could make me laugh with her sharp wit and irreverence; it was enough that she would take my hand in hers to read my palm and ask me why I was so hard on myself when I was a good guy, a nice guy, meaning why did I take everything so seriously. It was enough that she called me an old man because I smoked Redskins, because I wore a wedding band and talked about the class struggle; it was enough that she taunted me by claiming that there was no such thing as proles—that was the word she used—and that she didn’t say, as I did, stockings instead of nylons, and brassiere instead of bra, and that she didn’t wear pants like the ones I had on, muddy-colored, made of synthetic fabric, bell-bottomed. They weren’t exactly muddy-colored or bell-bottomed, but she’d hit the mark with the synthetic fabric and she’s merciless when she finds an opening through which to get in her digs. It was enough that upon letting go of my hand she left it impregnated with a penetrating and sensual smell that I, who know nothing about drugs, thought was marijuana, and when I told her she laughed and explained that it wasn’t marijuana but a perfume called Opium; and it was enough, too, that a few months later, when I went to buy her a flask of Opium as a present, I found out that French perfume cost what I made in two weeks. It was enough that she began calling me simply Aguilar, erasing my first name with a single stroke and leaving me reduced to my last name, but above all it was enough that one sunny morning in Independence Park she bent down to tie one of my shoelaces which had come undone; just like that, with no warning.

  We were both sitting on a bench and I was trying unsuccessfully to get her off to a real start on one of her many enthusiastically planned and rapidly abandoned projects, an autobiography that she’d asked me to help her write, and just then she saw that my shoe was untied, and she bent down and tied it for me, and when I asked her whether an Opium girl’s reputation wouldn’t be tarnished by tying the shoelaces of a prole in synthetic fabric, she made a face. It was pure demagoguery. And yet it wasn’t demagoguery, and that’s why I fell in love; nor was it deference or submission but simply the kind, unpremeditated gesture of someone who notices an untied shoe and leans over to tie it, whoever the foot in it belongs to.

  When I told Marta Elena, the mother of my children, from whom I was already separated, that I had fallen for a pretty girl because she’d bent down to tie my shoelace, she surprised me by responding, You’re so Christian. Anyone else would have pegged me as a chauvinist, but Marta Elena knows me well and realizes it’s not that; she’s well aware of the subliminal and devastating effect on me of bishops washing the feet of the elderly, saints offering their coats to beggars, nuns devoting their lives to the sick, all those who give their lives for something or someone: the kind of excessive or exalted gesture that today seems so anachronistic. So it was that, and her astonishing beauty, that were enough to make me think, What a pretty, crazy girl, and to fall hopelessly in love with Agustina, without even suspecting that madness, not the way it was then but the way it is now, isn’t beautiful at all but petrifying and horrendous.

  HOW TO PUT THIS, Agustina doll, I’m not good at explanations, but do you believe in that silly thing the gringos call a winner?, well it does exist, and that’s what I am, a born winner, a natural at coming out on top, which is something you should know better than anyone else, since each time we’ve been up against each other you’ve lost, and yet look at me now, down here biting the dust of defeat.

  What happened was that Mystery’s visit left me with a bad taste in my mouth, don’t ask me why, when he’d come to offer me the deal of the century, after all, and I’ve never been superstitious because for that I have you, my pretty little witch-girl, but as soon as I opened the door and saw that sinister bird standing there, burning with crack fever and polluting the air with his corpse-sucking breath, I, King Midas, golden boy, superstar of the highlands, felt an uncomfortable prickle run through me. And I don’t have to tell you, Agustina kitten, that Spider didn’t get it up that night, it was the first failed attempt, as was to be expected, chronicle of a failure foretold, and the truth is, I was ready to quit the game right then, settle my ill-fated bet, and tell Spider, We had our fun, Spider old man, let’s not fuck around with this anymore, you might as well settle for making money because lovemaking isn’t in the cards now.

  At this stage in the game I had hit rock bottom, and even though I’d just landed the deal of the century, I felt miserable, like I’d had enough, and what I desperately wanted was to go to bed all alone and sink into a quiet, bottomless sleep with the lights out and the blinds hermetically sealed, total blackout against the onslaught of the sun in the morning, but good old Spider, who couldn’t figure out why I was suddenly so down, was whimpering, convinced it was his fault, asking me over and over again to forgive him for failing, It’s not over yet, Midas my boy, he tried to console me with pathetic and groundless enthusiasm, his insistence only sending me deeper into my funk, I failed you in the end, but I swear we were millimeters from success, we would’ve won the bet if those two girls you brought me hadn’t been so limp and lifeless, next time I want some real women, some hot pussy, no more little china dolls.

  But Spider, old man, I replied, I brought you exactly the kind of girls you asked for, bilingual and ladylike and sushi-fed, Not quite, Midas my boy, I think there’s some kind of generation gap here, you missed the fact that men my age like women with a little meat on their bones and you set me up with a pair of anorexics, the kind that have to be kept in the freezer, men like me want ripe, juicy flesh, and you, Midas my boy, present me with a pair of forlorn, malnourished little girls who might be nice to adopt but not to fuck. Don’t worry, Spider old man, things will be looking up soon, that’s what I told him, because I can be the biggest ass-kissing bastard when I have to be, and at the same time I was pretending not to be in a foul mood so I wouldn’t screw up the serious business that had to be done, Don’t leave yet, Spider, old man, let me send Joaco and Ayerbe home, and you stay in my office with Silver for just fifteen more minutes, because I have word from Escobar.

  When I told Spider and Silver the big news, leaving out unflattering details like the fact that the Boss calls them the Cripple and the Informer, both of them sat silent, as if at first they weren’t sure they liked the sound of the thing, then they started
asking questions and getting caught up in doubts, like why was Pablo asking us for cash now when he’d always taken checks before, and why had he come looking for us again when so little time had passed since our last encounter, and they were right to worry, Agustina baby, because Escobar always lets at least six months go by before he comes to you again, he’s not the Boss for nothing and he knows how to rotate his paid beneficiaries, I knew that perfectly well and I don’t know how I could have forgotten it, I guess greed and Alzheimer’s go hand in hand, what’s worse is that the deal smelled bad to me from the start, but the payoff was so juicy that I decided to ignore the stench.

  Something didn’t smell quite right to Spider and Silver either, so they vacillated between scratching their heads and squirming at the slightest excuse, complaining, for example, about the difficulty of getting so much cash together overnight; they were acting like people who find out they’ve won the lottery and then gripe because they don’t know what they’ll do with all the money, but after a while they’d shrugged off any concerns or misgivings and were taking their Montblancs and little Hermès notepads out of their pockets to do the math, calculating deposits here and investments there, and that was when we all started to get carried away by excitement, because after all, making eight hundred million in one fell swoop is something that doesn’t happen every day. But don’t be late, boys, remember Pablo’s condition, the hard stuff has to be here in my hand by the day after tomorrow at the latest, I warned them as we said our goodbyes out there on the pavement in front of the center, by then it was almost two in the morning, and before taking off, we were hugging and slapping one another on the back like schoolboys on graduation day, the three of us bonded in the sweetness of the coming windfall.

  The next day, as I’d predicted, I woke with no desire to get up and with the feeling that I’d had a bad dream, I dreamed that somebody was chasing me, it was a paranoid kind of thing, I can’t be more specific because it was hazy in my mind, Agustina princess, hazy but so terrible that I felt weak when I woke up that morning, if you can call it morning when you open your eyes and the sun is already halfway across the sky; the covers felt heavy on me, as if I’d be trapped under them forever, and I couldn’t tell whether I was coming down with some kind of Asian flu, whether it was shock at the massive amount of money that was about to fall into my lap, or whether I was just shitting myself at the possibility of things turning out badly, or probably a combination of all three; the truth is that the only thing I wanted was to hibernate, I mean I didn’t even have the strength to pee, because I knew that out of bed I would be slobbering and ridiculous like a helpless snail without its shell.

  And when that happens to me you won’t believe it but I think of you, Agustina darling, and you should take that as a fucking earth-shattering declaration of love, because I’ve never been the kind of person to dwell on memories, the past is always erased from my hard drive, and anything outside the present moment is the land of the forgotten, as far as I’m concerned; of course you may ask what good my declarations of love have done you when in practice I act like a pig, but it’s true that I think of you when I’m alone in my bedroom, which is essentially my place of worship, and it’s also true that for a scum like me, the only prayer that counts is the memory of you. That’s why sometimes I think about what your life and mine might have been like if they weren’t what they are, and the thought makes me tired and I sink deeper and deeper into lethargy and that’s when I’m least interested in the world outside my bedroom, which in the end has become my only kingdom; you visited it on your night of horrors, Agustina doll, after you made the fuss that wrecked everything, but you were so out of it that you probably don’t even remember, and don’t think I blame you, Agustina my love, that family of yours has always been a collection of crazies, but the funny thing is, while it’s only too plain in your case, your mother and your brother Joaco hide it beautifully, it’s amazing how coolly Joaco rides his madness without being thrown, like it’s one of his polo ponies, and meanwhile you, Agustina baby, are tossed back and forth and jolted up and down like in a Texas rodeo.

  But I was talking to you about my bedroom, because although the outside world may have gotten too big for me, you should see me within the four walls of my room, I’m even astonished myself at how my will reaches into all eight corners without hindrance or difficulty; when I’m in my room, standing firm on my own ground, it’s as if time slows down or speeds up to suit me. I showed you, Agustina, but you didn’t see how slickly I turn everything on or off just by pushing a button on the remote, that pretty little toy; I smoke a joint, holding the remote like a ceremonial staff, and from the bed I dim the lights and adjust the temperature, I make my Bose stereo thunder, I open and close the curtains, I brew coffee as if by magic, I make a fire spring up instantly in the fireplace, I start the sauna or the Jacuzzi to cleanse myself with gushing water and steam myself until I’m free of dust and grit, and then I spend a while in the shower designed especially for me, with multiple jets so powerful that they could put out a fire, but which couldn’t calm you that night, my pretty little lunatic, although I took turns drenching you with icy and scalding water. Everything in my room is extremely clean, Agustina doll, you don’t know how much cleanliness money can buy, especially if your mother is a saint like mine and like all middle-class mothers, a saint who can warble detergent jingles and who picks up your dirty clothes and returns them to you impeccable the next day, washed and ironed and organized in perfect stacks in your closet.

  The rest of my apartment doesn’t interest me and that’s why I didn’t even try to show it to you, it’s immense and boring and I’ve declared it part of the vast outer wastes, which must be why I haven’t bought furniture for the living room yet, and why I haven’t once sat down to eat in the dining room, which seats twelve, because eating alone makes me sad and the idea of having to invite eleven guests makes me feel like passing out, but the most pathetic thing of all is the terrace, which has a red-and-white-striped umbrella in the center of its eight hundred square feet, an umbrella that has yet to shade anyone from the sun, and around it there are six dwarf palm trees in pots that could grow as high as the sky for all I care; I don’t think I’ve ever set foot on that terrace, or maybe I did once, just once, the day I came to look at the apartment to buy it. The living room, the study, the big dining room and the little one, the terrace, the kitchen, all of that is across the border; my bedroom is my kingdom, as far as I’m concerned, and the king-size bed where I sleep with pretty girls whose names I don’t even ask for is a replica of the maternal womb.

  It was in that very bed that I was dozing the morning after my encounter with Mystery when the telephone rang at about ten, propelling me into a sitting position, I, who had come to the firm decision to lounge lazily between the sheets until one, then to get up and go jogging, shower for a full half hour, have some granola and carrot juice for breakfast, and finally go blasting out to find the money for Pablo. But the telephone rang and it was Spider’s voice saying, Come to my office, I have some gossip for you, and I said, Spider, my man, tell me whatever it is on the phone because I’m not in the mood to get up, but in his best ministerial voice, Spider let me know that the matter was private and top priority and I sped out to see him, giving up the jogging and the granola and the endless shower for fear that there might be some problem in getting the money for Pablo.

  When I arrived, Spider poured me a whiskey, steered me into an empty conference room, and there, the two of us sitting alone at the end of the mile-long table, he leaned over as if to whisper some secret in my ear. I really thought he was going to tell me that he wanted out of the deal with Pablo, and I started to shake, the possibility frightening me more than anything in the world, first because my craving for the stunning profits had already taken root and second for fear of revenge, because everybody knows the Boss doesn’t take no for an answer. Do you know when it was, Spider asked me, puffing his moist breath in my ear, and I replied, bewildered, When w
hat was, When I almost managed it, Managed what, Spider my man, Well what do you think I mean, you sleepy-headed fool, I’m asking you whether you know when it was that I almost got an erection last night. And I couldn’t believe the man had dragged me out of bed for something so idiotic, so I said to him, Of course I know, you old bastard, you almost got it up when you heard how much money you were going to make with Escobar, I’m serious, Midas my boy, do you know when it was? It’ll be the day hell freezes over, I would have liked to answer, but instead I gathered my patience and asked with a conspiratorial air, So, old boy, tell me when it was.

  Then Spider said that the night before he’d felt the stirrings of an erection each time one girl did something naughty to the other one, Do you mean like them smacking each other’s asses? That’s right, when they went like this and like that with the little whip, too bad it was all fake, and Spider informed me that for the second phase of Operation Lazarus he wanted the emphasis to be on the rough stuff, but this time for real, without all the pretending and toys. So you mean you want me to find you a professional masochist, one of those women in black leather and chains? Figure it out for yourself, Midas my boy; I’m giving you some general guidelines and you take care of the details, the only thing I’ll spell out for you is that ever since last night I’ve been in the mood to see a girl suffer for real. All right, I said to play along with him, but inside, Agustina doll, I made the decision to hold the session in private, without Joaco or Ayerbe or the gringo as witnesses, so they wouldn’t find out about this new failure. Because we didn’t want to waste our second shot, which after all would be the next to last, and even though I’d shaken on the bet knowing I couldn’t win, deep down it drove me fucking crazy to have to lose, because a bet is a bet, Agustina baby, and in the end you want to win no matter how stupid it is.