Delirium

by Laura Restrepo

  It’s July 20, and Independence Day is being celebrated in Sasaima; the servants have been given the night off, and Blanca, Farax, and Sofi have walked down to town to watch the parade and the fireworks, and then go to the community dance. They’ve announced that they’ll be back late, which means that if the festivities merit it they might not return until seven or eight the next morning, because tradition demands that the celebration be concluded at dawn with a town breakfast in the market square, and the mayor, who is a conservative, has announced that this year free tamales and beer will be served. Nicholas and Eugenia are left home alone, Blanca having called Eugenia aside before she left to entrust her with the care of her father, predicting that this time the task would be easy. He’s quiet, she said, all you have to do is keep your eye on him until he falls asleep, and in fact it is one of those rare peaceful moments when her father is all right and even talkative; since Eugenia isn’t used to her father speaking to her, she stutters and doesn’t know how to reply. Although it’s already nine, her father isn’t yet drifting in a ponderous prelude to sleep as he usually does, but instead he’s awake and on his face there’s something resembling a smile, today Father brims with chuckles, little gurgles, as he fries sausages in the kitchen and serves them on a plate to his younger daughter, seemingly reconciled to the simple reign of the everyday.

  Eugenia looks at him and lets out a deep breath as if she really has been relieved of an exhausting responsibility. Father is queer, the girls say when they sense he’s slipping toward those murky regions where they can’t reach him, Father is queer, and no one knows what agony there is in the voice of a child who speaks those words. The first time that Eugenia thinks she noticed her father’s queerness was when she was five or six. While she was playing with shells from the river, her father was busying himself nearby clearing away the fallen leaves blocking one of the channels down which water flowed to the big house, and since the sun was strong, he was wearing a straw hat to protect his head, but it wasn’t a single hat; little Eugenia stopped playing, uneasy, when she noticed that her father was wearing not just one hat but two, one wide-brimmed straw hat on top of a smaller cloth cap. She thinks she remembers that it was horrible to suddenly realize that there was something irremediably strange about her father, something actually grotesque, so she went up to him to try to take off one of the two hats as if that would solve the larger problem, and he looked at her with unseeing eyes, infinitely remote eyes, and ever since then Eugenia thinks in terms of double hat when Father is queer, Father is double hat, she says to herself, and she is seized by dizziness.

  But today Father isn’t double hat and after dinner they sit together in the rocking chairs in the gallery that overlooks the river, or rather that overlooks the hollow where the Sweet River flows, since on this patriotic night of July 20 the river is no more than a darkness that slips whispering along under a quiet sky lit up every once in a while by bursts of fireworks from the distant celebration. There, where the rockets are thundering, her father says, that’s where young Farax and my lovely Blanca are, maybe holding hands as their eyes fill with artificial stars, and since Eugenia is scrutinizing him, trying to decide whether a new bout of delirium is brewing in him, her father soothes her by clumsily and heavily stroking her black hair. Don’t fret, daughter, he tells her, the problem is that neither of them has any literary gift, neither of them has an understanding of the tragic. One must be strong, like your father, not to want to resolve the conflict in one’s own favor; one must be generous, my child, generosity is what’s required here. Eugenia, who is very pale, her skin almost transparent, fails to grasp the meaning of her father’s speech from where she sits, hunched in her rocking chair, but that doesn’t alarm her, since she’s used to not understanding most things he says.

  On this peaceful night the cicadas and the crickets are making a racket, perhaps too much of a racket; Eugenia is afraid that her father’s eardrums, already overwhelmed by the constant buzz of tinnitus, will be assaulted, and as if her father has guessed what she’s thinking, he speaks to her of the eternal murmur bottled up in his ears. Your mother says it’s tinnitus, but she’s wrong, he says, it’s an extraterrestrial noise that doesn’t seem to come from a fixed point in space but from every direction at the same time. Father, the girl tries to explain to him, it’s just the singing of the cicadas. These women, says Nicholas Portulinus condescendingly, shaking his head from side to side, cicadas and tinnitus are what they call the age-old echo of the creation of the universe. And then he rocks until he dozes off, big, soft, and ugly in his green silk robe printed with a tangle of black branches. Ugly but peaceful, thinks Eugenia, and her thought is borne out by the litany of German rivers that she hears him mutter. The Lahn, the Lippe, the Main, the Moselle, the Neckar, and the Neisse, recites her father, talking in his sleep now. For a moment he seems to wake up and he says to his daughter, In Germany I have a very beautiful sister called Ilse, did you know? Yes, Father, Eugenia replies, but her father has already returned to his alphabetical listing, the Oder, the Rhine, and the Ruhr. Mother was right, thinks Eugenia as she too surrenders to sleep, Father isn’t queer today.

  That’s why the shock is so great when, a few hours later, she hears the clamor rising from the blackness of the river, the shouts of the steward Nicasio and his wife, Hilda, the long We foooooound him echoing in the background, beneath the racket of the cicadas, beyond the crackling of the fireworks that is already dying away, We foooooound him, and Eugenia realizes that her father isn’t in his rocking chair anymore, that all that’s left of him is his slippers and silk robe. She runs to look for him all over the big house, first in his bedroom, but the still-made bed makes it plain that he hasn’t been there, then in the bathroom, but the towels, hanging in place, confirm that he hasn’t touched them, then the billiards room, the immense, empty dining room, the kitchen with orange peels still piled on the table and the lingering smell of orange blossoms, and the silent piano parlor where Eugenia is startled when she runs straight into the steward Nicasio who appears out of nowhere like a ghost, We found Professor Portulinus in the river, the people from Virgen de la Merced found him and came to tell us, he was down there, by Virgen de la Merced, about a mile and a half from here, they found him naked and lifeless in a little rocky cove and they’re bringing his body now, the river carried it away and left it washed up in a backwater.

  Between cock’s crow and midnight Eugenia seems to remember a slow ceremony by torchlight on the riverbank, but the substance of that memory fades under the crushing weight of guilt, Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, a voice shouts inside Eugenia, it’s my fault that we’re burying Father bloated and green and in secret, my fault that Father swallowed the water of all those rivers in a single gulp. I fell asleep and it’s my fault that my father has drowned, I killed him in dreams and the ringing in his ears will echo inside of me forever, tormenting me every day of my life and reminding me of his departure. No cross, the dazed voice of her mother, Blanca, may have said, No cross, just a stone, another stone among the many that tumble in Eugenia’s wiped-clean memory. No cross, and there was no cross, nothing to mark the burial spot.

  It’s only days later that Eugenia’s memory recovers its sharpness, when she finds herself in the middle of a family scene so static that it resembles a photograph. Sitting around the dining-room table are her sister, Sofi, Farax, her mother, and she herself, Eugenia, listening as her mother announces in a cordial, reassuring voice, the voice of someone who hopes that life will go on despite everything, Girls, your father has returned to Germany, and we don’t know how long he’ll be gone. That’s what Blanca, the mother, tells them, firmly and categorically, offering no option for appeal. Father went to Germany without saying goodbye?, asks Eugenia, who doesn’t know what to do now with her dream of burial and torches on the riverbank, doesn’t know what to do with the catalog of German rivers that her father murmured that night like a funeral prayer, If Father is in Germany then what happened to that nigh
t when he let himself be tempted by the call of the river, and who dreamed the dream that Father went down to the river because I wasn’t watching, that I wasn’t able to stop him, that I was the guilty one because I fell asleep; Father went back to Germany but he left his terrible suffering here, his tribulations, his muddled head; if Father went back to Germany then maybe it isn’t her fault, Eugenia’s fault, if he’s happy there in his own land, then maybe Father has forgiven her for her horrendous carelessness, if Father is far away and safe, the throng of Eugenia’s guilty feelings will perhaps be quieted, reduced, extinguished, and she can rest. Sometimes Eugenia feels that she hasn’t slept since that night of fireworks when she did sleep and shouldn’t have. Yes, says the girl Eugenia at the dining-room table in Sasaima, Yes, yes, yes, she says, and she repeats, Father went to Germany without telling us and who knows when he’ll be back, if ever.

  And Farax? What happened to Farax, who disappeared almost before he completely appeared, the Abelito Caballero who shimmers in a fleeting dream that vanishes upon waking? After I’d finished reading the diaries and letters I found in the wardrobe, I didn’t have a clear answer; past a certain point Farax and Abelito are wiped out as if they’d been written in erasable ink. I ask Aunt Sofi what happened to Farax, You tell me, Sofi, if you don’t know then no one knows because Grandmother Blanca never mentions him again in her memoirs, she simply ignores him as if he never existed. I’d say that Farax must have stayed with us at the big house in Sasaima for three or four months after my father returned to Germany, answers Aunt Sofi, some three or four months, until one morning he was gone, taking his alpaca jacket, his old knapsack, and his lead soldiers, and heading off in the direction he’d come from, along the road to Anapoima. Maybe he didn’t think there was any reason for him to stay since there was no one to teach him piano anymore, or maybe he refused to accept the too-weighty inheritance that my father had left him, maybe he never loved my mother, or maybe he loved her too much, maybe he glimpsed expectations that unsettled him in my eyes or Eugenia’s, who knows what it may have been. All I can say is that Farax was left as far behind as the days of our adolescence, and that Abelito Caballero disappeared one fine day just as my father disappeared, except that he left by the road, not the river; all I know is that we never heard a thing about either of the two, or rather, three, of them again, because my mother never offered any explanation or once mentioned their names.

  I WAS PUTTING ON one of those old pairs of pants that Marta Elena still kept in her closet when I heard women’s voices in the living room; one was Marta Elena’s own voice and the other was also familiar but for the moment unrecognizable, then there was a third female voice, this one belonging to an older woman, like Aunt Sofi, and I thought it might be Margarita, Marta Elena’s mother, although I was surprised because I knew that she was ill and housebound, so still shirtless and barefoot, I hid behind the bedroom door, and, peering out, I discovered that the woman talking in the living room was actually Aunt Sofi, and that Agustina was with her.

  Standing there before Marta Elena, who had yet to recover from her astonishment, and Aunt Sofi, who didn’t know what to do with herself, was my Agustina, transformed into a kind of social worker, or at best a nosy and insistent neighbor, speaking to Marta Elena in a strangely impersonal, bossy voice, giving orders and pedantically pointing out everything that was out of place according to the principles of feng shui; Agustina was an expert in feng shui and was advising a terrified Marta Elena on how she should reorganize her house. Then Agustina started wandering around without asking permission, going in and out of the boys’ rooms and speaking exasperatingly fast, and my heart flip-flopped when I realized that in a few seconds she would come into Marta Elena’s room and find me there freshly showered and half dressed.

  At first my instinct was to hide under the bed like an illicit lover in a B movie, but I was immediately struck by a realization; what had initially been panic at the idea that Agustina would find me turned into the absolute joy of my sudden insight, into the ear-to-ear smile that must have appeared on my face when I realized in a flash what was happening, Agustina is looking for me, I thought, Agustina has come here to take me back, she missed me last night and today she’s come to find me. From that moment on, I found the whole scene amusing and even joyous, despite how surreal it was and despite Marta Elena’s fright and the consternation of Aunt Sofi, who tried as best she could to explain to me that it had been impossible to prevent Agustina from leaving the apartment, And how did she know I was here?, I don’t know, my boy, she just knew, it wasn’t hard to guess, It’s all right, Aunt Sofi, I said and in fact it was more than all right, I was nearly bursting with the happiness of knowing that Agustina, in her crazy way, had come looking for me.

  I stood still, behind the bedroom door, and Agustina blew into the room, passing me without turning to look at me, as if I were a ghost, because what she was doing now was critiquing furniture, objecting to vases, ordering Marta Elena to change the color of the walls, Who would ever think to paint an entire house this anemic yellow?, only someone extremely old-fashioned and boring. I’m very sorry, Señora—she always called Marta Elena Señora, not once using her name—but all the beds here are facing the wrong way, it’s terrible for inner balance to set the heads toward the south, even you should know that, and it would be a good idea to increase the feng shui tein so you have some circulation of northern energy. She even poked around in Marta Elena’s closet, pronouncing it untidy and recommending that she get rid of all her worn-out shoes and outdated clothes, These clothes make you look older, Señora; if you stop dressing in black, that gloomy face of yours might brighten up, Now, now, what have we here, she said when she saw my clothes, Oh no, this is no good, if your husband is gone, Señora, you should return his clothes to him and take back the space, you don’t want to expose yourself to the possibility that when you find a new man he’ll discover that his place is already taken.

  I didn’t know whether to cry or to laugh, unsure whether Agustina was raving or just pretending in order to harass Marta Elena, Look, Señora, these drawers crammed with useless junk do nothing for the place, and they block the chi and weaken the yang energy flow. Everything that was happening was so absurd, that several times I had to stifle a laugh, like when Agustina blasted an oil painting hanging in the living room and demanded that it be taken down immediately, and in the midst of it all I rejoiced, thinking that she was right, that the painting in question, which I had always hated and which Marta Elena had systematically imposed on the living room of each of our successive homes, really was appalling. I would have reveled in it all if my ex hadn’t been so upset, For God’s sake, Aguilar, what’s wrong with your wife? she asked me through clenched teeth when we were left alone for an instant, I don’t know what’s wrong with her, she’s just crazy, I answered, I who had never confessed to her how serious Agustina’s mental problem was, at most mentioning something in passing like, Agustina gets depressed, or Agustina is very nervous, but that was all I had said, with the result that now, with no warning and in Marta Elena’s own house, this whirlwind was unleashed, What’s the point of a double bed, Señora, it takes up too much space and as far as I know, you sleep alone. No one could stop my rabid plaything, nor was there a single object she didn’t find fault with, not even the plants, These pointy-leafed ones are no good, you’d better get some with rounded leaves, and I’d recommend that you hang a ba gua mirror surrounded by trigrams on that wall, put it up right away if you want to avoid disaster, Agustina decreed and as she uttered the word disaster her voice vibrated a little, as if she were predicting it. Marta Elena played along with her, taking down paintings and putting up mirrors while giving me looks of compassion, fear, and despondence, until finally she begged me, Take her away, Aguilar, I’m really sorry what’s happening to you, but take her away, work things out between the two of you, because this isn’t my funeral.

  Meanwhile Agustina was in the bathroom, opening the cabinets one by one and calling
out, Listen, Señora, this is very bad, you shouldn’t have so much medicine in the house, self-medication can be deadly, this cream has cortisone in it, I wouldn’t recommend it, and this one isn’t good either, it’s not smart to rely on antibiotics; How funny, I thought, it was as if Agustina had sensed my idle musings about moving back into this house and had come expressly to pick it to pieces, to completely demolish both the place and the thoughts, or who knows, it’s possible that my Blimunda actually did guess that for an instant I had begun to fail her. Aunt Sofi had fallen into an armchair and was making peculiar motions, something like repeated efforts to get up, though her legs were refusing to respond; Marta Elena was becoming increasingly annoyed that I was taking everything so lightly and it’s unclear how it all would have ended if Agustina hadn’t taken me by the hand, saying, Let’s go, and when Aunt Sofi tried to follow us, she stopped her, You stay here for a while and visit with this other lady, because sometimes it’s nice to let couples do things on their own, and all Aunt Sofi could do was laugh at the joke, while I for my part had become a person again, because it was the first time since the dark episode that the woman I adored was showing signs of needing me. Before we left, my rabid plaything grabbed a picture of me that was sitting framed on a little table and said, I’ll take this, too.

  THAT WAS A HAPPY MORNING; happiness comes when you least expect it. I’m sorry for Marta Elena, who must have been swept away by the stirrings of hope permitted for an instant then immediately dashed, but as for us, we left her house in good spirits; there was a carefree expression on Agustina’s face that brought me pure delight, and I announced to them, to Agustina and Aunt Sofi, that we wouldn’t return to the apartment just yet but instead would start out at once for Sasaima along the highway to Medellín: Bogotá, Fontibón, Mosquera, Madrid, Facativá, Albán, and Sasaima, That highway is under guerrilla control, protested Aunt Sofi, Yes, but only after three in the afternoon. I had been making inquiries, and apparently the guerrillas came down from the hills in the afternoon and then even the people at the checkpoints would close up and leave, but during the morning there was some truck traffic, If we leave and come back before three it will be fine.