Agustina, who was sitting in the backseat, didn’t say anything or make any objection, so apparently she approved of the trip to Sasaima whatever its purpose, but Aunt Sofi wanted to know what I was planning, To get my hands on Agustina’s grandparents’ diaries and those letters that you yourself told me are still there, I explained, Yes, but I’ve also said that they’re under lock and key, they’ve always been kept in a locked wardrobe and Eugenia has the key, Do you know what an ax is for, Aunt Sofi?, it’s for hacking locked wardrobes to pieces, although in the end no ax was needed because a hard shoulder to the double door was enough to make the lock give way, and a little rummaging through the clothes inside brought to light Grandfather Portulinus’s diary, Grandmother Blanca’s diary, and a bundle of letters, but that would come later, because now we were just leaving Bogotá and at the first checkpoint they confirmed what I had already heard, that the army essentially patrolled until three or four in the afternoon, then retreated to safety, and at that hour the guerrillas came down, roaming around until slightly before daybreak. One round-trip ticket to Sasaima, I said to the tollbooth woman, You travel at your own risk, she warned, and whatever you do I’d advise you to return before mid-afternoon.
Along the way Aunt Sofi continued her story about what had happened in the house in La Cabrera on the day that Mr. Londoño kicked his younger son in the back, and for the first time we talked openly in front of Agustina and nothing happened, I was watching every movement she made in the rearview mirror and I didn’t notice any changes, so either Agustina wasn’t listening or she was pretending not to, instead seeming preoccupied by the fruit stands that cropped up along the side of the road, by the appearance of big jacarandas on the last stretches of cold-country territory, by the foggy abysses that border the road down the mountain, Usually, says Aunt Sofi, when Carlos Vicente Senior hit Carlos Vicente Junior, the boy would shut himself in his room to cry and Agustina was the only one he would let in because it was she who was able to comfort him, but this time it wasn’t like that. Then Agustina, who had been quiet in the backseat of the car, asked whether we were passing through Mosquera yet, and when I said we were, she wanted us to stop to eat obleas, the wafers spread with arequipe, caramel cream, at the place where the old lady was decapitated, and Aunt Sofi, who smiled when she heard what Agustina was asking, said, We always stopped there to eat obleas on the way to Sasaima, before they killed the owner and afterward, too, when her daughter started up the business again.
So that’s what we did; the place was called Obleas Villetica and at the entrance there was an old mossy stone basin from which you could drink pure water, and it was beside that basin that many years ago the owner was decapitated, an old lady who wouldn’t have hurt a fly, no one knows why she was so brutally assassinated but they do know that it marked the resurgence of violence in the region and that’s why everyone remembers it. We parked in front and went in, and the daughter, who in the two decades since the tragedy had grown as old as her mother, asked us whether we wanted cream or jam on the obleas and Agustina answered for all three of us, Neither one, she said, we want them just the way they are, with arequipe, like always, and then when we left, as we passed the stone basin, she said, This is where they decapitated the old lady, but she said it calmly, as if she were repeating something that she must have spoken or heard many times, in the same place, all through her childhood.
Back in the car again, Aunt Sofi says that the naked photographs that Carlos Vicente Londoño had taken of her were tossed faceup on the table, I had let myself forget about them because he swore to me that he kept them in the safe at his office, but there they were on the table in plain sight of my sister, Eugenia, and the three children and there was no excuse or escape, and if that afternoon I had wished to be dead when Carlos Vicente Senior kicked Carlos Vicente Junior, now I wanted to be buried, too, and the only thing I could think of was to leave that house, hop in a taxi, and tell the driver to take me anywhere, never to return. Aunt Sofi confesses that she was gripped by the devastating certainty that her life was over, I had just lost everything, love, children, home, sister, and yet all I could think of was a story that I was told as a child about a little pig that built its house out of straw and when the wind blew, the house was knocked down; standing there in front of my sister, I was that little pig, I had built my house of straw and now the gale had blown away every trace of it, I didn’t say a word, in fact I think I remember that no one spoke at all, but mentally Aunt Sofi said to her sister, All right, Eugenia, it’s all yours, your husband, your children, your house, But instantly I realized that it wasn’t true because when it came down to it my poor sister wasn’t left with much, either; those photographs and especially that son of hers who was beaten by his father were proof that her house was made of straw, too.
Then Aunt Sofi looked at Bichi, the boy who was still standing in the middle of the room after having exposed the truth, every fiber of his body tense and waiting for the outcome, Carlos Vicente is going to finish him off now, thought Aunt Sofi, he’ll beat him to death for daring to do what he did, and then my thoughts took a turn, I said to myself, Well if he wants to hit the boy again he’ll have to do it over my dead body, it was funny, because if at first the revelation of those photographs stripped me of everything, the balance then tipped the other way and I felt that I was recovering the strength that had been drained from me by all those years of secret lives and hidden loves, Now that my life is in shambles, thought Aunt Sofi, I can stand up for that boy, but it wasn’t necessary, the boy was standing up for himself, ready for anything, his feet firmly planted, we’d never seen him so tall, an adult at last, looking out defiantly from under the tangled curls that veiled his eyes; it was impossible not to realize that if his father had dared to lay a hand on him, this time the puppy would fight mercilessly and to the death.
So the father held back when faced with his son’s newfound fierceness, I say, Maybe, replies Aunt Sofi, or maybe Carlos Vicente Senior, like Carlos Vicente Junior, was just waiting for Eugenia’s reaction; the next move was hers and everyone was watching her, So what did she do then, She did the most disconcerting thing, says Aunt Sofi, turning to look back at Agustina, who is pretending not to listen. Having recovered her calm and concealing any sign of pain or surprise, Eugenia picked up the photographs one by one, like someone gathering a deck of cards, and put them in her knitting bag, then, turning to face her son Joaco, she said, and I’ll repeat what she said word for word because otherwise you won’t believe it, she said, You should be ashamed, Joaco, is this what you’ve been doing with the camera we gave you for your birthday, taking naked pictures of the maids?, and then, laying the subject to rest, she addressed her husband, Take the boy’s camera away from him, dear, and don’t give it back until he learns how to use it properly, What do you mean, I ask, did Eugenia really believe that Joaco had taken the pictures? Don’t be naïve, Aguilar, it was clear by their format that they had been taken with the Leika camera that only Carlos Vicente used, and what doubt could there be that I was the one in the pictures; Eugenia, with stunning coolness and a perfectly steady voice, was putting on an act to defend her marriage.
For thirteen years, Aguilar, says Aunt Sofi, I’ve pondered the possible meanings of my sister’s reaction and I’ve always come to the same conclusion: she already knew, she always knew, and she wasn’t terribly bothered by it so long as the secret remained hidden, and the performance she improvised just then was a masterful attempt to guarantee that despite the evidence, the secret would remain a secret; what I’m trying to tell you is that she knew that her marriage would end not because Carlos Vicente was taking nude pictures of me but because it was known that Carlos Vicente was taking nude pictures of me, and not even then, but only if it were admitted that it was known. Are you sure of what you’re saying, Aunt Sofi? No, I’m not sure at all, sometimes I come to the opposite conclusion, that Eugenia was surprised by those photographs and that they were as much a blow to her as the kick was to Bichi, b
ut that she had the courage to play down the facts and behave as she did. Even more surprising was the role that Joaco played; believe me, Aguilar, when I tell you that it was that afternoon that the pact between Joaco and his mother was sealed, What did he do?, Joaco looked his mother in the eye and spoke the following sentence, just as I’m repeating it to you, Forgive me, Mother, I won’t do it again.
Can you imagine, Aguilar?, that Eugenia, after a lifetime of practice, should know the code of appearances is understandable, but that Joaco, at the age of twenty, had already mastered it, that he could pick it up like that, is truly astonishing. Everything had been destroyed by a lie, my lie, the lie of my clandestine affair with my brother-in-law, and now my sister was trying to rebuild our world with another lie and preserve everything as it was before the shake-up, her marriage, the reputation of her household, even the possibility of me staying there despite everything, one lie canceling out another, tell me whether it isn’t enough to drive a person crazy. What was the price of all this, besides the bottomless confusion in Agustina’s head?, I ask and I answer myself, The price was the son’s defeat before the father: the son had laid bare the truth and made a stand, and when the truth was denied, the son was crushed and the father saved. Almost, but not quite, Aunt Sofi contradicts me, because Bichi still had one last ace up his sleeve, that of his own freedom. When he saw that everything was lost in the house, that the morass of lies was swallowing them up whole, Bichi left by the front door, dressed just as he was, in a sweater, socks, and boots over his pajamas, and he went walking down the street and never came back, and I went out after him and I never came back, either.
By then Agustina, Aunt Sofi, and I were a good way down the road to Sasaima, and at that moment we were passing under a little cement bridge and Agustina announced from the backseat, This is the first bridge, take your jackets off now because in eight minutes, when we cross the second bridge, the heat and smell of the warm country will hit us all at once, and what she predicted came true exactly. In eight minutes by the clock we crossed the second bridge and at that same instant, like a wave coming in through the windows and hitting our noses, the heat reached us with its smell of green, damp, citrus, pasture, downpours, wild growth; we were in warm country now and it was only a little bit farther to Sasaima.
FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES all I did was shake, Agustina baby, I swear to you that after that phone call I was literally shaking, naked and helpless there like a newborn baby, until the telephone rang for a second time and I thought, Now it really is Rorro, but I was wrong again, this time it was a phone call from Mr. Sánchez, one of the security guards at the center, who spoke in gasps, unable to find the words to describe what was happening, They’re here, they’re here, Don Midas, and they’re searching, they’re tearing up the hardwood floor in the gym, they’ve already destroyed it and they’re still looking.
The first thing that popped into my head was that after the stir Agustina made that afternoon, the police must be raiding the center and taking it apart to find Dolores’s body, so I asked the guard, Who’s there, Mr. Sánchez, the police? No, Don Midas, it isn’t the police, it’s Mr. Spider’s bodyguards, Paco Malo, the Sucker, and six others, and Mr. Spider is outside with Mr. Silver, waiting in a car. I was still confused, but I managed to ask, Looking for what?, because all this came as a complete surprise, Agustina darling, if it was Spider’s thugs then they couldn’t be looking for Dolores, since after all they knew the stretch of wasteland where they’d left her mortal remains, so I went back to interrogating Sánchez, What the fuck are Spider’s men looking for at my Aerobics Center at this hour of the night? Money, Don Midas, they say that this is where you must have hidden the stash that you…what do I mean?, I’m sorry, I’m just repeating what they say, Don Midas, they’re looking for some money that according to them you stole from Don Spider and Don Silver, I’m calling to warn you, Don Midas, they say that if they don’t find anything here, they’re heading straight over there, to your apartment, these people are pissed off, Don Midas, there are lots of them and they’re extremely angry, they say that if the money isn’t here, it must be there, and pardon my language, boss, I’m just repeating what I’ve heard, they’re saying that if they have to string you up by the balls to find out where you hid it, then they’ll string you up.
You might ask, Agustina sweetheart, how I managed to think and respond in the middle of my intergalactic trip on Santa Marta Golden, a trip that was making my neurons, soft and spongy as marshmallows, bounce tamely around in the padded cell of my brain, and I tell you that either fear must work miracles or the double hit of adrenaline produced by those two calls gradually cleared away the fog, because at last I put two and two together and came to some conclusions, by which I mean that I assembled the previous month’s sequence of events as follows: one, Pablo’s cousins show up at my Aerobics Center asking to join and I rudely turn them down flat, without realizing the consequences of my actions; two, Pablo Escobar finds out and decides to teach me a lesson; three, Pablo sets a trap for me, ordering me through Mystery to ask for an excessive amount of money from Rony Silver and Spider Salazar; four, Pablo makes the money disappear and never returns it; five—and I had no way to confirm this fifth step but I deduced it logically—Pablo gets in touch with Rony and Spider and lies to them, making them think that he did return the money to me on the established date and with all the agreed-upon profits, and that he delivered it to me in full in order for me to pass their shares on; sixth and last, while I was mentally piecing together the map of the five previous points, Rony and Spider were on their way to my apartment with their gang of thugs to snip off my balls with fingernail clippers and yank off any detachable part of me, up to and including my eyelashes, to get me to tell them where I’d hidden the money that I’d supposedly swiped, so there you have it all laid out for you, baby, in six separate steps and a single move; why did the chicken cross the road? to get to the other side, riddle solved.
I admit that I’ve always been a brute to you, but you have to grant me this one thing: in the middle of my panic and the every-man-for-himself thinking that came over me, Agustina angel, I remembered you, incredible, yes, but true, I remembered you, I knew that if I fled my apartment I’d never get the call from Rorro, and it really did worry me not to know the outcome of your psycho interlude, but it’s also true that this was the extent of my heroic altruism, because there was no way I could sit there waiting for news of you until the Sucker and his hordes came to rip me to shreds, so with great sorrow and wishing you the best of luck from afar, I got the hell out of there, which meant that I had no more news of you; no news of you or Rorro or Spider or the pretty girls who used to sleep with me or of absolutely anyone until today, when who should I be fated to see but you, the rest never again, kaput, that’s it, total blackout, all lines of communication cut.
It’s as if I’ve already let go of everything and settled in the great beyond, and the longer I spend shut up here, the more I become convinced that the other life I stubbornly and methodically insisted on building in the air never really existed; now that I have infinite free time I’ve taken to philosophizing, I’ve become a speculative bastard, I like to reflect on the line that goes “for life is a dream, and dreams are only dreams,” I don’t know which poet wrote it but I’ve made it my bedtime mantra, Agustina doll, and I’d like to know who it’s by. Do me a favor and ask your husband, Professor Aguilar, he must have the information, or maybe that’s not his field of expertise. Your brother Joaco, the paraco Ayerbe, impotent Spider, my sumptuous apartment, the Aerobics Center with all its anorexics, Dolores and her hideous death, even my beloved BMW R100RT are all ghosts to me, actors and scenery from a play that’s finished now. The stagehands have carried everything away and now the curtain has fallen, even Pablo is a ghost, the whole country itself is ghostly, and if it wasn’t for the bombs and the bursts of machine-gun fire that echo in the distance, the tremors reaching me here, I’d swear that the place called Colombia had stopped existin
g long ago.
This is how I spent my last few minutes in that other world: after I received the phone calls from Pablo’s cousin and the guard at the gym, I tossed the end of my joint into the fire, put on a random pair of pants, the first shirt I could find, my Harvard cap, and some red-and-black Nike Airs, then I grabbed the overnight bag that I’d prepared that morning to take to the Londoño estate, which was still ready and waiting for me by some trick of fate, though for a different trip than originally planned, and I slung a golf bag over my shoulder which, as a precautionary measure, I kept packed full of dollars, and without even stopping to turn off the lights or the fireplace with the remote control, I hurried down to the garage for my bike and only then did I realize that I had left it at the gym, so for an instant I paused in my flight and allowed myself a hint of sadness as I said goodbye to my BMW, and to my Jacuzzi, my twin-headed shower, my soft vicuna pup–skin blanket, my precious record collection, and my deluxe Bose sound system, then I went out into the street carrying my suitcase and golf bag and took the first taxi that came by, and checking to make sure that no one was following me, I headed toward my mother’s apartment in San Luis Bertrand, for the first time in the last fourteen years.
Delirium Page 27
