With no wife and next to no sex life, my father went back to physics as soon as he turned fifty. He knew the subject well, because he’d thrown his heart and soul into it in his youth, before he met my mother and abandoned “All that stuff,” by which he meant science, in order to enter the rodent wheel of real life: earn money, have children, earn more money. But at fifty he suddenly found himself without a wife, and the old song of family and material comfort began to lose its charm. Lumberingly, like an old dog, he went back to the wisdom of his first love. He didn’t believe in rest, not even in the last months of his life, when he couldn’t get out of bed to use the bathroom or look at himself in the mirror. He always had his pockets filled with ifs and buts. If someone said “sky” he’d pull out the old “atmosphere” trick; if someone said “rest” he’d bring up the perpetual movement of the stars and atoms. He died triumphantly skeptical, or so I was told, in the same bed he’d been confined to for months. He died with his arms full of clocks. He’d had every clock in the house brought to his room and scattered across his bed. My brothers didn’t understand why, and neither did my sisters-in-law. It was just one of his eccentricities, one of them said when I returned to Buenos Aires. It was his way of saying goodbye to time, I said.
We struggled, but it was a false struggle. I fell to the ground, or let myself fall, and Marco threw himself on top of me. I would have liked to explain to him the complex interweavings of nature before we made love, but he didn’t care for stories—not even our story—and he abhorred explanations. From my very first night in the little house on the Del Monje farm I’d been weighing up the possibilities of this happening. Would he or would he not come to visit me one night? Would he or would he not warn me beforehand: “I’m coming to visit you tonight”? These questions braided themselves into huge spider webs that I, weak human specimen that I was, all protein, tissue and brain, was incapable of ripping apart. But we’d been pursuing each other for a while now. He and his mother rarely set foot inside my house. The cats came in, though (they weren’t allowed in the other houses), as did the dogs, and occasionally the tame sheep who always expected my leftover pickings. These visits only occurred when their owners weren’t looking: Madame Cupin certainly would not have approved, and if Marco had found out he would have stormed inside to kick them out. He is calmer out in the fields: he speaks to me mildly about strawberries, or the recent frost. He tells me about the corn and the apple trees, and I glimpse great mysteries behind the simplest of weeds. One day I asked him if he had a woman in town, someone he visited when he went out in the truck to sell lamb or buy provisions. He didn’t answer me. I understood that I’d said too much. I tried again another time, also outside, beneath the thick nose of the mountain: “Do you have a woman?” No, he says, and crouches down to uproot an encroaching weed. Later on it is night, or close to it. In spring, the sun sets much later. I go out onto the patio to turn off the tap that is watering the peonies. The heat is harsh for this time of year; it’s only October. I go out wearing very little, since I’ve just taken a shower and it’s warm and the patio is deserted. I walk a few meters to turn off the tap, which has already flooded one of the flowerbeds. I turn back toward my little house and see him standing there, in the middle of the patio—he’s probably been watching me this whole time. I understand that he is wearing more clothes than I am, and that this gives him some kind of insurmountable advantage. We measure each other up, neither of us lowering our gaze. It’s a long minute of nothing. I explain that I just took a shower and forgot I’d left the tap running. “Of course,” he says. I tell him that’s why I came outside. Difficult as it is, I turn my back on him. From the doorway I bid him goodnight. He doesn’t answer me, doesn’t move a centimeter, nor does he take his eyes off me. I could have hidden inside my house. But I didn’t. I waited for him. He approaches me and I let him. He touches my cheek and I offer it to him. One of us has just won a prize, but I’m not sure who.
That cold and probably damp night, we grew bored of walking along the canal. We hailed a taxi, and got out after a few blocks. Julia’s house was empty. We didn’t loiter in any of the rooms, nor did we bother to turn on the heating (which, according to custom, was always turned off when nobody was at home to enjoy its benefits). We didn’t pause in the kitchen to make a cup of tea. He removed his shoes. How many years had it been—eight? nine?—since we’d met in that seaside city of Málaga? We talked for a while, unnecessarily, about his well-paid cosmopolitan job, his travels, the incomprehensibility of languages and the wonders of English.
“I prefer Hong Kong to London,” he said, unprompted.
I particularly liked the way he closed his eyes, the way he crowned every phrase with a sarcastic little laugh that, with time, I would come to mistrust. And even though he wasn’t interested, he asked me about my life in Germany during those forgotten years. I invented a few stories: that I’d lived on the coast of the North Sea, that I’d married a man who managed fishing boats. I’m sure he didn’t believe a word of it. It was cold so I got into bed with my clothes on, which complicated matters later on. Stefan took a long time to follow me under the covers, because he received a call from the other side of the world, closing some deal at a cost of untold jobs. Such things excited him so much that I—that is, the woman I was back then—barely registered in comparison. After the phone call he told me to get out of bed and take my clothes off, slowly. I refused. But he wasn’t the kind of man to be deterred by obstacles; for him, my resistance was the whole point. He undressed himself instead, and as he did I understood why I’d been attracted to him all those years ago, why I’d used him as an excuse to leave Málaga. Once he was in bed with me I thwarted every one of his movements: if he wanted my mouth I gave him my hand, if he wanted my hair I gave him kisses. We persecuted one another for a long time upon those four square meters of mattress. But something was left unresolved, because the following night we made plans to meet again in his hotel, where we replayed the same scene, acted out the same comedy. This went on for days. Soon he had to leave—he had heads to tear off, heads on the other side of the globe. Did I want to come with him? In Berlin there was Julia and Kolya under the yellow light in the kitchen, where the three of us had eaten together for years. In Berlin I had a family, I had a whole box of good intentions, you might say, that we’d been filling up together for the future. I’d fallen in love with them both, mother and son. And yet, what is one to do, when faced with oneself? Cut and run, if that’s what you know best.
A constant westerly wind blew across the lake from the Pacific, via the mountains. We’d left late, under Madame Cupin’s disapproving gaze, which had fallen apart at the last minute once all her ploys to prevent us leaving together had failed. She’d insisted on taking the canoe across with us, so as to personally deliver Monsieur Cupin’s immaculate pile of books (which we were donating in his name) to Rural School Number Fourteen, which was only accessible by water, or by horseback if you took a long and winding detour. Her reluctance had pushed our departure past midday. We’d left her standing under the eaves, posed bitterly against her walking stick. We’d also had to pass through the town before continuing on to the lake, to deliver three animals to the lumberjack from El Hoyo. The gravel roads offered up a plethora of potholes and other obstacles, which posed little challenge to Marco’s truck. Marco had refused to tie up the last sheep, which we were to exchange for some wood from a man who lived a little way up the mountain, and the poor thing knocked around violently in the back. It was delivered on time, albeit a little jelly-legged. We carried our payment back to the truck and continued on to the lake shore, where another, bespectacled man was waiting for us with the hired canoe. Each of Marco’s interactions with the locals entailed the exchange of new and not-so-new gossip. The canoe man insisted he’d felt an earthquake two nights ago. And that the lumberjack from El Hoyo, a known outlaw, had been stealing his logs when he wasn’t home. We’d already discussed the earthquake with the man at the service station, who claime
d it hadn’t happened, and the man from El Hoyo, who assured us his brother had been thrown from his chair by the force of it. We set out to cross the lake. They told us there was too much wind, they advised us not to go. But Marco said we’d have a tailwind on the way back, and that we’d easily make it home before nightfall. I’d heard about the water in the lake, but I never anticipated it could be so transparent, even in spite of its depth: over three hundred meters, I was told.
“It’s cold,” Marco warned as I plunged my arm in.
It was freezing. I managed to feign composure, told him it could be worse. From the very first night we’d spent together he’d made a point of never letting his gaze linger on me any longer than it would on any other living creature, never uttering any especially meaningful words to me. Our bundle of French books was balanced on the floor of the canoe; there were two treatises on mechanics and several adventure novels. Three hundred meters below us there waved the green peaks of a long-lost forest. This should have been cause for long dull exclamations of admiration, but Marco paddled on in silence, and I followed suit, suffering as I did from the defect of happiness. We arrived late and exhausted at the other side of the lake, our arms burning. We ascended the steep slope of the shore, pricking ourselves on sweet briar rose and grabbing at broom bushes to pull ourselves up. It was all in vain. The school was closed, the doors padlocked shut. There was nothing for us to do but leave the books sitting on a pile of bricks next to the entrance, where they would not be protected from the dew and rain. Then we made our way back to the shore. The canoe slipped back into the water with barely a push. Night was beginning to fall in the forest—we could smell it—and the wind had changed. It blew enormous and glad against our faces.
Back then I wanted to hunt lions, I wanted to commiserate with the poor. Alexander didn’t understand this. He observed me from the bed with tired eyes. What good were his social sciences if they failed to convince even a single solitary woman to stay. He had no more reasons. So many ideas about Europe and human dignity, and now he had nothing left. He was naked, twice naked. Meanwhile, I repacked the suitcases I’d emptied one month earlier. He kept on trying, in fits and starts: we could fix things if we traveled together, if we started a family, if I found a better job. Why had I married him? That very night he’d speak to his friend, the physicist, and finally secure me the job in the laboratory. He’d call a friend who worked in a pharmacy a few hours from Heidelberg. His ideas died one by one, like so many poisoned moths. I refused everything, and even though I wasn’t finished packing I closed my suitcases as best I could, which was badly, and kicked and dragged them down the stairs. They clattered scandalously all the way down. Where was my victory? Alexander followed me, boarded the tram with me, helped me with my things when we got to the train station. In the ticket queue we let people in front of us, not wanting to advance. This game went on for a while, ten, fifteen minutes, as we fought with our tears and our ineluctable goodbyes. When I finally bought my ticket to Berlin, it felt like the greatest accomplishment of my life. Alexander said he didn’t want to say goodbye, and left suddenly. But later I saw him on the platform, where I was sitting on my bags waiting to board. He removed his scarf, tied it around my neck. We hugged and I promised him so many things: that I’d come back, that I loved him, all of them lies.
Why all that trouble if in the end I’d broken the laws of physics anyway? Why, I wondered, if after so many years of pilgrimage I’d finally found my place? Marco, sitting with the wood and the axe before him, scratched at the earth with his dirty boot. We spoke politely, the sheep bleating beside us.
“You’ll have to leave in two months, three at the most.”
“For any particular reason?”
“We’re restructuring.”
“And you want me to leave?”
“No, I don’t.”
The one who wanted me to leave was Madame Cupin. Later that afternoon she came to my house to bring me some clothes that, according to her, she hadn’t used in years and were now too big for her: Parisian handkerchiefs, one green and one red; an alpaca wool pullover; a number of other luxury items that were of little use to me. I should consider myself privileged, she said, to receive such precious gifts. Not everyone was deserving of such gifts.
I can smell night descending. He disappears behind me, into the forest, in search of branches and something to eat. I rest my head once more against the cold earth. And the planet has stopped spinning. And I’ve stopped with it.
“I don’t want to leave!” I cried as he retreated.
“Any love interests?”
None that I was aware of, I say.
“Well, there was Lali,” the other policeman intervenes.
They exchange a wink.
It can’t be true, I think from afar. The cow’s blood falls in a thick stream upon the grass. The sky darkens and it’s afternoon. I thought it couldn’t be true because they’d talked about it so many times, but nothing had ever happened. I’ve always had an exceptional capacity for skepticism. They always said today, or tomorrow, or the next day, but the day never came. And now today was the day, and the cow pumped blood until it collapsed on its side. Marco made a second cut, in case the first hadn’t finished the job, but it had, there was nothing left but flesh. They’d grown sick of waiting for the butcher, so Marco had recruited one of the neighbors’ sons who sometimes hired himself out as a farmhand. A drafthorse dragged the cow’s body to a tree, where they strung it up with chains and pulleys. It was a meticulous process: first they opened up the chest and carefully separated the meat, then they removed the legs. A slender boy of around ten, who had gathered around with a few others, stuck his fingers elatedly into the animal’s eyes, its stomach, its intestines, without rupturing any of the tissue. They skinned the body with care, so as not to damage the leather, and emptied its guts. The cow’s three hundred and fifty kilograms barely swayed in the breeze. Marco made a sign at me and I rinsed out the bucket where he’d washed the bloody knife, which wasn’t an easy job. Then we sat down on a tree stump a few meters away and discussed the various methods for killing cows, sheep and goats, and as he explained this to me he rubbed his hands with a cloth stained overly red. An acidic odor of fermenting grass issued from the carcass, and I wondered if I actually liked that man, if I would actually let him touch me with those bloody hands of his. Spring had not yet arrived. I worked all day in town and gazed at the mountain on my way home, predicting a life for myself; for real this time, this time forever. There was not a trace of emotional blackmail. I hear him chopping wood and I go outside, even though it’s dark. I offer him something warm to drink, because my heart betrays me and drives me to do the stupidest things; it convinces me to love a man who ignores me and spends his afternoons slaughtering lambs and gutting sheep. Marco pauses, and for a moment the axe is suspended in midair. Then he lets it fall and tells me no, he doesn’t want anything to drink.
I’m indefatigably happy. Even adversity brings me joy. The cold, the snow, the empty chair across from me at the dinner table, where I now sit down to eat.
At heart I’m no good, even for acts of justice. Everyone had left: the owner had gone to fetch reinforcements from among her family members, the baker was out collecting sacks of flour from the supplier. We were all overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle of the festive season, and the customers swarmed in search of fat and sugar like the eager flies they were. The cash register opened and closed before me. Notes came and went. There was enough money in there to fund the long holiday I’d promised myself, once the festive season was over. On the first of January I’d finally be a legal employee, and to ring in the new year I was planning to take some time off. “Where will you go?” the owner asked me. And then, with a hopeful tone, since she was a mother after all, she added: “Back home?” “Definitely,” I replied. Back then my lies were reluctant and unpolished, and I dragged them from my mouth with sorrow. Looking down at the cash register, I thought the right thing to do would be to set asi
de the money owed to me and hide it in my pocket. An impulse to flee trembled in one side of my head, just above the temple. I counted and separated the notes as a bluish-faced man selected a dessert for his family’s Christmas dinner. I threw in a little extra to cover my Christmas bonus. The flies buzzed impatiently on the other side of the counter. It would have been an act of enormous purity, leaving like that, with the cash in my pocket and the bakery packed with people. But perfection isn’t meant for us all. I wasted my time with Blue Face and with the man behind him, who wanted a poppy-seed loaf, and then with the man behind him, whom the snow had marked with a black stain on each shoulder. Even with my feet burning with pain, and the money burning a hole in pocket, I kept smiling obediently until the baker returned, crossing the room with long strides. Later on he complained to me about the number of customers expecting—that was the word he used—bread and cakes. This was how he managed to be both rich and miserable at once. All seemed lost, but when he retreated to the depths of the bakery I saw him slap the door with his palm, as he always did. This final repetition was all it took. I removed my apron and crossed to the other side of the counter. They say the flesh is weak, but the conscience is weaker. I went back to the cash register and returned the money. A customer asked me what I was doing. I told him the only thing I knew: “I’m leaving.”
Another customer tried to stop me, without success.
My jacket was still hanging from the coat stand, inside the bakery. I walked along the white street, wetting my shoes and admiring the lights. What was new about this? Nothing. I was cold and I walked, despising the bags of presents and the Christmas greetings people lavished on one another. I went into a café and spent all the coins I had left. I didn’t want to go back to the bedroom I knew by heart, the one I’d already tried to leave more than once. I walked down to the bridge and, rather theatrically, tossed my residency card and the ticket I’d just bought to Portugal into the river. The river was frozen, so they didn’t sink. I looked at them for a while, thinking that tomorrow, if resolve failed me, I could always try and rescue them. But that night resolve didn’t fail me; that night was the most triumphant of all, because I had nothing in my pockets, not even my own name, and nothing in my heart.
All My Goodbyes Page 9
