The last time, the deflowering was intense: it was one of the doctors in the clinic where I woke after being asleep for twenty-two weeks. I don’t know what his rank or position was—maybe he was an anesthetist, because it didn’t hurt—but he liberated my body, brought it back to life in a little room filled with medical supplies, bottles of alcohol, gauze, and hypodermic syringes, where there was also a photocopier—a strange place for a machine like that—and to be honest that was the most enjoyable part of it, because the doctor sat me down on the glass, and as he deflowered me—was it the twenty-seventh or twenty-ninth time?—he kept making photocopies, images of my backside flat against the glass and a cylindrical shadow lying in wait, a chisel striking the mass, I won’t go into detail, I’m dreaming now and losing certain nuances of reality, which is my closed garden, the place where my handsome men, my lovers, live, those who with their breath and their words take me out of this vegetable dream and take away my treasure, always restarted—toujours recommencée, like in the poem—which, when you come down to it, doesn’t have any more value than a counterfeit coin, something beautiful but not unique, and I think, why should unique things be better? I, at least, enjoy what’s banal, but that’s another story.
Where am I? where am I? Dare to look for me. Leave everything for me. Look for me. Look for me. Maybe I am that woman on the publicity hoarding that you long for so much, the one who sometimes pays you a visit at night. My bare legs emerge from a martini glass and move about. I am the only one who listens and attends to your prayers, because I live in your imagination.
Saying this, I remembered a man, one of the few I have loved and who was called, what was the name of my Beautiful Man? I’ve forgotten, but I’m going to give him a name in this dream, his name was Lars and he was a Danish sailor, he worked on the lower deck of a yacht that did cruises in the Baltic. Lars gave me the breath of life while I was asleep in the stern and took me to his little cabin where he lifted me onto his body, then, looking through the porthole, that circular window, he said, “We are passing a purple island, and on one of its plains there is a war, the soldiers are falling, their helmets are rising in the air, and their armor is bleeding.” That was what Lars said and I listened to him while other blood bathed my thighs, the wound of his body in mine, and I longed for this man not to stop, longed for him never to take his sword out of me and that the story of the war would last all life long, in short, that that little circular window would be life, but very soon something happened and a bell rang, Lars had to go up on deck to make sure that the sea monsters of the North didn’t sink the ship, or something like that, that’s what he told me, and when I looked through the porthole I saw the battle on the purple island, but all this happened on the old Telefunken TV set in the kitchen, which was what there was on the other side of the window, and I understood something, I understood the smell of fried oil and fish, which is what should be eaten at sea, what the sea should smell like, that mixture of salty water and fish and plankton and the remains of shipwrecks, and Lars left and I understood also that the movements that were carrying me away into a state of intoxication (in case anyone has lost the thread, I’m talking about sex, sex is my storm) came not only from the fury unleashed in Lars, but from the sea itself, or rather, from the storm that was lifting the sea and I wanted to take him out of his bed, like the men who touch me, and so I loved him, Lars and the storm, and on returning to my own cabin I heard cries and knew that Lars had fallen into the tempestuous water and the waves had carried him away, oh, what pain, and I fell asleep again, the world saddened me, and Lars’s face dissolved inside me and now nothing was left, that happens when I sleep and it’s because the world goes away, people leave or go out one day onto the street and never come back, and what saddens me most is that the world carries on in the same old way without all those people, nothing changes because Lars isn’t there, or because I’m asleep, because we are all dead, nothing changes, believe me, beneath the stones life emerges again, like a snake or a poisonous plant, and when it wakes there will again be poets and sailors and milkmen, desperate and solitary people, life will have the appearance of reality and some will cry out with pleasure while others decide to slash their wrists or go away forever, wandering about, kicking tin cans after being humiliated, and life will go on having that bitter taste until I open my eyes, and when I do someone will be happy, you can believe me, whom the sea will then take away, but I say, while I dream, that it’s better to be happy just for one moment, and let ourselves be carried away, than never to be happy and to live like a rodent, that’s what I say, that’s what I think, I’ve been happy, and as I say it I ask myself, what will my next beau be like? and you, beau, ask yourself, where am I? would you dare to look for me?
4
I had never been to Tehran, and to be honest it surprised me. The airport is modern and clean—as I’ve already said, everything seems clean after Delhi—the design rather similar to Roissy, in Paris, with wide open spaces, metal ceilings, stained-glass windows looking out on the desert and the sky, glass staircases, friendly people, good signposting and a pleasant smell, maybe of lavender, at any rate not of cheap air freshener.
When we got off the airbus of Mahan Air, the Iranian state airline, we saw a plane of the Venezuelan airline Conviasa parked next to it, which does the Tehran-Damascus-Caracas route and which, according to the press, is always empty, although in this case the line of passengers seemed infinite.
Tehran, like Santiago in Chile, is dominated by snow-capped mountains, and you have the feeling that the city is on a slope. Our hotel overlooked a large part of modern Tehran, which at first sight, and leaving aside its heritage, reminded me of a Latin American city (an impression I’ve also had in some Arab cities). But as soon as I entered my room, opened the window, and breathed in the cool air of the mountains, I became aware of something rather inconvenient, which is that there is no alcohol in Iran, so that I couldn’t carry out my usual ritual of asking for a bucket of ice, lying down, and having a drink while organizing my ideas. Those ayatollahs! I hate religions that ban alcohol.
That night, the Argentinian ambassador and his wife invited us to dinner at their residence in an area in the upper part of the city, full of large buildings, identical to the rich Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, and, much to my delight, the ambassador, a refined man of great taste, opened his bar, a large wooden chest, and offered us an aperitif. I spotted a bottle of Gordon’s, so I poured myself a generous measure, with a couple of ice cubes and two slices of lemon. The ambassador did the same, and so did the second secretary who had come with me, a pleasant young diplomat from Barranquilla, Mauricio Franco de Armas, whose posting to India was his first.
We were given an overview of the situation in Iran, how a process of reform was bound to be under way soon, given that 70 percent of its population was under forty and wanted to live in a system that was open to the world; we were also told why it was that Iran, which has borders with ten countries, was destined to be the leader of the region. Through its petroleum and other industries, it was an economic powerhouse. One example: 95 percent of the medicines they consumed were made internally. European companies were well established in Iran, as well as some Asian companies, especially Japanese and Korean ones. Thanks to the embargo imposed by Washington, there was no competition from North America. France built the freeways, manufactured the road signs, and assembled cars; the Spanish beer company Mahou, as well as the Dutch Heineken and Amstel, made alcohol-free beer that didn’t exist anywhere else, flavored with pineapple, vanilla, and strawberry; Hyundai cars from Korea were assembled here, as were Toyotas and Suzukis; German cars too, Volkswagen and Mercedes. The problem of payment, given that they were not connected to the international banking system, was solved by going through a third country like Jordan, which had grown rich thanks to the embargoes on Iran and Iraq.
The ambassador’s wife was equally enchanting. She worked for the Department of Foreign Studies at the University of Tehran and
immediately suggested I give a few lectures about Latin America. I could even come back and give a course now that a faculty of Latin American Studies was about to open. We had empanadas, delicious meat, and wine, and got back to the hotel just before midnight. Our mobile consulate would be opening at eight the following morning, and we needed to rest.
Back at the hotel I started thinking about Juana again. What ideas were crossing her mind now that she was so close to her brother? so close to fleeing Iran? I imagined her looking at it all with the eyes of someone looking at the things they are about to leave, which in her case included her husband: fearful eyes, anticipating homesickness; proud eyes, almost wild at the thought of what she is about to do, aware of what it will cost other people; hungry eyes that want to devour everything, swallow it up; predatory eyes that bite and don’t care about the blood. What had her life been like? and above all, the strangest, hardest thing to justify, the thing that kept hitting my brain over and over like a drop of water (that old Chinese torture): why had she never tried to get in touch with Manuel?
One word from her, and none of this would have happened.
The following day, at eight-thirty in the morning, those members of the Colombian community with procedures pending started to arrive. Olympia sat with the second secretary in what would become the dining room, and I sat at a small desk behind a staircase. The only problem we had—and it was one that almost drove us to distraction—was getting hold of an electric typewriter to fill in the passports. A typewriter that was big enough to allow the books to pass through the roller and that also had an corrector; being an antiquated machine you couldn’t use Tippex (I’d used Tippex when I wrote my first novel, typed on a Remington portable, and I remembered how it stayed on my fingers). In the end, the Cuban Embassy lent us one, which arrived just in time!
Most of those who came were women and, I have to say, almost all of them were very attractive. Apart from my own experience in Japan, I remembered what Olympia had told me about the Tokyo-Tehran connection. In the light of that, Juana’s case was just one among many.
Every time the bell rang and the secretary of the embassy opened the door, I imagined Juana coming into the room. But she didn’t. Even though I had her number, I preferred not to call her in order not to arouse suspicion. She must have had to invent an alibi to come. I continued waiting.
By three in the afternoon I had signed—and done by hand, with Mauricio and Olympia—twenty-two passports, sixteen birth certificates, and nine wedding certificates. Some of the Colombian women came with their husbands to ask for visas, but this was one of the few procedures we couldn’t do, because Iran was on the list of countries for which the Foreign Ministry obliged us to send the forms to Bogotá to be authorized. At four o’clock, we received the last forms and announced that the following day would be the deadline for applications. With that, we shut up shop for the day.
At about five the chauffeur took me to see the Grand Bazaar, one of the attractions of the city: a beautiful medieval market that at times goes underground, with winding alleyways. I bought pistachios—the best in the world—admired the pastries, the leatherwork, the many veils; just as I had in the bazaar in Damascus, I took photographs of the splendid stands selling women’s underwear (“brevity is the soul of lingerie,” who wrote that?), with their daring multicolored thongs as thin as dental floss, decorated with plastic flowers and flashing lights, corsets and panties open at the front, a whole range of models that, at least in Europe, can only be found in sex shops, which can’t help but arouse curiosity given the strict morality and Islamic modesty around women’s bodies.
Then, at seven, I went with the second secretary to the Foreign Ministry for a formal talk with the minister. His advisor for Latin America spoke excellent French and some Spanish, and the minister himself had served as ambassador in Cuba and Venezuela for ten years. Both agreed that Iran wanted closer links with our country, since they saw us as an economically prosperous area. Their friendship with Venezuela and Bolivia had opened their eyes. We returned the compliments. They insisted on their desire for Colombia to reestablish a diplomatic presence in Tehran, which it had not had since the Uribe government had severed relations in 2002. We promised to bear it in mind, ate more delicious pistachios with tea, and half an hour later were back out on the street.
That night we had dinner in a traditional restaurant: meat, kebabs, rice with saffron, mint, extraordinary flavors. It’s difficult to enjoy a dinner of that caliber without any kind of wine. Instead, we drank tea and mineral water. A little later I saw a singular spectacle, when a customer wanted to show his appreciation of the singer by offering him money. The master of ceremonies changed the sum into small notes and threw them over the singer, one by one, a shower of dinars, a colorful custom that, if any of our drug barons had seen it, would surely have become established in our country.
The following day we opened at the same hour.
The wait was a long one, but at last, about twelve, Juana appeared. She seemed unreal to me, as if looming out of a fog: an idea that materializes and takes on form and body, that emerges from a wood or a lagoon, from something symbolic, and at the same time, profoundly human. Was she beautiful? Anyone preceded by a history like hers would have been. I greeted her, holding back the emotion I felt. She was in fact very attractive. All Manuel’s words were in her: in her smile and her proud eyes, in her colossal expression of strength. She gave me a hug, then showed me her baby.
“This is Manuelito.”
Something in her expression, a certain weariness or sadness, bore witness to the blows she had received. I offered her tea. When we had moved apart from the others, I looked her in the eyes and said, have you decided? are you coming with me?
“Yes,” she replied, “everything’s ready. Is the flight on Sunday?”
I told her she could come to my hotel and we would leave from there. For obvious reasons, I didn’t put her name down as someone coming with our delegation, because that might cause diplomatic problems. But she would travel by my side. She said yes. We went to the office and she herself checked that the child’s documents were in order. Her passport had already been drawn up, as well as the birth certificate (Manuel Sayeq Hedayat Manrique). Having done this, the second secretary proceeded to remove the adhesive from the passport for the signature, but when I went to take hold of it, Juana stopped me.
“No, please, you keep them. I don’t want to take the risk of someone finding them. I’ll get to your hotel at eleven o’clock on Sunday, with everything ready. Thank you.”
I walked her to the door. She said goodbye with a sad, nervous smile. I watched her walking along the street in the direction of the avenue. Then I called my travel agent in Delhi to get his confirmation, and ordered him to send the tickets for her and the child on the same return flight that he had reserved for me. Foreseeing this situation, I had taken a return for Sunday, whereas Olympia and the second secretary were going back on Saturday. I trusted them completely, but I preferred not to have witnesses.
On the day of the flight, Juana arrived at the specified hour, with two small suitcases. Manuel Sayeq was asleep in her arms. She seemed nervous, but her eyes were hard and determined. She had swum in difficult waters, cold and deep; she was used to making definitive and even cruel decisions. I omitted to ask about her husband or to mention her life in Iran, the life she was on the point of abandoning. Now was not the time.
She was wearing a blue jacket gathered in at the waist and covering her hips, as is traditional, and a veil, which was also blue, but a little lighter. She clearly respected the hijab, which is obligatory in Iran. Her eyes were beautiful. They stood out. The day before, I had dismissed the chauffeur I had been given by the government, so I called a taxi. Toward noon we set off for the airport, and when we got there we checked in without incident. The only anxious moment was when we went through Immigration, but since she was with me and I had a diplomatic passport, nobody asked any questions. When we got on the Mahan
Air plane, she clasped her son to her chest and wept in silence.
The flight lasted four and a half hours, but I preferred not to ask her any questions and she barely spoke during the journey. I only heard her making a fuss of Manuel Sayeq on two occasions when the child woke up and demanded her breast.
When we got to Delhi, Indian Immigration had a ten-day visa ready for her, which I had arranged the previous week, explaining that it was an urgent case. There were no problems, and around midnight we got to my house in Jangpura. Manuel Sayeq was asleep in his mother’s arms. I told Juana where the lights, the refrigerator, and the pantry were, and settled them in my study.
Then she took off her veil and said, “Goodbye to that rag, goodbye forever.”
She unfastened her bun and her hair fell over her shoulders.
“You really do have a lot of books, Consul,” she said. “Can I take a look?”
“Of course, they’re arranged by author, more or less in alphabetical order.”
She walked slowly between the shelves and passed her finger over a few spines. Suddenly she took one out, read something that made her smile, and looked at it again. Then another one. She also looked at my pictures. Her attention was drawn to an oil painting of Saint Sebastian.
“It’s by my mother,” I said, “She’s an artist.”
“I like them,” she said. “They suffer and prefer not to see the world, and don’t like the world to see them.”
She continued walking around among the books while I switched on my computer to check my messages. I was hoping for something from the lawyer in Bangkok, but there was nothing. Then it struck me that people don’t write work-related e-mails at the weekend.
Suddenly she said, “Do you have any art books?”
“Yes,” I said, “anything in particular?”
Night Prayers Page 17
