Two years later, something new happened, which was that his laptop got damaged and he had to buy a new one. I managed to get hold of the old machine and tried to get into it, but I couldn’t so I hired a specialist. The man charged me seven hundred dollars, but anyway now I could get into the files and see what was there: his drafts of books, his rejected poems and the final versions, his personal pages, which didn’t really have much. It was when I connected it to the internet that things turned good, because that was when I saw all those e-mails from a travel agency confirming flights from Miami to Johannesburg via Sao Paulo, the first leg on Continental Airlines and the second with Varig.
I was puzzled, what on earth was José doing in Johannesburg? And worse still: why didn’t he take me with him if his route took in my native country, Brazil? why did he go every year? who did he have there? Through the e-mails I found out that whenever he arrived in Johannesburg he would rent a hotel room for three days and then disappear. Where did he go? My theory was that he was going into the jungle to spread the word of God, he wouldn’t have been the first to do that with native tribes. The next time he left on a journey I was prepared. After saying goodbye to him I went to the travel agency and asked to speak with the employee who had done the ticket for him. The man received me in his office, but said he couldn’t reveal Mr. Burnett’s itinerary–that was the name on his passport–unless I could prove I was his wife by bringing in a marriage license. I changed tactics and stroked his penis through his pants. I said that if he gave me that simple piece of information I’d give him a blowjob in the bathroom of the bar across the street. The man agreed to give me a copy of the complete printout: flights, hotel, times, everything. When he’d finished I changed my mind and said, listen, wouldn’t you prefer a hundred dollar bill? My gums are bleeding and I wouldn’t like to get blood on you. Then I went and called the hotel in South Africa and asked for Burnett and they said, he’s arriving tomorrow, madam, would you like to leave a message? Yes, I said, there are problems with the transportation to the jungle so he’ll have to wait. There was a silence at the other end, until the person said, what jungle are you referring to, madam? I thought it was weird that somebody in Africa should ask me that, but I had to keep up the lie. Mr. Burnett hired transportation from his hotel to the jungle, but there have been some problems and he’ll have to wait. Another silence on the line. There must be some mistake, he said, Mr. Burnett can’t have rented any transportation, because on Friday he’s taking the Tupolev to Tristan da Cunha, we booked it for him.
I hung up, and went and looked up Tristan da Cunha on the internet and, to my surprise, it turned out to be a tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic, halfway between Africa and America, with a population of three hundred. Why the hell had José been going there all these years? I confess I still don’t know.
A strange silence descended, interrupting Egiswanda, and at that moment the lights came on.
Immediately a voice announced that the danger was over and that we could go back to our rooms. The light from the generator had started working and reality, after that horrible flickering, seemed to have returned to us. But we weren’t the same anymore. In the light I recognized some of the shadows: there were Kosztolányi and Supervielle, and I even thought I saw Kaplan in the distance. Our faces were haggard. Marta was so pale she worried me, and Egiswanda, who I had never seen in the light, looked really grim-faced. From the way they were both looking at me I assumed they were struck by my appearance, too.
It was clear that the situation was moving quickly, that our days at the conference were coming to an end.
We went up in the elevator, after a long wait for our turn. When we reached the floor where my room was, Egiswanda looked at us anxiously and said, can I stay with you a while longer, I feel a bit scared. Marta hugged her and said, of course, our room is also yours, I think we should drink something. We sat down on the bed with some gins from the mini-bar and Egiswanda continued her story.
One day José himself said to me, why do you never ask me where I go? to which I replied: because I know perfectly well you won’t answer and I’m not stupid. José was silent for a long while, lost in thought, and finally said: you’ll come with me soon to live in another country, I’m getting everything ready for that; it will do you good, you and the people who need you, the moment is coming, you just have to wait.
Time passed and one day he said, get your bags ready, we’re going on a journey. I thought he was referring to a change of motel, but he said, no, we’re going to travel together, bring your passport, and that’s how we came to this conference. Of course he didn’t want us to share a room and asked me not to be close to him. He said: stay in your room and think about important things like your destiny or the destiny of the world, I’ll come for you when I need you. The day of his talk, he asked me to go and hear him, saying: only by listening to me will you finally understand who I am, and that was what I did, I went to hear him. I listened to him eagerly, drinking in his every word. I cried. I got goose bumps. I got wet. I felt all that, listening to him. It was what I’d been waiting to hear for years and I assumed there would be a change in our life. First the journey and then his words, why wouldn’t I have imagined that everything was about to change? Men like José, who love humanity, aren’t capable of loving one particular person; that’s something they have in common with the prophets. When he finished his talk I met him in the corridor and tried to speak to him, but he brushed me aside, saying we would talk later, he would come and find me.
I was in my room waiting for him, with the TV on, and had no idea what had happened. I found out in the most brutal way, because I kept calling his room until the switchboard operator answered, and said, we’re terribly sorry, the guest in that room has just had an accident. I went to reception and that’s where I heard the news. I almost fainted. They also gave me a letter, they said they’d been going to take it up to my room but had been distracted. A letter? I recognized José’s handwriting on the envelope and when I opened it I found another envelope inside, with these words written on it: Don’t read this today, wait until tomorrow. I went into a corner to cry, trying to hide my grief from everyone, but then I said to myself, if he’s not here anymore there’s no reason for me to hide, I’m not harming anyone and I deserve to be able to cry for him, after all the sacrifices and the sad, solitary life I’d lived with him. I deserved to cry rivers of tears in that lobby where nobody knew I was his wife, which was why nobody had a kind word, nobody bothered to talk to me with any kind of tact, it was just: the man slit his wrists, they took his body to the morgue; I tried going to his room but, as I walked toward it, I felt his presence and got scared. I thought he was watching me and was going to fly into a temper, seeing me break the rules: never approach him, only wait for him to come, so I went back to my room and lay down on the carpet to cry, I wanted to drink but I couldn’t swallow the alcohol, I’d lost even that, and besides, he wouldn’t be there to take care of me anymore, so I cried and cried until there were no more tears left, until the last cell of grief left my body, and I was empty, and this city and this destruction and all that’s happening here seemed to me the ideal place from which to go away, and I even imagined that if I slit my wrists I could still get to him, get to where he was before he moved off and squeeze his hand and fly together to who knows where, I don’t know what there is after death, because deep down I’m not very religious. The world hurts me without him, the light and the air, everything hurts me without him. This conference and its delegates hurt me. The world is still turning, as if nothing had happened. I can’t believe it, José’s death can’t go unnoticed, like the fall of a dead leaf in a forest. It can’t be. I’ve read the letter about ten times or perhaps a hundred, and I know parts of it by heart. I have it here, would it bother you if I read it aloud? Marta wiped the tears from her cheeks and said, no, please, Wanda, read it.
Before doing that, Wanda asked if she could go to the bathroom to wipe her tears and freshen up, but w
hat we heard were two loud snorts. She came out looking a little better, and said, you two are special, you’re the only people in all this mass of vanity who really care about José’s death. She picked up the letter and read:
Wanda,
My purpose isn’t to explain to you what happened to me, and notice that I’m speaking in the past tense, not in the future, even though as I write this nothing has happened yet. But it will happen. There are no reasons for certain things, and there doesn’t exist the slightest possibility of transferring experiences that are untransferable. Within three hours at the most, I will leave this frozen planet for good, and unlike Jesus Christ, my master, I won’t be coming back on the third day, because despite your admiration for me and the books I’ve written I’ve never been anything other than a total shit, a swindler. I’m not coming back after three days, among other things because nobody is waiting for me, with the possible exception of you. I am going to the world of the shadows, where I lived curled up before I was born, before somebody put their hand in that bag and pulled me out by the scruff of my neck and dumped me in the world, a hand that left me defenseless and in the most terrifying solitude, or, which amounts to the same thing, said, aha, my brother, I saw you, have a nice stay in this shithouse, you’re going to spend a few decades here, you already know that, the rest depends on you, you will see whether after a while you will be the grain that appears in the shit or the paper that cleans it or the stream of water that pushes it through the pipe, I give you those three possibilities, I’m feeling generous today—the hand continues—because, my friend, we’ll meet again during the race, and then the hand withdrew from the world with a nervous and rapid gesture, like someone pulling their hand out of a snake pit, and there I was lying on the street, bleeding and weeping, covered in entrails and shit, more alone than the first man on earth, without a trace of a past and without a history, my memories are the dirty walls of an orphanage, the concrete floor of a kitchen, the garbage piled up in the corners, a leaning lamppost filled with pigeons, anyway, I tried to do something in life and I don’t know if I succeeded, but it’s over now, what’s going to happen to me, in fact what’s already happening, can’t be changed, and that’s why I’m writing to you, let’s hope by the time you read this letter the situation in the city hasn’t gotten worse, because this is a farewell and a request, but let’s take things one at a time; first I’ll say goodbye and thank you for all the suffering and the deep faith you always had, accepting those silences and those abysses of mine, you were the strong one and I was the absent one, you were the island of air and clouds and me the nothingness; you knew how to respect my silences, which climbed all over yours and were harder to bear, and I say thank you, seriously, thank you, Wandita, my queen, what I am saying comes from the heart and there is something important: together with this letter there is a smaller blue envelope and a yellow one. Open the yellow one, you’ll find the details of a bank account into which I’ve transferred all the money I have, which now belongs to you, because you will have to carry on without me.
The request has to do with the other envelope. Look for God in the deep, say the gospels and that is what you are going to do; you are a rock on a cliff, strong, tough, I never told you these things but today I am saying them and writing them, so that you know they were inside me, so that you remember them, I leave you these words; being so close to death leads me to say them to you, I don’t know, in any case you deserve them and they are yours, in the end, I am leaving many things but not you or your company, my own life has finally caught up with me and now I can only escape by flying, like the birds or the souls, oh, the past never ends and is unpredictable; one of the first things I think I will ask the Big Enchilada, if he forgives me and I can see him even if only for a couple of minutes, is why he puts us to live on the tightrope of time, which brings us so much anguish and makes us act wickedly sometimes as long as we forget that sensation of emptiness, which is why we seek instant pleasures and put coke in our veins and look for ways to escape, but it doesn’t work, time is relentless and is always there in the corner, that’s what I want to ask the Big Boss, not even about my origin or about this shithouse where he made us live, but about the mystery of time; anyway, I’m finally getting to the point, because I don’t even understand myself anymore and I don’t want to write this letter again: in the blue envelope there is a map with an island marked on it and directions on how to get there, like in stories about treasures, except that in this case the treasure is the whole island, the one place on Earth where peace exists, a rock remote from the world where I would have liked to take you, I really had planned to take you there if this emergency had not come up, so the request is that you go and settle there; you can go whenever you like and move into our house, ask for the chaplain, his name is Talisker, he will help you because he knows about you and knows you’ll arrive sooner or later. You have to go there to be pure and clean and then, when that day arrives, you will make the leap into the infinite where the Big Enchilada and I will be waiting for you; but in the meantime go there and stay, that island is how I was when I was born, something small and solitary, lost in the world; on it you will be protected by millions of tons of water and you will be happy, because it is an emanation of the soul of God; my last gift is more solitude, Wanda, but what can I do, I was born alone; when I look at the world it will be to imagine that you are there, on that solitary dot, and to tell me that that pure uncontaminated place is Wanda’s island.
When she finished reading, Egiswanda brushed away a few tears, and said, thank you for listening to me, being with you has been a real consolation; José’s death is slowly becoming part of my life, and that’s how it must be, a grief that very, very slowly turns to resignation. Then she swallowed two pills out of a bottle, closed her eyes, and laid her head on one of the pillows, saying, let me sleep here, I beg you, I don’t want to be alone.
Marta put on one of my T-shirts and lay down next to her. I sat down on the carpet, thinking about Maturana’s words, José Maturana’s life. I was slowly drifting off to sleep, but before sleeping I asked myself: what kind of island is that? is it true you can find peace and tranquility there? I had a strange dream. I dreamed I had woken up in a clinic in ruins. My room had a hole in the wall and part of the roof had blown away because of some kind of explosion. I opened my eyes and looked up at the sky. There was nothing in it apart from a faint tinge of color, but I felt calm. From the bed ran cables connecting me to machines to check my heartbeat, my blood pressure, my breathing. There was nobody around. I heard the sound of the wind blowing through the dusty, rubble-filled corridors. The medical staff had left and I was the last patient, but my bandages were clean. How quiet it is, I said to myself, is this what death is like? There was no way of knowing. Suddenly a bird came to rest on the back of my bed. It looked at me in surprise, moved its head rapidly from side to side, and flapped its wings, stirring the air, and again I felt alone. The sickness had disappeared and I breathed in the air with relish, I could feel its sweet taste, the joy of its clean, fresh taste. My temperature was fine, below 96 degrees. The coolness of my body was transmitted to my soul. I was alone but I had recovered.
The next day the city woke up to silence.
After the night’s explosions the air seemed even thicker with mist and smoke. It was hard to see anything beyond a few yards. We were advised not to leave the hotel and to avoid the windows. Marta was asleep beside me and Egiswanda had gone, so I decided to go down and sit at one of the tables in the coffee shop, with my notebook. I drank two very black coffees. I put down in my notes what had happened the night before, the appointment with Sabina Vedovelli, her proposition, the air raid, and Egiswanda’s long story, all these things seemed to be finally putting an end to my period as a writer who does not write, so I immersed myself in my notes with a concentration close to what I had before my illness.
An hour later, the explosions started again. Every now and again, you could hear the unmistakable whistle of a gre
nade crossing the sky and how it was intercepted by the defense system, creating an area of conflagration. But I carried on with my notes. One can get used to anything, believe me. As Hemingway might have said: outside they are fighting for a city or for a world, but at this moment I belong to this pen and this notebook.
Some time later, I went back up to my room. I had to get ready for the round table at noon, The Soul of Words: A Look Inside, for which I had brought a number of short texts I could read in case the muses of inspiration did not lend me a hand. It was my first contribution to the conference and I wanted to make a good impression, especially after that had happened with the first of my round tables. By the time I got to my room, Marta had gone. Her laptop was open at a page with the heading The Body of a Suicide, but the screen was blank. Instead of writing she had been chatting: I saw various windows open with answers sent twenty minutes earlier: are you still there? are you coming back? What to say in my talk? I would talk about literature and life, I thought; I felt the desire to compare it with other artistic disciplines and also to tell human stories. I wanted many things but only had twenty minutes. The texts I had prepared had been written for other conferences or for short story anthologies, so I had to find a way to adapt them to the debate.
After a good shower, I dressed in a newly ironed suit, although without a tie; I combed my hair as best I could and went down scented and ready for my performance, which was in the Heroes of Masada room.
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