Who Among Us (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Mario Benedetti

  VIII

  But why insist on my childhood, when what I really want to talk about is Alicia, to get a clear picture of her, to know if I was right to let her go to Buenos Aires, to have written her such a hypocritical, repugnant and sickly letter yesterday. I’d have to start by admitting I was never entirely sure what terms our relationship was based on. There has always been a grey area where our gestures, silences and what we said could just as well have meant hatred or love, pity or indifference. When Alicia smiles, I never know if it’s a real smile or a grimace, if it’s spontaneous or comes from a fleeting, deliberate attempt to show compassion. It’s obvious that there is in her, or in me, or in both of us, some impossibility, some misunderstanding, that spoils our love for one another. Because even though I’ve always been a failure, though I’ve always faced life anxiously and reluctantly, there was a time when I enjoyed the bitterness I felt, when I at least appreciated complementary contrasts, like colours cancelling each other out; there was a time when I confused hope with daydreams. This timid acceptance was easy to mistake for happiness, and perhaps justified the reputation I had back then (a lad who knows how to live, someone who has fun) that today seems almost a mythical memory.

  At that absurd age, Alicia appeared, with her stern, sensible face, offering me at least a parody of salvation. I still have no idea how she, the smallest of us all, managed to survive among those brutes in the fourth year of secondary school who performed their rite of loud, coarse behaviour alongside their sour constellations of acne. Yet from the very first day her steady voice was the first to answer the roll call. I was simultaneously aware of her surname, her slightly husky voice and her irresistibly casual disdain. That was even before I had seen her face, and could only make out her huddled shoulders and the nape of her neck between coils of black hair. That same afternoon, during the last break, we told each other our first names.

  IX

  What’s left of that Alicia, the one prior to Lucas, the Alicia who used to walk twelve blocks with me, exchanging trivial confessions, trifling secrets, classroom gossip? Those journeys back from school are my only treasure, the only prosperity I’ve known in my life. Every day we went home in a zigzag, colluding innocently to avoid any family spying. On two corners I had the right to help her across by lightly taking hold of her arm. Only on rare occasions did we – ever so gingerly – bring up the topic of love as it related to others. We refused to fall into that insipid, repetitive dialogue, the verbal smooching of adolescents in love, and yet we stalked round it, in an area peopled by the smugly abolished past, our parents’ inevitable lack of understanding, everything we thought so deeply about before falling asleep, and the future – the hidden, unfathomable, desperately makeshift future in front of us.

  Obviously, I was deceiving myself in that fledgling happiness, falling into naive traps I had set myself. I told Alicia in great detail about my father’s commercial knack but religiously avoided mentioning the terrors of my childhood, still so close I shuddered to recall them. I did make fun, though in an openly tender way, of my mother’s endless jumpiness, but I didn’t talk about her stubborn goodness, the way she never asked anything of anyone. It’s true that during this period of transformation I was playing at being the cheerful optimist, and yet I was always dogged by an inescapable sense of disgust. It was a bogus well-being that led me to laugh, become emotional, sometimes even to shout out loud. And even though now I am increasingly aware of that fraudulence, I must admit that back then it felt good to stand on the corner opposite Alicia’s house watching her continue on her own, and waiting for the moment when, ten metres before she arrived at the big marble balconies, she turned round and closed her eyes tight, the innocent code for a farewell greeting.

  X

  But that was all a false prosperity. Lucas came on the scene, and from our very first encounter I was certain of two things that were to be vital elements of my future: that I would never be able to hate him, but that his presence would somehow disrupt my life and confirm my shame.

  Lucas joined the class halfway through the year. This meant his attendance was erratic, because he was not fully enrolled. I was aware what I was risking and yet I couldn’t avoid falling for his vague friendship. We used to be (and perhaps still are) strikingly similar in looks. For a long while, the whole class thought we were related in some way, and even now there’s always some absent-minded classmate from those days who, greeting me in passing on the street, automatically asks about ‘my cousin’.

  But Lucas and I knew how different we were – I did especially, finding myself disoriented by his almost shocking directness. His was obviously a much less troubled character than mine, and even though he never burst out laughing or took part in our class’s customarily boorish behaviour, he seemed to be content with life and the people around him, as if he had never been affected by their egotism or life’s incoherence. I’ve never managed to convince myself that Lucas isn’t able to see and feel things as they really are, and this has sometimes led me paradoxically to attribute his frankness to an extraordinary degree of hypocrisy and duplicity. But since on the other hand I can’t honestly admit that I believe things must only be the way I see them, that on the contrary both his impressions and mine could be naively superficial, based on appearances (that is, the hypocritical part of reality) I had to then, and must now, accept the Lucas that reveals himself to me, the sincere Lucas, a man of his word, someone with integrity. I failed in every attempt I made to twist his words, to make him say what he didn’t mean, to get him to admit things he didn’t want to admit.

  Lucas was never a brilliant talker; he was more a brilliant non-talker. Faced with his impassive, ambiguous expression, you could exhaust yourself saying everything there was to say and more, and his silence – which didn’t seem obstinate, but natural (as if there were nothing more to be added to what he heard) – was incredibly provocative. You went on and on because you felt you had to break his silence. It became a kind of sacred duty, an unavoidable obligation, to somehow prod him into a reaction. Whenever this happened, you were sorry you had said everything in such a jumbled fashion, and only then became aware how utterly meaningless it had all been.

  XI

  It was no easy task to get Alicia to accept Lucas. Before bringing him into our friendship, I had given her a vivid account of his merits. However, neither the theoretical contact with them, nor her subsequent comparison with his physical presence, seemed to Alicia sufficiently interesting to create a cordial relationship in either of them. She always agreed with me and disagreed with Lucas. Their clashes were sometimes so violent it was only because they were so well brought up that they didn’t degenerate into slanging matches.

  It was as a witness to these arguments that I began to confirm what I was vaguely afraid of. It was clear both of them took great pleasure in being challenged by someone of their own class, with similar qualities and impulses. Apparently, I was the one they both felt closest to. Lucas was always ready to encourage my contributions with a friendly smile. Alicia relaxed from her fierce discussions with Lucas by looking at me with a steadfast tenderness that was something like (not that I was taken in: it was only something like) love. It was plain that the two of them really liked me, were loyal to me and would carry on being so. I was certain of that. They, however, did not like each other: they needed one another. And in the end, this led to the undoing of the love and friendship I felt for them both.

  I knew I was there as their witness, and that they also knew this and valued me as such. The worst of it was that I couldn’t blame them for that, from the moment when I attributed myself a secondary role and consciously vegetated in their shadow.

  On Tuesdays and Fridays Lucas didn’t attend school, and so I walked home with Alicia as usual. But it was impossible for me to regain the special aura those walks had held before Lucas appeared. I had thought then that I was seeing the most complete expression of Alicia’s character. But with him around I became aware of how much mor
e she had to give, how far she was prepared to follow her passionate nature, and so the all too obvious effort she made to listen to me was bound to seem like an absent-minded, second-hand attentiveness. I wasn’t satisfied with this, even though I couldn’t expect anything else.

  On Saturday evenings I went out with Lucas. We would go to the movies or the theatre and afterwards stay out late in a café. I can still clearly see his lanky figure of those days, the strange way he had of smoothing down his hair, his overcoat’s frayed lapels.

  We talked very little; sometimes we went for ages without saying a single word, each of us caught up in his own thoughts, merely glancing at the other tables when some loudmouth was laughing hysterically, or at the street outside if a woman worth the trouble was passing by. I have to admit that for me those evenings were irreplaceable, even though with Lucas I had the same impression as with Alicia: it was obvious that he came with me out of a sense of obligation, especially since he sensed how much his being there meant to me, even if this was reduced to little more than tolerant, opaque silence. I don’t recall him ever failing to be friendly towards me, but nor can I remember him ever becoming excited, his face lighting up the way it did when he was debating with Alicia.

  I’ve always been fascinated by that awareness, that impromptu sense of discretion. Yet I’ve never wanted – and of course would never have found it possible – to be like him. I understand this may be merely a symptom of the most pronounced of my many shortcomings: my lack not only of ambition but also of envy. An envious person has willpower, the drive to make an effort, or at worst the impulse to do something, and indirectly this makes him distinguished, hard-working, tireless. Envy is the only vice nourished by virtues, that lives thanks to them.

  But I’ve never possessed that marvellous gift. I’ve often been touched by other people’s success; I’m also moved by the success I might have had. But I’m not jealous of anybody else’s triumph, even if it could have been mine. It hits me – and hard – simply as a confirmation of my subordinate role. For that reason alone and no other.

  XII

  It’s only now, as I write the word ‘jealous’, that for the first time I realize that my obvious inability to feel jealous over Alicia is part of my inability to feel envy in general. I still don’t know if at any point I was in love with her, but that’s more because I question my emotional capacity. I inevitably perceive people and things as far superior to what they are in reality, and consider my personal goals as being far beyond what I can attain. And this has become something of a curse, an obscure, suffocating punishment.

  Any naive teenager, or shop assistant, or skiving student who experienced the sort of affection I felt for Alicia, would have thought they were in heaven. And even if sooner or later, as always happens, everything fell apart, the memory of it would always have had an evocative power; that is, a kind of essence, capable of confirming that beyond the bounds of our everyday existence there exists another region, another country, that we can visit nervously (only as a tourist, of course, and with the tourist’s anxious curiosity) and which it’s good to know we are not barred from entering. But I, who in those days was also an ordinary adolescent, in no way superior to the local shop assistant or the college student, I, who felt an infinite tenderness towards Alicia that even today I am not ashamed of, never dreamed I was in heaven, convinced as I was that being in love was something more than this spontaneous intimacy, something more than my fervent desire for her presence, than the twelve blocks of conversation each day. I sense now, however, it must be much less than that.

  XIII

  There is no point in saying now that Alicia represented an unattainable love. I couldn’t be jealous of her, because at no moment did I feel I had the slightest right to possess her. I knew she would never be mine. And I’m still unable to decide whether I was mistaken or not.

  Alicia read the whole time. She knew what was being said about an author, and also had her own, carefully formed opinions. I recall that at one point she lent me a novel by M. As with almost all the authors I read then, I found it pretty boring. Despite this, I was determined to finish the book. Simply to please Alicia, I tried to formulate a judgement on it, and to substantiate my view. I reread the book, filling the margins with marks, innocuous comments designed to show my interest. But when, handing it back to her, I started detailing my impressions, Alicia stopped me with an equivocal, revealing remark: ‘Oh, don’t worry about it.’ This is a trivial detail, but it left me feeling both sad and relieved. Her discouragement put an end to my awkwardness, to my crazy attempt to be for her something I never was for myself.

  XIV

  One evening Lucas and Alicia discovered music. It must have been a mutual revelation, the shared experience both of them were unconsciously waiting for in order to recognize one another, to know what to expect, openly to reach – stepping on dry land for the first time – the true meaning of their relationship.

  They discovered music thanks to me. We were coming out of a class on Latin authors and Alicia asked if I could lend her Daphnis and Chloe. I asked why it interested her. ‘In fact,’ she said, ‘I’m not sure if it interests me. I don’t know the work. I’d just like to know what interested Ravel.’ The name struck Lucas like a thunderbolt. His face relaxed completely, with the apprehensive but delighted expression of someone who can’t quite believe in a heaven-sent gift. ‘Ravel?’ he asked, as if saying: ‘So this is what you and I are, this is where we meet.’ And although for Alicia the revelation wasn’t so much a surprise as the confirmation of an affinity she had already suspected, the moment was decisive anyway. It brought about such an abrupt change in their almost daily interactions, in the way they argued, in the mutual esteem in which, without having fully noticed it until then, they held each other, that all this seemed to envelop them in an atmosphere of palpable happiness, an evident pleasure in one another that in the end, superficially at least, infected me as well.

  XV

  It’s curious that I have to look back to that period to find the only clear image I have of the teenage Alicia. No doubt she was happy then, and her happiness works automatically as a photographic fixer. The fact is that it costs me no effort at all to conjure her in her suede jacket, with a scruffy red beret and a silk scarf that was too solemn for her look (better suited, perhaps, to a spruce fifty-something than to frame her narrow face, her prominent, pale, soft cheeks and fine, almost wary lips), talking disparagingly about Saint-Saëns as if in reality she didn’t admire him, and waxing lyrical over Stravinsky as if in reality she understood him.

  I can’t help but feel slightly resentful whenever I realize I never experienced Alicia’s happiness directly, but always received it second hand. I’ve been a spectator; I was never included in the joy radiating from her regions of joy. And yet this allowed me a rare objectivity in my assessment of her, an objectivity that continues to this day, when we have arrived at the brink of crisis.

  I think even now I’m still well placed to take stock of what’s happening, coolly and impartially, in the same way Lucas must carefully measure the postures and problems of the characters in his stories.

  Having said that, I suspect Lucas needs a bit more real reality. His stories always seem too closely lived, as though they aim to be little more than experience, amplified – I know that’s what he claims whenever he gets the chance. And yet reality is much more commonplace, mediocre, dull. I, for example, am rooted in reality; that’s why I could never be one of Lucas’s characters. For him to one day write a story about me is the only chance I have of becoming someone brilliant. Yes, maybe if Lucas turned me into a character I would be brilliant, someone who only stays in the background out of modesty, and not because they can’t do anything else; someone who lets others act out of generosity, and not impotence. I’m sure that in such a portrayal not even I would recognize the impenetrable egotist, the incurable coward that I really am. The fact is, art never ceases to be a lie; when it’s true it’s no longer art, and so
it’s boring, because reality is nothing more than irreparable, absurd tedium. But this turns everything into a blind alley for me. Real reality bores me, and art often strikes me as clever, but never effective or legitimate. Simply a naive means employed by certain disillusioned people, who are either shameless or melancholic, to lie to themselves, or worse still, to lie to me. And I don’t want to be lied to, or lie to myself. I want to know everything about myself.

  XVI

  On Christmas Eve 1934, Alicia left with her family for the interior. For four years all I received from her was an occasional postcard and a punctual birthday card. At the same time, in our final years at school Lucas and I drifted apart. We saw each other only by accident, as though Alicia’s presence had been the only thing binding our friendship or, maybe more precisely, as if our friendship had been a pretext to guarantee her presence.

  I’ve never been able to anchor myself to any one person in particular; I’ve never needed – I don’t know if for good or ill – to be the reflection of other people’s affections. And yet at first I felt a certain annoyance (albeit tinged with a certain pleasure) at finding myself alone. Alicia’s absence, and the melancholy this absence produced, was for me a kind of falling in love, maybe the only kind that was (and still is) permitted to me. I have to admit, though, that this feeling was so confused it never managed to stir my emotions or kindle my tenderness, because it was only rarely that my tepid nostalgia led me to think things like: ‘I’d like her to be here,’ or ‘What would Alicia say about this?’ or even ‘What might she be doing right now?’ And yet, any possibility that I was in love with her vanished the day I found myself wondering what Lucas would think about something, and clearly I was not in love with him.