Smoke doesn’t suit hair as blonde as mine. Now, a girl with a shock of hair black as a raven’s wing, that would be different. So I thought, ‘I’ll wash my hair: forty minutes.’ Such a momentous decision called for a truce. I smoked a whole cigarette, pulling faces at myself in my mirror, which used to have – I guess it still does, whether they’ve sold it or not – a crack down the middle that swallowed my reflection, literally sucked it in. Not that I ever asked for a new one; given how obsessed mamá is with keeping up appearances, she’d have been quite capable of buying me a two-metre-square mirror with a gilt frame. I was fascinated by this cracked mirror, which is why I still remember it: I found one just like it in a junk shop, a mirror with a frame as white as bone and the same identical crack; it was like my old mirror had come back to me and time had narrowed and deepened the crack.
I thought about turning on the battered old transistor in my room, but then I remembered a friend of mine, Silvio, had given me some records and said, ‘I’m lending you these so you can learn to really listen to music.’ Given that I trusted him, because I’ve known him since we were kids, I didn’t call him on it, but if it had been anyone else, one of the parasites of the night, I’d have said, ‘Go on, ask me a question; let’s see if I flunk.’ But Silvio was a good guy, he worried about me, about my lack of culture; besides, he was right: when it came to music I knew sweet-fucking-nada. Mariángela, now she knew everything there was to know; she was always dropping the names of singers and even song titles in English.
Up in the hay fever of my room, I thought, ‘Why don’t I go downstairs and learn music and English from Silvio’s records?’ But the minute I stood up, I sat down again. ‘No, what would I want to go downstairs for?’ I thought, sort of beweeping my outcast state. ‘Why would I want to listen to music in front of everyone [though at this hour ‘everyone’ was three servants and our dopey mutt who I think is a ‘lapdog’ in more ways than one], why would I want to listen to music at a respectable volume when last night it was thumping? Besides, I’d only have to turn it down because the minute papá and mamá came home from lunch, they’d say, “Turn that thing down!”’ So I thought, ‘No, no I’m not going downstairs,’ and walked over to the window. It was only two steps away. It took me three.
What I wanted was to close the curtains, maybe go back to sleep. But I didn’t. I stared down the day (quite a healthy move), knowing it was going to be horrible, ringed by those black mountains with their frizzy little hairs. Was the black guy spreading his legs?
The reader might think that this thing of seeing knees where there are mountains is because the pelada has already been hitting her stash … Okay, let’s talk about drugs: weed left me with a heavy feeling in my belly, rambling thoughts, nausea, spiky hair, lethargy, insomnia; next came the little rivers of fire like tiny caterpillars biting into my brain (at least I still realized I had a brain), a melancholy feeling in my mouth, a weakness in my legs and, sometimes, shooting pains in my crotch.
But, oh, what was any of that compared to the vast, eternally new, never-completely-explored terrain of hard black sand you discover as the music plays? Like I’ve said before, when it comes to culture I’m a total ignoramus, yet I could hear every sound, every constellation of wonders. Is that how other people do it?
I closed my eyes to the mountains. As for the park, forget about it; I couldn’t drag myself down there yet, I’d get caught up in its embrace sooner or later when I went down to face the day. As I thought about this, I was distracted by what looked like tiny dragonflies. When I forced my eyes in opposite directions, they tripled; when I squinted I saw a swarm of them on the tip of my nose. This I didn’t like. I squeezed my eyes tight shut to forget. Forgetting was good, I saw thousands of colours, then only two: green and the saddest grey in the whole world, forming crosswords, cartoon speech bubbles with no words, the green fragmenting to become a million tiny points like pins buried deep, then I opened my eyes again. I overexposed the mountains (I use that word because papá is a photographer), their frizzy hairs, the blue sky. Was it blue because I overexposed it or because the day really was improving? No, it was arid and anguished after a long year without a single drop of rain falling on this good earth. ‘Who cares about the rain?’ people would say. ‘Just seeing you, that hair of yours, I feel refreshed.’ And I looked down happily. But they also said, ‘Has a plague fallen on this city?’ And some guy answered, ‘Let it come down,’ hurling himself on to the dance floor, small and frenetic. And I danced too. I was the second-best dancer (Mariángela was always the best) and I don’t remember anyone saying anything else. All the people who knew English sang along with the lyrics, beautiful lights flickered on and there were no sad thoughts, just pure frenzy. As they say.
So, anyway, I decided to head straight for the bathroom. I also decided to order a big breakfast (which was not straightforward, unfortunately) to be ready by the time I went downstairs. I yelled down my order and headed for the bathroom, pulling off my shirt and pants along the way.
I always took freezing-cold showers; I still do. I tried to take my time soaping myself. I counted to thousands and then, stepping out of the shower, I sang as I untangled my hair.
Outside the windows the day was hard and dry. I decided I wouldn’t go out after breakfast, not in that sunshine, and I thought gloomily, ‘If only someone would come and claim me, whisk me off to some cold climate.’ But if I didn’t go out, then what? An hour later I’d have to have lunch with the whole family. Not that I’d have a problem eating again, I’ve got the appetite of a wild boar, but I hated the heavy silence at mealtimes, broken only by mamá singing snatches of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy songs in her falsetto voice. She couldn’t stand any other kind of music; she used to lull me to sleep on summer holidays singing me songs from Indian Love Call.2
And after lunch, then what? Come back up to my room since the heat downstairs would be unbearable, lie on my bed brooding from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., since on a day like today I wouldn’t be able to read.
I had a thought: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could live by night, in the twilight hour, with the nine colours and the windmills. Wouldn’t it be great if people worked at night, because if they didn’t there’d be nothing to do but rumba.’
Suddenly, there was a knock at my door and I screamed furiously, ‘Who is it?’
‘Ricardito,’ he said, with that helpless voice of his that drove every girl wild. Except me, never me.
‘A visitor!’ I thought cheerfully, wrapping a towel yellow as wheat around me as I opened the door.
He was smiling, the poor guy. I smiled too: the shirt he was wearing was spectacular! He stepped into my room, following the trail of my blouse and my white pants on the floor. And I knew the sight of them would cool him after the blistering heat he’d endured for hours, because Ricardito always went out straight after breakfast and wandered the streets aimlessly, without this trail my discarded clothes now marked out for him.
He pretended he wasn’t looking at them, stopped dead in the middle of the room. The light streaming through the open blinds gave a certain grandeur to his look of permanent anxiety, and I thought, ‘He always looks his best here in my room. Then again, who wouldn’t in that dark green and lilac shirt, it’s totally psychedelic.’ The word made me think that if I wound down the blinds, the light would paint horizontal shadows across his body, that if I took off his shirt he’d look like John Gavin,3 only thirty kilos lighter, that together, in this room, in this lonely house in this desolate, sweltering city, we were the opening scene of Psycho, a film I never wanted to see again so I wouldn’t forget it.
‘How’s the water?’ said Ricardito, in a wistful tone. You could see from the slick of sweat on his forehead and his nose he’d been walking in the sun.
‘The water’s fine,’ I said and laughed. ‘Still up at the crac
k of dawn?’
And suddenly he went dark, as though my words had enfolded him in the night he so dreaded. In that sudden darkness, he stepped closer and confessed, ‘I haven’t slept in ten months,’ and I backed away, protesting, ‘Don’t pull that face on me, Ricardito, don’t do it, the day’s only just beginning.’ Immediately I realized my mistake. He’d have been perfectly entitled to say, ‘For you, maybe …’ but he said nothing, though I know that’s what he was thinking, and I took advantage of his silence to turn my back and put on a little show for him: in a single movement I threw open the doors of the wardrobe, whipped the towel from my body and let it drop somewhere near him (I didn’t realize how near, but I couldn’t let him start on about misery; he’d ruined too many parties, bored too many girls to death with his melancholy moods) and, shielded by the wardrobe door, I gave a quick psssht! psssht! under each pudgy armpit and tossed the can of deodorant on to the bed so he’d see that the brand I always use is called ‘Polar Dawn’. I never thought about what pants to wear, I just picked the first pair off the top of the pile: there were hundreds of them.
‘I brought you something,’ he said, all serious, and since I wasn’t looking at him I asked vaguely, ‘Something small?’ twisting as I pulled on an orange shirtdress just perfect for days like the one I’m describing. And for a night as strange as this, I wear a black cape; it’s tattered and torn, but when I touch it, I touch everything around me – such is the confidence it brings, this shroud of mine.
Dressed now, I turned back to him and thought, ‘Caught you.’ He’d been staring at my ass the whole time. If you look sideways you can see my buttocks are covered with downy blonde hairs. He looked up, embarrassed, and stared at my tender cheekbones. He’d have stayed that way for hours, staring at me, already pulling his martyr face, if I hadn’t made him snap him out of it.
‘Something small?’ I asked again and, quick as a flash, like he’d just had an inspiration, he said: ‘Small … [I tensed] … but powerful.’ And giggled to himself: ‘Ha, ha, ha.’ I’d tensed because I thought he was going to quote the Bavaria Beer ad: ‘Small, but satisfying’. I’d never have forgiven him for coming out with such typical macho bullshit, so now I smiled at him in slow motion, grateful he hadn’t let me down. I moved closer to him and immediately he noticed my perfume. ‘It’s because I’ve just washed my hair,’ I explained. And he said: ‘I know. It looks great,’ and I said thank you and fluttered my eyelashes in close-up (the reader will have realized papá’s profession extended to a passion for cinema, so I’m entitled to use the term). And I was thinking, ‘I’m making him nervous, he could easily do a runner.’ Instead he sort of ducked away and went and threw himself on my bed, but he couldn’t get comfortable; he was twisting his spine and breathing like an asthmatic.
Then he took out a diary, from the diary he took a white wrap of paper, from the nightstand he took my copy of The Underdogs4 and, forgetting all about me, he tipped powder on to the cover and stared at it. He’d brought cocaine. I shuddered, like I felt sick and nervous, but I thought, ‘No, it’s just the excitement of anything new.’ I’d dreamed about this, about shovelling snow (words that sounded erotic, even though they referred to a weak interaction of forces) against a sky-blue background. Then I’d dreamed of the South Pole, of a ship full of corpses. Later I realized the dream was just the cover of a John Lennon album which in fact had powder in the bottom left corner.5 ‘Ha, ha, ha,’ I laughed to myself, seeing Misery Guts Ricardito looking so serious, and I thought, ‘He hasn’t even asked if I want some. Do I really look like a complete junkie?’ He’d taken a couple of little straws out of his diary and was offering me the shorter one. As I took it, I said, ‘Thank you,’ and I really meant it because he’d salvaged this horrible day. And at this he lit up and then I gave him his kiss, spontaneous, sincere and entirely superficial.
His mouth tasted bitter. Had he already done a line? He never said, the traitor. Then he asked, ‘It’s not a problem, is it? Your folks aren’t in?’ It wasn’t a problem, but just in case I turned on my old radio, turned it up full blast; it took a minute to warm up, then started crackling. Ricardito looked at me in disgust. ‘The batteries are nearly dead,’ I explained, giving him a big smile. At least it was a good song – Vanity, because of you I lost … – a song I’d had on the brain for two nights running, one that, when I hear it now, gives me that delicious, useless feeling of all sad things and so I stay in. And if I do go out, I keep my head down, I don’t look at anyone till the city wind whips away my conviction that I’ll never care for anyone, that I’ll always be alone. And then I look up and see the little boys straddling their bikes and by then (at 6 p.m.) the mountains look so feminine, so sisterly, that, in a surge of pure emotion, I surrender to the call of the night, which doesn’t swallow me but only shakes me and I go to bed covered in bruises. Like I said before: my good intentions always come the next morning. I never keep them. I’m crazy about the night, I’m its creature. Everything else is not for me.
‘You go first,’ said Ricardito and, I don’t know, I must have hesitated, because he said, ‘You know how?’ Not mocking me, just being nice.
‘Of course I do,’ I said. ‘What, you think I’ve never seen The People Next Door?’6 I picked up the straw and snorted hard, twice in each nostril, then he leaned down and for a second I lost him, till I looked down and saw him, nose buried in coke.
‘Keep the noise down,’ I said gently.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a deviated septum.’
And I said, ‘Should we turn up the radio?’
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I can’t stand the crackling.’
As I bounced around the room, he was already folding away the wrap, the greedy bastard. I skipped out and went to get my parents’ cool little transistor radio and when I came back Ricardito was sprawled diagonally across my bed. On the way, quick as a flash, I’d tuned the radio so it was playing ‘Vanidad’ and I was singing along. I smiled at him and it was like a whistle because music didn’t stop coming out of my mouth. But he looked like he was scared half witless and a greenish tinge had spread across his face.
So I tried coke, so what? The effects, which are fantastic, last about ten minutes. After that it leaves you bummed out. You don’t want to move, you get a horrible taste in your mouth, burning pains in the folds of your brain, a fever; you pinch yourself and you don’t feel a thing, you can’t watch a movie because any movement freaks you out, you feel paranoid and helpless and you grind your teeth. But the lucidity you have when you talk would be brilliant for the first few minutes of a speech! And as long as you’ve got enough, you never feel tired: you could rumba non-stop for three days! After that comes the insomnia, the terrible complexion, the yellow bags under your eyes, the blocked, peeling pores. You don’t want to eat. All you want is another hit of coke.
But right then I felt fabulous. I told Ricardito we had to go out, I even gave him a nudge to get him moving. ‘How did you get here?’ I asked.
‘Me? I walked,’ he said, struggling to his feet between the sighs and the creak of old bones and new clothes.
‘What about the car?’ I said, disappointed, because I was already imagining the warm wind in my face.
And he said, like it was no big deal, ‘They don’t lend me the car any more.’
I wasn’t really surprised they didn’t lend him the car any more given that the first time he borrowed it he couldn’t tell the accelerator from the brake. Then they signed him up for this posh driving school, the Academia Bolívar; it took him five months to learn the rules of the road, but as soon as they let him loose in a car it was a total disaster. The way he told it, at first he panicked because he was afraid of muddling up all the rules he’d learned and neatly classified in his brain, then felt ashamed because he knew he was bound to make a mistake, and the shame meant he coul
dn’t think straight so he ended up confusing the accelerator with the brake again and crashed straight into an African palm. He managed to extricate the car (a difficult manoeuvre, since he had to use reverse) and as soon as he was out of danger, safe and sound, he piled straight into the same tree.
I didn’t want to turn off the big old radio when we left, but as we were going down the stairs, the song ended and some tacky brass-band charanga7 came on, so I flicked off the little transistor I was carrying ipso facto. Since it was still playing up in my room, however, we could still hear it sputter and crackle, and just then I caught a whiff of food that turned my stomach: my big breakfast.
‘I don’t want it now!’ I yelled. ‘I’m not hungry any more; you took too long making it!’ No one answered, as usual. I prayed to God the maid was hungry and she’d eat it. Let’s be honest, she needed it more than I did.
Anyway, we stepped out into the accursed sunshine and somewhere in the back of my skull I felt a bad vibe I didn’t like one bit. I was about to say something to Ricardo but one look at him and I stopped dead: he was standing in the middle of the street, arms outstretched, the sun on his face; it looked like he was giving thanks. The shirt he was wearing really was groovy.
‘A present from your mamá?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, she got back from the States yesterday.’ (I hopped across the scorching paving stones towards him.) ‘She brought me the coke too, which was pretty dumb since it’s like a thousand times more expensive there. She said since I’m always on a downer I should try it. Said coke would either calm me down or blow my mind. I think she’s hoping for option two. She’s already sent off for a brochure for a mental hospital in England.’
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