The Promise

by Silvina Ocampo

  What was her mother doing? She thought of nothing else. Irene had told her that in the house she was visiting there was a mechanical bird that sang inside a glass cage with gold trim. Liar. How she lied to her. That glass and gold cage occupied a predominant place in Gabriela’s imagination. It had turned into a palace illuminated by a thousand chandeliers, a palace where her mother wove beautiful cloth with her perfumed and kind-hearted friends.

  She crossed many rooms and gardens before reaching the place where he was waiting for her. There, in a kind of cloister, was an enormous fishbowl with fish covered in purple fins and tails. This was Valentín Masini’s dry cleaners, where they never took Gabriela because the fumes of ammonium and other acids were not good for her health.

  The sun lit up the mirror of a wardrobe with the face of a faun, bunches of grapes, and leaves sculpted into the wood; a tiger-striped cat slept on a simple bed with a peeling iron frame, while torn, dirty curtains waved in the breeze. I liked that room! Irene did too. Sitting on the floor, her elbow leaning on the bed, she would occasionally glance at the disorder, as if it bothered her, then return again to the book she was reading. Sometimes one of her brassieres or handkerchiefs would be left on the floor. I looked at them with such hatred the first time I found them, without knowing to whom they belonged. She, Irene, was part of that disorder, one of its makers and also one of its martyrs. Stretching like an idiot, she’d call out to Leandro in a shrill voice. Did she love him? Was that what love looked like?

  Often I imagined this scene that tortured me so. He had told me about it. Not even the sea makes me forget it.

  Leandro’s muffled voice, from under the shower, would respond as usual:

  “What do you want?”

  He’d tell me in detail the silly things they’d say.

  “I can’t be a minute without you, my love,” she’d always say to him.

  “I’m coming,” he’d answer, annoyed.

  “Could you explain that matter of the synapses of the nervous system or about the extra-systolic pathways of the respiratory system?

  “It would be better if they didn’t exist,” Leandro would reply, drying his face with a towel; none of it mattered to him, and he would add vehemently: “It would be better if humanity didn’t exist, human beings are utter crap.” As he entered the room his body gleamed like the body of the bronze statue in the museum that Irene had sketched in her adolescence. How well I could imagine him! He always seemed happy.

  “Don’t ask me to explain anything to you today. I have to go to the hospital. I don’t have time for anything. I’ve got to leave right now.”

  “So early? Who are you going to see?”

  “Nobody. Don’t pester me with questions. I have to feel free, don’t you understand? I can’t be tied down,” Leandro would answer as he dressed.

  Sometimes when I have a fever I hear this conversation, with their voices buzzing like bees. How salty the sea is!

  “Idiot,” Irene would say. She was the idiot and she knew it. She’d think that “nobody” is worse than if it were somebody.

  Nino, purring, would come over and rub against Leandro’s legs. He was a dreadful cat, with his face split by a black stripe, which Gabriela would have liked because he looked like a tiger, and he adored me.

  “Not tied down,” Irene would continue, “as if you could live without ties. You even carry on a relationship with that ridiculous cat. You never go to bed without saying ‘Good night, Mr. Cat,’ as if you were a little boy. This rug is full of fleas.”

  As he did with me, Leandro paid her no attention, whistling as he looked at himself in the mirror. Irene’s words seemed ridiculous to him, and her attitude unpleasant. Pathetically, Irene would suddenly go over to hug him. The sensual voice has meaning beyond the words uttered, but she seemed so disagreeably human to him, there in the mirror.

  “Won’t you explain about nerve synapses or the urinary tract? If you don’t explain it, I’ll never understand, not with the help of pictures or textbooks or even with hands-on practice,” she’d say to him every day, playing the doctor. It was always the same, always the same.

  “Irene, don’t you think we’re letting life slip through our fingers studying together like this? You’ll never understand that there’s not enough time to go sneaking around.”

  “Let’s not start that eternal argument again. You’ve changed in the last two months, ever since you’ve been living here. I want to graduate, I want to have a profession. I want to study. I’m doing it for Gabriela. She’s the only person who loves me. The only one!”

  “Which do you prefer: to love or to be loved?” Leandro interrupted her.

  He’d say the same to me, but I’d just smile.

  “To love,” Irene would answer.

  “Love me, then.”

  Lying on the bed, Irene would embrace Leandro once again. He would kiss her passionately, the way he kissed me. The same thing would happen whenever she mentioned Gabriela. Leandro needed Irene to love another being that wasn’t him in order to feel any interest in her. It is so overwhelming to be loved exclusively.

  “Does she always follow you?”

  “She’s probably on the corner. I don’t dare to go out,” Irene would remark. “She’s so young, but she understands so many things! She’s not like other little girls. Look at her, isn’t she lovely?”

  Leandro would adjust his tie and finish dressing, looking out the window at the girl on the street.

  “Lovely,” he’d say, thinking of something else.

  For him, children weren’t as marvelous as they were for me, they were a concoction smelling of milk and oranges, they were creatures from another planet—especially that Gabriela, or Gabriel, whose name, constantly changing back and forth from feminine to masculine like a hermaphrodite, was always on Irene’s lips.

  “Poor Gabriel,” Irene would murmur, “sometimes I feel guilty.”

  “About what?”

  “About everything,” Irene would answer.

  “Don’t forget to lock the door and leave the key in the big planter in the courtyard. I have to go.”

  That was how it was, every day always the same, always the same.

  “You’re not even going to give me a kiss?” Irene would sigh.

  “Didn’t I kiss you enough?”

  “Each of your kisses is a dream. Nothing seems real. It’s as if I’m embracing you at the bottom of the sea and cease to exist. Later, when I’m alone, I still don’t exist, but then it’s unpleasant.”

  Uttering this sentence, Irene would feel that she had destroyed the importance of her feelings, and she had. Why explain them? Bitterly, she would hear Leandro’s voice.

  “You’re always so sentimental. What a pity!”

  After kissing Irene again impatiently, mussing her hair, hurting her lips, Leandro would pick up the books that lay on the table.

  These unpleasant scenes repeat over and over again. He’s going to hate me, Irene would think. When a man doesn’t love you, his embraces become awkward. He has too many arms and legs, too many bones, elbows and knees. It’s almost impossible for him to produce an orgasm. He used to slide over me like water, now he hurts me.

  She was right. Poor Irene, I alone understood her. Alone, alone as I am now, on a sea of relentless doubts. Dying is the only sure thing. Now I can finally die. But how to do it? It’s as impossible as ever.

  GABRIELA

  Gabriela. I return to Gabriela. She was lovely, with a long slender neck, blue eyes, blond hair. I always said she could be in the movies; what she needed were connections; you don’t get anywhere these days without connections. She lived for Irene.

  Alone, she would wait for Irene, always in Plaza Las Heras. She had followed her that day, which I remember now, more vividly than other days. She was so pretty, dressed in green with that necklace of tiny pearls, and a pair of white gloves she carried in her hand like a bouquet! Gabriela lost sight of her in a moment of distraction, in front of a tobacco shop wher
e they sold marbles. She sat pitifully on a green wooden bench eating an orange and staring, without realizing it, at the door her mother had entered.

  What do women do when they’re not at home? When they were pure like her mother they would be devoting themselves to serious tasks, she might think. Then she’d no doubt think, as usual, about the sex act. What she desired most in the universe of her curiosity was to see a man and a woman doing it. She had seen cats, dogs, pigeons, guanacos, monkeys commit that act, but never human beings. Juancha, a schoolmate, had told her that it was lots of fun. Juancha was a slut.

  I knew that to make her way to that disorderly room, with books on the floor, socks over the chairs, half-opened sacks of bread on a table, shirts tossed on the floor, Irene had crossed a vestibule with an interior door whose glass panes were red and blue; then a courtyard with plants, birdcages and a lemon tree in the center. But how different was the place Gabriela imagined her in, engaged in mysterious occupations! What was her mother doing? Irene had told her that in the house she was visiting there was a mechanical bird that sang inside a glass cage with gold trim. That glass and gold cage occupied a predominant place in Gabriela’s imagination. It had turned into a palace illuminated by a thousand chandeliers, a palace where her mother wove beautiful cloth with her perfumed and kind-hearted friends. She crossed many rooms and gardens before reaching the place where he waited for her. There, in a kind of cloister, was an enormous fishbowl with fish covered in purple fins and tails. This was Valentín Masini’s dry cleaners, where they never took Gabriela because the fumes of ammonium and other acids were not good for her health.

  The sun lit up the mirror of a wardrobe with the face of a faun, bunches of grapes, and leaves sculpted into the wood; a tiger-striped cat slept on a simple bed with a peeling iron frame, while torn dirty curtains waved in the breeze. Irene, sitting on the floor, her elbow leaning on the bed, would occasionally glance at the disorder as if it bothered her, then return again to the book she was reading. She, Irene, was part of that disorder, one of its makers and also one of its martyrs. Stretching, she called out to Leandro in a shrill voice. Did she love him?

  Leandro’s muffled voice, from under the shower, responded as usual:

  “What do you want?”

  “I can’t be a minute without you, my love.”

  “I’m coming.”

  “Could you explain that matter of the sensitive respiratory passages?”

  “It would be better if they didn’t exist,” Leandro replied, drying his face with a towel, adding vehemently: “It would be better if humanity didn’t exist, to suffer so much.” As he entered the room his body gleamed like the body of the bronze statue in the museum that Irene had sketched in her adolescence. He seemed happy.

  “Don’t ask me to explain anything to you today. I have to go to the hospital. I don’t have time for anything. I’ve got to leave right now.”

  “So early? Who are you going to see?”

  “Nobody. Don’t pester me with questions. I have to feel free, don’t you understand? I can’t be tied down, “ Leandro answered as he dressed.

  “Idiot,” said Irene. And she thought that “nobody” is worse than if it were somebody.

  She was right.

  The cat, purring, came over and rubbed against Leandro’s legs.

  He was a dreadful cat, with his face split by a black stripe, which Gabriela would have liked because he looked like a tiger.

  “Not tied down,” Irene continued, “as if you could live without ties. You even carry on a relationship with that ridiculous cat. You never go to bed without saying, ‘Good night, Mr. Cat,’ as if you were a little boy. This rug is full of fleas.”

  Leandro paid no attention, whistling as he looked at himself in the mirror. Irene’s words seemed ridiculous to him, and her attitude unpleasant. Irene suddenly went over to hug him. The sensual voice has meaning beyond the words uttered, but she seemed so disagreeably human to him, there in the mirror.

  “Won’t you explain about nerve synapses or the urinary tract? If you don’t explain it, I’ll never understand, not with the help of pictures or textbooks or even with hands-on practice.”

  “Irene, don’t you think we’re letting life slip through our fingers studying together like this? You’ll never understand that there’s not enough time to go sneaking around.”

  “Let’s not start that eternal argument again. You’ve changed in the last two months, ever since you’ve been living here. I want to graduate, I want to have a profession. I want to study. I’m doing it for Gabriel. She’s the only person who loves me. The only one!”

  “Which do you prefer: to love or to be loved?” Leandro interrupted her.

  “To love,” Irene answered.

  “Love me, then.”

  Lying on the bed, Irene embraced Leandro once again. He kissed her passionately. The same thing happened whenever she mentioned Gabriel. Leandro needed Irene to love another being that wasn’t him in order to feel any interest in her. It is so overwhelming to be loved exclusively.

  “Does she always follow you?”

  “She’s probably on the corner. I don’t dare to go out,” Irene remarked. “She’s so young, but she understands so many things! She’s not like other little girls. Look at her, isn’t she lovely?”

  Leandro adjusted his tie and finished dressing, looking out the window at the girl on the street.

  “Lovely,” he said. For him, children weren’t as marvelous as they were for me, they were a concoction smelling of milk and oranges, they were creatures from another planet—especially that Gabriela, whose name, constantly changing back and forth from feminine to masculine, was always on Irene’s lips.

  “Poor Gabriela,” Irene murmured, “sometimes I feel guilty.”

  “About what?”

  “About everything,” Irene answered.

  “Don’t forget to lock the door and leave the key in the big planter in the courtyard. I have to go.”

  “You’re not even going to give me a kiss?” Irene sighed.

  “Didn’t I kiss you enough?”

  “Each of your kisses is a dream. Nothing seems real. It’s as if I’m embracing you at the bottom of the sea and cease to exist. Later, when I’m alone, I still don’t exist, but then it’s unpleasant.”

  Uttering this sentence, Irene felt that she had destroyed the importance of her feelings, and she had. Why explain them? Bitterly, she heard Leandro’s voice.

  “You’re always so sentimental. What a pity!”

  After kissing Irene again impatiently, mussing her hair, hurting her lips, Leandro picked up two books that lay on the table and a magazine where I saw the photograph of Mr. Pigmy that same evening.

  Can one make love in the sea? So often I tried to commit suicide, and now that I could do it easily, I can’t.

  MR. PIGMY

  I know Mr. Pigmy from photographs, but in this moment his face is as familiar as that of any friend. An uncle of mine once showed him to me among photos of the Congo, which had appeared in a magazine. While I was looking at the colossal and mischievous face of the dwarf, he told me the story of the explorer Mattheus who had taken him out of the benevolent and innocent jungle. As soon as Mr. Pigmy found himself outside the jungle he no longer recognized the world. He believed that three zebras he glimpsed in the distance were three very strange animals two centimeters tall. He believed that a tree was a tuft of grass, that a man was an ant; he didn’t understand the laws of perspective. Not long after his exile, Mr. Pigmy died of sadness. In a way he had been killed by the sun, since during his twenty-five years of life in the jungle, the sun’s rays had always been gently filtered by the damp protective leaves of the tropical trees. In the summer, I’ve slept under their cool and perfumed blanket. This is why I remember so precisely that black shiny face, that body, small and potbellied as if it belonged to my family, to a member of my family who could have gone away on a trip before I was born, never to return. His slightly bulging round eyes, pointy
chin, and flat nose seemed incapable of expressing the sadness of his soul. I still feel as sorry for him as when I first heard his story. I was in bed with a fever. I suspected that my uncle had fallen in love with me, or I with him, because sick people disgusted him, and I didn’t. He drank from my glass looking at Mr. Pigmy’s face.

  “Being tired is restful, while resting is not always restful,” Leandro used to say. He was right. The same water that kills now revives me.

  LEANDRO ÁLVAREZ

  Leandro Álvarez’s face was as changeable as the weather. His eyes could be gray, green, and even blue. I don’t want to think about him. He was too young for my taste and talked to me as if I were his conscience. Everything he told me now feels like it happened to me. I want to think of other people, but I always come back to Leandro.

  Leandro opened the door, slammed it closed again, and went out to the courtyard filled with plants and canaries. He was tired of Irene, but he loved her, and that was the worst. The worst is never letting go completely of love. He was bored with her, as he was with his own conscience. The spring sun on the wisteria accented the blue color of the sky. The leaves cast shadows shaped like spiders and hands onto the flagstone. The owner of the boardinghouse, in her gray-striped apron, was watering the plants. The smell of hot, wet soil, the smell of the countryside in that enclosure under the sky, reminded him of his childhood, as it did me. Outside on the street, a group of children were fighting over a box in which they were dragging a dead cat. Leandro thought: I should say something to them. The cat is rotting. But they might throw stones at me. (He was a coward, but that didn’t matter to me.) A knife grinder passed by with his cart, hawking his services with a whistle. Leandro marveled at the day. He stopped before reaching the corner. He glimpsed the nearby store, Circe Antiquities, always with its lit chandeliers and a double bed that had not been put together yet. He tied his shoelace. He found it all so depressing. How he made me suffer!