The Promise

by Silvina Ocampo

  “I didn’t know you sketched,” said Leandro.

  “I’ve been drawing for a long time. I studied at the National Academy.”

  “Let’s see. Show me.” Leandro tried to look at the page.

  “Don’t look,” said Verónica, covering the drawing with her hand.

  “Don’t be like that. You’re a font of knowledge: an artist and a pianist.” Leandro continued respectfully, feeling inadequate: “How you tortured me. First we were supposed to meet in a sweet shop, then at the movies, and it’s here at the zoo, the worst place in the world, where I’ve finally found you.” He took out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Verónica.

  “I don’t smoke,” Verónica said, laughing.

  “Does the smoke bother you?” Leandro said, hiding the cigarette.

  “No,” answered Verónica. “Anyway, it’s more relaxing here. I love the merry-go-round music.”

  “You love it? You think this place is relaxing?” asked Leandro.

  “Yes,” replied Verónica. “I like innocent places. What did you want to tell me?” And she added, such an idiot, trying to seem indifferent: “I’m brimming with curiosity.”

  “I need to talk to you about your sister.”

  “I suspected as much,” Verónica answered, flirting.

  “What did you suspect?” Leandro asked.

  “That you wanted to talk about my sister.”

  She struck me as a hypocrite.

  “Does that bother you?”

  “No.”

  “Shall we go somewhere else?’ Leandro suggested. “Now that we’re finally alone. Shall we go?” he added impatiently.

  “To the wild animals’ cage?”

  “Do I seem so ferocious?” asked Leandro.

  I remember it all as if I had been there.

  “I don’t know you that well, but you seem very impatient.”

  “I’ve been waiting to see you for I don’t know how many days,” Leandro said. “Don’t I have a right to be impatient?”

  “A week is not that long.”

  “It might seem that way to you. How about going to the lake in the park? Would that be okay?”

  The two of them walked out of the zoo toward a motorcycle that was parked next to the gate.

  “Let’s go. Are you afraid to come with me?” Leandro asked, putting his hand on the handlebars.

  “Afraid?” said Verónica. “Why?”

  They both got on the motorcycle, and Leandro started it up with difficulty.

  “I didn’t you know you had a motorbike,” said Verónica, settling listlessly onto the seat.

  “I borrowed it,” said Leandro, turning his head to look behind them.

  “Watch the road,” Verónica said. “We’ll get into a crash out here.”

  “What did you say?” shouted Leandro, who could only hear the noise of the engine.

  Verónica bent forward and said in his ear:

  “We’re going to get ourselves killed.”

  They made it to the lake, got off, and sat on the grass, under a tree.

  “Don’t you like it here? The lake is so blue: if we saw it in a photograph we’d think it was a lake in Nahuel Huapi, one of those where the water’s so clear it looks fake.”

  “You’re right,” answered Verónica, gawking, “It’s very pretty.”

  Leandro took the handwritten pages from his pocket.

  “I’ve been carrying these pages around for a month in my wallet, or, rather, over my heart. I’m fed up with the people I know. These pages were the promise of something new. Do you recognize the handwriting?” he said, showing them to her.

  “No.”

  “You’re lying. It’s your handwriting.”

  “So you know my handwriting better than I do?”

  “I found this little notebook on the block where we live. I obsessed over the handwriting and the text for days. They’re yours.”

  “And why would the handwriting and the text be mine? Do you know how many people live on that block who know how to write? Are you crazy?” Verónica asked.

  “Don’t torment me.”

  “But what does all this have to do with my sister, pray tell?”

  “You’ll see, but don’t deny that this notebook is yours. I caught sight of you in the window the day I found it.”

  “Okay, if you’re going to keep insisting, I won’t deny it,” Verónica answered. “What I’d like to know is why you didn’t return it to me.”

  “I wasn’t sure it was yours. I barely caught a glimpse of you in the window the day I found the notebook. Sometimes I thought I had dreamed it. These pages became very important to me. The word LEA revealed in part to whom they belonged to. I consulted a handwriting expert so that he could study the character of the writing.”

  “Those pages are very important to me and mean nothing to anyone else. They’re from a novel I’m writing. I remember so clearly the day I lost them: it was the first day of spring, and I was worried. I was on the balcony sunbathing and writing, two things you can’t do at the same time. The pages came loose from the notebook and blew away in the wind without my noticing. It wasn’t until that night that I realized they were missing: I felt as if the air had become a person who would read and judge the most disgraceful part of my work, a kind of jury to which I had unwillingly submitted my book and that would never give me a prize.”

  “Is it about a crime?” Leandro asked.

  “The protagonist has hated Lea since childhood. Ever since Cain and Abel, hatred has existed among brothers and sisters.”

  “And why did you choose the name of your sister for the character in your novel?” Leandro asked.

  “Lea was not my sister’s name,” answered Verónica.

  “Then why did all you call her that?”

  “Because my parents liked the acronym that her initials formed more than her name, you must know this already.”

  “She never told me,” said Leandro.

  “I liked the name for a fictional character,” Verónica continued, “because it was short and quick like its meaning: READ.”

  “From what I could see in four pages, the feelings the protagonist had for Lea herself were very ambiguous,” said Leandro.

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “But what’s the plot about? Tell me, I’m dying of curiosity.”

  “It has no plot,” answered Verónica.

  “Can one write a novel without a plot?”

  “Naturally. One could write forever about their feelings.”

  “As long as it’s interesting or terrifying or moving.” Verónica and Leandro fell silent for a few minutes.

  Verónica pulled up blades of grass, and Leandro played with a small twig.

  “It feels like I’ve known you for a long time. I trust you,” murmured Verónica.

  “You say that so I’ll behave and live up to your trust.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t know anything about you and you know all about my life.”

  “I know all about your life?”

  “Well, at the very least you were my sister’s friend, and people say that we look alike. Besides, you’ve been in my house, you’ve read part of my novel; let’s face it, you know a lot, too much.”

  “Only by pure chance.”

  “You haven’t told me anything.”

  “My life is banal and miserable and I have no talent. Have you been writing for a long time? Tell me the story again.”

  “It’s very simple: the protagonist wishes for Lea’s death. She thinks of killing her, but she’s too cowardly to deal with actually carrying out a murder. The protagonist lives in a big house full of furniture and religion; she has to fight against a world that’s very conventional. Night after night she plots the murder, like a female Hamlet. Destiny obeys her: Lea dies in the last chapter, but when she dies she doesn’t disappear: she still weighs upon life, not like a shadow but as a live person, more alive perhaps than before. Her dresses, her recorded voice, her books and objects all r
emain in the house, and her dog waits for her under the bed. This leaves no room for remorse. She, the protagonist, feels that she’s committed a crime, but as the victim hasn’t vanished, her anger toward her won’t go away. Do you like it? Is it moving?”

  “I think it’s extraordinary.”

  “Let’s not stay here,” Verónica declared, seeing that it was growing dark.

  The last rays of sun lit the tops of the trees, and a few soft, melancholy clouds stretched out in the sky.

  “It’s late,” said Verónica.

  Leandro, who was lying facedown, kissed her hand gently, leisurely.

  “I don’t ever want to leave here.”

  As she heard Leandro’s voice, Verónica felt his moist lips moving over the back of her hand.

  At that point in the story, I felt so wounded.

  “But what were you going to tell me?” said Verónica, unsettled, withdrawing her hand. The idiotic woman doubtlessly thought: He’s in love with me, or all he wants is to have fun, maybe sleep with me, be my lover. He would have to have a lover. Women are so conventional.

  “I think you made me forget. Now I only want to talk about you.”

  Verónica listened to Leandro’s voice, just the voice, stripped of all words or rather filled with other words, shining like aural acrobats. Women are so sentimental.

  My waterproof watch wasn’t working. What time was it? Four, five in the afternoon? On land I could always guess the time, but here I was disoriented by everything. A few meters away, on the surface of the blue water, I saw a long, dark line that looked like the body of a whale. I slowed the loud beating of my heart, so as not to communicate with the monster through the water. A slight dread paralyzed me. I threw my head back, closed my eyes, and floated on my back with apparent calm. Who was I kidding? Myself? Suddenly, in my fearful stupor, I felt something lightly touch my head. I opened my eyes. I closed them again as if this made it easier for me to concentrate on indifference. How far from indifference I was heading! Happily I was leaving hunger behind, the possibility of being hungry. Hunger distracts one from all other appetites. The slight brushing against my head continued to torture me. I kept my eyes closed until, touching what was brushing against me, I cried out: it was a raft. Although I never remember that word, in that moment I recognized in the terrifying form of the imagined whale a raft in all its glory. I stood up over the sea. Nobody will believe this, except Saint Christopher or the privileged survivor of a shipwreck who’s approached in the middle of the ocean by a raft that asks for help, since it was the raft that was asking for help with its supply of provisions: grapes, peaches, and oranges, lovingly wrapped in fragrant paper and pretty straw, like boxes of toys. Thanks to the broken planks of the raft and its treasures I was able to climb up without difficulty. I didn’t consider the possibility of spiders or snakes. I didn’t hesitate: the smiling fruits called to me, so ripe that they were opening into two halves like mouths. The cling peaches in particular, with a rouge color that was the latest fashion.

  MIRTA LAMBERTI

  Mirta Lamberti had an acrobatic type of beauty. On two white horses, doing a balancing act, she would have been a sight to admire. I met her in the Wings and Soles shoe store. We lived in the same neighborhood so that it was natural, inevitable even, that we would get to know each other.

  Gabriela had been dreaming about her and about a pair of shoes for quite some time. Clothing was for her what toys and acrobatic beauties are for rich boys. Sitting on a chair in the shoe store, her foot propped on the stool in front of her, she looked at the shiny leather, the stiff shoestrings of the new shoe. Irene was talking to Mirta, looking at herself in a mirror, not paying attention to the salesman or to Gabriela or to me or to the shoes. I watched them.

  “What could they be, those pages with that schoolgirl’s handwriting?” sighed Irene.

  “What pages?” said Mirta.

  “Didn’t I tell you he’s going around with some pages in his pocket?” Irene exclaimed.

  “I like these, Mama,” said Gabriela, trying on the shoes. Her fidgety nose contradicted the sadness in her eyes.

  Why was she sad? She knew they weren’t going to buy her those fine shoes.

  “How much do they cost?” Irene asked.

  “Five hundred pesos,” the salesman replied.

  “Too expensive for me,” said Irene. “Gabriel always chooses the most expensive ones. These are better,” she said, taking a shoe out of a box and running her hand over it.

  “Why are you so worried?” Mirta said to Irene. “You’re suspicious of everything.”

  “It’s an obsession,” said Irene. “I didn’t slept a wink all night.”

  “They hurt,” said Gabriela, taking off the shoes.

  “They hurt the first few days,” said the salesman. “Then you get used to it—like everything.”

  Irene sat down.

  “Do you have any sandals for me?” she asked.

  “Coming right up, blondie. Don’t move.”

  The salesman brought a pair of sandals and a pile of shoeboxes.

  “Those are pretty,” said Mirta, pointing to a shoe with her gloved hand.

  “Latest fashion,” said the salesman, taking the sandals out of the box. He sat astride a little bench to try them on her and said: “Polished nails. What pretty toenails.”

  “They bother me. They’re uncomfortable.” Irene went over to the display and looked at other shoes.

  “Don’t look at those, they’re worse,” said the salesman.

  Irene sat down again; she, who was crazy about shoes, couldn’t think about them. She wouldn’t care if she went barefoot.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t like them,” said the salesman, sitting down again astride the bench and, caressing Irene’s foot and placing it between his legs so he could try the shoe on her.

  Irene must have felt the heat protruding through the material of his pants.

  “The other day I saw you with some dark-haired guy on the street. When will it be my turn, sweetie?”

  Irene took off the shoe and threw it at the man. Gabriela took off another shoe and threw it at him too. Irene, Gabriela, Mirta, and I left the store laughing. As we walked we came across a fruit stand.

  “You’re not going to buy me any shoes?” said Gabriela.

  “We’ll go downtown tomorrow, if I have time,” she answered.

  A man was playing a guitar on the front porch of his house. Gabriela, Irene, Mirta, and I stopped to listen. The man winked at Irene and looked at her breasts, singing:

  Sleepy bye, when will I go sleepy bye ’n’

  lay my head upon your breasts? Sleepy bye. …

  “Let’s go,” said Irene to Gabriela. And addressing Mirta: “I can’t go anywhere. I’m fed up. Always the same old crap.”

  “Why do you wear those bras?” said Mirta, who was the envious type.

  “What’s the matter with them? What do you mean?”

  They stopped in front of a display window with mirrors on the sides, where they could see themselves reflected.

  “Look at yourself,” said Mirta, freshening her lipstick and pausing to look at her.

  In the mirrors, Irene saw her breasts sticking out and smiled.

  “What do you want me to do? That’s how they are. They’re natural.”

  Gabriela gave her mother a sidelong glance. There was something sad in her face, reflected in the display window alongside colored pencils, notebooks, dolls, and a toy train painted green and red that nobody would ever buy. Gabriela wasn’t sad about that. The charms and deceptions of the world were of a different order to her, she told me later. She felt very old, so old that she stooped over when she walked. Kicking a stone, with her hands in her pants pockets, she sighed like worried women sigh.

  GUSANO

  What was Gusano’s real name? I never knew, or, rather, I knew that people called him Labardén after the name of the town where he was born. To describe him would be like describing a mysterious insect. He w
as hairy and swarthy, with eyes so black they seemed to have no irises; instead of speaking he would chew on his lips.

  Gabriela loved Irene more than anyone else in the world. Nevertheless, she had spent the happiest days of her life far away from her—unforgettable days, in the countryside, in Labardén. Verónica, who taught drawing classes to the neighborhood children and considered Gabriela one of her best students, had taken her to spend the summer at El Cardal, her grandmother Chumbela’s small country estate. There, Gabriela met Gusano and became his friend. “You’ll end up crawling with lice,” Chumbela would tell her, seeing them play together, but Gabriela even liked lice as long as they belonged to Gusano. Gusano the Worm lived in a hovel with a man who, presumably, was not his father. The man’s name was Papero, and he made his living as a sheep thief and sometimes as a papero, a potato grower, but there was never a lack of food or laundry soap or shoes for Gusano. He was kind to Gabriela and would catch little birds for her: once he gave her a red-breasted finch. It was lovely with its red breast, but it didn’t sing. Verónica tried to make Gabriela give the bird back to Papero, but Gabriela cried all day long. Verónica thought that birds were a bad omen. She was so superstitious that if she had bad luck while wearing a dress for the first time, she would never wear it again no matter how much she liked it. She would go back to wearing her old dresses, even though they were threadbare, if she thought they would bring her good luck. If she saw the new moon for the first time through glass, or if she broke a mirror, she wouldn’t sleep all night long. Seeing a cross-eyed person on the street unsettled her so profoundly that she would go straight home. One day, a friend of Mrs. Arévalo’s who came to visit with her eight-year-old daughter, who wore glasses because she was cross-eyed, occasioned a scene. The woman tried to show Verónica the beautiful color of her daughter’s eyes, and she took the girl’s glasses off so that Verónica could see them directly. Seeing the crossed eyes, Verónica covered her face with her hands, then ran out of the room, horror-stricken. That pitiful scene marked the end of Mrs. Arévalo’s friendship with the girl’s mother, who, outraged, left the house with her daughter in a huff.