A Beautiful Young Woman

by Julián López

  I couldn’t react, and I was powerless to stop myself as well; it was the law of the jungle that overcame me: beasts with lascivious gazes paraded before me, enchanting eyes that opened like fangs. When I walked, all the blood drained to the soles of my feet. I fell into deep holes covered with trapdoors of dead leaves, snakes hissed through forked tongues, nearby waterfalls roared, and the air was heavy with moisture. The corpse of a capybara swollen with maggots, glowworms and butterflies rushing out of caves where vampire bats hung upside down, the unexpected oasis that becomes a trap for the deer, a boa constrictor wrapped around the leg of a cow, sucking milk from its udder, a fledgling frightened by the loneliness of an abandoned nest, an orchid exploding in bloom with no one to see, the delicious perfume that turns from sweet to rancid as the sun reaches the highest branches of the mburucuyá.

  Being with Desiré was a jungle. We spent the night in each other’s arms in a room in the Pacific Hotel. We took naps and started over again and then ended up where we started, in each other’s arms. At one point, in the intermittent darkness of the room, she began to speak in a gentle voice, her body stood out from the wall in sequences of green neon light from behind the window.

  Desiré told me that I reminded her of a boy who had his first time with her. I never knew if she was telling me she had been a prostitute or if she’d just had an affair with a minor.

  “And?” I asked as I began to laugh a little. “How was it?”

  With that question I wanted her to see me, just like that, in that intermittent darkness I wanted to appear at last in her eyes.

  Desiré sighed, fixed her eyes on me, and answered gently, “I killed him,” she said with a proud smile and her guaraní tones, a Chinese rose penetrated by the long beak of an insistent hummingbird.

  That morning, extremely early, we left the hotel in the cold of first light. Once we were back on the street, there was nothing between us, nothing. An enormous sadness, perhaps. A sadness in which the monkeys of my first images of Elvira’s sister arriving, stealing fruit from her hat, were hidden in the pockets of her dress, exhausted from the dusty trip, a little ashamed.

  I invited her to breakfast at the little pizza restaurant underneath the bridge, and we drank coffee in silence while the day broke and everything turned pale. I pulled apart my croissants to find the soft dough inside, and Desiré dipped hers into the coffee. She seemed tired, but little by little, she regained her color.

  She couldn’t get away fast enough. All she wanted to do was begin her day and forget me.

  We never saw each other again. From that morning on and after the long night of the purest love I’d felt since childhood, everything ended. Venturing into the jungle left me more wounded than I could remember.

  I didn’t know where to go, and I couldn’t return home. I was shaking, frightened by the void I had plunged into. I began to walk and tried to feel the soles of my feet, tried to feel like I was truly there, slicing through the air.

  In a shop window I caught sight of my reflection, as redheaded as a child, my hair like a wildfire that could set fire to anything, as redheaded for sure as the man who never showed up. Son of a motherfucking bitch, leaving me alone in the world, swapping the chance to tie my shoelaces for something shitty. Son of a million dirty whores, leaving me with nothing to write in the space marked father.

  I walked along as fragile as the tiny body of the girl in the sequined bodysuit that shot sparks as it caught the light when she let go of the trapeze, with the circus tent in the background, before they packed it up and continued their journey. All the while the young man with the strong thighs, bathed in light like an apparition, stands strong in the darkness, his role essential in the forewarning of the void.

  The bodies pile up like so many bones on the side of the road; the circus goes on. Long live the circus.

  —

  I began walking toward the nursing home. My heart was a hole opening wider and wider, and all I needed was for Elvira to take me by the hand in silence while I kissed her cheeks and stroked her face, and she took out her embroidered handkerchief to wipe her eyes.

  It was far away, but I needed to walk. I realized I would have preferred not to fulfill my little fantasy with the correntina, and at last I understood why my mother had tried to save me from Christmas. All that remained from a night in the jungle was sadness. My body bled from the claws of a jaguar, and a fork-tongued poison entered into my bloodstream through my ankle.

  I needed the smooth and ancient hand of that body that was there for me then and was here for me now, my watchful neighbor. Elvira could gaze upon me and bring me back to my life of unfulfilled desires.

  When I had almost arrived at the nursing home I slowed my pace and saw the shutters of the building opened just slightly, enough to offer a still photo of the film that played inside. Elvira was alone, in her dressing gown, sitting at the table, eating breakfast in silence. Next to her cup of tea was a packet of water crackers. I stood there watching through the crack in the shutters, I could do nothing more. On the saucer, there was a used tea bag, and that image, Elvira’s hands, the crackers, the tea bag itself—it brought the whole film rushing forth. I remembered how my mother, when she was at home, used to make her tea very strong, the water almost boiling, with sugar and a streak of cold milk.

  Tea wasn’t my thing, it was never mine. I was just a son, nothing more than a son.

  Just then one of the nurses appeared to open the shutters fully, and she came upon me standing there staring.

  “What are you doing there?” She began yelling at me but soon the tone of her voice changed when she recognized who I was, and saw that I was standing there crying in silence in the middle of the sidewalk, watching Elvira with her ancient hands, watching her tea ritual.

  “Do you want to come in and see your grandmother?” asked the nurse, trying to console me, trying to calm me down. “Do you need a tissue?” she added, and I couldn’t even respond.

  “Wait here,” she said. “I’ll get you one.”

  A minute later she stuck her head out the window and told me to go to the front door, saying that she’d open up and give me some tissues. I had stopped crying. I don’t know if I had ever cried before, yet half a minute ago I couldn’t even imagine being alive without crying. Now it was over, but I still wanted to be with Elvira.

  The nurse displayed a modest friendliness which helped, because I didn’t want to have to explain anything, I just needed Elvira to stroke my face in silence, to look at me with her milky eyes, as white as the eyes of the dog she had in her apartment when I was little. When I walked into the dining room she had her back to me, I came up from behind and tried to sing “Flor de lino” in a low voice so that she would recognize me, but it was impossible—my voice was completely gone. I sat down next to her, realizing Elvira could never give me the embrace I needed. She was so tiny and, while in her eyes she held the flame of a shared experience, a tide of tears always extinguished any deliberate impulse. She was very happy to see me, but she kept eating breakfast as if it were completely normal for me to visit in the morning. A cheeky grin came over her face and then dissolved just as quickly, as if it were too much effort to hold the expression on her face.

  We sat in silence.

  When she finished her tea, she pushed the teacup in front of her, toward the center of the table. The trembling in her hands made the teaspoon rattle against the saucer. She picked up a piece of cracker from the table and lifted it to her mouth slowly, chewing noiselessly with calm resignation. Luckily we had a few moments of solitude, and I was able to kiss her cheeks, stroke her face, take her soft and gentle hand in mine, put my arm around her, and let her head rest on my shoulder while I kissed her forehead, stroked her back: every little thing I would have liked to feel. I put special effort into everything I wished she could do for me.

  When the room began to fill with sounds that presaged the arrival of the other old people, I kissed her cheeks again, leaned in close, and whispered,
“Thank you.”

  In moments like these language needs to be an invention, from absolute nothing it must burst forth like the first word, so her heart can remain in the perpetual glow of my gratitude, the only thing I felt, along with sadness.

  I had to hide my face because a tiny sob and a couple of tears had escaped. One from each eye, refracting tiny prisms of light in the air on their journey toward the ground. Weeping is a universal lamp, and tears are like teardrops from a rainbow.

  I left Elvira stuffing her handkerchief up her sleeve after she had finished wiping the tears from her eyes and had stared into mine. In that moment, we said something to each other, we began to say something. I started crying again in silence. I thanked her again.

  I walked down the hallway to the front door and faced the day. The sun illuminated the same things, but in a different way, it seemed like their possibilities in color were squeezed out, and that when I left the hotel with Desiré, the world was just a pale impression. Now it was the exaltation of its true manifestation.

  That morning I knew I would never see Desiré again. And that morning I also knew Elvira was going to die. Knowing that dispelled my sadness. Knowing Elvira would die brought the spring back in my step and returned me to myself. Elvira is going to die, and I am going to be there to accompany her, to see her, to commend her to earth or fire. What joy.

  On my desk there’s hardly anything but my inherited tea. Lately there’s some doubt too: who said no, who spoke for me? Did saying no make me think I was embracing him, looking at him, and telling him not to leave? Saying no, in order to have him here with me.

  If I don’t have children, then he’s the only father, and I’ll have him forever. Even if it’s only the blank silhouette of a passionate and unreliable choice made by my mother, the impression of an impression.

  But this red hair is mine also, the scarlet crown of a prince who resists the throne, my own private Elsinore. Am I an impression? Is it the determination of memory that forces me to be an impression?

  —

  On my desk there’s hardly anything, and each morning a man who appeared from a scattered past sits down in front of it. A leopard in a cage made from redheaded bars, a force of nature reduced to a body of nothing. Does anybody see me?

  Hardly anything. I thought it was depression; I thought it was anger. Hardly anything.

  One day I got fed up with hearing slogans like “We have the best dead people.” One day I got sick of building my own disappearance. I thought it was hardly anything; that I was depressed and that was logical.

  I thought it was depression.

  Maybe I wanted to get to the surface so that I could breathe that portion of the world’s air that belongs to me with my mouth wide open. I had become used to thinking that the beautiful young woman had been weak, that she had been strong. But weak for who? Strong for who? Who thought those things inside me, and how were those thoughts built?

  Hardly anything, I thought. A bit of depression. Who didn’t feel like a huge ice cream soda? Who didn’t want a beautiful young woman to look at him, just one time and with all her difficulty and all her utopia? Who didn’t want her to outline that tiny body with her eyes and place it on the Earth?

  I lived in fury, drowning from being the perfect son, of participating in the murmuring of that which didn’t even need to be said: everything is settled between broken and loyal people. I never heard anything more Catholic than that; I never heard anything more macho or papal. There’s no new man returning from among the dead. Not now and not two thousand years ago. There’s a beautiful young woman lost forever in horror and a broken man who is drowning and can’t distinguish his memories.

  —

  I’m a great diver, and I understand things better underwater. There are things that are nearby that seem far away and things that seem two arm strokes away and turn to water the very moment you try to touch them.

  Once we went diving from a little boat in the north of Brazil. We were a small group in frogs’ legs, a shoal of neoprene fascinated by the turquoise streaked brilliantly with light, of beautiful colors and expressions, of fauna that seemed undeniably happy. I love diving; in that universe everything seems united. Before taking the plunge, the leader of the group went through common issues to keep in mind: how to regulate pressure, how to come back to the surface safely, how deep to go. But in that environment everything is easy, everything embraces, in just one second you can find everything. I thought of kicking a little, and then I saw it all: the turquoise darkens concentrically and kindly, you don’t have to do anything more than let yourself be. It’s complete. Breathe? Be a good son, a good grandson.

  Fabiana appeared from behind with her commanding presence and distracted me from my liquid Orpheus, we swam around a couple more times before coming up together. Once we were up on deck we spoke with ample enthusiasm about how fantastic that submerged world was and how fascinating it was to suspend yourself before the void. I think we became impassioned enough to sail right through the fascination that Fabiana celebrated in our conversation, but beneath it all she was furious in the way of a woman who has to share her man with a lover.

  There’s not much mystery to me: the thing is I can’t stand it.

  Even though my life is little more than a miserable empire of justifications, the thing is I can’t stand it. I can’t.

  I don’t want to be the son of a body in the days between kidnapping and the end. I can’t stand it, I can’t carry it inside me, I can’t bear having survived that beautiful young woman and knowing everything that I don’t know. I can’t be the son of that woman who is smaller than me in the face of the void. I can’t stand it. I can’t. And I’m not interested in living to tell the tale. I can’t. I can’t.

  —

  Papa?

  (Is this my only private possibility of truth and justice, even though the first has to fold itself into me to release the other?)

  I won’t pronounce it like a silent psalm to hold me to this complete nothingness. The cult of the absent one. If there’s so little there, I want to live among the dead.

  I was too sure I’d never hear it.

  Now I hide so I can tremble without anyone seeing me. And what if someone says it to me one time, eyes looking up at me, looking up from some tiny little shoes?

  What if someone who has returned looks up at me?

  —

  On my desk there is hardly anything but a photo. A frame made of strips of lacquered wood with a stand on the back to hold it up. It’s a black-and-white photo with the wind blowing in my face and blowing everything away. A photo where the wind whips through the thick black hair of that woman with pale skin and makes the expression on her face difficult to see. We’re both in shorts, but I’m also wearing a sweater, a cable-knit sweater that she’d made for me. We’re both wearing sandals, she’s wearing a white blouse that sticks to her body on one side and on the other seems like it could blow away.

  I don’t remember who took this photo of us with our Kodak Fiesta camera, standing there calmly in the face of a wild landscape like a wall of low clouds, a tempestuous prophecy of the sky. Standing in the middle of pale grasses, the two of us looking at the camera, on the way to Mar del Plata from Chapadmalal. We were on vacation at the wonderful hotel built by Perón in 1945 for the Metalworkers’ Union. A huge mass of towers, like a hospital or a prison, a mass of buildings full of harsh, soviet luxury. Everything was huge and magnificent and austere, and all of us who were there were like comrades in something, as if we were all from the same school. I remember a feeling of shelter, seven possible days of vacation with my mother, seven days among equals.

  We had gone out for a stroll, one of those outings where I knew I would have to depend on every last ounce of patience I had, even though my mother made it sound like a safari full of adventures. It was strange to hear how she tried to talk me into an outing that would be torturous and would never present me with zebras, lions, or elephants.

  My mother
wanted to make me walk, strengthen me somehow, and I suppose to avoid me asking her to take me to the arcade games on a cloudy afternoon.

  “You see? That way is Mar del Plata,” she said to encourage me on a walk along the barren cliffs. I didn’t complain. I stretched my strides as far as I could to catch up to her pace and so she wouldn’t scold me, and every now and again I stopped to watch the albatrosses that glided alongside us on the cliffs.

  At one point we came across a huge construction site. We had been walking for a long time, and we stumbled upon a concrete staircase in the middle of nowhere, set into the ground and leading down toward the sea.

  I never knew exactly what that was, but it seemed to be the same type of construction as the hotel: enormous, sprawling, harsh. There was nothing at all where the staircase began. It was strange, as if the staircase had been built well before the attractions from which people would descend to the beach. But there was something stranger still: there was no beach down there.

  Hand in hand, we began to descend the stairs. My mother’s tone of voice changed and she must have felt some apprehension because she told me to hold her hand tight, and she leaned in close to go down the wide stairs. All of a sudden it became clear what was so confusing: not only was there no beach, but it was just a cliff. It was a sumptuous staircase leading to the mouth of a precipice, without protection, without any warning of the danger. The staircase ended suddenly, messily, unmade, as if the workmen of this Potemkin had undertaken the construction without knowing about the abyss and had thrown themselves over the edge while the foremen packed up and moved on to another project.

  The staircase led to the void. A wide staircase for visitors to reach the sea of the people’s summer. No need to bomb the main square in the face of this national architecture for suicidal lemmings.

  —