by Eduardo Lalo
Talking had done us both good. Something more real than languages, more elemental and powerful, had come about within these four walls of misery.
Then Wen stood up and pulled a portfolio full of drawings from under the bed.
— Li, he said, his only explanation.
I untied the cords binding the two cardboard sides of the portfolio warped by the humidity. There, in some disorder, were the drawings Li had done since childhood: typical school assignments, drawings of a flower or a house, mother’s day or father’s day presents, which in her case had been dedicated to Wen. Then the old man’s influence became apparent, the niece’s attempts to do landscapes of cliffs and mountains in the traditional Chinese style, and, after she had probably taken an art class, portraits of her mother, of cousins, and of restaurant coworkers, sketched in pencil on school notebook paper.
At the bottom of the pile were more recent drawings, done with better materials. Among them were her first attempts at abstraction: labyrinths of lines, compositions with solid shapes painted in tempera or watercolor, aggressive machines inspired by surrealism.
Separated from the rest by the wax paper in which they were wrapped were some twenty pieces, done recently, because I recognized the paper and knew we had bought it on one of our outings. They were a variation on the usual dense blotches, seemingly made with the same stubbornly insistent line, but in this case leaving more blank spaces. At first sight, they looked like netting or honeycombs, but on closer inspection I realized they were formed by superimposing written phrases. Something was there in them: a word, a sentence, or an entire paragraph that had been written systematically over and over again until it became unintelligible.
The last dozen drawings were nearly identical, and it was logical to assume they constituted a series. They were denser and blacker, as if Li had tried to solidify the words. I inspected them with growing interest, suspecting that there was a message in them that Li had determined would not be read. One corner where the lines of the word had been written and rewritten less intensively gave me the clue. There, unquestionably, was the form of a b and the dot of an i. I checked and saw the pattern repeated in other drawings, perhaps five or six of them. This was how I found out what Li had been secretly drawing all the months she’d lived with me. She had written Bai’s name countless times, trying to erase it, cross it out, crush it into a solid blotch. The result was a rectangle of black lines that looked like a tombstone, her attempt to destroy the past.
At the very bottom, there were three or four more pieces that, while made in the same way, expressed a different dynamic. It wasn’t easy to decipher them, either. The word that formed them was finally made clear by the curve of the c and the straight lines of the m. Li had written Carmen until she had cancelled out the name. It had been her attempt to prevent Carmen from returning, to ward off what she feared would happen. This was how she had meant to save us. These sheets of drawing paper, bought by the two of us, bore living witness to her silences.
When I closed the portfolio, I saw that Wen was watching me. He uttered phrases, laying his fragile hand on my shoulder. I kept nodding as if I understood and agreed, now that I understood that I wasn’t a victim of abandonment but of a war that had been lost.
After my visit to Wen, not only did the same questions remain unresolved, but I felt an even more urgent need to find some answers. It wasn’t enough to have seen Li’s torment expressed in her drawings. The fact that a woman shattered by men had decided, with much premeditation, to have a relationship with me remained a deep mystery. Why had I been chosen? Invoking random chance or accusing her of thoughtlessness resolved nothing. None of those explanations clarified our history together. Besides, why had she allowed me to penetrate her with devotion, passion, and delight, when Carmen Lindo was about to return and Li had decided to go back to her? Why was she sacrificing me? Why was she, as I was convinced, sacrificing herself? I had already glimpsed an explanation when I visited Wen at the Asian products store. Now I needed to know more, whether or not it would do me any good.
During the first days after she disappeared, when I went to the restaurant to look for Li, I had run into the imperturbable faces of the stressed-out boss and his wife, who shed no light on the subject and tried to keep me from talking with the employees. It was unlikely in any case that the cooks, who had been pretty friendly with me, would be able to clarify things, given how limited their Spanish was. But I didn’t even get a chance to find out. Then I remembered the Dominican woman who took orders on the side of the double restaurant with the cheap menu. She was a friend of Li and must know something.
Just an hour before they closed, I found myself in front of the shuttered entrance to a building across Avenida Muñoz Rivera. The windows on the expensive side of the restaurant, where Li had worked, were darkened and nothing inside could be seen, but the neon lights and plate-glass windows turned the other part of the restaurant into a sort of light box. Three lone diners and one couple sat in the booths. The Dominican woman sat reading behind the cash register. In front of me, at the traffic light, an addict mechanically begged, using a paper cup from the restaurant.
While I waited for closing time before crossing the street and walking in, I remembered how often I had ordered food from the Dominican woman, never imagining that someday I might be begging her to answer my questions. Li had mentioned her once or twice. Her name was Glenda and she studied at a beauty academy. She was my last resort.
Shortly before ten, when only one diner remained at a booth, I entered the restaurant. Resigned to waiting on one more customer just before closing, the Dominican looked up from her book. When she saw who it was, she stood.
— Li isn’t here, she said before I had a chance to ask anything.
— That’s not why I’m here. I’d like to talk with you, if I can. You’re Glenda, aren’t you? Li told me about you. I know you’re friends. I’d like to find out about a few things. That’s all. It’ll only take a minute.
— That’s OK, but not here. They fired Li and the boss won’t like seeing you in his restaurant. Wait for me in front of the fire station. I’ll be there in ten minutes.
It was late and the stores around there were closed. Since I hadn’t brought the car, I suggested to Glenda that we go to a park in the neighborhood. It was one of those spaces hardly anyone used now that people were accustomed to living indoors. At its center stood a gilded bust with a congested head, huge and horrendous, covered in pigeon shit. It was Rubén Darío.
We sat by the basketball court under the light of a lamp post.
— You must know, I have, or had, a relationship with Li? I asked.
Glenda’s smile convinced me that she didn’t mind talking with me. She was maybe a couple of years older than her friend and was very unlike her. She dressed very flashily, her long nails painted with a wing design and her straightened hair dyed red. It was clear that her dream was to work in a beauty salon.
— I’ve known all about it since before you guys started, she said.
— What do you mean?
— I mean Li told me all about you two. We’re friends.
— But what do you mean, before we started? I asked.
— How she met you, the little notes she left for you, how she’d hide to watch you . . .
— Tell me. Li hardly told me anything.
— That chinita’s crazy. She gobbled up a book by you, a real, real sad one, and went around mooning over your photo. Since she was going to the university then, she saw you over there and saw how you spent all your time walking around. Around Ponce de León, around Río Piedras, around Santurce. She got curious why you did it, why you wandered around with nowhere to go, always by yourself. Since she’d shown me your photo, I realized you came in sometimes for a fried rice from the restaurant, and I promised Li I’d let her know if I saw you. Sure enough, one night you came in and I ran out to tell her, but then the boss complained I’d left the customers waiting. Li came over and stood there eye
ing you from the door between the two places.
“We spent a lot of break time imagining who you were and why you were alone. I guess you know Li doesn’t like men, well, before she was with you, she said she didn’t like them. That’s why when she told me she was writing stuff for you and leaving it where you could find it, I thought she’d gone crazy or she was in love. Everybody’s time comes. Even for women who don’t know they’re ambidextrous, apparently.
“I kept up to date about the hunt the whole time it was going on, and I went with Li more than once when she hid out and spied on you to watch your reaction when you opened the envelope or saw what she wrote on the ground. My being there was also good to throw you off the trail in case you saw us at it, since it meant Li wouldn’t be alone, and you couldn’t tell which of us was the one with the messages. But you never caught on to us—you’re so dumb—and we had lots of fun. Sometimes I told her: Li, stop bugging the poor guy, go introduce yourself to him already. What could go wrong? He’s weird, but so are you, and you like him.
“But Li kept on reading and rereading whole books, and writing little notes that she’d leave for you God knows where. And so on, till you guys met in San Patricio Plaza. My cousin loaned me his car so I could drive her there and back that night. When she told me she had left without saying good-bye, I gave her a good talking to—after disappearing like that, I thought you’d never give her the time of day. But that didn’t happen, you were too patient for that, and, well, you know the rest of the story.”
— Not the whole story, I said.
— If you want to know more, if that’s why you came to see me, I can tell you Li loves you, and she was happy with you.
— So why did she vanish?
— Because Carmen came back. I don’t know if you know who she is. She’s the woman Li was with before you.
— You think it’s that simple. Li goes back to her old habits and just like that forgets what happened between us.
— Yes and no. You’re strange; Li’s even stranger.
— Why go to Carmen now? Hadn’t they split up?
— They’ve known each other for years, from back when Li started college. Carmen influenced her a lot, apart from helping her in more than one sense. Among other things, she ended up paying Li’s tuition. You should know that Li doesn’t have a penny to her name, and the Chinese, especially the guy that owns the restaurant, are slave drivers. Me, they pay minimum wage, but the Chinese don’t even get that much.
— What you’re telling me is, Li is extremely grateful, and she has debts.
— Right, both those things, and of course more than that. It’s not so easy, like you say.
— Why did she leave, then?
— You want me to tell you the truth? asked Glenda.
— That’s why I came.
— Because she was scared.
— Scared of me?
— I don’t know, maybe that too. But mainly scared of the Chinese.
— I don’t understand.
— Li doesn’t have anybody, Glenda explained, and the Chinese are her world.
— But you said they fired her.
— Yeah, but that was just the other day. There were problems, and the boss’s wife never liked her much. She couldn’t understand why she wanted to study and be different. Besides, after she left your house, she missed work, and that’s something the bastards never forgive. They’re mules, and they think the rest of us should work like them.
— Well, there’s no reason now for her to be as scared as you say.
— Just the opposite. Now’s when she’ll be running to the bathroom.
— Why?
— I already told you. Because she’s alone, she’s got no home, no money.
— Where is she?
— With the professor, Carmen Lindo.
— Why with her and not me?
— That I don’t know. You’d have to ask her yourself.
— But why do you think, given all you know?
Glenda thought it over for a while, straightening her necklaces, playing with the pages of the book she had set on the bench.
— I think, let’s see how I can put it for you, she wanted to escape.
Something flew over our heads and settled in the trees. Glenda grew anxious and wanted to leave.
— Don’t worry. It was a bird, I said, trying to calm her.
— No, they’re bats. They’re going to get tangled in my hair. I should be leaving now.
— Where do you live?
— On Roosevelt. I share a room with a friend.
— I’ll walk you if you’d like.
We went up a street that was a long, perfectly straight line. I thought it was the most unnatural thing that could exist. Maybe that was also why the city seemed so disagreeable. It was constructed along a model that didn’t correspond to life.
— Have you been here long? I asked while we walked.
— Six years since I came on a yawl.
— Have you ever been back?
— I can’t. I couldn’t ever go there and sail back here on a yawl again, no way.
— Do you at least have some family in Puerto Rico?
— Aunts and uncles, but I left my little boy in Santo Domingo. Look, here he is.
Glenda took out a photo. Her son was posing in the very center of a vacant lot. The image appalled me.
— What’s his name? I asked.
— Jean Michael.
Glenda put the photo away and added,
— This is no sort of life.
— I guess you understand the Chinese, then, I said.
— Of course I do, even if they’re assholes. They got it worse than us because they come from the other side of the world, and there’s no way of getting back there. God willing I’ll get to go to Santo Domingo next year and come back here with my boy. Them, forget about it. What I say is, we don’t work so much for ourselves as we work for Western Union.
— Do you think I could see Li again? I’d like to talk to her. I don’t mean to screw up her life.
Glenda thought about it for a moment.
— I didn’t tell you this, but this Saturday night, there’s a party at Carmen Lindo’s place. That’s 31 Calle Canals, third floor. I’ll be there, but you never met me. OK? Don’t even think of saying hi to me. If I was you, I’d show up and introduce myself, they aren’t going to kick you out.
We stopped in front of a garage door.
— Here it is. The little place in back, she explained.
— What are you reading? I asked.
Glenda displayed the front of the book.
— I borrowed it from one of the cooks. It’s good.
The wrinkled, dog-eared cover showed a landscape of skyscrapers in flames and, in large letters, the title: Predator.
Saturday afternoon came around, and I still hadn’t decided whether to go to the party. I wasn’t in the habit of showing up unexpectedly at places where I hadn’t been invited. I spent hours doing nothing but struggle with the question. I was afraid of causing a scene that would give Li an excuse for leaving me once and for all. Most of all, the thought of letting outsiders see the pain I was living through genuinely horrified me. As the sun set, I tried to convince myself, telling myself Li had spent weeks hunting me and I could let myself use a similar strategy with her. I tried to believe I’d find the courage to enter the elevator and knock on the door. In my anxious state, that was the biggest stumbling block, and I didn’t know whether I would be able to overcome it.
I stalled for time by driving around the block. At around eight, I parked and walked to Calle Canals. Number 31 was a five-story building with a rooftop terrace shaded by panels of corrugated iron. At street level, there was a dry cleaner’s and a small supermarket, still open at this hour. My head felt light and my heart was pounding.
On the third floor balcony, two doors stood open. Reddish light and a hint of Arabic music filtered out through them. Shadows moved across the bit of ceiling th
at could be seen in the apartment. The shadows were far apart, so I supposed that most guests hadn’t arrived yet.
I noticed three people coming in my direction on the opposite sidewalk. I took a few steps back and hid among the bags of garbage from a clinical laboratory. When the man and the two women drew near, I recognized them as professors at the university. The bald, chubby man with very white skin was an economist, and he could have once been called an acquaintance. More than ten years had passed since we last talked, however. One of the women must have been his wife; the other was a psychologist who had vanished into administrative positions and who liked doing academic tourism to assert, in select cities, that a better world was possible. This must, unfortunately, be Carmen Lindo’s social circle. The established and slothful professoriate, with short and dubious lists of published works, prone to attacks of gout, intellectual paranoia, and menopausal hot flashes.
From my hiding place, I saw others arriving who were cut from the same cloth. Not all of them lived and worked in the country. The arrival of summer allowed people to attend the party who hadn’t found work in the country and had emigrated to institutions in the United States. The incestuous and complicitous atmosphere they would bring to the party was completely inappropriate for my meeting with Li.
I left my hideout ready to turn around and go home in defeat. That was when I saw a man walking from Avenida Ponce de León. When he was twenty steps away, face lit by the street lamp, I recognized him as Máximo Noreña. He must have seen me from farther back because, without shifting his posture or raising his eyes, he walked straight over and welcomed me.
— Good evening, professor, he said, shaking my hand.