Four by Four

by Sara Mesa

  Sacra crept my way.

  “I see you’re keeping your eye on everyone,” she said. “But you haven’t seemed to notice me.”

  She was dressed in coral chiffon and heavy makeup. She narrowed her eyes theatrically. She looked younger under the diffuse light, but the jowls and bags under her eyes betrayed her age.

  “I didn’t see you,” I said.

  “I know you’re always out of it. I could help you with that. If you keep your head in the clouds, things could start to go badly for you. Very badly.”

  She placed her hand gently on my arm and began sliding it up and down, waiting for a response. I stepped aside. Again, she pressed in close. She was very drunk. She couldn’t stop laughing and halfmoons of sweat darkened her dress under the arms. Martínez joined us, chomping away with ridiculous gusto on who-knows-what.

  “You’ve been avoiding us lately, Bedragare. What’s going on?”

  It was both irritating and grotesque: old Martínez’s attempt to gobble up life’s leftovers in the worst way possible. His shirt hung out of his pants and he waved his arms, haranguing me.

  “You should spend more time with us—you should enjoy yourself as much as possible. You think too much. Why do you think so much? Life is too short! You have a lady friend, don’t you? Marvelous! Well, bring your friend along to one of our get-togethers.”

  I fled his presence as soon as I could. I felt the colich walls closing in, narrowing the space around me.

  I sat on a bench at a remove from the party. Marieta was dancing in the middle of the room. A delicate sway of her hips, not at all innocent. She watched me from the corner of her eye to check the effect she was having. She doesn’t know—couldn’t know—that her body is completely different to me now, so different from what I admired in the beginning: I saw the assistant headmaster’s frog-like hands on her hips, hands that ran over her ass, crept up her back. It disgusted me to even think about. I gagged.

  She waved. I raised my glass in response, drained it in a swallow. I calculated it must have been my ninth or tenth drink.

  I remember going to the bathroom to throw up. There were traces of cocaine on the sink. I wiped it up with my finger and licked. A small amount, but the taste hit me—bitter, intense, unmistakable. Exploding on the tongue.

  On the way back, I turned the corner and bumped into Señor J. He held me by the arms, shook me lightly as if trying to rouse me.

  “I think you’ve had too much to drink, Bedragare.”

  He threw an arm around my shoulder and brought me back to the auditorium. They had dimmed the lights. I barely distinguished the figures in the melding shadows. Señor J. sat me down in an armchair and called over a waiter. He ordered him to bring me something substantial to eat.

  “You’re sloshed,” he said. “This will help, you’ll see.”

  The assistant headmaster would never speak that way, I thought. Sloshed. I laughed. Señor J. laughed, too. I hadn’t realized I’d spoken out loud.

  “You’ve got him pegged.”

  But he rushed to advise me to make no mistake, the assistant headmaster wasn’t really a bad guy. He had his weaknesses, surely, but who didn’t?

  “You have them, too, don’t you?” he added.

  In his wink and the obscene curve of his lip, I knew he referred to Gabriela. I exaggerated my intoxication to avoid answering. He was still laughing. He spoke of younger flesh, dismissed the importance of sex, exalted love for the uncorrupted. His words were confused, I was confused. Someone broke a glass. I felt the pieces shatter in my brain. Marieta was watching us.

  “We all want the companionship of Gerasim, in the end,” he said. “I don’t think you’re any different from the rest of us.”

  “Who’s Gerasim?” I managed to mutter. The alcohol surged inside my skull.

  “Everyone has their own Gerasim. You simply must look for him. Look wherever you can, without fear or judgment. And don’t ruin anyone else’s good time.”

  I tried to form a new question, but my tongue was thick, the taste of coke sticking to the roof of my mouth. Words skittered away from me. They dropped, unformed, from my lips, shedding disconnected, aborted sounds. I wanted to know, wanted to question him now, wanted so much. I was willing, but unable.

  I wanted to say García Medrano. I wanted to say Marcela, but her name was an unintelligible rattle. It didn’t matter: Señor J. had already stood up and left. I could hardly make out his back, his stride, but his answer was still dissolving in the air, thoroughly sensible advice that was like a sudden wound: Know your place, Bedragare. Don’t get clever.

  Clever? Clever? I’m not getting clever, I argued. I must have been shouting. It was Marieta, I believe, who whispered in my ear that I should go, and Tato who took me by the arm and led me to my room. I must have fallen into bed and slept for a few hours straight; unconscious, my head spinning, nauseous but not vomiting.

  I had several nightmares. Each one was worse than the last. I lost my voice, my eyes dropped out of their sockets, a group of boys played soccer with a severed head, thousands of birds smashed against the classroom window. There was background music in those dreams, distant music from the party, still echoing inside my head.

  Chill dampness has woken me. Wet sheets stick to my skin. I turn up the heat and take a hot shower. It doesn’t help. I can’t simply lie down and stare at the ceiling. When I do, I see García Medrano’s body hanging, endlessly dripping piss.

  I write and I wait, lethargic and still drunk. I hope Gabriela will come to comfort me soon.

  MONDAY, JANUARY 15TH

  Ledesma is missing. No one has the faintest idea where he could be. Initially, we thought he had simply gotten sick. I thought he was probably in his room, delirious with fever, like I had been. But Gabriela told me his room was empty.

  “What do you mean, empty? Even his things are gone?”

  “No, not his things—not that he had much.” She hesitated. “But he isn’t there.”

  The students couldn’t hide their pleasure. They hate math, and likely hate Ledesma. More free time, fewer classes, that’s what his disappearance means to them. The assistant headmaster put me in charge.

  I tried to get out of it. “But I don’t know math.”

  The assistant headmaster never loses his patience. He tries soothing me with a smile.

  “You don’t have to actually teach math. You just have to be present. Take advantage and review your own classes. Just be on duty.”

  I didn’t bother to hide my displeasure. Duties, duties, plenty of duties, I thought to myself.

  “The children mustn’t discover that we don’t know Ledesma’s whereabouts,” he added. “Just tell them that he had to leave the colich for personal reasons.”

  Personal reasons, very well, but Ledesma’s car—a red sedan that had sat accumulating dirt since I arrived—is still parked in its spot.

  I think of suicide. Logically. Ledesma seemed impacted by what happened to García Medrano. He was the first person to speak of him to me, and he was also the first to tell me about that girl from so many years ago … or maybe not so many, I don’t really remember.

  I pose the question to Gabriela. Does she think Ledesma has killed himself?

  She’s brushing her teeth when I ask. I watch her finish brushing and spit slowly, taking her time while she thinks. I see her face and neck, her body protected by a bathrobe—she’s modest, she never lets me see her completely naked. She turns and looks at me sadly.

  “No, I don’t think so. I hope not.”

  More wishful than certain, her words float in the air between us before they vanish. The situation with Ledesma is, after all, always between us. I have a strange premonition, but I’m not quite sure about what.

  TUESDAY, JANUARY 16TH

  I go on a walk with the mastiff. I check Ledesma’s car for clues. I look inside: dusty, unkempt, the floor covered in bags and slips of paper, ash on the seats, a little stuffed donkey hanging from the rearview mirror.
r />   A strange object for Ledesma’s car, the stuffed donkey.

  A token of love? A remembrance from childhood? I realize I know nothing about him. Does he have children? A partner? What interests him, what does he think about the world?

  What did his last words to me mean? The eyes of all of humanity are on the pit into which we’re poised to fall.

  I hear footsteps behind me. Marieta. Calm eyes and the faint little smile I suddenly can’t stand.

  “This Ledesma has us all going mad,” she says. “He’s an endearing eccentric, but he makes trouble.”

  She’s usually so put together, but I notice today she’s not wearing lipstick, her shirt is wrinkled. Maybe, I think, she’s just back from seeing her lover. I maintain an obstinate silence. She must sense my disinterest, my disgust.

  My coldness surprises her: I see the change in her face, the trace of unease. Is she afraid of me? I prolong the silence, narrow my eyes.

  She continues, a tremor in her voice:

  “It isn’t the first time he’s done this, disappeared without a word. Ledesma is … like that. He has his moods, and he wants us to respect them.”

  No one has ever brought up Ledesma’s tendency to disappear, but I don’t let on, don’t ask. I restrict myself to listening and exaggerate my aloofness.

  “Eccentric personalities are often rather … interesting. There are so many examples, so many artists who were considered eccentrics. Creativity, genius. Intelligence, I don’t know … I do believe that Ledesma is an eccentric, but what happens when an eccentric doesn’t find his true calling? He suffers from interior struggles, can’t produce, becomes … poorly adapted, socially inept. In love, in his friendships.”

  She pauses. The more she speaks, the more she stammers. I begin to feel the irrepressible urge to strangle her. She constantly shifts position, crossing and uncrossing her arms over her chest. The mastiff is tense, too. Obviously, something is afoot.

  “I think that Ledesma … I think he wanted to start something with me. He was lonely, I think he always has been, because he’s so odd … There’s always something unsaid when he talks. Unsaid, unseen, like backstage in a theater … One never really knows what he’s thinking … and I rejected his … I rejected him and he cut his arms. I was with him when he did it, I saw him … he grabbed a knife, a pocket knife, and he made cuts on his arms, on his hands … They were deep, he bled a lot. I, I told him to stop … I told him nothing in this world was worth hurting himself like that.”

  I observe her neck, her elegant, white neck wrapped in a silk scarf, her hair falling on either side, framing it. Her pupils are dilated. She’s afraid of me and suddenly I feel powerful. I want this moment to last. She backs up, starts to make a sign that she’s leaving. I wanted to hit her. Insult her, at least. But that isn’t me. I’m not capable, not yet. My throat burns.

  A scream rises from my guts, courses up the trunk of my body. My skin is on fire. I open my mouth. Close my eyes.

  I howl.

  An animal cry. I’m conscious of its animalness.

  I keep howling.

  I open my eyes part way. Marieta is running down the path, running ridiculously in her high heels. She slips in the mud, stumbles, but keeps on running. I don’t move an inch from where I stand. I watch her get farther away. Saliva drips down my chin. I wipe it off. The mastiff watches me. The earth emits a hostile chill. I laugh, I want to laugh, keep laughing, laugh for hours, amplify my insanity.

  Back in my room, I write. The phone will ring and they will summon me immediately. I will be dismissed.

  Dismissal materializes before me. It’s a liberation.

  WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 17TH

  I’m given a medical exam. An emergency psychiatrist comes from Cárdenas, just for me. An athletic young guy, redheaded. Too young, perhaps. He looks me over, takes my blood pressure, taps on my chest, examines my eye sockets, my ears. I don’t resist. I feel extraordinarily relaxed. I could have fallen asleep right there on the table. And though I wouldn’t be able to repeat the performance, I have no regrets about what happened yesterday.

  He addresses me informally.

  “You’re not well. Your resistance is low. You need to take care of yourself.”

  He prescribes pills and two syrups. I ask what they are, what they’re for. He answers vaguely.

  “The issue is your stress. You take things too much to heart. Try to calm down. The medicine will help. It’s nothing serious.”

  “Sometimes my eyesight fails,” I say. “It’s like I’m going crazy.”

  “What are your symptoms?” He changes his voice, conveying professionalism as he turns back to me.

  “Blurry vision, blind spots, floaters … it’s different every day.”

  He puts on gloves again and inspects me, seemingly without much interest. I follow his commands: look up, look down, this side, now that side, blink, don’t blink. I have the suspicion that he’s improvising.

  He prescribes some eye drops and reaffirms his diagnosis. It’s all due to stress and nothing, nothing at all, is of concern.

  The assistant headmaster grants me leave to rest until next Monday. I wonder what he’s told the students.

  Ledesma still hasn’t reappeared.

  FRIDAY, JANUARY 19TH

  I’m not sure what I was given, what’s happening to me. I’m battered by relentless anxiety, rendered exhausted and confused. I will not take the medicine. I refuse to be sedated. I spend hours in bed and speak only when Gabriela comes to see me and bring food.

  She’s tidying my room and I watch her work. Light falls across her back at an angle, revealing particles that float around her as she sweeps. She’s better than I am. I’m sunk. A few knocks from life and I’m a useless waste. But Gabriela never complains. Always a smile, always calm.

  I lift myself up to see her better. She notices and turns, looks at me with a blush.

  The sentence leaves my mouth with unexpected vehemence.

  “We should have a baby.”

  She goes completely red. Continues sweeping without a word.

  “I’m serious, Gabriela. You and I should have a baby. Get out of this place, the three of us.”

  She stops. Her hands tremble.

  “That can’t happen, sir—Isidro—it can’t.”

  “But you’re not that old,” I argue.

  She freezes. I regret the word that, which is like a knife. I rush to explain myself, but she stops me.

  “I’ve been sterilized. I got sterilized when I came here.”

  It dawns on me that this is why she lets me come inside her. I feel a mix of jealousy, unease, surprise.

  “But why? What for, Gabriela?”

  “It was one of the conditions for working here. All the women who work here are sterilized. The school takes care of the procedure.”

  “What’s their reason? To eliminate the risk that one of them will get you pregnant?”

  She’s embarrassed.

  “I was okay with it. Why have more children? I wasn’t going to have them, anyway. Valentina is enough work.”

  “How much work is Valentina? She’s in the city. She has her life.”

  “No, you don’t understand … it’s the worry, the fear inside. I didn’t want more of that. I agreed to the operation. I know some women who were forced to give their children up because they couldn’t take care of them. I would prefer they not be born, before it came to that.”

  She brushes her fingers through my hair. She’s comforting me, and that’s when I realize that I’m crying.

  She’s known all along that I seek refuge in her, like a child and his mother, but I’m only conscious of it now, this instant. My desire had an unspoken, even instinctual, motive: future life. A desire, a path, that won’t ever be fulfilled. Penetrating her no longer makes sense. Sex no longer makes sense. The promise of existence has been stripped from the act.

  She sits down next to me and rests her head on my shoulder.

  Outside, a little bird
sings.

  “A lark,” she says.

  She knows the names of the birds.

  SUNDAY, JANUARY 21ST

  The police came and searched the school this weekend. Martínez told me without me asking. The security cameras hadn’t captured Ledesma leaving the colich in the days prior to his disappearance, and the mastiff hadn’t shown any signs of an intruder. Nevertheless, the inspection of the colich’s facilities confirmed once and for all that Ledesma was not inside. One by one they searched the rooms, including mine. The classrooms, all sections of all buildings, even the pantries and broom closets. They combed the surrounding areas: the playing fields, the gardens. They trawled the swimming pools. All in vain. The working hypothesis was that Ledesma had slipped into the woods through a hole in the fence. They were looking for him out there. The police brought their German shepherds, alert and slobbering. The air hummed with walkie-talkies, beeps and whistles, a constant drone that we’d soon grow accustomed to.

  The assistant headmaster informed us that they didn’t need volunteers. I wouldn’t have been inclined to join them, but I did approach one of the officers. I waited until he had time to speak to me, then showed him the fence hole that I knew about.

  They carefully examined the site. According to the officer, recent fingerprints from various individuals had been found in the vicinity of the breach. Some of them could be Ledesma’s, but to isolate them would be difficult.

  He seemed neither interested nor knowledgeable.

  When the sun went down, I watched them pack up from my room. Señor J. conversed with the officers and it took them a long time to leave. Hernández and Prieto were out there, too, and the mastiff raced around, upset by the presence of other dogs, the novelty. I saw a group of boys watching from a distance. Ignacio’s gait, the Goon’s mass. They won’t be able to hide things from the students much longer.