The Iliac Crest

by Sarah Booker

  When I’d recovered a few days later, I returned to the archives with new verve. I went home only to bathe and eat something quickly before rushing back. The Invaders were so absorbed in their own linguistic experiments that they didn’t even notice my two-day absence. They ignored my change of routine. For my part, I found myself content, almost loquacious, with a newfound euphoria. Entire years had passed since I’d felt the nervous energy that drove me to act, to resist, to persevere. It was in this mental state that I happened upon Amparo Dávila’s lost manuscript.

  AMPARO APPROACHED ME SURREPTITIOUSLY ONE NIGHT. SHE brought the bottle of anisette and, after serving the liquor in two small glasses, reclined in front of the lit fireplace. We chatted idly until, pausing, she looked up at me.

  “You know?” she said offhandedly. “I know your secret.”

  As had become customary in our few conversations, her comment made me let out a short, round burst of laughter. I laughed not only because the woman claimed to know my secret but because she shockingly assumed there was only one.

  “Oh?” I asked in turn. My cheeks must have been burning from the heat of the fire, the liquor, and her ridiculous comment.

  “Yes,” she asserted.

  She crawled catlike across the carpet, moving her shoulders slowly, sensually, until she arrived at my chair. With feline grace, she perched herself on the armrest and caressed my ear. She brought her anise-scented lips close to my face and said, “I know you are a woman.” She smiled and, with nothing more, returned to her position in front of the fireplace.

  I refrained from reacting. I watched her, completely stupefied. Paralyzed. Incredulous. I mentally examined each and every one of the pages of her lost manuscript and concluded that this was, without a doubt, her revenge. I wasn’t sure how she knew that I had found her manuscript and then pathetically attempted to deceive her, but at that moment I knew she understood everything.

  It was then that the Betrayed appeared in my reading nook. She wore a long, navy-blue nightgown; her hair was down, her cheeks flushed. It was obvious she felt better, that her health had radically improved. I tried to say something to her, but Amparo’s comment had paralyzed me, keeping me from uttering a single word. There, immobile and mute, I watched the two approach each other. One magnet before another. One magnet touching another. There was a kind of ease in the way they remained entwined in front of the lit fireplace.

  “Did you tell him yet?” the Betrayed asked, watching me out of the corner of her left eye.

  The other nodded.

  “I see,” said my ex-lover, and, as if a great weight had been lifted, she laid her head on Amparo’s illuminated lap.

  MY RELATIONSHIP WITH WOMEN HAS ALWAYS BEEN PROBLEMATIC. Some of you will immediately wonder about my relationship with my mother. I am afraid I will disappoint because, though I have searched for meaningful and relevant stories about her, I haven’t been able to come up with any. My mother was not a perfect woman, but nothing in the measured and careful way that she treated me when I was a boy left traumatic marks on my life. When she died just a few years ago, we had time to say goodbye in the general hospital, where she held my hand and looked at me with open and compassionate eyes. It pained her to leave me alive, to leave me alone, but she couldn’t do anything to change our future.

  To those of you who ask about my relationships with girlfriends, bygone lovers, wives, and the like, it’s better to spare you that boring and somewhat bitter monotony. Aside from the Betrayed, the rest were processed punctually or punctually forgotten. In this, I am like anyone else. But, because I never got over her, and because the information about my change in gender originates with her, I believe it is appropriate to reveal my version of the facts about the woman who always had a clear conception of herself in close relation to me.

  The Betrayed. What a heavy word! What immense humiliation it inflicts on both victim and victimizer!

  The woman who later named herself the Betrayed tended to be beautiful on Thursdays. On that day, her makeup gave her a flawless glow, her crimson lipstick accentuating her perfect pout. Her flighty eyes widened with a secret intelligence. Her clothing fell more gracefully on her body. There was, without a doubt, a secret romance between her and Thursdays, the only day of the week we saw each other. And we did so for a long time, with discipline, at consistent rhythms—with pleasure, even. At the end of those early months, as familiar as they were unfamiliar, we came to understand that the Thursday Woman had been slowly, irreversibly conquering the other days of the week. Thursdays spilled over into Wednesdays and Fridays; later they went until Saturdays and Mondays. Sundays were more work for her, but before two years had passed, she spent those with me, too.

  At that time I was living in South City studying medicine, and I swore that my life’s mission was to cure the sick. This excited the Thursday Woman, who, both honest and prone to flattery, admired my conviction, my energy, and, above all, the love I professed for her. My love, to be sure, was real. Before she became the Everyday Woman—that is to say, when she was still just the Thursday Woman—I loved her in ways that were, for me, inconceivable. I imagined her above all else. I imagined her in every moment. I imagined her even when she was in front of me. To this day, I don’t know a better definition of love. But all of this suffered a radical transformation when her imperialist zeal led her to dominate the other days. Something strange, something inexplicable, something silent passed between the two of us. And precisely between those parentheses, within that inexplicable strangeness, arrived one of those moments that affect you for the rest of your life.

  Surely she would say it was all a result of my selfishness, my irresponsibility, my lack of manliness and sensitivity, my senselessness, my calculated desire for revenge. She would say that and more, and I suppose, even now after so many years, she’d be right. But in the beginning, in the first hours of that crucial day that I still remember as luminous, I was just happy to be alive. I got up quickly and went for a walk through the narrow South City streets without eating anything, ready to breathe and stretch my legs. A couple hours later I stopped in an outdoor café and ordered my usual cappuccino. And there, as I brought the cup to my lips, still hesitating because of the liquid’s heat, she appeared. The Betrayer. The woman. She was not a stranger but one of those ex-lovers whom you stop seeing without ever knowing why, and never stop desiring upon meeting again, years later.

  The Betrayer sat at my table with a smile on her lips. She smoked cigarettes, flirted brazenly, and, in less than half an hour, had successfully made me forget about my habitual Thursday date. Such was the complicity she wove within me. When she stood up to leave, already having swung her leather bag over her shoulder, I felt the urge to stop her.

  “I might not see you again for many years,” I said with sudden fear and a sense of hopelessness.

  “Yes,” she replied, still smiling, unaware of the terrain she was treading upon.

  “And surely you will have children that won’t be mine.” My comment made her laugh, not out of irony but apparent desire.

  “Surely,” she affirmed.

  The midday sun was at its peak. Below its beating rays, oppressed by the dry heat of its presence, I allowed myself to be swept away. I allowed myself to be completely swept away.

  “Come with me,” I said to her, taking her by the hand and leading her, without another word, to the edge of the canal that crossed the city. “I’m not going to let you go.”

  She opened her eyes, then closed them. But not before I placed one of my hands at the base of her neck and pulled her toward me. There are kisses—the rarest, the most sublime—that compel you to remember the words of the Quran. Lips like fountains. Her lips, the lips of the Betrayer, were effectively my fountain. I drank them completely.

  The infatuation that overcame me that afternoon did not disappear quickly. For three years I was so dominated by the Betrayer and my feelings for her that I could barely remember my life before, including the woman who would s
oon become the Betrayed. It is true that on numerous occasions she showed up at my house crying excessively. And it is true that she waged an extended telephone war with me, which I would often escape by leaving the receiver on the shelf. And it is true that she threatened me. And that she uttered the Lord’s name in vain. And that she humiliated herself, asking me what she lacked, what else she could give me. And that she summoned her courage, crashing plates at my feet after the true target of my face failed. That was all true. But I did not truly understand everything that happened until years later, after the Betrayer had already left in search of something less familiar. Because while she was by my side, I had no time, energy, or space that was not entirely and absolutely dedicated to her.

  I do not regret it.

  And even if I did, it wouldn’t change anything.

  Regardless, the Betrayed was happy to learn of the Betrayer’s disappearance.

  “You made your bed, now lie in it,” she harshly declared every time she saw me. It was clear that saying those words filled her with as much pleasure as pain. The Betrayer had not only betrayed me, after all, but had also betrayed her; she had inflicted twice the damage. And there lay the damage in her wake: in the sharp and disorganized fragments, both faces were reproduced. Our Thursdays. Our hours. Our caresses. Our secrets, stubbornness, irrevocable desires for revenge. It was because of all of this, not for any other reason, that we began to see each other again. And she stopped calling herself the Betrayed for a few months, reclaiming her Thursday name. But, as you might expect, that did not last long. Soon, sooner than expected, she again became the Everyday Woman, and I—fearing a new betrayal and, above all, the regret that always accompanies new betrayals—decided to accept a job by the sea. I decided it was better to walk among the dying, to die little by little, day by day, with all of them.

  In reality the Betrayed is called the Betrayed because I was never kind enough to let her know I was moving to the coast.

  And if all this was true, as I was sure it was, then I didn’t have the slightest idea where they had gotten this story that I was actually a woman.

  FEAR ALWAYS STARTS FROM ZERO BECAUSE IT HAS THE VIRTUE—or defect, depending on how you look at it—of erasing precedents, assumptions, and histories. You always experience it for the first time. I suppose it was fear that I felt upon seeing my face in the bathroom mirror the next day. In reality, few things had changed: there were the wrinkles that surrounded my eyes and lips, the gray hairs at my temples, my green irises. And, nevertheless, my appearance was entirely intangible. I had to move several times and see my reflection move in unison to convince myself it was really me. I touched my sex and, with evident relief, confirmed my penis and testicles were still in place. Amparo Dávila and the Betrayed were playing a nasty trick on me, I had no doubt. With that sense of security, I headed for the Magpies’ house as we had arranged ten days earlier.

  “So punctual, Doctor,” one of them said, exposing a thigh full of cellulitis as she tried to climb into the back seat of my jeep. The other settled into the passenger seat. I set out immediately, and once on the road I asked them for directions to get where they were going. It was a dance hall they described as being close to downtown. When we stopped at the military checkpoints and the officials asked me what we were going to do in North City, I told them, as I tended to do, that it was an emergency. They looked at the Magpies and then at me. They did not believe me, but would have needed a lot more determination and resources to contradict a government employee. What seemed strange, but immediately slipped my mind, was that I could swear one of the armed officials winked at me before stamping our identity cards. And that he did it again as we pulled away. I could have reported him for such a lack of respect, but I didn’t process it until much later.

  The two hours separating us from North City passed in silence. I didn’t turn on the radio because I wanted to hear the sound of the waves crashing against the reefs slowly fade in the distance. As I normally did on this route, I concentrated on detecting the thinning of the marine scent below my nose—a phenomenon that, to neutralize entirely, usually took between eighteen and twenty-five minutes of driving. Afterward, it was all dirt and cement. Afterward, it was all reality. And it wasn’t until then that I had any desire to converse with my guests. The clothing they were wearing made it obvious that they were going out: sequined dresses and high heels.

  “I thought you were from South City,” I said, curious about their plans in North City, a place not characterized by lively parties or enjoyable celebrations.

  “Yes, but we have family in North City,” they answered almost in unison. “A nephew of ours is getting married.”

  They fell silent, watching me out of the corners of their eyes. They glanced at each other.

  “It would mean a lot if you joined us,” they said, trying in vain to tame their tangled manes of long black hair.

  At first the idea struck me as preposterous, even disrespectful, but it began to grow on me a few miles later. It had been a long time since I had visited either of the two cities and even longer since I had gone to a party. Moreover, there it was again, unexpectedly, the throb in my lower belly that always alerted me to my sexual appetites. I imagined the Magpies naked at my side: one mounting me energetically while the other spread her legs over my face. I heard their moans. I imagined one kneeling before me, sucking me off with pleasure and dedication, and the other competing to do the same. I imagined the round buttocks of one, and my hands separating them to insert my cock, slowly at first, and then firmly, into her puckered asshole. I heard her screams. I watched her back muscles. I savored the roundness of her shoulders. The nocturnal air and the speed of the car facilitated the course of my imagination. Soon I had the urge, a strong one, to touch myself, something I couldn’t do in the tight space and exposure of the jeep. I was going to control myself, to let it pass as one does with so many things in life, but I remembered the words of Amparo Dávila and was filled with rage. I stopped the car on the side of the highway and, with the pretext that I was going to take a piss behind a bush, I hid to touch myself and confirm that everything was still in its place: my penis and my testicles and my scrotum and all the evidence that flagrantly contradicted Amparo Dávila’s assertion. Taking advantage of the moment, I quickly masturbated and returned, a little more relaxed, to the car.

  “I’ll go with you,” I told them immediately. The Magpies smiled, and in their big, bright eyes there appeared scenes similar to the ones I had been imagining just a few miles before.

  The party was, for the most part, like any other. It was held in a spacious, windowless hall where there were about seventeen round tables covered with white tablecloths. There was liquor and food and music to encourage dancing. The Magpies, noting my boredom and still visibly flattered that I had accepted their invitation, soon pulled me aside. I followed them, aware of what would happen. They went to the lobby and asked for the key to one of the rooms at the top of the tower. There they undressed and, just as I had imagined only a few hours before, prepared for the silent gymnastics of the sexes. The women weren’t beautiful, but they weren’t horrible either. In fact, there wasn’t anything noteworthy about them. And though I was no longer young, isolation, meager meals, and long walks on the beach had kept my abdomen in check. My arms were long and thin but not saggy. I was indeed past my prime, but they had no reason to detest my physical appearance. Our sweaty exercises, which carried us from one bed to the other, from kisses to nibbles, from moans to feverish shouts, left me absorbed in other things. Amparo Dávila was wrong, I repeated to myself as my cock quickly thrust in and out of their asses. I did not have such a secret. And as I continued to repeat that phrase, I penetrated whichever Magpie even more vigorously. With both hands firmly gripping her hips, I pulled her closer when the pain made her want to distance herself from me. She began to shout out in pain, but also pleasure. Then, improvising, I pulled out and saw how she squirmed on the bed, waiting for more. My boredom, by then, was t
remendous. The only thing I desired was to return to the sea, her calmness, her immensity. One of them sat on my face while the other maneuvered to stick something up my ass. I had the impression it was a candle. The pain and the pleasure were incredible. Once I had bathed and they were lying together on one of the beds, I could do nothing but thank them sincerely for their spark of imagination.

  I left with a desire to walk for a bit in North City, which I rarely visited, but the winter wind forced me to go into one of those twenty-four-hour restaurants. There were fat women surrounded by full plastic bags at two of the tables. A few men with haggard faces and buckteeth stared, unblinking, out of the large illuminated windows. It was not difficult for me to imagine them in the rickety old beds of my hospital. They had that grimace, that attitude of being damaged that always announces the end. I was about to leave when one of the waitresses approached me with a cup of coffee I hadn’t ordered. I thanked her because I discovered I did indeed fancy something warm. I held the mug with both hands and brought it to my lips, anticipating the warmth that would soon slide through my body.

  A slow, delicate warmth flowed through me. I closed my eyes. And didn’t open them again until chaos woke me.

  It was a nocturnal patrol in charge of rounding up and incarcerating the homeless and the migrants living on the downtown streets. They entered the brightly lit restaurant and, after rigorously demanding identity cards, confirmed the obvious: the majority of the diners lacked appropriate state documentation and didn’t have jobs. A team of four blue-uniformed officials proceeded to load the men and women into the back of their truck to transport them to either prison, some sort of welfare institution, a hospital, or my house of death, depending on the case. I could tell upon their arrival at the hospital who among the newcomers had been caught and roughed up in this way. They didn’t even approach me, but, when I tried to recapture that delicate sensation of warmth I had momentarily felt, it was impossible. Disgusted and in an openly bad mood, I left without a destination in mind.