Thus Were Their Faces

by Silvina Ocampo

  Heredia was talking to me; I don’t remember his exact words, but in each of them I felt that he was going to reveal a secret to me: the secret that I was waiting for. I remember the last words I heard before falling asleep; it was no doubt the preamble to a confidence: “But do you swear not to tell anyone?” When I woke up I didn’t know where I was. It was broad daylight. As soon as I got my bearings I looked for Heredia. I looked for the pillow and flashlight; they were gone. I got up. I didn’t know what time it was; no birds sang; it seemed to me that everything I had seen, the place, the people, the animals, weren’t real. I wandered through the ranch house with the sensation of being a ghost living among ghosts.

  I thought that I shouldn’t see her, out of loyalty, caution, tact. Nevertheless, I decided to go to Cacharí. It was the late-afternoon hour when girls walk arm in arm along the station platform. There were people, animals in cages, waiting for the train. I paced up and down the platform a few times, stopped at the waiting room, studied the schedule, and at last sat down on some boxes to smoke a cigarette.

  Two girls passed by, their fingernails polished; four short girls with very black hair passed by. Then María Gismondi passed by, alone, a slight smile lighting up her lips. I approached her.

  “Forgive me, miss, but I must ask you a question.”

  Looking off in a different direction, she answered, “Go ahead.”

  “You won’t be angry with me?”

  She stared hard at me without answering; I continued, “You have two names, don’t you?”

  “No. I have three names: one is a nickname that was made up by one of my girlfriends; another is the name that my grandmother gave me that nobody knows how to pronounce; the other one is the true one and the one I like the best. Which do you prefer?”

  “The true one.”

  “It’s my godmother’s name. She is a healer, everyone visits her; she heals the sick. Maybe you’re sick?”

  “Not yet.”

  “There are a lot of people here who are sick with rheumatism. They called me once to take care of one patient. But the train is coming . . .”

  With an explosive shriek the train entered the station. The girl ran through the cars looking for something. I followed her from afar. A guard greeted her and gave her a big package of a triangular shape. The package no doubt weighed quite a lot as the girl placed it on the ground. I rushed up and asked almost into her ear, “Would you like me to carry it for you?”

  She accepted, smiling.

  “It’s a sewing machine. It’s quite heavy.”

  I lifted the package. It was wrapped in cardboard, wood, and newspaper.

  “I have to carry it to the carriage. My sister is waiting for me across the street.”

  We walked out of the station. It was night by now. The carriage wasn’t there.

  “The horse escaped with the carriage,” she exclaimed, almost crying. “What shall we do?”

  Night reached out dark as a cliff, but beyond the clouds, from time to time, the moon was shining.

  “Let’s leave the sewing machine here,” I said, while I hid the package beneath a bush and began to look for the carriage and the horse. At first nothing could be seen.

  “I am afraid,” said the girl. The trembling tenderness in her voice seemed to love me.

  I drew near and took her hand.

  “Don’t be afraid.”

  I closed in and put my arm around her waist, but her body seemed ungraspable, like the night. There are moments that happiness makes almost eternal; it seemed to me that while we embraced time would never end. The moon suddenly lit up our shadows and there, just a few yards away, was the carriage.

  “There was no reason to get so upset,” I told her, intimidated by her seriousness.

  “I wasn’t upset because of that.”

  “Why were you upset, then?”

  “I am sad.”

  “Why are you sad?”

  “I don’t know. Every time the train goes by I grow sad. I feel it here,” she said, taking one of my hands and holding it to her chest. “Can you feel it beating? Sometimes I think that my heart will break when I hear the racket of the locomotives.”

  “Has it always been like this?”

  “Always. My godmother, who is a healer, tried to cure me.”

  “Will I see you again?”

  “At the house where I live.”

  “Where is your house?”

  “Behind the bakery over there,” she replied, pointing to the horizon. “There is a garden with a diosma and a fuchsia.”

  After helping the girl into the carriage, I lifted up the package. I heard the crack of the whip and then, like a huge sheet, silence covered all of the images.

  We were saddling the horses. I asked Heredia, “Is there a healer who lives in town?”

  “I think so.”

  “I would like to see her.”

  “What’s going on with you?”

  “I have headaches.”

  “And do you believe in healers?”

  “Why not?”

  “Let’s go. I will accompany you there.”

  I hadn’t expected him to accompany me. It was an opportunity to find out whether María Gismondi was the same girl I had met.

  In Cacharí, after finding out where the healer lived, we neared her house, which was surrounded by poplars as described to us. After tying the horses to a post, we knocked on the door. We waited for a long time. Then a woman with indigenous features appeared. I leaned over toward her while Armando asked her solemnly, “Ma’am, are you the healer?”

  “Yes, gentlemen, I am the healer. Would you like to come in?”

  We went into a damp room that had a very tall armoire, a cot with an embroidered bedspread, and a chair.

  “Who is the sick one?”

  “I am,” I answered, looking all around with curiosity.

  “Sit down,” she said. “Where does it hurt?”

  “My head.”

  “Where?”

  “Here.” I showed her the area on my forehead that hurt.

  “You have come too late,” she answered, opening the door and looking at the sky. “You will have to come back another day, at four in the afternoon when your body’s shadow is a yard long.”

  Someone was whispering far away in the fields. Purple and pink lights fell like flowers from the trees. I approached the little wall around the well. At the very bottom I could see the water reflecting me—the image I saw was strange. I felt afraid: the fear that children and dogs feel before a mirror.

  We were at the bank of a river I was seeing for the first time. We had ridden fifteen miles on horseback. It was a cool spot among the reeds. The poplars cast gentle shadows over the water. We unsaddled and lay down to rest.

  Heredia spoke to me of his memories of travel, of his studies in Paris, of his childhood on the beaches of the Mediterranean, of his arrival in Buenos Aires. He spoke to me about his first visit to the Swans, about how the countryside had won over his heart from the first moment. I listened to him, feeling his lack of sincerity. Why did he profess this love for nature if the only thing that attracted him was a woman?

  When I asked whether the buying of the colts had been satisfactory, I took a chance and said that I had seen María Gismondi’s name written on the trunk of a tree at the ranch. As if he hadn’t heard me, he told me about a series of unrelated failures. I insisted, “Who could have written the name of the very person I would like to meet?”

  He asked me, pretending to take no interest, why I wanted to meet her.

  “I’ve seen a portrait of her.”

  “Where did you see that portrait?” Heredia asked brusquely, standing up.

  Wavering, I answered, “I don’t know.”

  I remembered the absurd print of the fight between the tiger and the jaguar; now the situation was even more difficult because I had no idea how to explain a lie that so angered Heredia.

  “Have you been snooping through drawers?”

 
“I haven’t been snooping anywhere,” I answered angrily. “In a very dull dream I saw María Gismondi’s portrait. I’m sorry for my boldness.”

  “How could it matter to me whether you have seen a portrait of María Gismondi? What matters to me is your snooping around.”

  “I told you that I haven’t been snooping anywhere: I saw it in a dream,” I shouted loudly.

  Heredia cracked his whip above the grass.

  “It’s not such a big deal,” he mumbled absentmindedly. “How sensitive you are!”

  “It’s the second time you have called me a spy.”

  I tried again to explain to him that it was a matter of dreams. I made a list of objects and people that I had met in dreams before meeting them in reality; I described them in great detail. I told him about several dreams, with no luck; they were vague, monotonous, and had no fantastic virtues. They were dreams that served as the basis for deeper reflections—only to me were they real. If I had told him a nightmare, perhaps the truthfulness of my tales would have been revealed with sumptuous precision. But I could only recall gray, blurry details in my memory. Why should Heredia care about the porcelain vase, the rocker, Esquivel’s face? How could I use these images to testify to the truthfulness of my assertion if he had never paid much attention to them and was unable to recognize them?

  Heredia accepted that I hadn’t been snooping around the house. By evening we were reconciled. Lighting our way with a lantern, we climbed a narrow green staircase and into the attic to look for a whip. Among broken wood, dusty drawers, and the whistling of bats, we advanced in the cluttered darkness. Heredia wanted to show me a jewelry case and a trunk where various old family keepsakes were stored. He wanted, with some ill will, to show me the awful palace of the bats. After hanging the lantern on a nail, we sat down on some drawers and opened the old wooden jewelry box, which was inlaid with painted designs.

  “My mother,” Heredia told me, “was the only heir; she never had the nerve to look at these things. By now any sentimentality has turned into indifference. I suspect that she doesn’t even know what’s in this attic. Out of habit, she doesn’t want to return to this ranch.”

  “But these things are valuable!” I responded with feigned seriousness, believing that Heredia disapproved of his mother’s behavior for sentimental reasons.

  “Not necessarily. Those that were valuable I had sold in Buenos Aires. The inkwell that was inside a crystal box, with gold carvings around the edges, the ivory-and-lace fan, the monogrammed silver mate, the ebony picture frame that preserved a bouquet of flowers made from the dirty hair of my ancestors, all of those things I have already sold. The most ridiculous objects make antiquarians happy. I found a tiny wooden box with mother-of-pearl inlay and a hole where a key could be hidden. I found it underneath one of the floorboards. It took me some time, fool that I am, to realize that the key wasn’t the right one to open the box. It was a music box. When it was wound up the top lifted and out came a moth-eaten bird less than half an inch long. The bird sang and furiously beat its green wings. That was my first discovery in this attic. Do you know how much I got for that toy? One thousand five hundred pesos. Now I know the value of things.”

  “Have you spent many days up here?”

  “Many,” he answered. “I thought that I would never finish looking at everything: the portraits, old letters, receipts from stores, bits of trash.”

  Heredia took out a bundle of portraits from the box while I stared with amazement at that spiderweb filled place that had appeared in so many of my dreams. We heard the whistling of the bats crossing the attic in enormous shadows.

  “If these portraits were objets d’art, I would be a millionaire!”

  Heredia passed me some portraits to look at. They were from all sorts of different periods. None of them interested me.

  “Here’s the whip,” Heredia exclaimed. “It’s worthless, but still it’s always better than a branch of privet. Let’s go.”

  He took the lantern down and for a moment we could see clumps of motionless bats. Heredia handed me the lantern.

  “I will take one of these creatures to Eladio so he can crucify it and force it to smoke,” he said, carefully capturing a bat.

  At that moment a gust of wind blew out the lantern. Fear paralyzed me. Going forward in the darkness, surrounded by bats and frogs, seemed impossible to me.

  “Let’s get closer to the staircase,” Heredia said.

  “I can’t see anything,” I responded without moving.

  “I’m like a cat: I can see in the dark.”

  He approached the door without stumbling. I felt something brush against my cheek, something cold, rough, and quick.

  “A bat!” I cried.

  Heredia’s laugh—cruel, hoarse, penetrating—wounded me like an insult.

  We heard some shots from the end of the garden.

  “Máximo Esquivel’s out shooting,” said Heredia. “When he turned thirty my grandfather gave him a revolver. He shoots at a target on Sundays.”

  “Who is Máximo Esquivel?”

  “Eladio’s father. He doesn’t live here. Sometimes he comes to visit his son.”

  We walked toward the shooting and Heredia shouted, “Máximo, don’t shoot!”

  Heredia asked for the revolver. He aimed at a dove that was sitting on a branch but didn’t pull the trigger until it started to fly. The wounded dove fell to the ground and died at our feet. Heredia passed me the revolver. I aimed at a hawk and when I fired I closed my eyes; the hawk, shrieking, flew in circles for a while. Then it followed us to the ranch house.

  On Heredia’s bedside table I saw a portrait: I thought it was María Gismondi. Heredia was putting on his boots. I was waiting for him so that we could go riding. After he walked past me I looked at the portrait. Against a gray background, the face, lit up and veiled with gentle shadows, seemed to indicate a total lack of character. This defect was perhaps due to the girl’s unnatural posture. The only expressive detail was the set of retouched lines and shadows that made up her hair, which was as straight as rain. Like a thick veil, it concealed both sides of her face, cropping the oval shape with soft, glossy light. I felt a deep sense of relief: we were not in love with the same woman. On the face of the photograph, in a slanted and very delicate hand, there was a name with a flourish after it. When Heredia returned, I asked him, “Why don’t you ever want to talk to me about María Gismondi?”

  “I don’t understand,” he answered.

  “Since she interests you so much, why don’t you talk to me about her?” I insisted.

  “Who said that I am so interested?”

  “It seems so to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you have her portrait, because you are constantly pronouncing her name.”

  “That’s a portrait of my sister,” he said, showing it to me. “Look.” With surprise I read the signature: Carmen Heredia. “But by what right are you asking me about such things?”

  “Because of our friendship.”

  The conversation, which seemed about to degenerate into a dispute, was interrupted by the happy arrival of Eladio Esquivel. The horses were saddled.

  “María Gismondi will come this afternoon. I promised her some photographs of her family and a medallion I found in an envelope that had her name written on it. She is a shy, guarded girl. Finding you here would raise her suspicions. I invited her to come today because the caretakers are going with Eladio to Azul. I ask that you shut yourself in your room or go out in the country before seven this evening and not show yourself again until nine.”

  With those words Heredia revealed to me the secret that I had awaited for so many days.

  At quarter to seven it was very hot. I decided to shut myself up in my room. I took off my clothes, lay down on the bed, and studied for about half an hour. I was sleepy and thirsty. I got up, looked out the window. Nobody was there. Absolute silence reigned in the hallways of the ranch house. It occurred to me that without disobeying Her
edia’s orders I could go (without any risk of meeting anyone) to the pantry to get something to drink. Two or three squeezed oranges, like the ones my mother squeezed, would quench my thirst. I cautiously opened the door. With the thrill thieves must feel when they are about to commit a robbery, I slipped through the hallways, entering the pantry without running into anyone. I chose the oranges; they were hard as rocks. With some difficulty I found a knife in the dining room, though it wasn’t sharp enough. I looked for another one and then, just at the moment I was crossing the hallway between the two rooms, I thought I heard a noise. I silently approached an inner window with red and blue panes; I couldn’t see anything; the window was too high. Moved by curiosity, I stood up on a chair. What would Heredia have said if he had found me at that moment? Was I doing anything other than confirming the accusation that had so hurt me? Although it might cost me my life I had to see María Gismondi. Through the panes I saw the ramshackle and dark living room of the house. We never spent time there because it was damp and quite dirty. Despite its ruinous state, it possessed a certain stylish class: on the ceiling there were garlands of flowers on the moldings, and the proportions of the windows echoed its former splendor. I saw Heredia alone, facing the door, with his arms resting on the back of a chair. I stayed there for a long time looking at him, with the hope (which he must have shared) of seeing María Gismondi come in; but the light went out and night surrounded the half-open door.

  María Gismondi did not appear. I looked at my wristwatch; it was nine o’clock. I could come out of my hiding place and find out what had happened.

  Later, during dinner, when I was sitting across from Heredia, our conversation was unexpectedly strained: I didn’t have the nerve to ask him anything, and he didn’t tell me anything.

  I was trying to study, but the letters of the book, red as fire, danced before my eyes.