When I heard the hoarse voice of the woman, I recalled some memories from my childhood. I had played with that same seriousness. My games could be confused with the heaviest labors that men perform out of a feeling of obligation—nobody had respected me. I thought: Children have their own hell. Punishing and threatening the youngest child severely, she used the wonderful name: “I will send María to your houses to tell your mothers what you have done.”
Ashamed, I slunk like a shadow through the streets of the town following that horrid woman. The streets seemed more twisting and ominous to me, infinite and at every step filthier, as if winding through a swamp. I crossed the railroad tracks, passed two shops, stopped in front of a drugstore; the streets capriciously became narrower then wider; I came to the avenue of the phoenix palms, when all of a sudden the woman disappeared around a corner.
On a balcony of a whitewashed brick house, there was a half-open window behind a cast-iron railing. Protected by the darkness of the night, I peeked through the window into the interior of the room. In the dizzying light of a mirror I saw the reflection of a girl whose face I could barely make out in the shadows. Her image became clearer, but her hair, like a river as shiny as silver, obscured her. I thought that María, suspecting that I was looking at her while crouching in the darkness, was hiding her body with her hair.
The light in the room went out. I heard the footfalls of bare feet on the wood floor and then total silence in the street.
With a leap I entered the room. I thought about dying. Love and death are alike: when we are lost we rely on others. Motionless, I waited, adjusting to the sudden darkness of the room. After a duration that seemed to connect me with eternity, the mirror began to light up. I saw a chair, then a bedside table, a sewing basket with spools of thread, the painted metal alarm clock, the vase with paper flowers, the narrow bed where the girl lay with her eyes open. “There are people who sleep with their eyes open,” I thought, drawing near. “She doesn’t see me. I can lean over her to see her better. I could kiss her without her feeling it.” I leaned over. I felt her delicate breathing. I saw her hands on the white bedspread, her hair loose on a pillowcase embroidered with large daisies. “She no doubt embroidered this herself,” I thought, seeing the blue pencil line beneath the wreaths. Kneeling by the bed I examined her eyes: she seemed to look at me without seeing me.
“María, now, for the first time, I can embrace you the way I’ve often dreamed of doing,” I told her in a low voice, feeling as if I was shouting. I tried to keep my body away from mirror’s light that shone in the room. I drew several steps back and banged into the bedside table; the alarm clock fell off. I crouched down expecting terrible things to happen but silence once more spread like a veil over the house. I stayed for a time holding still, not daring to move. I knelt once more by the edge of the bed. In the soft light of the mirror the girl’s face shone with extraordinary clarity. Suddenly, as if my insistent gaze had woken her, she sat up. She looked at me with horror. She wanted to scream but I covered her mouth. She wanted to flee but I held her down.
Dawn was breaking when I left the house.
It was very early when I stepped out of my room. The dew shone on the leaves of the plants. Heredia appeared. He beat the stones, the branches, the thistles, the tree trunks—everything we encountered—with his whip.
“I have to speak to you,” he said. “I have to explain some things to you.”
Astonished, I listened without uttering a word.
“For me,” he continued, “María Gismondi didn’t die four years ago. Do you how she died, and for whom? Four years ago, in February, I wanted to deliver a letter to her. Her parents weren’t supposed to know about it. The task was nearly impossible. One night (I remember it was a Sunday), overwhelmed, I wandered through the town and decided to enter her room like a thief. I intended to leave the letter under the mattress or in a drawer of the bedside table and then flee without being seen. I crept through the window. I hid in a space between the armoire and the wall. I heard some steps in the next room; someone opened the door and lit the lamp. I couldn’t leave. (To this day I still feel my heart beat against the cold of the whitewashed wall.) I heard bare feet slowly walk across the floorboards. María Gismondi entered the room; she closed the window, lay down, and turned off the light. I waited for her to fall asleep. Never in my whole life have I waited so long. When I thought she was asleep, I left the letter on the bedside table and fearfully approached the window. I tripped on something. In the total silence of night, the noise echoed violently. I stood still. In the darkness, María Gismondi hunted for matches and lit the lamp. When she saw me she wanted to cry out; I put my hand over her mouth. I held her in my arms for the first time. When two people fight it seems as if they are embracing. I struggled with María Gismondi until daybreak. Afterwards I fled her house, as she was about to fall asleep. The next day they announced her death. For a few days I thought that I had killed her; then I thought that anyone who thought she was dead had killed her. I understood that our lives depend on a certain number of people who see us as living beings. If those people imagine that we are dead, we die. That’s why I can’t forgive you for saying María Gismondi is dead.”
I searched for a calendar. I found one in the kitchen. Feverishly I consulted it. The twenty-eighth was only one day away. It was important to wait without fear. I thought, trying to calm myself down: Fear attracts misfortune. I went out to the patio; I gathered some stones and, with astonishing precision, tried out my marksmanship on a tree trunk.
Atop the kitchen roof, a white cat looked at me with green eyes. I threw the last stone at the cat. I heard the dry thud on the tiles and a sharp cry of distress.
The poor animal fled the roof, bleeding. I found a trail of blood around the house. I thought about how cruel people can be when they are afraid. Why had I thrown the rock? To deserve being punished? To prove that I could kill too? To prove something to someone? To myself. Nobody had seen me.
A cloudy sky brought the night on quickly. So as not to imitate my dream I decided to go to the post office in the carriage. Trembling, with the letter in my pocket, I crossed the hallway, the patio, and into the kitchen. The housekeeper told me that her husband had taken out the carriage. With a horribly ominous feeling I found the horse and saddled it.
“Are you cold?” Eladio asked.
I realized that I was still trembling.
I felt as if I wasn’t moving forward, that I was riding a horse made of lead. Overwhelmed by a dreadful exhaustion, I reached the town. I felt calmer facing the low, yellow post office. Nobody was there. I dismounted. I only had to take a few steps to slip the letter into the mailbox and be free, but suddenly, as I held it out in my hand, Heredia appeared. I thought, “I am dreaming . . . I should be upset . . . soon I will wake up.”
Heredia said very slowly to me, “Give me that letter; I’ll put it in the mailbox.” When he held the letter in his hand he added, “This envelope has another one of the same size inside it.”
“You are a sorcerer,” I answered, trying to keep reality from resembling the dream. “I put a letter to a classmate inside. I don’t have his address.”
A few yards away, Claudia or María came walking along a dirt path. (I still didn’t know her name. I wouldn’t ever find out what it was!) I felt calm: reality was diverging ever more from the dream; besides, that circumstance would allow me to speak about something else, to distract Heredia’s attention. I told him in a low voice, gesturing with my eyes to where he should look, “That’s the girl who traveled with me. You will see how she blushes. She pretends not to know me!”
Heredia looked at me scornfully. Did he suspect how much I had suffered thinking that we were in love with the same girl? I waited for her to draw near and then, removing my hat, asked her, as if I didn’t know her, “Miss, could you tell me if the train schedule has changed?” I looked at my watch. “It’s twelve and I still haven’t heard a whistle.”
She looked at me with s
urprise.
“The station is two blocks from here, ask the station chief.”
“And the social club, miss, do you know where it is?”
“The social club is five blocks away, to the right.”
“Will there be a dance soon?”
“Saturday night.”
“Are you going, my beauty?”
When she heard the last word, which was not exactly what I intended to say, the girl blushed.
“I don’t go to dances. I’m in mourning,” she responded, with a proud twitch of her lips. She walked off with a quick grace, without saying goodbye.
We stood there watching her. We spoke about her legs, her age, her waist. But what had Heredia done with my letter? I saw that he had tucked it in his pocket, perhaps absentmindedly. I told him, in a trembling voice, “You’ve forgotten about my letter.”
“Quite the opposite: I haven’t forgotten it.”
“Then why do you have it in your pocket?”
“So that you can read it to me aloud when we get back to the ranch.”
I tried to grab it from him but he threatened me with the revolver—the revolver from the dream! We mounted the horses. As we rode, I thought about forcing the letter and the revolver from him. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, waiting for a moment of distraction to flee, to ask for help, to hit him on the head. But he was much stronger than I was, and very fit, so I abandoned my plans. If I asked for help, they would think I was crazy anyway; if I fled, Heredia would shoot me in the back; if I attacked him, he would kill me like a dog.
Dying didn’t matter to me. I looked at him with indulgence.
“And how do you think you can make me read you my letter?”
“With this,” he said, putting the revolver on the table, “because you are incapable of defending yourself, even with this revolver, even with the knife strapped to your belt.”
“I disdain violent means to reach an agreement.”
“What means do you approve of, then?”
“Those of mutual understanding.”
“Okay,” he said, sitting down. “Now read me your letter.”
“I won’t.”
“By violence, then,” he said, picking up the revolver again.
Trembling, I took the letter that Heredia handed me. Once again I thought I was dreaming and that I would soon wake up. Perhaps the letter would turn into a completely different one.
Slowly I began to read. I read as they had taught me to read aloud in school, my body held straight, raising my head at the end of each paragraph, indicating the punctuation in an exaggerated way. When I finished, a century later, Heredia, without a word, stood up and left the room. I heard his steps stop on the flagstones in the hallway. As in my dream, I needed to flee. I shut Carbón in my room so that he wouldn’t follow me. I looked for the carriage, the horses: they weren’t there. With the heaviness produced by shameful fear, I ran. I entered my room again; I had forgotten the keys. I tucked them in my pocket. I put my notebook and books in the drawer of the table and departed once again. I left everything behind; anything I took with me could give me away or make my flight more difficult.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS BY RÓMULO SAGASTA
Here the pages of this extravagant notebook come to an end. After having meditated upon the notebook’s contents, I feel the need and duty to add the true conclusion.
Every life, with its experiences and illusions, is incomplete, fragmentary, and terrible: the life revealed in the preceding pages is an especially moving symbol in my view. Having corrected some grammatical errors, without modifying the simple, childish style of the sentences, I will now add the following:
On February 28, 1930, I left Constitution Station on the morning train for Cacharí. I did so unwillingly, not thinking that I would find myself facing the awful spectacle fate had in store for me.
The Swans, the ranch that I had visited so many times with my friend Raúl Heredia for weekends during the May holidays or during Carnival, evoked the warmest, sweetest memories in my heart.
The delicious lunches outside, the long siestas, the calm silence of the countryside are pleasures that no native of these parts can disdain. It is true that I am fond of hunting and that this entertainment is an additional attraction for me to country life. The first thing I did whenever I visited was to rent the shopkeeper’s hunting dog for two pesos. A pointer, even one that’s in bad shape, is of some use when the hunter is skillful. Without fail, at the end of the afternoon, I would return from the fields with eight or nine partridges.
I reached the Swans, I repeat, on February 28, 1930. I carried my shotgun with me to conceal the real motive for my journey.
It was a dazzlingly beautiful sunny day. Nobody was waiting for me at the station. I wandered around the platform for half an hour, and was beginning to regret my trip when the carriage appeared. Eladio Esquivel slowly climbed down like an old man and greeted me. I received him coldly, at once suspecting the tragic eloquence that was hidden in his slowness. Something grave had happened. With serious words, spoken with hesitation, he told me, “There has been an accident.”
With my shotgun and suitcase, I hastened into the carriage and, as we rode to the ranch, I listened, confused, to the boy’s story. The sun, the brightness of the day, Eladio’s sleepy voice—everything seemed to call his words into question.
Then I saw the dead body. I spoke to the caretakers, the doctor, the police, and after dealing with the coffin, I went to examine the place where the accident had occurred. Along a road lined with eucalyptus trees and Australian pines, Eladio took me to a place surrounded by high grass where it was still possible to see bloodstains and traces, possibly, of a struggle. Later I learned that the black dog from the ranch had howled and, in wild desperation, dug up the earth where it saw the blood.
We never foresee the worst possibility. I had foreseen everything except what had actually happened. I again lamented my acceptance of such an unpleasant mission. My friendship with Raúl Heredia, my sympathy for his family, had impelled me to relent out a sense of duty. To visit a lonely ranch under the pretext of hunting partridges, to spy on and give counsel to a boy of eighteen, even if he was the son of my friend, struck me as intriguing but embarrassing. Now, finding myself in the face of such an unexpected and horrible event, it seemed as if my fears matched my forebodings in a natural way.
Since childhood, Armando Heredia had shown signs of madness. It is true that young boys always struck me as crazy; their conversations, the games they play, the words they utter, are often sure signs of madness to me. Surviving childhood is a severe test on the faculty of reasoning. Among children I have known, Armando Heredia was without a doubt the oddest. I see him as he was at fourteen, his eyes blazing, a whip in his hand, punishing a fictitious character (whose features he had drawn himself on the ground, in red ink) and then crying because of the character’s death.
The Heredia family arrived on the afternoon train. I had never witnessed such a dramatic scene, watching a mother embrace her dead son. I am not particularly self-conscious, and yet I worried about acting with proper respect toward a mourning family I hold in such high esteem.
It was hard for me to recognize the happy ranch house, with its pleasant hallways and thick vines. In an instant, the atmosphere of a place can change forever. When I saw Raúl Heredia, I understood that we would never be able to return to the ranch as it was before. Certain events mark a point of no return in time, like those lines of white chalk in a game that signal the beginning and end of different periods.
They placed the coffin in the living room of the house, where we held the wake. In the flickering candlelight, the face of the young man wasn’t disfigured. His dark skin, his narrow forehead, the purity of his profile were unchanged. The bullet had pierced the center of his heart. I was moved by the flowers that the mother had tried in vain to insert into the dead man’s hands, by the resentment with which she spoke to him, the bitter, severe phrases.
At dawn, after several cups of coffee, Raúl Heredia led me to his son’s room (a dark damp room). He opened the armoire and the drawers of the bedside table.
“My wife wouldn’t be able to bear doing this. I know her well. Before leaving, I want to look at everything.”
The light of dawn hit the blinds and the first birds sang weakly. Raúl Heredia stopped for a moment and said, “At this hour one suddenly understands what is definitive.” Through the doorframe he pointed to the white sky. “Only when I’ve been drunk or sad have I seen the dawn; only after parties, births, or deaths, and this is the most bitter, the most hellish, the most unfair . . . ”
We found a notebook with a blue cover in the drawer of the bedside table. The first page was titled “My Dreams.” Raúl Heredia sadly turned over all the pages and gave the notebook to me.
“I don’t have the courage to read these pages. But it would be a crime to destroy them. Armando was intelligent. I barely knew him! I give this notebook to you because you are my best friend. You can read it and perhaps discover within what motives impelled my son to commit this mad act—now no explanation can change anything.”
I took the notebook and we returned to the living room where the candle flames flickered.
Many neighbors had come to the wake. The women cried with the force of poetry and spoke eloquently on death.
It would be futile to recall all the details of the sad conversations that night, the painful train journey, the arrival in Constitution Station.
After the burial in Buenos Aires, I began to read the notebook, with much astonishment. For several days I was terrified. I thought about destroying the pages. I still haven’t found a solution to the problem. In vain I searched the phone book for the name of Luis Maidana. At the same time, I tried to avoid encounters with my friend Heredia. What if he spoke to me about the notebook? What if he asked me for it? I tried spending time with other family members, hoping to discover details of the boy’s life, but it was fruitless.
Six months passed. Heredia came to visit me one day. With a jovial voice, he announced that they were going to Europe shortly. He spoke to me about his children and when he mentioned Armando, he said, “It was just as well that God took him away; boys like that never thrive. He caused his mother a lot of suffering.”
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