Clara, Rossi, Cordero, Perfecto, and Juan were all there, along with Albina Renato, Maria (the one with the glasses), that nitwit Acevedo with his new teeth, the dead woman’s three boys, a blond boy nobody introduced me to, and that tramp Humberta. Luqui was there, as was little Dwarf, and the kid who used to be Adriana’s boyfriend but who didn’t talk to her anymore. I was shown the presents: they were arranged on a shelf in the bedroom. The table, which was very long, had been moved to under a yellow tent in the courtyard; it was covered with two tablecloths. The ham and colorful vegetable sandwiches, and the beautifully decorated cakes, whetted my appetite. Half a dozen bottles of sparkling cider and many glasses glittered on the table. It all made my mouth water. A vase with orange gladioli and another with white carnations decorated either end of the table. We were awaiting the arrival of Spirito, the photographer: we were not to sit down at the table, open the bottles of cider, or taste the cakes until he arrived.
To make us laugh, Albina Renato danced “The Death of the Swan.” She was studying classical ballet, but danced in a spirit of fun.
It was hot and there were lots of flies. The flowers of the catalpa trees stained the tiles of the patio. All the guests fanned themselves—the men with their newspapers, the women with fancy fans or other objects—or they fanned the cakes and sandwiches. That tramp Humberta fanned herself with a flower to attract attention. No matter how much you wave it back and forth, how much breeze can you make with a flower?
We waited around for an hour, asking ourselves each time the doorbell rang whether Spirito was coming or not, and entertaining ourselves with stories of more or less fatal accidents. Some of the victims had been left without arms, others without hands, others without ears. “The misfortune of the many is the consolation of the few,” said a little old lady, referring to Rossi, who has a glass eye. Adriana smiled. The guests kept arriving. When Spirito came in, the first bottle of cider was opened. Of course nobody tried it yet. Various glasses were served and the extended prelude to the long-awaited toast began.
In the first photograph, Adriana, at the head of the table, tried to smile with her parents. It was very hard to arrange the group right, since it didn’t come together naturally: Adriana’s father was robust and very tall, and the parents knitted their brows quite noticeably while holding their glasses aloft. The second photograph wasn’t any easier: the younger brothers and sisters, the aunts and the grandmother, clustered around Adriana in disorder, blocking her face. Poor Spirito had to wait patiently for a moment of calm once each individual assumed the position he had assigned. In the third photograph, Adriana brandished the knife to cut the cake, which was decorated with her name, the date of her birthday, and the word “Happiness,” all written in pink icing, and covered with rainbow sprinkles.
“She should stand up,” the guests said.
An aunt objected: “And if her feet come out wrong?”
“Don’t worry,” responded the friendly Spirito. “If her feet come out wrong, I’ll cut them off later.”
Adriana grimaced with pain, and once more poor Spirito had to take her picture sunken in her chair surrounded by the guests. In the fourth photograph, only the children accompanied Adriana; they were allowed to hold their glasses high in imitation of the adults. The children caused less trouble than the adults. The most difficult moment still remained. Adriana had to be carried off to her grandmother’s bedroom for the last photographs to be taken. Two men carried her in her wicker chair and put her in the room, along with the gladioli and the carnations. They sat her down on a couch, between piles of pillows. There must have been about fifteen people in the bedroom, which measured fifteen by twenty feet; they all drove poor Spirito crazy, giving him directions and telling Adriana how she should pose. They fixed her hair, covered her feet, added pillows, arranged flowers and fans, raised her head, buttoned her collar, powdered her nose, painted her lips. You couldn’t even breathe. Adriana sweated and grimaced. Poor Spirito waited for more than half an hour without saying a word; then, with a great deal of tact, he took away the flowers they had put around Adriana’s feet, saying that the girl was dressed in white and that the orange gladioli did not go with the ensemble. Patiently, Spirito repeated the well-known command: “Watch the birdie.”
He turned on the lamps and took the fifth photograph, which ended in a thunder of applause. From outside, people said, “She looks like a bride, like a real bride. What a shame about the boots.”
Adriana’s aunt asked that they take a picture of the girl holding the aunt’s mother-in-law’s fan. It was a fan of alençon lace and sequins, decorated with little pictures painted by hand on the mother-of-pearl ribs. Poor Spirito didn’t think it in good taste to introduce a sad black fan, no matter how valuable it might be, into the portrait of a fourteen-year-old girl. But they insisted so strongly that he gave in. With a white carnation in one hand and the black fan in the other, Adriana appeared in the sixth photograph. The seventh photograph stirred up much debate: whether it should be taken inside the room or on the patio, next to Adriana’s cranky grandfather who did not want to move from his corner. Clara said, “If this is the happiest day of her life, how can you fail to take her picture with her grandfather, who loves her so much!” Then she explained, “For a year this girl has been hovering between life and death, and is now paralyzed.”
The aunt declared, “We’ve been killing ourselves to save her, sleeping by her side on the tile floors of the hospitals, giving our blood for transfusions. And now, on her birthday, are we to neglect the most solemn moment of the banquet, and forget to put her beside the most important individual of all, her grandfather who was always her favorite?”
Adriana was complaining. I think she was asking for a glass of water, but she was so upset she couldn’t utter a word; besides, the racket people made when they moved around and talked would have drowned out her words even if she had uttered them. Two men carried her, once more, in the wicker chair to the patio, and set her down at the table. At this moment the traditional “Happy Birthday” song blared out of the loudspeaker. Adriana, sitting at the head of the table, next to her grandfather and the cake covered with candles, posed for the seventh photograph with great serenity. The tramp managed to slip into the front of the picture, her shoulders and breasts showing (as always). I accused her in public of butting in and advised the photographer to take the picture over, which he did willingly enough. Humberta resentfully slunk into a corner of the patio; the blond boy nobody had introduced me to followed her and, to make her feel better, whispered something in her ear. If it had not been for that tramp the catastrophe wouldn’t have happened. Adriana was about to faint when they took her picture again. Everybody thanked me. They opened the bottles of cider; the glasses overflowed with foam. They cut the two cakes in big slices that were handed around on plates. These things took time and attention. Some glasses were spilled on the tablecloth; they say that brings good luck. With our fingertips we moistened our brows. Some people with no manners had already drunk their cider before the toast. The tramp Humberta set the example, handing her cup over to the blond boy. It wasn’t until later, when we tasted the cake and toasted Adriana’s health, that we noticed Adriana was asleep. Her head hung down from her neck like a melon. Since this was her first day out of the hospital, it was not odd that exhaustion and emotion should have overcome her. Some people laughed; others approached her and clapped her on the back to wake her up. That tramp Humberta, that killjoy, jostled her by the arm and cried out to her, “You’re frozen.”
Then that bird of ill omen said, “She’s dead.”
Some people farther from the head of the table thought it was a joke and said, “Who wouldn’t burst with happiness on such a day!”
The nitwit Acevedo didn’t let go of his glass. Everyone stopped eating except Luqui and Dwarf. Others, on the sly, slipped pieces of squashed cake without icing into their pockets.
How unfair life is! Instead of Adriana, who was an angel, that tramp Humberta
should have died!
MAGUSH
A THESSALIAN witch read the future of Polycrates in the designs the surf made on its way down the beach; a Roman vestal virgin read Caesar’s future in a little pile of sand next to a plant; Cornelius Agrippa of Germany used a mirror to read his own future. Some present-day sorcerers read one’s destiny in tea leaves or in the dregs of coffee at the bottom of a cup; some read it in trees, in rain, in ink-blots or egg whites, others in the lines of the palm, others in crystal balls. Magush reads the future in a vacant building opposite the charcoal yard where he lives. The six huge picture windows and the twelve little windows of the adjacent building are like cards for him. Magush never thought of associating windows and cards: that was my idea. His methods are mysterious and can be explained only in part. He tells me that during the day he has trouble drawing conclusions, because the light disturbs the images. The most propitious moment to carry out his task is at sunset, when certain slanting rays of light filter through the side windows of the building and are reflected onto the glass of the windows in front. That is why he always makes appointments with his clients for that hour of the day. I know, having learned from careful research, that the upper part of the building has to do with matters of the heart, the lower part with money and work, and the middle with problems of family and health.
Magush, despite the fact that he’s only fourteen, is my friend. I met him by chance one day when I went to buy a sack of charcoal. I wasn’t slow to guess his gift of prophecy. After several conversations in the patio of the charcoal yard (surrounded by sacks of charcoal in the freezing cold), he asked me into the room where he works. The room is a sort of hallway, every bit as chilly as the patio; from there, through a combination of skylights of colored glass and a tall narrow window (shaped for a giraffe), the facing building can easily be seen, its yellowing façade marked by rain and sun. After a while, in the room I felt the chill lifting and a pleasant feeling of warmth replacing it. Magush told me that this phenomenon occurs during the moments of prophecy, and that it is not the room but the body that absorbs those beneficent rays.
Magush was extraordinarily kind to me. At the right moment, he let me look at the windows of the building myself, one by one. (Incomprehensible scenes were sometimes visible; in that respect, I was lucky at first.) In one of the windows I saw, for my sins, the woman who later became my fiancée embracing my rival. She was wearing the red dress I found dazzling, her hair loose in the front and wrapped in a little bun that rested on the back of her neck. To see that detail I must have had the eyes of a lynx, but the sharpness of the image was due to the magic that surrounded it and not to my eyesight. (At the same distance, I’ve been able to read letters or newspaper clippings.) Then I saw the painful scene I had to suffer later, in the flesh. I saw the bed covered with pink blankets and the horrible ladies going in and out with packages. There, in the window aglow at sunset, I saw the excursions to Tigre and to the Luján River. There I was about to strangle someone. Later, when I lived through these events, the reality seemed a little faded to me, and my fiancée perhaps less beautiful.
After those experiences, my interest in living what was destined for me diminished. I consulted with Magush. Was it possible to avoid your destiny? To refrain from living it, somehow—was that possible? Magush thought this over with his deep intelligence. For several days I didn’t leave his side. I entertained myself watching images, refraining from seeking them out and living them. Finally, Magush said that because of our close friendship of many years, he would make an exception—he would never let anyone else experience my entertainment, watching my fate appear in those windows while he played tricks on his clients, giving them my fate as if it were theirs.
“It’s more prudent to have someone live out your destiny right away, as soon as it appears in the windows. Otherwise it might come looking for you: destiny is like a man-eating tiger lying in ambush for its owner,” Magush would say to me. He would add, to reassure me, “One day, perhaps, there’ll be no more of you in those windows.”
“Will I die?” I asked uneasily.
“Not necessarily,” answered Magush. “You might live without a destiny.”
“But even dogs have a destiny,” I protested.
“Dogs can’t avoid it: they’re obedient.”
What Magush had foretold happened in part, and I lived for a time bored and calm, devoted to my work. But life attracted me and I missed standing by Magush, watching the building. The figures intended to elucidate my fate had still not been extinguished. In each window, intricate new shapes sometimes surprised us. Somber lights, ghosts with the faces of dogs, criminals: everything indicated that it would be better if those pictures I saw didn’t come true.
“Who would want to live out those misfortunes?” I asked Magush. He resolved one day, in order to distract me, to become an adviser and a magician at once. I began to see fireworks, puppets, Japanese lanterns, dwarfs, people dressed as bears and cats. I said to him hypocritically, “I envy you. I wish I were fourteen.”
“I’ll switch destinies with you,” Magush said.
I accepted, although his proposal seemed impertinent to me. What would I do with those dwarfs? We talked for far too long about the difficulties that might be entailed in the difference in our ages. Perhaps we lost the faith we needed.
We didn’t carry out our project. Both of us missed the chance to satisfy our curiosity. Sometimes we feel anew the temptation to switch destinies; I give it a try, but always come up against the same obstacle: if I think about the difficulties Magush has overcome, the idea seems absurd. Not long ago I was about to leave. I packed my bags. We said goodbye. The images in the windows were tempting. Something stopped me at the last moment. The same thing happened to Magush: he didn’t have the nerve to escape from the charcoal yard.
I’m always fascinated by Magush’s destiny and he by mine (no matter how bad it is), but in reality the only thing that both of us want is to continue contemplating the windows of the building and giving others our own destinies, so long as they strike us as extraordinary.
THE OBJECTS
FOR HER twentieth birthday someone gave Camila Ersky a golden bracelet with a rose of rubies. It was a family heirloom. She liked the bracelet and wore it only on certain occasions, when she was going to some gathering or to the theater for opening night. Nevertheless, when she lost it she did not share the pain of her loss with the rest of the family. In her view, objects could not be replaced whatever their value—she only appreciated people, the canaries in her home, and her dogs. In the course of her life, I think she only wept over the loss of a silver chain with a medal of the Virgin of Luján set in gold, a present from one of her boyfriends. The idea of losing things, those things we lose as if by fate, didn’t trouble her as much as it did the rest of the family or her friends, who were a vain lot. Without tears she had seen her childhood home stripped, once by fire, once by a poverty as ferocious as fire: stripped of its most beloved furnishings (paintings, tables, commodes, screens, vases, bronze statues, fans, marble cherubs, porcelain dancers, bottles of perfume in the shape of radishes, whole cases of miniatures with curls and beards), some horrible but valuable. I suspect that her complacency was not a sign of indifference, and that she had an anxious foreboding that these objects would someday rob her of something more precious than her childhood. Perhaps she cared for them more than those who wept over their loss. Sometimes she saw these objects. They came to visit her like people, in processions, especially at night, when she was about to fall asleep, when she was traveling by train or by car, or even when she was going through her daily routine, on her way to work. Often they bothered her like insects: she wanted to scare them off, to think of other things. Often, from a lack of imagination, she described the objects to her children, in the entertaining stories she told them when they were eating. She didn’t add to the objects’ glow or beauty or mystery: that wasn’t necessary.
One afternoon, returning from some errands, she crosse
d a square and stopped to rest on a bench. Why imagine only Buenos Aires? There are other cities with squares. The light of the setting sun bathed the branches, streets, houses around her: the light that sometimes increases the wisdom of joy. She contemplated the sky for a long while, stroking her stained kid gloves; then, attracted by something shiny on the ground, she looked down and, a few moments later, realized it was the bracelet she had lost more than fifteen years ago. With the emotion that saints must feel when they work their first miracle, she picked the object up. Night fell before she decided to put the bracelet on her left wrist as she had long ago.
When she got home, after looking at her wrist to make sure that the bracelet had not vanished, she told the news to her children, who didn’t stop playing, and to her husband, who looked at her skeptically, not interrupting his reading of the paper. For days, despite her children’s indifference and her husband’s suspicions, she woke with the joy of having found the bracelet. The only people who would have been truly surprised were all dead.
She began to remember with greater precision the objects that had peopled her life; she remembered them with nostalgia, with an unknown anxiety. Like an inventory, in reverse chronological order, her memory was filled with a crystal dove with broken wings and beak; a candy box in the shape of a piano; a bronze statue that held up a lantern with little lightbulbs; a bronze clock; a marble cushion with bluish streaks and tassels; opera glasses with a mother-of-pearl handle; an inscribed cup; and ivory monkeys with little baskets full of baby monkeys.
Thus Were Their Faces Page 14