In ways completely normal to her and completely unbelievable to us, she slowly recovered the objects that had long dwelled only in her memory. At the same time she noticed that the happiness she had felt at first was turning into a feeling of discomfort, of fear, of worry.
She hardly looked at the things around her for fear of discovering a lost treasure.
While Camila was troubled and tried to think of other things, the objects appeared, in the market, at stores, in hotels, in all sorts of places, everything from the bronze statue with the torch that used to light up the entrance to the house to the jeweled heart pierced by an arrow. The gypsy doll and the kaleidoscope were the last ones. Where did she find those toys, belonging to her childhood? I am ashamed to say, because you, my readers, will think that I seek only to surprise you and not tell you the truth. You will think that the toys were different ones, similar to the old ones, not the very same, that of course there isn’t only one gypsy doll in the whole world, not only one kaleidoscope. But fate dictated that the doll’s arm was tattooed with a butterfly in India ink and that, engraved on the copper tube, the kaleidoscope bore Camila Ersky’s name.
If it weren’t so pathetic, this story would be tedious. If it doesn’t seem pathetic to you, my readers, at least it’s short, and telling it will give me practice. In the dressing rooms of the theaters that Camila often attended, she found toys that belonged, by a long series of coincidences, to the daughter of a dancer; the girl insisted on trading them for a mechanical bear and a plastic circus. She came home with the old toys wrapped in newspaper. Several times, on the way home, she wanted to put the package down at the bottom of a staircase or on the threshold of a door.
Nobody was home. She opened the windows wide, taking a deep breath of the evening air. Then she saw the objects lined up against the wall of her room, just as she had dreamed she would see them. She knelt down to caress them. She lost track of day and night. She saw that the objects had faces, the horrible faces they acquire when we have stared at them too long.
Through a long series of joys, Camila Ersky had finally entered hell.
THE FURY
SOMETIMES I think I can still hear that drum. How can I leave this place without being seen? And, imagining that I could leave, once free how would I be able to take the child home? I would hope someone is running ads on the radio or in the newspaper, searching for him. Make him disappear? Impossible. Kill myself? Only as a last resort. Besides, how would I do it? Escape? But in which direction? Right now the corridors are full of people. The windows are walled up.
I asked myself these questions a thousand times before I noticed the penknife the child was holding in his hand, then put back in his pocket. I calmed down, thinking that if all else failed I could kill him, slitting the veins of his wrists in the bathtub so as not to bloody the floor. Once he was dead, I would stuff him under the bed.
So as not to go crazy I took out the notebook I always carry in my pocket, and while the child played strange games with the fringe of the bedspread, with the rug, with the chair, I wrote down everything that had happened to me since I met Winifred.
I met her in Palermo Park. I now realize that her eyes glistened like a hyena’s. She reminded me of one of the Furies. She was fragile and nervous, like all the women you don’t like, Octavio. Her black hair was curly and fine, like armpit hair. I never found out what perfume she used, plus her natural odor mixed with the contents of that unlabeled bottle, decorated with cupids, which I had glimpsed in the disorder of her purse.
Our first dialogue was brief:
“Sweetheart, you don’t look like you’re from this country.”
“Of course not. I’m Filipina.”
“Do you speak English?”
“Of course.”
“You could teach me.”
“Why?”
“It would help me with my studies.”
She was walking with a child; I, with a math or logic book under my arm. Winifred was not especially young—I could tell from the veins on her legs, which formed little blue trees behind her knees, and from her swollen eyelids. She told me she was twenty.
I saw her on Saturday afternoons. For a while, we would always take the same path we had taken the first day, walking from the bust of Dante by a terebinth tree up to the monkey house. We would stare at the tips of our shoes covered with dust, or feed raw meat to the cats; we would repeat nearly the same dialogue, with different emphases, or, one could say, with different meanings. The child banged constantly on his drum. We got tired of the cats the first day we held hands: we no longer had time to cut up so many tiny pieces of raw meat. One day I took bread for the pigeons and swans: this served as a pretext for a picture taken at the foot of the bridge that leads to the little walled island in the middle of the lake, where there’s a gate covered with pornographic inscriptions. She wanted me to write her name and mine next to one of the most obscene messages. I obeyed her reluctantly.
I fell in love with her the day she spoke in verse (Octavio, you taught me everything about meter).
“I remember my angel wings as a child.”
To steady myself, I looked at her reflection in the water. I thought she was crying.
“You had angel wings?” I asked in a sentimental voice.
“They were made of cotton and were very large,” she answered. “They framed my face. They looked as if they were of ermine. For the Day of the Virgin Maria, the nuns at the school dressed me as an angel in a light blue dress: a tunic, not a dress. Underneath I wore light blue tights and shoes. They made curls and pasted them on.” I put my arm around her waist, but she kept on talking.
“On my head they placed a crown of artificial lilies. A very fragrant kind of lily, tuberose I believe. Yes, tuberose. I threw up all night long. I’ll never forget that day. My friend Lavinia, who was as well liked at the school as I was, received the same distinction: they dressed her as an angel, a pink one. (The pink angel was less important than the blue one.)”
(I remembered your advice, Octavio: there’s no need to be shy when seducing a woman.)
“Don’t you want to sit down?” I said to her, taking her in my arms toward a marble bench.
“Let’s sit on the grass,” she said to me.
She took a few steps and threw herself down on the ground.
“I’d like to find a four-leaf clover . . . and to give you a kiss.”
She went on, as if she hadn’t heard me: “My friend Lavinia died that day; it was the happiest and the saddest day of my life. Happy, because the two of us were dressed as angels; sad, because it was when I lost happiness forever.”
I put my hand on her cheek to touch her tears.
“Every time I remember her, I cry,” she said, her voice cracking. “That special day ended in tragedy. One of Lavinia’s wings caught fire in the flame of the tall candle I was holding. Lavinia’s father rushed over to save his daughter: he picked up that living torch, rushed onto the chancel, crossed the patio, and into the bathroom. When he turned on the bathwater, it was already too late. My friend Lavinia lay there in cinders. All that was left of her body was this ring I treasure as if it were gold dust,” she told me, showing me a little ruby ring on her third finger. “One day, when we were playing, she promised me the ring when she died. Of course there were those who accused me of having set Lavinia’s wings on fire deliberately. The truth is that I can only take pride in having been good to one person in my life: to her. I took care of her as if she were my daughter, educating her, correcting her faults. We all have faults: Lavinia was proud and fearful. She had long blond hair and very white skin. One day, to correct her pride, I cut off a lock of her hair, stashing it away secretly in a drawer—they had to cut the rest of her hair to even it out. Another day I spilled a bottle of cologne on her neck and cheek, the fragrance seeping into her skin.”
The child was playing the drum next to us. We told him to go somewhere farther off but he didn’t listen.
“And if we were
to take his drum away?” I asked impatiently.
“He would have a fit,” Winifred answered me.
“Sometime, may I see you without the child or without the drum?”
“Not for the moment,” answered Winifred.
She spoiled him so much that I came to believe he was her own child.
“And his mother, his mother can’t ever be with him?” I asked her once, bitterly.
“That’s why they pay me,” she answered, as if I had insulted her.
After several kisses, exchanged in the foliage, she continued with her confidences, though the child continued to play the drum without pause.
“In the Philippines there are paradises.”
“Here, too,” I answered, thinking she was talking of a kind of tree.
“Paradises of happiness. In Manila, where I was born, the windows of the houses were decorated with mother-of-pearl.”
“Can one be happy with windows decorated with mother-of-pearl?”
“Being in paradise is to be happy; but the serpent is always on its way, and one always awaits it. The earthquakes, the Japanese invasion, Lavinia’s death, everything that happened later. Nevertheless, I had premonitions. My parents always left a bowl of milk for the snakes just outside our house by the front door, so they wouldn’t come in. One night they forgot to put the milk outside. When my father went to bed, he felt something cold between the sheets. It was a snake. He had to wait till the next morning before shooting it. He didn’t want to scare us with the noise. That was when I foresaw everything that was going to happen. It was a premonition. Kneeling in the chapel at school I tried to ask for God’s protection, but every time I knelt down my feet bothered me. I would turn them in and out, put them to one side, then to the other, without being able to find a posture that would allow contemplation. Lavinia looked at me with astonishment; she was very intelligent, not able to understand that one could have these difficulties before God. She was sensible; I was romantic. One day, while reading in a field of irises, I fell asleep. It was late. They looked for me with flashlights; the group was led by Lavinia. There the irises make you sleepy; they’re narcotic. If they hadn’t found me, you’d certainly not be talking to me today.”
The child sat down next to us, playing his drum.
“Why don’t we take his drum away from him and throw it in the lake?” I dared to suggest. “The noise is driving me crazy.”
Winifred folded her red raincoat, stroked it, and went on talking. “In the dormitories at school, Lavinia would cry at night because she was afraid of animals. To combat her baseless fear, I would put live spiders in her bed. Once I put a dead rat that I had found in the garden; another time I put a toad. Despite all my efforts I didn’t succeed in correcting her; quite the contrary, her fear worsened. It reached a climax the day I invited her to my house. Around the little table where the tea set was arranged with the pastries, I placed the beasts my father had hunted in Africa and had gotten stuffed: two tigers and a lion. Lavinia didn’t try the milk or the pastries that day. I pretended to give food to the animals. She kept crying until nightfall. Then I hid in the darkness, behind some plants. Fear dried her tears. She thought she was alone. The hammocks were some distance away from the house. She stood among them, next to a rough bench, nervously scratching her knees, until I appeared covered with banana leaves. In the darkness I could imagine the pallor of her face and the two thin trails of blood on her scratched knees. I cried out her name three times, “Lavinia! Lavinia! Lavinia!,” trying to alter my voice. I touched her icy hand. I believe she fainted. That night they placed hot water bottles onto her feet and bags of ice on her head. Lavinia told her parents that she didn’t want to see me ever again. We later reconciled, as was to be expected. To celebrate, I brought some gifts to her house: chocolate, a fishbowl with a goldfish in it, but the gift that Lavinia found most unpleasant was a little monkey, dressed in green, with four bells hanging from it. Lavinia’s parents received me affectionately and thanked me for the presents, but Lavinia didn’t say anything. I believe the fish and monkey starved to death. As for the chocolate, Lavinia never touched it. She disliked sweets, something they scolded her for; sometimes they would even force her to eat the candies I brought her as presents.
“Don’t you want to go somewhere else?” I asked, interrupting her confidences. “It’s raining.”
“All right,” she answered, putting on her raincoat.
We walked, crossed the avenue lined with palm trees, reached the Monument to the Spaniards. We looked for a taxi. I gave directions to the driver. On the way we bought chocolate and bread for the child. The house was like others of the same kind, perhaps a bit larger. The room had a mirror with a gold frame and a clothes rack; the hangers were each painted like the neck of a swan. We hid the drum under the bed.
“What shall we do with the child?” I asked. The only answer I received was the embrace that led us into a labyrinth of other embraces. We made our way inside, pausing in the darkness as if it were a tunnel, still blinded by the light of the garden we had just left.
“And the child?” I asked again, seeing her straw hat and white gloves in the twilight, but not him. “Could he be hiding under the bed?”
“That miscreant must be wandering the hallways.”
“And if someone sees him?”
“They’ll think he’s the manager’s kid.”
“How come they let him in?”
“They didn’t see him under your raincoat.”
I closed my eyes and smelled Winifred’s perfume.
“How cruel you were to Lavinia,” I told her.
“Cruel? Cruel?” she said emphatically. “I’m cruel to everyone. I’ll be cruel to you,” she said, biting my lips.
“You can’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Now I understand that she wanted to redeem herself for what she had done to Lavinia by committing still greater cruelties with everyone else. Redemption through evil.
I went to look for the child, as she had asked me to. I wandered around the hallways. No one. I stood by the veranda where the taxis arrived with couples who tried to hide their laughter, their joy, their shame. A white cat climbed up a vine. The child was peeing by a wall. I picked him up and carried him back with me, hiding him as best as I could. When I entered the room, I couldn’t see anything at first; it was pitch-dark. Then I saw that Winifred wasn’t there anymore. Nor were her things; not her purse, her gloves, nor her scarf with light blue initials. I ran to open the door and see if I could spot her down the hall, but I couldn’t even smell her perfume. I closed the door again, and while the child played dangerously with the fringes of the bedspread, I found the drum. I searched everywhere for some clue Winifred might have absentmindedly left behind that could lead me to her: a scrap with her address on it, or a friend’s address, or her last name.
I tried several times to talk to the child, but it was hopeless.
“Don’t play the drum. What’s your name?”
“Cintito.”
“That’s your nickname. What’s your real name?”
“Cintito.”
“And your nanny?”
“Nana.”
“Where does she live?”
“In a little house.”
“Where?”
“In a little house.”
“Where’s the little house?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll give you some candy if you tell me your nanny’s name.”
“Give me some candy.”
“Later. What’s her name?”
Cintito kept playing with the bedspread, the rug, the chair, the drumsticks.
What should I do? I thought, as I talked to the child.
“Don’t play the drum. It’s more fun to roll it.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s better not to make noise.”
“But I want to.”
“I told you not to.”
“Then give me my penknife back.”
“It’s not a toy for children. You could hurt yourself.”
“I’m going to play the drum.”
“If you play the drum I’ll kill you.”
He started screaming. I took him by the neck. I asked him to be quiet. He refused to listen to me. I covered his mouth with the pillow. He struggled for a few minutes; then he lay still, his eyes closed.
Indecisiveness is one of my faults. For several minutes, I experienced eternity for the first time as I repeated over and over: What will I do?
Now I can only wait for the door of this cell to open. That’s the way I was: to avoid a scandal, I managed to commit a crime.
AZABACHE
I AM ARGENTINE. I joined the crew of a ship. In Marseille I found a doctor to sign a document certifying that I was crazy. It was easy for him to do because he must have been crazy himself. That way I was able to leave the ship but then they locked me in a madhouse and now I have no hope that anyone will ever get me out.
This is my story: to escape from my country I joined a ship’s crew, and escaping the ship I was locked in a madhouse. When I fled from my country and when I fled from the ship I thought I was fleeing from my memories, but every day I relive the story of my love, which is my prison. They say that I fell in love with Aurelia because of my hatred for elegant women but that’s not true. I loved her as I had never loved another woman in my life. Aurelia was a servant; she barely knew how to read or write. Her eyes were black, her hair black and straight like a horse’s mane. As soon as she finished washing the dishes or the floors she would take a pencil and paper and go to a corner to draw horses. That was all she knew how to draw: horses galloping, jumping, sitting, lying down. Some were roan, others chestnut, red, bay, black, bluish, white. Sometimes she drew them with chalk, when she could find chalk; other times with colored pencils, when available; other times with ink or paint. They all had names: her favorite was Azabache because he was jet-black and skittish.
When she brought me my breakfast in the morning, I would hear her neighing laughter moments before she entered my bedroom, nervously kicking open the door. I was unable to educate her, in fact refused to educate her. I fell in love with her.
Thus Were Their Faces Page 15