The echo, which seemed so seductive when you spoke to it, repeated the phrase, bereft of any charm.
“She’s behaving wonderfully,” Chango answered, hearing his words resound in the lower depths of the basement.
“At five o’clock I will bring up her milk.”
Chango replied, “Don’t worry, I’ll prepare it for her myself,” was answered by a feminine “Thank you” and then was lost in the tiles of the lower floors.
Chango returned to the room and gave you an order, “Look through the keyhole while I’m in the little room next door. I’m going to show you something very beautiful.”
He stooped down next to the door and, putting his eye to the keyhole, showed you what you had to do. He left the room and you were alone. You kept on playing as if God were watching you, as if you had taken a vow, with that deceptive fervor that children sometimes have when they play. Then, without a moment’s hesitation, you approached the door. You didn’t need to stoop: the keyhole was at the very height of your eyes. What headless women would you discover? A keyhole acts as a lens on the image that is seen: the tiles sparkled, a corner of the white wall was brightly lit. Nothing else. A slight breeze made your hair blow around and forced you to close your eyes. You moved away from the keyhole, but Chango’s voice resounded with a commanding and sweet obscenity, “Doll, look! Look!” You looked again. Bestial breathing could be felt through the door, not just the air from an open window in the adjoining room. I feel such sorrow when I think how horror imitates beauty. Through that door, Pyramus and Thisbe, like you and Chango, spoke their love through a wall.
You drew away from the door and automatically went back to your games. Chango entered the room again and asked, “Did you see?” You shook your head, your straight hair flying around madly. “Did you like it?” Chango insisted, knowing that you were lying. You didn’t answer. You pulled off your doll’s wig with a comb, but Chango leaned once more on the edge of the table where you were trying to play. With his troubled look he was staring at the mere inches separating the two of you, then slid in quietly next to you. You threw yourself onto the floor, holding the doll’s ribbon in your hand. You didn’t move. Flushes of red covered your face, like those thin layers of gold that cover fake jewelry. You remembered how Chango had rummaged around the white underwear in your mother’s drawer when he replaced the women servants to take over the housework. The veins of his hands were all swelled up, as if full of blue ink. On his fingertips you could see bruises. Without meaning to, you looked carefully at his lustring jacket, which felt very rough when it touched your knees. From that moment on, you would always see the tragedies of your life adorned with tiny details. You missed the delicate flower of the mimosa, your odd weakness, but you felt that this arcane spectacle, brought on by unforeseen circumstances, would accomplish its goal: the impossible violation of your solitude. Like two criminals who were very much alike, you and Chango were united by different objects but were pointed toward identical goals.
For a series of sleepless nights you invented dishonest reports that could serve as confessions of your guilt. Your first communion arrived. You couldn’t figure out a modest or clear or concise form of confession. You had to take communion in a state of deadly sin. In the pews were not only the members of your (large) family but also Chango and Camila Figueira, Valeria Ramos, Celina Eyzaguirre, and Romagnoli, the priest from a different parish. With the sorrow of a parricide, of someone sentenced to death for treason, you entered the church feeling frozen, biting on the corner of your missal. I see you pale, unblushing before the high altar, with your linen gloves on, holding a bouquet of artificial flowers, like a bride’s bouquet, at your waist. I would journey on foot across the whole world, searching for you like a missionary to save you, if only we had the fortune, which we don’t have, of being contemporaries. I know that in the darkness of your room, you heard for a long time, with the insistence with which silence seals the cruel lips of the furies who devote themselves to tormenting children (the inhuman voices, linked to your own) saying: It is a deadly sin, my God, it is a deadly sin.
How were you able to survive? Only a miracle can explain it—the miracle of mercy.
THE GUESTS
FOR WINTER vacation, Lucio’s parents had planned a trip to Brazil. They wanted to show their son the Corcovado, the Sugarloaf, and Tijuca, and to admire those places afresh through the child’s eyes.
Lucio fell ill with German measles; nothing serious, but with “face and arms covered with splotches like grits,” in his mother’s words, he couldn’t travel.
They decided to leave him in the care of a maid, a very kind old woman. Before leaving they told her to buy a cake and candles for the boy’s birthday, which was coming up, even if his little friends couldn’t come and enjoy it for fear of catching his illness.
Joyfully, Lucio said goodbye to his parents: he thought that their departure would bring his birthday nearer, a day that was so important to him. To comfort him, even though there was no need for that, his parents promised to bring him a painting of Corcovado made of butterfly wings, a knife with a picture of the Sugarloaf painted on its wooden handle, and a telescope through which he would be able to see the most important sights of Rio de Janeiro, with its palm trees, or of Brasilia, with its red earth.
The happy day, or so it was in Lucio’s hopes, was slow in coming. Vast zones of sadness impeded its arrival, but one morning, different for him from all other mornings, the cake with six candles, which the maid had bought according to the mother’s instructions, sparkled on Lucio’s bedroom table. A new yellow bicycle also shone by the front door, a gift left by his parents.
There’s nothing so infuriating as having to wait unnecessarily; that was why the maid wanted to celebrate the birthday at lunchtime, but Lucio protested, saying that his guests would be coming later.
“Cake feels heavy when you eat it in the afternoon, just as an orange in the morning is like gold, silver in the afternoon, and deadly in the evening. Your guests won’t come,” the maid said. “Their mothers won’t let them come for fear of your disease. They already told your mother that.”
Lucio refused to listen to reason. After their scrap, Lucio and the maid didn’t speak again until teatime. She took a siesta and he waited by the window.
At five o’clock there was a knock on the door. The maid went to open it, thinking it was a deliveryman or a messenger. But Lucio knew who was knocking. It had to be his guests. He smoothed his hair in the mirror, changed his shoes, washed his hands. A group of impatient girls was waiting with their mothers.
“No boys among the guests. How strange!” the servant exclaimed. “What’s your name?” she asked one of the girls who struck her as nicer than the others.
“My name is Livia.”
The others said their names all at the same time and came in.
Lucio stopped by his bedroom door. He already seemed older! He greeted them one by one, looking them in the eye, examining their hands and feet, stepping back to look them over.
Alicia was wearing a very tight wool dress and a knit cap, the traditional kind that is back in fashion. She looked like an old woman and smelled of camphor. When she took out her handkerchief, mothballs fell out of her pockets; she picked them up and put them back where they had come from. Doubtless she was precocious, showing a deep concern with everything around her. Alicia’s concern was for her hair ribbons, which the other girls pulled on, and a package that she grasped tightly under her arm and didn’t want to let go of. This package contained the birthday present: a present that poor Lucio would never receive.
Livia was exuberant. Her glance would light up and then darken like those dolls with batteries. As affectionate as she was exuberant, she hugged Lucio and took him off to a corner to share a secret: the gift she had brought him. She spoke no words to communicate; this detail seemed unpleasant to all but Lucio, and seemed like a joke to the others. In the tiny package that she unwrapped herself, because she couldn’t stand the
slow pace with which Lucio unwrapped it, there were two crude magnetic dolls that couldn’t resist kissing on the lips, their necks stretched out, as soon as they were within a certain distance of each other. For a long while the girl showed Lucio how to play with the dolls in ways that made their positions more perfect or more unusual. Inside the same package there was a partridge that whistled and a green crocodile. The presents, or the girl’s charms, captivated Lucio’s attention totally. He paid little attention to the rest of the group, instead hiding in a corner with Livia and the presents.
Irma, who had clenched fists and pursed lips, a torn dress, and scrapes on her knees, infuriated by Lucio’s reception, by his deference to the presents from the exuberant girl who was whispering with him in the corner, hit Lucio in the face with the strength of a boy, and not satisfied with this, crushed the partridge and the alligator on the floor with her foot, while the mothers of the girls, all a bunch of hypocrites according to the servant, lamented the disaster that had happened on such an important day.
The maid lit the candles on the cake and closed the curtains so that the mysterious light of the flames would shine more brightly. A brief silence brought life to the ritual. A scandal occurred: Milona stuck the knife in the cake and Elvira blew out the candles.
Angela, who was dressed in an organdy suit with lace hems and other details, was distant and cold; she didn’t want to try even a little icing from the cake, or look at it, because at her house, according to her, birthday cakes had surprises inside. She wouldn’t try the hot chocolate because it had a layer of scum on it and when they brought her a strainer she became offended, saying that she wasn’t an infant, and threw everything onto the floor. She didn’t notice, or pretended not to notice, the fight between Lucio and the two girls who had crushes on him (she said she was stronger than Irma), or the scandals provoked by Milona and Elvira, because according to her only stupid people go to silly parties, and she preferred to think about other happier birthdays.
“Why do these girls come to parties like this if they don’t want to talk to anyone, if they sit off to the side alone, if they disdain the delicious things that have been prepared with love? Since they were little girls they have been party poopers,” the offended maid complained to Alicia’s mother.
“Don’t get upset,” the lady answered, “they’re all the same.”
“How can I not get upset? They have a lot of nerve: they blow out the candles and cut the cake even though they aren’t the birthday boy.”
Milona was very pink.
“I don’t have any trouble getting her to eat,” said her mother, licking her lips. “Don’t give her dolls or books because she won’t even look at them. She wants candies and pastries. Even ordinary quince jam drives her mad. Her favorite game is eating.”
Elvira was very ugly. Greasy black hair covered her eyes. She never looked at anything directly. A green color, like olives, covered her cheeks; no doubt she had a bad liver. When she saw the only present that was still on the table she let out a shrill laugh.
“Girls who give ugly things should be punished, right, Mother?” she told her mother.
When she walked by the table she managed to make her long tangled hair knock the two dolls onto the floor, where they kept on kissing.
“Teresa, Teresa,” the guests called.
Teresa wouldn’t answer. She was as indifferent as Angela but didn’t sit up as straight; she barely opened her eyes. Her mother said that she was sleepy, that she had sleeping sickness. She pretended to be asleep.
“She falls asleep even when she is having fun. It’s a blessing because she leaves me in peace.”
Teresa wasn’t completely ugly; at times she even seemed nice, but she was a monster when compared to the other girls. She had heavy eyelids and a double chin that were not in keeping with her age. At times she seemed like a very good girl, but she wasn’t: when one of the girls fell on the floor because of something Teresa had done, she didn’t come to her aid, and sat stretched out on her chair, groaning, looking at the ceiling, complaining that she was tired.
“What a birthday party,” thought the maid after it was over. “Only one guest gave a present. And better not to even think about the rest of them. One ate almost the whole cake; another broke the toys and hurt Lucio; another went off with the present she had brought; another said unpleasant things, the sort of things that only adults say, and with a doughlike face didn’t say goodbye when she left; another sat in a corner like a lump without blood in her veins; another—God help me!—I think it was the one named Elvira, had the face of a viper, something that brings bad luck; but I think that Lucio fell in love with one of them (the one with the present!) just out of self-interest. She knew how to win him over without even being pretty. Women are worse than men. They’re hopeless.”
When Lucio’s parents returned from their trip they couldn’t find out who the girls were who had visited him on his birthday, and they thought their son must have secret friendships, which was, and probably still is, true.
But Lucio had now become a little man.
from
DAYS OF NIGHT
MEN ANIMALS VINES
WHEN I fell I must have lost consciousness. I only remember two eyes staring at me and the airplane rocking back and forth for the last time, as if a huge nursemaid were rocking me in her arms. A boy likes being rocked. I closed my eyelids, wandering around unknown worlds. Then a deafening noise and a hard blow brought me back to reality: the hard crash to earth. Nothing brought me in touch with earth except for the feeling of a bonfire going out, leaving gray ashes so much like silence. I don’t understand what form the accident took: suddenly I was here, alone, in the jungle with all the provisions but without any sign of the plane in which I had traveled—all so strange. Someone will come looking for me; I trust the skill of the airmen who besides looking for me and the rest of the crew and passengers will come looking for the plane. They will find me by accident; accidents happen and sometimes they are fortunate. These provisions, if guarded carefully, will last for three weeks. My count may be inaccurate.
Besides, some rodent, some bird, some animal could devour the provisions that aren’t adequately wrapped, which would reduce my supply considerably. In that case I would only have the jelly and the little tinned crackers that taste like cardboard, smoked meat, tongue, dates and prunes, repulsive cashews, peanuts.
But those eyes, where were they?
Three weeks is a long time, almost a month. Provisions for three weeks, what more could I ask for? Sharing them—would I have this privilege? I don’t remember where I read about some monks who survived for a long time on two or three dates a day. The bottles of wine will also help me stay healthy and strong.
But those eyes that were staring at me, what will they drink?
No animal could be interested in wine: Why? And speaking of animals, I think about the possibility of predators.
Sometimes I hear branches creak and I think it smells of predators, but I understand that if I let my thoughts go I will go mad, so I throw myself down on the earth, kiss it, and try to imagine a world full of sheep, like in the prints we got for first communion, and of butterflies, like in a child’s first readers. My bed is so comfortable that after sleeping for eight hours I wake up calm, thinking that I am at home. I stretch one arm out, confidently trying to turn on the light on my bedside table, dwelling in this illusion for a while. If the night is very dark I am seized by great anguish, but if there is a moon I look at the light that shines on the leaves of the trees and the trunks covered with moss and imagine that I am in a tended garden. That image, so silly in reality, makes me feel calm, though I always preferred woods to gardens. That’s why I always wandered around with my hair unkempt, why I let my beard grow, and why at times my clothes are less than spotless. Now that I am surrounded by vegetation that grows at random, would I prefer to be surrounded by well-kept plants? No, not at all. My thoughts go back to the city that I hated, to the city’s surroundings
that I scorned. I angrily remember its smell of gasoline, mothballs, drugstores, sweat, vomit, feet, basements, old people, insecticide, urinals, newborns, spit, shit, kitchens. I don’t commit the mistake of redeeming the image of the city with the image of beloved people. I try not to miss the toilets or the sinks. I adapt to this life. One adapts to anything: that’s what Mama said, and she was right.
I don’t know what sort of climate this place has; I do know that I am disturbed by my ignorance. It would be difficult to find out without anything that could guide me: no barometer, no geographical sign, no botanical or climatic study. Due to a storm, the plane went off course, so I have no idea where it fell. I could consult the sky, but I don’t know much about the stars either. I fear making a mistake. I think this place is damp because there are some vines and a variety of honeysuckle that grows in damp places. I don’t know whether the heat I feel is tropical or just summer. Beneath the trees there are some ferns piled up among the moss.
What color were those eyes? The color of the marbles I picked out at the toy store when I was a boy.
At night there are fireflies and deafening cicadas. A soft penetrating perfume seduces me: Where does it come from? I don’t know yet. I think it’s good for me. It comes from flowers or trees or herbs or roots or from all of those at once (maybe from a ghost?); it is a perfume I never smelled anywhere in the world, an intoxicating yet soothing perfume. Smelling like a dog—will I turn into a dog?—I tear at the leaves, the plants, the wildflowers that I encounter. I study the leaves, searching for the perfume. I tear at the bark of trees and taste it. At last I discover what perfumes the air so thickly: a vine, one with insignificant flowers. Nothing about its appearance distinguishes it from the others except its impetuous foliage. While I look at it I think it’s growing. I feed myself methodically in accordance with the daily amounts of food that I have decided to eat so that the provisions will last until the plane, or helicopter, arrives, something I expect via men or God. Several times a day I eat small amounts of food. There are some wild fruits that enrich my diet. I am filthy. Why do I take such care of myself? Less than a month ago I thought of committing suicide; now I am methodically eating, trying to rest, as if I were taking care of a child. There are people who only find out who they are after a long time. The song of birds at midnight (at what I guess to be midnight) becomes deafening. I could have made a slingshot out of the elastic bands that I have on the waistband of my anorak and two branches that I have cut. Why hunt a bird? I ask. The natural thing would be to kill and eat it. I couldn’t. My will weakens, perhaps. I sleep a lot. When I wake up I take pictures of the trees, of my hand, of my foot, of the foliage; what other photographs could I take? I don’t have an automatic shutter to take a picture of myself. Besides, I don’t know if my camera is working because it fell hard. Sometimes I pronounce my name over and over, giving my voice different tones. Am I afraid of forgetting it? I discover that there is an echo in the jungle. Nothing frightens me so much as that. Sometimes I hear, or think I hear, the motor of a plane: at these times I search the sky desperately.
Thus Were Their Faces Page 26