Delirium

by Laura Restrepo

  It’s the weight of my guilt working against me, guilt that I don’t know my wife better despite having lived with her for what will soon be three years. I’ve managed to establish two things about the strange territory of her madness: one, that it is by nature voracious and can swallow me up as it did her, and two, that the vertiginous rate at which it grows means that this is a fight against the clock and I’ve stepped in too late because I didn’t know soon enough how far the disaster had advanced. I’m alone in this fight, with no one to guide my steps through the labyrinth or to show me the way out when the moment comes. That’s why I have to think carefully; I must order the chaos of facts coolly and calmly, without exaggerating, without dramatizing, seeking succinct explanations and precise words that will allow me to separate concrete things from phantoms, and acts from dreams. I have to moderate my voice, remain calm, and keep the volume low, or we’ll both be lost. What’s happening to you, Agustina darling, what were you doing at that hotel, who hurt you?, I ask, but this only unleashes all the rage and noise of that other time and other world in which she’s entrenched, and the more worried I am, the more venomous she becomes. She won’t answer me, or she doesn’t want to, and maybe she doesn’t know the answer herself or can’t formulate it amidst the storm that’s erupted inside her.

  Since everything around me is collapsing into uncertainty, I’ll start by describing the few things I know for sure: I know I’m on Thirteenth Road in the city where I live, Bogotá, and that the traffic, which is always heavy anyway, is impossible because of the rain. I know that my name is Aguilar, that I was a literature professor until the university was shut down because of unrest, and that since then, I’ve gradually become almost a nobody, a man who delivers dog food in order to survive, though maybe it’s to my advantage that I have nothing to occupy me except my stubborn resolve to get Agustina back. I also know—I know it now, although two weeks ago I didn’t—that any delay on my part would be criminal.

  When it all began I thought it was a nightmare that we’d wake up from at any minute, This can’t be happening to us, I kept repeating to myself and deep down I believed it. I wanted to convince myself that my wife’s breakdown would last only for a few hours, that it would be over when the effect of the drugs had worn off, or the acid, or the alcohol, or whatever it was that had alienated her like this; that in any case the problem was something external, devastating but temporary, or maybe some brutal act that she couldn’t tell me about but from which she’d recover little by little. Or one of those murky episodes that are increasingly common in this city where everyone’s at war with everyone else; stories of people who’re sold doctored drugs in some bar, or who’re attacked, or who’re given burundanga, an herbal extract that makes them do things against their will. At first I assumed it had been something like this, and in fact I still haven’t given up the idea, and that’s why my first impulse was to take her to the nearest emergency room, at the Country Clinic, where the doctors found her agitated and delirious, but with no trace of foreign substances in her blood. The reason it’s so difficult to believe that they really found no evidence of foreign substances in her blood, the reason I refuse to accept that diagnosis, is because it would imply that the only problem is my wife’s naked soul, and that the madness issues directly from her, without the mediation of outside elements, without mitigating factors. For an instant, the same evening this hell was loosed, her expression softened and she begged me for help, or at least she tried to make contact, saying, Look, Aguilar, see my naked soul; I remember those words with the sharp clarity that a wound remembers the knife that made it.

  IN THE MIDDLE OF the drunken chaos, the polo players were shouting at Spider, who was still on the ground, Get up, Spider, don’t be a pussy, while Spider was down there in the dark and the mud, at death’s door and unable to move because, as we later learned, he had just shattered his spine on that rock. A few days later, when he came around to realizing he was still alive, he had himself flown to Houston in a private plane, to one of those mega-hospitals where your father was taken, too, in his time, Agustina kitten, because in this miserable excuse for a country anybody who gets sick and has some money makes a pilgrimage to Texas convinced that as long as the treatment’s in English they’ll be cured, that the miracle will work if it’s paid for in dollars, as if Houston were Fátima or Lourdes or the Holy Land, as if they didn’t already know that livers blooming with cirrhosis couldn’t be made right even by the technological God of the Americans. And no matter whether the doctors squeeze a fortune out of them in electrocardiograms, sonograms, or stress tests, or thread a stent through the kernel of their souls, they almost always end up the same as they would’ve here, six feet under and pushing up daisies; just look at what happened to your father, sweetheart, who took himself off to Houston only to return a little later in cold storage on an Avianca flight, just in time for his own burial in the Central Cemetery of Bogotá.

  But to get back to Spider: as you must have heard, angel, that was what messed up your head and put an end to my lucky streak, and believe me I’m sorry you’re sick, Agustina, you know better than anyone that if I ever hurt you it wasn’t on purpose. What happened with Spider was that after four major operations and a pile of cash spent on rehab, the doctors in Houston, Texas, managed to save his skin but not his pride, because he wound up paraplegic and impotent, the poor bastard, shoveled into a wheelchair like a potted plant, and probably incontinent on top of it all, although Spider swears he’s not, that not being able to screw or walk is humiliation enough and that the day he shits himself, too, he’ll shoot himself without a second thought. When he’s wallowing in self-pity, Spider says that that son of a bitch Parsley was the lucky one, since now he must be chasing mares up in heaven. What it all means, darling, is that this has been a chain of disasters and the first broken link was Spider; psychologically he was broken, is what I mean, although his huge fortune is still intact. Things happen the way they happen and whoever loses is lost, and in this three-way game Spider lost, you lost, and I lost, to say nothing of the supporting cast.

  This was on a Thursday, I can tell you the precise day, an ill-fated Thursday when the five of us were having our usual dinner at L’Esplanade: Spider Salazar, Jorge Luis Ayerbe, your brother Joaco, the gringo Rony Silver, and I, the four of them smelling of Hermès and dressed in Armani, all wearing those Ferragamo ties with little equestrian prints imported straight from the Via Condotti, Spider’s with little spurs, your brother Joaco’s with riding crops, Jorge Luis’s with saddles, and Silver’s with something like tiny unicorns, as if the four had come to some kind of sissy agreement. They all arrived at L’Esplanade dressed up like respectable people, but I came straight to the restaurant from the Turkish bath, still steaming and radiating tan, healthy to the toes of my sockless Nikes, and shirtless under my raw wool Ralph Lauren sweater; you know how I dress, Agustina doll, I don’t have to tell you, and I dress the way I do so that they never forget I’ve got them beat in the youth game, because any one of them could be my father, and any of their fiftysomething wives could be my mother, with those crocodile bags and big gold bracelets, and tailored pastel suits, while my thing is chicks by the dozen, top models, TV stars, architecture students, water-ski instructors, skinny little screwed-up long-haired beauties, Agustina, like you.

  The truth is, if I’d chosen just one of them to set up house with, it would’ve been you, my little princess-in-waiting; it would almost certainly have been you, the one with the hottest little body, the prettiest and the craziest of them all. But never mind, why talk about setting up house, let Father Niccoló set up house for orphans and old people, let him shoot for sainthood; why should I care about homemaking, when it has nothing to do with me or my life, and I’m more than satisfied with what fate has seen fit to give me, a hot girl for every cold night, because if I’ve ever had a problem it’s been lack of appetite, there’s been so much sweet stuff that sometimes I get sick of it. And money-wise, too, I run circles around yo
ur hotshot brother Joaco, your dead father, Carlos Vicente, and plenty of the Bogotá old-money types, who know that when I’m paying they’re served caviar wholesale, in a deep dish with a soup spoon, and, Eat, you bastards, I tell them, gorge yourselves on Russian caviar and enjoy, since in your fancy houses all you get is five little eggs on a piece of toast the size of a coin.

  DON’T BE SCARED, Bichito darling, the girl Agustina says to the smaller boy she’s holding close, this ceremony is to keep you safe and make you better. Like what happened to Achilles, Tina?, the boy asks, already half recovered from his panic, Yes, Bichi Bichito, like when Achilles the Wrathful, and he interrupts her to complain, I like it better when we say Achilles, he who is covered in golden down, All right, when Achilles, he of the golden down, is bathed in the waters of the Styx to make him invincible, I like it more when we say in the waters of the Infernal River, It’s the same thing, Bichito, it means the same thing, what’s important is to remember that since they’re holding him by the ankle, that part of him is still vulnerable and they can hurt him there, No, Tina, they can’t, because later, when he’s big, Achilles the Wrathful returns to the Infernal River to dip his weak foot in and from then on his entire body is protected.

  The problem is that their father is always after Bichi, he has it in for him because he’s the youngest, not like Joaco, Joaco is my other brother, the oldest of us three, and my father never hits him or tells him he’s done anything wrong, even when they call home from the Boys School to say that he lit a fire in the toolroom or did bad things to the caretaker’s dog, and when their father finds out he orders Joaco into his study and then scolds him, but halfheartedly, as if he’d like to praise him instead and make him see that deep down he likes his oldest son to be badly behaved, to be known as an ace soccer player, and to get good grades, So long as you’re at the top of your class, they’ll let you get away with things sometimes, says Carlos Vicente Londoño to his oldest son, Joaquín Londoño, who unfortunately doesn’t have the same name as his father but is just like him in spirit, and Joaco looks him boldly in the eye, Of the three of us, says Agustina, my brother Joaco is the only one who’s never scared, because Joaco knows that my father’s yellow eyes, his bushy eyebrows that come together in the middle, his big nose, and the peculiar way his index finger stretches longer than his middle finger are all traits they share, which is why father and son smile secretly, even when the vice-principal of the Boys School calls to say that Joaco will be put on probation because he’s been drinking beer at break, but Joaco and my father smile because they know that the two of them are essentially the same, one generation after the next, studying at the same boys’ school, getting drunk at the same parties, maybe even starting fires in the same place or tormenting the same old dog, the guard dog that hasn’t died yet and won’t die because its fate is to be there still when Joaco’s son, Joaco’s father’s grandson, is born and grows big enough to extend the miserable dog’s long agony over three generations. Listen Bichi, my pale-skinned little darling, we can’t blame my father for liking Joaco better, because after all you and I perform ceremonies that we shouldn’t, do you understand?, we commit sins and my father wants to help us be better, that’s what fathers are for.

  My father wanted his firstborn son to be named after him, Carlos Vicente Londoño, but because he was busy with work, he didn’t make it to the christening in time, or at least that’s what my mother says, and she’s probably right because my father was never one of those people who arrive when you expect them to, so since he wasn’t there, instead of giving the baby his father’s name, his godparents named him after the Virgin Mary’s father, that is, Joaquín, maybe thinking that he’d be better protected that way on his journey through this vale of tears, his godmother said that in the annals of the saints there is no Carlos Vicente because it isn’t a Christian name, who ever heard of Saint Carlos Vicente the bishop or Saint Carlos Vicente the martyr, so they convinced themselves that it was better to call him Joaquín, and it was then that the story of my father’s great frustration began. So that he would forgive her, Eugenia, the boy’s mother, promised him that their second son would be called Carlos Vicente, but then I was born and since I was a girl they named me Agustina and so the long wait got longer, the wait for the chosen one who would be given the Name, until it was Bichi’s turn to be born and by consensus and without discussion he was named Carlos Vicente Londoño, just as my father’s obsession dictated, but life is so fickle that my father never wanted to call him that, and so we had to invent all kinds of nicknames, like Bichi, Bichito, Charlie Bichi, Charlie, all not-quite-real names, like names for a pet.

  Why should it be your fault, Bichi Bichito, for not looking like my father, for looking exactly like my mother and me; she, you, and I with skin that’s almost too white. Can you believe it, my mother was brought up to be proud of being Aryan, and who does she marry but someone who looks down on her for being washed-out and poor; whiteys, my father calls us when he sees us in our bathing suits at the pool at Gai Repos, the family estate in Sasaima, and before Bichi can ask her again what Gai Repos means, Agustina tells him: It means happy rest in one of the European languages that grandfather Portulinus could speak, he was the one who first came to Sasaima and bought the ranch; I’ve explained it to you a thousand times and this is the thousand and first time, but you never get it, you’re such trouble, Bichi Bichito, sometimes I think my father is right when he says that you’re the kind of boy who lives in the clouds and no one can make you come down.

  THOUGH SHE’S NEVER MET ME and probably never will, my mother-in-law Eugenia won’t forgive Agustina for living with me. Before the delirium, when Agustina hadn’t yet forsaken reality, I never bothered to ask her about her past, her family, or her memories, good or bad, partly because I was so busy with teaching and partly, to be honest, because I didn’t really care, I felt tied to the Agustina who lived with me here and now, not to the Agustina who belonged to other times and other people, and now, when that past might be crucial in helping to reassemble the puzzle of her memory, I mourn the questions I didn’t ask, yearning for those interminable stories that fell on deaf ears, about fights with her parents or past loves. I blame myself for everything I refused to see because I wanted to keep reading, because I didn’t have time, because I didn’t think it was important, or because I couldn’t be bothered to listen to stories about strangers, by which I mean stories about her family, which bored me to death.

  Those people, her family, have always refused to meet me because they think I’m a peon, Agustina herself confessed to me once that that was their word for me, peon, or in other words a bourgeois nobody, a third-rate professor, and that was before I was out of work; Agustina told me that there were other strikes against me, too, like the fact that I’m not divorced from my first wife, that I don’t speak any foreign languages, that I’m a communist, that I don’t make enough money, that I dress like a bum. It’s no surprise that there’s a wall of contempt between her people and mine, but the strange thing, the truly fascinating thing, is that the class Agustina belongs to doesn’t only exclude other classes but also purges itself; it’s always getting rid of its own kind, those who for subtle reasons don’t quite fulfill the requirements, like Agustina or Aunt Sofi, and I ask myself whether they were condemned at birth or whether it was a consequence of their acts, whether it was original sin or some other sin committed along the way that expelled them from paradise and revoked their privileges; among her many faults, Agustina committed the cardinal sin of getting involved with me, because number one on the list of the internal rules that govern her people is not to fraternize with inferiors, much less sleep with them, although of course Agustina was already exiled when she chose to keep company with me, so who knows what other crimes she may have committed before.

  I’d rather not think about my mother-in-law, but I can’t forget the absurd phone call she made after Agustina’s breakdown. Eugenia rarely calls here, and she hangs up if I answer, but the other day
she deigned to speak to me for the first time in the three years I’ve been living with her daughter, and that was only because Agustina got extremely upset when she heard that it was her mother and refused to pick up the phone, I don’t want to talk to her because her voice makes me sick, she repeated over and over again until she went into one of her nervous states, so Eugenia had no choice but to talk to me, though without ever calling me by name, twisting herself into knots to avoid mentioning my connection to Agustina and speaking in an impersonal tone as if I were an operator or a nurse, in other words as if I were nobody and she were leaving a message on the machine, which was how she informed me that from now on she herself would look after Agustina, Look, Señor, what my daughter needs is a rest, she said to me, or rather didn’t say to me but to the nonentity at the other end of the line, This is to let you know that I’m coming today to take Agustina away to a spa in Virginia, What do you mean a spa in Virginia, Señora, what are you talking about?, I shot back at her, and since Agustina was next to me screaming that her mother’s voice made her sick, I was having trouble hearing Eugenia, who was listing the healing treatments that her daughter would receive at one of the best spas in the world, thermal baths, floral therapy, seaweed massage, until I cut her off, Listen, Señora, Agustina isn’t well, she’s in a state of uncontrollable agitation and you come to me intending to take her away for some Zen meditation?, And who are you, Señor, to tell me what’s best for my daughter, at least have the courtesy to ask her whether she wants to go or not. Agustina, your mother’s asking whether you want to go with her to some hot springs in Virginia, Listen for yourself, Señora, Agustina’s saying that all she wants is for us to hang up right now.