by AIRA, CESAR
“Yes, yes, I hear you. But I don’t understand . . . I didn’t know the wind could talk.”
“I can.”
“What wind are you?”
“My name is Ventarrón.”
The name sounded familiar.
“That sounds familiar . . . Have we met before?”
“Many times. Let’s see if you remember.”
“Do you remember?”
“Of course.”
She tried to think.
“It wasn’t that time . . . ?”
“Yes, yes.”
“And that other time, when . . .?”
“Yes! What a good physiognomist you are.”
He wasn’t joking. It must have been a figure of speech.
“So many times . . .! Now I remember others, but it would take me hours to mention them all.”
“I would listen to you without ever feeling bored. It would be like music for me.”
“Millions of times.”
“Not so many, Delia, not so many. It’s just that I’m unmistakable.”
He was very friendly, really. But poor Delia was in no condition to carry her courtesy to the point of launching into Proustian record-keeping, so she moved on to a more immediate matter.
“You’re the one who saved me from the truck driver?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. You don’t know how much I appreciate it.”
“I’ve been looking after you since you came here, Delia. Who did you think saved you from those rough-housing winds that were dancing you all over the sky and set you down safely on the ground? Who stopped the truck door when it was about to cut off your head?”
“It was you?”
“Yes.”
“Then thank you. I didn’t mean to be so much trouble.”
“I did it because I liked doing it.”
“I just don’t know why all those accidents had to happen to me, I don’t know how I got myself into all this trouble . . . All I know is that I went out looking for my son . . .”
“Things happen, Delia.”
“But they’ve never happened to me before.”
“That’s true.”
“And now . . . I’m lost, alone, with nothing . . .”
She whimpered a little, overwhelmed.
“I’m here. I’ll make sure nothing bad happens to you.”
“But you’re just a wind! Excuse me, I don’t know what I’m saying. It’s just that I want my son, my house . . .!”
“All you have to do is say so, Delia. I can bring you whatever you want. Your house, you said?”
“No!” Delia exclaimed, already seeing her house flying through the air and falling, a pile of rubble, at her feet in that desolate place. “No . . . Let me think. You can really bring me whatever I ask for?”
“That’s why I’m the wind.”
She would have liked to ask him for just the opposite: to carry her back to her house . . . But, in addition to her fear of flying, she kept in mind that that was not what Ventarrón had offered her. She began to feel suspicious. The question which came to mind at that point was: “Why me?” But she didn’t dare ask him. What she had heard up until now sounded like a declaration of love, and she didn’t know what intentions this mysterious being could have. She preferred to keep talking along a less compromising route.
“It must be interesting being a wind.”
“I’m not just any wind. I’m the fastest and the strongest. You already saw what I did to that truck.”
“That was very impressive. That man was starting to scare me. You know he’s a neighbor of mine, in Pringles?”
Silence.
“Of course I know.”
“What I can’t figure out is how Miss Balero got there.”
“You’ll find out . . ..”
“I hope he won’t think of following me.”
“He will pursue you, he’ll do nothing else from this moment on.”
“Really?”
“But don’t worry, that’s what I’m here for.”
“Forgive me, sir, but I don’t think a wind, no matter how strong it might be, can stop a truck.”
The wind snorted with disdain.
“No one can defeat me! No one! Look how I run!” He went to the horizon and back. “Look how I stop!” He stopped on a dime. “Watch this jump!” He executed a prodigious pirouette. “Up! Down!”
The night was clear, like a dark blue day. The moon watched impassively. Delia thought she saw it, but she wasn’t sure. If she hadn’t been so impressed, the display would have seemed a little puerile.
Ventarrón returned to her side, and then she was sure she saw him, invisible, strong and beautiful, like a god.
“Now, what do you want?”
She still didn’t know what she should ask for.
“Could I have . . . something to eat?”
“Of course!”
He left and was back in a minute, bringing a table, a chair, a tablecloth, plates, silverware, a napkin, a salt shaker, a chicken-fried steak with French fries, a glass of wine and a pear with cream. It all came flying, loose, the French fries like a swarm of golden lobsters, the cream whipped up into a little cloud . . . But it all settled in an orderly way on the table, and the chair was pulled out for her with the greatest courtesy . . . She didn’t even have to unfold the napkin and put it on her lap, because Ventarrón did it for her.
“It’s only missing the candles, but I couldn’t light them,” he told her. “It goes against my nature. At any rate, the moon, which I’ve been polishing so it will shine more brightly, will be your lamp.”
“Thank you very much.”
He stayed off at a certain distance, whistling, until she finished. Then he pulled out the chair, Delia stood up, and he carried it all away.
“Who knows who he snatched it from,” the seamstress thought. “To think I had to eat what a thieving wind brought me!”
“Now you’ll want to sleep.”
Just then a bed, a mattress, sheets, a fur blanket, and a pillow came flying in from the horizon. The bed was made up before her eyes in an instant, without a single wrinkle.
“Sweet dreams.”
“Thank you . . .”
His voice had become caressing, as had he. He wrapped himself around her, ruffling her hair and her dress, circling her legs with velvet breaths . . .
“Until tomorrow, Delia.”
“Until tomorrow, Ventarrón.”
There was a kind of whirlwind of absence, and the wind climbed into the starry sky. Delia stood for a moment, unsure, beside the bed. The wine had made her very sleepy. The white knit sheets invited her to sleep. She looked around. It was a little incongruent, this bed in the middle of the plain. And her dress was impossibly greasy. She hesitated a moment, and then said to herself, lying to herself with the truth: “No one can see me.” She stripped, and as she slid under the sheets her body shone in the moonlight. The night sighed.
20
WHEN SHE WOKE the next morning she thought she was at home, as often happens to travelers . . . Except for her it was not a brief, fleeting state, a short lapse of incomprehension . . . instead, the strangeness of it settled in her mind like a world, and stayed there. Under normal circumstances, she was in her bed, her bed was in her bedroom, her bedroom was in her house, and her house was in Pringles. Today, however, it looked like that whole chain of familiarity had been broken. The sky was very blue, and the sun was a white dot set in the most distant part of it. She turned to her right, and there was no Ramón beside her, and beyond that no child’s bed, no sleeping Omar. To her left there was no dresser with its mirror on top . . . and, therefore, no reflection of the window over Omar’s bed . . . In a word, she was not at home. She was not anywhere. An immense space surrounded her on all sides. The only thing that seemed to be in its place was the time, although not even the late dawn in that place had a particular time: one could call it a lapse in eternity. It didn’t feel like time to get up . . . She stret
ched.
Days of idleness in Patagonia . . .
When she put on her dress she could see now, in the light, what a greasy disaster it was. Her shoes were impossibly covered with dust, she could have written on them with her finger. The wind, so helpful for other things, had not taken care of her clothes, probably because she hadn’t asked him to. It occurred to her that he must be like those maids who are very hardworking and efficient, but lack initiative, and have to be told to do everything.
“Good morning, Delia.”
“Ah, um . . . Good morning.”
“Did you sleep well?”
“Perfectly. I wanted . . .”
“One moment. I have to take this.”
The bed and everything on it flew away at full speed and was lost beyond the horizon. “Such a hurry,” Delia thought. In an instant the wind was back.
“Delia, I have to tell you something I would have preferred to keep to myself, but it’s better for you to know, just in case.”
“About what? Don’t scare me . . .” Delia was already thinking of catastrophes, as was her custom.
“Last night,” began Ventarrón, “I went out for a stroll, after you fell asleep, and over there I saw a light, and got closer to look. There’s a hotel there, on top of a little mountain, and at first I thought it was on fire, it glowed so brightly. But there was no fire. I went down and looked in the windows. It wasn’t a party either. It was a radioactive kind of light, pulsing, pulsing so much it shook the whole hotel . . . A red, horrible light, and the temperature had risen to several thousand degrees . . . As I had no intention of becoming an atomic wind, I moved back, and stayed there watching. It went from bad to worse. Even I started to become frightened, though there’s no one better at getting away than me. But I know there are distant terrors from which escape is useless. And then, all at once, the whole hotel fell in, melted like a snowflake in the sun . . . And there it was — free, burning and horrible — the Monster . . . the child who should never have been born . . .”
His voice, already naturally low, had taken on a from-beyond-the-grave resonance, very pessimistic. His last words gave Delia goose bumps along her spine.
“What child . . .? What monster . . .?”
“There is a legend that says that one day, in a hot springs hotel in this area, a child will be born who is gifted with all the power of transformation, a being that will encapsulate all of the winds in the world, an über-wind, and therefore terrifyingly ugly . . . At least for me, and for you, because what in me is exterior, in him is interior, fostering all kinds of deformations . . . Now you see why it impressed me so.”
“And what happened?”
“Nothing. I ran away, and here I am. The problem is that the Monster is loose, and he’s looking for you.”
“For me?! Why me?”
“Because that’s what the legend says,” answered the wind, cryptically. “And it’s obvious that the legend has come true.”
“But where could this Monster have come from?”
“Evolution follows no path.”
“And the truck driver is looking for me too, no?”
“I’ll take care of the truck driver, he’s not a problem.”
“And the Monster?”
Silence.
“That’s something else,” said Ventarrón.
Delia lowered her head, overwhelmed.
“Changing the subject,” said the wind. “Last night I saw another thing which enchanted me: a great wedding dress, folding and unfolding at thirty thousand feet up, sailing south . . .”
“A wedding dress? With nylon voile cuffs, satin . . .?”
“Yes! But what do I know about fabrics! Why do you ask?”
“Because it’s mine. I lost it yesterday, or the day before
yesterday . . .”
“Yours how? Aren’t you married? Didn’t you tell me you had a son?”
“No. I mean I was sewing it, for a girl who just . . .”
“Don’t tell me you’re a seamstress?!”
“Yes.”
The wind almost fell over. He took a while to recover.
“You’re the seamstress then? Ramón Siffoni’s wife?”
“Yes. I thought you knew that.”
“Now I’m starting to understand. It’s all beginning to line up. The seamstress . . . and the wind.”
“The two of us.”
“The two of us . . .”
The wind was in love. He’d been in love for all eternity, or at least for all of his wind-eternity. And now that the story was starting to unfold before him, he found it suddenly too real, shrill, paradoxically unpredictable . . .
“Sir . . .” Delia interrupted his meditation.
“Yes?”
“You told me you could bring me what I asked you for?”
“. . .”
“Would you bring me the dress?”
“What do you want it for?”
Yes, well put, what for? It didn’t look like Miss Balero, who was now black and in the power of that savage truck driver, was going to need it. But one never knew; in any case, she could charge for the labor and turn it over to Miss Balero’s mother; it was already practically done. Besides, it was reasonable to ask for it, since it was her work.
“The customer provided the fabric,” she said, “and she’s going to want it back.”
“All right, but give me time. Who knows where it might be by now.”
“One more little thing, if it’s not too much trouble. I brought a sewing kit, and I lost it, surely the things are spread all over . . . Could you gather them up and bring me the box?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m very good at finding lost needles in Patagonia.”
“What I don’t know is what to do in the meantime.”
“I never get bored,” said the wind.
“Neither do I, when I’m at home. But here . . .” she whimpered again.
“I already told you I can bring you your house, with everything in it.”
“No, no . . . I don’t want it!”
She could think of nothing more depressing than her house set there in the middle of the desert; for her the house was the street too, the neighbors, the neighborhood. Offering her the house by itself was like trying to pay her with an inconceivable one-sided coin.
“We’d be very comfortable, Delia, you here in your house, cleaning, cooking, sewing. I would keep you company, bring you everything you wanted . . . we would live happily, safely . . .”
Delia was terrified. Ventarrón’s intentions were becoming clear, and they filled her with dread. Was it possible that a meteorological phenomenon had fallen in love with her? And besides, he was contradicting himself: how was she going to be safe? There was an insane truck driver, and on top of that a monster out to destroy her! It was not a very soothing perspective. And there were her husband and son. She didn’t want to talk about that with the wind, but he brought the subject up.
“Would you like your husband to come get you?”
“. . .”
“He won’t be able to, Delia. He tried, but his vice intervened (you already know what I’m talking about), and he lost the truck.”
“Really?”
“And he won’t be able to get it back. That little red truck you were so accustomed to is now invisible, and no one will ever drive it again. Ramón Siffoni has been left on his feet forever.”
I will never return to Pringles! thought Delia with desperation. She hated the wind for his sadism.
“I have to ask you something, Delia. Are you in love with your husband? Did you marry for love?”
“And why else would I get married?”
“To keep from ending up an old maid.”
She didn’t deign to respond. She might not have been able to even if she’d wanted, because she had a knot in her throat.
“Do you love him?”
“Yes.”
“But you’ve never told him so.”
“It’s not necessary in
marriage.”
“How unromantic you are!” A pause. “Do you want to tell him?”
In a fit, Delia forgot her prudence.
“If only he were here I’d tell him! If only!”
“He doesn’t have to be here. I could carry your words to the other side of the world, if necessary.” Another pause. The wind waited. “Tell him. Be brave and tell him.”
Delia raised her head and looked at the horizon, out there at the end of the plateau. It all seemed very small, and yet she knew it was very big. Could her voice cross it? Her voice was in her husband’s heart . . . How big the world was! And how far away she was! Where had she come to rest? She would never go back to Pringles! Never!
“Ramón . . . ” she said, and the wind roared and was gone.
21
I’M SITTING IN a café on the Place de Clichy . . . At this point I remain here against my will. I should have left a while ago, I have a commitment . . . But I can’t call the waiter, I simply can’t do it, it’s stronger than I am, and the minutes are passing . . . I’ve reviewed the bill and my pocket several times, I’ve counted the coins from back to front and front to back and I come up short by a hair, I have six francs and ninety centimes and the coffee costs seven, it’s as if it were done on purpose . . . That’s why I need the waiter to come, he’s going to have to give me change for fifty francs, I don’t have anything smaller . . . If I had enough coins I would leave them on the table, free as a bird I would leave these little metal eggs and fly away. My impatience is so great that if I had a ten franc note I would leave it . . . But I don’t. I’m reduced to waiting for him to look at me so I can make some gesture, wave him over . . . it’s the same here as everywhere in the world: waiters never look your way. My eyes are fixed on him, every turn he makes I try out my gesture . . . By now all the customers must have noticed, and the other waiters, of course, all except him. Let’s see . . . He’s coming this way . . . no, again I failed, I must have the air of a supplicant, I’m stuck to my chair . . . I move it, I scrape the legs against the floor, to make him look at me . . . I know going after him would be useless as well as grotesque, he’d slip away . . . Then, I would become the invisible man, yes, the ghost of the Place de Clichy. There’s nothing to do but wait for the next opportunity, hope that he turns this way, that he clears the table next to mine and sees me . . . And I want to go, I have to go, that’s the worst . . . I’ve been here for two hours writing at this table (he must think that if I stayed two hours, I could just as well stay three, or five, or until they close), and in the enthusiasm of inspiration, which I’m cursing now, I went on and on until I’d finished the previous chapter . . . and when I looked at the clock I wanted to die . . . I should already be at that dinner, they’ll be waiting for me — for me, stuck here . . . I have twenty minutes on the Métro at least, and the minutes pass and I keep searching for the waiter’s gaze . . . I don’t know how I can be writing this, if I’m not taking my eyes off his head . . .. Every time I put in an ellipse I make holes in the notebook. This is beginning to look definitive: he’s never going to look at me, ever. Have I been trying for ten minutes? Fifteen? I don’t want to look at the clock any more. I stare at him like a maniac . . . The law of probabilities should be in my favor, at some point he should look at me, since he can’t help looking at something . . . And to think it would have been so easy to make him come over as soon as I saw the time: calling him would have been enough. So many people do it . . . But I can’t. Never in my life have I called a waiter except by mute craft (and I have written all my novels in cafés), I’ve never done it, I will never do it . . . never . . . And then an ardent recrimination of my Creator rises in me — mute of course, internal, though I pronounce and hear it with the greatest clarity: