“Do you love him?” she asked once she had me cornered. I didn’t answer, and this only bolstered her victory. Later on, I dared to say that I was happy in the little house they had rented to me, that I felt grateful, that I hoped I wouldn’t have to leave.
“You are a charming young lady,” Madame Cupin lied to me at the end of the night, and in my innocence I believed that everything would be all right.
I sold four packets of myrrh incense and a necklace of thick beads. A while later, someone threw a coin into my coffee cup.
I arrived at Retiro as the sun was setting. It was the first time I’d retraced my steps in many years. Since leaving Buenos Aires at twenty-three I’d managed to plot a simple and erratic circle across the globe, never treading on my own footprints. I even stayed at the same traveler’s hotel on Avenida Libertador, because again there were no buses leaving that night and I had to wait until the next morning.
But in the hotel, unlike the first time, I didn’t pretend to be anyone except the person I was. I gave my name and the address of an apartment in Once, where I still live. The twenty-hour bus ride was grueling; I was afraid and excited. Why go back now, after everything that had happened? I craved repetition, down to the finest detail: I wanted to get off the bus, walk to the fire station, cross the road, continue past the cabins, then walk up to the little house on the patio, even if it had already been knocked down. I disembarked in El Bolsón, at the ticket kiosk that serves as a bus station, and sat down on a wooden bench to let a woolly stray dog lick my hands. Someone had left a newspaper on the ground. I picked it up. In the crime section I saw an article on the trial of Marco and Madame Cupin’s alleged murderers, which had kept half of Patagonia abuzz for several months. Meanwhile, I’d locked myself inside an apartment in Buenos Aires, looking out at the buildings and their terraced rooftops, trying not to think about snow or mountains. That night I slept in El Bolsón, badly. My head spilled the same thoughts over and over again from its dark depths, like a relentless fountain. Did I know the handcuffed men in the photo? Of course I did. One of them was the lumberjack from El Hoyo, the one we’d sold sheep to several times, the one I’d sold bread to at the health-food shop and fruit to at the farm. They claimed the double murder had been a hit, organized in advance and confirmed that fateful morning with a phone call. They said the voice on the telephone could have belonged to a man or a woman. The details of their testimonies were given further down, but I didn’t read them; I scrunched up the page, and kicked the dog as I got up.
How many people did I use as a shield? As many as I needed.
On the tram back to Heidelberg I came across a Turkish moustache I knew well. Not once had we bumped into one another on our respective journeys home from IKEA, so I felt there must be a reason for this coincidence. Had he followed me? To find out, I decided to follow him. He got off after my usual stop and walked into an Italian pizzeria, where he ordered something to eat. I waited outside, watching as a woman served him a plate and immediately sat down at his table. Their farewell was affectionate. Then he walked a few blocks and got on a bus. There were enough passengers that I was able to avoid detection. But I didn’t notice him get off the bus until it was too late. I got off at the stop after his. I walked three blocks through the clean and empty suburbs of Heidelberg, with eyes in the windows of every house. The two of them were there together, at the entrance of a building. The house couldn’t have belonged to either of them, judging by the abandon with which they kissed. I was envious of their sly little situation, and stood there in the middle of the street long enough for them to notice me. We studied each other for a moment. Apparently it was neither good nor bad that I’d seen them. I turned and left. They must have closed the door she’d been holding open with her foot; they must have gone up to their secret hideout in search of pleasure, with no higher motive than to love one other completely. I retraced my path, envying them every step of the way. I boarded the tram and got off at Bismarck Square. I saw two drunk youths kicking an empty beer can around. I decided I would report them the next day at IKEA. The Lithuanian had arranged a pile of plates that had fallen on our boss, she’d stained sheets with red marker, she’d broken glasses in secret. Other accusations occurred to me as I made my way up to my room. I was ecstatic in my misery. I planned to go to bed early, as I always did, because I had to get up in the middle of the night to arrive at work on time. But at eight o’clock I was still pacing back and forth between the fridge and the dining table; by ten o’clock I realized that I would have liked to kiss the Turk on the mouth, to smoke his cigarettes, that I would have preferred the danger he symbolized to every one of my good alibis. I never went back to IKEA, not to report them or for any other reason.
• • •
What could be more miserable than believing in God? And yet, when I saw the blood-spattered arm I began to pray that God existed, even though there was nobody there to witness it.
Marco was never one to doubt. But this time Marco doubts: he runs and catches me. Then he withdraws and pushes me away, to the other side of the fence. This confuses me. I look at him, trying to guess what his decision will be. His life is at stake, and he doesn’t know it. But finally I do as he says and go into town. I take a stroll, walk past the payphone center, and end up asking for a room in the Hotel Amancay. I lock myself inside, looking out. “It’s just for tonight,” I tell myself. Later I recognize his truck parked outside the hotel. He’s come to spend the night with me, just as I asked. Why don’t I open the window and call out to him? His face is as somber as a tombstone. Before leaving, he sticks his head out the truck window.
Months had passed. I was in a Coto supermarket in Once, choosing a can of peas that I could pay for and consume, although none of them were as good as the ones on the farm, and they were all expensive. This brand or that one? I was entangled in this meticulous decision when I thought of him. The strap of my purse slipped from my shoulder and slid down my arm to the ground. I picked it up slowly, as if I’d suddenly fallen very ill. I abandoned my trolley, my umbrella, the bag of clothes I’d planned to take to the laundromat. I left the supermarket and thought that the cars were making an enormous racket along Avenida Rivadavia. I sat down in the plaza. Shortly afterward, a man came along and sat down beside me. He spent a long time with the pigeons. Like me, everyone had their eyes on him. All the faces in the world passed by.
But it would be an act of vandalism to say that he did it for me. Anyone who’s ever lived near El Hoyo knows the story of the lumberjack who killed the old empanada lady. Anyone might have sold him sheep in exchange for wood, or served him one afternoon if he came to buy strawberries. It couldn’t have been the brother, who’d come from Chile to claim his inheritance and build his big hotel. It couldn’t have been the French relative Madame Cupin spoke of as though he were a wealthy pirate, thirsty for a hectare of forest to spend his retirement on. That was why I’d seen him in the payphone center that day, when we’d bumped into each other at the door and he’d tried to ignore me, too slow to hide one of the green silk handkerchiefs his mother had brought back from Paris. That was why he’d auctioned off half of his best animals at such a low price, why the axe had turned into just another garden tool, loitering there on the patio under the walnut tree, like a cat. He must have hired the hit men himself. It’s possible that the French relative didn’t even exist. Marco hires the lumberjack from El Hoyo because he can’t do it himself. But he makes sure the man doesn’t know who’s paying him; he calls from a payphone in town, he must use the green handkerchief to disguise his voice. The crime itself is simple. The murder weapon is waiting at the front door, underneath the walnut tree, as if someone has forgotten to bring it inside. The forgotten axe is one of Marco’s pretenses, surely. But that night of the insects they arrive earlier than planned, or they arrive too late. And it’s not one man, but two. For the first time in his life, Marco doubted. He’s been in doubt for a few hours now. He thinks about heading into town with me, just like I aske
d him to, but then he thinks better of it, perhaps to avoid rousing suspicion. In any case, he decides to stay home. But he doubts, he’s on the verge of regret. A little while later he drives into town, but he doesn’t even get out of his truck. He parks for a moment outside the Hotel Amancay, spits out the window, then drives off. There’s no way to stop the wheel he’s set in motion. If he were to stay, he would give himself away. He returns to the farm and looks for his mother, who for some reason isn’t in her house; she’s in the little house in the middle, which is mine.
Sitting there in the plaza, I think about the crime. I sit for hours. Or are they minutes? It’s afternoon and evening and morning and afternoon.
He’s been planning it for a long time, perhaps since the day he first tells me I’ll have to move out of the little house. Then he argues with Madame Cupin, and succeeds in winning me a little more time, because by now he knows what I’m looking for there on the mountain, and he’s looking for the same thing. They’re inside my house, they hear noises outside. He knows who it is, but he’s surprised to see two people in the living room. Because he only hired one: the lumberjack from El Hoyo. Now that he regrets his decision, the fact that there are two of them is a huge disadvantage. Killing one’s mother is not the same as killing a horse or a dog—this is what he must think, in his regret. When he finds her, a little before the others arrive, he says: “What are you doing here?” She is emptying drawers in my bedroom. They hear noises, and he goes into the living room. He doesn’t have his shotgun with him. He uses a chair, a stick, a pot plant heavy with earth, but nothing can defend him against the axe that he himself left under the tree for the murderer to collect. Now it’s two against one. Madame Cupin must be hiding in the bedroom. It’s a slow massacre, there in the living room, where only a few hours earlier Marco and I had promised each other something akin to the future. Now he is fighting tooth and nail and arm, and they cut him open. They bring him down and then they take care of Madame Cupin.
I embraced doña Carmen in the town of Almagro, under the midday sun of La Mancha. I promised I would see her again, knowing that I never would.
I looked at Alexander, standing there on the platform, and made a gesture of love to him, but I didn’t love him.
I kissed Julia’s hand from inside the taxi as she, trembling in the Berlin cold, fought back tears.
I never saw any of them again. I never spoke to any of them again, never replied to any of their messages. I put an end to them all, I didn’t leave a trace, didn’t feel a trace of remorse. These are all my crimes: all my goodbyes.
It’s turned out to be a perfect evening—it’s snowing, I’m rugged up in sheepskin, and there is a white path stretching before me. I’ve just left my job, thrown my personal documents into the sea, and walked out of my room. I’ve left a suitcase in Hamburg Square, accumulating damp. I hope someone steals it, out of pity. With every step I bury a sentence, a name, until I’ve buried them all. I am twenty-six years old and I am brand new. Now that I have nothing, I think everything belongs to me.
He goes in search of his mother, who is rummaging through the drawers in my bedroom, and he forgets to pick up the axe he left under the walnut tree. Before the first blow is struck he manages to tell his assailant which stone the money was hidden under—the hit man’s payment, which he must have already collected. If not, he wouldn’t be there. It’s an attempt to stall him. But, faced with the axe, Marco doesn’t remember how many times he changed his voice and gave his telephoned instructions: go to the Del Monje farm and kill whoever’s there. The cash is under a stone after the first rise in the mountain, at the third curve in the path, at the foot of the burned pine. It doesn’t work, the second blow falls. He is big and strong, and this sparks the others’ rage. They silence him with blows and then they take care of Madame Cupin. I saw him from the window of the hotel that summer night, when the insects were meant to rain down. He parked his truck and spat out the window. This was always his plan: to doubt, right to the very last; to make as if he’d conceded at the last minute to sleep with me in the Hotel Amancay. If we’d actually planned it, if it had been a real date like the ones other men and women make when they love each other and their love is out in the open, he wouldn’t have had contingency on his side. He would have planned to be out of the house, and this would have seemed suspicious. This was his plan—this, or something like this. But that night he has doubts, real doubts and fake doubts. This is his undoing.
My home, after all this time? My home is the atomic number for silicon, it is the properties of butane gas. In them I relax and stretch out my legs as if in a great armchair.
He sticks his face out the car window one last time, a face that isn’t his, a face that is already gone, and spits onto the ground. I see him, I see. Why don’t I beg him to come up? Why don’t I save him? He spits and spits, and I sit in silence.
Much later I saw the baker in a Heidelberg street, far from the bakery and the white aprons we used to use. He was a different man: not better, not worse. He recognized me from a distance, and just as we were about to pass one another he crossed to the other side of the street.
My third trip to El Bolsón was a slow one. The asphalt was full of traps. I was tired of all the questions I’d already answered; I didn’t want to hear them anymore. Along the way I looked at the green countryside, the dry pampa, the Neuquén meseta. I awoke and we were approaching the cordillera, although there were still several hours to wait before I’d set foot on the mountain again. This would be the second time since his death. I didn’t want to believe any of it: that the houses had been demolished, that construction had started on the big upmarket hotel Marco’s brother had designed. In town, everyone had decided that the project had no future; this wasn’t the kind of place anybody got rich from, it was hard enough here just to survive. I walked unhurriedly up the road, all the way to the fire station, where they waved at me with brief enthusiasm and informed me that the hit men were on remand at the prison in Esquel. Since it hadn’t been a robbery, there was a lot of speculation about who had hired them. They had nothing on Marco’s brother. They had nothing on the neighbor, despite his bitter argument with Marco over a water channel so many years earlier, and despite the rumors surrounding the fire that had devoured half of his fruit trees. The firefighters were drinking tepid yerba mate; they offered me a sip, which I accepted. It wasn’t the fire season, it had been raining for weeks. One of the firefighters was betting on Marco’s brother, said the evidence was right there in front of our faces: he had been the one to inherit the farm, and he’d started construction immediately on that pointless hotel, which of course was bound to fail. The other, who was born in the area and knew a lot about revenge, was convinced that the neighbor from up the hill had been the one to order the hit. Marco had shot two of his dogs and one of his horses—the blond one—after the water-channel argument. Of the fire there were only whispered suspicions. But there was motive in spades. Madame Cupin had not been the principal target—her only fault lay in being the heir’s mother, or perhaps she’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Which wrong place? My bedroom.
“Thank God you weren’t there that night.”
“You dodged it by a whisker.”
“It must have been the brother, don’t you think?”
“No,” I said, “I think it was me.”
They found this entertaining. The one on the left gave me a friendly slap on the arm, which I allowed. At those latitudes women were considered too foolish to be guilty of anything. We spoke about the bad weather and the coming summer, the behavior of the tourists, who were awful, and the most recent car crash on the road to El Bolsón.
“You should believe me,” I said as I took my leave.
They assured me that when I came back in a few months everything would be better. That we’d know more about the crime, that the mountain would be the same as ever. I should rest easy.
“Julia,” I whisper. I walk on tiptoes to her bedroom, whic
h is dark despite the daylight outside; it smells of sour flowers, one of her bad perfumes I’ve somehow learned to love. She is a white shadow against the bed. Her head is crowned with handkerchiefs that she dabs intermittently into a bowl of ice. She offers me her hand. She doesn’t usually speak during her migraine episodes, but this time she does. She tells me useless things, ridiculous things, and asks me to do the same. We spill our hearts out as usual, although this time in very quiet voices and in darkness and with great angst, even more than usual, because this isn’t doing her any good and it does nothing to mollify me or rouse in me the tingling of perpetual love.
“That,” she concludes somewhat faintly, “is because they didn’t have enough proof of love.”
She’s telling me about two people who didn’t manage to make a happy ending of their love story—we spoke about such things all the time. This afternoon, though, with Berlin cloaked in haze outside the shuttered windows, Julia made an effort to explain their failure to me. Proof of love: that thing one lover demands of another; that thing that makes no sense; that capricious, that cursed thing. She gets worked up, propped there in the middle of her bed, beneath her turban of cloth and ice, and a spiral of spit escapes from her mouth.
“People demand it without explanation: I want you to come tomorrow, I don’t want you to come, and so on. A train trip, a resignation, it all works the same way,” she rhapsodizes, squeezing my hand in hers, trusting that she has convinced me of something.
Four years have passed since I moved into this apartment in the suburb of Once, where I look out at the rooftops of Buenos Aires. If I stand on my tiptoes and stretch my neck out, I can see the roof of a house that used to be mine, my father’s, my brothers’, a long time ago. I have a table, two chairs, a blanket and a bathtub. That’s all I need.
All My Goodbyes Page 11