Reputations

by Juan Gabriel Vasquez

  ‘That’s what I just said,’ said Mallarino, ‘you and I don’t know each other.’

  ‘We don’t know each other,’ said Cuéllar. ‘And it seems to me that you’ve been unfair to me, forgive my saying. I’m not a bad person, you understand? I’m a good person. Ask my wife. Ask my children. I have two, two boys. Ask them and you’ll see they’ll say so, that I’m a good person. Poor little guys. I don’t show them your drawings. My wife doesn’t show them, forgive me for telling you this, sorry.’

  Mallarino could barely believe it: the man had come on a supplicant mission. He called to beg me, Valencia had said. It was like the guy was on his knees over the phone. He felt invaded by a solid contempt, as palpable as a tumour. What was annoying him so much? Was it perhaps the humility with which Adolfo Cuéllar was speaking to him, head bent, casting shadows under his nose, arms resting on his knees (the pose of someone confessing to a friendly priest, a sinner before his confessor), or perhaps the respect with which he was treating Mallarino in spite of the fact that he, obviously, felt none. I’ve humiliated him, I’ve ridiculed him, and now he’s come to lick my arse. What a repugnant man. Yes, that was it, an unpredictable and thus more intense repugnance, a repugnance for which Mallarino was not prepared. He had expected complaints, protests, even diatribes; a few minutes earlier he had greeted this man with a measure of hostility just to better face up to the other’s hostility, like an employee who, caught in the wrong, arrives at the supervisor’s office gesticulating and shouting, launching little preventative attacks. Well, now it seems that Cuéllar has not come here to demand the immediate cessation of those aggressive drawings, but to humiliate himself even further before his aggressor. He is an adult, thought Mallarino, a grown man and I have humiliated him; he has a wife and kids and I have ridiculed him; but this adult man does not defend himself, this head of a family does not respond with similar blows, rather he humiliates himself even more, seeks even more ridicule. Mallarino found himself feeling a confusing emotion that went beyond contempt, something that wasn’t irritation or annoyance but seemed dangerously close to hatred, and it alarmed him to be feeling it.

  ‘Please, Javier,’ Cuéllar was saying, ‘please don’t draw me like that any more. I’m not like that.’ And then, correcting himself: ‘That’s what I came to ask you, Señor Mallarino,’ he said with a shaky and nervous voice (nervous like Beatriz when she licked the dry skin of her hands). ‘Thank you for listening to me, sorry for your time, I mean thank you for your time.’

  Mallarino listened to him and thought: He’s weak. He’s weak and that’s why I hate him. He’s weak and I’m strong now, and I hate him for making the fact so obvious, for allowing me to abuse my strength, for giving me away, yes, for exposing this power that maybe I don’t deserve. Seen from this seat, the sliding door to the garden had turned into a big illuminated rectangle, and Mallarino saw, against the bright backdrop, the silhouettes that now began to enter. ‘The day’s cooled down now,’ he heard someone say. The house filled with lively conversations, open or more discreet laughter; someone asked where the record player was, and someone else, Gómez or Valencia, began to sing without waiting for musical accompaniment. I saw you arrive, he sang, and felt the presence of an unknown being: it was a song Magdalena liked, but there was no way Valencia or Gómez knew that or knew that those lines were forcing Mallarino to remember his absent wife, the profound emptiness that was opening in his life without her, and to regret everything, to regret it intensely: I saw you arrive and felt what I’d never ever felt before. Adolfo Cuéllar was just apologizing again: for taking his time, for invading his house on a Sunday. He was talking about a father’s image for his children, and how his sons would grow up with Mallarino’s image of him. ‘Do it for them,’ Cuéllar was saying, ‘as a father yourself, please,’ he asked or begged, and Mallarino saw his ears, his nose, the bones of his forehead and his temples, and thought of the strange disdain those bones and cartilages produced in him, and said to himself that even if Adolfo Cuéllar didn’t strike him as a repugnant little character, he would keep drawing him non-stop, and his bones and cartilages were to blame. His bones are to blame, thought Mallarino, it’s always all the fault of bones and cartilages. And then he thought: Bones are the only things that matter; in them, in the shape of the skull and the angle of the nose, in the width of the forehead and the strength or trepidation of a jaw and the dimples on a chin, their delicate or brusque slopes, their more or less intense shadows, there lies the reputation and the image: give me a bone and I shall move the world. Politicians don’t know it, they haven’t realized yet, or maybe they have, but it’s not something they can fix: we are born with these bones, it’s very difficult to change them, and so we’ll go through life with the same vulnerabilities, or always forcing ourselves to compensate for them: didn’t someone say that a successful man is simply someone who has found the way to conceal a complex? In the living room, standing next to a crouching body who was manipulating old newspapers to light, for the first time, a fire in the fireplace of the new house, Rodrigo Valencia – it was him, it was Valencia, now Mallarino had recognized him – was singing at the top of his voice the lines of the song about a love that wasn’t fire and wasn’t flame, and those other lines, that Magdalena loved so much, about the distances that separate cities and cities that destroy customs, and with each line Mallarino had the impression that Adolfo Cuéllar, who now took a sip of his drink and made a grotesque grimace as he swallowed, fell lower and lower in humiliation and shamelessness. A burst of flames reddened the room. Cuéllar was incredible: how could he inflict such pains on himself, or did it not pain him to kneel before someone who’d wounded him? Mallarino was on the verge of asking him roughly when there was a sound of breaking glass, and before Mallarino had time to discover where it had come from Elena Ronderos appeared, taking long strides and moving her hands as if wiping a clumsy phrase off a blackboard.

  ‘Hey, Javier, come quick,’ she said. ‘Something’s wrong with the girls.’

  And that’s how the adults discovered that Beatriz and her little friend had spent the last hour running around the house, visiting every surface where there were half-finished drinks, every table in the living room and every step on the stairs and every shelf where some guest might have set down the last sip of aguardiente or whisky or rum, and now they were so drunk they were pinned out like butterflies on the floor of Beatriz’s room and couldn’t even open their eyes or answer any of the questions they were asked. They had broken one of the framed pictures, which were propped up against the wall, waiting to be assigned a place, and there was the frame and three or four long triangles of glass. Mallarino thought he’d clean them up right away, but first he picked up his daughter; someone, he doesn’t know who, picked up Samanta Leal, and a few seconds later both girls were on the bed in the master bedroom, one beside the other like two pens on a sheet of drawing paper, perfectly unconscious and motionless. A woman whose name Mallarino didn’t remember brought a wet cloth from the kitchen; she put it on the girls’ foreheads, alternately, and on Beatriz’s and Samanta’s pale skin, on their foreheads, emptied of colour, was a fleeting patch, red and damp. Mallarino, meanwhile, had called a paediatrician, and moments later he was striding into the room and sitting down on the bed with efficient movements and putting down on the bedside table, or rather on top of his notebook, transforming it into a coaster, a glass of water with sugar and a teaspoon that glistened when he turned on the reading lamp. ‘A little bit every twenty minutes and everything will be fine,’ he said. ‘A little spoonful, just one, and everything will be fine.’

  ‘We got drunk?’ said Samanta Leal. ‘I got drunk?’

  ‘You two drank all the dregs in the house,’ said Mallarino. ‘And it wasn’t funny either. You could have put yourselves in a coma.’

  ‘I don’t remember at all. I don’t remember your daughter. Were we very good friends?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. Beatriz changed best friends every week. That�
��s what it’s like when you’re seven, I guess.’

  ‘I guess,’ said Samanta Leal. ‘And who looked after us, you?’

  ‘Every twenty minutes I looked in on you,’ said Mallarino, ‘and gave you each a teaspoonful of sugar water. That’s what the doctor had told me to do. You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to get you to swallow it.’

  ‘I don’t remember, I don’t remember at all.’

  ‘Of course not. You were both out of it, Samanta, completely out. At one point I even put a mirror under your nostrils, to make sure you hadn’t died on me. A father’s paranoia.’

  ‘Nobody dies of that.’

  ‘No, of course not, but what did I know. Or rather, a father imagines anything, that anything might be possible. And you looked like you’d fainted.’

  ‘Well, we must have.’

  ‘We couldn’t hear you breathing. You didn’t even snore the way drunks do. You didn’t move either. It was as if you were sedated. I put a blanket over you both, one of those blankets people used to steal from aeroplanes, and the blanket didn’t even move: each time I came back it was exactly as I’d left it, I think I could have painted the folds and they would have stayed exactly the same for as long as it took. As I said, you were both out cold. Naturally.’

  ‘Naturally?’

  ‘I mean, that much booze in a seven-year-old body, and not just any drinks, but aguardiente and rum. You might as well have just been gulping down a coma. No, but we really were very worried. And you don’t remember a thing.’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘I see that.’

  ‘Not a thing,’ said Samanta.

  ‘Not about what happened afterwards either?’ Silence. ‘The scandal, all that? You don’t remember that either?’ Silence. ‘I see,’ said Mallarino. ‘So that’s what this . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ said Samanta. ‘It’s about that.’

  ‘I see.’ Silence. ‘But you must remember something.’

  Samanta closed her eyes. ‘I remember my dad lifting me up,’ she said. ‘Or maybe not, maybe I only think I remember my dad lifting me up, because I remember my dad putting me in the car, in the back seat of the car. And if he carried me to the car, he must have had to lift me up, right? My dad carried me to the car, didn’t he?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘I don’t remember too clearly,’ said Mallarino. ‘You have to understand, I was very upset. Everybody was very upset at that moment.’

  ‘Because of the drinks,’ said Samanta. It wasn’t a question; it wasn’t even an affirmation. It was something else.

  ‘No, no,’ said Mallarino. ‘You know that’s not why. The upset over the drinks had passed by then, you two were sleeping and taken care of, I was going in every twenty minutes with my spoonful of sugar water. That was under control.’

  ‘So then?’

  ‘You know,’ said Mallarino.

  ‘No,’ said Samanta, ‘that’s just it. I don’t know.’ Silence. ‘And what I want is to know. I want you to tell me.’ Silence. ‘Let’s see, let’s see. You were taking care of us.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You came by with spoonfuls of sugar water.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Every twenty minutes.’

  ‘Yes. That’s what the doctor ordered.’

  ‘And between one spoonful and the next?’

  ‘I went to see to my guests, of course. I was still the host.’

  ‘They were all still there?’

  ‘Most of them, at least. I don’t remember anyone having left.’

  ‘Were they all there when my father arrived?’

  ‘I think so. As I said, most of them. I had just given you two a spoonful, but I don’t remember if it was the third or fourth. There was a fire lit in the fireplace, I remember that, and I had to keep it burning. I went out to the garden, brought in wood, looked for old newspapers to burn, and the fire kept burning. People had taken over the bar, I mean they knew where to find booze and were helping themselves. But now and then someone asked me for something: ice, a fresh glass, soda, cigarettes. I remember that, the smell of cigarette smoke. Or I think I remember that, but maybe it’s just because I had stopped smoking. Anyway, what I can tell you is that I didn’t sit down for a second. Between the fireplace, the things people asked me for and friends who put their arms over my shoulders to sing a ranchera, I didn’t sit down for a second. I don’t even remember having answered the door when your father arrived. Introducing him, yes: I remember introducing him, making him come into the living room where everybody was and introducing him, look, Samanta’s dad, yes, Samanta, Beatriz’s little friend. And everybody stiffening, obviously: he had to be told something, but nobody wanted to be the one to tell him. That’s when I realized I’d screwed up. I should have explained the whole thing as soon as I opened the door. But I don’t know if I answered the door, Samanta, maybe the door was open and he just walked in. That changes everything, don’t you think? When you answer the door to a stranger, it’s easier for something to occur to you, to explain something important to someone you don’t know. But if the stranger finds himself suddenly inside, you might forget, no? Some tiny distraction, any little thing . . . It doesn’t matter, it’s not an excuse. I should have explained everything as soon as I shook his hand. But I didn’t, and it was a mistake.’

  ‘Why was it a mistake?’

  ‘Because it put him on the defensive. Don’t take this the wrong way, Samanta, but as soon as I saw him I realized that your dad wasn’t the most assured guy in the world. Or isn’t. He’s still alive, I imagine.’

  ‘I was fifteen when he left. I know at first he was living in Brazil, then I haven’t heard anything since. What do you mean by assured?’

  ‘I mean you could see a sort of bashfulness from a mile away, I don’t know how to explain it, something that made him pull back. You could see that he would rather not have come to pick you up, that he would have preferred it if your mother had come. I introduced him to everybody in the living room and it seemed hard for him to shake hands, and it was very strange, a guy that size so reticent. He’s a big guy, your dad, a well-built guy, and there in the living room, with all of us, he seemed sort of shrunken. Your dad seemed like one of those big guys who would rather not draw attention to themselves when they arrive, and seem to have their heads ducked down between their shoulders, as if they were bending down to go through a low door. Although maybe it’s always like that, you know? Maybe that’s always the way it is with someone who just arrives at a party where everybody’s had a bit to drink. You look small even if you’re six feet tall and have swimmer’s shoulders, or at least that’s how I remember your dad. I also remember long sideburns and a strong jawline, I may be mistaken. You have a strong jawline, Samanta, but not like your dad’s. In any case, I had finished taking him round, introducing him to all those people who were staring at him, and then I explained what had happened. The look on his face changed, of course. Where was Samanta, he began asking me, where was his daughter. “She’s upstairs, in my room,” I told him. “She’s fine, don’t worry, she’s asleep and she’s fine, both of them are fine, my daughter too.” That was to remind him that there were two little girls with the same problem, not just one, and if I was here, relatively calm, he could be here too, relatively calm. “And where are the stairs?” he asked me. I pointed towards the hallway, just as I pointed it out to you a few hours ago, and said, “Give me a second, I’ll come with you.” But he didn’t give me a second. I don’t remember him running, or even walking quickly, as one does in an emergency. No, no: he simply turned on his heel, without saying anything to me, a little offended, I think, or indignant, and went towards the staircase without another word. He didn’t have to say anything for me to know what he was thinking. What kind of place is this, that’s what he was thinking, how did my daughter end up here. There are people who don’t know how to deal with the unexpected, and your dad was like that, you could see that too
from a mile away. He walked towards the stairs and I saw him go through the doorway, there, on the left, just as we did before. And then I didn’t see him any more. I didn’t follow him, Samanta, and now I’m very sorry that I didn’t. But it bothered me, what can I say: his impoliteness, his rough edges bothered me. I thought: OK then, to hell with him, he’s on his own. Let him go upstairs, look around, try the wrong door, let him find her, see that everything’s fine, throw her over his shoulder and get out of here. To hell with him. That’s what I thought. And then the shouting started.’

  ‘Coming from upstairs.’

  ‘It began upstairs,’ said Mallarino, ‘and then came down the staircase, rolling down the stairs like a ball, no, like a stone, like one of those landslides you get on mountain roads. One time, when Beatriz was a baby, I ran into a landslide near La Nariz del Diablo. Have you seen the Devil’s Nose, Samanta? It’s on the way to the tropical lowlands, a huge piece of rock, truly gigantic, that juts out of the mountain and hangs over the road like a bridge. People say that the devil stands there, on top of that stone nose, to make cars crash. The drivers get scared or distracted and lose control and drive over the edge of the cliff, which is extremely high at that point, a cut through the mountain and a fall into the abyss. Down there at the bottom of the ravine are the cars of the victims, and if they don’t die when they hit the bottom they die for lack of help, because no one can get down that far, and if they shout, no one can hear them . . . My wife and I were going to spend Easter week in Melgar, I think it was. Beatriz’s first holiday. She was in the back, or rather they were both in the back, Magdalena with Beatriz in her arms. And we ran into the landslide. They’d closed the road a little way before the Nariz and the traffic was stopped and we saw the Nariz, and Magdalena started talking about the devil. “What if we see him?” she said. “What if we see the devil standing right there?” We didn’t see him, Samanta, we didn’t see the devil, but we heard a noise and then everything started to tremble, the car began to tremble and the landslide came down the mountain. A stampede of big rocks that seemed to be heading straight for us, to have us in their sights, and for four or five seconds one thinks well, that’s it, here and no further, because if one of those rocks landed on top of us, no car’s bodywork would hold up. It all passed twenty metres ahead of us, but just thinking that Magdalena and Beatriz were back there . . . Anyway, a landslide is a shocking spectacle that would frighten anybody. So, like that landslide, the shouts came crashing down from upstairs. It still strikes me as incredible that neither of you woke up.’