And then, one November morning, Mallarino was woken by the telephone ringing. ‘They’ve asked for his resignation,’ said Rodrigo Valencia from the other end of the line. ‘Nobody’s talking about it as a punishment, because there’s nothing to punish. But my spies have very clear opinions. You don’t have to be too savvy to realize.’
It was still very early: Mallarino cradled the receiver between his shoulder and head while his hands, tingling with sleep, felt around for his cigarettes and lighter in the methodical messiness of his bedside table. ‘Realize what?’ said Mallarino.
‘Well, Javier, you know,’ said Valencia. ‘Or rather, the less said the better. Watch the news tonight, I’m sure there’ll be something.’
And there was: that night Mallarino turned on the television a couple of minutes before seven, and listened with half an ear to the end of an episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show while filing away the press clippings he hadn’t used that week. He had time to go outside and find the dogs’ plastic dishes, serve them a scoop of dog food, come back up and wash his hands before the newscast began. The first commercial break suggested that on a salary of fifteen thousand pesos he could be a banker, asked him to drink a grape-flavoured soda pop (only because a roller-skating girl was carrying one) and ordered him urgently to buy the book The World Challenge. After all that, the presenter’s talking moustache announced the news.
The images, it seems, had been filmed that very morning. There was Cuéllar, his head on a bed of microphones like the head of John the Baptist on Salomé’s platter, announcing his temporary retirement from the Congress of the Republic on the very steps of the Capitolio Nacional. ‘No, gentlemen, it is not a matter of trying to hush anything up,’ he said: replying to a question that hadn’t been broadcast. That’s how the news item began, with that irritated stress the voice makes in denial. ‘No, not at all. The reasons are personal. I’m going to take a little break, this job wears a man down, you know what I mean? My family needs me, and the family is the top priority, isn’t it? At least I’ve always said so.’ Mallarino saw the image from the edge of his bed; he tried to capture, in his sketchbook with black covers, two or three details: the nose enlarged by the cameras, the gleam of the flashes reflecting off the slicked-over hair, the high collar of his checked shirt that added a fold and a shadow under the chin. Something caught the attention: some movement, a face he knew? Mallarino leaned forward; he saw a woman keeping a restrained silence behind the swarm of journalists; despite a background shot on television not being the same as a foregrounded newspaper portrait, he recognized Cuéllar’s wife, the laboriously curled black hair, the sky-blue eye shadow, a sepia-toned silk scarf wrapped around her long neck. He didn’t know what to make of that presence, for the woman’s face was half-hidden and her expression was inscrutable, and he went back to focusing on the congressman. It was true that he looked tired: the weariness, at least, was not feigned. He could see it in his eyes, thought Mallarino, those eyes that seemed irritated by the lights, and he could also hear it in his voice: it was no longer that indiscreet and repugnant voice that had asked him for clemency that afternoon and later forgiveness, but it still had something in common with it. What was it?The image of Cuéllar – his practised indifference or confidence on the stone steps of the Capitolio – lasted a very short time, a few brief seconds, and was cut when, after the last of his indifferent and confident answers, the reporters rose up in an incomprehensible salvo of questions. The newscast went on to announce the dismantling of a conspiracy to overthrow the government in Spain, but Mallarino went on thinking about the head that was speaking among microphones and comparing it to the head that had spoken to him, drooping and humble, the afternoon of the party, and suddenly he was also thinking about the head of the woman who was observing the whole scene from behind, and then went back to thinking about the man at the party and the man on television. And then he knew, both were humiliated men. It was true that now, on television, the humiliation had been more obvious and notorious, but was actually nothing more than the exacerbated or extreme version of the previous humiliation, or rather the previous one had been the seed, and the current one, broadcast on national television at peak viewing hour, its full flowering. And now he focused on the wife again: the humiliation, all humiliation, needs a witness. It doesn’t exist without it: nobody is humiliated alone: humiliation in solitude is not humiliation. Was Cuéllar’s wife the witness at this moment? Or were the journalists? Were the real reasons he was leaving his post known or not? Did they or did they not have Mallarino’s drawing in mind? Did he, Adolfo Cuéllar? What bothered people who were caricatured most, as Mallarino had discovered over the years, was not seeing themselves with their defects, but everyone else seeing them: like when a secret comes to light, as if their bones were a well-guarded secret and Mallarino had revealed them all of a sudden. Did that happen to Cuéllar? His wife was looking at him, the journalists were looking at him, Mallarino was looking at him, millions of people all over the country were looking at him . . . Cuéllar had become a visible being, too visible; Mallarino imagined himself observing the city from on high and at the same time he imagined the satisfaction the little people must feel, the men and women who were too small and insignificant to be seen by him and those like him. Perhaps Cuéllar, in these moments, would have preferred to be one of those men nobody sees, an anonymous and hidden creature. Or perhaps he was justly turning into one of them: by giving up his privileged position, going into the shadows to blend in with those who were not privileged, he was also fleeing from future humiliations. Without privileges, Adolfo Cuéllar would be safe from those, like Mallarino, who see the world through the humiliations of others; those who seek out weaknesses in others – bones, cartilages – and pounce to exploit them, the way dogs smell fear. Mallarino turned off the television. As the back of his hand passed in front of the screen, he felt the tickle of static electricity on the hairs of his fingers and on his skin.
‘Poor bastard,’ Mallarino said to the black screen, the chest of drawers, the closed blinds. ‘He should have just stayed home.’
The second Sunday of December, just before the end-of-the-year festivities got under way in the agitated and warm city, Mallarino invited Magdalena to the first bullfight of the season. A young Colombian torero was going to graduate to full standing; his sponsors would be two Spanish bullfighters, and one of them, Antoñete, always put on a good performance at the Santamaría Bullring; Mallarino thought that all this could provide him with the perfect pretext to spend an afternoon with his wife, just the two of them on their own, and discover if the impression he’d had lately was illusory. He’d been feeling it for days now, each time he met with Magdalena to hand over or return Beatriz like clandestine merchandise: it was something impossible to pinpoint, a sigh that seemed involuntary during a goodbye kiss on the cheek, a straightening up when Mallarino, with a hand on her waist, directed her through a door he was holding open. One night, after the birthday celebration of a mutual friend they were obliged to attend together, they’d found themselves furiously desiring each other, and there was a tacit agreement between them to close their eyes and forget about everything, even what was about to happen, like someone placing a bet thinking that tomorrow he’ll see what to do if he loses. It was a drunken fuck, a clumsy, cursing, colliding coupling in the darkness on a sofa with upholstery that left marks on their skin, and it was neither repeated nor even mentioned, except to say that if they weren’t more careful things were going to get very complicated. But now, in the front row of the half-filled shady section, Mallarino thought that maybe it might not be impossible: that time had passed now, and with time, many things. The sunny section was full to bursting, he saw coloured scarves, he saw heads wearing dark glasses, he saw the trees behind the flags and the brick tower blocks behind the trees, and Magdalena was at his side, and Beatriz was waiting for them at her grandparents’ house. He liked, he’d always liked, the imminence of unpredictable danger, the threat that he felt e
ach time the wooden doors spat forth one of those bulls with their four-hundred-and-fifty-kilo charge, and he was glad he was there, with Magdalena, knowing that she too liked some of it: she liked the music, the din of the paso dobles in the imperfect acoustics; she liked the heat of the early afternoon and the coolness of the end. Everything was good, thought Mallarino, and then the Colombian torero flourished a set of veronica passes and finished off the bull with know-how beyond his years. Mallarino was looking at Magdalena, the way the sun reflected from the other side of the ring illuminated her face, when a banderillero was slightly gored and the whole bullring let out a howl and both Magdalena’s hands flew to her mouth, her long fingers to her full lips, and Mallarino saw the liquid shine of her gaze and thought that maybe it might not be impossible, that time had passed, and with time, many things. Antoñete presented the Colombian torero with his sword and other accoutrements. Everyone applauded. The Colombian torero did an amusing bow; when he put his feet together he raised a little cloud of dust. It’s fine to live and to die, thought Mallarino. He was fine, Magdalena was fine, everything was fine.
After the fifth bull, the crowd whistling as it was dragged away, leaving a trail of blood that seemed to coagulate in the sand in front of the audience’s eyes, Mallarino looked up and thought someone was waving at him from a flat on one of the top floors of the Torres del Parque. Someone was moving their arms, but he was far away and his face was a blurry oval, and Mallarino decided he was waving at someone else. As he looked down, however, he saw another pair of arms, waving more exaggeratedly: it was Rodrigo Valencia, who was taking off his cap as if his signals would be more comprehensible if he had it in his hand. Mallarino understood they’d see him afterwards. ‘Oh, look,’ said Magdalena. ‘I wonder what he’s doing here.’ The Valencia family had season tickets to the bullfights every year, as Magdalena knew very well; her sarcasm, however, did not seem to refer to that. What new notes were there in her voice? Something like resentment, but doubtful and lukewarm, lacking conviction, the lilt of a spoiled little girl prowled through the air as if they weren’t in a public place but in the privacy of her room.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Mallarino. ‘Don’t you want us to see Valencia?’
‘He’s going to invite us somewhere. I don’t want to do anything this evening, I wanted . . . I don’t want to do anything.’
‘Well, I’ll say no. I’ll just say no to whatever he proposes. Nothing easier.’
Magdalena shrugged at the same time as the sixth bull burst cheerfully out, stirring up the sand with the drum roll of his hoofs. The Colombian torero was handling his cape well, but Magdalena’s mood had darkened. Her hands busied themselves with the belt of her coat and took refuge in her deep pockets; from behind them came the smell of tobacco, and Mallarino had a sudden urge to smoke as well. Now the whole bullring had started whistling at the picadors: the old man next to them whistled, sprinkling the shoulders in front of him with saliva, and Magdalena whistled at them, and received disapproving looks from a lady with dyed hair. Later, when the Colombian torero missed with his sword and disenchantment flew around the bullring like slander, Magdalena seemed to be with him again, here, regretting the loss of the ears, shouting silly patriotic cheers while a small group of enthusiasts lifted the young man onto their shoulders.
‘How little it takes,’ Mallarino said to her, when they were inching their way out, brushing up against arms and elbows like cows in a corral. ‘To get carried on people’s shoulders, I mean. It’s as if people do it for their own pleasure.’
‘Maybe they do do it for their own pleasure, silly,’ said Magdalena.
They were just about at Seventh Avenue when Mallarino heard some hurried steps behind them and then felt a tapping of fingers on his shoulder, on the shoulder pad of his jacket. ‘And where are you two going?’ said Rodrigo Valencia. ‘Answer: Nowhere. You’re coming with me.’ Tedium clouded Magdalena’s face.
‘Where?’ asked Mallarino. ‘You know post-bullfight chitchat bores me.’
‘We’re not going to recap the corrida, Javier.’
‘Lots of people talking nonsense. Lots of people who don’t go to see but to be seen.’
‘It’s nothing to do with the corrida,’ said Valencia, suddenly serious. ‘I have to tell you something.’
And that’s how Mallarino found out: almost by accident, in an almost private moment, in the company of the woman who was almost his wife. Valencia led him and Magdalena to a restaurant on the ground floor of the Hotel Tequendama, a cold, unpleasant place with lights that were too red from the door of which you could see the grey cement mouth of the tunnel that led down to the underground parking (and this, who knows why, made Mallarino intensely uneasy). At a dark table, beside the window where the name of the restaurant shone in curved neon tubes, a small group of people waited for them: Mallarino recognized two reporters from the judicial section and greeted the rest from afar, unenthusiastically, perhaps because he already knew that enthusiasm was not welcome at this meeting. ‘Tell Mallarino what you told me,’ said Valencia, the words cast out into the air without being addressed to any of them specifically, cast out so the most interested would pick them up. The one most interested was a young woman – too big now to be wearing the braces she had on her teeth – who began to talk about Adolfo Cuéllar as if she’d known him her whole life. She spoke of his marital problems over the last few months, well known to all, and the fact, known only to a few, that he’d recently separated from his wife, or rather his wife had asked him to leave. She spoke of Cuéllar’s health, which was not impeccable, and of the diabetes that was forcing him to have constant check-ups for the next three years. She spoke of Cuéllar’s phone call that morning, demanding an appointment with such insistence that, in spite of it being a holiday and the exceptional circumstances, the doctor had to see him. She also spoke of the routine check-up that took place in the examining room – she spoke of Cuéllar in stockinged feet on the scales, Cuéllar lying down barefoot while the doctor checked his pulse beside his Achilles tendon, Cuéllar without his shirt on taking deep breaths and coughing – and she spoke of the conversation that followed the check-up right there, with the patient sitting on the examining table: shirtless and shoeless. She also spoke of the things that, according to the doctor, Cuéllar had mentioned, several anecdotes concerning his wife and sons and most of all the same recurring complaint: the irreparable loss of his reputation. She spoke of the moment the doctor had left the examining room and sat down behind his desk to find stamps and headed notepaper and write up and sign a prescription for antidepressants, and then she spoke of what the doctor said he heard: the unmistakable sound of a window opening and, seconds later, the screeching of cars braking suddenly and the reactions of pedestrians, which must have been very noisy, because otherwise they would not have reached so high from the pavement of Thirteenth Avenue. And now, after telling all that, the girl with braces looked at her colleagues, and Mallarino understood, in the same magnificent moment, that Valencia had not brought him there just to hear the tale of Adolfo Cuéllar’s suicide, but also to respond to the reporters’ questions, or to one single declaration followed by one single question, in this improvised and almost clandestine press conference. This time too it was the little girl with braces who took charge. ‘Maestro Mallarino,’ she said (and Mallarino saw the alert spiral notebooks and pens erect over them like phalluses), ‘we are all in agreement, as public opinion is as well, that Congressman Cuéllar’s fall from grace began with your caricature. My question, our question, is: do you feel in any way responsible for his death?’
Public opinion, thought Mallarino. Fall from grace. Where did those formulaic phrases come from? Who had invented them? Who had been the first to use them?
‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘No caricature is capable of such a thing.’
On the way back to Beatriz’s grandparents’ house, the silence in the car was dense, rich, concentrated. Bogotá, on a Sunday evening, is a vast, desolate c
ity; if it’s Christmas time and the streets are festooned with lights, there is something melancholy about it, like a party that’s gone wrong. Or that was Mallarino’s impression, not knowing why he felt Magdalena’s gaze weighing on him like a judgement. If at some moment, a thousand years ago, it had been possible that the day might have ended with some sort of reconciliation (and perhaps that was why they’d left Beatriz with her grandparents: to allow them an hour or two extra and the sex that might happen in that time), that possibility seemed distant now, seemed more confused with every green light they passed as they drove north up Seventh Avenue. They had to arrive in front of the building where Magdalena had grown up, they had to turn off the car and stay in the dark, illuminated only by the pale streetlights, for Magdalena to tell him how terrified she was at having seen what she’d seen.
‘What did you see?’ asked Mallarino. ‘I don’t know what you’re referring to.’
‘Of course you do, Javier, of course you know, you know perfectly well,’ she said. ‘You absolutely realized, maybe you realized before I did. It took me a couple of seconds, I confess. I didn’t realize from one moment to the next, no, but gradually. It wasn’t easy, I have to admit that too, it wasn’t easy to realize. But I did realize, Javier, I realized something was not right in the air, there, in that horrible restaurant that seemed full of smoke even though nobody was smoking and I was trying to think for a moment what it might be. Until I knew. It was the look in people’s eyes, the look in the eyes of those reporters and even Rodrigo Valencia: the look of admiration. They were looking at you with admiration. The guy killed himself this morning and they were interviewing you, they had to ask you that question: but they asked it with admiration. Or with astonishment, or awe, choose the word you like best. But that’s what there was in the air, that sort of fear you inspire, yes, a reverential fear. And then came the worst: when I realized that you were proud. You were proud of that question they were asking you, Javier, and who knows, maybe you were proud of something else. Here, while we’re talking, with our daughter asleep a few steps away, you are proud. You’re proud and I can’t understand it. You’re proud and I don’t know who you are any more. I don’t know who you are, but I do know one thing: that I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be with you. I don’t want Beatriz to be with you. I want you far away from her and far from me. I want you far, far, far away.’
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