Who Among Us (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Mario Benedetti

  And so gradually I grew used to doing without them, and the effort it now costs me to reconstruct that earlier world shows that the past had also been stripped of its images, that I learned to do without my own memory of it.

  XVII

  In all that time, I had only one conversation with Lucas. This was three years after Alicia had departed. One Saturday evening I was in a café when Lucas appeared with seven or eight friends. They all sat together round a circular table.

  Lucas had already begun to publish his stories and was enjoying a mysterious prestige that went far beyond what to me they seemed worth. I’ve never been able to explain the credulous respect with which, even back then, his name was mentioned. To that gang of opportunists and lazy good-for-nothings who wrote sonnets and critical essays not out of any special vocation but because of how short those genres were, somebody like Lucas, who had the nerve to write stories fifteen or twenty pages long, was seen as tremendously serious, worthy of the greatest consideration, even before there was any discussion of whether what he wrote was good, mediocre or abominable. I’m convinced that his growing reputation has always been based on the bold way he wrote at length, not even aided, as in other cases, by any great verbal dexterity. In group conversations, however heated his friends became, Lucas would usually say nothing. His pointed, exalted silence could signify anything from praise to criticism, as the optimists believed, or an overwhelming sense of boredom, as I thought, and perhaps so did he.

  That evening, Lucas emerged from this stultifying circle and came over to my table. Doubtless at that moment I was a means of escape, an anomalous presence in the life he was by then leading. That was why he sat opposite me with an imperceptible gesture of connivance, as if inviting me to free him from his hangers-on.

  I never imagined Lucas could talk with me for such a long time, still less that he would feel able to speak about Alicia in such a confidential manner.

  He didn’t ask any questions, but simply stated: ‘You must understand that my friendship with Alicia was a kind of revelation to me. What’s strangest is that what was revealed wasn’t her, but me.’ This came as no surprise. It always seemed to me that Lucas was one of those people who can’t give themselves away; someone who sees and listens to everything, who touches and smells things in an entirely self-absorbed way. Well, I’m no good at giving myself, either. But that’s completely different.

  ‘Alicia helped me to get to know myself, to see how far I could go. I usually keep quiet; maybe you’ve wondered why. The truth is, I’ve nothing to say. Nothing I hear stirs me, nothing compels me to interject. Right now I’m talking to you, and I’m doing so because that’s what I’ve chosen to do, because I’m pleased to have found someone who knows Alicia. But I’m not doing this for your sake, or for the discussion we might have, because I know only too well what you can tell me, how much of yourself you have to give, and frankly it doesn’t interest me.’

  There was no need for him to say that. I’ve always been aware I’m of no particular interest to anyone. And yet what he said was one of the cruellest things I’ve ever heard. He didn’t offend me. Neither Lucas nor Alicia could ever offend me. But I admit that this phrase of his brought about a renewal of my indifference, my passive, apathetic attitude. I’m convinced that if Lucas said it so brutally it was because of his lack of practice at instigating conversation, because he was unfamiliar with certain tricks or ruses that clever conversationalists employ to say the most insulting things with the greatest show of politeness. That’s to say, it wasn’t the words in themselves that hurt me, but the truth they contained. Usually we lie and flatter one another so brazenly that any truth always wounds us deeply: it forces us out of the time and atmosphere in which we are vegetating so comfortably.

  ‘With Alicia, though, the opposite happened. And the opposite was unusual for me. She, whatever she says, has always provoked me. I’ve never felt my intelligence so stretched, so vibrant as when her insights demanded an urgent retort. That’s the only stimulus anyone could ever need.’

  I remember asking if that meant he loved her. ‘I’ve often wondered about that,’ he said. I could never say anything new to him. Perhaps I would never interest anyone. ‘And to be frank, I don’t know. There are two things I’m certain of: she interests me and I need her. I’m not sure how important anything else is.’

  XVIII

  Although Alicia returned in June 1939, I didn’t hear about it until the end of that year. I later found out that during those six months she had regularly gone out with Lucas, that they had often been to concerts together, and that she went with him to his folk club. None of this surprised me. I always prided myself on being the first to realize that Lucas and Alicia were cut from the same cloth. Even now, in such different circumstances, I still think the same. They, meanwhile, have persisted in not seeing this, refusing to admit their mutual attraction.

  I have to admit this period gave rise to the unexpected origin of my life’s greatest failing, my most abject surrender. All I can say in my defence is that I was absolutely convinced that the friendship between Lucas and Alicia was increasingly intimate, and that they already formed a virtual union. I occasionally heard talk – from friends of theirs rather than of mine – of this relationship that so intrigued everyone. Nobody knew if they were engaged, or lovers, or just friends. They considered themselves to be the latter, and I am now convinced, I know intuitively, that although they never went beyond the hazy boundaries of friendship, in their daily dealings with one another they allowed themselves the gestures, secrets and affection which, to a certain extent, justified the quiet suspicions of those invaluable neutral observers. That now and again they flirted with the prudish assumptions of their onlookers. I wasn’t one of those people, and didn’t believe theirs was an improper union. I thought instead that they were both edging slowly towards marriage, and for once that institution seemed to me adequate, theirs a stable match.

  In February I had exams and went regularly to the Botanical Garden, where I spent two or three hours studying, enjoying a temporary solitude. I often promised myself that once I had sat the exam I would go back there, to enjoy the place without constraints, just letting things happen, for the plants to surround me like a contemplative wall.

  I still believe this would have been a quite modest simulacrum of unspectacular happiness, but in the end I never even came close. That’s why it still seems to me so vivid now, why I can still see how meaningful it was back then, because it’s never been destroyed by me achieving it. The only happiness is not only the one that isn’t achieved, but the sort that never could have been.

  Be that as it may, it was in the Botanical Garden that I met Alicia again. If she hadn’t called my name, I don’t think I would have recognized her. We had stopped seeing each other in the midst of one of those periods of great emotion and changes of mind, when several directions in our lives seem probable. The girl I remembered was an enthusiast, a hesitant but joyful conspirator. The Alicia I was now meeting was a strong, adult woman whose composure (and this was the extraordinary thing) had not been born of suffering. She had made herself strong, as if her close study of other people’s wretchedness had been sufficient to help build her own defences. And these were strangely appropriate: they had that rare consistency usually discovered only through pain.

  The odd thing about our triangle was that whenever two of us were together, we inevitably talked about the third person. I can’t even suggest they didn’t talk of me when I was the absent one. In fact, I’m sure I was the central topic of their conversations. So sure that I attribute a great deal of the change (from then on) in my relationship with Alicia almost exclusively to how much she and Lucas must have said about me. Probably Lucas sang my praises (I also praised him whenever I talked with Alicia; the absent person was always the star), and no doubt as a result Alicia became convinced I was the best of the three – and consequently the better of the two, Lucas and me, which in the end was the choice that mattered.


  Obviously we talked about Lucas, but everything happened so quickly he didn’t have time to become the best of the three. My initial praise of Lucas was not enough to counter the many flattering comments about me that Lucas and she must have exchanged during their six months of meeting one another. So that when I asked: ‘And when are you getting married?’ thinking of her and Lucas, and Alicia replied: ‘Whenever you like,’ referring to her and me, the mere possibility that she wasn’t joking, that everything depended on me alone – that mere possibility was enough to bewilder me, to undermine my reasoning, make me forget my displays of sincerity, my long-held policy of remaining indifferent towards life. For a fleeting moment I had the sense of holding that power in my hands, that the decision was down to me. And that’s how I spoke and behaved, as if I were master of Alicia and the situation. And yet my power didn’t belong to me; nor did the decision, and nor did Alicia. I wasn’t even the master of myself.

  Lucas left Montevideo three months before my wedding to Alicia. The last time we saw him, he told us he’d found a job in Buenos Aires and was leaving at the end of the month, was suspending his studies for the time being, but reckoned on returning in the middle of the following year. He left that same night, and since then I’ve never heard word of his return.

  XIX

  A moment ago I decided to write about Martin’s homecoming, and then that of our little girl. His eyes red from an evening of cowboys, Martin gave me a sleepy kiss and went straight to bed. Adelita, on the other hand, sat down very primly opposite me and asked what I was writing. I think Adelita is the only person in the world who sometimes understands me, even if she will no longer do so the day she loses her problematic innocence and starts to believe in her own originality. That’s the crucial point at which we all turn into idiots. ‘I’m writing to your mother,’ I told her. That wasn’t a complete lie. My daughter’s face has the tenderness of a little animal, a tenderness that’s never calculated but occurs as spontaneously as tears or a runny nose. She knows what she wants and always says so. But she isn’t very persistent. By that I mean she doesn’t have the strength to remain optimistic over any length of time. She simply shows her disappointment with a very moving pout, the only habitual display of sadness I find unbearable. ‘Tell her Grandma was saying nice things about her.’ In fact, this was much nicer than if she had made the classic envoi, ‘sends her love’, because the fact is that Grandma never has any words of praise for Alicia.

  Martin never disconcerts me in that way. He’s not very intelligent or sensitive, and will sail through life: he’ll exist without having any inkling of his own insignificance, and this is a variant (maybe the only possible one) of happiness. Adelita, on the other hand, will always be aware of her limitations. I’m certain of finding in her ever closer resonances of my own way of being. The worst of it is that I’m pleased at the prospect of our resigned, gloomy communion. ‘Well, see you in the morning,’ she said, and left without giving me a kiss. Oh, comrade!

  XX

  In reality, there’s no story to our marriage. Three or four key events, three or four foundational memories that lend meaning to this crisis, this Sunday. Nothing more.

  Two nights before our first anniversary, I was stretched out on the bed when Alicia walked into the room. I called to her, and she seemed surprised, but came over and sat beside me. She was in the sixth month of her first pregnancy, although the strain on her face and body weren’t yet very obvious. I said something affectionate about her pregnancy or the child, or about her. She smiled without much conviction, as though she found it hard to tolerate my interest and affability. All of a sudden I was overcome by the sensation that my tenderness was forced, and that deep down I couldn’t care less about her or her condition. I decided to go the whole hog: I decided to give way – for that instant at least – to what my body, my feelings or possibly only my nerves were spontaneously pushing me towards, that is, not to impose any intellectual corrective, any urgent reasoning onto that moment. We stayed there in silence, me lying back, staring up at the damp patches on the ceiling, and Alicia propped up on the pillows on her side of the bed. I wasn’t looking at her, and yet I was aware she was no longer smiling, that she was studying me as if I were a photograph in an album, the way we look at a face that was once important but no longer is, or simply has disappeared from our life but is still a useful reminder of some tiresome lesson that no longer applies. The fact that she didn’t move wasn’t aggressive, it simply meant she had suddenly come to a worthless, belated lucidity. There was no reason to retreat into worrying about it, because everything had become clear. I didn’t move: not my head or my arm or a single finger. No part of my body was yearning to get closer to that woman, even though she was well on the way to assuming the rather corny yet moving dignity of becoming the mother of my children. I was on the point of telling her as much, about to indulge in a faint-hearted cruelty, but I realized that wouldn’t have been any better. Then the circle closed and I returned to my cowardice, the cowardice of friendly words, affectionate gestures, the role of a proper husband. But by the time I started to run my fingers through her hair, and she once more adopted her unconvinced smile as an uneasy, problematic means of defence, I had again discovered that my tenderness was fake, forged again and again on the hollow prospect of a love that couldn’t be meant for me, and which anyway I never did receive.

  XXI

  The second essential memory arose when Adelita came down with typhoid fever just after she turned five. I admit that then I came close to despair, and I drank more than I should have. It’s true that on the night when it seemed as if her exhausted little body couldn’t resist any longer, I broke my usual rules and talked and talked, mostly meaninglessly; I groaned and cursed everyone and everything. Alicia, who had spent practically the whole week without leaving her bedroom, had the strength to drag me away to the old sofa in the guest room and began to talk to me in a choking voice I didn’t recognize. She didn’t talk about our daughter or me, or even herself. She said the simplest things about destiny, death, despair. At any other moment, even now maybe, all those commonplaces would simply have irritated me. But on that occasion nothing better could have happened.

  ‘To anyone who doesn’t have religion there is nothing particularly frightening about hopelessness. Just think, the whole of life is hopeless, the whole of life is despair.’ The house was silent: as on any other night, good or bad, the only noises to be heard were trams in the distance, the pharmacy’s buzzing neon sign. Really, nothing had changed. Adelita on her deathbed and my despair were simply the confirmation that the world is a blind alley, a trap with no escape, a tremendous, brutal chaos. ‘The only consolation is to enter into the chaos, to become chaotic as well,’ Alicia was saying, and I raised my eyes. It was only at that moment that I recognized my own words. She was repeating things I always said. It was only then I understood how often I must have wearied her with my uninspired, sterile axioms. She was wreaking her revenge as she consoled me, as, of course, she was perfectly entitled to do.

  XXII

  My suicide is at the heart of my third fundamental memory. I never considered this means of escape to be contemptible. I never thought it either cowardly or reckless. Suicide was something inevitable, not a solution that one sought out, but rather an act forced by circumstance, or simply by an overwhelming disgust for life. Obviously this disgust didn’t sweep over me like a storm, it crept up slowly, accentuating the discomfort I had always felt with regard to myself. In fact, it wasn’t so much disgust as boredom.

  When there is faith, or when there is doubt, tedium arrives like sleep: at the moment when our will relaxes its grip. But when faith and doubt reveal themselves in their simple but profound relation they soon give way to astonishment at the absurdity of existence, at God’s marvellous indifference, and calm is restored for ever, and this endless calm is tedium.

  In reality I wasn’t so sure I hadn’t sought out the solution, but even so I wanted to believe it
– I wanted to believe that death had opened up before me as the only door in a suffocating chamber. To exist no longer: that was the be-all and end-all of hope.

  This was four years ago. The children were circling round me like witnesses. Adelita seemed to be interrogating me with her troubled, urgent eyes. Even Martin, who was still very young, was uneasy. One evening he came running over to me and grabbed my hand so tightly I couldn’t get him to let go. To no longer exist. Alicia was indifferent, distant, and I thought: ‘If she hasn’t realized, I can’t really be at the end of my tether, because out of everyone, she’s the closest to me and should be the first to sense it.’ And yet I suddenly found myself making the preparations, the clumsy, unavoidable preparations, that consist in choosing cyanide over a revolver, Monday rather than Friday. These preparations made me feel more ridiculous than ever, as if even my death were condemned to be corny and mediocre.

  I succeeded in convincing myself that I wouldn’t carry on beyond Monday, but at siesta time on Saturday the crisis hit me. First I caught myself trying to work out why I had settled on Monday and not any other day. For a long half-hour nothing became clear to me; after all, it was amusing in such circumstances to investigate what lay behind my preferences. But soon I began to have my doubts, and in the end I came to a conclusion as obvious as it was revealing: I’d chosen Monday so that on Sunday I could go to the football match. The only noteworthy thing about this was that it showed an obscure wish to survive. But I decided to test myself in another way. I attempted to fix as clearly as I could the image of that particular room (the bed, wardrobe, chairs, chest of drawers, paintings) without any trace of my body stretched out on the bed. Then I extended this to try to imagine what the world would be like without me, what other people’s lives would look like in my absence, what nothingness, my nothingness, would resemble. I felt my stomach clench and had to fling myself over to one side. I must have passed out for several minutes. I remember that when I opened my eyes, the floor was only a few inches from my head. And just as horribly close: my shoes, socks and a pool of vomit.