Who Among Us?

by Mario Benedetti

  ‘Maybe I’d have a better idea if I knew what Andres was thinking.’

  Still she said nothing. Was it because she couldn’t pluck up the courage, or was it the same kind of silence he himself had fallen back on when he had nothing to say?

  Behind its smeary window panel, the snake was moving almost imperceptibly, and at that ghastly sign of life in an otherwise inanimate creature they felt a frisson of disgust.

  ‘I don’t understand why he’s sent you here. It’s as if he thinks I’m an imbecile or a swine.’

  They drifted towards the bars separating them from the pit. The creature beyond it stood motionless, its ancient horn vainly awaiting an impossible spark of light. A little girl with plaits being carried along by a vaguely oblong mother was asking if it was a hippopotamus. The mother said it wasn’t, but didn’t say what it was.

  ‘After all, he is, or was, my friend.’fn6

  Yes, that was the past: the three of them caught up in a kind of mutual misalliance, each of them thinking the other two didn’t align together, and that they were the only one who did with both. And this was the present: him embarking on a search for motives, remorse and scruples, only half willing to take on the burden of another adventure, with the dead weight of his uneasy conscience as a friend; him speculating in the face of this silent new Claudia, as they met up once more with the old man and young woman still being entertained by the discerning monkey with a predilection for green mints.

  III

  When the tall woman with a soft face and elongated hands opened the door, Claudia thought: ‘This is his lover,’ but he kissed her on the cheek like a sister and then introduced them: ‘Claudia, Lucía.’fn1 Lucía smiled: she had a big mouth and prominent cheekbones. Claudia yielded to her absurd, long-held conviction that people with big mouths were faithful, noble, and generous.fn2 (Andres had a small mouth, with fleshy lips: the worst kind.)

  Lucía led them down a long, poorly lit passageway. Opening the second door on the left, she stepped aside to let them enter. It was quite a spacious room, with a wardrobe, two brass beds, a small table and three folding chairs. He waved to everyone, and Lucía said: ‘This is Claudia, a friend of Oscar’s.’ She added at once: ‘And a friend of ours, too, I hope?’ Claudia said, ‘Of course,’ and handed her the hat, handbag and gloves.

  Two men were sitting on one of the beds. One was holding several sheets of paper. An almost pretty but rather common-looking girl with a face like Greer Garson’s was leaning against the shoulder of the one holding the papers. Another thirty-something woman, with straight hair dangling over her left eye, and a youngster about ten years younger than her, wearing a blue jersey and flannel trousers, were propped up together against the far wall.

  Lucía went through the list for Claudia: ‘This is Carlos. He doesn’t work, he lives off his parents. This is Fortunati, an unexceptional poet whom we happen to like very much. This is Asia – to the world at large – although in fact her name is Josefa; she’s convinced us of her beauty, so fortunately we don’t have to talk about it any more. Those two, despite appearances, are only together now by accident: she’s María, but although that’s the name of a virgin, she likes tangos, men and poetry. She’s only made a success of the second of those. He’s Amilcar: as you can see, he’s still just a boy. He specializes in stealing books, translating from English, and motor-car accidents. He drives without a licence and writes without inspiration. As a rule, we don’t like him.’fn3

  The laughter that greeted this sally confused Claudia far more than Lucía’s brief introductions. The one who celebrated most was Asia-Josefa.fn4 When she had more or less calmed down, she came over to Claudia, took hold of her hands and asked Lamas: ‘Where did you find this gorgeous woman?’ He was relaxed, as quiet as he had been all those years earlier, surrounded now by men and women older or stupider than the ones in the past. ‘She’s Andres’s wife,’ he said, speaking not to her but to Lucía. Asia didn’t seem to see this as a snub, but adopted her best clown’s face to say to Claudia: ‘Oh, so this is Andres’s darling wife, but without Andres? Why didn’t you bring him? What’s he like? Do you still get on with him?’ From the far wall, peering out from behind her fringe of hair, María called for her to be quiet, but Asia was already continuing: ‘Or did you come here for a rest? It’d be strange if you got a rest with Oscar. Lucía can tell you that. Or are you really nothing more than a friend?’

  Claudia shook her head, not quite knowing what she was denying.fn5 In reality, this denial came from deep within her, a kind of disgust for an attitude that had been normal eleven years earlier, but which now couldn’t even touch her with a distant glow, with that glimmer of self-pity that accompanies the attitudes of any past. For Oscar to have remained in this world while she was becoming hardened by life with Andres seemed to her such a glaring injustice, such a painful stagnation, like that of someone who, having been highly praised for sucking their thumb during their first year of existence, wanted similar recognition for doing so at thirty.

  ‘That’s enough, Josefa,’ said Oscar, and this time Asia was crushed at the sound of her real name. She moved away from Claudia, apologizing: ‘You’re right, that’s quite enough. Don’t pay me any attention, I’m a bit loca.’

  ‘So, you’re from Montevideo,’ Carlos said, to change the conversation. At this, Fortunati studied her closely for the first time and then said slowly, as though revealing a previously unknown truth: ‘The city that gave France three poets.’

  Oscar finally looked at her with some sympathy. It was plain she wanted to say something, but didn’t know what. She hadn’t yet spoken, but it seemed as if the others only wanted her to listen. ‘Lautréamont, Laforgue and Supervielle,’ Fortunati eruditely clarified.

  ‘So you’re the poet,’ Claudia mustered, feeling terribly awkward. ‘Yes, sweetheart,’ said the one called Carlos, ‘he’s the poet.’ So then Claudia, going against a lifelong policy, heard herself saying: ‘Read us something of yours,’ incredibly also heard herself add with a smile: ‘Please.’

  Fortunati scarcely needed to be asked. He picked up a sheet of paper and said quickly: ‘This is one of my latest poems, entitled: “The Song of the Deputy Assistant”.’fn6

  He closed his eyes for a second, as if to seize the fleeting moment of ecstasy. Then he began to recite, in the choking voice of an unpublished poet:

  Leave me this buzzing summer

  And the blessed absence of a siesta

  It was dreadful, and yet there was something pathetic about that quavery voice that had mentioned Lautréamont and was facing his kindly, abject audience:

  Leave me this pencil

  this notepad

  this typewriter

  this guilt-free two months’ delay

  this message on the tabulator

  Yes, it was dreadful. And yet, it did convey a convincing sense of resignation, an inevitable admission of the entwined impossibilities of writing and of not writing:

  Leave me alone with my pay

  My doubts and my boss

  Leave me

  But don’t leave me

  After ten minutes

  To seven

  Lord

  When this fog of fiction dissolves

  And You remain

  If I do.

  ‘See,’ said Lucía, ‘he knows as well as we do that it’s no good, but we like it. The only lines worth anything are “And You remain / If I do.” The rest is rubbish, simply a pretext for that ending. That’s why we forgive him. Because he says that.’

  Fortunati looked pleased, as if Lucía had praised him to the skies. But he glanced at Claudia, who was still rather confused and had murmured, ‘Very good,’ or some other meaningless congratulation with cool disdain.

  She realized with a pang that she was beginning to feel lonely. Inevitably, her thoughts drifted back to Andres, the children, her home. This was the critical moment of nostalgia. Of course, she would feel better in her own living room, knitting or listening to t
he radio, with nothing more to worry about than the next day’s dinner menu or the floor polisher or repairing the soles on her daughter’s shoes. She was uncomfortable in this adventure she had forced upon herself. And yet feeling nostalgia wasn’t that hard to suppress. It was enough to imagine herself listening to Andres’s carefully measured comments about himself, or just about anything else, for all this to seem fresh to her (these no-hopers, so listless, ill-fated and so mannered) to appear spontaneous (the limp verses, that caustic Lucía, the languid vampire in the background).

  They carried on talking, with shrill laughter, baring their teeth. It was obvious they held no surprises for each other. They knew by everyone’s failings, their weaknesses. They were bored stiff with their own ironies, with putting up with one another, each other’s company.

  ‘So, what did you come here for?’ said María, and she was throwing her out.

  ‘We’ve got to go,’ said Lamas, and he was throwing her out.

  ‘You must bring her round again,’ said Lucía, and she was throwing her out.

  And long before all those tobacco-stained hands touched hers, Claudia was already imagining herself out in the street, regaining her freedom.

  IV

  Everything was going according to plan. He couldn’t believe this was the room he had always had. Maybe because never before had he crossed the city to arrive home in mid-afternoon.fn1 Suddenly it was a different room, with more light, no cockroaches or cobwebs, with Claudia’s almost familiar perfume and the past tamed at last, finally understood now, or perhaps never to be understood.fn2

  It was all too obvious that his behaviour came from a fierce sense of triumph. It had been years since he had laughed out loud, or felt so optimistic and restless, with this extraordinary energy that seemed alien to him.

  ‘Oscar,’ the woman said. She was half-lying across the bed, as if preparing for what was to come. ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Who? Lucía?’ asked Oscar. Claudia was wearing a tight-fitting grey dress. ‘You can’t imagine what a good sort she is.’ A shaft of sunlight fell diagonally across her back.

  ‘I know she’s a good person. But what’s she like with you?’ She was looking at him seriously, in a more mature, guarded way than eleven years earlier. ‘Does she make you happy?’

  ‘Is that so important?’ he said, recalling the underlying sadness in Lucía’s friendly tone and extravagant behaviour.fn3

  Claudia stretched out until she could reach the left-hand bedside table. Now the shaft of sunlight lay across her waist. Lamas felt weak, perturbed when he realized he desired her again. She had hold of the shoebox containing the photos, and a lock of hair fell down over her forehead in a way that in someone else might have looked obscene. But she was still a young girl, waving her legs in the air just as she used to when they were revising critical theory on the grass. Now, though, the grass was a patchwork bedcover, and her legs showed varicose veins and stubborn blotches at her heels.fn4

  ‘Is this you?’ she asked. It was an old sepia photo of a well-scrubbed five-year-old boy, with no shoes on. It was obvious that the newspapers under his arm, the cap and the cigarette in his mouth were not his: they had been added as props.

  ‘That was the first time I went barefoot in public.’ She stared at the two small feet that were arched as high as possible to avoid contact with the paving stones. It was only then she realized this was a confession, that he was offering her a casual revelation of his past. She tried to fix in her memory the immense, frustrated, hope evident in that photo from a far-distant past. She tried to work out what still survived of that little boy in this man with eyes that had turned grey, a man no longer so young, who for a while now had been desiring her body and yet was constantly pulling himself back. She was aware that she had regarded this as an insult, as if she could blame him for his withdrawal. Yet she knew that for her it was no great achievement to have succumbed to this fleeting moment of nostalgia.fn5

  Lamas had grown tired of his own inability to make up his mind. ‘I’m asking you one last time,’ he said, his voice suggesting he was still rehearsing what he was about to say: ‘In Andres’s mind, what role do I play?’

  She put the photo back where she had found it, and slowly shrugged her shoulders, shrinking into herself. Her mouth remained stiff and old-looking, but her eyes showed they were certain the moment was fast approaching.

  ‘You’re a kind of picture above the bed. When he embraces me, when we make love, he knows you’re there like a guardian angel.’

  ‘I think I worked that out eventually. What I don’t understand is why he sent you here.’

  ‘Maybe to test me. To free himself of you, to free himself of me.’

  ‘How sordid.’

  ‘Who knows? For a long while I’ve wondered what kind of person Andres might be. I’d prefer him to be crazy, one of those who are so cruel they just obliterate you. At least then I’d be able to recognize him, see him for what he is and what I am. But I find the way he is unbearable, with his snooping intelligence, his self-pity and his occasionally revolting behaviour, that imperturbable other woman of his, his private diary.fn6 I’ve held it in my hands, but haven’t opened it, because that would have been to admit my defeat. I’m sure he wants me to read it, even though he could never say so; that he’s writing for me, even if he claims that he’s doing his best to be sincere. Yes, at first sight it’s squalid. But you never know.’

  A man and a woman isolated in a room, half intoxicated by their growing desire for one another, necessarily need to harden and move beyond tenderness. The past became less and less meaningful, their expectant bodies increasingly important.

  When she reached into her handbag and produced the sheet of paper, Lamas recognized the hooked, sloping handwriting.

  ‘At any rate, if something is sordid, it’s this,’ she said. She unfolded the letter with pitiless distaste, as if she wanted nothing to do with it. ‘Just look at this.’

  He could no longer maintain his air of confidence. He lit a cigarette to have something to blame for the stomach ache he was sure was about to hit him. Good God, don’t let her read it, he thought with a rush of despair.

  But she began: ‘My beloved old lady. Another night alone. Maybe you don’t mind. I hope you don’t, because then you’ll be enjoying yourself to the full. But it’s terrible being here, without your steadfast goodness.’fn7 And yet there was no goodness in the way she read.fn8 She was hard, and there was a base loathing as she read out his saccharine lament. ‘Sometimes I am unbearable, I know. But how good it is to ask you for forgiveness and never to leave me. Today I opened the wardrobe door and buried my head among your clothes. I caught a trace of your smell.’

  Lamas looked away, but his eyes met the mirror, and in it he saw her body sag, as if vanquished by all this hysterical hypocrisy. ‘Last night I hugged my pillow. I know that’s ridiculous, but it’s terrible, also, to reach out with my hand and not find you there. Of course, the children are here, and yet I don’t know why, but for now they’re not uppermost in my mind. All I want is for you to come back and never leave me. I have a desperate longing to caress and understand every inch of your skin, although I’m afraid no part of you has ever really belonged to me. Is that true?’

  Suddenly Claudia reacted and crumpled the sheet of paper. Then she drew up her legs and fell back on the bed. Lamas could hear her sobbing convulsively.fn9 She ran her hands down her legs, as if rediscovering this skin that Andres wanted to understand.

  Miserably irresolute, his stomach began to ache and he stood looking at himself in the centre of the room. Then he couldn’t bear it any longer and threw himself on her. Taking her head in both hands, he gazed at her filled with desire and concern, as if he wanted to possess her madly while at the same time freeing his desire from all that was wretched, contemptible and ridiculous on that bed with its two weary bodies.fn10 ‘He’s so despicable,’ she said. ‘It’s all lies. He’s never desired me. He’s cold, he’s completely self-obses
sed.’

  Lamas said nothing. He simply carried out the rite of unbuttoning her blouse. He wasn’t self-obsessed, and she let him do it.

  For the first time, he was making love to Claudia.

  For the first time he saw on the grimy wall Andres’s absurd face, watching over him like a guardian angel.fn11

  THE BEGINNING

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  PENGUIN CLASSICS

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  Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  First published as Quién de Nosotros in 1953

  This translation first published in Penguin Classics 2019

  Translation copyright © Nick Caistor, 2019

  The moral right of the translator has been asserted

  Cover photograph © Fernanda Montoro

  ISBN: 978-0-241-35100-0

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