"But that doesn't mean you killed her,” said Eduardo.
"Are you sure? I was the love of her life. How did things go for her after she left?"
She had never smiled again, Eduardo recalled. She worked from sunrise to sunset, and spent the weekends sitting in the living room. She said she was resting, but he had known that wasn't it. What she was really doing was waiting. Waiting for Monday to come, and for it all to start all over again. Her days were sad, and now, looking back, he realized he had never again seen her singing in the kitchen. His mother had a beautiful voice. Not exceptional, but beautiful, and before things had gotten so bad with his father, she always sang around the house. But after they left, she never sang again.
There had been other men. Without trying very hard, Eduardo could remember at least half a dozen, but most of them had become, in his memory, names without faces. They didn't usually last long. They'd be around for a week, sometimes two, and then they'd disappear. A certain Fernando went out with her for three months until one Saturday, he, too, stopped calling. His mother went and sat in the living room and waited for Monday to come around. She didn't shed a single tear. Now Eduardo asked himself if perhaps those men left her because she never smiled, never sang. If they left her because she was cold.
Cold like a cadaver.
"There are many ways to kill a woman, son,” his father said again. “And I killed her in the worst way imaginable."
Eduardo contemplated the face of the decrepit old man seated in the armchair before him and spotted a tear trembling on one of his eyelashes, threatening to roll down his cheek at any moment. He felt the urge to strangle him, to wrap his hands around his neck and shatter the window with his skull because he remained alive and able to cry, able to laugh and live, while his mother had been dead for thirty years. She'd been dead thirty years even though she'd only been resting in the cemetery for the past five. But his urge soon faded, and he was left with nothing more than a feeling of profound exhaustion.
"How's Ines?"
"We haven't been doing too well lately."
"Don't let it get to you. It's just a phase."
Eduardo got up and took his coat off the bed.
"You're leaving already?"
"I told her we'd eat together,” he lied.
His father nodded.
"Then you have to go. You two are young. Pay attention to her. Make her feel special."
Eduardo put on his coat and picked up his umbrella.
"Don't make the same mistake I did."
He left the room and closed the door. On his way to the elevator, the words of the psychologist came back to him. Think about it, she'd said. Try to compare your childhood with your life now. He walked to the entrance, opened his umbrella, and stepped out onto the street, all the while thinking about it, trying to find anything in common between the child he barely remembered and the man he had somehow become. He'd started having the divergences when he was young, before going to live with his grandparents, when his father—in his own words—was already killing his mother. Then they'd disappeared almost completely until the argument with Ines had brought them back.
What did it mean, Eduardo asked himself as he walked in the rain. Was he killing his wife, too?
* * * *
3.
He spent the day walking the wet streets. He ordered the daily special soup and steak at a restaurant not far from the residential home, and in the afternoon, stopped in for a coffee at the complete opposite end of town. He'd asked for time off the week before to organize his thoughts. There hadn't been any problem. After the holidays, work always slowed down.
After speaking with his father, he had a different perspective on what had happened. He asked himself if Dr. Fresneda would agree with him. He suspected she would. His divergences had come back with a vengeance because he was letting his marriage fall apart—no, he was leading it by a firm hand towards disaster, and maybe he was even doing it out of a subconscious desire to follow in his father's footsteps. He didn't drink or smoke, but like his father had said, there are a lot of ways to kill someone.
Maybe he should speak with Ines. Tell her what was happening to him, ask forgiveness, and accept the job his father-in-law had offered him even if it meant swallowing his stupid pride and moving to another city. But even the idea of sitting down with her made him break out in cold sweats. He had found that over time, silence could get very heavy. He didn't think he'd be able to lift it up and just toss it far away.
The streetlamps came on and the puddles in the street reflected the yellow lights, making it seem like there were even more. People bustled to and from the downtown, each with his own bundle of problems underneath his own umbrella. He passed by the post office headquarters, asking himself if he wouldn't be better off working—occupying his time with work rather than wasting it on long walks by himself. Maybe it would make the divergences disappear, although he didn't think so.
It was getting colder. He went into a bar and asked for decaf coffee to warm up. The bar's regulars were there, smoking and drinking beer with their backs against the bar, their eyes glued to a Barcelona vs. Madrid match. Flies puttered in circles overhead, dizzy from the smoke.
He decided he would talk to Ines. Sooner or later he'd have to rip the Band-Aid off, and better sooner than later. He would do it, but not tonight. Better to wait until tomorrow. At noon. If he stayed at home to eat lunch with her, it would be the perfect moment to talk through things, clear the air. He downed the rest of his coffee, paid the bill, and left the bar.
Arriving home, he left his umbrella and shoes in the entranceway and tiptoed quietly down the dark hall so he wouldn't wake Ines. It was after 11:30, and she would be in bed, sleeping or pretending to be asleep. He got to the kitchen and groped a moment before finding the doorknob. When he opened it, a strong odor of rotten meat assaulted his nostrils and all of a sudden everything changed.
He was no longer in the kitchen, but seated in a large armchair in a strange room dimly lit only by the glowing coals in the fireplace. He looked down and saw that he was wearing a deep red robe. His fingers were long and slender. A pianist's fingers, he thought to himself. Or maybe a surgeon's. From where he sat, he could see part of the hallway. There was a clock on the wall. The bronze pendulum swung from one side to the other, catching the light. “She'll come back,” he thought, and then asked himself who she was, and where she had to come back from.
A faint smell of rotten meat made his nose twitch. He wanted to leave, leave that place, leave that world, but the clock kept ticking, the flames kept dancing in the fireplace, and he was stuck.
"She'll come back. . . . “
The doorbell rang and his heart leapt inside his chest. He rose from the armchair and walked swiftly past the clock to the door. The rotten smell was stronger now. He reached for the light switch and the two twenty-watt bulbs on either side of the doorway illuminated the hall and entryway.
"My God, make it stop soon,” he thought as he watched his hand reach for the doorknob, turn it, and push the door open only to reveal not the landing and elevator door he was used to, but an overgrown garden and a gravel pathway. And there she was.
She wore a white dress covered with mold, and her face was like blistered dough. Her eyes burned with hunger and with love, and a green-toothed smile sliced across her face. A piece of her cheek was missing.
I thought you wouldn't come back, thought Eduardo, crying. Her response was unintelligible, her voice flat and halted as though her tongue were swollen and spongy, her mouth full of worms.
He couldn't stop her from coming inside, just as he couldn't keep his other self from wrapping her in a long embrace right in the front entrance while the pendulum swung back and forth and tears ran down his face. He couldn't keep it from happening, just as he couldn't help screaming when she clutched him tightly and took a small bite from his neck.
The ceiling lights flickered and the kitchen appeared before him. Eduardo blinked while his teary eyes
adjusted to the white light of the bare fluorescent bulbs. He grabbed the countertop to steady himself. He inhaled short, rapid breaths that burned his throat. His neck hurt and he could still detect the rotten stink in the air.
He asked himself when they would stop happening, when he would stop suffering these horrible divergences. Hallucinations, the psychologist had called them. If they had been in her office now, Eduardo would have suggested that she make herself a necklace out of that damn word and would have shoved it down her throat: h-a-l-l-u-c-i-n-a-t-i-o-n-s. One letter after the other.
Slowly, he found himself returning to his own world. The odor was still there, however, and he realized it was that smell that had sent him into the divergence—it was the nexus between the two worlds. Compared with the stench in the divergence, though, this was like a subtle and expensive perfume. But it was there nevertheless. He let go of the countertop and walked toward the fridge. As soon as he opened it, he pulled his hand away from the door and tried unsuccessfully to stifle a gag. The inside of the fridge was empty except for a carton of milk, a few pieces of fruit in one of the drawers, and a pan on one of the shelves. He took a deep breath and clamped his mouth shut. He pulled the pan out and pulled off the lid. As he did, the stench was so intense it made him nauseous even though he was holding his breath. Inside were at least two servings of spaghetti with meat sauce. The meat was covered with mold. He put the lid back on the pan and took it to the bathroom. He dumped the pasta into the toilet and flushed it several times. If it woke up Ines, well, too bad. She deserved it for not having thrown that garbage away at least a week ago.
He returned to the kitchen and put the pan in the sink, running water into it. He closed the refrigerator door and took a deep breath.
How long had that pasta been in the fridge? He searched his memory while he watched the water spill into and back over the edge of the container, taking with it bits of tomato and meat. A week? Two? He couldn't remember. It had been at least twenty days since he had eaten at home. He couldn't remember with any more precision than that.
He would definitely have to talk with Ines in the morning. They couldn't go on like this, working their way around each other. If there was a way out of this, they should search for it together. If not, the sooner they accepted it, the better off they'd both be. This cold war of silences and emptiness didn't do any good, and it was destroying them.
Last weekend's newspaper lay spread across the kitchen table. He remembered having left it there in the morning, open to the crossword puzzle page. He had flipped through the pages without paying attention while drinking his tea when, all of a sudden, one of the clues caught his eye: “4 Across: To be outside of the mainstream.” He remembered that when he had seen that, he had asked himself if they should add the word “paranoid” to the diagnosis of “schizophrenic” in his chart, and had laughed under his breath so he wouldn't wake Ines. He had sat down and written “divergent” in capital letters with the red pen that Ines used to make shopping lists. Naturally, it was just a coincidence. Life is full of them. Just ask Paul Aster.
He picked up the paper and read another clue at random. “8 Across: Revive thought.” He remembered his literature classes, and Manrique's verses rose diligently from his memory:
* * * *
O let the soul her slumbers break,
Let thought be quickened, and awake;
Awake to see
How soon this life is past and gone,
And death comes softly stealing on,
How silently! *
* * * *
Awaken, he thought. He counted the spaces in the crossword. It fit. But the clue doesn't say To revive but rather Revive.
He picked up the pen, which lay next to the newspaper, and wrote, “wake up.” Perfect.
"How easy,” he thought, again leaving the newspaper on top of the table. Crosswords had never really appealed to him. He never would have gotten sucked in if that one clue hadn't caught his eye as he flipped through the pages.
He turned out the kitchen light and walked out. It was completely dark in the bedroom, and he slipped between the sheets. He felt his wife's body next to him, her back to him. He wanted to turn her over and touch her, embrace her, whisper in her ear, ask her forgiveness, but he didn't.
Tomorrow, he thought, and fell asleep.
* * * *
4.
"I'm happy you decided to cooperate. It was very brave of you to speak with your father like you did."
"You were right."
"I hope you'll trust me a little more from now on. I'm referring to your comments yesterday about the small-town priests."
"That doesn't matter to me. All I want is . . . to have it all over with, for once and for all. To be honest with you, I'm afraid of getting trapped in the wrong reality."
"Can that happen? I mean, according to your theory?"
"I don't see why not. They last longer every time. The one I had last night in the kitchen lasted a long while, and I completely lost it. With infinite possible universes, there must be infinite universes identical to ours."
"I understand. Maybe—just maybe—you should start reconsidering this theory of yours about the parallel universes. You should start to come to terms with the possibility that all of this is in your head."
"And we're back to the schizophrenia and hallucinations."
"You see, sometimes our surroundings overwhelm us. Our brain simply can't process it all, and it detaches. Just like what happens every night when we dream. The conscious mind puts up a closed for repairs’ sign and the subconscious takes over. Have you ever thought that maybe your . . . divergences . . . are trying to tell you something, or protect you from something?"
"Yes, I've considered that, especially after speaking with my father. Yesterday it occurred to me that maybe my divergences helped me escape the arguments between my mother and father."
"Aha . . . “
"But there's no yelling now. There's nothing. Ines and I don't even speak. When I go to bed, she's already asleep, and when I get up, she stays there, sleeping. I'm conscious of the fact that I come home late and get up early to avoid confronting her . . . but, in that case, what help are the divergences?"
"I don't know. You're the only one who can know. In any event, you told me that you had decided to speak with her today, to lay the cards on the table. Why haven't you?"
"Because of what happened this morning, before I came here."
* * * *
5.
The alarm clock had gone off at five in the morning, but it only had time to sound once before Eduardo tapped the top of it with the palm of his hand, shutting it off. He had already been awake for ten minutes, lying on his side with his gaze fixed on the electronic digits. Without making a sound, he set the alarm so it would go off again at ten. He would get up with Ines. He would eat breakfast with her, and they would finally talk it over. If need be, he would skip his appointment with Dr. Fresneda.
More relaxed after making the decision, he turned over on the mattress, and, lying on his back, gazed at the dark ceiling.
The hours crept by slowly until around seven, when a weak light began to peek through the slats in the window shade. Eduardo turned again to lie half on his side, looking at the wall. And then it happened, although so gradually that he didn't even realize he was in a divergence until a few minutes had already gone by.
He finally realized because there was no digital alarm clock on the bedside table, just a lamp he didn't recognize. And the window had disappeared from its wall, and the light filtered in from behind, from Ines's side, but it wasn't even Ines's side, it was Sandra's. Sandra, with whom he had lately only had the most ridiculous of arguments, the most recent of which had been just the night before. Sandra, who slept on her side of the bed in a green nightgown, so silently that it seemed she wasn't even breathing, that she had died in her sleep, maybe from a piece of raw fish that had risen in her throat, choking her to death.
The man whose body he
occupied convinced himself that she was dead, dead right next to him, and that her feet were as cold as deepwater fish, except that he knew it wasn't true. It was impossible that she was dead. People didn't die in such absurd ways, with pieces of sushi stuck in their throats. Except that she was dead. His mind—and with it, Eduardo's—whirled.
For more than half an hour, while the light grew brighter in the bedroom, he went back and forth, debating whether or not he should touch his wife under the sheet and find out once and for all what state she was in. In any given moment, he thought how ridiculous it all was, that she was of course alive, and then in the next second, he would be completely convinced he was sharing the bed with a cadaver. Eduardo wanted to scream, but he couldn't. He wanted to get up, but it was impossible.
Finally the alarm clock on Sandra's side went off, and at that moment, before finding out if she would turn it off or go on sleeping for infinity in the bedroom, Eduardo returned.
The window was once again in front of him. The alarm clock on the bedside table showed 9:47. He decided he wouldn't wait until 10. He got up, and without turning on the light, left the bedroom carrying his clothes under his arm.
He took a shower, afraid the entire time that the divergence with the man in the muddy swamp would return, but his fears were unfounded. He made tea in the kitchen, which still smelled faintly of rotting meat, looking the whole time at the newspaper: “divergent” and “wake up,” the words spoke to him in red letters. He had no desire to add a single word to that cryptic message.
"I put the cup and saucer in the sink full of water, and I left the house. I walked the streets until our appointment."
"I'm not going to lie to you, Eduardo. I'm concerned. Very concerned. This most recent divergence of yours, along with all the others . . . “
EQMM, September-October 2010 Page 7