“I don’t believe in novelists who write poetically,” Sofía said. “On the contrary, there’s something a little dry in Fontarabia, I’d say almost a lack of style, though that might seem silly . . .”
“What about you, Chita? What do you think of Fontarabia’s style?” Gastón said.
“The only thing I think is that I have an empty stomach.”
“Well,” Adelinda said, “I think we can serve the tea. As for Fontarabia, he’ll probably prefer a drink.”
“Sounds fine to me,” Gastón said. “Speaking of a drink . . .”
“Wait a minute, Sofía,” Rosalba said. “What you said about the lack of style is nonsense. Everybody has a style, good or bad, but they have one. And Fontarabia’s is—”
“It depends on the book,” Adelinda said. “It changes from book to book, depending on the subject . . . I’d rather talk about Fontarabia’s styles.”
“No, no,” Doña Zarela said. “Great writers have only one style . . .”
“But what is style?” Sofía asked.
“The style is the man,” Gastón said.
“Adelinda, please,” Chita said. “Don’t pour him another drink; if you do, he’s going to keep repeating that all night.”
“To me,” Doña Rosalba said, “style is the way you put the words together, one after the other. Some put them together well, others badly . . . There are writers who just pile them up, let’s say, like potatoes in a sack. Others pick and choose, weigh them, polish them, place them carefully like, like . . .”
“Like pearls in a necklace,” Gastón said. “How original!”
“Okay, you people keep talking,” Adelinda said. “Sofía and I are going to get the tea. You coming, Sofía?”
When they entered the kitchen, Herminia had already laid out the pastries on a platter and placed the empty tea cups on a tray.
“Not those teaspoons! The silver ones!” Adelinda scolded. “And put the sandwiches on a plate.”
“Tell me, Auntie, did you actually talk to Fontarabia?”
“What do you mean, did I talk to him?”
“I mean, when you invited him, did you talk directly to him?”
“I talked to his mother . . . But I might as well have talked to him. Alberto was taking a shower, but Doña Josefa, who’s an old friend of mine, told me it was fine.”
“What was fine, with whom?”
“With him, of course . . . But, what are you thinking, Sofía? That I—”
“No, but it’s getting late . . . I’ll take the cups. You bring in the platters.”
“Bravo!” Chita exclaimed when she saw them. “Just in time. We were about to scratch each other’s eyes out.”
“You know what Chita was saying?” Doña Rosalba said. “That we’re a bunch of snobs! Now, it seems, anybody who wants to read and talk about literature is a snob. Thank you, Chita. I’d rather be a snob than an ignoramus.”
“Please, Rosalba,” Doña Zarela said. “It’s not like that. Chita was just saying . . . anyway . . . what were you saying, Chita?”
“Huh? I don’t even remember.”
“The thing is, Chita is incapable of reading even a telegram,” Gastón said. “But she spent the whole afternoon at the hairdresser’s. To impress our writer, I guess.”
“Help yourselves, please,” Adelinda said. “How many sugars?”
“Wait a minute,” Doña Zarela said. “I’m still thinking about Fontarabia . . . May I criticize him? I think he can be criticized for being a little too grim. All his stories have sad endings, people always end up dead, sick, wounded, disappeared . . .”
“I find him highly entertaining,” Gastón said. “I’d even say he was a humorous writer.”
“You realize what you’re saying?” Doña Rosalba protested. “Fontarabia, a comic writer? His work is so sad, it tears me apart.”
“But the two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive,” Sofía said. “It can be sad and also humorous.”
“I’d say he was a pessimist,” said Doña Zarela.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Gastón said. “A pessimist who doesn’t take things tragically, instead, he laughs his head off at reality.”
“Reality?” Sofía said. “But in Fontarabia, reality has nothing to do with it . . . Everything he writes is invented.”
“Oh, so now it turns out that Fontarabia is a fantasy author . . .” Doña Zarela said, “Adelinda, you’re the only one who can set us straight, you know him. Or maybe Fontarabia himself . . . But, is he coming or not?”
“Like I told you, call him,” Doña Rosalba said. “I have to be home by eight.”
“I’ll do it now,” Adelinda said. “I just didn’t want to bother him by calling so often. Can you imagine how many people are after him! But, help yourselves, the tea is getting cold. Will you come with me, Sofía?”
They both went into the hallway that led to the kitchen. On a small table, under a wall mirror, was the telephone. Adelinda picked up the receiver, looked in the mirror to check her hair, and stood there, paralyzed.
“What’s the matter, Auntie?”
“I don’t remember the number . . . I must have it written down in my address book. But I don’t know where my address book is.”
“Maybe you left it upstairs. You want me to go look?”
“No, now I remember it . . . Oh, my hair is a mess. How disappointing! Does it look okay? It’s not too young looking?”
“I already told you, Auntie, it looks marvelous. Dial the number, once and for all.”
Adelinda put her finger in the dial.
“Go back to the living room, Sofía. Make sure Gastón doesn’t pour himself another drink.”
“Let him drink, he gets less solemn.”
“It’s ringing! . . . Maybe you should do the talking, Sofía. Here, take it! I think we forgot the napkins.”
In a flash, Adelinda had disappeared down the darkening hallway, leaving Sofía with the phone in her hand, a phone from which an impatient male voice sounded. Sofía answered:
“Hello? Mr. Fontarabia? . . . Adelinda’s niece here . . . Adelinda Velit . . . You don’t know her? . . . Velit with a v as in Victor . . . your old neighbor . . . his wife . . . Boby’s widow, I mean . . . Yes, she lived next door to you . . . For tea . . . Your mother . . . I think she took the message . . . She didn’t tell you? I understand, Mr. Fontarabia . . . understood . . . anyway . . . well . . . thank you very much . . . very kind . . . I’ll tell her . . . goodbye.”
Sofía replaced the receiver and at that moment realized that Adelinda had reappeared; she could see her shadow a few steps away, through the darkness.
“So?”
“I spoke with him . . .” then she immediately corrected herself. “Not with him, precisely, with someone at his house . . . with someone close to him, that is, with his mother.”
“What did she say?”
“She said . . . she said that Alberto wasn’t well. Lunch, yes, lunch hadn’t agreed with him . . . indigestion, something bad . . . Just imagine, he’s in bed . . . He can’t even get up!”
An angry voice reached them from the living room.
“I’m going to tell you three or four things! . . . An explosives factory, I don’t deny it, but also, culture . . . Cheers, Doña Zarela! The style is the man!”
“So, he’s not coming?”
Who asked that? And why in such a worn-out voice?
“It’s very dark in here, Auntie,” said Sofía, turning on a lamp in the hallway.
The sudden glare lit up Adelinda, but now an Adelinda who was merely another Zarela, another old lady.
“He sends tons of kisses, his mother told me . . . He apologizes, Adelinda. He’s really so sorry . . . but his indigestion, Auntie . . . he says that next time, the next time he returns from Paris . . .”
“Thank you,” Adelinda said. “Thank you, Sofía, thank you. He must feel really poorly. Give me your arm, please. Let’s go have our tea.”
THE SOLUTIO
N
“SO, ARMANDO, let’s see, what are you working on now?” The feared question had arrived. They had finished dinner and were now in the living room of their home in Barranco, drinking coffee. Through the half-open window they could see the lights of the esplanade and the winter fog creeping up the cliff face.
“Don’t play dumb,” Oscar insisted. “I know, writers sometimes don’t like to talk about what they’re working on. But we’re your friends. Give us a preview.”
Armando cleared his throat, looked at Berta as if to say, what a drag our friends are, but he finally lit a cigarette and decided to speak.
“I’m writing a story about infidelity. As you know, it’s not a very original subject. So many things have been written about infidelity! There’s The Red and The Black, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, to name just the masterpieces . . . But, that’s just it, I feel drawn to what lacks originality, to the ordinary, the hackneyed . . . Speaking of which, I’ve interpreted something Claude Monet said in my own way: I don’t care about the subject, the important thing is the relationship between the subject and me . . . Berta, please, do you mind closing that window? The fog is pouring in!”
“Not bad for a prologue,” Carlos said. “Now, let’s get to the nitty-gritty.”
“I’m getting there. It’s about a man who suddenly begins to suspect that his wife is cheating on him. I say suddenly because in twenty or more years of marriage the idea had never crossed his mind. The man, for now let’s call him Pedro or Juan, whatever you want, had always blindly trusted his wife, and since he was a liberal, modern man, he allowed her to have what is called ‘her own life,’ without ever asking her to account for herself.”
“The ideal husband,” Irma said. “You listening, Oscar?”
“In a way, yes,” Armando continued. “The ideal husband . . . Well, as I was saying, Pedro—let’s call him that—begins to suspect that his wife is cheating on him. I’m not going to go into details about the reasons for his suspicions. In any case, when this happens, his world falls apart. Not only because he had always been true to her—besides a few little flings of no consequence—but because he deeply loved his wife. Without the passion of youth, of course, but perhaps in a more abiding way, with such things as understanding, respect, tolerance, all those little attentions and concessions that are born out of routine and on which conjugal life is based.”
“I don’t like the part about routine,” Carlos said. “Routine is the negation of love.”
“That may be,” Armando said, “though that sounds to me like a cliché. But let me continue. As I was saying, Pedro suspects his wife is cheating on him. But since it’s only a suspicion, and is that much more distressing for being so uncertain, he decides to look for evidence, and while he’s looking for evidence of this infidelity, he discovers a second infidelity, an even more serious one, for it had been going on for longer and was more passionate.”
“What evidence did he find?” Oscar asked. “It’s difficult to find evidence of infidelities.”
“Let’s say letters or pictures or eyewitness accounts from totally trustworthy people. But that’s secondary, for now. What’s important is that Pedro sinks even more deeply into despair, because now it’s a question of two lovers: the most recent one, which he already suspected, and the older one, which he thinks he has proof of. But things don’t end there. As he continues to investigate the frequency, the seriousness, the circumstances of this deception, he discovers a third lover, and while trying to find out more about this third one, a fourth one turns up—”
“You mean she’s a regular Messalina,” Carlos interrupted. “How many did she have, in the end?”
“For the purposes of the story, four is enough. It’s the number that works. Increasing it would be possible, but it would create structural problems. Anyway, Pedro’s wife has four lovers. And, moreover, they’re simultaneous, which shouldn’t surprise anyone because each of the four is very different—one is much younger than she, another much older, one is very refined and educated, the other rather uneducated, et cetera—so they satisfy her various carnal and spiritual appetites.”
“So, what does Pedro do?” Amalia asked.
“I’m getting there. Just imagine the horrible state of anguish, of rage, of jealousy this situation puts him in. Many pages of the story will be dedicated to the analysis and description of his state of mind. But I’ll spare you that. I will just say that thanks to an enormous effort of willpower and, above all, a heightened sense of decorum, he does not let his emotions show; he searches for the solution to his problem on his own, without confiding in anybody.”
“That’s what we want to know,” Oscar said. “What the hell does he do?”
“To be fair, I don’t know, either. The story isn’t finished. I think Pedro lays out a list of alternatives, but I don’t know which one he’ll end up choosing . . . Please, Berta, can you get me another cup of coffee? . . . But he tells himself, when an obstacle appears in our lives, we have to get rid of it in order to return to the original situation. But, in this case, it’s not one obstacle but four! If there were only one lover, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill him . . .”
“Murder?” Irma asked. “Would Pedro be capable of murder?”
“Murder, yes, it would be a crime of passion. You know that the law everywhere in the world carries stipulations that soften the punishment for a crime of passion. Especially if a good lawyer can show that the perpetrator committed it in a violent rage. Let’s say that Pedro is willing to run the risk of committing murder, knowing that, given the circumstances, the punishment wouldn’t be that serious. But, as you see, killing one of the lovers doesn’t resolve anything, for there would still be three more. And killing all four would be a serious crime, a true massacre, and would get him the death penalty. Therefore, Pedro dismisses the possibility of murder.”
“Murders,” Irma said.
“Precisely, murders. But then he thinks of a clever idea: to confront the lovers so they eliminate each other. Here’s his idea: because there are four—now you’ll see why that number works for me—I’ll do a kind of elimination tournament, like in sports. Have each confront one other one, then the two winners confront each other, so at least three would be eliminated.”
“That sounds like a novel,” Carlos said. “How the hell does he do it? I don’t think it would work, in practice.”
“But that’s precisely where we are, in the world of literature, that is, of probability. Everything depends on if the reader believes what is being recounted. And that’s my job. Anyway, Pedro divides the lovers into One and Two and then Three and Four. Using anonymous letters or phone calls or other means, he reveals to One the existence of Two and to Three the existence of Four. In all of this he uses a carefully considered strategy, and deceit as a technique that allows him to provoke in the chosen victim not only the most atrocious jealousy but also a violent desire to annihilate his rival. I forgot to tell you that Rosa’s lovers—let’s call her Rosa—were all passionately in love with her, and they each believed they were the sole repositories of her love, and therefore the revelation of the existence of a competitor blindsides them as much as it did Pedro himself.”
“That’s possible,” Carlos said. “A lover is probably more jealous of another lover than of a husband.”
“In short,” Armando continued, “Pedro carries out his plan so well that One kills Two and Three kills Four. So only two are left. Then he proceeds in the same way with them, so that One kills Three. And Pedro himself kills the survivor of that duel, that is, he personally commits only one murder, and since it is only one, and one of passion, he gets a light sentence. At the same time, he achieves what he had set out to do, that is, eliminate the obstacles to his love.”
“That sounds ingenious,” Oscar said. “But, I insist, it wouldn’t work in practice. Suppose lover One doesn’t manage to kill lover Two, and just wounds him. Or that lover Three, no matter how much in love he is with Rosa, is incapable of committ
ing murder.”
“You’re right,” Armando said, “and that’s why Pedro rejects this solution. Confronting the lovers in order for them to eliminate each other isn’t feasible, not in reality or in literature.”
“So what does he do?” Berta asked.
“Well, I don’t know myself . . . I told you the story isn’t finished. That’s why I’m telling it to you. Can you think of anything?”
“Yes,” Berta said. “Divorce. There’s nothing simpler!”
“I already thought of that. But what would divorce solve? It would create a useless scandal, especially in a city like this one, which in many ways is very provincial. No, divorce would leave untouched the problem of the existence of the lovers and Pedro’s suffering. And it wouldn’t sate his desire for revenge. Divorce would not be a good solution. I’m thinking of another one: Pedro throws Rosa out of the house after shoving her betrayal in her face. He brutally throws her into the street, with or without all her belongings. It would be a virile and morally justified solution.”
“That’s just what I think,” Oscar said. “A real man’s solution. You betrayed me? Here, take that! Now, you’re on your own!”
“But it’s not that simple,” Armando continued, “and I don’t think Pedro would choose that solution, either. The main reason is that he couldn’t bear to throw his wife out because what he wants most is to keep her. To throw her out would make her even more dependent on her lovers, would shove her into their arms, and push her even further away from him. No, throwing her out of the house, even if it were possible, wouldn’t solve anything. Pedro is thinking that the most sensible thing would be the opposite.”
“What do you mean, the opposite?” Irma asked.
“For him to leave, disappear, without a trace. Just leave a note, or nothing at all. His wife would understand the reasons for his disappearance. Leave and start a new life in another country, a different life, a different job, other friends, another woman, without ever telling her anything. This might work even if we assume that Pedro and Rosa have children, though it would be better if they didn’t, they would complicate the story too much. But Pedro would leave, even abandoning his supposed children, for romantic passion is stronger than paternal passion.”
The Word of the Speechless Page 20