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And
then, brushing aside Rosa Mendez, who might have said wow, because her
ignorance was great but so was her capacity for astonishment and her desire to
learn, her father asked Charly Cruz directly if he knew who had discovered this
thing, this persistence of the image, and Charly Cruz said he didn't remember
the name, but he was sure it had been a Frenchman. To which her father replied:

"That's
right, a Frenchman by the name of Professor Plateau."

Who,
once the principle had been discovered, launched himself ferociously into
experiments with different devices he built himself, with the object of
creating the effect of movement from the rapid succession of fixed images. Then
the zoetrope was born.

"Do you know what that is?" asked Oscar
Amalfitano. "I had one when I was a boy," said Charly Cruz. "And
I had a magic disk, too."

"A magic disk," said Oscar Amalfitano.
"Interesting. Do you remember it? Could you describe it to me?"

"I could make one for you right now," said Charly
Cruz, "all I need is a piece of cardboard, two colored pencils, and a
piece of string, if I'm not mistaken."

"Oh no, oh no, oh no, no need for that," said
Oscar Amalfitano. "A good description is enough for me. In a way, we all
have millions of magic disks floating or spinning in our brains."

"Oh,
really?" said Charly Cruz.

"Wow,"
said Rosa Mendez.

"Well, there was a little old drunk, laughing. That was the
picture on one side of the disk. And on the other side was a picture of a
prison cell, or the bars of a cell. When you spun the disk the laughing drunk
looked like he was behind bars."

"Which isn't really a laughing matter, is it?" said
Oscar Amalfitano.

"No, it isn't," said Charly Cruz with a sigh.

"Still, the drunk (by the way, why do you call him a
little old drunk and not just a drunk?) was laughing, maybe because
he
knew
he wasn't in jail."

For a few seconds, remembered
Rosa
,
Charly Cruz's gaze altered, as if he were trying to see where her father was
going with all this. Charly Cruz, as we've already said, was a relaxed man, and
for those few seconds, although his poise and natural calm were unshaken,
something did happen behind his face, as if the lens through which he was
observing her father, Rosa remembered, had stopped working and he was
proceeding,
calmly,
to change it, an operation that took less than a
fraction of a second, but during which his gaze was necessarily left naked or
empty,
vacant,
in any case, since one lens was being removed and another
inserted, and both operations couldn't be carried out simultaneously, and for
that fraction of a second, which Rosa remembered as if she had invented it
herself, Charly Cruz's face was empty or it emptied, and the speed at which
this happened was startling, say the speed of light, to put it in exaggerated
but nevertheless roughly accurate terms, and the emptying of the face was
complete, hair and teeth included, although to say hair and teeth in the
presence of that blankness was like
s
aying nothing, all of Charly Cruz's features emptied, his
wrinkles, his veins, his pores, everything left defenseless, everything
acquiring a dimension to which the only response, remembered Rosa, could be
vertigo and nausea, although it wasn't.

"The
little old drunk
is laughing because he thinks he's free, but he's
really in prison," said Oscar Amalfitano, "that's what makes it
funny, but in fact the prison is drawn on the other side of the disk, which
means one could also say that the
little old drunk
is laughing because
we think he's in prison, not realizing that the prison is on one side and the
little
old drunk
is on the other, and that's reality, no matter how much we spin
the disk and it looks to us as if the
little old drunk
is behind bars.
In fact, we could even guess what the
little old drunk
is laughing
about: he's laughing at our credulity, you might even say at our eyes."

A little later something happened that upset
Rosa
quite a bit. She was on her way back from the
university, walking along, and suddenly she heard someone calling her name. A
boy her age, a classmate, pulled up at the curb and offered her a ride home.
Instead of getting in the car, she said she'd rather go have a soda at a nearby
coffee shop that had air-conditioning. The boy offered to take her and
Rosa
accepted. She got in the car and gave him
directions. The coffee shop was new and spacious, in the shape of an L,
American-style with rows of tables and big windows that let in the sun. For a
while they talked about random things. Then the boy said he had to go and he
got up. They kissed each other goodbye on the cheek and
Rosa
asked the waitress to bring her a cup of coffee. Then she opened a book on
Mexican painting in the twentieth century and began to read a chapter on
Paalen. At that time of day, the coffee shop was half empty. Voices could be
heard coming from the kitchen, a woman giving another woman advice, the steps
of the waitress who came by every so often to offer more coffee to the few
customers scattered around the big space. Suddenly someone she hadn't heard
approach her said: you whore. The voice startled her and she looked up,
thinking it was a bad joke or that she'd been mistaken for someone else.
Standing there was Chucho Flores. Flustered, all she could do was tell him to
sit down, but Chucho Flores, his lips barely moving, told her to get up and
follow him. She asked him where he planned to go. Home, said Chucho Flores. He
was sweating and his face was flushed.
Rosa
t
old him she wasn't going
anywhere. Then Chucho Flores asked her who the boy was who had kissed her.

"A classmate," said Rosa, and she noticed that Chucho
Flores's hands were shaking.

"You whore," he said again.

And then he began to mutter something that
Rosa
couldn't understand at first, but after a moment she
realized he was repeating the same words over and over again: you whore,
uttered with teeth clenched, as if saying it cost him a huge effort.

"Let's go," shouted Chucho Flores.

"I'm not going anywhere with you," said Rosa, and
she looked around to see whether anyone had noticed the scene they were making.
But no one was looking at them and she felt better.

"Have you slept with him?" asked Chucho Flores. For a
few seconds
Rosa
didn't know what he was
talking about. The air-conditioning seemed too cold. She wanted to go outside
and stand in the sun. If she'd brought a sweater or a vest she would've put it
on. "You're the only person I sleep with," she said, trying to soothe
him. "Lies," shouted Chucho Flores.

The waitress appeared at the other end of the room and came
toward them, but she changed her mind halfway and went to stand at the counter.

"Don't be ridiculous, please,"
Rosa
said, and she fixed her gaze on the Paalen article but all she saw were black
ants and then black spiders on a bed of salt. The ants were battling the
spiders.

"Let's go home," she heard Chucho Flores say. She felt
cold.

When she looked up she saw he was about to cry.

"You're my only love," said Chucho Flores.
"I'd give everything for you. I'd die for you."

For a few seconds she didn't know what to say. Maybe the
time has come to end things, she thought.

"I'm nothing without you," said Chucho Flores.
"You're all I have. All I need. You're all I've ever dreamed of. If I lost
you I would die."

The waitress watched them from behind the counter. Some twenty
tables away, a man was drinking coffee and reading the paper. He was wearing a
short-sleeved shirt and a tie. The sun seemed to vibrate against the windows.

"Sit down, please," said
Rosa
.

Chucho Flores pulled out the chair he was leaning on and sat down.
Immediately he covered his face with his hands and
Rosa
thought he was going to shout again or cry. What a spectacle, she thought.

"Do
you want something to drink?"

Chucho
Flores nodded.

"Coffee,"
he whispered without moving his hands from his face.

Rosa
turned to the waitress and beckoned to
her.

"Two
coffees," she said.

"Yes,
miss," said the waitress.

"The
guy you saw me with is just a friend. Not even a friend: a classmate. The kiss
he gave me was on the cheek. It's normal," said
Rosa
.
"It's something people do."

Chucho
Flores laughed and shook his head from side to side without moving his hands
from his face.

"Of
course, of course," he said. "It's normal, I know. I'm sorry."

The
waitress came back with the coffeepot and a cup for Chucho Flores. First she
filled
Rosa
's cup and then the other cup. As
she moved away, her eyes met Rosa's and she made a sign, or that was what
Rosa
thought later. A sign with her eyebrows. She arched
them. Or maybe she moved her lips. A word articulated in silence. She couldn't
remember. But the waitress was trying to tell her something.

"Drink
your coffee," said
Rosa
.

"I
will," said Chucho Flores, but he didn't move, his hands still over his
face.

Another
man had come in and sat next to the door. The waitress was standing at his
table and they were talking. The man was wearing a baggy denim jacket and a
black sweatshirt. He was thin and probably no older than twenty-five.
Rosa
looked at him and the man noticed that she was
looking at him, but he ignored her and drank his soda, not returning her gaze.

"Three days later I met you," said
Rosa
.

"Why
did you come to the fight?" asked Fate. "Do you like boxing?"

"No,
I already told you it was the first time I'd been, but it was Rosa who
convinced me to come."

"The
other
Rosa
," said Fate.

"Yes,
Rosita Mendez," said
Rosa
.

"But
after the fight you were going to make love with Chucho Flores," said
Fate.

"No," said
Rosa
.
"I took his cocaine, but I had no intention of going to bed with him. I
can't stand jealous men, but I was willing to be his friend. We had talked
about it on the phone and he seemed to understand. But I did think he was
acting strange. In the car, looking for a restaurant, he wanted me to give him
a blow job. He said: blow me one last time. Or maybe he didn't say it like
that, in those words, but that was more or less what he meant. I asked him if
he'd gone crazy and he laughed. I laughed, too. It all seemed like a joke. For
two days he'd been calling me and when it wasn't him it was Rosita Mendez
calling and giving me messages from him. She said I shouldn't break up with
him. She said he was a good catch. But I told her I considered our relationship
or whatever it was over."

"He understood things were over between you," said Fate.

"We had talked on the phone, I'd explained that I don't like
jealous men, I'm not a jealous person," said
Rosa
,
"I can't stand jealousy."

"He
thought he'd lost you," said Fate.

"Probably," said Rosa, "or he wouldn't have asked
me to give him a blow job. I never would've done it, especially not in the
middle of town, even if it was dark out."

"But he didn't seem sad," said Fate, "or at least I
didn't get that impression."

"No, he seemed happy," said
Rosa
.
"He was always a happy man."

"Yes,
that's what I thought," said Fate, "a happy man looking to have a
good time with his girlfriend and his friends."

"He
was high," said
Rosa
, "he kept
taking pills."

"He didn't seem high to me," said Fate, "he seemed
a little strange, as if he had something too big in his head. And as if he
didn't know what to do with it, even though it would blow up on him in the
end."

"So
is that why you stayed?" asked
Rosa
.

"Maybe," said Fate, "I don't really know, I should
be in the
United States
right now or writing my article, but here I am, in a motel, talking to you. I
don't understand it."

"Did you want to go to bed with my friend Rosita?" asked
Rosa
.

"No,"
said Fate. "Not at all."

"Did
you stay for me?" asked
Rosa
.

"I
don't know," said Fate.

They both yawned.

"Have
you fallen in love with me?" asked
Rosa
with disarming naturalness.

"Maybe,"
said Fate.