Delirium (16 page)

Portulinus, friendly and hospitable so long as he wasn’t muddled—and anyway why not welcome a handsome blond boy who has arrived exhausted after traveling by foot from Anapoima?—asked whether his daughter had invited the visitor in, whether she had at least offered him some lemonade, but no, the boy wouldn’t accept anything, he’d just announced that if the piano teacher wasn’t there, he’d return the next day. That settled, the family sat down at the table with Nicasio, the steward with the perpetual flu, Nicasio’s wife, and a pair of salesmen from Sasaima, and were served the pork roast with golden creole potatoes and steamed vegetables. Portulinus was clearheaded and charming and questioned those present about the state of his or her health, and in the middle of the boisterous conversation, the girl Eugenia said, though no one was listening, that the blond boy had brought some lead soldiers in his knapsack. He let me play with them while he was waiting for you to come, Eugenia told them, but they didn’t hear her, and we set them up in three rows in the hall and he whistled military marches and said that we had staged a great parade; he also told me that the soldiers were just a few he’d brought with him since they were his favorites, but that he had left many more at home in Anapoima.

WHO’S OUTSIDE, MOTHER?,
asks Agustina, Who’s outside, Aminta? She’s talking about her first house, the one from before the family moved north, the white-and-green house in Teusaquillo, on Caracas Avenue, and there’s someone outside and they won’t tell her who it is. The school bus comes to pick me up early in the morning, someone blows the horn, and Aunt Sofi laughs and says, That poor bus moos like a sick cow. Where are my notebooks, Aminta, where are my pencils? But they won’t let me go, they refuse to open the gate, they look out the peephole, the day had to come when even Aminta was scared of something. Mr. Leper, stand aside and let the girl by!, shouts Aunt Sofi, who doesn’t live with us yet but who’s the only one who knows how to fix things, Stand aside, please, Mr. Leper, Señor. Let me go, Aunt Sofi, I’m on my way to school, but she hugs me tight against her, covering my head with her white orlon sweater, the one with fake pearls instead of buttons, and we hurry out into the street like that, so that I can’t see. So that I can’t see what? So that I can’t see who?, but Aunt Sofi isn’t here anymore to answer me.

So that you don’t see the leper man, says Aminta, Who is he? A poor sick man. And why can’t I see him? Your mother says you shouldn’t see him, because you’ll be scared. He’s horrifying, the poor thing, deathly white, with rotting skin and cemetery breath. My head has managed to escape from Aunt Sofi’s sweater and my eyes see him, a little, or they dream of him at night, he’s a bundle of dirty rags and he’s holding a piece of cardboard in his hand, a sign. The writing is clumsy, like that of a child who hasn’t learned to write yet, the writing of a poor person: my mother says the poor are illiterate. That’s dirty, child, What’s dirty? I already know the answer, everything that comes from the street is dirty. But I want to see it, I have to see it, the leper has written something for me to read. What does it say, Aminta? What does it say, Mother? Will someone read me what it says on his dirty piece of cardboard? That we should give him money because he’s from Agua de Dios, they answer, but I don’t believe them. What’s Agua de Dios? Hurry up, Agustina, the bus will leave without you, Let it leave, I want to know what Agua de Dios is, Agua de Dios is the leprosarium where they keep people with leprosy locked up so they don’t come to the city to infect us. Then why is he here, why has he come to stand outside my house, not my house now but the one from before, did he escape from Agua de Dios to come looking for me?

Now I know why my father bars the doors at night; it’s so that the Agua de Dios contagion doesn’t creep in with its stinking white flesh that falls off in pieces. Tell me, Aminta, what is he like, what does he smell like, who says he has death written on his face? I want to know what he sees with his empty eye sockets, do his eyes turn to wax and melt? Aminta says his eyes turn to pus, Be quiet, stupid, don’t say that! Mommy, Aminta is scaring me about the leper, you’ll be sent away for lying, do you hear me, Aminta?, my mommy said she’d fire you from your job if you kept scaring the children. Now I don’t have to ask anyone, because I know: I have the Power and I have the Knowledge, but I still don’t have the Word. They think I don’t understand but I do; I know the face of the horrible thing waiting in the dark, outside the door, quiet in the rain because it escaped from where it was locked up, the thing that stares with vacant eyes into our lit-up house. Turn off the lights, Aminta!, but she pays no attention to me. This is our house from before, the white-and-green one on Caracas Avenue where my two brothers and I were born, I’m talking about the old days. After my father closes the shutters, I go around covering up all the holes in them with my finger, one by one, because my mother says that what happens in families is private, that no one should go around sticking their noses into other people’s business, that dirty laundry should be aired in private.

When faced with the Leper my powers are small and flicker out like a dying flame that hardly sheds any light anymore. Does he know he’ll be victorious in the end? Does he know that one day my father will go away and won’t be here to lock the doors? When we’re abandoned, the Leper will triumph, Oh, Father, take my hand and let’s go lock the doors, because if he’s escaped from Agua de Dios it’s because he already knows. Mr. Leper, stand aside and let the girl by! I don’t like it, Aminta, I don’t like it when Aunt Sofi shouts that word so loud, that word
girl
, because that’s me, and if he learns my name he’ll infect me, he’ll make my name his own and crawl inside of me, he’ll burrow deep in my head and make his cave there, in a nest of panic. Deep in my head there lives a panic called Leper, called Leprosarium, called Agua de Dios, that has the power to change its name whenever it wants. Sometimes, when I speak in Tongues, my panic is called the Hand of My Father, and as I grow up I realize that there are other threats.

The little holes in my house’s shutters are round, splintered around the edges, like eyes with eyelashes on the wood’s green face. What are those little holes, Mother? What are those little holes, Father? They always answer me, They’re nothing, They’re nothing. What they mean is that the shutters have holes in them and that’s all, that’s just the way it is, like people having eyes. One night, while we’re making the rounds with the keys at the ninth hour, my father confesses that it was the April 9 snipers. I understand his words: the April 9 snipers made those holes in our house’s shutters. And how did they make the holes, Father? By shooting, Were they shooting at us?, No, at the people, he tells me, but that’s all he’ll say. At what people, Father? People, people, these things happen and there’s no point in discussing it. And were we scared?, I ask him then and he answers that I wasn’t born when it happened. The number of harmful beings against whom we must protect ourselves keeps growing, the Agua de Dios lepers, the April 9 snipers, the students with battered and bloody heads, and especially the guerrilla rabble that took Sasaima; and that killed Grandfather Portulinus? Mother, did the rabble kill Grandfather Portulinus? No, Grandfather Portulinus left Grandmother Blanca and returned alone to Germany.

There are other threats that my fear seizes on because it won’t stay still; my fear is a growing beast that must be fed and that swallows everything up, beginning with Ben-Hur’s mother and sister, who become lepers and wander paralyzed by shame, hiding from people’s gazes in an abandoned courtyard where leaves blow in the wind. And also Messala, Ben-Hur’s enemy, who is trampled by chariot wheels and the hooves of galloping horses until he’s the bloodiest wreck imaginable. The theater was almost empty during the matinee and I didn’t dare move in my seat, it was Aminta who took me, I think, because that afternoon my mother was sick, Leave your mother alone, she’s depressed, said Aunt Sofi who didn’t live with us yet, and I see Messala smashed and bloody and those two women with pasty white skin broken out in blisters who cover themselves up with cloaks and rags. Aminta tells me, Don’t be afraid, child, these are things from the Bible. But I’m afraid of the Bible, it seems a terrifying book to me; my mother, who is religious, has put one in each bedroom but at night I shut mine up in the garage, because it’s full of lepers.

No matter how well those two women cover themselves, the stink of their sores gives them away and that’s why they take shelter in the abandoned courtyard of the house that used to be theirs when they were well, a grand house. My old house in Teusaquillo, where no one lives now, had a courtyard, too, and I ask my father whether dead leaves are blowing there. My mother says that the rabble who’ve risen up in the south won’t come to our new house, but I know they can because they live in my memory, or in my dreams, and all dreams come from way back, from biblical times. Aunt Sofi went to the school to complain, Don’t read the girl these things, she doesn’t understand them and her head is already full of nonsense, that’s what she said and I’m repeating it because I like how it sounds, I laugh when I remember it because I realize it’s true, ever since I was little I’ve lived the way Aunt Sofi said, with my head full of nonsense. At school they told Aunt Sofi that it was spiritual instruction and that it was required that we read such things in religion class. Don’t worry, Mommy, I know they won’t be able to get into our house, that’s the message I receive each night from my father’s hallowed hand. And if my father leaves us? When he leaves, the great panic will begin.

In the morning I shout for Aminta to bring me breakfast in bed, on the silver tray, as my mother has taught her. Orange juice, hot milk with Milo, yucca rolls, poached egg; Aminta brings me good things. But she also brings news: That man has been standing outside the house all night, waiting. Don’t lie to me, Aminta, did you see the horrible hole he has instead of a mouth? Did you see his arms, all raw? Tell me, Aminta, tell me what his sign says, how can I protect myself from him if I don’t understand his message. I think I dreamed of his rotten voice coming in my window, saying: I’m infected with Lazarus’s disease. Who was Lazarus, Mother? Leonorita Zafrané, the teacher who’s in charge on the school bus, swears that she’s seen the leper in front of my house, too. I ask her what’s written on his piece of cardboard but she doesn’t know either, and instead she scolds me, You’re not being fair to Ben-Hur’s mother and sister, she tells me, because in the end Christ the Redeemer grants them the miracle of healing. Then they don’t drag themselves through the dead leaves of the courtyard at night anymore? No, not anymore. They don’t hide in the courtyard of my old house in Teusaquillo? No, and they never did, you made that up, you make up too many things. Thank you, Leonorita Zafrané, thank you for erasing that nonsense from my head, my problem, Leonorita, is that my head is full of nonsense.

This afternoon my mother, Bichi, and I are out in our yellow Oldsmobile with the black convertible top, my mother driving and the two of us sitting in the backseat. We like to ride in the Oldsmobile because all you have to do to open and close its tinted windows is push a little automatic switch, and because it smells new. We’ve just bought it, it’s the latest model. There’s lots of traffic, we’re stuck in the crush of cars, and then my mother gets strange, she’s talking a lot and very fast. It’s hot, Mommy, let me open the window, but she won’t let me. Because of muggers? Yes, because of muggers. The other day a mugger yanked off Aunt Sofi’s gold chain and hurt her neck. The chain is the least of it, said Aunt Sofi, who was just visiting because she didn’t live with us yet, it can be replaced, but my mother’s Saint Angel medallion was hanging from the chain, Well, we’ll get you one just like it, promised my father, Impossible, said my mother, that medallion was an old gold coin, where will we ever find another one like it, It doesn’t matter, said my father, the important thing right now is to have her seen by a doctor because she has a nasty scratch and it could get infected. Two of the mugger’s fingernails left a mark on Aunt Sofi’s neck, the scars are still there and my daddy tells her it’s a Dracula bite, but her Saint Angel and her gold chain are gone and today she’s not with us in the Oldsmobile, but we still keep the windows shut tight despite the heat, just in case. If no air comes in I feel sick, Mother, Well don’t open the window even if you feel sick.

The Oldsmobile is trapped in a tight knot of cars. My mother checks again to see whether the doors are locked; she already checked but she does it again. Are you angry, Mother?, I ask because when Bichi and I are noisy she gets annoyed, but she says she isn’t, it isn’t that, and she tells us to come up to the front seat, beside her. Cover your eyes, children, cover your eyes tight with both hands and promise me you won’t look, no matter what happens. We obey her. She clutches us as tight as she can with her right arm while she holds the steering wheel with her left; she won’t let us lift our heads and we can’t see what’s happening outside. But we can hear shouts in the street, shouts that come closer, and we know that, although we can’t see them, there are people passing the car, shouting. What’s happening, Mother? Nothing, nothing’s happening, those are her words but her voice is saying something else entirely. Now she tells us to get down, huddled on the floor of the car, where you put your feet, and here all I can see is the plaid of the kilt she’s wearing, the pedals, the rugs, which are gray, a lost coin, some trash, Bichi’s shoes, which are red and almost round they’re so small, like little wheels. My mother’s shoe has a very high heel and it pushes one pedal and then the other and then the first one again, accelerating and braking, accelerating and braking, and I hear her heartbeat, the ticktock of my own fear, and some little words that Bichi is saying, happy down here playing with the coin he’s found under the seat. I hug him very hard, Keep playing, Bichi Bichito, nothing’s going to happen to you, my powers tell me that you’re safe, and I play with the coin to distract him, but I know that things are happening. What is it, Mother? Nothing. Then can we get up now and sit on the seat? No, stay down there. My mother wants to protect us, from something, from someone, I realize that, I know that things are happening around us that she can see and I can’t. It’s the lepers, isn’t it, Mother? What makes you say that, what a ridiculous idea. They escaped from Agua de Dios and now they’re here? My mother tells me not to say silly things because I’ll scare my little brother. But he’s already scared and he’s crying!

I know it was the lepers even though later, at night, when we’re home and everything is over, my father tells me a thousand times that what happened today on the street was a student protest against the government. It doesn’t matter what they tell me, I don’t believe them, and the next day my father shows me the pictures of the student revolt that were published in the papers, but even the pictures don’t make me believe him. My father tries to explain that my mother didn’t want my little brother and me to be upset, and that’s why she wouldn’t let us see the students running between the cars, bleeding, with their heads smashed. But I know it isn’t true, I know that the lepers have come at last. Thousands of lepers have left Agua de Dios and invaded Bogotá; Sacred Hand of my Father, protect me from the invasion of the lepers. Though I know you shouldn’t really trust the Hand too much.

I JUST MANAGE
to hit the brake so I don’t run over the beggar who suddenly appears out of the rain and crosses in front of my van, what the fuck is this suicidal lunatic doing, I almost killed him but apparently he couldn’t care less, it’s just part of his routine, a hazard of the trade, and before I realize what’s happening he sticks a begging hand in my window, Give me something for coffee, brother, I’m freezing my balls off out here, his voice is casual as if two seconds before I hadn’t nearly mowed him down and he seems satisfied, even proud of having achieved the practical and premeditated goal of stopping me by any means necessary to ask me for change: here you are again, dementia my old friend, wily bitch, I recognize your chameleon-like methods, you feed on normality and turn it to your own ends, or you mimic it so well you supplant it.

When my son Toño was seven he asked me once, Is it true that people are crazy inside, Dad? Now, pondering his question, I remember something from the day I met Agustina. I mean in person, because back then she was famous all over the country as the seer who had just used her telepathic powers to find a young Colombian hiker who’d been missing for days in Alaska, and since he was the son of the then-Minister of Mines, his fate had captured the attention of the press as the rescue mission proceeded, with the joint efforts of a group of marines there on the frozen tundra and, oh!, who but Agustina Londoño here in Bogotá, coming up with parapsychological clues, intuitively sticking pins into a map of the Arctic, and issuing paranormal predictions from the very office of the Minister of Mines. When the lost boy was finally found, the whole country, from the cabinet ministers on down, flamed with patriotic fervor as if we had qualified for the Copa América, and the press didn’t hesitate to give full credit to Agustina’s visionary powers, discounting the will of God as well as the efforts of the marines, who in the end were the ones who rescued him from who knows what kind of avalanche, glacier, or northern peril.

A few days after the denouement, I was introduced to her as we were leaving a film club. All I was told was, This is Agustina, and not making the connection with the Alaska story, I saw only an ordinary Agustina, though a very beautiful one, who couldn’t stop talking about how wonderful the film was and the first thing that occurred to me was, What a pretty girl, though she’s completely crazy. But the word
crazy
didn’t have negative associations for me at the time. In the days that followed I was able to establish that Agustina was sweet and fun, and, according to my son Toño’s theory, that she was crazy inside.

Agustina dressed all in black, like a cross between a Spanish belle and a witch in lace mantillas, astonishingly short miniskirts, and cutoff gloves that left her long, gothically white fingers bare; Agustina made a living reading tarot cards, telling fortunes, casting the I Ching, and playing the lottery, or at least that’s what she said but she really lived on a monthly allowance from her family; Agustina had very long hair and smoked marijuana and traveled each spring with her family to Paris and hated politics and intoxicated her admirers with a bold, barbaric perfume called Opium; Agustina lived alone in an apartment with no furniture, but with candles and cushions and mandalas drawn on the floor; she rescued stray cats and was a disturbing mix of orphan and daddy’s girl, rich kid and Woodstock grandbaby. Whereas I, a middle-class professor, sixteen years her senior, was a Marxist of the old school and a dyed-in-the-wool militant, and therefore I scorned crazy chic in all its permutations and was uncomfortable with the phenomenon calling itself magic realism, so fashionable at the time, because I considered myself far removed from the superstitions and miracle worshipping of those around us, of whom Agustina was the prime representative.

But it was enough that she could make me laugh with her sharp wit and irreverence; it was enough that she would take my hand in hers to read my palm and ask me why I was so hard on myself when I was a good guy, a nice guy, meaning why did I take everything so seriously. It was enough that she called me an old man because I smoked Redskins, because I wore a wedding band and talked about the class struggle; it was enough that she taunted me by claiming that there was no such thing as proles—that was the word she used—and that she didn’t say, as I did, stockings instead of nylons, and brassiere instead of bra, and that she didn’t wear pants like the ones I had on, muddy-colored, made of synthetic fabric, bell-bottomed. They weren’t exactly muddy-colored or bell-bottomed, but she’d hit the mark with the synthetic fabric and she’s merciless when she finds an opening through which to get in her digs. It was enough that upon letting go of my hand she left it impregnated with a penetrating and sensual smell that I, who know nothing about drugs, thought was marijuana, and when I told her she laughed and explained that it wasn’t marijuana but a perfume called Opium; and it was enough, too, that a few months later, when I went to buy her a flask of Opium as a present, I found out that French perfume cost what I made in two weeks. It was enough that she began calling me simply Aguilar, erasing my first name with a single stroke and leaving me reduced to my last name, but above all it was enough that one sunny morning in Independence Park she bent down to tie one of my shoelaces which had come undone; just like that, with no warning.