Delirium (34 page)

In an attempt to keep track of Portulinus’s ravings, the following outline of several steps might be drawn up: first, Nicholas builds a bubble or a parallel world in which what he imagines acquires real-world worth, as when he meets Abelito and identifies him with the Farax of his dreams; in the second step, the bubble is divided into opposing halves, Abelito and Farax, for example, or Farax and Nicholas, that polarize Nicholas’s mind, making him flit unbearably fast between two extremes; third, Nicholas transfers his deepest feelings to the bubble, making everything inside it a matter of life or death, in such a way that after he’s built up an impossible conflict between the opposing forces, he crucifies himself on his own creation. I’m a helpless and horrified witness, Blanca laments, to the way he is caught in the pincer of opposites and driven to destruction. Fourth, once the parallel world is perfected in every detail, Nicholas detaches himself, breaking contact with the real world, and is left sealed and alone inside his bubble; fifth and last: during the course of his ravings, Nicholas is swept away by an anxiety that feeds on itself; he’s like a man bewitched, unable to escape his delirium, though he doesn’t want to escape, either, because the relationship he’s established with it is that of a slave to his master.

This is more or less the state of things inside Nicholas Portulinus’s head, but not entirely, of course, since nothing can ever be quite so precise, and anyway, it was taken for granted at the house in Sasaima that he should rave or be queer, as his daughters put it. The odd thing lately is that Blanca seems a little unbalanced, too; nothing has been the same since Farax knocked at the door with his old alpaca jacket and his knapsack full of lead soldiers. Farax has become the dream and the nightmare of both Nicholas and Blanca, the love object and the rival of both in an ascending spiral, a spiral that rises to where the air is so thin it’s impossible to breathe. Does Nicholas suspect that if Blanca had to choose between the two men living in the house, deep in her heart she would choose the younger one, even if her lips professed otherwise? I liked the number two, Bianchetta darling, Nicholas confessed to her one afternoon when the world was flooded with rain, two made it possible for me to get along, two filled the void between you and me, but three makes my head explode into a million pieces.

BUT AT THE CENTER
you didn’t say anything you were supposed to say, Agustina my love, you didn’t choose version number one, in which Dolores, or Sara Luz, goes with her boyfriend to the Dominican Republic, or version number two, in which she’s been working as a drug mule and is behind bars in the United States, or even version number three, which was by far the easiest, because how hard would it have been to declare that the signature in the sign-in book was a fake, and if the positive options were limitless and the number of possible destinations infinite, why couldn’t you reassure the five o’clock super-rumba class by telling them that the nurse, as she claimed to be, had ended up in Puglia, in the south of Italy, for example, or in Nunavut, in the north of Canada?

No, of course not, because true to yourself you chose extremism, irrationality, and melodrama, as always; you started waving your arms and shouting wild things in front of fifty fitness fans who watched you in horror, quite a spectacle you made of yourself, my lovely Agustina, it would’ve made you blush if you hadn’t been so demented, and speaking in your worst metallic voice, the one that sounds like it’s echoing in a tin can, you started to say, Something happened here, something happened here, and from the moment you uttered that very first sentence my blood ran cold and I knew that there was no way to stop you now, that disaster was already imminent, Something happened here, you insisted with touching conviction and you went sniffing around the gym like a bloodhound, searching for clues here and there as I tried to convince you that we should go somewhere else, Come on, Agustina, I said to you under my breath so that the super-rumba class wouldn’t hear me, Come on, why don’t we forget about all of this, and instead I’ll take you to see
Flashdance
, that movie you wanted to see a little while ago, are you listening to me?,
Flashdance
, Agustina, does it ring any bells?

But no, nothing could stop you, you were determined to ferret out that Dolores, even if she was hidden at the end of the earth, and you wouldn’t give up until you had found her dead or alive, you were becoming more agitated and upset, and finally you blurted out, Something terrible happened here, and I didn’t know what to do with myself, there before all my clients, when the seer I myself had brought to put out the blaze started to fan the flames instead, and next you were seeing blood, I see lots of blood, you said, and I did what I could to discourage you, No, Agustina, not blood, I tell you honestly there was no blood, and that was true, princess, I don’t know what that whole blood thing was, because Dolores didn’t lose a drop, the poor thing was all broken up inside but there was no blood to speak of, I swear to God, why would I lie to you, and still you insisted, you’d already started down that path and there was no stopping you, I see blood, I see blood, terrible blood flooding the channels, But please, Agustina, what channels are you talking about?, That woman was killed here, you said, she was kicked to death, Not kicked to death, Agustina, I broke in, get a hold on yourself, sweetheart, try to keep your voice down, and I wasn’t lying to you about that either, angel, the whole kicking thing is a scene from a different movie, but in your cocktail shaker of a brain everything turns into the same slush, it was your monster of a father and your brute of a brother who wanted to kick Bichi to death for acting like a faggot, but as far as I know getting kicked was the only thing that didn’t happen to Dolores that night, and yet you, Agustina darling, were deep in a stubborn trance and no one could bring you out of it, but why bother to keep telling you about the massive disaster you caused, what point is there now in totaling losses and damages.

What I do want to talk to you about is what an ordeal it was getting you out of the center once you had reached the final stage of full-blown delirium, because you weren’t seeing or hearing anything, much less prepared to listen to reason; I tried to take you back to my apartment on my motorcycle but I don’t know if you realize how hard it is to get someone who’s convulsing onto a motorcycle, so with great sorrow I left my cherished R100RT at the center, called a taxi, brought you to my refuge and opened its doors to you, thinking that maybe in the calm of my bedroom and with another little toke of weed you might relax, Come on, Agustina darling, get in my bed and I’ll cover you with my blanket of vicuna-pup skin, see how soft?, yes, I guess you’re right, vicuna-pup skin is probably banned by all kinds of animal protection societies, but there’s no need to worry, because those societies don’t generally have access to my bedroom, and what if I bring you a Baileys with a few ice cubes and we watch a movie on the Betamax, how does that sound?, I understand, Baileys is too sweet and the picture quality is no good, well fuck Baileys and the Betamax, there’s no point arguing about that, wait a minute, I’ve got the hottest new song right here, Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney, “The Girl Is Mine,” haven’t you heard it?, but sweetheart, you’re out of touch, this song has conquered the planet and the two guys who sing it made millions, what’s wrong, you don’t like it, you want me to turn it off?, shit, Agustina, this is getting old, that fucking psychic crap makes you really impossible.

I didn’t know what to do with you anymore or how to deal with your fit, so I took you into my bathroom, doll, which to me is like the quintessence of hedonism, almost everything good that’s ever happened to me has happened in that bathroom, which itself is as big as a small apartment in San Luis Bertrand and completely done in Kalopa black granite imported from Malawi, its Finnish sauna suffused with the smell of birch, its huge window with the morning sun pouring through, its pile of
Newsweek
,
Time
, and
Semana
magazines beside the toilet, and especially its twin sinks, one next to the other, the truth is I’ve never understood what the point is of having two but it gives me almost orgasmic pleasure to have both. So I try to introduce you to the joys of steam and water, convinced that this will do the trick, but you don’t agree at all and put up an epic resistance that leaves us both soaked from head to toe, And now what do I do with you, you spoiled brat, you wild thing, you’re going to die of cold and fever in those wet clothes, but suddenly I had an idea, or more than an idea, it was as if a lightbulb had come on in my head, Wouldn’t it be nice to be alone, I thought, and I felt an infinite relief at the mere possibility, it would be so nice to be alone in the quiet of my room, and as I let myself be swept away by this radical desire for solitude, I realized that my Christ-like patience and compassion had been entirely used up, and in an instant I had called Rorro, Who’s Rorro?, What do you mean who’s Rorro, for God’s sake, Agustina, you know perfectly well who Rorro is, good old Rorro, my right-hand man at the gym, giant with a quarter-inch of forehead, not too bright but as decent as they come, the person in charge of all the stretching classes, weight training, and spa treatments, I didn’t have to think twice because I knew there was nothing the man wouldn’t do for me, so I called him and said, Come on over, Rorro, do me a favor and bail me out here.

At that moment of utter anarchy only a single thing was perfectly clear to me, Agustina darling, and that was that I wanted you out of my bedroom, out, vanished, gone, you were shouting in the only place where I demand perfect silence, you were wreaking havoc in the only corner of the world that I like to keep neat, you had spun out of control precisely within the four walls where I keep everything under control, Enough, angel, chaos in my private paradise is more than I can stand, Rorro can’t take you away a minute too soon, I need to get back into a healthy rhythm, work out the kinks with a good soak in the Jacuzzi and then turn on the fireplace with a click of the remote control, and naked by the fire like the first man in his primeval cave, smoke a blunt of Santa Marta Golden and do my best to forget, let my mind go blank and soar in the placid void of blue vastness.

I managed to establish that the first step was to call Rorro to come and get you, but problems arose with step number two, where to send you. Return you to your mother, batty as you were, defenseless and exposed?, no, certainly not, you would never have forgiven me and even I’m not capable of something that cruel. Send you alone to your apartment, where Rorro could keep you company until your husband came back from Ibagué, good old Aguilar, who is apparently the most self-sacrificing loony-bin keeper in the city?, that wasn’t a bad plan, in fact, it was clearly the best, or the only good one, but it wouldn’t work because I had no idea where you lived, you’d never told me where your apartment was and considering the level of mental chaos you were operating on, asking you would have been a waste of time. To a hospital, then?, I suggested it to you, wanting to know whether you thought it might be a good idea for me to send you to a psychiatric clinic and you, instantly grasping every word, as if you’d gone from speaking only Sanskrit or Russian to a sudden comprehension of Spanish, threw your arms around me and begged me please not to send you to a hospital, anything but a hospital, maybe you were afraid that they would lock you away forever, fry your brain with electroshock therapy, give you pills that would put you to sleep for all eternity like Sleeping Beauty, I don’t know what it was that terrified you so much, but the forlorn, despairing look on your face made me abandon that idea, It’s settled, I ordered Rorro, take her to a hotel, treat her with tender, loving care because you’re looking at a real angel, she’s a little upset but she’ll be over that in two seconds, here, Rorro, here’s my card number so you can put her up at the Wellington, they know me there and you can tell them I’ll be by later to sign the bill, I want you to shut yourself up with her in a suite, give me a call to report mission accomplished, and then wait for further instructions; now take her away, but listen up, I want it to be the best suite, where she can eat well and take a nice bath and sleep off whatever’s wrong with her in a good bed until she’s back to normal, you take care of her tonight, Rorro my good buddy, and tomorrow, if she wakes up feeling better, bring her back here.

But the devil has his way with the best-laid plans and this was such an absolutely fucked-up day that even then I couldn’t relax; despite the excellence of the Santa Marta Golden that I was smoking nice and slow, letting it filter down to the core of my being, I was tortured by remorse, unable to rest, I’d managed to get you out of my sanctum sanctorum, Agustina sweetheart, and now I was doing my best to push you out of my thoughts, too, but somehow you kept coming back. As that golden smoke twined around me, my conscience was plagued by a buzz of pestering horseflies, and those horseflies were particular moments from the past that seemed like carbon copies of the moment we were living now, almost duplicates, I don’t know, Agustina princess, I guess that looking back it would be fair to say I’ve always abandoned you when you needed me, that I’ve let you down at every crucial moment.