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Epub ISBN: 9781407054094

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Published by Vintage 1991

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About the Author

Manuel Puig was born in 1932 in a small town in the Argentine pampas. He studied philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires, and in 1956 won a scholarship from the Italian Institute in Buenos Aires and chose to pursue studies in film direction at the Cinecitta in Rome. There he worked in films until 1962, where he began to write his first novel. Exiled from Argentina, he settled in New York City in 1963. Puig’s novels –
Betrayed by Rita Hayworth, Heartbreak Tango, The Buenos Aires Affair, Kiss of the Spider Woman
and
Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages
– have been translated into fourteen languages and secured his international reputation. He died in July 1990.

ALSO BY MANUEL PUIG

Betrayed by Rita Hayworth

Heartbreak Tango

The Buenos Aires Affair

Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages

CHAPTER
1

—Something a little strange, that’s what you notice, that she’s not a woman like all the others. She looks fairly young, twenty-five, maybe a little more, petite face, a little catlike, small turned-up nose. The shape of her face, it’s . . . more roundish than oval, broad forehead, pronounced cheeks too but then they come down to a point, like with cats.

—What about her eyes?

—Clear, pretty sure they’re green, half-closed to focus better on the drawing. She looks at her subject: the black panther at the zoo, which was quiet at first, stretched out in its cage. But when the girl made a noise with her easel and chair, the panther spotted her and began pacing back and forth in its cage and to growl at the girl, who up to then was still having trouble with shading in the drawing.

—Couldn’t the animal smell her before that?

—No, there’s a big slab of meat in the cage, that’s all it can smell. The keeper drops the meat near the bars, and it blocks out any smell from outside, that’s the point, so the panther won’t get excited. And noticing the anger of the wild animal the girl begins to work more feverishly, with faster and faster strokes, and she draws the face of an animal that’s also a devil. And the panther watches her, a male panther, and it’s hard to tell if he’s watching to tear her to pieces and make a meal of her, or if he’s driven by some other, still uglier instinct.

—Nobody else at the zoo that day?

—No, almost nobody. It’s winter, it’s freezing. The trees are bare in the park. There’s a cold wind blowing. So the girl’s practically by herself, sitting there on the folding chair she brought out herself, along with the easel to clip her drawing paper to. A little further off, near the giraffe cage, there’s some boys with their schoolteacher, but they go away quickly, the cold’s too much for them.

—And she’s not cold?

—No, she’s not thinking about the cold, it’s as if she’s in some other world, all wrapped up in herself drawing the panther.

—If she’s wrapped up inside herself, she’s not in some other world. That’s a contradiction.

—Yes, that’s right, she’s all wrapped up in herself, lost in that world she carries inside her, that she’s just beginning to discover. She has her legs crossed, her shoes are black, thick high heels, open toed, with dark-polished toenails sticking out. Her stockings glitter, that kind they turned inside out when the sheen went out of style, her legs look flushed and silky, you can’t tell if it’s the stockings or her skin.

—Look, remember what I told you, no erotic descriptions. This isn’t the place for it.

—Whatever you want. Okay then, she’s wearing gloves, but to get on with her drawing she slips off the right one. Her fingernails are longish, they’re painted almost black, and the fingers are white, until the cold begins to turn them slightly blue. She stops working for a minute, puts one hand inside her coat to warm it. It’s a heavy coat, black plush, very padded in the shoulders, but thick plush, more like the coat of a Persian cat, no, a lot thicker. And who’s there behind her? Someone tries to light a cigarette, the wind blowing out the flame of the match.

—Who is it?

—Wait. She hears the striking of the match and it startles her, she spins around. It’s a guy, kind of good-looking, not a pretty boy, just a likable face, hat brim turned down and a baggy overcoat, full-cut trousers. He touches the brim of his hat by way of introduction and apologizes, tells her it’s sensational that drawing. She sees the guy’s okay, face gives him away, he’s the quiet, understanding type. With her fingers she touches up the hairdo a little, partly messed by the wind. It’s cut in bangs with curls, and down to the shoulders, that’s how they used to wear it, with little curls at the ends too, almost like a permanent wave.

—I picture her dark-looking, not too tall, really nice figure, and she moves like a cat. A real piece.

—Who didn’t want to get aroused?

—Go on.

—She answers that he didn’t frighten her. But with all this, and the business of fixing her hair, the page works loose and the wind blows it away. The fellow runs and catches it, he brings it back to the girl and offers an apology. She says it’s nothing, and by the accent he can tell she’s a foreigner. The girl explains to him she’s a refugee, she studied fine arts in Budapest, when the war broke out she left for New York. He asks her if she’s homesick for her city, and it’s as if a dark cloud passes over her eyes, the whole expression of her face darkens and she says she doesn’t come from a city, she’s from the mountains, way off in the Carpathians.

—Where Dracula comes from.

—Mmm-hmm, those mountains with dark forests, where wild beasts live who go mad with hunger in the wintertime and have to come down into the villages to kill. And people are scared to death, and hang sheep and other dead animals in their doorways and make vows, for protection. After all that, the fellow wants to see her again, and she tells him she’ll be back to draw again tomorrow afternoon, like almost every day recently, whenever there’s been sun. Then you see him in his studio, he’s an architect, the next afternoon with his architect colleagues and his assistant, a young woman, who’s an architect too. But when three o’clock comes and not much daylight’s left, he gets the urge to put away his compass and ruler and go over to the zoo, almost directly across the way in Central Park. The assistant asks him where he’s going, and why he’s so happy. He treats her like a friend but it’s obvious that deep down she’s in love with him, even though she hides it.

—She’s a dog?

—No, friendly face, chestnut hair, nothing out of this world, but nice enough. He leaves without giving her the pleasure of knowing where he’s going. It upsets her but she doesn’t let anybody see and buries herself in work so that she doesn’t get more depressed. At the zoo it still hasn’t begun to get dark yet, it’s been a day with very strange light for wintertime, everything seems to stand out more sharply than ever, the black bars, the white tile walls of the cages, the gravel looks white too, and the leafless trees gray with no leaves. And the bloodred eyes of the beasts. But the girl, whose name is Irena, isn’t there. Days go by and the architect can’t forget her, until one day walking down some fashionable avenue something in the window of an art gallery catches his attention. They’re showing works by an artist who draws nothing but panthers. The architect walks in, Irena’s there, getting congratulated from all sides. And I don’t know exactly what happens then.

—Try to remember.

—Wait a minute . . . I don’t know if this is when someone gives her a greeting that scares her . . . Anyway, then the architect congratulates her too and notices something different in Irena, something like happiness, she’s got no dark look in her eyes like the first time. And he invites her to a restaurant and she walks out on all those critics, and they go off together. She looks as though she can walk down the street for the first time, like she’d been a prisoner, and now she’s free to go wherever she wants.

—But you said he takes her to a restaurant, not wherever she wants.

—Hey, don’t take me so literally. Anyhow, when he stops in front of some restaurant, Hungarian or Rumanian, something like that, she starts feeling funny again. He thought she’d enjoy being taken someplace like that, with her own kind of people, but it backfires on him. And he figures something’s going on and asks her. She lies and says something about memories of the war, which is still going strong at the time. Then he tells her they can go someplace else for lunch. But she realizes that he, the poor guy, doesn’t have much time, he’s on his lunch break and has to go back to the studio later. So she gets a grip on herself and walks into the restaurant, and everything’s fine, because the atmosphere’s relaxed and the food’s good, and she’s back to feeling how pleasant life is.

—And him?

—He’s happy, because he sees how to please him she got her complex under control, just the way he planned, to go there in the first place, to please her. The kind of thing when two people get to know each other and things start working. And he’s so swept off his feet by her he decides not to go back to work that afternoon. He tells her how he happened by the gallery by chance, that he was actually out on another errand to buy a present.

—For the other girl, the assistant.

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