Loquela (12 page)

THE NOVEL

Carlos found a torn-out page from his novel on his desk. He was surprised to see it there, discarded, and when he read it he was baffled: it was a page from an old notepad, which he'd glued to the back cover of his notebook, where in two paragraphs the detective story made its first appearance and which one day he'd crumpled up and pitilessly tossed in the waste basket; the character left his house on a Sunday morning to buy the newspaper, still unsettled by the sleepless night he'd spent unable to produce a decent article for a crime-story magazine that had offered him a job. Not only would it be enjoyable to read the travel supplement and the reports about economic conspiracies, he could also find material in the police report, which offered detailed analyses of all kinds of crimes on that particular day. He crossed the street and paid the old man at the kiosk, turned around, and traveled half a block flipping through the headlines. On the corner he saw the figure of an albino girl, tall and thin, wearing a summer dress and carrying a notebook in one hand. He considered the paleness of her skin.

The red light gave way to green and the girl crossed the street; just then a car accelerated, not paying attention. She froze, the car didn't even brake when she let out an ear-splitting scream, brushing against
her and disappearing two blocks down. The albino girl fell to her knees, covering her face with her notebook. He asked her if she was okay, helping her up. When he stepped back a little, he saw that her tear-stained face was scrutinizing him. She murmured something incoherent, maybe a whimper, and then, as if he'd been the one trying to hurt her, took off running. He was left standing in the middle of the street, not knowing what to think. He found the albino girl's notebook on the ground and picked it up. He walked home thinking about coincidence: just before the accident he'd actually wondered what it was that girl might be writing in those pages.

Carlos stopped reading. He recalled that earlier in the week he'd heard different people say that coincidences don't exist. But what would happen if a third person forced someone to realize those unknown desires, he wondered, even if it was an accident. In that first version of the novel's opening, the character had wanted to help the albino girl and yet he'd ended up delving into her pages; he thought about Elisa, about himself, and about the albino girl Violeta. He also reviewed the pages he was writing now: convinced that the killer would act that afternoon, the protagonist ended up shooting the girl, passing from investigator to investigated, from innocent to criminal with a single nervous movement of his hand. Someone's eyes pulled him from his reflections. A man was watching him from the street, standing in front of his window; he didn't bother to draw the curtain, instead he noted in the margin of the torn out page that the man's face and eyes resembled his own. And when he looked up there was nobody there. Leaning on the window frame, he scanned the sidewalk for the man in vain: it must've been a neurotic, some passerby who wanted to examine the expression on the face that watched him obsessively from the window of some random house. When he was five years old, Carlos
was convinced that every night a stranger watched him from the hallway while he slept; the paradox was that, if he stayed awake to prove there wasn't anyone there, the terror kept him from lifting his head off the pillow and looking out into the hallway. Until he fell asleep.

THE RECIPIENT

            
September 21
^st

            
4:15
A.M.

“Biblical statues tasting the salt in our own mouths, twisted and borne away by the wind in the movement of turning around, and yet, for a second joyful statues, nonetheless.” (A phrase shouted over and over in my dream, my own cries wake me and oblige me to write this down.)

            
September 24
^th

(Every muscle in my body is tired. This is a final attempt to stay on this page. I could force myself to sleep, I could stare at the ceiling all afternoon, I could just let the phone ring [like right now], wondering who's calling. I hope it's Alicia, but know it's not. She reappears a few days later when I've already slept off the intoxication of her and not even a trace of her mouth remains, talking to me between ironic laughs. I bet it's some company calling to sell
me something, or my mom reaching out to say hello, or some friend wanting to grab a beer. I want no more nights, no more sleepless nights, just radiant spring days lying in a plaza, the smell of freshly cut grass, Alicia's quick, possessive eyes looking at me; her short eyelashes that make her seem like she never sleeps.)

The Little One asks me if I want to see her friends again. Of course she was emphatic; she was confirming that I was as fearful as she thought after the way I reacted on Saturday, when I left, running down the bar's stairs, disgusted and bewildered, but not afraid: fear, that sensation that precedes sickness, disaster, disintegration, is a resource for those who need preparation for things. I've always been direct, right when I'm about to explode I open my eyes as if I'd slept from sunrise to sunset, and my own inability to prepare myself for the worst always surprises me. On Saturday, heading down the path that leads to the abandoned part of the hill, I found shreds of clothing, crumpled up papers, candles, kilos of hair, unused videotapes; The Little One had told me before about the Corporalists, that the boy had been expelled from the Universidad de Neutria after putting on that spectacle in the middle of the quad, the day that Violeta wanted to come (“to die” they told me) to Santiago. The story of a depraved professor, of a fake erotic manifesto written to take revenge against someone, I'm not going to spend my time talking about what happened or about their reason for fleeing to the one city they most hated, because there are things she won't tell me yet. The curiosity led me to take the hand of The Little One, and I believed us to be in the middle of a field when suddenly we appeared on Américo Vespucio and the cars did what they could to avoid hitting the running drunks. I'm keeping the rest to myself, I'll just add that when I woke up
I was so sick I could barely lift my head; I bolted out the door of that dive bar, I couldn't look at the stairs anymore, exhausted and puking, I went out into the street. Sunday morning, downtown, I don't remember the street name (Puente, Catedral, Ahumada), all I heard were a few bored police officers harassing a beggar, sleeping on a bench; the cries reached my ears and I couldn't comprehend why they were hitting him, nor could I distinguish between the cobblestones that passed before my eyes as I started to run. I couldn't help recalling The Little One's contortions on top of the table in the bar, the fat body of the man who cornered her against one wall; I understood that my decision in the spring to be someone else had come to an end at the point in the night when the Corporalists started to play word games and make bets; when the boy said
delight
, The Little One took off her last article of clothing. I woke up that Sunday afternoon in my own bed and allowed sleep to pull me away on other adventures where I wouldn't stop to consider the implausibility of a phantasmagoric Victorian intrigue unfolding in my uncle's country house, where an albino girl, fierce (sum of sums), and I were the only suspects in our own murder. I saw myself getting up the next day, slow and thirsty, I saw myself sitting in front of the notebook, the fucking notebook made everything stand still, the notebook where I watched myself lament not finding the precise expression to narrate the character's disintegration.

(Last night's party was in an old bar downtown, where an acquaintance of Alicia's was exhibiting photos of monsters drawn by a childish hand, tempera and pastel pencils across the walls of squalid public bathrooms. A rapper improvised exclamations in counterpoint to two cellos and a violin, while backstage someone
simulated powerful electronic rhythms with their lips and throat so that at the climax a tenor sax drifted out from behind the curtains. I'd escaped this apartment at last; in my inertia I'd thought that—since I needed to buy a new pen so I could keep on writing—a walk would be my only respite: I wanted to write until someone found me collapsed on top of the page, to wake up in a white bed, to have Alicia come visit me in the hospital and, before leaving, for her to confess to me that she'd been the one who'd found me at the desk, my face streaked with ink, that she'd called my parents, and that before the ambulance arrived she'd gathered together my pages and gone home to read them in peace. She wouldn't hate me for speaking of her to the infinite (blonde, brunette, short or tall: the same idealization), she'd understand and yet she'd feel a little fear. Fear. So much fear, in fact, that she'd let my period of convalescence elapse without visiting me, forgetting about me, writing a little novel copied from my deliriums. (Forgive me, she'd write on the envelope that'd come to me in the mail.) This is what I wanted: for the world to destroy itself if I enumerated every part of it. For Santiago, so destitute in the empty pages of my diary, to at last be filled with inhabitants, with a river and a history; I thought that I should get up and go out to buy a pen, but the intercom buzzed and I jumped, frightened. It was Alicia, she was downstairs in the lobby, and as usual she wanted me to go with her to a party. I had to come, she said. I closed the notebook, got dressed quickly, walked to the door wondering how much of me would still react to the bodies of other people.)

We laughed. What, she thought I was going to stay inside sleeping because of the disgusting behavior of some drunks? Or better: The Little One and I laughed as we ran down the stairs and got
in her car. I grabbed her around the waist to kiss her, she twisted away, without taking her eyes from the stoplight at Américo Vespucio she asked me not to be a coward today, at her friend's birthday party. Be quiet, I responded; it was just that, a couple nights before, I'd been dumbfounded to see her like that, on top of a table surrounded by executives toasting a fat man, who was vomiting bile, glasses breaking on the floor while her hands were pinned down onto the sharp edge of the table by the knees of a man wearing a tie. The man had approached her, run his fingers along her fleshy arm, and whispered something in her ear. He'd call her later to have us join them in a private room. What name had he uttered in that moment? She didn't answer. We parked, went up to the house's gate, knocked. No one came out to let us in for quite a while. The Little One looked at me, I took her hand and squeezed it, demanding that she tell me her name.

(I danced with S almost all night, we had a good time together, thrilled by the stupid movements extremities make when there's something driving them: music that takes hold of the hips and arms and chest, as if a different type of pounding blood animated us and the autonomy of the organism were lost when confronted with this pulse that comes from outside, that connects and disconnects us not only to the person smiling in front of us, but also to the couple whose backs touch ours because of a misstep, to the passionate kiss over there in the corner, to hands that form bodies when brought together, and to the mouths that open yet say nothing; there's only one body that's separate, Alicia's body, dancing around whomever she likes, never in front of them; she joins a circle of bodies clapping their hands for a wild dancer, comes toward us, makes a half turn and I don't want to smile; I smile at S, the three
of us dance together, she's lost again in the confusion of heads and necks. When S goes to the bathroom, I stay on the dance floor and Alicia reappears beside me, distant because we're never able to bring our movements together to form a single figure, a figure that moves forward, draws away and comes together and laughs, but never stops. The body is movement, its only rest is death or dreaming: Alicia and I discussed this the other day. Now, on the other hand, when we try to dance, the silence is the moment I trip and almost fall; in the blank spaces of our conversations each of us reproduces the true message on our own; I don't understand what it is she's doing, but I marvel at the confusion her movements provoke in me. I go up to her and kiss her: there's no possible interpretation, I'm separated from you if you stop reading these words and start dancing; Alicia moves away, she's disappointed by our stiffness. Later I find her sitting down and offer her my beer. Why the long face? I ask. She answers with a monosyllable and I, without having planned it, respond with a phrase that she likes. The moment is overwhelming: she and I in the absolute ubiquity of our dialogue, I think about how much I love her and for an unexpected second she rests her head on my shoulder. All of a sudden we realize what we're doing, we shake ourselves and talk again about some random thing; the contact provokes separation.)

The Little One didn't want to tell me her name right away. She opened her mouth with surprise, but then a blond man appeared and invited us to follow him through the gate without saying a word. Later, she licked my ear a little as she told me I could call her whatever I wanted, and I was delighted by that party where dozens of couples groped each other on the couches. With my hand on her back I led her to the center of the living room. She
came close, put her arms around my neck, and we swayed to a soft music. It must sound different from how it was; the Corporalists of Santiago rarely use words. They were there to enjoy themselves, The Little One explained. Mouths opening only to share their partner's mouth, tongues fulfilling their roles while fingers weren't instruments, but parts of foreign bodies, like the knees, the waist, the neck, the eyelids, the groin. A solitary woman fell down, asleep; she was useless there. A man lifted her in his arms, she curled against that unfamiliar chest moving off to one of the bedrooms; the two of them were sleeping deeply in one of the beds; or maybe he was shaking her violently, then came a slap, she shoved him and ran crying out to the patio. At the end of the night, the couple lay peacefully on a rug in a room on the second floor: it's love, The Little One interrupted at sunrise, when I told her that I'd spent the entire night thinking of the perfect names with which she and I would be happy.