Purgatory (18 page)

The afternoon is placid, even the Delaware does not seem to flow. The round, grey cloud that looks like a sheep still hovers. Everything persists in its essence, except Emilia. The memory of her mother has passed over her like a shadow and changed her. She has barely sipped the Chianti, barely touched the plate of pasta. All she wants is for Simón to talk to her. But Simón is still staring at the unmoving river, he does not speak. He seemed excited that morning when he told her the story of the writer with his slate, but then this expression returned, the indifferent expression that so reminds her of her sick mother. It’s unfair, Emilia thinks again, she does not even know the storms he has weathered. Seven years in an old people’s home. It is the sort of place she has only ever briefly visited, and even then, every time she left she found it difficult to shake off the feeling of anxiety. ‘So where was the retirement home, Simón?’ she asks. When he does not answer, she decides to tell him about the terrible dream she had two nights before she encountered him in Trudy Tuesday. She says:

‘I saw myself turning the corner onto an empty street. You were striding along on the opposite pavement, head down. “Simón!” I shouted. You crossed the street, came up to me, I gave you my hand. “What a pleasure to see you again, Señor Cardoso,” I said with a formality that seemed natural in the dream. “I don’t know whether you remember, but I was married to you.” “Oh, really?” you said. “That’s nice.” “I was married to you.” “I don’t know what else to say on the subject, señora. The dead have no memory. Now, I’m afraid I have to go, I’m in rather a hurry.” “Please remember,” I begged you. “Remember me, Señor Cardoso.” I made a gesture you didn’t understand. The deserted street filled with voices, with people jostling for space. My parents, Chela, the cartographers at Hammond, Nancy, the people from the hills above Caracas, James Stewart’s character from
Vertigo
and behind them a numberless, infinite multitude. All clamouring for my attention while I tried to stop you from leaving, but you had already left without saying goodbye. I’ve never been as surrounded by people as I was in that dream, and I didn’t like it. When I woke up, it occurred to me that the most unbearable loneliness is not being able to be alone.’

Before the night draws in, they head back to Highland Park in the Altima. Emilia drives in silence. She does not know what to say to her mute husband. She has already told him that first thing on Monday she will go with him to pick up his papers, his social security card, his driver’s licence if he has one. She should ask him where he left them, but not now. Now, as they cross the bridge over the Raritan, they see brightly lit stalls on the bank: tombolas, bingo, stalls selling crafts, a string of coloured Japanese lanterns swaying in the wind. ‘What do you say we go down and look at the stalls later?’ she asks. The only fair she is familiar with is the one they hold on Raritan Avenue on the Fourth of July. She never heard of one on the banks of the river, still less in November when the rains come unannounced. This has to be the first. If it fails, there won’t be another one. ‘Shall we go down and take a look?’ ‘Later,’ Simón says, ‘later.’

When they arrive at the apartment on North 4th Avenue, however, he shows no sign of wanting to go out again. He takes off his shoes, reheats the coffee from breakfast and toasts himself a slice of rye bread. As he sits down at the table, he looks as though he is about to speak. He reaches a hand out towards Emilia and strokes her. He says:

‘The writer with the slate who used to pace the corridors of the old folks’ home also told me a dream. It wasn’t a dream exactly, it was the memory of a recurring dream. A huge black dog was jumping on him and licking him. Inside the dog were all the things that had never existed and even those that no one even imagined could exist. “What does not exist is constantly seeking a father,” said the dog, “someone to give it consciousness.” “A god?” asked the writer. “No, it is searching for any father,” answered the dog. “The things that do not exist are much more numerous than those that manage to exist. That which will never exist is infinite. The seeds that do not find soil and water and do not become plants, the lives that go unborn, the characters that remain unwritten.” “The rocks that have crumbled to dust?” “No, those rocks once were. I am speaking only of what might have been but never was,” said the dog. “The brother that never was because you existed in his place. If you had been conceived seconds before or seconds after, you would not be who you are, you would not know that your existence vanished into nowhere without you even realising. That which will never be knows that it might have been. This is why novels are written: to make amends in this world for the perpetual absence of what never existed.” The dog vanished into the air and the writer woke up.’

Without Emilia asking him, he tells her where he has been all these years. She listens to the sentences fall as though she knows them, sentences that form stories that seem to be projected on a screen. It is the same deceptive impression she had as images rained upon her in her cell in Tucumán.

‘I don’t know how I ended up in the retirement home, and I don’t think it matters. The manager was expecting me. The building was surrounded by iron railings. Above the wooden door I saw an opaque glass canopy. All the rooms had high ceilings, beds without headboards and various crucifixes. All the rooms looked out onto courtyards with palms and ipe trees where the patients took the air and the sun. The courtyard I was to look after had large mosaics with ornate patterns and edging tiles. The men were separated from the women, and in the seven years I spent there, there was never any communication between the sexes. The men did not talk much, we played checkers, watched television. I saw you on the news once, you and your father.’

Emilia is surprised. ‘On the news? It can’t have been me.’

‘It was you,’ Simón insists. ‘It was during one of the World Cup matches, the first or the last. Your father was seated on the main stand behind the
comandantes
, who kept turning round to talk to him. You were on the grandstand opposite yawning. You were wearing a blue-and-white scarf and a white wool cap. You were yawning and laughing.’

‘It was me? How embarrassing.’

‘It was you.’

‘No, during those months I had stopped being me. I started to lose myself when you left. Or, what is worse, I became someone I didn’t want to be. It’s too late, Simón. I’m sixty years old. You’ve already given me more than I deserve, you have made me happy. You can go now, you can save yourself. I’m not worth anything. I don’t even matter to me.’

‘That’s not true. If it were true, I wouldn’t have come back. You started to lose yourself, as you rightly say: that’s a different matter. You lost a part of yourself. With what remains, you can start again. Don’t undervalue yourself. I love you.’

‘I love you too, I love you so much, so much. I don’t know what to do with myself.’

‘What to do? The life you’re living has diminished you. I’ve seen the pile of useless coupons you collect to buy things you’ll never eat: money-off vouchers for pickles, Campbell’s soup, chocolate puddings. And the bingo cards. And the false nails. And the friends you’ve chosen. Instead of being your mirror, they are your humiliation. What have you done with your life, Emilia?’

‘Nothing, that’s the worst of it. I’ve done nothing with it. It is my life that has done everything to me.’

Some weeks after the visit to Dr Schroeder, no trace of the mother’s tumour remained. The doctors who had recommended surgery performed two further sigmoidoscopies and incredulously admitted that the tissue now appeared to be healthy. In all other ways, she had got worse. She still did not recognise anyone, she confused the past and the present, her memories were muddled and she was doubly incontinent. Emilia had to go back to her job at the Automobile Club and could not continue caring for her. At the nursing home, she had met two excellent nurses, who were fond of her mother and agreed to care for her in alternating shifts. But Dr Dupuy had had enough. He considered that he had done more than was necessary to respect his wife’s unshakeable will to live and that it was now time to shut her away in a home to be cared for by professionals. Had Ethel decided to be immortal, there she would be able to enjoy a perfect eternity, with no memory, no world. She greeted all displays of affection with the same indifference. When Chela kissed her forehead her expression was exactly the same as when the Eel’s wife stroked her hands. She greeted everything with a beatific, meaningless smile. What difference did it make, then, whether she was cared for by her daughters or by nurses who were strangers to her? The nurses, at least, would clean her up more promptly. Chela insisted that a nursing home was the best place for her. Her friends knew nursing homes where patients were like guests in five-star hotels. Emilia, on the other hand, had heard horror stories about such places: old people left to God’s tender mercies, ill-fed, their sheets and mattresses never washed or aired, human beings tossed onto the scrapheap and left to die. ‘You’re both exaggerating,’ Dr Dupuy insisted. ‘I will make sure that Ethel is in the best facility in Buenos Aires. Chelita is getting married soon and what are we supposed to do with her on the wedding day, how do we protect her from the commotion, the telephone, the guests? I always know what’s for the best,’ said Dupuy. It was a phrase Chela loved to repeat: ‘You know me – whatever
Papá
decides is for the best.’

In a country that had been many years divided, Dupuy had long since learned to predict the winning side and distance himself in time from those about to lose. When he confined his wife in the institution in Parque Chacabuco he was proud that he had never yet been mistaken. He had succeeded in persuading Marcelito Echarri to propose to his daughter Chela (he could hardly claim the boy was in love) and agree to marry her. Even her father could not deceive Chela. She was impulsive, thoughtless and at the least effort declared herself exhausted. Marcelito, on the other hand, had graduated from Wharton with honours and had the makings of a first-class son-in-law. He had worked as a financial adviser in Miami but wanted to move back to Buenos Aires. When Dupuy discovered this, he immediately hired him to write a financial column for
La República
. In his first article, Echarri advised state-run companies to take advantage of easy foreign lines of credit which offered advantageous rates of interest. Now was the time to take a gamble, was his advice. And he was right. The companies secured loans at no risk to themselves since the Central Bank acted as guarantor. They made fortunes and gave Dupuy unlimited access to the private jets and the villas in Europe. ‘The respect I enjoy now is fully deserved,’ Dupuy told Echarri. ‘After so many years without one false step, people finally respect and fear me.’

There was only one mistake for which he reproached himself, but he never spoke of it to anyone. It had happened when, against his better judgement, he had allowed his eldest daughter to marry an insignificant cartographer whose background seemed so disreputable that he did not even bother to have it checked out. This was a serious mistake. The young man had been a student leader in the geography department, a member of the youth wing of the Montoneros and a left-wing idealist so arrogant he had dared to expound on his ideas at family gatherings. Out of force of habit, he initiated an investigation, but the files with the relevant information arrived too late, after the wedding Mass, when it was no longer possible for man to put asunder what God had joined together.

All his life, Dupuy had remained true to his Christian principles and he was convinced that this was why God was showering him with blessings. He expected surprises from Emilia, from his lunatic wife, but not from Chela. And yet it was she who put his faith to the test.

A few months before the date set for the wedding, she began waking up with dark circles under her eyes, she would wander around the house not bothering to get dressed until late in the afternoon, lock herself in the bathroom for hours at a time, she did not even bother to answer the telephone, which rang at all hours of the day and night. The telephone had been her passion, there was nothing she enjoyed more than talking to her girlfriends about the details of her trousseau, about what to wear on the beach, how many pairs of sandals to take, whether Bahía or Ipanema was the more romantic place for a honeymoon. The wedding day was drawing near and still Chela sat staring at the television, watching soap operas all afternoon, as though she had decided to retreat from the world. There was little difference between her and a nun. She only got to her feet when Marcelo Echarri arrived, as he did punctually every day after work at
La República
. She would shut herself away with him in her room, which smelled of damp and dirty laundry, and they would talk and talk for hours. Emilia was intrigued to know what kept them so occupied and finally resolved to ask her sister with whom she had not exchanged a word for several months.

‘I don’t know what sort of reaction you’re waiting for,’ she said. ‘Whatever is going on can’t be so serious that you have to lie around in bed all day as though you were dying. If you’re not in love with Marcelo any more, that’s easily fixed. Postpone the wedding, or cancel it. A mistake like this is something you’ll end up paying for your whole life. He’s strong, he’s intelligent, he’ll get over it—’

‘You don’t understand,’ Chela interrupted her. ‘It’s serious, it’s really serious. I can’t get married. I’d be a laughing stock. I’m pregnant. If you look hard, I’m already showing. I’ve been wearing loose dresses – luckily, the peasant style is in fashion right now, ruffles and flounces and overskirts, but this fucking bump just keeps growing.’ She sobbed inconsolably. ‘Who’s the father?’ Emilia asked, alarmed. ‘Who do you think it is?’ Chela shouted. ‘It’s Marcelo. What do you take me for, a whore?’ ‘So, what’s the problem then? He doesn’t want to marry you any more? He doesn’t want the baby, doesn’t want you?’ ‘No, no, God, it’s so difficult trying to explain things to you. It’s hard to believe we’re sisters. I’m the one who doesn’t want the baby. I want to have an abortion before it’s too late. My last period was three months ago. I can’t get married like this, I don’t want four hundred people watching me walk down the aisle with a big belly. Can you imagine the gossip, the whispering? Just like you a minute ago, people will wonder whether Marcelo is the father, whether
Papá
is forcing him to marry me. Can you see me walking down the aisle in a white dress seven months pregnant? It would be in all the magazines, I’d look like a fool.’ ‘No one will dare publish a thing,’ said Emilia. ‘
Papá
will quash any rumours. You need to get a grip. Children are not something to be hidden or aborted. You need to tell
Papá
before your gynaecologist does.’