The Seamstress and the Wind (9 page)

20

WHEN SHE WOKE
the next morning she thought she was at home, as often happens to travelers . . . Except for her it was not a brief, fleeting state, a short lapse of incomprehension . . . instead, the strangeness of it settled in her mind like a world, and stayed there. Under normal circumstances, she was in her bed, her bed was in her bedroom, her bedroom was in her house, and her house was in Pringles. Today, however, it looked like that whole chain of familiarity had been broken.
Th
e sky was very blue, and the sun was a white dot set in the most distant part of it. She turned to her right, and there was no Ramón beside her, and beyond that no child’s bed, no sleeping Omar. To her left there was no dresser with its mirror on top . . . and, therefore, no reflection of the window over Omar’s bed . . . In a word, she was not at home. She was not anywhere. An immense space surrounded her on all sides.
Th
e only thing that seemed to be in its place was the time, although not even the late dawn in that place had a particular time: one could call it a lapse in eternity. It didn’t feel like time to get up . . . She stretched.

Days of idleness in Patagonia . . .

When she put on her dress she could see now, in the light, what a greasy disaster it was. Her shoes were impossibly covered with dust, she could have written on them with her finger.
Th
e wind, so helpful for other things, had not taken care of her clothes, probably because she hadn’t asked him to. It occurred to her that he must be like those maids who are very hardworking and efficient, but lack initiative, and have to be told to do everything.

“Good morning, Delia.”

“Ah, um . . . Good morning.”

“Did you sleep well?”

“Perfectly. I wanted . . .”

“One moment. I have to take this.”

Th
e bed and everything on it flew away at full speed and was lost beyond the horizon. “Such a hurry,” Delia thought. In an instant the wind was back.

“Delia, I have to tell you something I would have preferred to keep to myself, but it’s better for you to know, just in case.”

“About what? Don’t scare me . . .” Delia was already thinking of catastrophes, as was her custom.

“Last night,” began Ventarrón, “I went out for a stroll, after you fell asleep, and over there I saw a light, and got closer to look.
Th
ere’s a hotel there, on top of a little mountain, and at first I thought it was on fire, it glowed so brightly. But there was no fire. I went down and looked in the windows. It wasn’t a party either. It was a radioactive kind of light, pulsing, pulsing so much it shook the whole hotel . . . A red, horrible light, and the temperature had risen to several thousand degrees . . . As I had no intention of becoming an atomic wind, I moved back, and stayed there watching. It went from bad to worse. Even I started to become frightened, though there’s no one better at getting away than me. But I know there are distant terrors from which escape is useless. And then, all at once, the whole hotel fell in, melted like a snowflake in the sun . . . And there it was — free, burning and horrible — the Monster . . . the child who should never have been born . . .”

His voice, already naturally low, had taken on a from-beyond-the-grave resonance, very pessimistic. His last words gave Delia goose bumps along her spine.

“What child . . .? What monster . . .?”

“
Th
ere is a legend that says that one day, in a hot springs hotel in this area, a child will be born who is gifted with all the power of transformation, a being that will encapsulate all of the winds in the world, an über-wind, and therefore terrifyingly ugly . . . At least for me, and for you, because what in me is exterior, in him is interior, fostering all kinds of deformations . . . Now you see why it impressed me so.”

“And what happened?”

“Nothing. I ran away, and here I am.
Th
e problem is that the Monster is loose, and he’s looking for you.”

“For me?! Why me?”

“Because that’s what the legend says,” answered the wind, cryptically. “And it’s obvious that the legend has come true.”

“But where could this Monster have come from?”

“Evolution follows no path.”

“And the truck driver is looking for me too, no?”

“I’ll take care of the truck driver, he’s not a problem.”

“And the Monster?”

Silence.

“
Th
at’s something else,” said Ventarrón.

Delia lowered her head, overwhelmed.

“Changing the subject,” said the wind. “Last night I saw another thing which enchanted me: a great wedding dress, folding and unfolding at thirty thousand feet up, sailing south . . .”

“A wedding dress? With nylon voile cuffs, satin . . .?”

“Yes! But what do I know about fabrics! Why do you ask?”

“Because it’s mine. I lost it yesterday, or the day before
yesterday . . .”

“Yours how? Aren’t you married? Didn’t you tell me you had a son?”

“No. I mean I was sewing it, for a girl who just . . .”

“Don’t tell me you’re a seamstress?!”

“Yes.”

Th
e wind almost fell over. He took a while to recover.

“You’re the seamstress then? Ramón Siffoni’s wife?”

“Yes. I thought you knew that.”

“Now I’m starting to understand. It’s all beginning to line up.
Th
e seamstress . . . and the wind.”

“
Th
e two of us.”

“
Th
e two of us . . .”

Th
e wind was in love. He’d been in love for all eternity, or at least for all of his wind-eternity. And now that the story was starting to unfold before him, he found it suddenly too real, shrill, paradoxically unpredictable . . .

“Sir . . .” Delia interrupted his meditation.

“Yes?”

“You told me you could bring me what I asked you for?”

“. . .”

“Would you bring me the dress?”

“What do you want it for?”

Yes, well put, what for? It didn’t look like Miss Balero, who was now black and in the power of that savage truck driver, was going to need it. But one never knew; in any case, she could charge for the labor and turn it over to Miss Balero’s mother; it was already practically done. Besides, it was reasonable to ask for it, since it was her work.

“
Th
e customer provided the fabric,” she said, “and she’s going to want it back.”

“All right, but give me time. Who knows where it might be by now.”

“One more little thing, if it’s not too much trouble. I brought a sewing kit, and I lost it, surely the things are spread all over . . . Could you gather them up and bring me the box?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m very good at finding lost needles in Patagonia.”

“What I don’t know is what to do in the meantime.”

“I never get bored,” said the wind.

“Neither do I, when I’m at home. But here . . .” she whimpered again.

“I already told you I can bring you your house, with everything in it.”

“No, no . . . I don’t want it!”

She could think of nothing more depressing than her house set there in the middle of the desert; for her the house was the street too, the neighbors, the neighborhood. Offering her the house by itself was like trying to pay her with an inconceivable one-sided coin.

“We’d be very comfortable, Delia, you here in your house, cleaning, cooking, sewing. I would keep you company, bring you everything you wanted . . . we would live happily, safely . . .”

Delia was terrified. Ventarrón’s intentions were becoming clear, and they filled her with dread. Was it possible that a meteorological phenomenon had fallen in love with her? And besides, he was contradicting himself: how was she going to be safe?
Th
ere was an insane truck driver, and on top of that a monster out to destroy her! It was not a very soothing perspective. And there were her husband and son. She didn’t want to talk about that with the wind, but he brought the subject up.

“Would you like your husband to come get you?”

“. . .”

“He won’t be able to, Delia. He tried, but his vice intervened (you already know what I’m talking about), and he lost the truck.”

“Really?”

“And he won’t be able to get it back.
Th
at little red truck you were so accustomed to is now invisible, and no one will ever drive it again. Ramón Siffoni has been left on his feet forever.”

I will never return to Pringles! thought Delia with desperation. She hated the wind for his sadism.

“I have to ask you something, Delia. Are you in love with your husband? Did you marry for love?”

“And why else would I get married?”

“To keep from ending up an old maid.”

She didn’t deign to respond. She might not have been able to even if she’d wanted, because she had a knot in her throat.

“Do you love him?”

“Yes.”

“But you’ve never told him so.”

“It’s not necessary in marriage.”

“How unromantic you are!” A pause. “Do you want to tell him?”

In a fit, Delia forgot her prudence.

“If only he were here I’d tell him! If only!”

“He doesn’t have to be here. I could carry your words to the other side of the world, if necessary.” Another pause.
Th
e wind waited. “Tell him. Be brave and tell him.”

Delia raised her head and looked at the horizon, out there at the end of the plateau. It all seemed very small, and yet she knew it was very big. Could her voice cross it? Her voice was in her husband’s heart . . . How big the world was! And how far away she was! Where had she come to rest? She would never go back to Pringles! Never!

“Ramón . . . ” she said, and the wind roared and was gone.

21

I’M SITTING IN
a café on the Place de Clichy . . . At this point I remain here against my will. I should have left a while ago, I have a commitment . . . But I can’t call the waiter, I simply can’t do it, it’s stronger than I am, and the minutes are passing . . . I’ve reviewed the bill and my pocket several times, I’ve counted the coins from back to front and front to back and I come up short by a hair, I have six francs and ninety centimes and the coffee costs seven, it’s as if it were done on purpose . . .
Th
at’s why I need the waiter to come, he’s going to have to give me change for fifty francs, I don’t have anything smaller . . . If I had enough coins I would leave them on the table, free as a bird I would leave these little metal eggs and fly away. My impatience is so great that if I had a ten franc note I would leave it . . . But I don’t. I’m reduced to waiting for him to look at me so I can make some gesture, wave him over . . . it’s the same here as everywhere in the world: waiters never look your way. My eyes are fixed on him, every turn he makes I try out my gesture . . . By now all the customers must have noticed, and the other waiters, of course, all except him. Let’s see . . . He’s coming this way . . . no, again I failed, I must have the air of a supplicant, I’m stuck to my chair . . . I move it, I scrape the legs against the floor, to make him look at me . . . I know going after him would be useless as well as grotesque, he’d slip away . . .
Th
en, I would become the invisible man, yes, the ghost of the Place de Clichy.
Th
ere’s nothing to do but wait for the next opportunity, hope that he turns this way, that he clears the table next to mine and sees me . . . And I want to go, I have to go, that’s the worst . . . I’ve been here for two hours writing at this table (he must think that if I stayed two hours, I could just as well stay three, or five, or until they close), and in the enthusiasm of inspiration, which I’m cursing now, I went on and on until I’d finished the previous chapter . . . and when I looked at the clock I wanted to die . . . I should already be at that dinner, they’ll be waiting for me — for me, stuck here . . . I have twenty minutes on the M
é
tro at least, and the minutes pass and I keep searching for the waiter’s gaze . . . I don’t know how I can be writing this, if I’m not taking my eyes off his head . . .. Every time I put in an ellipse I make holes in the notebook.
Th
is is beginning to look definitive: he’s never going to look at me, ever. Have I been trying for ten minutes? Fifteen? I don’t want to look at the clock any more. I stare at him like a maniac . . .
Th
e law of probabilities should be in my favor, at some point he should look at me, since he can’t help looking at something . . . And to think it would have been so easy to make him come over as soon as I saw the time: calling him would have been enough. So many people do it . . . But I can’t. Never in my life have I called a waiter except by mute craft (and I have written all my novels in caf
é
s), I’ve never done it, I will never do it . . . never . . . And then an ardent recrimination of my Creator rises in me — mute of course, internal, though I pronounce and hear it with the greatest clarity:

“Lord, what did You give me a voice for if it’s no use to me? Along with my voice, shouldn’t You have given me the capacity to use it? How hard would that have been? Don’t You think it’s sarcastic, almost sadistic, to make me the owner of this marvelous instrument that passes from the immobile body through the air like a messenger and which is the body in another form, the body in flight . . . and wrap that voice up in me, under a spell of interiority? It’s as if I’m carrying a corpse inside, or at least an invalid, or a guest who won’t leave . . . I suppose as a newborn I could scream to call my mother like anybody else . . . but then what? My voice has atrophied in my throat, and when I speak — and I only speak when spoken to, like a ghost — what comes out is an adenoidal and affected stammer barely adequate for carrying my ignorance and doubts across very short distances. If You’d at least made me mute, I’d be calmer!
Th
en I could yell, and I’d yell all the time, the sky would be full of my dumb howling! You’ll say I’ve abused my reading of Leibniz, Lord, but don’t You think, given the circumstances, You should move the waiter’s head in such a way that he might see me?”

Delia, my reality . . . Talking to you now, in my silence, does your story not resemble mine? It’s the same, it matches in each iridescent turn . . . What in me is a miniscule incident, in you becomes destiny, adventure . . . And yet the two things are not dissimilar; rather, one is a rearrangement of the other. It’s not the volume of the voice that matters, but its placement in the story where it’s spoken; a story has corners and folds, proximities and distances . . . A word in time can do everything . . . And more than anything else (but it’s all the same) what matters is what’s said, the meaning; in the arrangement of the story there is a silver bridge, a continuum, from voice to meaning, from the body to the soul, and the story advances by that continuum, by that bridge . . .

I left off just at the release of the voice . . .
Th
e wind left with the words of love riding on his back, and crossed vast distances in all directions. To throw them off he shook, he twisted, but he managed only to turn the words around, point them elsewhere, drive them into the interstices of Patagonia.
Th
e wind too had a lot to learn. In his life there was only one restriction on total freedom: the Coriolis effect, the force of gravity applied to his mass — which is just what keeps all winds stuck to the planet.
Th
e voice, for its part, has the peculiarity that when released it carries the weight of the body from which it has come; since that weight is erotic reality, lovers believe they can embrace words of love, they believe they can make them into a continuum of love that will last forever.

Th
e continuum, by another name: the confession. If I wrote confessional literature, I would dedicate myself to seeking out the unspoken. But I don’t know if I would find it; I don’t know if the unspoken exists within my life.
Th
e unspoken, like love, is a thing that occupies a place in a story. Leaving aside the distances involved, it’s like God. God can be placed in two different locations within a discourse: at the end, as Leibniz does when he says “and it is this that we call God” — which is to say, when one arrives at Him after the deduction of the world; or at the beginning: “God created . . .”
Th
ey are not different theologies, they are the same, only exposed from the other side.
Th
e kind of discourse that places God at the beginning is the model and mother of what we call “fiction.” I must not forget that before my trip I proposed to write a novel. “
Th
e wind said . . .” is not so absurd; it’s only a method, like any other. It’s a beginning. But it’s always a beginning, at every moment, from the first to the last.

Words of love . . . Traveling words, words that alight and stay forever balanced on the scales within the heart of a man. In Ramón and Delia’s past there was a small, secret puzzle (but life is full of puzzles that are never solved).
Th
ey had consummated their marriage some time after the wedding, apparently due to Ramón’s desire or lack of it, although he never explained himself. What I mean to say is, there was a blank spot between the wedding and the consummation. Even if anyone besides the two of them had known about this blank spot, it would have been pointless to ask Delia about it, just as it was pointless for Delia to ask herself, because she wouldn’t have known how to answer. And, that was what I was referring to, in large part, when I talked about forgetting, and memory, et cetera: there are things that seem like secrets someone is keeping, but aren’t being kept by anyone.

Th
e backbiting of neighbors, that passionate hobby at which Delia was an expert, was a similar thing. If I entered Delia’s consciousness the way an omniscient narrator could, I would discover with surprise and perhaps a certain disillusionment that backbiting does not exist in her intimate heart. But it was Delia herself who was surprised! And she discovered her surprise as her own omniscient narrator . . .