The Secret of Evil (11 page)

D
ANIELA

My name is Daniela de Montecristo and I am a citizen of the
universe, although I was born in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, in the
year 1915, the youngest of three sisters. Later my father remarried and had a
little son, but the child died before his first birthday, and Papa had to be
happy with what he had, that is, with my sisters and me. I don’t know why I’m
explaining all this. It’s ancient history, or children’s stories if you like, of
no interest to anyone now. I lost my virginity at the age of thirteen. That
might interest someone. I was deflowered by one of the ranch hands. I can’t
remember his name, all I know is that he was a ranch hand and must have been
somewhere between twenty-five and forty-five. He didn’t rape me, I do remember
that. At least I never thought of it as rape, afterward I mean, when it was
over, and I was getting dressed behind an ombu tree, and the ranch hand, around
the other side, was pensively rolling a cigarette, which he then lit and gave me
for a couple of puffs on it, my first ever puffs of smoke. I remember that
vividly. The bitter taste of the tobacco and the plains stretching away
endlessly and my legs trembling. What was really trembling, though, were my
thoughts. I could have gone and told on him. All that night I kept turning the
idea over in my mind, and the next two nights as well. But I didn’t do it.
Partly because I wanted to repeat the experience. Partly because it wasn’t my
father’s ranch; it belonged to one of his friends, so the punishment wouldn’t
have been administered by my blood relations, it would have fallen outside what
I took to be the ambit of real justice, the justice of the blood. My father
never had a ranch. My older sister married a lawyer, a pathetic shyster who
never tired of declaring his inordinate love for my father. My other sister
married the son of a ranch owner, a crazy kid who within a few years managed to
gamble away a small fortune and get himself cut out of the will. To sum up: my
family was always middle class, and whatever efforts we made, from our various
starting points, in our various and often contradictory ways, to climb up a rung
and enter the rigid, immutable upper crust, official guardian of justice and
morality, the fact is we never moved out of our social compartment, which,
although comfortable, condemned the livelier minds in the clan (myself, for
example) to a restlessness that even then, at the age of thirteen, on that
ranch, which wasn’t our property, I could glimpse like a dizzying mirage, a
space in time where time itself was cancelled, time as we know it, and that was
why I began by saying that I am a citizen of the universe and not, as the saying
goes, of the world, because I may be old but it should be quite clear that I’m
not stupid, and the world cannot contain a dizzying mirage like that, although
perhaps the universe can. But I was talking about restlessness. I was talking
about the night when I thought about telling on the ranch hand who had
deflowered me. I didn’t, and I didn’t have sex with him again. Restlessness, my
first apprehension of restlessness, declared itself as a fever, so my father
sent me back to Buenos Aires, where I was entrusted to the care of a physician,
Dr. Guarini.

S
UNTAN

The previous summer I’d been a temporary foster parent to a
child from the Third World. It was a terrible experience. When I took her to the
airport I was a wreck, and Olga (that was her name), she was a wreck as well. We
cried all the way, we didn’t stop for a minute. She kept sobbing that she wanted
to stay with me, the poor thing. Just as well there were no photographers. Even
so, I stayed in the car for a while, fixing my makeup, before we got out. The
man from the NGO who was there to take the children back was waiting by the
information counter. He looked at me and realized right away that I was taking
it hard. It’s normal, the first time, he said. There was another girl there with
her foster family. In spite of the dark glasses, they recognized me immediately.
The mother came over and said: It gives us such a boost to know that you’re
taking part in the program too, Lucía. I had no idea what she meant, but I
smiled and said I was just another volunteer. Half an hour later the children
and the man from the NGO boarded the plane and disappeared, leaving the foster
parents in the departure lounge. One of them suggested that we go for a drink. I
declined. I shook hands with all of them (no kisses) and left. In the car I
cried all the way back to my apartment, but two days later I had to go to Milan,
for work, and I spent August in Marbella and Mallorca. Eventually the summer
came to an end and work began again in earnest.

And all sorts of things happened after that.

Eight months later the same NGO wrote to me to see if I wanted to
foster a child again in July. I thought about it all that day, carrying the
letter around in my handbag, and eventually decided to repeat the experience. I
called them and said I’d participate again, as long as they did whatever they
could to make sure it was Olga. They said they’d try, but the organization had a
rule, or something — I didn’t understand. Call me, I said. A month later they
called and said they were doing their best to get Olga. At that time I was
acting in a play, a wonderful English production, a musical about the poor
people of London, or maybe it was Manchester, set at the beginning of the
century, a play in which I had to sing and dance as well as act. For some
reason, talking with the people from the NGO helped me with my work. It was just
after the première and the reviews hadn’t been very good. Especially the
comments about me. Well, not just me; some of the other actors came off badly
too. After that phone call my performances improved; they were stronger, more
convincing, and the others were inspired by my energy on stage.

Then I was offered a television show. I said yes without a second
thought.

Then I met a doctor in Madrid called Gorka (his family came from the
Basque country) and we fell in love.

To be completely honest, for a while I forgot all about the girl and
the NGO. I was living at a frantic pace: interviews, TV appearances, a small but
gratifying part in a film, and my own talk show with celebrity guests
(actresses, models, athletes, heartthrobs).

One morning they called and said that Olga wouldn’t be able to spend
her vacation month with me. Why not? I asked, although for a moment I had no
idea who Olga was, what vacation month they were talking about, or who had
called to tell me this and was now replying to my question in a condescending
tone of voice that I didn’t like at all, explaining something about regulations,
which left me even more confused. When I finally realized what it was about, I
said I didn’t have time to talk right then and told them to call me back the
following night, insisting that I wanted Olga. We completely understand, said
the voice: It’s human, it’s normal.

Having reached this point in my story, there’s something I think I
should clarify. There are show-business personalities who’ll stop at nothing to
appear on TV and in the magazines. Generalizing broadly, they belong to one of
two kinds: those who are working and those who aren’t. Those who are working
might go to a leper colony in India to promote their new record or TV show. The
others can’t afford to fly to India, but they might visit an orphanage in
Tangiers or a prison in Rabat to keep themselves visible and boost their chances
of getting some work soon. Not that either kind of personality necessarily goes
to India or Morocco — those are just examples I’m using to make a general point:
fame is measured in exclusives, calibrated by the size of the splash you can
make with a scandal or a spectacular act of charity. But there was no such
design behind my decision to foster a child for the month of July. No one knew
anything about it, I mean no one who works for the glossy magazines. Olga’s stay
at my apartment was a secret, and during the days we spent on Mallorca with my
family we kept well out of the public eye. I play the bimbo sometimes, if it’s
in the script, but I went to college and I earned my degree in art history.

So let me make it perfectly clear that I didn’t want the girl for
self-promotion. I have nothing against publicity as such, but there’s a line
between vulgar and sophisticated publicity. And that line should never be
crossed, or so I was taught as a child, because there’s no going back.

The next day I got a call from the NGO. They said they’d done
everything humanly possible, but it wasn’t going to be Olga. Instead they talked
to me about Mariam, or María, a twelve-year-old Saharan girl who had lost her
father in the war, a lovely girl, they said, and very clever for her age. Olga
was twelve as well, I thought, and then I remembered her birthday and realized
that I hadn’t even sent her a card, and before I knew it I was crying, while the
guy from the NGO went on giving me information about Mariam; she’d seen all
sorts of atrocities, he said, and yet had somehow preserved her innocence. What
do you mean? I asked. That’s she’s still a girl, in spite of everything she’s
been through. But she’s twelve, I said. You haven’t seen what I’ve seen, Lucía,
he said in a velvety voice. The guy was trying to hit on me! He started telling
me stories, not about the children, but about things that had happened to him.
You have to travel a lot in this job. I travel a lot too, I said. I know, he
said. For a while we talked about our respective travels. Then I agreed to
foster Mariam and we said good-bye and hung up.

The only people I told were my parents and my sister. I didn’t say
anything to Gorka. Partly because he wasn’t in Madrid (he’d gone to Mallorca for
a sailing regatta), partly because I’m an independent woman and it was my
decision and mine alone. Naturally, Gorka had plans for the summer, vague plans
to go to an island in the Caribbean, and then to find a place in Mallorca, near
his sailing friends, where we could stay till the beginning of September. I
adore the sea. And I enjoy the regattas. I’m actually a better sailor than
Gorka, who took it up quite recently (I’ve been sailing since I was a child),
but like the rest of us, he’s entitled to waste his time however he sees
fit.

D
EATH
OF
U
LISES

Belano, our dear Arturo Belano, returns to Mexico City. More
than twenty years have passed since the last time he was there. The plane is
flying over the city, and he wakes with a start. The uneasiness he has felt
throughout the trip intensifies. At the airport in Mexico City he has to catch a
connecting flight to Guadalajara, for the Book Fair, to which he’s been invited.
Belano is now a fairly well-known author and is often invited to international
events, although he doesn’t travel much. This is his first trip to Mexico in
more than twenty years. Last year he had two invitations and he pulled out at
the last minute. The year before last he had four and he pulled out at the last
minute. I can’t remember how many invitations he had three years ago, but he
pulled out at the last minute. Still, here he is in Mexico, in the Mexico City
airport, following a group of perfect strangers who are heading toward the
transit zone to catch the plane to Guadalajara. The corridor leads through a
labyrinth of glass. Belano is the last in line. His steps are increasingly slow
and hesitant. In a waiting room he spots a young Argentine writer who is also
going to Guadalajara. Belano immediately takes cover behind a pillar. The
Argentine is reading the paper, whose cultural supplement — maybe that’s what
he’s reading — is entirely devoted to the Book Fair. After a few moments, he
looks up and glances around, as if he knew he was being observed, but he doesn’t
see Belano, and his gaze returns to the paper. After a while a very beautiful
woman approaches the Argentine and kisses him from behind. Belano knows her.
She’s a Mexican, born in Guadalajara. The Argentine man and the Mexican woman
both live in Barcelona, together, and Belano is a friend of theirs. The Mexican
woman and the Argentine man exchange a few words. Somehow both of them have
sensed that they are being watched. Belano tries to read their lips, but he
can’t work out what they’re saying. He doesn’t leave his hiding place until
their backs are turned. By the time he can finally escape from that corridor,
the line of passengers heading for the connecting flight to Guadalajara has
disappeared, and Belano realizes, with a deepening sense of relief, that he has
no desire to go to Guadalajara and take part in the Book Fair; what he wants to
do is to stay in Mexico City. And that is what he does. He heads for the exit.
His passport is examined, and soon he’s outside, looking for a taxi.

Back in Mexico, he thinks.

The taxi driver looks at him as if he were an old acquaintance. Belano
has heard stories about the taxi drivers of Mexico City and muggings in the
vicinity of the airport. But all those stories vanish now. Where are we going,
young man? asks the driver, who is younger than Belano. Belano gives him the
most recent address that he has for Ulises Lima. OK, says the driver, and the
taxi pulls away and plunges into the city. Belano shuts his eyes, the way he
used to when he lived there, but now he’s so tired that he opens them almost
immediately, and his old city, the city of his adolescence, displays itself to
him for free. Nothing has changed, he thinks, although he knows that everything
has changed.

It’s a cemetery morning. The sky’s a dirty yellow. The clouds, moving
slowly from south to north, look like graveyards adrift; sometimes they part to
reveal scraps of gray sky, sometimes they come together with a dry, earthy
grinding that no one, not even Belano, can hear, but it gives him a headache,
the way it did when he was an adolescent and lived in Colonia Lindavista or
Colonia Guadalupe-Tepeyac.

The people walking on the sidewalks, however, are the same; they’re
younger, they probably hadn’t even been born when he left, but basically these
are the faces he saw in 1968, in 1974, in 1976. The taxi driver tries to engage
him in conversation, but Belano doesn’t feel like talking. When he can finally
close his eyes again, he sees his taxi driving at full speed down a busy avenue,
while robbers hold up other taxis and the passengers die with terrified
expressions on their faces. Vaguely familiar gestures and words. Fear. Then he
sees nothing and falls asleep the way a stone falls down a well.

Here we are, says the taxi driver.

Belano looks out of the window. They’re in the street where Ulises
Lima used to live. He pays and gets out. Is this your first time in Mexico? asks
the driver. No, I used to live here. Are you Mexican? the driver asks as he
gives him the change. More or less, says Belano.

Then he’s standing alone on the sidewalk, looking at the façade of the
building.

Belano’s hair is short. A bald patch like a tonsure reveals the
top of his scalp. He’s no longer the long-haired youth who once roamed these
streets. Now he’s wearing a black leather jacket and gray trousers and a white
shirt and a pair of Martinelli shoes. He’s been invited to Mexico to participate
in a conference that will gather a group of Latin American writers. At least two
of his friends have also been invited. His books are read (a bit) in Spain and
Latin America, and all of them have been translated into various languages. What
am I doing here? he wonders.

He walks toward the entrance of the building. He takes out his address
book. He presses the buzzer of the apartment where Ulises Lima used to live.
Three long buzzes. No one answers. He buzzes another apartment. A woman’s voice
asks who it is. I’m a friend of Ulises Lima, says Belano. She hangs up abruptly.
He buzzes another apartment. A man’s voice shouts, Who is it? A friend of Ulises
Lima, says Belano, feeling more and more ridiculous. The door opens with an
electric click, and Belano starts climbing the stairs to the third floor. By the
time he reaches the landing, the effort is making him sweat. There are three
doors and a long, dimly lit corridor. This is where Ulises Lima spent the last
days of his life, he thinks, but when he rings the doorbell he finds himself
irrationally hoping to hear his friend’s approaching steps and then to see his
smiling face appear at the crack in the door.

Nobody answers.

Belano goes back down the stairs. He finds a hotel nearby,
without having to leave Colonia Cuauhtémoc. He sits on the bed for a long time,
watching Mexican television and letting his mind go blank. Not a single show is
familiar, but somehow the old shows infiltrate the new ones, and Belano has the
impression that he can see the face of El Loco Valdés on the screen or hear his
voice. Later, channel surfing, he comes across a Tin-Tan movie and watches to
the end. Tin-Tan was El Loco’s elder brother. He was already dead when Belano
came to live in Mexico. El Loco Valdés might be dead now too.

When the movie’s over, Belano takes a shower and then, without even
drying himself, he calls a friend. No one’s home. Just the answering machine,
but Belano doesn’t want to leave a message.

He hangs up. He gets dressed. He goes to the window and looks out at
Calle Río Panuco. He doesn’t see people or cars or trees, only the gray pavement
and a calm that has something timeless about it. Then a boy appears, walking
down the opposite sidewalk with a young woman who might be his big sister or his
mother. Belano shuts his eyes.

He isn’t hungry, he isn’t sleepy, he doesn’t feel like going out. So
he sits down on the bed again and goes on watching television, smoking one
cigarette after another, until he finishes the pack. Then he puts on his black
leather jacket and goes out into the street.

Irresistibly, the way a hit song keeps playing in your head, he finds
himself returning to Ulises Lima’s apartment.

The sun is beginning to set over Mexico City when, after a series of
fruitless attempts, Belano succeeds in getting someone in the building to buzz
him through the street door. I must be going crazy, he thinks, as he climbs the
stairs two by two. Nothing’s affecting me: the altitude, not having eaten, being
alone in Mexico City. For a few interminable and, in their way, happy seconds,
he stands in front of Ulises’s door without ringing. Then he presses the button
three times. As he is turning to go, about to leave the building (though not for
the last time, he knows that), the door of the adjacent apartment opens and an
enormous, hairless, coppery head, on which slashes of red can be dimly made out
(as if the possessor of the head had been painting a wall or a ceiling), emerges
and asks him who he’s looking for.

At first, Belano doesn’t know what to say. There’s no point
saying he’s looking for Ulises Lima, and he can’t be bothered making something
up, so he keeps quiet and looks at his interlocutor: the head belongs to a young
man, he wouldn’t be more than twenty-five, and from his expression Belano
guesses that he’s annoyed or lives in a permanent state of annoyance. It’s
empty, that place, says the young man. I know, says Belano. So what are you
ringing for, idiot? says the young man. Belano looks him in the eye and says
nothing. The door opens and the hairless young man comes out into the corridor.
He’s fat, and all he’s wearing is a pair of baggy jeans held up by an old belt.
The buckle, partly hidden by the young man’s belly, is large and made of metal.
Is he coming out to hit me? wonders Belano. For a moment they examine each
other. Our hero Arturo Belano, dear readers, is forty-six by this stage, and as
you all know, or should know, his liver, his pancreas and even his colon are in
a bad way, but he still knows how to box, and he’s sizing up the voluminous
figure in front of him. When he lived in Mexico he got into plenty of fights and
never lost, though it’s hard to credit now. Schoolyard scraps and barroom
brawls. Belano looks at the fat guy, trying to figure out when to attack, when
to hit him and where. But the fat guy just stares at Belano and looks back into
his apartment, and then another young man appears, wearing a brown sweatshirt
with a transfer on it that shows three men striking defiant poses in the middle
of a street full of trash, and “Los Amos del Barrio” written in red letters at
the top.

Belano is momentarily hypnotized by the design. Those pathetic-looking
guys on the sweatshirt seem familiar. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s the street that
seems familiar. I’ve been there, years ago, he thinks, years ago I walked down
that street, with time on my hands, just looking around.

The guy in the sweatshirt, who’s almost as fat as the other one, asks
Belano something in a voice that sounds like water boiling. Belano doesn’t
understand. But it wasn’t an aggressive question, he’s sure of that. What? he
asks. Are you a fan of Los Amos del Barrio? repeats the fat guy in the
sweatshirt.

Belano smiles. No, I’m not from here, he says.

Then the second fat guy is pushed aside and a third fat guy appears;
he’s very dark, an Aztec kind of fat guy with a little moustache, and he asks
his roommates what’s going on. Three against one, thinks Belano, time to go. The
fat guy with the little moustache looks at him and asks what he wants. This jerk
was ringing the bell at Ulises Lima’s place, says the first fat guy. Did you
know Ulises Lima? asks the fat guy with the little moustache. Yes, says Belano,
I was a friend of his. And what’s your name, jerk? asks the fat guy in the
sweatshirt. Arturo Belano says his name and then adds that he’ll be on his way,
he’s sorry to have bothered them, but now the three fat guys are looking at him
with real interest, as if they were seeing him from a different point of view,
and the fat guy in the sweatshirt smiles and says, Cut the bullshit, your name
can’t be Arturo Belano, though from the way he says it, Belano can tell that
although he’s unconvinced, he’d like to believe it’s true.

Then he sees himself — and it’s as if he’s watching a movie, a movie
so sad he’d never go to see it — in the fat guys’ apartment, and they’re
offering their guest a beer. No thanks, I don’t drink any more, he says, sitting
in a rickety armchair, its cloth cover printed with wilting flowers, holding a
glass of water he can’t bring himself to drink from, because the water in Mexico
City, so he’s been warned, though in fact he’s always known this, can give you
gastroenteritis, while the fat guys settle down in the surrounding armchairs,
except for the one without a shirt, who sits on the floor, as if he’s afraid the
other chair might break under his weight or afraid of how his friends might
react if it did.

The fat guy without a shirt is behaving a bit like a slave, Belano
thinks.

What happens next is chaotic and sentimental: the fat guys inform him
that they were the last disciples of Ulises Lima (that’s the word they use:
disciples
). They tell Belano about his death, how he was run down
by a mysterious car, a black Impala, and they talk about his life, a succession
of legendary drinking bouts, as if the bars and rooms where Ulises Lima got sick
and threw up were the successive volumes of his complete works. But mainly they
talk about themselves: they have a rock group called El Ojete de Morelos and
they perform in discos in the suburbs of Mexico City. They’ve made a record,
which the official radio stations won’t touch because of the lyrics. But the
little stations play their songs all day long. We’re getting famous, they say,
but we’re still rebels. The way of Ulises Lima, they say, Ulises Lima’s tracer
fire, the poetry of Mexico’s greatest poet.

As good as their word, they put on a CD of their songs, and Belano
sits there motionless, listening, with his hand clamped around the glass of
water he still hasn’t sipped from, looking at the dirty floor and the walls
covered with posters for Los Amos del Barrio and El Ojete de Morelos and other
bands he’s never heard of, maybe they’re earlier groups, whose members went on
to form Los Amos and El Ojete: Mexican kids staring out at him from photos or
from hell, holding their electric guitars as if they were brandishing weapons or
freezing to death.