On Heroes and Tombs

  “ ‘Alejandra,’ he said, ‘the storm’s about to break and I think we’d best get back to Miramar.’

  “I turned over onto my side and looked up at him scornfully.

  “ ‘You’ve just gotten here, you’ve just set eyes on me for the first time in ages, you haven’t even asked why I wanted to see you right away, and already you’re thinking about turning tail and running for home,’ I said.

  “I sat up so as to get undressed.

  “ ‘I’ve lots of things to talk to you about, but we’re going swimming first.’

  “ ‘I’ve been in the water all day, Alejandra. Besides, look what’s coming,’ he said, pointing a finger toward the sky.

  “ ‘It doesn’t matter. We’re going swimming anyway.’

  “ ‘I don’t have a swimsuit with me.’

  “ ‘A swimsuit?’ I said mockingly. ‘I don’t have one either.’

  “I began to slip off my blue jeans.

  “With a firmness I couldn’t help but notice, Marcos said:

  “ ‘No, Alejandra, I’m leaving. I don’t have a suit and I won’t swim naked with you.’

  “I had my jeans off now. But I stopped there and said in an innocent tone of voice, as though I didn’t understand:

  “ ‘How come? Are you afraid to? What sort of Catholic are you if you have to keep your clothes on so you won’t commit a sin? Are you a different person when you’re naked?’

  “And as I began taking off my panties, I added:

  “ ‘I always thought you were a coward, a typical Catholic coward.’

  “I knew that would turn the trick. Marcos, who had averted his eyes the moment I’d started taking off my panties, looked at me then, his face red with embarrassment and rage, and clenching his teeth, he began to undress.

  “He’d grown a lot that year, his athlete’s body had filled out, his voice was a man’s voice now, having lost the ridiculous childish inflections it had still had the year before. He was only seventeen, but very strong and well-developed for his age. I for my part had given up my absurd habit of binding my breasts with the strip of sheet and they had had ample room to fill out; my hips had filled out too and I felt a powerful force in my body impelling me to do extraordinary things.

  “Wanting to mortify him, I scrutinized every inch of his body once he was naked.

  “ ‘Well, you aren’t the little brat you were last year, are you?’

  “He had turned away in embarrassment and was standing almost with his back to me.

  “ ‘You even shave now.’

  “ ‘I don’t see anything wrong with shaving,’ he snapped angrily.

  “ ‘Nobody said there was anything wrong with it. I merely remarked that I see you shave now.’

  “Without answering me, and perhaps so as not to be obliged to look at my naked body and let me see his own nakedness, he ran down to the water, just as a flash of lightning illuminated the entire sky, like an explosion. Then, as though this detonation had been a signal, flashes of lightning and claps of thunder began to follow one upon the other. The leaden gray water had grown darker as the sea became rougher and rougher. The sky, entirely covered with the huge black clouds, was suddenly illuminated again and again, as though by a series of flashbulbs mounted on some immense camera going off.

  “The first drops of rain began to fall on my tense, vibrant body. As the waves lashed furiously against the shore, I ran down to the water’s edge.

  “We swam out to sea. The waves lifted me like a feather in a violent wind and I felt a marvelous sensation of strength—and of fragility at the same time. Marcos never left my side and I had no idea whether it was out of fear for himself or fear for me.

  “Finally he shouted to me:

  “ ‘Let’s go back, Alejandra! In a minute we won’t even be able to tell which way the beach is!’

  “ ‘Always the prudent one, aren’t you?’ I shouted back at him.

  “ ‘All right then, I’m going back by myself.’

  “I didn’t answer. But it scarcely mattered, since it was impossible now to hear each other anyway. I began to swim back toward the beach. The clouds were pitch black now and rent with flashes of lightning, and the continuous thunderclaps seemed to have come rolling in from far off so as to burst just above our heads.

  “We reached the beach and ran to the place where we had left our clothes, just as the storm finally broke in all its fury: a savage, icy pamperofn7 swept the strand as the rain began to come down in nearly horizontal torrents.

  “It was impressive: alone, in the middle of a deserted beach, naked, feeling on our bodies that rain swept by a furious, violent wind, in that landscape shaken by thunder and illuminated by blinding flashes of lightning.

  “Badly frightened, Marcos was trying to struggle back into his clothes. I lunged at him and tore his pants from his body.

  “And pressing against him as we stood there, feeling his palpitating, muscular body against my breasts and belly, I began to kiss him, to bite his lips, his ears, to dig my fingernails into his back.

  “He resisted me and we fought to the death. Each time he managed to tear his mouth away from mine he stammered unintelligible yet obviously desperate words, till finally I heard him cry:

  “ ‘Let me go, Alejandra, let me go for the love of God! We’ll both go to Hell!’

  “ ‘You utter imbecile!’ I shouted back. ‘There’s no such thing as Hell! It’s a story made up by priests to take in idiots like you! God doesn’t exist!’

  “He struggled frantically and finally managed to push me away.

  “A flash of lightning suddenly revealed the expression of sacred horror on his face. Staring wide-eyed with terror, as though he were living a nightmare, he shouted:

  “ ‘You’re mad, Alejandra! Utterly mad! You’re possessed by the devil!’

  “ ‘I don’t give a damn about Hell, you imbecile! I laugh at eternal punishment!’

  “A terrible energy possessed me; I was overwhelmed at the same time by mingled feelings of cosmic force, hatred, and unutterable sadness. Laughing and weeping, flinging my arms open wide, with adolescent theatricality, I cried out again and again unto the heavens, challenging God to destroy me on the spot with His lightning bolts if He existed.”

  Alejandra looks at Marcos’s naked body as he flees as fast as his legs can carry him, momentarily illuminated by the flashes of lightning, a ridiculous and touching sight; the thought occurs to her that she will never see him again.

  The roar of the sea and the storm seem to be bringing down obscure and awesome threats of the Divinity upon her head.

  11

  They went back inside her room. Alejandra made her way over to her little night table with the lamp on it and took two red pills out of a tube. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed, and patting the place beside her with the palm of her left hand she said to Martín:

  “Come sit down.”

  As he did so she downed the two pills, without water. Then she lay down on the bed, with her knees tucked up, close to Martín.

  “I must rest for a minute,” she explained, closing her eyes.

  “Well, I’ll be going then,” Martín said.

  “No, don’t go yet,” she murmured, as though she were about to drop off to sleep. “We’ll talk some more later … in a minute …”

  And she began to breathe deeply, already asleep.

  She had let her shoes fall to the floor and her bare feet were tucked up next to Martín. He was puzzled by the story Alejandra had told out on the terrace, and his mind was still in a whirl: everything was absurd, everything followed some plot that made no sense to him, and no matter what he did or didn’t do seemed all wrong.

  What was he doing here? He felt stupid and clumsy, but for some reason that he could not contrive to understand, it would appear that she needed him. Hadn’t she come looking for him? Hadn’t she told him of her experiences with Marcos Molina? She had never told anyone else about them, he was certain of that, not a soul, a
thought that made him feel both proud and perplexed. And she hadn’t wanted him to leave and had allowed herself to fall asleep at his side, that supreme gesture of trust that going to sleep at someone else’s side represents: like a warrior who has laid down his arms. There she was, defenseless yet mysterious and inaccessible. So close, yet separated from him by the weightless though dark and impenetrable wall of sleep.

  Martín looked at her. She was lying on her back, breathing anxiously through her half-open mouth, her large, scornful, sensual mouth. Her long straight blue-black hair (with those reddish glints that indicated that this Alejandra was the same little red-headed girl she had been in her childhood, yet at the same time something so different, so different!) fanning out over the pillow set off her angular face, those features of hers that had the same clean, sharp edge, the same hardness as her spirit. He trembled, full of confused ideas that had never before crossed his mind. The lamp on the night table illuminated her relaxed body, her breasts clearly outlined beneath her clinging white blouse, and those long, beautiful, tucked-up legs that were touching him. He reached one of his hands out toward her, but before he could bring himself to place it on her body, he drew it back in fright. Then, after great hesitation, his hand went out toward her again and finally came to rest on her thigh. He allowed it to linger there for a long time, his heart pounding, as though he were committing a shameful theft, as though he were taking advantage of a warrior’s rest to steal a little souvenir. But then she turned over and he withdrew his hand. She drew her legs up again, raising her knees and curling up in a ball as though returning to the fetal position.

  The deep silence was broken only by Alejandra’s restless breathing and a far-off ship’s siren sounding somewhere down at the docks.

  I’ll never know her completely, he said to himself, as though the thought were a sudden, painful revelation.

  She was there, within reach of his hand and his mouth. In a certain sense she was defenseless, yet how far away, how inaccessible she was! He sensed that vast abysses separated her from him (not only the abyss of sleep but others) and that in order to reach the center of her he would be forced to endure fearful trials, to make his way for many long days amid dark crevasses, through defiles fraught with peril, along the brink of erupting volcanoes, amid blinding flames and deep shadows. Never, he thought, never.

  But she needs me, she’s chosen me, he also thought. In some way or other she had sought him out and chosen him, for some purpose that as yet he failed to understand. And she had told him things that he was certain she had never told anyone else, and he had the presentiment that she would tell him many others, more terrible and more beautiful still than those that she had already confessed to him. But he also felt that there would be others that never, absolutely never, would be revealed to him. And weren’t these mysterious, disquieting shadows the truest ones, the only really important ones? She had shuddered when he had mentioned the blind—why? The moment she had uttered the name Fernando she had regretted doing so—why?

  The blind, he thought almost fearfully. The blind, the blind.

  Night, childhood, shadows, shadows, terror and blood, blood, flesh and blood, dreams, abysses, unfathomable abysses, loneliness, loneliness, loneliness, we touch yet remain immeasurable distances apart, we touch yet we are alone. He was a child, beneath an immense dome, in the center of the dome, amid a terrifying silence, alone in that immense, gigantic universe.

  And all at once he heard Alejandra stir, raising up and seemingly pushing something away from her with her hands. From her lips came unintelligible, violent, panting murmurs, until, as though forced to make a superhuman effort to get a single word out, she shouted “No, no!” and sat up all of a sudden.

  “Alejandra!” Martín cried out to her, shaking her by the shoulders, trying to wrench her away from that nightmare.

  But eyes wide open, she continued to groan, violently fighting off her enemy.

  “Alejandra! Alejandra!” Martín called out again, shaking her by the shoulders.

  Finally she seemed to rouse herself from her sleep as though climbing out of a very deep well, a dark well full of spider webs and bats.

  “Ah,” she murmured in an exhausted voice.

  She sat there in the bed for a long time, her head resting on her knees and her hands crossed over her drawn-up legs.

  Then she climbed out of the bed, turned on the overhead light, lit a cigarette, and began to make coffee.

  “I woke you because I realized you were having a nightmare,” Martín said, looking at her anxiously.

  “I always have nightmares when I sleep,” she replied without turning round as she put the coffeepot on the alcohol burner.

  When the coffee was ready she handed him a cupful, sat down on the edge of the bed, and drank hers, lost in thought.

  Martín thought: Fernando. The blind.

  “Except Fernando and me,” she had said. And although he knew Alejandra well enough to know he shouldn’t ask any questions about that name that she had immediately retreated from, an insane impulse kept taking him back again and again to that forbidden region, drawing him closer and closer to its perilous edge.

  “And is your grandfather also a Unitarist?”

  “I beg your pardon?” she said, her mind elsewhere.

  “I asked if your grandfather is also a Unitarist.”

  Alejandra turned her eyes toward him, looking somewhat taken aback.

  “My grandfather? My grandfather’s dead.”

  “What’s that? I thought you told me he was still alive.”

  “No, no! My grandfather Patricio is dead. The one who’s still alive is my great-grandfather, Pancho—didn’t I explain all that to you?”

  “Well, yes, I meant to say your great-grandfather Pancho—is he a Unitarist too? It’s amusing to me to think that there can still be Unitarists and Federalists here in this country.”

  “You don’t realize that we lived all that here. In fact, just imagine: Grandpa Pancho is still living it—he was born just after Rosas’s downfall. He’s ninety-five years old—didn’t I tell you that?”

  “Ninety-five?”

  “He was born in 1858. The rest of us can just talk about Unitarists and Federalists, but he lived all that, do you see what I mean? Rosas was still alive when he was a little boy.”

  “And does he remember things from those days?”

  “He’s got a memory like an elephant. And what’s more he talks of nothing else, all day long, whenever he gets you within range. That’s only natural: it’s his only reality. All the rest doesn’t even exist.”

  “I’d like to hear him some day.”

  “I’ll show him to you right now.”

  “What! You can’t mean it! It’s three in the morning!”

  “Don’t be silly. You don’t understand that for grandpa there’s no such thing as three in the morning. He hardly ever sleeps. Or maybe he takes a little snooze at any and all hours of the day or night, for all I know …. But it’s at night that he has the most trouble sleeping, and he spends all his time with the lamp lit, thinking.”

  “Thinking?”

  “Well, who knows? … What can you know about what’s going on in the head of an old man who’s lying awake not able to sleep, an old man who’s almost a hundred years old? Maybe all he does is remember—how should I know? … They say that at that age all you do is remember …”

  And then she added, with her dry laugh:

  “I’m going to be very careful not to live that long.”

  And heading toward the door of the room quite naturally, as though it were simply a question of a normal visit to normal people at a sensible hour, she said:

  “Come on, I’ll show him to you now. Who knows—he may die tomorrow.”

  She halted.

  “Get your eyes accustomed to the dark a little and you can see your way down better.”

  They leaned on the balustrade of the terrace for a time, looking at the sleeping city.

  “L
ook at that light in the window in that little house,” Alejandra commented, pointing with her hand. “Lights like that in the night always overawe me: can it be a woman who’s about to give birth to a baby? Somebody who’s dying? Or maybe a poor student reading Marx? How mysterious the world is! It’s only superficial people who don’t see that. You chat with the watchman on the corner, you make him feel confident, and in a little while you discover that he too is a mystery.”

  After a moment she said:

  “Well then, let’s be off.”

  12

  They went downstairs and around the house along the gallery on the side until they reached a back door, under an arbor. Alejandra felt around with her hand and turned on a light. Martín saw an old kitchen that had all sorts of things piled up in it, as though it were moving day. This impression grew stronger as they went down a hallway. The thought occurred to him that in the successive divisions of this big old house no one had wanted to or known how to get rid of things: furniture with rickety legs, gilded armchairs without seats, a huge mirror leaning against a wall, a grandfather clock that had stopped running and had only one hand, console tables. As they entered the old man’s room, Martín was reminded of one of the auction houses in the Calle Maipú. One of the former parlors had become part of the old man’s bedroom, as though the rooms of the house had been shuffled together like a deck of cards. In the feeble light of a kerosene lantern, he saw an old man dozing in a wheelchair amid a jumble of furniture. The chair was placed in front of a window that looked out onto the street, as though to allow the grandfather to contemplate the world.

  “He’s asleep,” Martín murmured in relief. “You’d best leave him be.”

  “I’ve already told you—you never know if he’s really sleeping or not.”

  She went over to the old man, leaned over him, and shook him a little.

  “What, what?” the grandfather muttered, half opening his little eyes.