‘It’s so strange about your age.’
‘My age?’
‘Yes, your age. How old are you?’
She laughed.
‘How old do you think I am?’
‘That’s precisely what’s strange,’ I returned. ‘The first time I saw you I thought you were about twenty-six.’
‘And now?’
‘I don’t know. Even at the beginning I was confused, because something – nothing physical – made me think …’
‘Made you think what?’
‘Made me think you were much older. There are times when I am with you that I feel like a child.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Thirty-eight.’
‘That’s really very young.’
I was still confused. Not because I thought I was so old but because in spite of everything I must be much older than she. She could not be more than twenty-six.
‘Yes, very young,’ she repeated, perhaps sensing my bewilderment.
‘Well, how old are you?’ I insisted.
‘What does my age matter?’ she asked, serious now.
‘Then why did you ask how old I was?’ I was close to irritation.
‘This conversation is absurd,’ she replied. ‘Absolute nonsense. I can’t believe you’re concerned about such things.’
Was I concerned? About our having this conversation? In fact, how could this be happening? I was so confused I had forgotten the reason for my first question. No, to be more accurate, I had not analyzed the reason for my first question. Only when I was home, hours later, did I realize the profound significance of that apparently trivial conversation.
XVII
For more than a month we saw each other almost every day. I do not want to recall in detail everything that happened during that marvelous and terrible period. There were too many unhappy times to want to relive them in memory.
María began to visit my studio. The scene of the matches, with minor variations, had occurred once or twice again, and I was obsessed by the idea that her love for me was, in the best of cases, the love of a mother or sister. I came to believe that only physical union would prove that she truly loved me.
I will say right now that this was another of my many naïve fantasies, the kind of ingenuousness that must often have caused María to smile behind my back. Far from giving me peace of mind, physical love distressed me even more, bringing with it new and tormenting doubts, painful scenes of misunderstandings, cruel experiments with María. I will never forget the hours I spent in the studio. During that whole period my sentiments – given María’s contradictions and inexplicable actions – swung between the purest love and the wildest hatred. In spite of the fact that she gave herself to me without reservation, I would suddenly be overcome with the feeling it was all a sham. For a while she would seem as innocent as a young girl, but suddenly I would be convinced she was a bitch, and then a long parade of doubts would file through my mind: where? how? how many? when?
On those occasions I could not suppress the thought that María was playing the most subtle and cruel games, and that in her hands I was a wide-eyed little boy being lulled with fairy tales to eat his supper or go to sleep. At times I would be possessed with a moral frenzy. I would leap up, get into my clothes, and rush outside for a breath of fresh air, to mull over my doubts and apprehensions. On other days my reaction was aggressive and brutal. I would throw myself on María, seize her arms in an iron grip, twist her backward, and stare into her eyes, trying to force a guarantee that her love was true love.
But none of this is exactly what I intended to say. I must confess that I myself do not know what I mean when I say ‘true love.’ And the curious thing is that although I used that expression repeatedly in questioning María, I have never until today actually analyzed it carefully. What did I mean? A love that included physical passion? Perhaps I sought physical passion in my desperation to strengthen the bond between us. I was sure there were times we did communicate, but in a way so subtle, so transient, so tenuous, that afterward I was more desperately alone than I had been before, with that undefined dissatisfaction that comes with trying to reconstruct a dream of love. I know that suddenly, sitting in a park at dusk or watching a foreign freighter leaving port, we achieved rare moments of communion. Being together lessened the melancholy that always accompanies such moments – surely the result of the essential incommunicability of beauty. All we had to do was look at each other and we knew that we were thinking, that is, feeling, the same things.
Of course we paid dearly for those moments, since everything that happened afterward seemed gross or dull. Anything we did (talk, drink coffee) was painful, because it pointed out the brevity of those instants of communion. And, what was much worse, they caused further rifts between us, because in my desperation to perpetuate that sharing any way I could, I would force María to make love. All we accomplished was to confirm the impossibility of prolonging or strengthening oneness through a physical act. But María aggravated matters because, perhaps in a desire to rid me of my obsession, she seemed to experience a true and almost unbelievable pleasure. That caused the episodes of my throwing on my clothes and rushing outside, or brutally twisting her arm, hoping to wring confessions from her about the authenticity of her emotions and sensations. And all of this became so abhorrent that when she suspected the moment was approaching for making love, she tried to avoid it. Finally she became totally cynical, and tried to convince me that our lovemaking was not only futile, but harmful.
She succeeded only in heightening my doubts about the nature of her love: I wondered whether she had been acting all the time in order to argue that physical love was damaging our relationship, and thus avoid it in the future: the truth being that she had detested it from the beginning – proving she had been feigning pleasure. Naturally, other quarrels developed and there was no point in trying to convince me of anything; all she did was drive me mad with new and more subtle doubts, and that led to new and ever more convoluted questioning.
What galled me most when I considered any hypothetical deception was that I had surrendered myself to her wholly, defenseless as a newborn babe.
‘If I ever suspect you have deceived me,’ I raged, ‘I will kill you like a dog.’
I would twist her arm and glare into her eyes to see whether I could detect some sign, some suspicious gleam, some fleeting spark of irony. But she only stared at me like a frightened child, or with a sad face began to dress in silence.
One day when our argument was more heated than usual I shouted a terrible obscenity at her. She froze, then slowly, without a word, went behind the model’s screen to put on her clothes, and when, after struggling between hatred and remorse, I ran to ask her to forgive me, I saw that her face was wet with tears. I could not think what to do. I kissed her eyes tenderly; meekly, I begged her forgiveness; I wept; I berated myself for being a cruel, unfair, vindictive monster. And I believed that – as long as she showed a trace of distress; but the minute she stopped crying and a smile started to light her face, I began to find it unnatural that she was no longer upset. It was all right that she should be feeling more cheerful, but it was extremely suspicious that she could feel happy after being called what I called her. It seemed to me that any woman would be humiliated by being called that, even a prostitute. No woman should be able to shift moods so quickly, unless there was a certain truth to what I had said.
Scenes like this were repeated almost every day. Sometimes they ended in relative calm, and we would go out to walk through the Plaza Francia like two lovesick teenagers, talking about painting or music; sometimes, in a low voice, she would sing some little song for me. But such moments of tenderness were growing more infrequent and short-lived, like intervals of sunshine in an increasingly dark and stormy sky. My doubts and questionings were engulfing everything, like jungle vines curling around trees in a park, choking the life from them.
XVIII
Every day my interrogations – abo
ut María’s silences, the look in her eyes, her hesitant words, her love affairs, a visit to the estancia – grew more intense and more unmerciful. One day I asked her why she called herself ‘Señorita Iribarne’ instead of, as Allende’s wife, ‘Señora de Allende.’ She smiled, and said:
‘What a child you are! What difference can it make?’
‘It makes a lot of difference to me,’ I said, watching her eyes.
Her smile disappeared, and she said, ‘It’s a family custom.’
‘Ah, but the first time I called your house and asked for “Señorita Iribarne,” ’ I countered, ‘the maid hesitated before answering me.’
‘You must have imagined it.’
‘Maybe. But why didn’t she correct me?’
María smiled again, more brightly.
‘I just explained,’ she said. ‘It’s our custom, so obviously the maid knows about it. Everyone calls me María Iribarne.’
‘The “María Iribarne” sounds reasonable, but I thought it was odd the maid didn’t seem surprised by the “Señorita.” ’
‘Oh … I didn’t realize that was what bothered you. Well, that isn’t usual, and that may explain why she hesitated.’
She seemed abstracted, as if considering that for the first time.
‘But I’m telling you, she didn’t correct me.’
‘Who?’ she asked, as if she had been far away.
‘The maid. She didn’t correct me when I said “Señorita.” ’
‘But, Juan Pablo. None of this is of the least importance. I can’t imagine what you want to prove.’
‘I want to prove that probably it wasn’t the first time someone called you “Señorita.” The maid would have corrected that the first time.’
María burst out laughing.
‘You are absolutely fantastic,’ she said almost happily, hugging me tenderly.
I was unmoved.
‘Furthermore,’ I continued, ‘when you first came to the phone your voice was neutral, very businesslike – until you closed the door. Then your tone was affectionate. Why the change?’
‘But, Juan Pablo,’ she replied, suddenly very serious. ‘How could I have spoken with affection in front of the maid?’
‘Yes, that part is logical. But you said, “When I close the door they know I am not to be disturbed.” That couldn’t refer to me because it was the first time I had called. Or to Hunter, since you can see him as often as you like at the estancia. It seems obvious to me that there are other people who call you, or used to call you. Is that true?’
María’s eyes filled with sadness.
‘Instead of looking so sad, you might answer,’ I commented irritably.
‘But, Juan Pablo, everything you’re saying is childish. Of course I talk to other people: cousins, family friends, my mother, how do I know?’
‘But I wouldn’t think that you would have to hide for that kind of conversation.’
‘And where do you get the right to say that I “hide”?’ she replied angrily.
‘Don’t get excited. It was you who told me about a certain Richard, who wasn’t a cousin, or a family friend … or your mother.’
María was suddenly despondent.
‘Poor Richard,’ she said softly.
‘Why “poor”?’
‘You know very well he committed suicide, and in a way I was slightly to blame. He used to write me awful letters, but there was nothing I could do. Poor, poor Richard.’
‘I want you to show me some of those letters.’
‘Why? He’s dead now.’
‘I don’t care, I want to see them anyway.’
‘I burned them all.’
‘Then why didn’t you say in the beginning you’d burned them? Instead, you said, “Why? He’s dead now.” That’s what you always do. Besides, why burn them – if in fact that’s what you really did? One day you admitted to me that you keep all your love letters. Richard’s letters must have been very compromising for you to have done that. Am I right?’
‘I didn’t burn them because they were compromising, I burned them because they were sad. They depressed me.’
‘Why did they depress you?’
‘I don’t know … Richard was a depressing person. He was a lot like you.’
‘Were you in love with him?’
‘Please …’
‘Please, what …?’
‘Don’t do this, Juan Pablo. You get the strangest ideas …’
‘I don’t see that they’re so irrational. He falls in love with you, he writes you letters so terrible you think it best to burn them, he commits suicide, and you think my ideas are irrational. Why is that?’
‘Because in spite of everything, I never loved him.’
‘And why not?’
‘I don’t really know. Maybe he wasn’t my type.’
‘You just said he was a lot like me.’
‘For God’s sake. I meant that he was like you in some ways, not that he was identical. He was a man incapable of creating anything; he had a lethal intelligence; he was a nihilist. Something like your negative side.’
‘All right. But I still don’t understand the need to burn the letters.’
‘I repeat, I burned them because they depressed me.’
‘But you could have kept them without reading them. The fact that you burned them proves you kept reading them until you burned them. And if you kept reading them, you must have had some reason – something about the man attracted you.’
‘I didn’t say he didn’t attract me.’
‘You said he wasn’t your type.’
‘My God, my God! Death isn’t my “type,” either, and yet it often attracts me. Richard attracted me almost the same way death does, or oblivion. But I don’t believe you give in passively to such feelings. That may be why I didn’t love him. That is why I burned his letters. When he died I decided to destroy anything that would prolong his existence.’
María’s mood did not improve, and I could not get another word from her on the subject of Richard. I must add, however, that it was not the idea of Richard that tormented me, because I came to know quite a bit about him. What tortured me were the men I didn’t know, the shadows María never mentioned but I could sense moving silently and darkly in her life. The worst things I imagined about María I imagined happening with those anonymous shadows. One word that escaped from her lips while we were making love used to crucify me – still crucifies me.
But among the many hours I spent interrogating María, one session was particularly revealing about her and her love.
XIX
Naturally, since she had married Allende, it was logical to think that she had once felt something for the man. I should admit that this problem, which we could call ‘the Allende problem,’ was one of the ones that most obsessed me. There were many enigmas to be explained, but especially two. Had she once loved him? Did she still love him? These questions could not be considered in isolation; they were related to others. If she did not love Allende, whom did she love? Me? Hunter? One of the mysterious telephone callers? Or was it that she loved different people in different ways, as some men do? It was also possible that she did not love anyone, and that she told each of us in sequence – poor fools, poor innocent fools – that we were the only one, and that the others were mere shadows, people with whom she had a superficial or obvious relationship.
One day I decided to clear up the Allende problem. I began by asking María why she had married him.
‘I loved him,’ she answered.
‘Then you don’t love him now?’
‘I didn’t say I’d stopped loving him,’ she replied.
‘You said, “I loved him.” You didn’t say, “I love him.” ’
‘You always twist my words, and pervert my meaning,’ María protested. ‘When I said I had married him because I loved him, I didn’t mean I don’t love him now.’
‘Ah, then you do love him,’ I parried swiftly, as if hoping to prove she had lied in answ
er to earlier questions.
María was subdued, and unresponsive.
‘Why don’t you answer?’
‘Because there doesn’t seem to be any point. We’ve had this same conversation too many times before.’
‘No, this is different from the other times. I asked you whether you love Allende now, and you told me yes. But I seem to remember that not too long ago, at the port, you told me I was the first person you ever loved.’
Again María did not answer. What irritated me about her was not only that she contradicted herself but that it was almost impossible to get her to say anything at all.
‘What is your answer to that?’ I said.
‘There are many ways of loving, of caring,’ she replied in a weary voice. ‘You probably are thinking that I can’t still love Allende the way I loved him years ago when we were married.’
‘What way is that?’
‘What do you mean, “what way”? You know what I mean.’
‘I don’t know at all.’
‘I’ve told you again and again.’
‘You may have told me, but you’ve never made it clear.’
‘Made it clear?’ she exclaimed bitterly. ‘You have told me a thousand times that many things cannot be explained, and now you tell me I must explain something as complex as this. I have told you a thousand times that Allende is my best friend, that I love him like a brother, that I look after him, that I feel great tenderness for him, that I have the greatest admiration for his serenity, that he seems far superior to me in every way, and that when I compare myself to him I feel contemptible and guilt-ridden. How can you imagine that I don’t love him?’
‘I didn’t say you don’t love him. You’re the one who said that things aren’t the same as they were when you married him. Maybe from that I should deduce that when you married him you loved him the way you say you love me now. But remember that a few days ago in the port you told me I was the first person you ever truly loved.’
María’s eyes were sad.
‘All right. We’ll ignore that contradiction,’ I continued. ‘But let’s go back to Allende. You say you love him like a brother. Now I want you to answer one question: do you sleep with him?’