‘There are several bedrooms up here. Actually, the house is quite comfortable, even though it was designed in rather amusing taste.’
I remembered that Hunter was an architect. I wondered what he would consider an unamusing structure.
‘This was my grandfather’s bedroom; I use it now,’ he informed me, pointing to the middle room at the head of the stairs.
Then he opened the next door.
‘This is your room.’
He left me alone, saying he would meet me in the garden for tea. The minute he left, my heart began to pound at the thought that María could be in any of these bedrooms, maybe even the one next to mine. I stood like a dolt in the center of the room, not knowing what to do. I had an idea: I went to the wall of the next room (not Hunter’s of course) and rapped softly. I waited for a reply, but there was only silence. I went into the corridor and looked to see if anyone was there; I walked rapidly to the door of the next room and, with great trepidation, lifted my hand to knock. I did not have the courage, and practically ran back to my room. A little later I went down to the garden. I was completely disoriented.
XXV
It was when we were at the tea table that the skinny woman had asked me what painters I preferred. I grumbled a couple of names: Van Gogh, El Greco. She looked at me with irony and said, as if to herself:
‘Tiens!’
Then she added: ‘As for myself, I detest larger-than-life types. I don’t mind telling you,’ she continued, turning to Hunter, ‘that I am thoroughly bored by great artists like Michelangelo and El Greco. Greatness is so aggressive, so dramatic! Don’t you think it is almost bad manners? I believe that an artist has an obligation never to call attention to himself. After all, to claim that one is original is really like pointing one’s finger at the mediocrity of others – which to me seems in very doubtful taste. I am sure that if I painted or wrote, my art would never attract attention.’
‘I don’t doubt that,’ Hunter said maliciously. ‘Then you would not want to write, let us say, The Brothers Karamazov.’
‘Quelle horreur!’ Mimí exclaimed. She rolled her eyes heavenward, then completed her thought:
‘To me, they are the nouveaux riches of the consciousness. Can you bear Russian novels?’
This last question, unexpectedly, was directed to me, but the woman did not wait for an answer; she rushed on, again speaking to Hunter:
‘My dear, I have never been able to finish a Russian novel. They are so tiresome. I think there are thousands of characters, and in the end it turns out there are only four or five. Isn’t it maddening just when you begin to recognize a man called Alexandre, he’s called Sacha, and then Satchka, and later Sachenka, and suddenly something pretentious like Alexandre Alexandrovitch Bunine, and later simply Alexandre Alexandrovitch. The minute you get your bearings, they throw you off the track again. There’s no end to it; each character is a whole family in himself. Even you will agree it is exhausting, even for you!’
I felt terribly depressed. People always say that I am impatient. But even today I am amazed that I listened so courteously to Hunter and Mimí’s inane comments, and even more amazed that I remember them in such detail. Strangely, as I listened I was trying to cheer myself by thinking, ‘These two are frivolous, totally superficial idiots. María could only feel lonely in their presence. I cannot have a rival in people like this.’ I did not feel any happier, nonetheless. Something deep inside me was telling me to be sad. Worse, being unable to identify the root of that depression was making me irritable and nervous, no matter how much I tried to be calm, or promised myself I would analyze the phenomenon once I was alone. I wondered whether the source of my depression was María’s absence, but realized that her not being there was irritating me rather than making me sad. That was not it.
Now they were talking about mystery novels: I heard the woman asking Hunter whether he had read the latest novel of the Seventh Circle series.
‘Why?’ Hunter asked. ‘All detective stories are alike. One a year might be condoned. But one a week indicates very little imagination on the part of the reader.’
Mimí was indignant. That is, she pretended to be indignant.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘Mystery stories are the only kind of novel I can bring myself to read. I mean, they are enchanting! Everything is so complicated, and there are those marvelous detectives who know everything from Ming dynasty art, graphology, Einstein’s theory, baseball, archaeology, palmistry, and political science to statistics about raising rabbits in India. I adore it when they are so infallible. Don’t you agree?’ Again she turned to me for my opinion.
I was so taken by surprise that I did not know what to answer.
‘Yes, that’s true,’ I replied, to say something.
Again Hunter’s irony was evident.
‘I am going to tell Georgie that detective novels – even his series – drive you up the wall,’ added Mimí, looking at Hunter with mock severity.
‘I didn’t say they “drive me up the wall”; I said they all seem alike to me.’
‘Whatever you said, I am going to tell Georgie. Thank God not everyone is as pedantic as you. Our Castel here, for example; you like them, don’t you?’
‘Me?’ I asked, horrified.
‘Naturally,’ Mimí persisted, again not waiting for my answer and again turning to Hunter, ‘if everyone were as savant as you, life wouldn’t be worth living. I feel sure you must have an elaborate theory about the detective novel.’
‘As in fact I do,’ Hunter smiled, accepting her challenge.
‘Didn’t I tell you,’ Mimí commented sternly, turning to me as if enlisting me as witness. ‘Oh, I know this man too well. So, do go on and astound us with your knowledge. I know you are dying to explain your famous theory.’
It was true that Hunter did not need much coaxing.
‘My theory,’ he began, ‘is the following. The mystery novel represents in the twentieth century what the romance of chivalry represented in the time of Cervantes. I will go even further: I think that something similar to Don Quixote could be done with a mystery: a satire of a detective novel – just as the Quixote was a satire of the chivalric romance. Imagine an individual who has spent his life reading mystery novels and has reached such a point in his madness that he believes the world functions the way it does in a novel by Nicholas Blake or Ellery Queen. Then imagine that this poor fellow sets off finally to solve crimes, and to act in real life the way a detective in a mystery novel does. I think such a book could be entertaining, tragic, symbolic, satirical … beautiful.’
‘Then why don’t you do it,’ Mimí asked mockingly.
‘For two reasons: I am not Cervantes … and I am very lazy.’
‘I think the first reason is sufficient’ was Mimí’s comment.
Then, worse luck, she turned to me:
‘This man,’ she said, jabbing her ridiculous cigarette holder in Hunter’s direction, ‘rails against mystery novels because he is not capable of writing one – even though they are the most boring novels on earth.’
‘Give me a cigarette,’ Hunter said to his cousin, and only then replied:
‘When will you learn not to exaggerate? In the first place, I did not “rail” against mystery novels. I simply said that it should be possible to write a kind of contemporary Don Quixote. In the second place, you are mistaken if you think I am totally without talent in that regard. I once had a brilliant idea for a mystery.’
‘Sans blague,’ Mimí limited herself to saying.
‘Oh, but I did, I tell you. Now: a man has a mother, a wife, and a little boy. One night the mother is mysteriously murdered. The police investigations lead nowhere. A while later the wife is murdered: same story. Finally, the little boy is murdered. The man is out of his mind with grief, because he loves them all, especially the boy. Desperate, he decides to investigate the crimes himself. Using the usual inductive, deductive, analytical, synthetical, and on and on, methods of those geniuses of
the detective novel, he arrives at the conclusion that the murderer must kill a fourth time, on a certain day, at a certain hour, and in a certain place. His conclusion is that the murderer must now murder him. On the appointed day and hour, the man goes to the place where the fourth murder is to be committed, and awaits the murderer. But the murderer doesn’t come. The man reviews his deductions: he might have miscalculated the place; no, the place is correct. Perhaps he miscalculated the hour; no, the hour is correct. The conclusion is intolerable: the murderer is already there. In other words: he is the murderer, he had committed the crimes in some psychic state. The detective and the murderer are the same person.’
‘Too original for my taste,’ commented Mimí. ‘And how does it end? Didn’t you say there had to be a fourth murder?’
‘But that is obvious,’ Hunter drawled. ‘The man commits suicide. The doubt remains whether he killed himself out of remorse, or whether the murderer “I” kills the detective “I,” as in an ordinary crime. Do you like it?’
‘It’s amusing enough. But it’s one thing to tell it like that, and another to write the novel.’
‘That’s true,’ Hunter admitted tranquilly.
Then the woman began to chatter about some palm reader she had met in Mar del Plata, and some female seer. Hunter made a joking comment, and Mimí replied irately:
‘You will have to believe this is a serious matter,’ she said, ‘when I tell you her husband is a professor of engineering.’
Then they started arguing over telepathy. I was getting desperate because I had not seen María. When next I listened to what they were saying, they were discussing farm labor.
‘The trouble is,’ Mimí intoned, brandishing the cigarette holder as if it were a baton, ‘that no one wants to work anymore.’
Toward the end of this conversation I had a sudden illumination that dispelled my inexplicable sadness: this Mimí had showed up at the last minute, and María had not come downstairs because she could not stand Mimí’s and her cousin’s opinionated small talk (which surely she must have heard to the point of exhaustion). In retrospect, I realize that my supposition was not a completely irrational intuition but the direct result of something the chauffeur had said while driving me to the estancia: something that had gone right over my head at the time, a remark about Señor Hunter’s cousin having come from Mar del Plata for tea. Yes, that made everything clear: María, disheartened by the woman’s unexpected visit, had shut herself in her room, pretending to be ill. Obviously she could not face someone like Mimí. As I felt my sadness evaporate with this insight, I immediately identified its cause: when I had reached the house and seen that Hunter and Mimí were such frivolous hypocrites, consciously I had rejoiced, because that meant I need not fear any competition from Hunter. Subconsciously, however, I had been saddened to think (that is, feel) that María was one of their circle and that somehow she might be like them.
XXVI
As we got up from the tea table to take a walk around the grounds, I saw María coming toward us, which confirmed my hypothesis: she had waited until now to join us in order to avoid the absurd conversation at the table.
Every time we were with other people and I saw her approaching, I thought, ‘There is a secret bond between this marvelous woman and myself.’ Later, when I analyzed that feeling, I realized she had become indispensable (like someone I had discovered on a desert island), and subsequently – once the fear of absolute solitude had passed – a kind of luxury of which I was inordinately proud. It was in this second phase of my love that all the difficulties had begun to arise. I was like someone dying of hunger, who will unconditionally accept anything he is offered, but later, once the greatest urgency has been satisfied, gradually begins to complain of problems and inconveniences. I have seen émigrés with the humility typical of concentration camp survivors come to this country and happily accept anything that afforded a livelihood, the most demeaning jobs. But is it not rather strange that a man cannot be content with having escaped torture and death? As soon as he begins to enjoy his new security, the pride and vanity and arrogance that seemed to have been permanently obliterated begin to creep back, like beasts driven into hiding – but showing themselves with greater insolence, as if in reaction to the shame of having fallen so low. It is not rare in such circumstances to witness ingratitude and lack of appreciation.
Now that I have the opportunity to analyze my sentiments in tranquil surroundings, I think there was something of this in my relations with María, and I feel that in a way I am paying for the madness of not having been content with that part of María that liberated me (temporarily) from loneliness. That surge of pride, that growing desire to possess her exclusively, should have warned me that I was taking the wrong path – governed by vanity and arrogance.
That afternoon as I watched María walking toward me, pride was almost erased by the guilt and shame arising from the memory of the hideous scene in my studio, of my stupid, cruel, even vulgar, accusation that she had been ‘deceiving a blind man.’
I felt my knees grow weak, my face pale and turn icy cold. Why weren’t we alone! I would have thrown myself at her feet and asked her to forgive me and to cleanse me of the disgust and contempt I felt for myself!
In contrast, María seemed totally self-possessed; almost immediately my vague sadness began to return.
She was very restrained as she said hello, as if she wanted to prove before her two cousins that we were nothing more than friends. With the uneasiness that accompanies the fear you behaved like a fool, I remembered something that had happened days before. In one of my fits of depression I had told María that one day I hoped to sit on a hillside at dusk and look down on the towers of San Gimignano. She had replied passionately, ‘Wouldn’t that be wonderful, Juan Pablo!’ But when I proposed that we run away that very night, I frightened her; her expression hardened, and she said somberly: ‘We have no right to think of ourselves. The world is too complex.’ I asked her what she meant by that. She replied even more somberly: ‘Happiness is encircled with pain.’ I had left her abruptly, without a word of good-bye. More than ever I felt that she would never be wholly mine, and that I must resign myself to fragile moments of communion, as sad and insubstantial as the memory of certain dreams or the joy of certain musical passages.
And now she was walking toward me, controlling every gesture, calculating every word, every facial expression. How could she smile at that woman!
She asked whether I had brought the sketches.
‘What sketches!’ I exclaimed with fury, knowing my answer was jeopardizing some scheme, a scheme meant to benefit us.
‘The sketches you promised to show me,’ she persisted, unruffled. ‘The sketches of the port.’
I glared at her with hatred, but she met my eyes serenely and, for a fraction of a second, her own softened and seemed to be saying ‘Take pity on me.’ My darling, darling María! I was devastated by that instant of pleading and humility. With great tenderness I replied:
‘Of course I brought them. They’re in my room.’
‘I’m very eager to see them,’ she said in the same cool voice.
‘Why don’t we go look at them now?’ I asked, falling in with her scheme.
I trembled at the thought that Mimí might join us. But María, who knew her better than I, immediately foiled her by adding:
‘We’ll be right back.’
She grasped my arm purposefully and led me toward the house. I glanced back for a second and thought I intercepted a knowing glance between Mimí and Hunter.
XXVII
I had planned to stay several days at the estancia, but spent only one night. The day after my arrival, at daybreak, I fled on foot, carrying my suitcase and paints. This may sound insane, but you will see that it was fully justified.
We left Hunter and Mimí, entered the house, went upstairs to look for the fictitious drawings, and came back downstairs with my paints and a sketch pad intended to represent the drawings. That latt
er subterfuge was María’s idea.
The cousins had left, anyway. From that moment María’s mood lightened, and by the time we had walked through the park to the seashore, she was actually ebullient. She was a different woman from the one I had known in the misery of the city: more vibrant, more vital. There was also a sensuality about her I had never seen, a sensual pleasure in colors and fragrances: she would be strangely (strangely to me, for my own sensuality is introspective, almost purely intellectual) excited by the color of a tree trunk, or a dried leaf, or an insect, or the smell of eucalyptus mingled with the scent of the sea. But far from making me happy, this new María depressed and saddened me, because I knew this aspect of the woman I loved was alien to me and must somehow belong to Hunter or some other man.
My depression increased with every step, perhaps partly because of the increasingly audible sound of the waves. When we emerged from the trees and I saw the sky above the shoreline, I knew that sadness is inevitable. It was the sadness I always feel in the presence of beauty or, at least a certain kind of beauty. Do all people feel this way, or is it just another sign of my black disposition?
For a long time we sat on the rocks, not speaking, listening to the furious pounding of the waves below, feeling on our faces the sea spray that from time to time crashed as high as the top of the cliff. The stormy sky reminded me of Tintoretto and his Saint Mark Rescuing the Saracen.
‘I can’t count the times,’ said María, ‘that I have dreamed of sharing this sea and this sky with you.’
After a pause, she added:
‘Sometimes it seems as if we have lived this scene together forever. When I saw the solitary woman in the window of your painting, I sensed that we were alike, you and I, and that you, too, were searching blindly for someone, a kind of companion in silence. From that day I have thought of nothing but you. Many times I dreamed of you here, in this place where I have spent so many hours of my life. Once I even thought of looking for you and confessing how I felt. But I was afraid I might be mistaken, as once before I had been mistaken, and I hoped that somehow it would be you who searched for me. But I helped you with all my heart; I called out to you each night; and I came to be so certain we would meet that when it did happen, when I was waiting for that absurd elevator, I was terrified, and all I could say was something unutterably stupid. And when you turned and left, stung by what you thought was your blunder, I was half-crazy, and I ran after you. Then came those moments in the Plaza San Martín when you thought you had to explain things to me and I tried to put you off, torn between worry that I might lose you forever and fear of the harm I might do you. I tried to discourage you, to make you think I didn’t understand your cryptic words, your coded message.’