On the fourth day an Andalusian woman who was there just to clean picked up the phone. "The gentleman's gone away," she said, with enough vagueness to drive him mad. Saturno did not resist the temptation of asking if Senorita Maria was in by any chance.
"Nobody named Maria lives here," the woman told him. "The gentleman is a bachelor."
"I know," he said. "She doesn't live there, but sometimes she visits, right?"
The woman became annoyed.
"Who the hell is this, anyway?"
Saturno hung up. The woman's denial seemed one more confirmation of what for him was no longer a suspicion but a burning certainty. He lost control. In the days that followed he called everyone he knew in Barcelona, in alphabetical order. No one could tell him anything, but each call deepened his misery, because his jealous frenzies had become famous among the unrepentant night owls of the gauche divine, and they responded with any kind of joke that would make him suffer. Only then did he realize how alone he was in that beautiful, lunatic, impenetrable city, where he would never be happy. At dawn, after he fed the cat, he hardened his heart to keep from dying and resolved to forget Maria.
After two months Maria had not yet adjusted to life in the sanatorium. She survived by just picking at the prison rations with flatware chained to the long table of unfinished wood, her eyes fixed on the lithograph of General Francisco Franco that presided over the gloomy medieval dining room. At first she resisted the canonical hours with their mindless routine of matins, lauds, vespers, as well as the other church services that took up most of the time. She refused to play ball in the recreation yard, or to make artificial flowers in the workshop that a group of inmates attended with frenetic diligence. But after the third week she began, little by little, to join in the life of the cloister. After all, said the doctors, every one of them started out the same way, and sooner or later they became integrated into the community.
The lack of cigarettes, resolved in the first few days by a matron who sold them for the price of gold, returned to torment her again when she had spent the little money she had with her. Then she took comfort in the newspaper cigarettes that some inmates made with the butts they picked out of the trash, for her obsessive desire to smoke had become as intense as her fixation on the telephone. Later on, the few pesetas she earned making artificial flowers allowed her an ephemeral consolation.
Hardest of all was her loneliness at night. Many inmates lay awake in the semi-darkness, as she did, not daring to do anything because the night matron at the heavy door secured with a chain and padlock was awake too. One night, however, overcome with grief, Maria asked in a voice loud enough for the woman in the next bed to hear:
"Where are we?"
The grave, lucid voice of her neighbor answered:
"In the pit of hell."
"They say this is the country of the Moors," said another, distant voice that resounded throughout the dormitory. "And it must be true, because in the summer, when there's a moon, you can hear the dogs barking at the sea."
The chain running through the locks sounded like the anchor of a galleon, and the door opened. Their pitiless guardian, the only creature who seemed alive in the instantaneous silence, began walking from one end of the dormitory to the other. Maria was seized with terror, and only she knew why.
Since her first week in the sanatorium, the night matron had been proposing outright that Maria sleep with her in the guardroom. She began in a concrete, businesslike tone: an exchange of love for cigarettes, for chocolate, for whatever she wanted. "You'll have everything," the matron said, tremulous. "You'll be the queen." When Maria refused, she changed her tactics, leaving little love notes under her pillow, in the pockets of her robe, in the most unexpected places. They were messages of a heartbreaking urgency that could have moved a stone. On the night of the dormitory incident, it had been more than a month that she had seemed resigned to defeat.
When she was certain the other inmates were asleep, the matron approached Maria's bed and whispered all kinds of tender obscenities in her ear while she kissed her face, her neck tensed with terror, her rigid arms, her exhausted legs. Then, thinking perhaps that Maria's paralysis stemmed not from fear but from compliance, she dared to go further. That was when Maria hit her with the back of her hand and sent her crashing into the next bed. The enraged matron stood up in the midst of the uproar created by the agitated inmates.
"You bitch!" she shouted. "We'll rot together in this hellhole until you go crazy for me."
Summer arrived without warning on the first Sunday in June, requiring emergency measures because during Mass the sweltering inmates began taking off their shapeless serge gowns. With some amusement Maria watched the spectacle of naked patients being chased like blind chickens up and down the aisles by the matrons. In the confusion she tried to protect herself from wild blows, and she somehow found herself alone in an empty office, where the incessant ring of a telephone had a pleading tone. Maria answered without thinking and heard a distant, smiling voice that took great pleasure in imitating the telephone company's time service:
"The time is forty-five hours, ninety-two minutes, and one hundred seven seconds."
"Asshole," said Maria.
She hung up, amused. She was about to leave when she realized she was allowing a unique opportunity to slip away. She dialed six digits, with so much tension and so much haste she was not sure it was her home number. She waited, her heart racing, she heard the avid, sad sound of the familiar ring, once, twice, three times, and at last she heard the voice of the man she loved, in the house without her.
"Hello?"
She had to wait for the knot of tears that formed in her throat to dissolve.
"Baby, sweetheart," she sighed.
Her tears overcame her. On the other end of the line there was a brief, horrified silence, and a voice burning with jealousy spit out the word:
"Whore!"
And he slammed down the receiver.
That night, in an attack of rage, Maria pulled down the lithograph of the Generalissimo in the refectory, crashed it with all her strength into the stained-glass window that led to the garden, and threw herself to the floor, covered in blood. She still had enough fury left to resist the blows of the matrons who tried, with no success, to restrain her, until she saw Herculina standing in the doorway with her arms folded, staring at her. Maria gave up. Nevertheless, they dragged her to the ward for violent patients, subdued her with a hose spurting icy water, and injected turpentine into her legs. The swelling that resulted prevented her from walking, and Maria realized there was nothing in the world she would not do to escape that hell. The following week, when she was back in the dormitory, she tiptoed to the night matron's room and knocked at the door.
Maria's price, which she demanded in advance, was that the matron send a message to her husband. The matron agreed, on the condition that their dealings be kept an absolute secret. And she pointed an inexorable forefinger at her.
"If they ever find out, you die."
And so, on the following Saturday, Saturno the Magician drove to the asylum for women in the circus van, which he had prepared to celebrate Maria's return. The director himself received him in his office, which was as clean and well ordered as a battleship, and made an affectionate report on his wife's condition. No one had known where she came from, or how or when, since the first information regarding her arrival was the official admittance form he had dictated after interviewing her. An investigation begun that same day had proved inconclusive. In any event, what most intrigued the director was how Saturno had learned his wife's whereabouts. Saturno protected the matron.
"The insurance company told me," he said.
The director nodded, satisfied. "I don't know how insurance companies manage to find out everything," he said. He looked over the file lying on his ascetic's desk, and concluded:
"The only certainty is the seriousness of her condition."
He was prepared to authorize a visit with all the nece
ssary precautions if Saturno the Magician would promise, for the good of his wife, to adhere without question to the rules of behavior that he would indicate. Above all with reference to how he treated her, in order to avoid a recurrence of the fits of rage that were becoming more and more frequent and dangerous.
"How strange," said Saturno. "She always was quicktempered, but had a lot of self-control."
The doctor made a learned man's gesture. "There are behaviors that remain latent for many years, and then one day they erupt," he said. "All in all, it is fortunate she happened to come here, because we specialize in cases requiring a firm hand." Then he warned him about Maria's strange obsession with the telephone.
"Humor her," he said.
"Don't worry, Doctor," Saturno said with a cheerful air. "That's my specialty."
The visiting room, a combination of prison cell and confessional, was the former locutory of the convent. Saturno's entrance was not the explosion of joy they both might have expected. Maria stood in the middle of the room, next to a small table with two chairs and a vase empty of flowers. It was obvious she was ready to leave, with her lamentable strawberry-colored coat and a pair of disreputable shoes given to her out of charity. Herculina stood in a corner, almost invisible, her arms folded. Maria did not move when she saw her husband come in, and her face, still marked by the shattered window glass, showed no emotion. They exchanged routine kisses.
"How do you feel?" he asked her.
"Happy you're here at last, baby," she said. "This has been death."
They did not have time to sit down. Drowning in tears, Maria told him about the miseries of the cloister, the brutality of the matrons, the food not fit for dogs, the endless nights when terror kept her from closing her eyes.
"I don't even know how many days I've been here, or how many months or years, all I know is that each one has been worse than the last," and she sighed with all her soul. "I don't think I'll ever be the same."
"That's all over now," he said, caressing the recent scars on her face with his fingertips. "I'll come every Saturday. More often than that, if the director lets me. You'll see, everything will turn out just fine."
She fixed her terrified eyes on his. Saturno tried to use his performer's charm. He told her, in the puerile tone of all great lies, a sweetened version of the doctor's prognosis. "It means," he concluded, "that you still need a few more days to make a complete recovery." Maria understood the truth.
"For God's sake, baby," she said, stunned. "Don't tell me you think I'm crazy too!"
"The things you think of!" he said, trying to laugh. "But it really will be much better for everybody if you stay here a while. Under better conditions, of course."
"But I've already told you I only came to use the phone!" said Maria.
He did not know how to react to her dreadful obsession. He looked at Herculina. She took advantage of the opportunity to point at her wristwatch as a sign that it was time to end the visit. Maria intercepted the signal, glanced behind her, and saw Herculina tensing for an imminent attack. Then she clung to her husband's neck, screaming like a real madwoman. He freed himself with as much love as he could muster, and left her to the mercies of Herculina, who jumped her from behind. Without giving Maria time to react, she applied an armlock with her left hand, put her other iron arm around her throat, and shouted at Saturno the Magician:
"Leave!"
Saturno fled in terror.
But on the following Saturday, when he had recovered from the shock of the visit, he returned to the sanatorium with the cat, which he had dressed in an outfit identical to his: the red-and-yellow tights of the great Leotardo, a top hat, and a swirling cape that seemed made for flying. He drove the circus van into the courtyard of the cloister, and there he put on a prodigious show lasting almost three hours, which the inmates enjoyed from the balconies with discordant shouts and inopportune applause. They were all there except Maria, who not only refused to receive her husband but would not even watch him from the balconies. Saturno felt wounded to the quick.
"It is a typical reaction," the director consoled him. "It will pass."
But it never passed. After attempting many times to see Maria again, Saturno did all he could to have her accept a letter from him, but to no avail. She returned it four times, unopened and with no comments. Saturno gave up but continued leaving a supply of cigarettes at the porter's office without ever finding out if they reached Maria, until at last reality defeated him.
No one heard any more about him except that he married again and returned to his own country. Before leaving Barcelona he gave the half-starved cat to a casual girlfriend, who also promised to take cigarettes to Maria. But she disappeared too. Rosa Regas remembered seeing her in the Corte Ingles department store about twelve years ago, with the shaved head and orange robes of some Oriental sect, and very pregnant. She told Rosa she had taken cigarettes to Maria as often as she could, and settled some unforeseen emergencies for her, until one day she found only the ruins of the hospital, which had been demolished like a bad memory of those wretched times. Maria seemed very lucid on her last visit, a little overweight, and content with the peace of the cloister. That was the day she also brought Maria the cat, because she had spent all the money that Saturno had given her for its food.
APRIL 1978
The Ghosts of August
WE REACHED Arezzo a little before noon, and spent more than two hours looking for the Renaissance castle that the Venezuelan writer Miguel Otero Silva had bought in that idyllic corner of the Tuscan countryside. It was a burning, bustling Sunday in early August, and it was not easy to find anyone who knew anything in the streets teeming with tourists. After many useless attempts, we went back to the car and left the city by a road lined with cypresses but without any signs, and an old woman tending geese told us with precision where the castle was located. Before saying good-bye she asked us if we planned to sleep there, and we replied that we were going only for lunch, which was our original intention.
"That's just as well," she said, "because the house is haunted."
My wife and I, who do not believe in midday phantoms, laughed at her credulity. But our two sons, nine and seven years old, were overjoyed at the idea of meeting a ghost in the flesh.
Miguel Otero Silva, who was a splendid host and a refined gourmet as well as a good writer, had an unforgettable lunch waiting for us. Because we arrived late, we did not have time to see the inside of the castle before sitting down at the table, but there was nothing frightening about its external appearance, and any uneasiness was dissipated by our view of the entire city from the flower-covered terrace where we ate lunch. It was difficult to believe that so many men of lasting genius had been born on that hill crowded with houses with barely enough room for ninety thousand people. Miguel Otero Silva, however, said with his Caribbean humor that none of them was the most renowned native of Arezzo.
"The greatest of all," he declared, "was Ludovico."
Just like that, with no family names: Ludovico, the great patron of the arts and of war, who had built this castle of his affliction, and about whom Miguel spoke all during lunch. He told us of Ludovico's immense power, his troubled love, his dreadful death. He told us how it was that in a moment of heart's madness he stabbed his lady in the bed where they had just made love, turned his ferocious fighting dogs on himself, and was torn to pieces. He assured us, in all seriousness, that after midnight the ghost of Ludovico walked the dark of the house trying to find peace in his purgatory of love.
The castle really was immense and gloomy. But in the light of day, with a full stomach and a contented heart, Miguel's tale seemed only another of the many diversions with which he entertained his guests. After our siesta we walked without foreboding through the eighty-two rooms that had undergone all kinds of alterations by a succession of owners. Miguel had renovated the entire first floor and built a modern bedroom with marble floors, a sauna, and exercise equipment, as well as the terrace covered with brilliant flo
wers where we had eaten lunch. The second story, the one most used over the centuries, consisted of characterless rooms with furnishings from different periods which had been abandoned to their fate. But on the top floor we saw a room, preserved intact, that time had forgotten to visit--the bedchamber of Ludovico.
The moment was magical. There stood the bed, its curtains embroidered in gold thread, the bedspread and its prodigies of passementerie still stiff with the dried blood of his sacrificed lover. There was the fireplace with its icy ashes and its last log turned to stone, the armoire with its weapons primed, and, in a gold frame, the oil portrait of the pensive knight, painted by some Florentine master who did not have the good fortune to survive his time. What affected me most, however, was the unexplainable scent of fresh strawberries that hung over the entire bedroom.
The days of summer are long and unhurried in Tuscany, and the horizon stays in its place until nine at night. When we finished walking through the castle it was after five, but Miguel insisted on taking us to see the frescoes by Piero della Francesca in the Church of San Francesco.
Then we lingered over coffee beneath the arbors on the square, and when we came back for our suitcases we found a meal waiting for us. And so we stayed for supper.
While we ate under a mauve sky with a single star, the boys took flashlights from the kitchen and set out to explore the darkness on the upper floors. From the table we could hear the gallop of wild horses on the stairs, the lamenting doors, the joyous shouts calling for Ludovico in the gloomy rooms. They were the ones who had the wicked idea of sleeping there. A delighted Miguel Otero Silva supported them, and we did not have the social courage to tell them no.
Contrary to what I had feared, we slept very well, my wife and I in a first-floor bedroom and the children in one adjoining ours. Both rooms had been modernized and there was nothing gloomy about them. As I waited for sleep I counted the twelve insomniac strokes of the pendulum clock in the drawing room, and I remembered the fearsome warning of the woman tending geese. But we were so tired that we soon fell into a dense, unbroken slumber, and I woke after seven to a splendid sun shining through the climbing vines at the window. Beside me my wife sailed the calm sea of the innocent. "What foolishness," I said to myself, "to still believe in ghosts in this day and age." Only then was I shaken by the scent of fresh strawberries, and I saw the fireplace with its cold ashes and its final log turned to stone, and the portrait of the melancholy knight in the gold frame looking at us over a distance of three centuries. For we were not in the first-floor bedroom where we had fallen asleep the night before, but in the bedchamber of Ludovico, under the canopy and the dusty curtains and the sheets soaked with still-warm blood of his accursed bed.