OTHER BOOKS BY ARIEL DORFMAN
Blake’s Therapy: A Novel
The Burning City (with Joaquin Dorfman)
Death and the Maiden
Desert Memories: Journeys Through the Chilean North
The Empire’s Old Clothes: What the Lone Ranger, Babar, and Other Innocent Heroes Do to Our Minds
Exorcising Terror: The Incredible Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet
Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey
In Case of Fire in a Foreign Land: New and Selected Poems in Two Languages
Konfidenz
Manifesto for Another World: The Speak Truth to Power Play
The Nanny and the Iceberg
Other Septembers, Many Americas: Selected Provocations 1980–2004
The Rabbits’ Rebellion
The Resistance Trilogy
Some Write to the Future (essays)
Widows: A Novel
Copyright © 1988 Ariel Dorfman
Introduction copyright © 2004 J. M. Coetzee
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dorfman, Ariel.
Mascara : a novel / Ariel Dorfman.—1st pbk. ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-60980-258-5
1. Women—Fiction. 2. Girls—Crimes against—Fiction. 3. Identity (Psychology)—Fiction. 4. Plastic surgeons—Fiction. 5. Authoritarianism—Fiction. 6. Age (Psychology)—Fiction. 7. Revenge—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9309.9.D67M37 2004
863’.64—dc22
2004012308
College professors may order examination copies of
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Cover design by POLLEN/Stewart Cauley
v3.1
This book is for María Angélica
Acknowledgments
In this novel of deception and betrayal, the reader will be hard pressed to find human beings who show a hint of loyalty to one another. It is particularly gratifying, therefore, to acknowledge in real living people a quality that the characters, in Mascara at least, do not possess.
The unflagging faithfulness which Nan Graham, my editor, has shown toward me, my family and my work has sustained us all during the harrowing times when I was writing this novel. Not to mention her intelligence and stubborn insistence on making my writing as clear and direct as possible. Nor could the novel have been finished without the encouragement, almost day by day, of my agent, Andrew Wylie, whose enthusiasm for this book, fortunately, was contagious.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
First Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Second Chapter 6
Third Chapter 7
A Sort of Epilogue
Afterword
About the Author
FIRST
So we’re finally going to meet, Doctor. Face to face, so to speak. Two o’clock this afternoon in your consulting room. Your nurse just confirmed our appointment. After lunch, that is, she said to me. As if I had any interest in lunching with you, Doctor.
Yes, Doctor, I’m talking to you, Mavirelli, or whatever your name is. It’s true that I’m speaking softly and just as true that you’re not even present yet. A pity your ears are less nimble and far-reaching than your fingers. You could prepare yourself for what I’m going to propose today at two. Instead of assuming that I’ll deliver my unconditional surrender.
Not a chance, Doctor. If you really knew me, your deceiving hands wouldn’t touch upon such a bizarre idea. But we won’t have time to further our acquaintance. So this story that I’ll tell to the face of yours that’s in my head will have to do. If many years ago I had taken the precaution to stuff your features inside my camera, if I had snapped a photograph of you, things would be different now. You’d be the one asking me for an appointment.
Of course you won’t receive me at two o’clock sharp. You’ll give yourself time to look at me, at both of us, through a half-open door, some one-way mirror. You’ll tell yourself you know everything about me that there is to know.
But you know nothing of my eyes, Doctor. Your spies cannot have informed you of them. They would have had to be present five days ago when I exercised my own right to look, when I gave myself the time to calmly contemplate, through the slit in the curtains of my window, that woman who called herself Patricia. What better way of beginning to explain to you who I am, what I want? Of course, it makes no difference where one begins to tell a story: we always reach the same ending, don’t we?
As for so-called Patricia, nobody was going to open the door to her. At least I wasn’t, and there was nobody else at home. So I took my time examining her bit by bit. That’s right, as if she were undressing. That’s why zoos are such a pleasure, Doctor; they were when I was a kid. That terrorized animal—she was far more frightened than the first time she came to my door, it was spilling out of her, far more—that animal which called itself, for now, Patricia couldn’t guess that someone was giving her the once over.
She’s going to ring the buzzer, I thought. A first, energetic sounding; then a couple of vacant moments; after that a timid chirp of a buzz that doesn’t want to show impatience, a longer period in which she won’t know what to do, if she should stay or leave, one last attempt, the long wait before she withdraws. A camera would have captured for later a sequence of Patricias, with one face after the other decomposing, fear rising in her like water that can’t be flushed away. Entertainment for a few minutes—maybe that Friday morning’s lone offering.
But it wasn’t my intention to take her picture. At least not then. The camera’s always ready and more so on a holiday; the feet, always prepared to follow the person these eyes of mine have chosen. But not that morning. Nor was Patricia’s face steeped in a mystery worth exploring. If she was coming back to my house again, it was because she was still stuck with the same problem she had when she came to see me the first time, the day before yesterday. Her problem had two legs attached to it, and those two legs were probably somewhere nearby, out of sight around the corner, hoping for a refuge they wouldn’t get, at least here. Or so I had sworn at the time. When the supposed Patricia would tire of ringing and these eyes would tire of scanning her, each of us would return to our little dilemma, I to the list I had in my hand, thanks to you, Doctor, the list of contacts who had passed themselves off as my allies and whom I had been calling systematically on the phone, crossing them out one by one with what might almost be pronounced satisfaction, because I was merely confirming a disloyalty I had always anticipated, and she, she, on the other hand …
But that’s not the way it went. Not even the corner of her mouth trembled, not even the thinness of those lips that he
r careful ochre-red rouge was trying to disguise, not even an eyelash. She pushed her finger into the buzzer and the initial shrillness sounded in the house and went on, like a sour lemon of a trumpet, went on here in this head of mine. These eyes measured the paleness of that pressed finger, the contrast with the calm liquid quiet of the rest of her body, the fury of the trapped bee in that finger, and they realized all of a sudden that the vixen knew for a certainty that there was someone at home and that the someone was none other than myself. Because a while ago the phone had interrupted the silence, and this mouth had muttered a hello, hello, with the idiotic hope that it would be one of those who had vowed their faithfulness to me, returning my calls, offering to find a witness against you, Doctor Maravirelli, before next Wednesday, at the preliminary hearing on our lawsuit.
On the other end of the line, they hung up.
“Son of a bitch!”
Someone had been calling periodically since the accident. I had come home directly from the police station, without even approaching—I would have to have been crazy—the hospital as they had recommended, limping from the pain, and the phone was already ringing. That same Wednesday—Christmas Eve, Marivelli, that first call. You work fast. That first empty hum on the line when I answered—and the knowledge that someone was tracking me down. Since then, over and over and over, that muffled purr and then these hands sweating for minutes on the dead receiver, unable to reconstruct the face of that enemy from the muted breath on the other end, the identity of the person—or persons?—that you have hired to destroy me, Doctor. The same shadow that, undoubtedly, during the last few days has been calling without respite each name in this address book of mine, in alphabetical order, as if he had the booklet itself to consult. Phoning to murmur rumors to each of them, perhaps threats. Until nobody wanted to answer my calls—sorry, he’s not at home—scared of my voice—if you want to leave a message …
I should have worried, Mavirelli. It’s been so many years since I have had that sort of experience, people denying me what I demand. People who owe me everything, whom I have made into celebrities, saved from an insipid existence. I thought it would be enough to go to my office on Monday, enough to look up their files and their photos, and the traitors would crawl back on their knees to beg forgiveness. Then I would not only flourish three, four, as many as twenty witnesses in your face, Doctor Mierdavelli, I would also find out who was acting as your lackey, who was punching my number with a long finger. And in the worst of cases there was always one name you couldn’t know about, one at least that wasn’t in my booklet. I was in no hurry. It was a holiday, the day after Christmas, and there were no elevator boys on the job. Climb to the fourteenth floor? With this bandaged leg? Better to wait till Monday.
A mistake. Not to have rushed to my files right away. Yes, and also a mistake to have shouted son of a bitch. Daughter of a bitch would have been more accurate, or simply bitch, because the buzzer’s persistence was revealing the true identity of the person who had called and hung up this morning.
But not the other times. It hadn’t been her then. Patricia wasn’t collaborating with you, Marvirelli, she wasn’t your spy, or your informer. Probably didn’t even know you. Our accident—and that’s what it was, Doctor, an entirely unexpected, fortuitous collision of cars which neither of us desired—that accident had occurred precisely a couple of hours after she had come to see me that first time. Her neutrality attracted me. That’s what forestalled my urge to disconnect the buzzer and let her rot there forever or until the police would come to carry her off, pseudonym and all. Down there, at my door, was one person in the world who was not in my address book and who had therefore not been poisoned by your flunky’s efforts, Doctor. I rose with difficulty from my chair. One person who wasn’t prejudiced against me, who might even be neutral. One person to have a little fun with. I towed my damaged leg down each step of the stairs. Patricia, exasperating as she was, was better than no one. With each painful step, I thought of another reason to open the door. Until I found myself, in fact, opening the door. A mistake.
Because once you’ve opened a door, Maravillo, it’s almost impossible to shut it. You must know that. Once you begin to operate on a face, once you’ve transplanted one sliver of skin and everything else that your butcher’s hands plunder underneath that skin, there is no way back to the person as she once was. Once you make that first thrust, Doctor, after that, the patient’s fucked. Just the tip. The tip of the shoe, the tip of the tongue, the tip of whatever it is we have between our legs, the tip of that bitch Patricia’s breasts—it’s enough that someone should pierce us with the tingle, the dawn of a scalpel, and we’re fucked. Who sticks it into whom, that’s the only question worth answering in this world—or have you got a different question, Mirlaveri?
“I’m not deaf, you know.”
“I’m in a hurry,” said the woman who had called herself Patricia the last time we had spoken. “Is the man of the house in?”
Not even forty-eight hours had passed since she had asked this same face exactly the same question in the same place, not more than forty-eight hours, and she no longer remembered. To her, I was less than a speck of dust that is washed away by a tear. I didn’t care. You won’t recognize me, either, Doctor, when you inspect me through the split-second frame of your door. Your eyes will slip over my face as if they were made of soap, sliding through my features like rain on a darkened waterfall.
It’s been happening to me since I can remember. Before I can remember. There’s proof that they used to forget to give that kid his bottle. Why’s that brat squealing? Suppose he’s hungry? Impossible—we gave him his—and then they realized that no, they hadn’t given that baby a piss of milk. These are not guesses, Doctor. I’ve read my own medical record. Don’t get so upset, Miralevi. I’ve got access to the records of all the citizens of this land. Surely you understand that I would consult my own—before I shredded it so nobody could ever find me. There were the notes of some nurse at whose window I will arrive one day with my implacable camera: a bottle every ten, every twelve, every eighteen hours, huh, nurse? Do you think she works for you, now, Doctor? Is she one of the staff who was aiming the reflectors in your operating room yesterday? Will I encounter her this afternoon presiding over your waiting room—and she won’t recognize me today, either? Is that what will happen?
I won’t make things easy for her, for you, for anybody. Or for Patricia. She had been, without a doubt, most amply replenished with milk on the strictest of schedules, not to mention the probably generous tits of a mother who remembered her name and the color of her eyes. So I’ll let Patricia, just like you, Doctor, this afternoon—I’ll let you all figure out your mistake on your own.
She was clever, I’ll admit that, and quick. Ten seconds later, when she began to wonder if the man of the house wasn’t, in fact, standing composed right there in front of her, she took advantage of the fact that the accident had left me in a dreadful state, to excuse herself.
“Hey, now. What happened to you? Didn’t recognize you.”
That familiar hey, now, wasn’t to my liking. “An accident,” I answered. “My car is worth shit.” Measuring how much she needed my help, how much false sympathy she was ready to deal me. Just like you measure cheekbones and nostrils, Doctor.
“So why aren’t you inviting me in?”
“Should I? Have you got another letter for me?”
“The dead only write one good-bye letter. You’ve got yours.” But she added, “Poor little thing.”
There’s something that still melts, still becomes tender all over, Doctor, when a woman speaks to me softly. Even if I know it’s hypocrisy, that it was Patricia’s press agent spouting the words, that all that gentleness was cosmetic and calculated, even so … That someone in this world would treat me with the semblance of affection … It must happen to you all the time: being sucked in by somebody’s splendor although you are absolutely aware that, underneath the bronzed skin, one skeleton is just about as une
nticing as another.
I let her in. Gave her just enough space so she would have to make a dancer’s flexible, imperfect twist to avoid this male body, so the feminine flesh in her left breast had to brush my arm. I was able to imagine the wave of heat further down, further inside. Patricia emerging from the shower, how she would dry herself out, slowly like a cat, or with the startled, nervous movements of a dog in heat. It’s something I’ll never know, Doctor. I wasn’t interested in knowing it. The mere idea of following her to her home, of adding her intimacy to my collection, was—to put it frankly—distasteful.
My hand was going to shut the door behind her when she stopped me.
“Wait,” she said. “I’m not alone.”
It was then, Doctor, that I saw her for the first time. Oriana. She appeared, she materialized, she came like a miracle to my threshold. Later, I realized that both of them had planned that ambush down to the last detail. As soon as Patricia was inside the house, the woman whom I still call Oriana today, because I have no better name for her, was to turn the protective corner, cross the street, enter my life. But at that moment what I felt was admiration for the way in which Patricia had managed to fool me, the way she had found to extract a full-grown woman with dark glasses out of thin air.
Those dark glasses of Oriana’s. It wasn’t necessary to read her eyes in order to surmise what the morning, probably the preceding week had been, the slow exhausting of possible sanctuaries, the boarding of the next bus, the act of getting off at an unknown stop, of gauging how many people were still left until they returned to this house which they had visited before, how many people would observe them still from the heights of some window without the slightest show of pity, until they had drained the list and found themselves returning dispassionately to the surname my parents gave me as their only gift—which I didn’t want, anyway—when they pushed me into this world. My surname, which Patricia had already crossed off her list once two days ago. And if the door had not opened, what would they have done? Would they have stood there in front of the house, like a couple of tombstones or dead horses? Or would they return, punctual, insistent, sterile, every two days?