The Truce (3 page)

I returned home, took a nap and woke up feeling sluggish, in a bad mood. I drank several matés and was annoyed at the bitter taste. Then I got dressed and went back into town again. This time I went into a café and sat at a table next to the window. In the span of an hour and fifteen minutes, exactly thirty-five attractive women passed by. To help pass the time, I made up a list on a paper napkin of what I liked the best about each of them. This is the result: two had faces I liked; four, the hair; six, the bust-line; eight, the legs; and fifteen, the buttocks. It was a broad victory for the buttocks.

Last night Esteban arrived home at twelve, Jaime at twelve-thirty, and Blanca at one o'clock. I heard all of them come in, picking up every minute sound, every footstep, every mumbled curse word. I think Jaime was a little drunk, because I heard him bumping into furniture and he kept the bathroom tap running for about a half an hour. However, it was Esteban who was cursing, and he never drinks. When Blanca arrived, Esteban said something to her from his room and she responded by telling him to mind his own business. Then there was silence, three hours of silence. During the weekends I'm plagued by insomnia. And I wonder, will I ever be able to sleep when I retire?

Blanca was the only one I spoke to this morning and I told her I didn't like her coming home late. She isn't disrespectful, so
she didn't deserve to be scolded. But in any case, it's a mother and father's duty. I should be both at the same time, but I think I'm neither. I felt I went too far when I heard myself ask in a monitoring tone of voice: ‘What were you doing last night? Where did you go?' Then, while she spread butter on her toast, she replied: ‘Why do you feel obligated to be the bad guy? There are two things we can both be sure of: that we love each other and that I'm not doing anything improper.' I felt defeated, but nevertheless added, if for no other reason than to save face: ‘It all depends on what you consider improper.'

Avellaneda and I worked together all afternoon in search of discrepancies, the most boring activity in the world. A discrepancy of seven hundredths. Actually, it was a combination of two different discrepancies: one of eighteen hundredths and another of twenty-five hundredths. Poor Avellaneda still hadn't caught on very well. She becomes just as tired doing this type of strictly mechanical work as she does when she has to do work which forces her to think and do research in order to arrive at solutions on her own. Personally, I'm so accustomed to this kind of research that I often prefer it to any other type of work. Today, for example, while she called out the numbers and I checked them off on my adding tape, I practised by counting the moles on her left forearm. They fall into two categories: there are five small and three large ones, one of which is quite big. When she finished calling out the number for November, just to see how she would react, I said: ‘Have that mole removed. It's usually nothing, but in one case out of a hundred it could be dangerous.' She blushed and didn't know where to put her arm. Then she said: ‘Thank you, sir,' and quite uncomfortably continued to
read the numbers out loud. When we got to January, I started to read the numbers out loud and she checked them off. Then, I suddenly became aware that something strange was happening and I looked up in the middle of reading a number. She was looking at my hand. Looking for moles? Perhaps. I smiled and once again she became quite embarrassed. Poor Avellaneda. She doesn't realize that I'm a gentleman and that I would never, ever, make overtures towards an employee in my department.

Dinner at Vignale's. The house is dark, cramped and cluttered. There are two armchairs in the living room that are of such an undefined international style that they look like two hairy dwarves. I let myself drop into one of them and felt a wave of heat travel up to my chest. While I sat in the armchair, a little discoloured dog with the face of a spinster came to greet me. After looking at me without so much as a sniff, she opened her legs wide and proceeded to commit the classic offence right there on the carpet. The stain appeared precisely on the head of a peacock, which was the star in that rather frightful pattern. But there were so many stains on the carpet that one might think they actually formed part of the design.

Vignale has a large, noisy and insufferable family. It includes his wife, mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law and, horror of all horrors, his five children. These could be approximately defined as little monsters. Physically, they look normal, too normal, rosy-cheeked and healthy. Their monstrosity resides in how annoying they are. The oldest is thirteen (Vignale was middle-aged when he married) and the youngest is six. They are constantly running around, making a noise and arguing at the top of their lungs. One gets the feeling that
they're climbing on to one's back or shoulders, and that they're always about to stick one of their fingers into your ear or pull your hair. They never get that far, but the result is the same, and one is aware that in Vignale's house, a person is at the mercy of that pack of little monsters. The adults in the family have found refuge in an enviable attitude of disregard for them, which doesn't exclude stray slaps that suddenly cut through the air and land on the nose, temple or eye of one of those little angels. The mother's method, for example, could be defined like this: tolerate any kind of attitude or insolence by the one offspring who bothers all the others, including visitors, but punish every gesture or word by the offspring who bothers her personally. The high point of dinner occurred while we were having dessert. One of the kids wanted to leave evidence that the rice pudding hadn't agreed with him. Said evidence consisted of spilling his portion of the rice pudding on to his youngest brother's trousers. The gesture was celebrated with plenty of noise, but the weeping of the victimized little brother surpassed all of my expectations and is beyond description.

After dinner the kids disappeared and I didn't know whether they were getting ready for bed or whether they were preparing a poison cocktail for early tomorrow morning. ‘What kids!' said Vignale's mother-in-law. ‘It's just that they're so full of life. That's what childhood is: pure life,' said the son-in-law as a suitable postscript. In response to a non-existent inquiry on my part, the sister-in-law pointed out: ‘We don't have children.' ‘And we've been married for seven years already,' said her husband with an apparently malicious guffaw. ‘Personally, I would like to,' the woman explained. ‘But this one takes pleasure in avoiding them.' It was Vignale who rescued all of us from such gynaecological and contraceptive digressions, to refer to what constituted the main attraction of the evening: the exhibition of the famous old photographs. Vignale kept them in a green
homemade envelope made out of construction paper, on which he had printed the words: ‘Photographs of Martín Santomé'. Evidently, it was an old envelope, but the writing on the front of it was recent. In the first photograph there were four people standing in front of the house on Brandzen Street. It wasn't necessary for Vignale to say anything: when I saw the photograph my memory seemed to shake itself out and acknowledge the receipt of that yellowish image that was once sepia. The four people in the photograph were my mother, a neighbour who later moved to Spain, my father and me. I looked incredibly clumsy and foolish. ‘This photograph, did you take it?' I asked Vignale. ‘You're crazy,' Vignale replied. ‘I've never had enough courage to hold a camera or a revolver in my hand. Falero took that photograph. Do you remember Falero?' Vaguely, I thought. For example, I remembered that his father owned a bookshop, and that he would steal pornographic magazines, taking care later to share this fundamental aspect of French culture with us. ‘Look at this one,' said Vignale, anxiously. I was in that photograph too, next to Blockhead. Blockhead (him I remember) was an idiot who always attached himself to us, laughed at all of our jokes, even those that weren't funny, and wouldn't stop following us around.

I couldn't remember his name, but I was sure it was Blockhead. It was the same silly expression, the same flabby skin and the same gummy hair. I let out a laugh, one of the best laughs I've had all year. ‘What are you laughing at?' asked Vignale. ‘Blockhead. Look at that face,' I replied. Then Vignale lowered his eyes, looked bashfully at his wife, in-laws, brother-in-law and sister-in-law, and then said in a hoarse voice: ‘I thought you didn't remember that nickname. I never liked being called that.' It took me completely by surprise. I didn't know what to do or say. So Mario Vignale and Blockhead are one and the same? I looked at him, then looked at him again, and confirmed that he
really was stupid, cloying and ignorant. But apparently, this was about some other stupidity, some other cloyingness, some other ignorance. It wasn't about the man called Blockhead in the photograph, how could it be? Now there is something irremediable about both Vignale and Blockhead. Then, I think I stuttered: ‘But, hey, nobody called you that to hurt your feelings. Remember that Prado used to be called “the Rabbit”.' ‘Don't I wish they had called me “the Rabbit”,' said Blockhead Vignale, sadly. And we didn't look at any more photographs.

I ran twenty yards to catch the bus and was exhausted. When I sat down I thought I was going to faint. While struggling to take off my jacket, unbutton the collar of my shirt and make myself comfortable in order to breathe easier, I brushed the arm of a woman who was sitting next to me two or three times. Her arm was lukewarm, but not terribly thin. When I brushed her arm I experienced the velvet feel of hair, but didn't try to find out if it was mine, hers, or both of ours. I unfolded the newspaper and began to read. She, meanwhile, had been reading an Austrian tour brochure. Little by little I started to catch my breath, but still continued to have palpitations for an entire fifteen minutes. Her arm moved two or three times, but it didn't seem to want to move away completely from my own. It would go away and then return again. Sometimes the feel of her arm was limited to a slight sensation of proximity to the tips of the hairs on my arm. I surveyed the street several times and, in the process, discreetly looked her over. She had an angular face, thin lips, long hair, wore little makeup and had big hands; not very expressive. All of a sudden she dropped her brochure and I bent down to pick it up. Naturally, I glanced at her legs. They
weren't bad-looking, with a small Band-Aid on one of her ankles. She didn't thank me and prepared to get off as the bus approached Sierra Street. She put the brochure away, adjusted her hair, closed her handbag, and excused herself to move past me. ‘I'm getting off too,' I said, acting on a whim. She started to walk quickly along Pablo de María, but I managed to catch up to her in four long strides. We walked along next to each other for a block and a half. I was still thinking about what I should say to break the ice when she suddenly turned her head towards me and said: ‘Make up your mind if you're going to talk to me or not.'

After giving it some serious thought, Friday was quite a strange experience. We didn't mention our names, exchange phone numbers, or discuss anything personal. But still, I could swear that sex is unimportant to this woman. Instead, she seemed exasperated about something, as if her surrender to me was some strange form of revenge she was taking against I don't know what. I must confess that this was the first time I have ever seduced a woman with just my elbow, and also the first time that, once in the motel room, I've ever seen a woman undress so quickly, and in broad daylight. What did the aggressive nonchalance with which she lay down on the bed prove? She was trying so hard to show that she was completely naked that I was starting to believe that it was the first time she had ever been naked in front of a man. But no, she wasn't new at this. And with her serious face, her mouth without lipstick, her expressionless hands, she still managed to enjoy herself. Later, at what she felt was the opportune moment, she begged me to talk dirty to her. It's not my specialty, but I think I satisfied her.

A government job for Esteban. It's the result of his work in the political club. I don't know if I should be happy about his appointment as a boss. After all, he's an outsider who now has jumped ahead of those who are now his subordinates. I imagine they will make his life impossible. And understandably so.

Today I stayed at the office until eleven p.m. A big favour from the manager, sure. He called me at six-fifteen to tell me he needed that worthless material first thing in the morning. It was a job for three people, so Avellaneda, poor woman, offered to stay and help. But I felt sorry for her.

Three fellows in the Shipping Department also stayed late. Actually, they were the only ones who really needed to stay, but then, of course, the manager certainly wasn't going to force Miss Valverde's lover to stay late without embellishing the punishment by giving some innocent person extra work to do. This time I was the innocent person. Patience. I'm hoping that Valverde will get bored with that gigolo.

Working late depresses me terribly. The entire office is quiet, deserted, with filthy desks covered with file folders and filing trays. There is a general appearance of untidiness, of neglect And in the middle of that silence and darkness, there are three fellows here and three fellows there, working unwillingly, dragging along the tiredness of their previous eight hours.

Robledo and Santini dictated the figures to me while I recorded them using a typewriter. At eight p.m. my back started to hurt, near my left shoulder. At nine o'clock I didn't mind the
pain and kept typing the dull figures. No one spoke when we had finished. The three fellows in the Shipping Department had already left. The three of us who were left went to Plaza Independencia, and I bought them a cup of coffee at the counter of the Sorocabana, and then we said goodbye. I think they were holding a grudge against me because I had selected them to work late.