This Too Shall Pass (11 page)

—True.

Our relationship has probably taken all the turns allotted it in life, and the roulette wheel stopped this one last time on a losing number. We are completely penniless now. I'd love to rebuild the world, or an almost-world, with the pieces I have left, put the puzzle back together and bring things back to the way they used to be, not have to go outside again, but I guess there are just too many pieces missing now.

He tries to kiss me on the lips, but I turn my head.

Guillem shouts as soon as I close the door, happy to be the only adult male once again (Damián, being merely a guest and without a sentimental relationship with me, doesn't count).

—Thank God he's left—he's so stiff, I don't understand what you see in him.

I try to laugh. —Yeah, you're right—the other day he wanted to stop the boys eating three crêpes for dinner.

I give the children an outrageous amount of money to go out and buy some pancakes with Argentine caramel at a place near the church. I tell myself it doesn't really matter, that it's true about how life goes round and round. But I feel as though I've swallowed a piece of glass.

The boys, exhausted after spending another day on the boat, head straight for bed. It's almost pitch black on the terrace, and the town's warm, happy, summery sounds hover in the air. The church looks magnificent, illuminated like a theater set, as if exacting revenge on the sea for taking center stage by day. But the sea submits now, becoming a dusky, taciturn pond, reflecting the silvery moonlight and the streetlight's yellow shades. The houses spiral about the church's whitewashed wings, as if they were under its protection. Damián and I, like two sick children taking a dose of mother's cough syrup, smoke the joints that had been so industriously rolled by Elisa. I watch them whisper in each other's ear on the opposite side of the terrace. She collects herself, and talks without looking at him, while he listens to her and looks out over the horizon, smiling. Guillem and Sofía are drinking—I've never seen Guillem smoke dope, or Oscar either, for that matter—and he's trying to talk her into helping him weed the back garden. Some of Damián's friends are here, people I've met on several occasions at dinners and social events. I watch them from a distance, through the cruel and petty lucidity that comes with alcohol and dope, and the black ideas provoked by Oscar, and now Santi, whom I've arranged to see tomorrow. The men are friendly enough, if a bit uptight, and use culture and a very calculated sense of humor as a way of protecting themselves from the world, and to compensate for being physically unattractive and uncomfortable in their own skins—which of course doesn't stop them from being crude and implacably harsh judges of feminine beauty. A sort of affected and condescending gallantry becomes a substitute for good manners. They're dressed very tidily, conventionally, as if their mothers still chose their wardrobe and ironed their clothes. Their weapons of choice are intelligence, sarcasm, and an infallible eye for detecting the defects in others. Two of them are writers. The girls are pretty and slim, clever, cautious, and modest. They don't say much, existing sweetly and with suspicious affability, all the while sneaking glances to register what's around them. They've brought a guitar. Juanito, the shorter, funnier, and more aloof of the bunch, starts playing and singing and the women join in. They render South American love songs with grace and enthusiasm. Maybe they're playing that song you liked so much at that snack bar on the beach, who knows? Sofía belts out the lyrics of the first ranchera she knows, and she and Guillem start dancing. Pedro, Damián's other friend, comes up to me, as considerate and affectionate as ever. He talks about the last time he was in New York, his children from different mothers, scattered around the world, one here and the other in Amsterdam, and how much money they cost. We've had lunch together a few times and he always made a show of paying, maybe too much of a show.

—How are you holding up? he asks.

—Not well. Tired. I miss my mother. Maybe I should have lied, I think. Told him that everything is fine, all is under control. Truth is a door I open only once in a while; otherwise, I keep up the high, slippery wall of fibs and courtesy. The quick smile also protects me like a blanket, but today I have neither the strength nor the willpower to raise the wall. —Sometimes I feel as if I've lost everything, I add, expecting him to respond with the usual silence that meets all circumstances dealing with death. I take another hit of the joint. I look at Damián, who is also smoking slowly, like my reflection on the other side of the terrace. His eyes are bloodshot and yet twinkling, and they look into mine as if through a mirror darkened by smoke, as if we were trying to recognize each other. I smile; he must be a good drinking buddy, enthusiastic and fearless; I suspect Elisa—as well as sleeping with him, and acting like his mother—protects him from himself.

—Oh, come on, Blanca, you know perfectly well that's not true, Pedro interrupts me, breaking the drugged, sleepy, and unanticipated link that was tying me to Damián. —You don't look like a person who's been left with nothing, he says brusquely, opening his eyes like a cunning monkey, as if suddenly he's aware that he's talking to someone a lot stupider than he thought.

—Nearly every person I've most loved in my life has died. I'm losing so many of the important places of my childhood and adolescence, I explain.

—But you observed these people and these places when they belonged to you, right? he continues with the slightly irritated tone of a professor before an unexpectedly disappointing pupil. I realize that both of us are completely stoned.

—Yes, of course. I could describe each and every corner of my mother's house. I know and remember the changing colors of the mahogany shelves where she kept her books, from mahogany to garnet and finally black according to the time of day and when dusk fell. I know the exact temperature of my father's hands, like bread fresh out of the oven, and in a snap I could draw you the half-empty glass of red wine he always kept in the kitchen. Want me to draw it for you? I could do it right now. Go on, get me a pencil and paper and I'll draw it for you.

—Sweetheart, he continues as he stands by my side, —love is not the only thing that makes things belong to us, it's also our power of observation; the cities we've visited, the adventures we've lived, the people, everything. Everything you've done or experienced without indifference, attentively, they belong to you. You can call them up whenever you want. His thin face, like Captain Haddock's butler, scrunches into an ugly grimace. I feel like smoothing it out softly with my fingertips, but instead I pass him the joint.

—No, dude, no. I've never called him “dude” before. —I think there are certain things that we lose forever. In fact, I think we're more a sum of the things we've lost than of the things we've kept. I look up at the darkness of your bedroom, whose door Patum has been guarding since we arrived. I never went to the cemetery to see you today, in the end.

Slowly but surely, a thread weaves its way among those of us who are getting more and more stoned, like a delicate spider's web, unwittingly excluding those who remain sober. I smile at Damián from the fog and he seems so far away. I feel Elisa's immediate, inquisitorial glare, a person who barely drinks and doesn't even smoke cigarettes any more, full of a kind of relentless scrutiny for anyone except her boyfriends. It glides over me like something slightly oily and unpleasant, but I continue the mute, absurd conversation that my eyes are engaging in with her ever-fuzzier boyfriend. I make the sign for him to come over, afraid he might dissolve away entirely and disappear forever into the mist. He sits down beside me and chats with Pedro. For a second, it seems as if all is well, nothing is lost and Pedro is right. Music blends with my friends' voices and the rumour of the sea is like a familiar and protective nanny. I rest my head on Damián's shoulder and close my eyes.

I wake up with an epic hangover. It must be late because I don't hear the children, who must have left for the beach already, and because of the brazen, unforgiving light that's streaming through the window. Closing my eyes does nothing to stop it from perforating my eyelids and temples. I put on my Lady of the Camellias dressing gown and move as little as possible to keep my steps from reverberating in my head. I prepare an herbal tea and browse through an old newspaper. That's when Elisa shows up.

—Hey! I'm happy to see her—we haven't had a chance to talk much since she started going out with Damián.

—What a great time we had last night! Your friends are really nice, what a great idea to bring a guitar. We should do it again sometime.

She looks at me with a stern expression and doesn't say a word. Her face is tired; she has shadows under her eyes, but not the good kind, from having had a lot of fun and kisses, but the insomniac and troubled kind.

—Elisa, what's wrong?

—You know perfectly well what's wrong.

—No, I don't. My head's ready to burst with a migraine, so I'm not really in the mood for a guessing game. I begin to feel a little apprehensive, a vague disquiet regarding the mists of the previous evening.

—Last night I saw something that disturbed me and made me feel really sad. She pauses and looks at me with the same hard, somber expression as, well, now that I think of it, as the night before.

—What did you see?

—I saw you say good night to Damián.

I burst out laughing, thinking she's pulling my leg.

—Yeah, he kissed me on the mouth, like he always does.

It's not the first time, and it won't be the last, that I say good-bye to a friend after a night of partying with a quick peck on the lips, I think. Yesterday evening, it was on his initiative and for a second I considered rejecting him, but I thought, amused, that he was just being a shameless scoundrel (in an age of cowards, the bold deserve recognition), and that's when Elisa's dark glance shot at me like a bolt of lightning. But everything happened so quickly, and by the time I was able to finish my thought, the flutter of his lips on mine had also finished.

—Oh, that was on his initiative…Thank goodness! And then Pedro kissed me too.

—Blanca, darling, I'm not talking about Pedro. I already know you're kissed by many.

I laugh again, unable to believe the conversation we're having, it's so unlike us, so far from our usual friendship.

—Elisa, you can't honestly think I'm trying to seduce your boyfriend. Are you nuts?

—Yes, maybe I am going absolutely bat crazy, but I know what I saw…though naturally, I could be wrong.

—Elisa, he didn't kiss me, our lips brushed each other. We were totally stoned. We're friends. But don't worry, I promise I'll never give him another kiss of any variety.

—Blanca, sweetie, I've been watching you for days, seen how you're constantly grabbing on to his arm.

I burst out laughing again.

—It's true, she says under her breath.

—I like Damián, I think he's a nice guy, but that's it, end of story. But really, there's no problem, I'll stop showing any physical signs of affection. Elisa! I stand up and grab her by the shoulders, trying to wake her up from a bad dream. —You seriously think that I would fool around with Damián? It's absolutely ridiculous.

—Oh, sure! she cries, now even more resentful than before. —It's so disgusting to think you'd want to screw Damián—I'm the only one stupid enough for that, right?

—No, that's not what I mean. I'm trying to say that I would never get involved with a friend's boyfriend. You must know that. With the number of men out there in the world…I begin to realize that it doesn't really matter what I say.

—No, you just throw yourself at them and say good-bye with kisses on the lips.

—I promise you that “throwing myself” at a man is something entirely different. Elisa, we're just friends, there's nothing going on.

—Blanca, it's not friendship, it's flirting.

—Friendship is always flirtatious.

—Oh! In that case, just go right ahead! She makes a sweeping gesture with her hand, as if she were ordering the troops to advance.

—Elisa, seriously, I'm not after Damián, I just think he's nice. And our lips barely touched. I also realize I'm going to have a migraine all day long. —Anyway, kissing on the lips isn't an intimate gesture—I kiss my boys on the mouth, my male friends and also my girlfriends.

—You want to know something, Blanca? This childish idea you have of a new kind of society that theoretically our generation is building while nobody's looking, where we all understand one another and kiss whomever we want whenever we want and go in and out of relationships like we go in and out of our houses and have children with this person and that person, it only works when you don't give a shit about other people.

—I don't give a shit about other people.

—You don't give a shit about anyone. Except for your children and maybe your mother. And you know what? I'm tired of psychoanalyzing you. Your mother died, she was old and very sick, and she suffered a lot over the last six months, and she screwed you over a lot, but she had a wonderful life, she loved and was loved, she was successful, she had friends, children, she had fun, and according to you, she always did whatever she damn well pleased. And you loved her and now you're sad and a little bit lost, but that doesn't give you the right to turn everyone else's lives upside down.