Cristián appears, carrying a small, coffee-colored case, like the kind people who sell aspirin use. He’s wearing a beige jacket, and he’s so closely shaven no one would ever take him for the miller. His red-veined eyes reveal the only evidence of last night’s heavy drinking.
I’ve put on one of Dad’s jackets. It used to be a bit too big for me, but the years seem to have shrunk it. The little silk label sewn into the lining reads GATH Y CHAVES, SANTIAGO.
Precisely because my destination is the whorehouse in Angol, I want to look as though I’m going to the city for “work-related reasons.”
And so I’ve brought along a book by Raymond Queneau that the editor of the newspaper wants to publish in installments. Prose is easier than poetry, but I do get all caught up in the fates of the characters. Maybe that’s because so little happens here. We’re secondary figures, not protagonists.
As the train comes rolling in, whistling and huffing smoke, Augusto Gutiérrez appears on the platform. A toothbrush and a tube of Kolynos toothpaste are sticking out of the lapel pocket of his school jacket.
“Are you going to Angol?” he asks.
“Yes,” I reply, blushing hot and red all of a sudden.
“What for?”
“The movie theater’s showing a film about Paris. I want to see it because I’m translating this book.”
I show him Zazie dans le métro.
“What’s the name of the movie?”
“Quai des Brumes,” I say, inventive but disciplined.
“You’re lying.”
“No I’m not.”
“Will you be back for my party?”
“Of course. I plan to buy your present this very afternoon.”
The train stops in the station. The stationmaster looks up at the Roman numerals of the clock, whose hands always point to ten after three, and passes a cheese sandwich to the engineer. As usual, nobody gets either on or off.
But the painful images come back: I’m returning home, I get off the train, Dad gets on the train, the train leaves.
“I’m afraid they might close down this line,” the stationmaster tells us. “Railroad’s streamlining, and this stretch isn’t profitable. I hate to think about being out of a job at my age.”
“What time’s the train leave?”
“In a couple of minutes. My wife’s fixing a thermos of coffee for the engineer. We make a little extra income with things like that. Incidentally, I’ve also got fresh homemade Chilean éclairs, a hundred pesos each. You interested?”
“When we come back.”
Augusto Gutiérrez pulls at my sleeve and makes me lean toward him; my forehead bangs against the hard frames of his spectacles.
“Please take me with you to Angol.”
“We can’t do that, kid.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a secret.”
“You’re going to the whorehouse.”
“No we’re not. I’m going to buy you a present. I don’t want you to see it before Friday.”
“As long as it’s not a globe. You already gave me a globe last year.”
“You didn’t like it?”
“What can I say? All those countries, right there in front of me, and I’m stuck in this pit.”
He gestures toward the cow that’s crossing the tracks.
“How am I any different from her?”
“You’re different because you know what you want and you have self-awareness. The cow’s always just a cow. She’s not even aware she’s a cow. She’s all cow, all the time. But you, on the other hand — your awareness makes you free.”
Gutiérrez takes off his glasses and reveals his eyes, the soft, sad, watery eyes of the myopic. He says, “I’m going to be fifteen years old, Prof. I don’t want to feel humiliated next Friday because I’m not a real man yet.”
“You’re a child, Gutiérrez. We’ll talk about it when you turn sixteen.”
“I’m going to be dead by the time I’m sixteen. You’ll recognize my grave because a mound will rise up over it. The same mound that forms under my sheets every night.”
The miller grabs the boy by one ear and pulls him several meters in the direction of the street. “Go on home, you annoying little brat!”
While he’s trying to get out of Cristián’s grip, the boy shouts to me, “Professor, sir, take me with you to the whores!”
I climb into the car so I won’t have to see him anymore. But he breaks away from the miller and comes to my window. “I’ll fix you up with my sister,” he says, panting. “She’s crazy about you.”
“The younger one or the older one?”
“The younger one. She wrote you a letter.”
“How do you know?”
“She keeps it in her dresser. With her bras and panties.”
“What does the letter say?”
“You have a distinguished air.”
“What else?”
“You’re a cultured man.”
“Me?”
“She looks at my globe and says she’d like to be lying on the beach at Acapulco with you.”
“Acapulco? How did she come up with that?”
“She listens to that song on the radio, ‘Remember Acalpulco, María Bonita.’ She’s out of her mind for sappy boleros.”
“What else does the letter say?”
“Other things.”
“Tell me.”
“If you take me to the whorehouse.”
I give him a tap on the forehead. “I can’t, Gutiérrez. I’m your teacher, not your pimp.”
The train starts to move. Before climbing aboard, the miller aims a blow at the kid, but he dodges it with catlike agility.
A pair of boxing gloves is a good idea, I think with a sigh.
Just as the train leaves Contulmo, I see my pupil on the platform cup his hands around his mouth like a megaphone. “Do one for me, Jacques!” he shouts.
He means I should climb on top of one of the girls and dedicate the ensuing bonk to him.
TEN
In the little fishing harbor near Angol, we lunch on fried hake and Chilean salad. I remove the onions from my tomatoes, picky eater that I am.
Cristián drinks half a liter of white wine and then accepts the fisherman’s offer of a siesta on his boat. The miller covers himself with sacks and a net and asks me to wake him up before it gets dark.
When the girls are open for business.
We have to show up early, because demand is very high on weekends.
I go into town and start looking in shop windows. I see articles of clothing made by local artisans, things like scarves, caps, heavy woolen socks. A chess set whose pieces are Japanese samurai, advancing sword in hand. A professional-quality soccer ball autographed by Leonel Sánchez. A Mexican parrot made of thin silver sheets. A Bavarian clock with two dancing boys in leather pants. A photograph of Marlon Brando in The Wild One, sitting on a motorcycle with an unlit cigar between his lips. A deck of cards whose backs are all reproductions of Playboy centerfolds.
And I also see some splendid red leather boxing gloves.
Just about all the items I see are beyond my means, except for an album bound in blue velvet with an inscription in gold letters: Diary of My Life. I ask the shopkeeper to gift-wrap it and buy two packs of Richmond cigarettes with the change. I find a shady spot on the corner, lean against a fire hydrant, and have a smoke.
I open Raymond Queneau’s book and use a red pencil to mark the words I’ll have to look up later in my Larousse français — espagnol.
ELEVEN
In the course of an hour, I notice that the little town I’m in moves about as slowly as a watch, and I try to think up some possible conversational gambits to use on the girls. Nothing particularly witty comes to mind; it even occurs to me that Gutiérrez would handle the situation better than I could. I’ve been with girls before, but never in a bed. Classmates, girls from the neighborhood.