The story was unfinished. I might expand it and turn it into a novel, I said to the Jesuit. The Jesuit said nothing. Maybe he hadn’t liked the last part, about the Amazon missionary. When I got back to the party, I thought about making some changes and asking him to read it again. But then Dora Montes’s secretary came in and I forgot about the story and the Jesuit. Dora is about to do something desperate, was the first thing she said. I was sitting and she was leaning over me, speaking almost into my ear. She smelled spicy, a combination of Italian food and perfume. I asked what she meant. Why would Dora do something desperate? For love, why else, said the secretary, sitting down next to me. Her hand felt for mine under the table and she furtively handed me a bill. Buy me a drink, she said, smiling. When I got up, I tried to see whether Dora Montes had come into the room, but I couldn’t spot her. When I came back with two whiskeys, I handed the secretary the change over the table and I asked her to explain clearly to me what was wrong with Dora. She’s going to strip in front of everyone, she said, fixing me with her gaze. And it’s your fault, she added.
One of the most indelible memories of my return trip to Chile is a night that I spent at a boardinghouse in Guatemala. The walls were probably thin and the head of my bed must have been against the head of the bed in the neighboring room. At first everything was silent and I settled down to finish a book while having a peaceful smoke. The book was Pierre Louÿs’s
Aphrodite. At some point I must have fallen asleep. Then I heard voices and I woke up. It was two men talking. By their accents I could tell that they weren’t Mexican. One of them might have been Central American; the other, Venezuelan or Panamanian. I don’t know why, but I imagined that the second man was black. Their room had two beds, like my room, and the Central American was in the bed up against mine: for a moment I imagined his head resting on the exact same piece of wall as mine. Even before I woke up, I knew what they were talking or arguing about: that’s the only way I can explain the distress I felt. The Central American was talking about knives. The Venezuelan, who might have been even more upset than I, was expounding on different brands of knives. The Central American told him to shut up, saying all that mattered was the arm that wielded the knife. The Venezuelan expounded on famous Venezuelan knife fighters. The Central American said that all this (all what?) was sissy chatter, real fighters lived in anonymity. The Venezuelan agreed, saying that anonymity and humility were man’s Sunday suit. The Central American said that men who wore Sunday suits didn’t deserve to call themselves men. The Venezuelan assented, undeterred, and said that he was absolutely right, real men wore good suits every day of the week. The Central American said that real men lived in anonymity and blood, no suit required. Anonymity and blood, said the Venezuelan. That’s poetry. Beautiful. The Central American coughed then, as if the presence of the Venezuelan was suffocating him, and he told a story. The story was about a woman, a showgirl like Dora Montes, whom he’d grown fond of. A beautiful woman, he said, twenty-eight but still in great shape, serious and hardworking. A woman with whom he had a son or a daughter (it wasn’t clear; he might even have been referring to the woman’s child from a previous lover) and with whom he lived happily for a while. A woman he put to work and who didn’t complain. A woman he could curse at and hit, never hearing anything from her lips but the most reasonable complaints (he used the word reasonable several times and also sense and nonsense). So what happened, compadre? asked the Venezuelan in a quavering voice. I imagined him as black, maybe a boxer, stronger than the Central American in any case, capable of knocking him down nine times out of ten, but reluctant to fight, wanting to sleep and get back on the road the next day. What happened? asked the Central American, close to my ear. What happened to that happy life, compadre? repeated the Venezuelan. Five months ago, I killed her, said the Central American. And then: with a kitchen knife. And much later: I buried her in the yard of our little love nest. And finally, just as I was about to fall asleep: I said that she had gone on tour. That’s what you told the authorities, compadre? The police, yes, said the Central American, in a voice tinged with sleep, weariness, even vulnerability, any drunkenness or aggression gone.