The armor thing requires particular emphasis, because before the dark episode, what we did on Sunday mornings was make love, and in my opinion we did it with impressive zeal, as if we were compensating for the hurried sex we were obliged to have during the week because I had to get up early in the morning and by the end of the day I was exhausted. On Sundays we’d make love from the time we got up until we were overtaken by hunger, then we’d go downstairs and eat whatever we could find in the refrigerator and come back up again and keep at it, then we would sleep or read for a while before moving again into each other’s arms; sometimes she wanted us to dance and we would dance slower and slower and closer and closer together until we ended up back in bed. I don’t know, it was as if Sunday really was a holy day and nothing bad could touch us then, which is why I woke up that morning full of hope, and in fact Agustina turned to me, seeking out my company again after days of icy indifference, though not to kiss me but to ask me to tell her what Spanish province begins with GUI, ends in A, and is nine letters long, and even so, that was like a gift; the sole fact that she recognized me and spoke to me was already like the difference between night and day.
Tell me the name of the salivary gland located behind the lower maxillary, Aguilar, this was the kind of question she asked me, which made me rack my brains and search the encyclopedia for the correct response that would elicit praise from her, a smile that for an instant would wipe from her face the almost blank expression that now marks it like a scar, reminding me that I loved this person once, that I still loved her, that I’d be able to love her again, this person barricaded inside her sweatshirt who got into my bed to solve a crossword puzzle and spent all day working at it with a fanatical obsession that undermined my hopes, until by evening I’d become convinced that if I asked her What’s my name? she wouldn’t be able to answer, though she’d be quick to say, What ancient Yucatán tribe is six letters long and starts with IT. I was afraid that if I could enter into her head, like a doll’s house, and walk through the compressed space of the various rooms, the first thing I’d see, in the main room, would be candles the size of matches lit around a little coffin holding my own corpse, me dead, forgotten, faded, stiff, a Ken-size doll in Barbie’s all-pink house, a ridiculous Ken abandoned in his tiny moss-green living room, I myself moss-green, too, because I’ve been dead for a while.
But again my head betrayed me, again the wound bled, Take off that sweatshirt and let’s make love, I said to Agustina, with an ugly hint of aggression in my voice that undoubtedly sprang from my anger that she wouldn’t do it with me but would with the man at the hotel. She hurled the crossword puzzle away and left the room, and when I went to find her she was rushing around with containers of water again and wouldn’t speak to me or look at me, though I tried everything I could to undo my mistake and interest her once more in the crossword puzzle, Look, Agustina, who would’ve thought, the word that starts with P that we’re missing here is palimpsest, look, it fits perfectly, but Agustina no longer wanted to have anything to do with me or the crossword puzzle or this miserable world. Could it be my fault that she’s gone crazy? Or is her madness infecting me?
I’VE ACQUIRED ANOTHER POWER, says the girl Agustina, one that shakes me so hard it leaves me half dead, a power that sucks all my strength; looking back, she says, I think that’s how I spent my childhood, gathering strength and accumulating power to keep my father from leaving home. Yesterday, today, many times, she’s heard him fight with her mother and threaten her with the same words, do this and I’m out of here, do that and I’m out of here, and more than anything Agustina doesn’t want her father to go because when he’s here and he’s happy it’s the best thing in the world, and there’s nothing, absolutely nothing like his laugh, like his clean smell of Roger & Gallet and his English shirts with blue-and-white stripes; sometimes, when the house is dark, I look at my father and it’s as if he’s shining, as if there’s a halo around him of cleanliness, elegance, and good smells, I like it when he asks me to blow my nose or wipe some bit of food off my lips because then he hands me his white handkerchief drenched in Roger & Gallet cologne. I’ve seen how Maricrís Cortés’s father sits her on his knees and I cling close to my father hoping he’ll do the same but he doesn’t, maybe if I ask him he will but I don’t dare ask because it isn’t really my father’s way to sit his children on his knees, but I touch the gray wool of his pants, which is so soft because it’s pure cashmere, my mother says, and it isn’t really gray but charcoal, because the colors my father wears have only English names, and I idolize him even though he doesn’t pay much attention to me because his favorites are Joaco, for spoiling, and Bichi, for taunting, and because he has to work all day and when he’s here he’s busy with his stamp collecting.
But Agustina, who little by little has learned to be patient, waits for her turn, which always comes at nine on the dot, the time she calls the ninth hour, which is when we prepare for the night by closing all the doors and windows to protect ourselves from thieves, and my father says to me, Tina, shall we go lock up? it’s the only time he calls me Tina and not Agustina and that’s when everything changes for a little while because he and I enter a world that we don’t share with anyone, he gives me his heavy key ring that jingles like a cowbell and takes my hand, and we make our way around both floors of the house, starting on the top floor; we even go into the rooms that are dark and since I’m with him I’m not scared, the light that my father radiates reaches into the corners and chases the fear away, he and I are silent, we don’t like to talk as we go about the sacred task of barring the shutters and bolting the doors, this is my old house, the one in the neighborhood of Teusaquillo, because the house after that was the one in La Cabrera, where it was never the ninth hour because it’s a modern building that locks automatically and because by then my father didn’t call me Tina anymore or give me his key ring to hold, because he had other things on his mind.
But this is the house on Caracas Avenue in Teusaquillo, and Agustina knows by heart which key fits where, the gold Yale with the notch at the top is for the door between the kitchen and the patio, the key that’s stamped with a rabbit is for the back gate, the little square one that says Flexon is for the other lock, and the two longest are for the big door to the street; Agustina, who doesn’t need to look at them because she recognizes them by touch, has them ready to pass to her father before he asks for them, at the moment he reaches out his hand, and she’s overwhelmed with happiness when he says, Bravo, Tina, that’s the one, you never get mixed up, you’re even better at it than I am, When he praises me like that I think maybe he really does appreciate me even though he doesn’t say so often, and I realize again that it was worth waiting for the ninth hour; whatever happens that night or the next day I’ll just have to wait for it to be nine again, when my father says, Come on, Tina, and the fog lifts, because once again he’ll offer Agustina his big, dark-skinned hand with its prominent veins, the wedding band on his ring finger, and on his wrist the Rolex that she was given when he died and that she started wearing herself even though it was enormous on her and hung like a bracelet; where must it be, the watch that was once her father’s and is now hers, lost, the watch lost, the hand lost, the memory too vivid and the smell permanently lodged in her nose, her father’s clean, cherished smell.