BEFORE THE WEEPING over Schubert, maybe three months before, things had become unbearable and I’d turned to Social Security, discovering that because of my restricted policy as a university professor, my wife only qualified for treatment at the charity hospital La Hortúa, where she was assigned to a doctor named Walter Suárez, who subjected his patients to sleeping cures, shooting them full of sodium amytal. She was admitted to one of the halls in the psychiatric ward and put to bed, and all I could do was watch her sleep, and accept that as soon as she opened her eyes, or moved her lips to try to say something, Doctor Walter Suárez’s assistants would appear with another dose of the barbiturate, a yellowish powder with a sulfurous stench that they dissolved and injected intravenously, and that’s how I spent my days and nights, in contemplation of that sleeping beauty who glowed pale and distant on the worn hospital sheets that had seen so much human suffering, her hair like a creeping vine that had claimed the pillow centuries ago; I couldn’t take my eyes off the soft and slightly trembling shadow that her eyelashes projected on her cheeks as if she were an old doll forgotten on a shelf in an antiques store, and I looked for hidden messages in the rhythm of her breath, the tone of her skin, the temperature of her hands, the silence of her organs, the ripple of time over her still body, Are you dreaming, Agustina, or just swimming in a sea of fog? Are you barricaded alone in your little death, or is there a crack I can slip through to keep you company?
As I watched over her to make sure that, helpless in her unconsciousness, my wife wouldn’t make an involuntary movement and tear out the needle through which the sleep-inducing drug entered her vein, so that she wasn’t bothered by drafts or caught uncovered by the early-morning chill or tormented by nightmares or possessed by who knows what incubuses, as I sat waiting for the ghostly hours at La Hortúa to pass, I often recalled the terrible stories of the Japanese writer Yasunari Kawabata, peopled with naked girls lying drugged, girls in whom no trace of love, shame, or fear was left. Three times a day the effects of the drug wore off and I had to feed her and take her to the bathroom, and then for a few minutes her body came back to life but her soul was still lost, her gaze turned inward and her movements became mechanical and remote, like a marionette’s.
Six other patients shared the room with Agustina, all of them also there to find rest from guilt, hallucinations, and worries with Doctor Walter’s famed sodium amytal, and one of them, the one in the next bed, was an old woman as light as a breath of air, whose husband, a man as old as she was, brushed her hair, massaged her legs to stimulate her circulation, and rubbed lotion on her hands because, as he would say, My Teresa doesn’t like her hands to be dry, Have you seen how white my Teresa’s hands are, young Aguilar? Look, not a mark, and that’s because they’ve never seen the sun, since whenever she goes out she puts on gloves to protect them. This gentleman had an unusual name; he was called Eva, because, as he explained to me, Eva was short for Evaristo, and I played endless chess games with Don Evaristo as our respective girls sank down to regions very close to death, and sometimes Don Eva would bring a guitar and sit next to his Teresa singing old boleros in her ear in a ruined but impeccably modulated voice, the voice of a professional singer of serenades, and over and over again he’d sing her the song that goes “pretty little girl with locks of gold, pearly teeth, ruby lips,” and he’d say to me, It’s Teresa’s favorite, ever since we got married I’ve sung it for her on all our anniversaries, of course there are other songs that she likes, too, like “Acacias,” and “Sabor a Mí,” “Bésame Mucho,” and “Pardon Me Young Man But Don’t Presume,” Don Evaristo told me, My Teresa is a very discerning woman, a lover of good music and all fine things, but wait, come here, come closer, see how she smiles when I sing “Pretty Little Girl,” I don’t know whether you can tell because it’s just the faintest hint of a smile, but knowing even her subtlest expressions as I do, I know that a smile lights up her face each time I sing that song.
Don Evaristo stayed religiously by his wife’s side from the time he arrived at the hospital at eight on the dot in the morning until the clock struck eight at night, and when he got up to go he always asked me to look after her in the same words, I’m off to work and I leave the heart of my heart in your care, he’d say patting me on the shoulder; on one of these occasions, I asked him what he did, and Don Eva replied, I work nights singing boleros at the Blue Star, a popular, reputable bar near here, and once when I was walking to the hospital along Twelfth Street near Tenth, I happened upon the famous Blue Star, which actually turned out to be a roadhouse and brothel of the lowest sort, and since it was seven thirty in the morning and they were cleaning the place, the woman who was sweeping had the doors wide open so that I could peek in and see a row of wooden tables with clay candlesticks in the middle, dusty curtains hiding dismal little rooms with cots and washbasins, red lightbulbs that by night must have disguised the shabbiness, and a wooden platform with a single microphone where I imagined Don Eva singing “Pretty Little Girl” so that the whores and their clients could dance while he pined for his Teresa, who lay next to my Agustina, the torments of her madness lulled with sodium amytal, and a minute later, Don Eva emerged from one of the tiny rooms, and behind him came a fat girl who by all indications seemed to be one of the women who worked there; at first Don Eva tried to avoid meeting me, but since it was inevitable, he greeted me warmly and introduced me to the woman who was with him, This is Jenny Paola, he said, and shrugged his shoulders in apology, doing his best to explain, I take care of my Teresa and Jenny Paola takes care of me, what’s to be done, young Aguilar, human beings are vulnerable creatures in desperate need of companionship…
The days passed identically from the first to the fourth, and then on the fifth, when we were in the middle of one of our interminable chess matches, I announced to Don Eva that I wasn’t going to let them drug my wife anymore and that I was taking her away tomorrow, I couldn’t stand the agony of seeing her this way, blank, lifeless, nonexistent, Anything but this, I said, Don Eva, anything but something so much like death, You’re doing the right thing, boy, take her away, what you say is true, And what about you, Don Eva, why don’t you bring Teresa home with you, you could watch over her there by day and find someone to take your place at night while you’re working, Oh no, Don Eva said, I couldn’t do that to my Teresa, you can’t imagine how frightened she gets when she’s awake.
Hours later, as Agustina and I were leaving La Hortúa, we were welcomed by one of those Bogotá afternoons that are beyond compare, I’m referring to the high-altitude sky of an intense hydrangea blue and the smell of mountain vegetation, and unlike Teresa, my Agustina wasn’t terrified to be awake again, in fact she seemed happy and ready to return to the world of the living; The sun is so nice, she said, leaning on a stone wall where the rays fell, her head slightly tilted, half puzzled and half amused, as if she hadn’t seen me for a while and now I seemed slightly different but she couldn’t quite say why, Your hair is shinier, she said at last, stretching out her hand to touch it, and you’ve gotten some gray hairs, Please, Agustina, I’ve had gray hairs since you’ve known me, Yes, but it isn’t the same, she declared without taking the time to explain, and she didn’t want to go straight home, so we walked with our arms around each other along the streets of the city center, as dazzled as Bogotá’s founder, Don Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, must have been the first time he set foot on this high plain more than four centuries ago and thought it blessed.