BEING A MUSICIAN by profession, Grandfather Portulinus made a living by giving piano lessons to the daughters of the well-to-do families of the town of Sasaima, among them Blanca Mendoza, a slight girl who was hardly a promising pianist as she had clumsy hands and little ear for music, and in fact Portulinus never even managed to teach her the scales, but instead he ended up marrying her, although he was twice her age. If he did, it was partly for love and partly out of obligation, because he had gotten her pregnant through a thoughtless, inconsiderate act that was committed without her parents’ knowledge and probably against her will, an ill-fated start to any marriage, but in the end what mattered most wasn’t what was augured but the way the man dealt with his fate, and twenty long years of unswerving conjugal loyalty were proof that if Grandfather Portulinus had married the girl who was now Grandmother Blanca, it was because he loved her, not because he had to.
Besides giving piano lessons, Portulinus composed music to order for marriages, serenades, and celebrations, certain folk dances like bambucos and pasillos, which, as Grandmother used to say, were catchy and lively despite his Germanness, and they touched people’s hearts even though their lyrics made reference to sky-blue summers, the snows of yesteryear, pine forests, the ocher shades of fall, and other yearnings equally unknown in equatorial Sasaima, where no one doubted that Nicholas Portulinus was a good man, and if certain oddities of character were noted in him, they were dismissed as being attributable to his foreignness. But the truth is that every so often, as if in waves, Grandfather Portulinus suffered mood swings of varying severity and for months he would give up teaching, stop playing and composing, and only roar or mutter, seemingly plagued by noises not of this world, or at least that’s what he complained to his wife. Blanca, sweet Blanca, your name is enough to clear away the shadows, he would say to her when she took him out into the countryside to soothe him, and he would run holding her hand and then trip and fall, rolling in the tall, sweet-smelling summer grasses, though it should be understood that this was not summer in Sasaima, since in Sasaima there’s only one single continuous season all 365 days of the year, but that other summer, so far away now, lingering in a foreigner’s mournful memory.
THE HOTEL ROOM was luxurious, or striving to be so; I remember yards of fabric in drapes and upholstery and a peach-colored carpet that exuded the smell of newness. At the far end was Agustina, sitting on the floor, as if trapped between the wall and a table with a lamp on it, a place where no one would think to sit unless they had fallen. She looked pale and thin and her hair and clothes were bedraggled, as if she hadn’t eaten or bathed for days, as if she had been subjected to all sorts of humiliations. And yet her eyes were shining, I remember that clearly, at the far end of the room Agustina’s eyes were shining, with an unhealthy gleam but they were shining, as if whatever was sapping her strength had been incapable of breaking the intensity of her gaze, in fact to the contrary, amid the sudden waste of her body I discerned a challenge in her eyes that filled me with fear, something disturbing, an excessive vibration that brought to mind the word delirium, Agustina was possessed by some delirium that simmered inside her with a slow, hostile shudder.
And yet it had been only four days since I’d gone away and left her painting the walls of the front room of our apartment a mossy green, a color she herself had chosen because, as she explained to me, feng shui advises it for couples like us, and to prevent her from spouting some complicated Eastern theory, I was careful not to ask her what she meant by couples like us or why moss green would be good for us. I had to drive my van to Ibagué on Wednesday to deliver an order of Purina, so I decided to take advantage of a free stay my health insurance offered at Las Palmeras Holiday Resort, tacky and middle class, as I informed Agustina, but it had a pool and cabins and was in a stunning mountain valley in the warm country, and ultimately why find fault when I couldn’t have afforded anything better anyway. I wanted to spend a few days there with my two sons, Toño and Carlos, my children with Marta Elena, my first wife; for a while I’d needed some time with them to see how they were feeling, and to continue mending the family closeness that had been ruptured when I separated from their mother.
That was my reason for not inviting Agustina, too, although she gets along well with the boys and they get along well with her; in fact, I can’t help but feel that there are moments when a generational bond is established among the three of them that leaves me out, or to put it another way, a slightly hypnotic and almost physical link, created when my two sons’ eyes light up at the sight of Agustina’s beauty, and she, in turn, gazes nostalgically at those sculpted adolescent bodies like someone relinquishing a place she isn’t fated to visit. What I mean is, things cool a few degrees between my sons and me when she’s there; our conversation turns a little stiff and we behave as though in the presence of company.
When I informed Agustina that I was taking the trip alone, she threw one of those seismic fits that have led me to call her my rabid plaything, because Agustina is like that, witty and amusing but with a vicious temper. Afterward she refused to speak to me for several hours, and at last, when she was calmer, she asked how I could possibly not realize that she might like a break and some sunshine, too, that we had no time together during the week because I was at work and I spent Saturdays with Toño and Carlos. It broke my heart to hear Agustina’s reproaches because in a way she’s like an older daughter to me whom I sometimes neglect in favor of my other two children, and also because the sun and warmth make her even more desirable, cheering her up and toasting her skin, which is usually so excessively white that it’s almost blue, and it broke my heart, too, because all her complaints were true, as true as they were inevitable: nothing in the world, not even my devotion to her, would prevent me from using those coupons and free days to go off alone with my two boys.
Upon seeing that I wasn’t going to change my mind, Agustina pulled an old trick from her sleeve: she told me she had a feeling that something bad was going to happen, and only someone who has the dubious fortune of living with a visionary can understand the tyranny this represents, because by raising the alarm of impending danger, the visionary’s premonitions freeze trips, plans, and impulses in such a way that you never discover whether the supposed mishap would have come about or not; or actually it does come about even when it doesn’t, and the seer’s will ends up being imposed on everyone else’s. For example, Agustina warns, Don’t go to Ibagué with the boys because something will happen to you along the way, although what she’s really referring to is vague ill fortune, not a specific accident, but supposing she says, as she has before, Something bad might happen to you along the way, she has a high probability from the start of being right because life is hazardous in and of itself and likely to play dirty with us, but also because in a country like this, split from top to bottom by a mountain range, the highways, which are already in bad shape, twist and twine around abysses and as if that weren’t enough, they’re seized every other day by the army, the paramilitaries, or the guerrillas, who kidnap you, kill you, or assault you with grenades, beatings, gunfire, explosives, antipersonnel mines, or the massive detonation of propane tanks.