Expelled from my own house by a conspiracy of my crazy wife and my dead father-in-law, and without a cent in my pocket, from whom could I beg for shelter if not my children and former wife? Marta Elena, so trustworthy, so responsible, so predictable, still pretty despite the matronly look she’d acquired and despite the twenty-six years she’d spent working faithfully for the same company, without missing a single day or ever arriving late at the office, Marta Elena, the extraordinary mother, my comrade-at-arms, the person with whom I’d shared my adolescence, Marta Elena, so solid, so good, my great lifelong friend; I’ve never been able to figure out what could have come over me to make me stop loving Marta Elena.
When I woke up in her house I realized that for the first time in countless nights I had slept soundly, then I heard the still-sleepy voices of my sons who were beginning to shuffle barefoot around the house, and Marta Elena’s calm voice starting the day off with crisp instructions, Quiet or you’ll wake your father; Here’s your shirt, Toño, I’ve ironed it for you; Carlos, take your sneakers because you have gym class today. For an instant it was clear to me that precisely these, and no others, were the voices of happiness, and that the only truly good thing in this world was hearing them when I woke up. Opening my eyes, I discovered that all around me, in the bedroom that my son Toño had let me have, there were no objects, with a few exceptions, that I wasn’t familiar with or that I hadn’t placed there myself, that didn’t speak to me of my own history, that hadn’t remained in the same place for years, Good morning boys, good morning Marta Elena, I shouted from bed.
My ex-wife asked me to help her with breakfast and for a minute I seemed to be two people at once, as if I had never stopped heating up corn cakes for my sons in the mornings, and what I saw was so pleasing to me that I asked myself why it wouldn’t have worked in reality, at what point things had broken down; if this was where my children were growing up and where a woman who still loved me was keeping a place for me as if I might some day return, why in the hell, I asked myself, was I running absurdly around in pursuit of something I hadn’t lost. Of course I vaguely remembered the sense of dissatisfaction that had made me leave and driven me to look elsewhere, I remembered it, but only vaguely and I couldn’t see any justification for it, because at this exact moment everything was calling me to stay in this place where, despite my four years of absence, I’d always been present, and I was struck with uncommon force by the feeling that all the puzzle pieces of my life fit this house, which I had never lost despite having abandoned it; everything spurred me to return, everything except enthusiasm, and standing outside myself just then, enthusiasm didn’t strike me as a particularly important factor.
The boys left for school and I asked Marta Elena whether I could take a shower. She said that I could, directing me to the boys’ bathroom and then thinking better of it, The kids use up all the hot water in there, she said, you’d better shower in mine, so I went into Marta Elena’s bathroom and started to undress, not daring to close the door, which would’ve seemed ridiculous, since after undressing in front of Marta Elena for seventeen years there was no reason why I shouldn’t do it again, though I felt strange, and through the half-open door I could see that Marta Elena had finished getting dressed and was sitting on the bed, pulling on her stockings and I had the feeling, something very like vertigo, that this was the sight I’d like to see every morning for the rest of my life; now Marta Elena was adjusting her skirt and fastening her earrings, then putting on her shoes, and what’s odd is that she must have been thinking the same thing I was, because she didn’t close the door, either.
I took a quick shower, quick, I think, out of fear that she would finish getting ready and call to me from the bedroom that she was leaving; the idea of her going pained me. I felt good with her around, and I thought that I’d still like to be there when the boys got home from school so that I could go down with them to play basketball at the neighborhood courts and come back, hungry, to make the ravioli that Carlos likes, to ask Marta Elena how things had gone at the office and let my mind wander a little as she told me, with slight variations, the same stories I already knew by heart. So I took a quick shower, then started to put on the clothes I’d been wearing the day before, but I stopped, opening the doors of Marta Elena’s closet and confirming my suspicion that much of my clothing would still be hanging there, everything I hadn’t taken when I moved alone to Salmona Towers, and there it all was: my plaid shirts, my drill pants, my old leather jacket.
TODAY NICHOLAS PORTULINUS is frying sausages for dinner and he serves them on a plate to his younger daughter, Eugenia. You’re a forest sprite, my poor little Eugenia, he tells her, you’re a silent sprite hidden away in your cave. It’s just the two of them, father and daughter, in the enormous kitchen, with sacks of oranges that the agent brought today piled against the walls and bunches of plantains hanging from the rafters. Eugenia is squeezing oranges with a heavy cast-iron juicer that is screwed to the table, from which comes not only the juice filling the pitcher but also an intense scent of orange blossoms. Nicholas Portulinus looks into the eyes of his younger daughter, Eugenia the strange, and asks her, Does the smell of oranges make you cry, too? At dawn today, he tells her, the road was carpeted with oranges crushed on the asphalt, because during the night they fell from the loaded trucks and the wheels of the cars rolled over them. I spent a long time sitting by the side of the road, little Eugenia, and the smell of oranges was very, very sad, and very, very strong. Eugenia watches him chew his food with the heavy jaw and wistful deliberation of an old cow and thinks with relief, Thank heavens Father isn’t queer today.
It’s July 20, and Independence Day is being celebrated in Sasaima; the servants have been given the night off, and Blanca, Farax, and Sofi have walked down to town to watch the parade and the fireworks, and then go to the community dance. They’ve announced that they’ll be back late, which means that if the festivities merit it they might not return until seven or eight the next morning, because tradition demands that the celebration be concluded at dawn with a town breakfast in the market square, and the mayor, who is a conservative, has announced that this year free tamales and beer will be served. Nicholas and Eugenia are left home alone, Blanca having called Eugenia aside before she left to entrust her with the care of her father, predicting that this time the task would be easy. He’s quiet, she said, all you have to do is keep your eye on him until he falls asleep, and in fact it is one of those rare peaceful moments when her father is all right and even talkative; since Eugenia isn’t used to her father speaking to her, she stutters and doesn’t know how to reply. Although it’s already nine, her father isn’t yet drifting in a ponderous prelude to sleep as he usually does, but instead he’s awake and on his face there’s something resembling a smile, today Father brims with chuckles, little gurgles, as he fries sausages in the kitchen and serves them on a plate to his younger daughter, seemingly reconciled to the simple reign of the everyday.