The stuntman took it as joke, laughed, and said in a loud voice: “How about the Mexican writer coming over here to break the horse. Everybody says Mexicans are great riders.”
“No,” I shouted back. “I don’t know how to ride. But you don’t know how to write a book.”
He didn’t understand me, or he was very thick, because for the rest of the day he spent his time on practical things: he moved trailers, tied up cables, raised machines, drove horses, tested rifles, and counted blank cartridges out loud, all as if he wanted to impress me with his mechanical ability — me, who can’t drive a car or change a tire. His physical exhibitionism nevertheless comforted me. Once, when the hairdresser told me that the stuntman had been after Diana since Oregon, I had imagined him inside the trailer with her while I stayed behind in Santiago filling page after page with growing diffidence and disillusion. Now, as I watched this macho show-off, I was sure he’d never touched her. He put on too much of a show, made too much of a fuss, wasn’t really sure of himself. He was no rival …
On the way back to Santiago, Diana leaned on my shoulder and played with my nails, exciting me. We passed the boy who’d been Juárez, and I told Diana the story.
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth. That I didn’t know anything about it.”
She made a guttural noise she instantly stifled, raising her hand to her mouth and abandoning my nails. “What a terrible thing to do!”
“I don’t understand.”
“How could you understand? You’re the man whose table is always set for him. You don’t know what it is to fight, to get out of the hole …”
“Diana …”
“You should have told him you knew all about it, don’t you understand? You should have told him you saw the film, that he was stupendous, that the picture is a success everywhere, and that it’ll be coming to Santiago soon to shut his friends up …”
“But that’s an illusion …”
“Movies are illusion!” Her eyes shouted louder than her voice.
“I refuse to give these people false hopes. It’s worse that way. I swear it’s worse. The fall is disastrous.”
“Well, I think you’ve got to give a hand to the person who needs it. We all need a hand …”
“Charity, you mean.”
“Okay, charity …”
“So they never stop being beggars. I hate charity, philanthropy …”
She moved away from me, as if I were burning her, as if she herself were freezing cold.
“Tomorrow I’m going to look for that boy first thing.”
“You’re going to leave him worse off than ever, I’m telling you.”
“I’m going to look for the film, I’m going to bring it here, and I’m going to show it to the boy, his family, his friends …”
“Who will hate him more than ever. They’ll be jealous of him, Diana, and there won’t be any sequels. He won’t make any more pictures …”
“You have no imagination. I’m telling you, no imagination, and no compassion whatsoever …”
“For you, it’s all Italian toothpaste …”
We turned our backs on each other, staring attentively at a landscape devoid of interest, abolished, erased.
XVIII
“You left the door open.”
“You’re mistaken. Look at it. It’s tight shut.”
“I mean the bathroom door.”
“Yes. It’s open. So what?”
“I asked you always to keep it closed.”
“Well, it so happens that at this particular time I’m going in and out a lot.”
“Why?”
“What’s it to you? Because I’ve just come down with a case of Montezuma’s revenge, because …”
“You’re lying. You Mexicans never get that. You reserve that for us …”
“Diarrhea recognizes neither frontiers nor cultures. Didn’t you know that?”
“How can you be so horribly vulgar?”
“Why’s it such a big deal whether the bathroom door is open or closed?”
“I’m asking it as a favor.”
“How delicate we are. At least you’re not giving me a direct order. After all, I am living in your house.”
“I never said that. All I’m asking is that you respect …”
“Your manias?”
“My insecurity, stupid. I’m very sensitive to things that are open or closed. I’m afraid. Help me, respect me …”
“So our relationship is going to depend on whether I close the bathroom door or leave it open?”
“It’s such a little thing. And since you put it that way, yes, you are in my house …”
“And you’re in my country.”
“Eating shit, that’s true.”
“We could go back to Iowa and eat fried chicken in cellophane or dog-meat hamburgers. I’m ready when you are …”
“Since you don’t respect my vulnerability, you can use another bathroom and let me have this one …”
“I can also sleep in a different bedroom.”
“I’m asking you to do me the tiniest favor. Close the bathroom door. Open bathroom doors scare me, okay?”
“But it doesn’t bother you to sleep with the bedroom curtains open?”
“I like that.”
“Well, I don’t. The sun comes blazing in early and I can’t sleep.”
“I’ll lend you an American Airlines sleep mask.”
“You get up at dawn, so you’re fine. But I end up with a fucking migraine.”
“You’ll find all the aspirin you need at the drugstore.”
“Why do you insist on sleeping with the curtains open?”
“I’m waiting.”
“For whom? Dracula?”
“There are beautiful nights when the moon invades a bedroom, transforms it, and transports you to another moment in your life. Maybe that will happen again.”
“Again?”
“Right. Moonlight inside a bedroom, inside an auditorium, it transforms the world — that’s something you really can believe in.”
“You told me not to believe in your biography.”
“Just believe in the images I offer you from time to time.”
“Please excuse me. I’ll leave the door closed. I wouldn’t want a single moonbeam to escape.”
“Thank you.”
“Assuming one does arrive some night.”
“It will. My life depends on it.”
“I think you really mean, my memory.”
“Don’t you remember any night you’d like to recapture?”
“Lots of them.”
“No, it can’t be ‘lots of them.’ Only one or none at all.”
“I’d have to think about it.”
“No. Imagine it.”
“Tell me what props I’d need, O Duse.”
“Don’t laugh.”
“Duse Medusa.”
“You’d need snow.”
“Here?”
“Snow all the time. Snow all four seasons of the year. I can’t imagine it without snow. Snow outside. A circle. A circular theater. An auditorium. A skylight. Night. Me stretched out on the stage. The two of us alone. Him on top of me. Searching with his hand. Lifting my little skirt.”
“Like this?”
“Exploring me with a marvelous tenderness no other man has ever known how to give me.”
“Like this?”
“He’s patient, exploring, lifting my little skirt, sliding his hand under my panties, searching in the darkness …”
“Like this.”
“Until the moon rises and the light floods over us, the moonlight shines on my first night of love, my love …”