(Last night’s party was in an old bar downtown, where an acquaintance of Alicia’s was exhibiting photos of monsters drawn by a childish hand, tempera and pastel pencils across the walls of squalid public bathrooms. A rapper improvised exclamations in counterpoint to two cellos and a violin, while backstage someone simulated powerful electronic rhythms with their lips and throat so that at the climax a tenor sax drifted out from behind the curtains. I’d escaped this apartment at last; in my inertia I’d thought that — since I needed to buy a new pen so I could keep on writing — a walk would be my only respite: I wanted to write until someone found me collapsed on top of the page, to wake up in a white bed, to have Alicia come visit me in the hospital and, before leaving, for her to confess to me that she’d been the one who’d found me at the desk, my face streaked with ink, that she’d called my parents, and that before the ambulance arrived she’d gathered together my pages and gone home to read them in peace. She wouldn’t hate me for speaking of her to the infinite (blonde, brunette, short or talclass="underline" the same idealization), she’d understand and yet she’d feel a little fear. Fear. So much fear, in fact, that she’d let my period of convalescence elapse without visiting me, forgetting about me, writing a little novel copied from my deliriums. (Forgive me, she’d write on the envelope that’d come to me in the mail.) This is what I wanted: for the world to destroy itself if I enumerated every part of it. For Santiago, so destitute in the empty pages of my diary, to at last be filled with inhabitants, with a river and a history; I thought that I should get up and go out to buy a pen, but the intercom buzzed and I jumped, frightened. It was Alicia, she was downstairs in the lobby, and as usual she wanted me to go with her to a party. I had to come, she said. I closed the notebook, got dressed quickly, walked to the door wondering how much of me would still react to the bodies of other people.)
We laughed. What, she thought I was going to stay inside sleeping because of the disgusting behavior of some drunks? Or better: The Little One and I laughed as we ran down the stairs and got in her car. I grabbed her around the waist to kiss her, she twisted away, without taking her eyes from the stoplight at Américo Vespucio she asked me not to be a coward today, at her friend’s birthday party. Be quiet, I responded; it was just that, a couple nights before, I’d been dumbfounded to see her like that, on top of a table surrounded by executives toasting a fat man, who was vomiting bile, glasses breaking on the floor while her hands were pinned down onto the sharp edge of the table by the knees of a man wearing a tie. The man had approached her, run his fingers along her fleshy arm, and whispered something in her ear. He’d call her later to have us join them in a private room. What name had he uttered in that moment? She didn’t answer. We parked, went up to the house’s gate, knocked. No one came out to let us in for quite a while. The Little One looked at me, I took her hand and squeezed it, demanding that she tell me her name.
(I danced with S almost all night, we had a good time together, thrilled by the stupid movements extremities make when there’s something driving them: music that takes hold of the hips and arms and chest, as if a different type of pounding blood animated us and the autonomy of the organism were lost when confronted with this pulse that comes from outside, that connects and disconnects us not only to the person smiling in front of us, but also to the couple whose backs touch ours because of a misstep, to the passionate kiss over there in the corner, to hands that form bodies when brought together, and to the mouths that open yet say nothing; there’s only one body that’s separate, Alicia’s body, dancing around whomever she likes, never in front of them; she joins a circle of bodies clapping their hands for a wild dancer, comes toward us, makes a half turn and I don’t want to smile; I smile at S, the three of us dance together, she’s lost again in the confusion of heads and necks. When S goes to the bathroom, I stay on the dance floor and Alicia reappears beside me, distant because we’re never able to bring our movements together to form a single figure, a figure that moves forward, draws away and comes together and laughs, but never stops. The body is movement, its only rest is death or dreaming: Alicia and I discussed this the other day. Now, on the other hand, when we try to dance, the silence is the moment I trip and almost fall; in the blank spaces of our conversations each of us reproduces the true message on our own; I don’t understand what it is she’s doing, but I marvel at the confusion her movements provoke in me. I go up to her and kiss her: there’s no possible interpretation, I’m separated from you if you stop reading these words and start dancing; Alicia moves away, she’s disappointed by our stiffness. Later I find her sitting down and offer her my beer. Why the long face? I ask. She answers with a monosyllable and I, without having planned it, respond with a phrase that she likes. The moment is overwhelming: she and I in the absolute ubiquity of our dialogue, I think about how much I love her and for an unexpected second she rests her head on my shoulder. All of a sudden we realize what we’re doing, we shake ourselves and talk again about some random thing; the contact provokes separation.)
The Little One didn’t want to tell me her name right away. She opened her mouth with surprise, but then a blond man appeared and invited us to follow him through the gate without saying a word. Later, she licked my ear a little as she told me I could call her whatever I wanted, and I was delighted by that party where dozens of couples groped each other on the couches. With my hand on her back I led her to the center of the living room. She came close, put her arms around my neck, and we swayed to a soft music. It must sound different from how it was; the Corporalists of Santiago rarely use words. They were there to enjoy themselves, The Little One explained. Mouths opening only to share their partner’s mouth, tongues fulfilling their roles while fingers weren’t instruments, but parts of foreign bodies, like the knees, the waist, the neck, the eyelids, the groin. A solitary woman fell down, asleep; she was useless there. A man lifted her in his arms, she curled against that unfamiliar chest moving off to one of the bedrooms; the two of them were sleeping deeply in one of the beds; or maybe he was shaking her violently, then came a slap, she shoved him and ran crying out to the patio. At the end of the night, the couple lay peacefully on a rug in a room on the second floor: it’s love, The Little One interrupted at sunrise, when I told her that I’d spent the entire night thinking of the perfect names with which she and I would be happy.
THE NOVEL
It was very early in the morning. 5:15, Carlos saw on his watch. He turned the key, pushed open the door, groped the wall in search of the light switch and turned it on. He contemplated the living room, briefly illuminated, then flicked the switch again to proceed in darkness. He bumped into a potted plant. Tired, sad, and drunk, he let himself collapse onto the couch and closed his eyes. He could still hear the shouting inside the car of the friend who’d offered to give him a ride home. At Salvador and Providencia they’d spotted two transvestites. His friend had slowed down to get a look at the fairies, he found these girls fascinating from a distance, he said. He said to look closely, they were paragons of woman: legs long as columns, those waists, oh, those waists. Of course their hair was a little strange, but those shoulders, those shoulders in the air. The car crept up the incline; the two transvestites approached one step, then another. The problem, according to his friend, was that everything changed at a few meters; it was a problem of distance. Now those exquisite women had turned into garish men, costumed and painted, serious faces giving way to nervous chuckles and then fits of laughter, he added, accelerating. In the rearview mirror, the shrinking image of one of the transvestites panting, furious, open mouth insulting them: sissy faggots. From desire to laughter and then the leering faces, the weariness, the silence. The problem of distance, of the lie the head tells the eyes, and the eyes tell the touch. Like what’d happened to his girlfriend, said Carlos, interrupting the silence in which they were moving. Like the problem Elisa had when that gringa with whom she’d exchanged letters since she was thirteen came to meet her in person; she hadn’t had the courage to tell her unknown yet intimate friend that she disliked her shrill voice, or the strange acidity of her scent, or her emphatic hand gestures, that she came too close when starting a conversation or blinked slowly whenever responding to a question, moving her head up and down. The truth is that Elisa only relaxed after dropping her off at the airport, and that the feeling had been mutuaclass="underline" she never received another letter from the gringa.