I have never recalled so many things out loud as I did that night in Tunquén. I recalled, for example, the time in the 1970s when I lived between Paris and Berlin and considered myself to be a radical leftist and undergrounder and was friends with people like Ingrid Caven, Paloma Picasso, and Ulrike Meinhof (before she became a terrorist). And I recalled how in those days it seemed that my destiny — like that of many of my peers — would be loneliness, drugs, violence, or suicide. I remembered my mother, so fragile and strange, a secret poet, resembling Alejandra Pizarnik, permanently halfway between barbiturates and (the as yet unnamed) Montano’s malady. I remembered how my generation wanted to change the world, though said perhaps it was far better that our dreams never came true. I recalled the day I discovered that writing is like walking in the library of life. I recalled the day I discovered Cernuda and he made me literature-sick: “Light is the part of life / that like gods poets rescue.” I remembered how I used to sell apartments with my father on the Costa Brava. I remembered a trip to Warsaw, when I was twenty-five, a trip from Paris made exclusively to have dinner with Sergio Pitol. And finally I recalled how two days previously, on the airplane bringing Rosa and me to Chile, I had dreamed that I was married to the Canadian filmmaker Julia Rosenberg and how by chance, hours after that dream, I had learned that Rosenberg was married to a writer, the New Yorker Jonathan Lethem, who — and this was the strangest part — looked a lot like me when I was young, as I suddenly discovered in a photograph I came across completely by chance in one of the inflight magazines; he looked like the young man who had walked in Paris and Berlin in the 1970s, he looked like me before I began to resemble the elegant but vampiric Christopher Lee: a slightly tragic and regrettable destiny, but, when it comes to it, no harder than any other.
The evening was a little spoiled at the end, when Gombrowicz’s name was mentioned and our Chilean friends, wanting to see how I reacted when I got angry, piqued me by suggesting in a snide and persistent way, using the most varied arguments, that on more than one occasion I had copied the Polish writer.
There the night came to an end.
I slept little and badly. I dreamed that Julia Rosenberg was dancing with an iguana on a beach on the Pacific full of old people talking constantly about funereal themes, about how in their time it was customary for all the mirrors in the house of the deceased to be covered over with silk crêpe as a sign of mourning.
The following morning, none of us having rested very much, we began the long and tortuous journey — owing to the general hangover — to the Brighton, where we arrived at about half-past one in the afternoon and where the first thing Rosa and I were able to confirm was that the hotel’s famous hanging terrace was as spectacular as the Brodskys had told us.
The hotel was occupied by us, but the terrace at that time seemed to belong to the entire city of Valparaiso, there wasn’t room for another soul. What I saw as soon as I stepped onto it, I put down to the hangover: beneath a sunshade, an old and very ugly man, with horrible, grandiose ears and shaved head, appeared to be absorbed in reading Pornografia, a book by Gombrowicz.
As the Brodskys had told me that we were due to meet a friend of theirs who had been unable to come to Tunquén, I thought that this horrible, vampiric old man could be the person they planned to introduce to me. Separating from the group and spontaneously taking the initiative, as if drawn by the brotherly call of Nosferatu’s blood, I approached the old man and jokingly asked how much the Brodskys were paying him to pretend to be reading Gombrowicz.
The look that man directed toward me I would not wish on anyone.
“The Brodskys?” he said. “What on earth are you talking about? Those creatures who, with your lordship, have just stepped on to the terrace? Are they the Brodskys? I have to tell you, sir, those kids must be very good at playing ball.”
This man was undoubtedly very odd, and not just on account of his vampiric appearance. He was elegant, but very strange. And his elegance was also strange, not to say extravagant. For example, he was wearing a belt strapped around his waist, on top of his white shirt, as if he were tying himself up.
It seemed to me, despite his chilling gaze, that he was joking and I simply had to go along with it.
“They’re pretending to be adults,” I said. “But they’re just as much children as are you, who owns the ball.”
His next look made me think I was mistaken and this man had nothing to do with the Brodskys, I had been talking to a stranger in the literal sense of the word.
“Mistakes like yours,” he told me, suddenly sounding like Gombrowicz and adopting a very unpleasant tone, “deserve a flick. And now, mister intruder, clear off if you do not want to discover that my belt is a whip.”
Your head reminds me of a large lily, I thought of telling him. But the sentence was too soft for my liking. Your pale forehead is a confused map. This also seemed too soft, and sweet besides, and even sickeningly poetic. You’re the one who’s a flick, I thought of telling him. But I found that simplistic. You son of a bitch. This seemed more to the point, but too vulgar and direct. Besides, I had to show respect for my elders. All the same, I felt a sudden dislike for this man, he struck me as rude and detestable, and finally I went for this bold question:
“Did Your Majesty get his Draculean or DraculARSEan ears from his lady mother, the Great Arse?”
I thought that he would at least give me a smack or a heavy lash, but he didn’t. He looked at me, smiled, and roared with monumental, theatrical laughter, as spectacular as that terrace. Everyone suddenly turned toward us, and I almost blushed. His laughter seemed to have no end, but it ended. He then became very serious and reached out his hand to me in a friendly manner.
“Tongoy,” he said, “Felipe Tongoy.”
He was a friend of the Brodskys, I was not mistaken. But the fact he was reading Gombrowicz was in no way related to the previous night’s argument in Tunquén. Felipe Tongoy had been a fan of Gombrowicz his whole life, and that was all. Or nothing. Because Tongoy had such an odd appearance, he was seven times Dracula compared to me. And it was difficult to be sure about him, though this much was undoubtedly clear: he was friends with the Brodskys and read Gombrowicz.
“Tongoy,” he said again. “Felipe Tongoy. I am the Brodskys’ oldest friend. I like dry martinis, Chile, Gombrowicz, and vampires. Garçon,” he shouted to the waiter, “ink, please!”
He had ink on his gums, perhaps he had just eaten squid in their ink. He aroused in me neither disgust nor fear, I saw him as a friend, but most of all — this calmed me — as a friend of the Brodskys; though he did arouse in me a certain amount of fear, or even a great deal, not because of the Brodskys, but because of the strange ink on his gums. My blood was not circulating too well, I could feel it. I had never seen anyone so literature-sick as this monster.
“Girondo,” I replied, trembling. “Rosario Girondo at your service.”
“Do you like Chile?” he asked me with a devilish look.
I thought hard before answering.
“Chile is OK,” I said finally.
He smiled at me, I suppose so that I could see the ink again. And shortly afterward, with his left hand, which was the one he had free — because with his right he was again calling the waiter — he touched his monstrous right ear.
I recalled Gombrowicz: “If you wish to indicate that you liked my work, simply touch your right ear when you see me.”
“Girondo,” I said, also touching my ear. “Rosario Girondo.”