Conceited for no obvious reason and euphoric at the same time, I decided to go for a wander in the vicinity of the house, I took a few steps into the night — two, four, eight. In a couple of minutes, almost without realizing, I left behind the group of wooden houses that comprised Tunquén. As I emerged into open ground, a mildly irritating wind arose. Inclined as I am to think in literature, I recalled Goethe: “Who rides so late through the night and wind?” As was to be expected, nobody answered, and the silence together with the short gusts of wind began to erode both my conceit and my euphoria. With no clear direction in mind, I proceeded to climb a steep slope, thinking that, when I reached the top, I would find no more houses, I would find nothing else, there would be nothing on the other side, in the same way — I told myself, almost stifled — as there is nothing after death. However, there was something.
A hundred yards away, on the ground floor of a house with the lights on, a group of youngsters was engaged in lively conversation. I hid among the trees and, protected by the shadows of the night, gradually approached the house, intending to get close to those youngsters and perhaps be able to overhear what they were saying; I gradually approached a position that I understood to be discreet and above all strategic, where I thought I would be able to see and hear everything, but, on reaching it, I soon realized that I was mistaken and that, if I wanted to spy on the house, I had to draw nearer, with the inherent risk. Also I was frightened to steal along in the shadows, since I could end up being discovered and taken for a thief or at least a strange and possibly dangerous visitor. But curiosity — as Borges said — is stronger than fear. And I drew very close, so much so that I was suddenly surprised to find out that they were not youngsters in the lively group, but old people. Ancient people, I should say, who appeared to have walked straight out of a fairy tale.
What had started as a happy outing in the light of the full moon, making me feel that I was an interesting person, had drifted into something somber and ancient. No, I said to myself, so much literature is not possible, so much anxiety, old people and death, heavens above, it is not possible, I went for a simple, happy wander and have ended up coming face-to-face with death, some old people and fantasy literature — clearly I cannot escape this personal, angst-ridden closed situation; even in Chile.
I spied on the group of old men and women for a few seconds and heard one of them say that in his time it was customary for all the mirrors and all the paintings showing domestic landscapes in the house of the deceased to be covered over with silk crêpe in sign of mourning. “Not just paintings with landscapes,” added an old woman, “any painting showing human beings or fruits of the earth.”
Everything was shamelessly sad and real. Profoundly literary as well. Death seemed to preside over it all. In Tunquén I didn’t seem to be able to forget the obsessions that haunted me. Taking the necessary precautions not to be discovered at the last moment, I started back toward Margot’s house in great distress, as if it were my first outing after death and my soul should avoid becoming distracted by mirrors or landscapes; hence I walked with my eyes glued to Chilean soil on the Bay of Quintay, terrified, to tell the truth more frightened than ever, as if I were walking along the first shore of my life after death.
It is five in the afternoon, I shall stop here for a while; now is a good time to prepare a dry martini, though, after the excesses of today’s lunch with Tongoy, what I really need is an Alka-Seltzer. Or an aspirin, because I have a slight headache; it isn’t easy receiving Tongoy, having lunch with him and then coming home to write an account in these pages of my trip to Chile last New Year’s Eve and, owing to the needs of the text, having to delve into an episode of disagreeable memory, my angst-ridden nocturnal wander in the vicinity of the house in Tunquén.
I had not one but two dry martinis. As I was finishing the second, I heard the jangle of keys, Rosa was entering the house. I told myself that the time had come to introduce a topical theme into this diary, so that it might appear a little less like a novel, and to carry on recounting my trip to Chile later.
In the hope of having something fresh and homespun to relate in these pages, I decided — it isn’t difficult — to pick a fight with Rosa. The simplest tactic was to let her come into the kitchen and catch me with the second dry martini. But this was too easy. As I concealed all traces of my alcoholic crime, I recalled a biography that I’d read recently, the biography of a man who had become heavily addicted to alcohoclass="underline" but, thanks to the strength of his constitution, was able to control his addiction, to ration out the alcohoclass="underline" he never drank before midday and after lunch he would not drink again until five. This man knew that it was a hard struggle and always would be. On weekends he would paint doors, chop wood, mow the lawn, look at his watch every ten minutes to see if it was time to drink legally. At five to five, with a sweaty face and trembling hands, he would take out the cocktail shaker and prepare himself a dry martini.
I let Rosa catch me in the kitchen, but drinking a glass of water. “Things are not going well,” I said to her, thereby causing a mild fight that would introduce a small dose of hot topicality into this diary. “I don’t know what you’re referring to,” she replied. “Do you really think it is normal for a man and a woman to live together like this?” I asked her. “No,” she answered. “So let’s talk.” Her face was tense and pale, her eyes not swollen but glazed, her eyebrows slightly raised, clearly she was exhausted from work. “How is Tongoy?” she asked me. “He sends you his regards and says to remind you that he’ll be in your office tomorrow,” I replied. “You destroy everything you love!” she exclaimed suddenly. I hadn’t expected her to get heated up quite so soon. “I love my children and I haven’t destroyed them,” I answered jokingly, I really had not intended to pick a serious fight. “What children? Don’t bring Montano into this, you’ve done him enough damage already, stuffing literature into the poor boy, he speaks in book — do you know what it means to speak in book?” I stopped and thought for a few seconds and, before I explained that I had planned the fight only for this diary and we would do well to continue the idyllic state in which we had been living since my return from Chile, replied (not wanting her to believe that a literary critic of my stature was incapable of answering her question), “To speak in book means to read the world as if it were the continuation of a never-ending text.”
The following morning — to return to Tunquén — the wonderful Margot had prepared a splendid and very generous breakfast for us. Unable to conceal the bags under my eyes and my air of preoccupation, I ended up telling them about my strange nocturnal jaunt, the youngsters who were in fact old people, my anxiety about the hellish siege to which both literature and death were subjecting me.
“All this would pass if you could unite the two anxieties and channel them into a single preoccupation, a separate concern of deep humanistic import. The death of literature, for example,” Tongoy said as he sipped his third coffee of the morning. “Has it ever occurred to you that, in this savage age in which we live, poor literature is beset by a thousand dangers and directly threatened with death and needs your help?”