Yes, all men are the same, and you fake a voice as if you were saying something funny, but you’re not even looking at them; you’re still waiting for my eyes, just one of my looks to let you know that everything’s the same, and you’ll be calm again; so I can go on playing with Graciela, but I still love you more than anything else. But if it weren’t so? But if I loved Graciela more, Graciela who can lift her legs? And you can’t. Who can yell like Tarzan. And you can’t. Who can fight with me in the grass. And you can’t. Who can smear her whole face with orange juice. And you can’t. Who can kill herself laughing at the grown-ups all sitting there, looking so stupid. And you can’t. So it’s useless to smile every time I turn my head; and to make funny faces to win me over. I’m not amused by those faces; I don’t even notice them. I don’t see you even when you pass by my side. And you’ve passed three times now; and you’ve touched me; I felt how you touched me but I didn’t turn around. And I know you make noises for me to hear, and you sing that song about the bumble-bee because I like it best. But I don’t like it any more. Now you know. Graciela can sing much better songs, pretty Graciela, nobody will take me from her side even if it’s night-time and we have to go to sleep. She’ll come, earlier today than all the other days, with more cuddles and more promises. But I won’t. And I won’t. I’ll resist up to the last minute; I’ll scream and kick when Mommy wants to hold me in her arms. Yes, Daniel, you want to be with Mommy, of course you want Mommy to put you to bed. It’s night-time, can’t you see? You must remember we love each other so much, Daniel. That I’m the best in the world for you, Daniel. You can’t climb the stairs screaming and kicking that way; don’t you see you are betraying me, my little monster who doesn’t understand betrayal? Don’t you know that Mommy does understand and that her heart aches, and she can’t stand letting you fall asleep in tears, remembering Graciela? I didn’t want to hurt you, my darling. I didn’t hurt you, it’s not true. You fell asleep in peace and quiet and I’m sure that you’re having lovely dreams now. Only I am not sleeping. Only I’m afraid of the kisses I gave you, of the caresses, of the terrible way we both played on the bed till you fell asleep, happy and exhausted, thinking of me, I’m sure. And it’s useless for me to repeat over and over again that I always kiss you, that I always caress you, and that we always play, both of us, because my little Daniel must be happy. It’s useless to say that little Daniel is happy now and he’s dreaming lovely dreams; that he doesn’t know anything about his miserable mother’s ugliness. It is useless to repeat that night turns everything horrible, that tomorrow it will be different. That you will come running to wake me, and everything will be lovely, like every day. Horsey, horsey, don’t you stop, let your hooves go clippety-clop. Like every day.
FAMILY LIFE
Nicolas Broda belonged to that type of people who are cardinally unemotional. It is certain that if, one night, looking up into the sky, he saw two stars about to collide, instead of waiting for the bang he would set out to gather the necessary information. And on the very next morning, after a lot of fiddling with Lagrange’s equations applied to the mechanics of three heavenly bodies, he would have reached the conclusion that yes, a satellite launched in the past thirty-eight days and another only four days ago would create the illusion of a crash if observed at the time and place from which he was now staring at the sky.
On the morning of July 7 he woke up because a saucepan or something metallic had just been dropped in the next room. Every house sounds different, and for a split second he had the intention of asking himself why the word ‘different’ had crossed his mind. I’ve got to get up, he thought, but he didn’t even open his eyes because he vaguely remembered that no, of course, he didn’t have to. He didn’t have to get up because it was Saturday or because the alarm had not yet rung. It’s true that he had to visit the Computer Centre to inspect a routine tryout (he was a Fortran programmer, as well as an advanced-maths student), but it didn’t matter if he went now or later. He stretched luxuriantly and reasoned that this was the great thing about Saturdays: they begin like any other day, and then, suddenly, freedom. Freedom? But he immediately discarded this avenue of thought because it occurred to him that it was asinine to start the day with hairsplitting.
He made a small effort and opened his eyes. The next effort took longer and required a little more will power: he turned his head to see the time. It was 8:30. The alarm had not gone off.
For his third effort — pulling his arm from under the blanket and reaching for the clock — he required nothing at all, because his movement was sparked by real curiosity. He wanted to know whether the alarm was broken or whether he had forgotten to wind up the clock. He immediately realized that he had forgotten to wind it up. He also noticed that the alarm hand, usually fixed at 8, now pointed to 8:30. Whatever did I do last night? He tried to remember. He was now wide awake.
The saucepan made a noise again, something like a light tapping that stopped at once. It came from his parents’ room. He remembered his father, in his dressing gown, standing on the balcony. Suddenly he remembered what he had done last night. He had been in Segismundo Danton’s apartment. They had discussed the complex theory of a binary chain, several women, the novels of Musil and finally the times (long gone) when they used to see Tarzan films at the Medrano Theatre. Nicolas had walked home feeling as light as a bird. He later discovered, to his dismay, that his birdlike condition — the feeling of having the brain of a bird — could be attributed to his having forgotten in Segismundo’s apartment a briefcase full of IBM manuals, a dump at least thirty pages long, a rare collection of Maupassant’s stories, a universal treatise on pre-Pythagorean mathematics, personal documents, a few odd bits and pieces and the keys whose absence — though not so literally weighty as the rest — obliged him to ring the bell for almost ten minutes and then to exchange socio-economic arguments with his brusquely awoken father. And yet, in spite of this incident, he had felt so carefree and elated that it wasn’t strange, he now thought, for him to have forgotten to set the alarm. For the time being he didn’t care to consider the question of why the hands were pointing at 8:30. He felt happy. So he jumped out of bed like a soldier and began to sing ‘Ay Jalisco, no te rajes’ with all his body and soul. ‘Porque es peligroso querer a las mala-aas!’ He held the ‘aas’ until he could hold it no longer, then he opened the door of his room.
An unknown woman in a lace-trimmed dressing gown — fat, with peroxided hair — was coming out of his parents’ bedroom.