Public opinion, thought Mallarino. Fall from grace. Where did those formulaic phrases come from? Who had invented them? Who had been the first to use them?
‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘No caricature is capable of such a thing.’
On the way back to Beatriz’s grandparents’ house, the silence in the car was dense, rich, concentrated. Bogotá, on a Sunday evening, is a vast, desolate city; if it’s Christmas time and the streets are festooned with lights, there is something melancholy about it, like a party that’s gone wrong. Or that was Mallarino’s impression, not knowing why he felt Magdalena’s gaze weighing on him like a judgement. If at some moment, a thousand years ago, it had been possible that the day might have ended with some sort of reconciliation (and perhaps that was why they’d left Beatriz with her grandparents: to allow them an hour or two extra and the sex that might happen in that time), that possibility seemed distant now, seemed more confused with every green light they passed as they drove north up Seventh Avenue. They had to arrive in front of the building where Magdalena had grown up, they had to turn off the car and stay in the dark, illuminated only by the pale streetlights, for Magdalena to tell him how terrified she was at having seen what she’d seen.
‘What did you see?’ asked Mallarino. ‘I don’t know what you’re referring to.’
‘Of course you do, Javier, of course you know, you know perfectly well,’ she said. ‘You absolutely realized, maybe you realized before I did. It took me a couple of seconds, I confess. I didn’t realize from one moment to the next, no, but gradually. It wasn’t easy, I have to admit that too, it wasn’t easy to realize. But I did realize, Javier, I realized something was not right in the air, there, in that horrible restaurant that seemed full of smoke even though nobody was smoking and I was trying to think for a moment what it might be. Until I knew. It was the look in people’s eyes, the look in the eyes of those reporters and even Rodrigo Valencia: the look of admiration. They were looking at you with admiration. The guy killed himself this morning and they were interviewing you, they had to ask you that question: but they asked it with admiration. Or with astonishment, or awe, choose the word you like best. But that’s what there was in the air, that sort of fear you inspire, yes, a reverential fear. And then came the worst: when I realized that you were proud. You were proud of that question they were asking you, Javier, and who knows, maybe you were proud of something else. Here, while we’re talking, with our daughter asleep a few steps away, you are proud. You’re proud and I can’t understand it. You’re proud and I don’t know who you are any more. I don’t know who you are, but I do know one thing: that I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be with you. I don’t want Beatriz to be with you. I want you far away from her and far from me. I want you far, far, far away.’
III
On Friday morning, just after eleven, Mallarino’s four-by-four snaked down towards the city along the slippery road. Rain lashed the bodywork: it was one of those Bogotá downpours that make considered conversation impossible, make drivers furrow their brows and force them to grip the steering wheel hard with both hands. The mountain rose up on their left, always menacing, always on the verge of collapsing on top of people, that mountain that seemed to pass underneath the grey ribbon of road, fall away to the right in a rough, steep slope and crash, in the distance, miraculously converted into the blurry design of the scattered city. On the horizon, that point where the western hills were no longer green, but blue, aeroplane lights dangled in the cloudy grey sky like an old woman’s earrings.
Mallarino had slept little and badly, without ever forgetting that Samanta was there, just a few steps away, in Beatriz’s old room. Samanta Leaclass="underline" the woman who was no longer a little girl, the woman who could lie and put on an act in order to gain access to his house and remember (or ask him to remember, like a beggar of memories) what happened there twenty-eight years earlier. He heard her get up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom, inevitably heard the liquid sounds she made: the stream of her urine, the indiscreet flush, the water running as she washed her hands. When the first light began to shine in his window, as the gentle agitation of the hummingbirds began, Mallarino had already been awake for a while: awake and thinking about Samanta Leal, awake and feeling sorry for her, genuinely sorry, sorry for the night of total vulnerability that his guest must be enduring. Samanta was alone, alone with those new memories she’d just acquired and which altered her entire life, everything she’d believed she knew about herself until now, or at least shifted it slightly, enough to change her whole perspective. In a Holbein painting there is a skull that you can only really see from the side, not when you look straight at it: was something similar happening to Samanta Leal? Today she would wake up feeling like somebody else; right now she would be revisiting her dearest memories and re-examining them, not with affection this time, but with suspicion. Poor thing. Mallarino had given her a towel and an extra blanket, in case she felt cold. Before retreating into Beatriz’s room like someone hiding out in a cave, Samanta told Mallarino about the night of the ceremony, what had happened, and he couldn’t help thinking that she sounded as if she were talking about another person. Which, in more than one sense, was perhaps true: Samanta was now another. This woman was talking about the woman she had been just a few hours ago.
Samanta told him about her colleagues at the Misión Gaia (an environmental foundation where she’d been working for the last two years) and the admiration that one of them had for the life and work of Javier Mallarino. She didn’t remember who had suggested they all go downtown together, to the ceremony at the Teatro Colón where Mallarino’s reputation would be enshrined for all time, but the idea sparked some enthusiasm. To witness that moment: was it not a wonderful opportunity? She accepted the invitation — more out of curiosity than anything else — and hours later found herself sitting in an unlit box, attending the beginning of what looked set to be the most boring ceremony, wondering what she’d got herself into and swearing she’d slip out the first chance she got. Then they started showing the slides; an image invaded the theatre, then another, and a third; Samanta looked at them absentmindedly, the way one looks at flames in a fireplace, and after a while she noticed that she wasn’t looking so absent-mindedly any more: that she recognized some images: that she recognized the house. She turned and said to her colleague: ‘I’ve been there.’ This surprise made her laugh, a silly laugh. The whole situation had something absurd about it, and the cheerful expression that then appeared on her colleague’s face: ‘You’ve been to Javier Mallarino’s house?’ And she assured him that she had been there, to that house, and he teased her and they laughed. But then Samanta began to recognize things: a couple of pictures, for example. The one with the three faces, for example. Now the whole thing didn’t seem so funny. ‘I’ve seen that picture before,’ she told her colleague, and the irritated people sitting behind them clicked their tongues to order silence. ‘I’ve been in that house,’ Samanta continued. But not laughing any more; it didn’t seem such a funny surprise now; the people sitting nearby kept telling her to be quiet. So Samanta didn’t say anything more about it. She stopped saying she’d been there before; she stopped saying she’d seen that picture before. She kept quiet. She wrestled as much as she could with the unformed questions that were pestering her. She began to imagine possibilities. And the next day she arrived at the house in the mountains and lied and acted and all the time she was trying to remember and to get Mallarino to remember, yes, that too: for Mallarino to remember. And all for nothing.