‘I don’t know why it should even matter,’ said Samanta. ‘Here I am, Señor Mallarino: I am what I am, that’s not going to change. Twenty-eight years: an entire lifetime. Who does it matter to now? Maybe it’s better to just leave it all as it was. Who told me to go digging around instead of leaving well enough alone? Wasn’t it better for everything to stay as it had been? Wasn’t I just fine the way I was, without knowing what I now know? That belongs to another lifetime, a life that has never been my life. They took it away from me. They changed it. My parents changed it for me. They gave me another one: one where there was no past. A child’s past is made of plasticine, Señor Mallarino, adults can do whatever they like with it. We can, I mean, we can do whatever we like. That’s how it was with me. A year went by, and then another, and that life from before began to recede, until it stopped existing. That little girl from before, that girl that certain things happened to, went to sleep and died, Señor Mallarino. She stopped existing, like a sickly puppy. And one fine day that girl is thirty-five years old and sees a slide projection in a theatre and feels something strange, something she’s never felt. I didn’t know that could happen. Just to be sitting there and feel these strange things. With each passing minute, with each minute, feeling even stranger. They’re talking up onstage, there are speeches, but you don’t hear them. Your attention is elsewhere. You’re remembering things. You have intuitions, shall we say, uncomfortable intuitions. Half-formed memories arrive, like phantoms. What do you do with this? What do you do with phantoms? That’s what I’ve been asking myself all this time. I’ve spent half the evening remembering things and the other half wondering which of the memories were true and which were lies. I’ve begun to remember things, but now I don’t know if I’m remembering because I remember, Señor Mallarino, or if I’m remembering because you told me. Am I remembering because you put the memory in my head? It’s not easy, it’s not easy to know. The problem is that a whole lifetime has gone by, Señor Mallarino, and my question is: who can all this matter to? What happened, what didn’t happen, who does it matter to?’
Who does it matter to, thought Mallarino this morning. He waited for the coffee pot to stop bubbling and took out the glass mug; a drop fell onto the hot stovetop and the stovetop hissed like an aggressive cat. With a cup of fresh coffee in hand, Mallarino picked up the newspaper and read it standing up at the kitchen counter, his back to the frosted window, freezing to death, with his charcoal pencil in hand, until he realized he wasn’t taking anything in, that his mind was elsewhere. Elsewhere, yes, or in another time, and in any case far away from the newspaper — that vulgar flatterer of the present moment — and its announcements of parties and acts and speeches and more speeches and skies covered in balloons, big coloured balloons, all designed to celebrate the bicentennial of Colombian Independence. Who does it matter to, thought Mallarino, and then he thought: It matters to me. He poured himself more coffee; he went up to his studio; he looked at Daumier’s caricature where King Louis-Philippe’s same chubby face (his pear face, as Frenchmen of the time saw him, a king with the face of a pear) looked towards the past, the present and the future: Mallarino said to himself that his own situation didn’t seem very different at this moment. That face was like his, perhaps. But that face said to him: all is the present. What I remember, thought Mallarino, is happening now. It was too early to call Rodrigo Valencia, so Mallarino took a sheet of paper out of the fax machine — those too white, too thick sheets whose edges inflicted painful paper cuts on the unwary — and wrote a message by hand, with his careful handwriting, dating it in one corner and signing it at the end as he always did, as if it were a letter. Valencia, he thought, would find the message as soon as he arrived at the office.
Rodrigo:
I want to ask you for an urgent favour. Do you remember Adolfo Cuéllar, the congressman? Well, I need his widow’s details. Address, phone number, whatever you can find for me. I don’t know if I already said it was urgent.
Very best,
Javier
The call came sooner than expected. ‘Well, if it isn’t the most brilliant star in the Colombian firmament,’ Valencia said, ‘and my number one fax correspondent. Let’s see, let’s see, tell me what on earth this is about. What have you got in mind?’ Mallarino thought Valencia was talking far too loudly; for a second he was tempted to tell him to keep his voice down, but he didn’t. He asked him to remember the afternoon of the party, twenty-eight years ago, to remember the girl, Beatriz’s little friend.
‘She needs to talk to Cuéllar’s wife,’ said Mallarino, ‘to ask her some things. Can you get me an address, a phone number? Ask someone there, your secretary, one of your researchers. Five minutes: I’m sure it wouldn’t take your people any more than five minutes.’ There was a silence. Mallarino imagined Valencia’s vacant stare landing anywhere: on a pencil, his computer keyboard, the walls where caricatures of him and of his wife that Mallarino had drawn years ago hung.
Finally, Valencia said: ‘That girl? You know the girl?’
‘Look, it’s a long story,’ said Mallarino. ‘She’s here, with me, and needs that information.’
‘Just a moment, one moment. She’s with you?’
‘Will you get it for me or not?’
‘One moment, Javier. For you, or for the girl? Who must not be a girl any more, but anyway. What is this about her being there with you? What’s her name?’
‘Will you get me the information?’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Samanta Leal. What does it matter to you? Will you get me the information?’
‘But I just don’t understand. I need more details, there’s something missing. No, I know what I’m missing: understanding. I don’t understand, that’s what’s wrong.’
‘You don’t have to understand, Rodrigo: you just have to do me a favour. And doing favours is easier than understanding. Look, it’s very simple. You’re in your office, right? There in that glass case you have instead of an office, in everyone’s sight. So follow my instructions. Raise your hand, so they see you from outside. When the first of your slaves comes in, you ask him to do this. And when you have it, send me a fax. So very simple.’