“What a strange place,” she said.
Everything seemed to be liquid. A memory from years before suddenly came back to me: a hallucination induced by the psilocybin in mushrooms that grow in that area — a general impression of wateriness, the intuition of a liquid world.
I said: “It’s like driving underwater. Look at those trees.”
“This is the bottom of the sky!” she exclaimed.
The track started climbing again, heading straight for the highest point on the ridge, which was covered with little trees. We came to a small clearing, where the wheel ruts stopped. I turned the car around and switched off the motor.
“This is it. We’ll have to take him a little bit farther. There’s a gully.”
The air smelled of moss. For a while we watched the trees swaying under a sky so full of stars it was white.
Between the two of us, we carried the old man’s body. We went about fifty yards into the trees, slipping repeatedly. We stopped at the edge of a gully plunging away into the shadows, in which a big vein of black rock was dimly visible.
“This is good,” she said.
We placed the body carefully between two smooth, wet stones. Without a word, I moved away. She knelt down beside him. She kissed him once on the forehead. Without betraying any sign of pain, she pulled out a handful of her hair and slowly scattered it over his body. She prayed, I think, or maybe recited some lines of poetry. She was like the celebrant of a simple and primitive rite.
I picked up the shovel. I plunged it into the soft, sandy soil. She scooped up a little in both hands. “May it lie softly on you,” she murmured as she sprinkled it over her grandfather’s chest. She stood up and asked me to finish the burial.
A few steps away, in the starlight, an armadillo waddled slowly past and disappeared into the shadows.
It didn’t take me long. I was sweating, and I sensed that there were moments of unhappiness in store for me.
She came over to the mound of earth beneath which her grandfather lay and placed stones in a little pile over his chest, which reminded me of the cairns that people build in rural Morocco, beside paths or in out-of-the-way places, to serve, perhaps, as memorials.
“Someone’s going to find him here, sooner or later,” she said when we were back in the car.
“I doubt it.”
We didn’t talk on the trip back to the apartment. I don’t know what she was thinking about. I was trying not to think at all.
Nevertheless, I ended up thinking about various things. I was afraid that with the old man gone everything would be different between us. I was afraid she’d distance herself from me. I thought about the possibility of traveling, fleeing. I thought: “I need money.”
The next few days were calm. On Tuesday, as usual, Severina got up very early and went out to avoid an encounter with Juana. I tried to read a book by Fernando Ortiz, a Cuban disciple of Lombroso, about witchcraft in Cuba, but I couldn’t concentrate. A number of times, I went to the windows and looked out to the southeast, where, on the far horizon, I could see the mountaintop where we had buried the enigmatic Señor Blanco.
Juana arrived at the usual time. She went into the kitchen, made some noise, and came into the living room to say hello.
“Did the old gentleman wake up?”
“Yes, thank God.”
“And the customer went too?”
“No. Don’t call her the customer, OK?”
She nodded and then, with a gesture, requested permission to vacuum the living room. I took refuge in my study.
Schnitzler was right, I said to myself: “A woman can leave you for lack of love, or excess of love, for this or that, for everything or nothing.” Severina didn’t take anything that wasn’t hers — not even the key to the apartment, which she left on the little shelf by the door — and this struck me as further proof of ingratitude. Nor did she leave a note, a word of explanation. One Wednesday afternoon when I was at the bookstore, she simply gathered her few belongings, which all fitted into a backpack, left the apartment, and didn’t return.
The fact that she didn’t have genuine proof of identity, the way her accent shifted, like her grandfather’s, the old guy’s strange ideas, their peculiar way of life, even her skill at outwitting alarm systems: all of this suggested that our love affair had been a trick, not a trick performed by two human beings in order to deceive a third, but a product of my own delirious imagination. Except that I wasn’t crazy. I had proof that both of them had existed: the list of stolen books, Ahmed’s testimony (unless he was in on the scheme), and Juana’s, and the hospital bills.
I spent the night waiting for the sun to come up so that I could do something. I called Ahmed. He had no news.
“But they haven’t left the country, my friend; I put them under a restriction order,” he said.
I called the Pensión Carlos. They hadn’t seen Severina. I drove around. I must have covered half the city. Predictably, every time I saw a woman, I thought for a moment it was her. I went to the airport, but this time I couldn’t go in. I came back home and, deep in the nightmare now, called the Missing Persons’ Bureau. A woman’s voice answered. She asked for my name and details. I hung up.
I tried to write — to get this crazy story off my chest. I didn’t last even fifteen minutes at the desk. When I went back out it was midday. Workers were lined up to buy bread in front of the bakery on the corner. The woman who was serving had long black hair like Severina. I stopped and stood there staring at her for a while. She smiled at me. I walked on. Without realizing what I was doing, I headed for the Pensión Carlos. I stopped for a moment in front of the door. I felt like crying. I walked on aimlessly. I came to the center of the city. My feet were aching. I went into a little cantina, ordered a quart of rum, and sat down to drink. It burned all the way down. I left a bill on the table and walked out. It was starting to get dark. I took a taxi home.
Around seven there was a knock on the door. I put my notebook and pen away in a desk drawer and went to see who it was. It was her!
“What happened? Where were you?” There was dust and grass on her clothes and her backpack.
“Can I come in?”
She left the backpack by the door, and we went and sat on the divan. It was the first time I had been angry with her.
“Where did you go? Look at you! What happened?”
“I went to see my grandfather. I lit a candle on his grave.”
“What? Couldn’t you have told me? You left your key. I thought you’d gone for good and I’d never see you again.”
“I told you, didn’t I? Life is shit.”
“Can’t you explain?”
She was looking at her hands, which were dirty, and glancing up at me from time to time. “I was confused, I am confused. I thought of leaving, yes. I tried. But I couldn’t.”
“Leaving? To go where?”
“Back to Uruguay; I’ve got a return ticket. But I couldn’t use it. I’m under a restriction order.”
Silently, I thanked Ahmed.
“Couldn’t you have said?”
“I hate goodbyes.”
“So?”
I thought she was going to cry; she tossed her hair back and looked at me steadily.
“I told you. I was confused. I don’t like the thought of being completely dependent on you. Can’t you understand that?”
“It’s not easy.”