“Did you run away? How come? Were you scared of getting married?”
“Something like that. But it’s all behind me now: water under the bridge.”
“Well said.”
Meanwhile, Adelita had been speaking in a shrill voice, very different from her usual whispering. She hung up and said:
“It’s all sorted. They’ll take care of it. I asked them not to wake him up. He’s so tired, the poor thing. .”
Jessica and Vanessa smiled, imagining the scrawny little guys from the shantytown carrying Maxi’s gigantic sleeping body. There’d have to be twenty of them at least.
“But will they be able do it in time? It’s been a while since that criminal left, you know.”
“Ma’am, they have all the time in the world.” She seemed very calm about it all, and to put them at ease she said, “Didn’t you notice how, earlier on, extra time was needed too, for Maxi to get to the shantytown when it started raining, and reunite me and Alfredo, and let the guys put him to bed, and then for the Pastor to get back to the esplanade?”
“That’s true. We got there by car in a few seconds.”
They relaxed. Now there really was nothing more to do. They looked idly at the television, which was showing a series of dim shots of the shantytown’s outer alleys. Alfredo sighed:
“It’s such a long time since I saw the old shantytown. .” Adelita took his hand and squeezed it. The others were imagining that as soon as the rain stopped, the young couple would go there and consummate their delayed marriage. But was it ever going to stop raining?
“I just thought of something,” said Jessica. “Shouldn’t we call home?”
“You’re right! My mom’ll be having kittens. Is there a public phone here?”
She was already turning around to ask the waiters when she remembered that there was a cell on the table. Both girls laughed at her distraction; Vanessa picked it up and called. Her mother answered. Vanessa said that she and Jessica had been caught by the rain and taken shelter in a pizzeria where they were waiting for it to stop. They were fine; there was no reason to be worried. Yes, they’d got a bit wet, but it was no big deal. She didn’t lie much, in the end, and given the circumstances a little white lying was justified. Her mother said something, and she pretended to remember Maxi (and actually remembered him), and said that her brother, whom she’d run into by chance just as it was starting to rain, had gone to a friend’s house and would probably spend the night there. She hung up with a sigh and passed the phone to Jessica, who called her mother and told her more or less the same story.
“Mothers. .” they said to the other two, with a resigned smile. “You know what they’re like.”
“You’re lucky to have them.”
“But you have each other,” said Jessica, “and you don’t have to talk on the phone because you’re together.”
“Everyone has a mother, whether they like it or not,” said Vanessa. “It’s a mother’s world. That’s the only conclusion we can come to, in the end.”
She looked at Jessica. Jessica looked at her, with a melancholy air. They were still living in a mother’s world. Speaking of “conclusions,” it was obvious that for Adelita and Alfredo, the adventure had come to an end, and it had ended well. They loved each other; they would get married and have children: they were home safe. But Vanessa and Jessica were still up in the air, faced with the never-ending choice between following the advice of their mothers and doing exactly the opposite. The only conclusion that this or any other adventure could have was to let it be a lesson. . or not. That was the sole and dubious privilege of the middle class: not to learn from experience, to go on making mistakes, covered unconditionally by maternal insurance.
XIII
Maxi was sleeping in a big folding bed that the shanty dwellers had constructed months before and stored in readiness for the time when it would come in useful. They had made it for him when they noticed how, as soon as night fell, he was overcome by sleepiness, rightly supposing that sooner or later he would end up staying a bit too late and be unable to go home. They might not have spoken to him but they had observed and studied him carefully, and so they were able to build a bed to measure. It was a sort of camp bed, made of coarse elastic fabric stretched over an aluminum frame, with four sets of hydraulic hinges. It had solid metal detachable feet, two feet high, arranged in three rows, one at either end and one in the middle. The shanty dwellers made a folding bed because it would have taken up too much space otherwise, and naturally they didn’t want anyone but Maxi to use it. Plus it was easier to hide. They had also set aside a pair of linen sheets, and a vicuña-wool blanket, dyed bright red. These were never used either, in spite of which they were periodically taken to the laundry and the dry-cleaner’s to keep them immaculate. They also carried out simulations every so often, to be sure that when the moment came they could unfold the bed and make it up in a few seconds. And there was always a shack empty somewhere to house it; they had a roster for every day of the year.
That night, when the Pastor came back from the esplanade with Maxi, who was wet and exhausted after having reunited the fiancés, the operation commenced immediately. They led him to the designated shack, and by the time he got there, stumbling along, seeing nothing, thunder crashing overhead, the bed was ready. He was fast asleep before his head touched the pillow.
The shack was an almost regular cube and the folding bed just fitted into it, pressing on the front and back walls. It was one of a million similar cubes, juxtaposed with or without gaps, sometimes crammed together in rows or bunches, haphazardly arranged in a vast collective improvisation. The amateur builders preferred simple forms, not for their aesthetic appeal or utility but precisely to simplify things. Simplification had a special meaning in the shantytown, as distinct from the rest of the city. In waking life, simple forms are very intellectual or abstract, but in the world of dreams they are simply practical or convenient. And this enormous ring belonged by right to the unconscious. The electricity cables, as numerous and chaotic as the buildings they connected, reinforced the shantytown’s allegiance to the world of dreams.
Cabezas was driving around the ring road: the metaphor of the moth and the flame could not have been more apt. With the windshield wipers overwhelmed and the headlights under water, he could barely see where he was going. But the huge illuminated diamond of the shantytown was on his left, so he couldn’t get lost. He had been around that circuit so many times, with the uneasy feeling that the mystery was just eluding his grasp, but all he had done was to make himself mysterious, without realizing! Now that he knew what he was looking for, he scrutinized each inward-leading street, checking the configurations of light bulbs suspended between the shacks. The bright patterns made him squint, even though he was seeing them through massive curtains of water. Everything was light in there, to the point where the light was reflecting itself.
Although his attention was narrowly focused, he couldn’t help noticing that the “designs” formed by the light globes were “inside” others, which always had more or less the same shape, something like a lung. The attribution of a particular shape to a group of lights was disputable: they had to be joined up by an imaginary line, and with half a dozen lights or more, the joining could be done in many different ways. . If the idea was to indicate a location, it was paradoxical or counterproductive, but by the very nature of the medium, it couldn’t be as simple as a sign saying HERE IT IS. Also, he had to remember that this was a part of the overall proxidine system.