~ ~ ~
“Profesor, don’t sleep in your chair.”
A neighbor who I know that I know but do not recognize wakes me up now. He is carrying an oil lamp with the flame low: the yellowish beam illuminates us, in gusts, thick with mosquitoes.
“They’re going to eat you alive,” he says.
“What time is it?”
“It’s late,” he says tortuously, “late for this town; who knows whether it is for the rest of the world.”
“It is,” I say.
He does not take the hint. He hangs the lantern on the door handle and crouches down, leaning against the wall, removes his hat, using it as a fan, and reveals his shaved, sweaty head, scar across his forehead, tiny ears, blisters on the back of his neck. I must know who he is, but I do not remember, is it possible? I distinguish, in the half-light, that he has a lazy eye.
“Let’s go in,” I say. “We’ll make some coffee in the kitchen.”
I do not know why I say it, when in reality I want to go to bed and sleep, at last, in spite of the world — free of worry about disappearances, let them not bother me, I want to sleep unconscious — why do I say it when, furthermore, this man, whoever he might be in my memory, causes me an inescapable annoyance and unease; is it the way he smells of petrol, his tone of voice, that twisted way of expressing things?
Once inside the kitchen, when he sees me light a candle, he puts out his lamp, “to economize”, he says, although we both know that candles are also scarce in this town. He kneels on the floor and starts playing with the Survivors. It is strange: the Survivors never let anyone except Otilia touch them, and now they are meowing, they coil happily around the man’s arms and legs. He is barefoot, his feet dirty with dust and cracked mud: if I did not doubt my own eyes, floating in the shadows, I would say dirty with blood.
“You are the first person ever to invite me in for coffee in this town,” he says, and, afterward, sitting where Otilia sat, “in years.”
While we wait for the coals to come back to life in the stove, for the water to boil, I feed the Survivors — rice soaked in rice soup.
“Profesor, do you cook?”
“Yes. Enough.”
“Enough?”
“Enough not to starve to death.”
“But your wife used to cook and you only ate, right?”
That is how it was, I think. I turn to look at the stranger: unrecognizable; why do I lose my memory when I need it most? We drink in silence, sitting around the stove. I am grateful for the tiredness I feel. Tonight I shall be able to sleep, I hope not to dream, simply not to dream; if I had slept outside, in the chair, my back would hurt the next day; I shall sleep in bed and convince myself for a few hours that I am sleeping with you, Otilia: what hope.
However, the familiar stranger does not take his leave.
He is still there, even though we both emptied our cups in three gulps, even though there is no more coffee in the pot, in spite of this, in spite of everything — I get impatient. I have been friendly to him; after all he kept me from sleeping the whole night in the chair: Otilia would not have liked me to wake up outside in the street with the whole town looking at me.
“Well,” I say, “I am going to have to say goodnight. I want to sleep, I hope once and for all.”
“Is it true, profesor?” he asks, not giving a fig for my words. “Is it true that Mauricio Rey pretended to be drunk so they wouldn’t kill him?”
“Who says that?” I answer, without managing to avoid the sort of rage I haven’t been able to defeat since they took Otilia. “Mauricio really did drink. I don’t think his bottles were full of water.”
“No, of course, surely not.”
“They smelled of pure alcohol.”
We are silent again; why does he ask me that? Since when did they not kill drunks around here? They are the first ones they do kill, and it must be easy, for they are defenceless: the sober are the majority, Mauricio Rey used to say. The candle goes out and I am not going to replace it. We are almost in the dark. I hear him sigh as he lights his lamp and stands up. By the yellow, earthy light, which makes the kitchen a sort of shadow of flames, I see the Survivors have left, Otilia is not in the kitchen either, Otilia is nowhere.
Only when the stranger has left do I remember: it is Hey, the empanada vendor; what is he doing here? I should have told him, in spite of everything, to stay in my house, because at this hour, in such darkness, even with his lantern in his hand, he could easily be confused with someone who has to be killed. Why did I say he was annoying? An unfortunate fellow, what fault is it of his if he rubs everyone the wrong way? I light a candle and go out of the door, in the hope of finding him — seeing him in the distance, calling him. The light of his lantern has disappeared.
I hear some moaning in the night, a little girl sobbing? Then silence, and then another cry, longer, almost a howl, very close to my house, by Geraldina’s gate, which sways and creaks. I go over there, protecting the candle flame with my hand: I need not have bothered, there is not the slightest breeze, and the heat seems worse outside. The candle melts quickly.
It is a girl, I discover, standing, leaning back against the railings, and, in front of her, rubbing her, a shadow that could be a soldier.
“What are you doing here, old man? What are you looking at?” says the soldier with a sigh, playing down the assault, and, since I stay where I am, still surprised at having found something so different from what I was imagining — I was thinking of groans of utmost agony — the light from the candle flares up, extending over us, and they stop, with the gesture of a single body blinded. In the light I make out the face of Cristina, Sultana’s daughter, observing me with a frightened smile over the soldier’s shoulder.
“What are you looking at?” the lad repeats as a threat. “Get lost.”
“Let him watch,” Cristina says all of a sudden, revealing much more of her sweaty face, studying me. “He likes to watch.”
I notice from her voice that she is drunk, or drugged.
“Cristina,” I say, “you’re welcome to stay here when ever you want. There is a bed.”