“Dumbass scum,” Félix exclaimed, made a contemptuous gesture once the patrol car had disappeared down Fresas Street, and then immediately let out a defiant shout: “What the fuuuuck, you motherfuckers!” while flinging his arms into the air as if in celebration, like a gladiator who has just claimed victory over his most ferocious opponent, just as I became aware that I was bathed in sweat, so much so that I had to take off my jacket because my shirt was soaked under my armpits. “Your own damn fault, you moron,” I managed to say to my friend in reproach, but he was no longer paying any attention to me, he was rushing forward, now with renewed energy, and rushing me, telling me how those women with their fine asses were probably about to arrive at the restaurant, if they hadn’t already, and rubbing his hands together with glee. The fact that I was feeling like I was coming apart at the seams because my moods had been swinging back and forth on a crazy pendulum would have been obvious to anyone who saw me walking behind my buddy Félix on my way to El Gran Bife, looking disheveled, my mind in even more of a tangle, until suddenly I recalled what the maid had said, that Don Chente had flown to El Salvador with his wife, which made it well-nigh impossible that they had taken him captive, she was a member of the oligarchy, and he was an old man and not a member of any party whatsoever; so, at the door to the restaurant, I told my friend that I had to call Muñecón again and dashed off to the phone booth on the corner, where I finally managed to get a hold of my uncle, whom I eagerly asked if my doctor had ever shown up. “Yeah, why?” he asked me, just as calmly as could be, as if he hadn’t been the one who had told me of his disappearance, and it wasn’t till that moment that I realized that my uncle was probably suffering from a worse hangover than mine, if he was not still intoxicated, but instead of asking for explanations or recriminating him for throwing me into a maelstrom, I felt enormous relief, as if in one fell swoop all the loose pieces inside me had fallen into place. I stood for a few seconds with the phone glued to my ear, not saying anything, contemplating Félix at the doorway of the restaurant pointing to the table where he would wait for me, while out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed, at the corner of Insurgentes and Félix Cuevas, the bank where I should have gone hours earlier.
11
AND THERE I WAS, sitting at the small bar, where I could see Gate 19, a can of Tecate beer in my hand, trying to control my nervousness, which was threatening to overwhelm me, because I was about to finally embark on my trip of return, in one hour at the most I would board the airplane that would carry me to a new phase in my life, to confront the challenge of reinventing myself under conditions of constant, daily danger, where I would be forced to remain lucid and would learn to have control over how I spent my energy, which I was looking forward to; to achieve this, I counted on meeting, at least once more, Don Chente, the doctor who would give me clues to myself, whose revelations would guide me toward a longed-for equilibrium. In the meantime, however, I was extremely thirsty, the past few days I’d been living at a million miles a minute, clearing away all kinds of obstacles, especially trying to calm down Eva, whose emotional instability continued to increase as the day of my departure approached; the night before, I had barely been able to sleep at all precisely because of how upset she was, because she reproached me again and again for abandoning them, for fleeing like a coward from my paternal responsibilities, for choosing to go run after some stupid danger rather than make an effort to repair our relationship. It didn’t do any good for me to reassure her that she would receive her monthly stipend for our daughter’s upkeep, that every three months I’d return to Mexico so as not to lose my residence permit, that at the slightest inkling of a threat from the army I would return without delay; it did no good for me to beg her to let me sleep a little, even once we were lying in bed with the lights off, she started up again with her tears and exclamations, until she woke up Evita, and the poor girl ended up climbing into our bed, something we had already gotten her out of the habit of doing, and even though at a certain point I thought about going downstairs to sleep on the sofa in the living room, I didn’t have the strength to do it, trapped as I was in that morose state of mind, a result of the guilt Eva had infected me with. And if that wasn’t enough, and in spite of my pleas to the contrary, she insisted on driving me to the airport in the morning with Evita, her heart set on acting out a melodramatic farewell à la Mexican soap opera, as if she didn’t know that I’ve always hated goodbyes, that tears and pseudo-sentimental smooching disgust me, that even at parties I try to leave without anybody noticing, I slip away at the slightest excuse, I really do, I’m so impatient I can’t tolerate people who spend hours and hours saying goodbye, as if they were at an eternal dinner party, which is why I insisted that we say goodbye at home and that I take a taxi to the airport; in addition, flying makes me anxious, which then affects my nervous system, and I become prey to uncontrollable irritability. But she didn’t listen to my arguments, and after I checked in, when the only thing I wanted to do was go through immigration and get to the gate, she suggested we go have something to drink, because I still had plenty of time, she said, and Evita seconded her, she also wanted a refreshment, the girl said, haltingly, and I had no choice but to accompany them to Bar Morado, where I drank my first beer of the day while Eva repeated her refrain from the night before, and I tried to disconnect, to listen to her without hearing as my mind sought refuge in the imminent future, repeating to myself that once I got to San Salvador, I’d make drastic changes in my life, like taking up exercise and abstaining from alcohol, even if at that moment I needed the beer I was drinking to calm me down, until she said something she had not yet said, and her tone of voice was harsh when she muttered it: that my obsession with returning to San Salvador now that the war was about to end was a way of hiding my cowardice, and by so doing I was trying to cover up the fact that during the war I had never had the courage to fight with the guerrillas, as my friends had done, and that instead I had spent my time boasting and drinking, and now that there was no longer any danger because the war was coming to an end and nobody cared about me, I wanted to return and pretend I was brave, make a big fanfare out of my courage, when in fact what I was perpetuating was a new form of cowardice by not accepting my responsibilities. I was so full of rage that I didn’t open my mouth, I just stared at her with the most abject hatred, repeating to myself that it wasn’t worth responding, that with that accusation she had shut all the doors, and any response from me would plunge us into a futile argument in front of the child. I drank down the rest of my beer, then went to pay and get the goodbyes over with, because as soon as possible I wanted to escape Eva’s new bout of tears, her mixture of resentment and scorn, and also the expression of alarm on Evita’s face, which I was kissing in an attempt to communicate to her a false sense of joy and serenity, as if nothing were going on, as if her mother’s tears weren’t what they seemed to be, then waving my hand and making loving faces at my daughter as I lined up to go through security, with a heaviness in my chest that did not leave me from that moment on, not while I was being screened, not when I waved goodbye one last time to the two Evas, not when I handed my passport over to the immigration officer, not even when I passed through the duty-free stores and checked out the price of vodka, unable to decide when faced with a tempting deal — a half gallon of Finlandia at bargain-basement prices — because one part of me refused to go past the duty-free shops without taking advantage of their bargains, while the other part of me, a pretty rickety one, why deny it, was telling me that if I really intended to start a new life, the least sensible thing for me to do would be to buy a half-gallon of vodka, which would only sink me deep into the same old rut. I resolved my dilemma in a flash of Solomonic wisdom after spending nearly ten minutes among the bottle-laden shelves: I would buy the half gallon, not for myself but as a gift for the friends I would be staying with that first week while I looked for an apartment.