“Wake up!” I heard Don Chente say in a commanding voice. I opened my eyes and saw the same ceiling and then the serene face of the old man behind his tortoiseshell glasses. “Is it over?” I asked as I gained consciousness of where I was and the treatment I had undergone, surprised that the session had been so short, without a single memory of Don Chente asking me anything or of having spoken a word. “That was short, wasn’t it? How long was I asleep?” I asked as I got up to put on my loafers. Don Chente looked at his wristwatch and said impassively in his gentle, almost shy, voice: “Just about two hours.” Perhaps my bewilderment was greater because I had just emerged from a deep sleep, but when I looked at the time and saw that, indeed, I had been lying there for as long as Don Chente said, though I had no consciousness of anything that had taken place, if, that is, anything had taken place other than a deep sleep, which is what I immediately asked, now truly in the grips of anxiety; Don Chente answered that we had talked a lot, but that I shouldn’t worry if I didn’t remember anything now, that was normal, later I would remember what we had talked about — that was the process.
As I was still unable to grasp the notion that we had talked for a long time without a trace of the conversation remaining in my memory, the moment I entered his office again I told Don Chente that I had learned that same physical relaxation technique many years before in San Salvador when I attended several meetings of a so-called Gnostic organization, at its headquarters at 27 Calle Poniente, in Colonia Layco, to be precise. I told Don Chente this to find out if he had known those people who considered themselves esoteric, or if at least he had heard or read something about them. “It’s a very old and universal technique,” he said and then got quiet before starting to write in his notebook, undoubtedly noting down everything I had revealed to him and didn’t remember, which to be honest made me very uncomfortable and tense; I had the urge to grab his notebook and dash out of there, something I’d obviously never have dared to do. I asked if I had told him anything important, but Don Chente merely lifted his hand, as if requesting that I wait a moment, and he continued writing with his elegant fountain pen at a steady rhythm as my anxiety continued to increase, because nobody likes somebody else knowing more about one than one knows about oneself, which was exactly what was happening, though I had no choice but to wait until the old man had finished writing, put his fountain pen back into the pocket of his guayabera, and told me he’d see me next Wednesday at the same time to continue the treatment, that we had made a lot of progress but still needed a couple of sessions before he would be able to tell me anything about it. “You need a lot of patience and trust,” he said, standing up to accompany me to the elevator, while I swallowed all my questions, which were actually only one: what had I told him?
4
I THOUGHT ABOUT IT INCESSANTLY, I told myself that it was ridiculous, the events were too fresh, too recent, I wouldn’t be able to avoid opening my big trap while I was there, on that table, hypnotized and at the mercy of Don Chente’s questions, which is why I should call him the day before and tell him any lie whatsoever to get out of showing up at his apartment, that’s what I thought, but Tuesday night came and I still hadn’t summoned the courage to call him, as if I were paralyzed and without any willpower of my own, truly bewildered in the wake of the events that had swallowed up both my weekend and my sense of sanity; I had the impression that the fact that I’d been hypnotized was somehow connected to my outrageous behavior, as if the session with Don Chente, the contents of which I didn’t remember, had expanded the shadowy realms inside me, realms I hadn’t known even existed. That’s why, on Wednesday afternoon, my inertia unchecked and in a vulnerable and defenseless state of mind, I arrived punctually at Don Chente’s apartment, resigned to the possibility that I would tell him things that would be shameful for me to admit.
The thing is, going crazy happens in a matter of seconds, as I found out that Friday afternoon when I received a phone call from a stranger who didn’t utter a word, who only breathed into the mouthpiece for about twenty seconds at the most, long enough for me to suspect that it was that two-bit actor Eva had slept with, and I was about to tell him off, but he hung up before I could, all of which perturbed me even more, needless to say, because that call was proof that Eva was still seeing him, in spite of her protests to the contrary, and also because I suddenly saw myself as the odd man out, the ugly duckling — I didn’t even know Antolín’s last name much less his telephone number so I could call him back. By the time Eva returned home half an hour later, I had left behind my initial perturbation and was now in an extremely agitated state of mind, because time only makes bad get worse, as I realized on that occasion when I exploded, went berserk, shouted at her that my role in life wasn’t to take calls from an imbecile who didn’t even have the courage to speak to me, that she was an inveterate liar and had most likely just come from having her pussy pummeled by that two-bit actor, and if she got pregnant again she shouldn’t even think of telling me. To my surprise, however, instead of breaking down in tears or becoming hysterical, Eva told me in a consummately detached tone of voice that I should stop acting like a moron, she had not seen Antolín again, but he had taken it into his head to pursue her by telephone, at the office and at home, and she was as put out by it as I was, because that two-bit actor’s pursuit of her was affecting her at work; the guy seemed impervious to reason, determined to prove to her that he was suffering because he loved her and was desperate to see her alone, even if it was only one last time, that’s how truly screwed up the poor guy was. And it became evident that only the devil himself knows the pathways taken by our self-esteem: instead of feeling pity for the scorned Romeo, I was flooded with hatred and a yearning for vengeance, feelings that were in all respects irrational if what I supposedly wanted was to be rid of Eva, to let her live her own life without interfering in mine, in separate countries and with Evita as the only bond between us; but instead of listening to common sense, which was telling me that she had to clean up her own mess, I started spewing out death threats at the two-bit actor and demanding that Eva give me all and any information she had about my future victim, which she refused to do, obviously, seeing me in such a state of bestiality, she said, a refusal that managed to rile me up even more, until I stomped out of the house, shouting insults and slamming the door behind me. A few hours later I was at La Veiga drinking vodka tonics compulsively, like a fiend, and telling my old and trusted friend, Mr. Rabbit, about Eva’s betrayal and how that two-bit actor was pursuing her. “Let’s break the sonofabitch’s neck,” Mr. Rabbit said in a flat voice and without flinching, in that style so typical of him, and he said it as if he could read my thoughts, because the only thing I wanted to do was break that obnoxious Romeo’s neck, for even though I’d never killed anybody and lacked the necessary experience to carry out such an act, at that moment I felt elated at the prospect of killing the man who had cuckolded me, my elation increasing by leaps and bounds as Mr. Rabbit displayed so much indignation and willingness to be my accomplice in the execution of Eva’s ex-lover; and we aren’t talking here about any old accomplice but rather a man who, during his long tenure as a militant revolutionary, had liquidated a number of subjects, and who therefore knew how to pull the trigger without his hand shaking. I immediately gave him all the information I had on the subject and proposed a plan that we set in motion the following day, a plan Mr. Rabbit approved of with keen resolve. When I got home that night, I was transformed, as if I had discovered my mission in life, the one on which I would focus my best resources and all my energy, so I behaved shrewdly toward Eva, conciliatorily, as if the homicidal plans she had written off as mere bluster earlier that evening had been nothing more than that, bluster that wouldn’t be repeated, whereby I asked her calmly and with all the virtues of a compassionate man, whether she had persuaded her Romeo to stop harassing her, to which she responded sincerely that she hoped he would now stop calling though she couldn’t be one hundred percent sure of it; when we were in bed, I asked her — as if none of it had anything to do with me — if Antolín was at least a good actor, if she had seen the play he was in or had heard anything about it from others, this for the sole purpose of verifying information that would help me carry out my plan the following night. I spent that Saturday in a bizarre, almost jubilant, state of mind, like a naughty child about to get up to some mischief he’d always longed to do, that’s what I thought momentarily, even though I had never been a naughty child, and this was something more, something serious, an initiation, as if finally I was going to be capable of carrying out an act that would consolidate my masculinity on many different levels; as if by liquidating the person who had dared offend me in the gravest possible way, I would be fulfilling a manifest destiny that would give me access to a different level of consciousness and personal realization, because from then on I would have a more rigorous understanding of life, a better sense of justice, and I would never forget that everyone must pay what they owe. Mr. Rabbit called me at three in the afternoon, as we agreed, to confirm that we were going to go through with the operation. And at a few minutes before eight o’clock that night, we met in the lobby of the theater behind the National Auditorium but acted like total strangers, each buying his own ticket and entering the hall, where Mr. Rabbit sat a few rows in front of me — he had bought his ticket a few moments before me — which would allow him a better view of the subject, who was also within my field of vision, as I soon confirmed when the play,