"Don't be like that. It's good to talk about these things. It's therapeutic."
"That shit again. Your dad used to say the same thing. Why are you so arrogant? Does it run in the family? Look, if you guys go through life talking about everything and that works for you, fine, but tell me one little thing, why the fuck should it be the same for me?"
"No reason. Calm down."
"Why would what works for you guys work for me as well?"
"Calm down. No one's saying that."
Silence.
"You need to respect other people more, Gabriel."
"Respect other people."
"We're not all the same."
"We're very different."
Silence.
"Besides, I'm the therapist."
"Yes."
"Don't give me that shit."
"No."
Silence.
"Well, at least we're in agreement. Wait a second. Wait, wait, wait, wait. . OK. Right, what were you saying?"
"What happened?"
"I was rolling a joint."
"At this hour?"
"Yeah, right now. After what happened to my parents, this was the only way I could get to sleep."
"And you rolled it there, in bed, without dropping the phone? What a pair of hands you've got, it's true."
"I hold the phone with my shoulder, that's all. It's not that hard. Do you sleep well?"
"I suppose. I wake up early, though. Five in the morning and that's it, my brain wakes up in one second and keeps running all day. Or I get up to go to the bathroom. But everyone else can go back to sleep, I can't. While I'm pissing I think of my dad and then there's nothing for it. It'll last for a while, I guess, and then things'll go back to normal. Because things normalize, don't they?"
"Yes. Don't worry about that, Gabriel, things go back to normal. Here, have a puff of marijuana down the phone."
"I can smell it from here, I'm so jealous."
Silence.
"So, you're in your dad's apartment, eh? Sitting on your dad's bed. It's a little strange, to tell you the truth, you've got your strange side, you have."
"What are you wearing, Angelina?"
"Oh no, but not so strange after all."
"Are you under the covers?"
"No, I'm stark naked on top of the bedspread and I've got a red lamp shining on me. Of course I'm under the covers, it's fucking freezing in this fucking city. As usual. And you?"
"I'm taking my jeans off and getting under the covers, too. It is cold. I think I'm going to stay here, I've never slept in this bed."
"Aren't you scared?"
"Of what?"
"What do you think? That you'll get your feet pulled."
"Angelina, what a thing to say. And you, a woman of science believing in such superstitions."
"Science, my arse, I've had mine pulled. A friend from college died three years ago, of kidney failure, you know, one of those things they discover one day and three days later there's nothing to be done. And it was as if the poor thing hadn't had time to say good-bye to her friends. I was here, totally relaxed and sound asleep, and I swear she pulled them. Dead people like to say good-bye to me."
"Well, no one's ever said good-bye to me. And no one's ever come to pull my feet."
"But in a dead man's bed. It's impossible that it doesn't make a bit of an impression on you. I couldn't do it. You're very brave. What sheets are on the bed?"
"They're white with checks."
"I gave those sheets to your dad. He hadn't bought himself new sheets for ten years."
"I'm not surprised."
"Those are the last sheets Gabriel slept in."
"OK, don't get mystical on me. I'm going to stay here and my dad's not going to come to scare me, I swear he's got better things to do."
"Can I tell you something?"
"Tell me something."
"You're very good, Gabriel, a lot better than I was. You're going to get over this quickly."
"Don't be fooled. I act like I'm fine, but it's a defense mechanism. I'm an expert at that, everybody knows it. A poker face is a defense mechanism. Cynicism is a defense mechanism."
"And isn't it hard to keep pretending?"
"I play poker in my spare time."
"Sure, you make jokes about it, but I'm jealous. What I wouldn't give for a bit of a poker face. Can you learn that? Where do they teach it? No, I swear, it hit me really hard being alone, after the bomb, being on my own at night. Then your dad showed up and it was like he rescued me, I held on really tight to him. Maybe that was my mistake. And then to see that he left me, too. That he was also capable of hurting me. The truth is that hit me pretty hard. Who told me to build up my hopes? Who told me to be so naive? But it was really hard."
"I know. Enough to make you stab him in the back. And on television."
"You think what you like, my conscience is clear. I only know one thing, that Gabriel was someone else. In the end he wasn't the person we thought he was."
"Not him or anyone else, Angelina."
"Well, on television, I wasn't talking about him, I was talking about the other one."
"Sophist."
"What's that?"
"It's what you are. A shameless sophist."
"Is that an insult? Are you insulting me again?"
"More or less. But I don't feel like fighting."
Silence.
"Me neither. I've turned out the light now, I've got a nice buzz, I'm tucked up here as if everything were fine, as if the world were all peaceful, as if I didn't have problems, and I know I'm cold, but I don't feel it, or I feel it but it doesn't matter. . No, I don't want to fight either. . it's the first time I've felt good all day. Though I am cold."
"Well, put on something else. What are your pajamas like?"
"It's a long nightgown, long, down to my knees. Light blue cotton with dark blue edging on the sleeves, really pretty."
"That explains it. Don't you even have any socks on?"
"Yeah, socks as well."
"Have you finished smoking now?"
"A while ago."
"Good. Are you sleepy?"
"Not too sleepy, no, I'm a little tired. You?"
"I'm wide awake. I have to stay and wait for my dad."
"Don't even joke about that, Gabriel, don't say those things. Look, I've got goose bumps all over now." Silence. "On my arms and on my neck." Silence. "I really loved him."
"I did too, Angelina."
"Everybody loved him. People loved him."
"Yeah."
"I'm sure his German friend loved him."
"Sure."
"So why did he do that to him? Why didn't he ever tell anyone, not even you? Why did he tell me he was coming back if he was tired of me and didn't want to see me anymore? Why did he tell us so many lies?"
"Everyone tells lies, Angelina," I said. "The worst thing is that we don't notice. That's what should never happen. Liars should be infallible."
"I don't know about infallible, but I would rather not know. Carry on, like before. Wouldn't you?"
"I'm not sure," I heard myself say. "I have wondered about that, I have."
A few days later I paid Sara a surprise visit, I dragged her out for a walk down Fifth Avenue to Fourteenth Street, and we walked down as far as the place where they killed Gaitan. That had happened one afternoon-1948, April 9, one o'clock in the afternoon: the coordinates formed part of my life, and my life actually began more than a decade later-and twelve hours earlier my father had been listening to the dead man's last speech, the summing up in defense of Lieutenant Cortes: a man who had murdered out of jealousy, a uniformed Colombian Othello. Gaitan had been carried out of the courtroom on men's shoulders; my father, who had been waiting for this moment to approach him and try to congratulate him without his voice trembling, was repelled by the mob surrounding him. It was a whole year before my father dared to set foot again in the place where we now were; he would later return with some frequency, and each time would stop for a few seconds in silence before he went on his way. The pavement of Seventh Avenue is broken at that spot by the tram tracks (that don't go anywhere, that get lost under the pavement, because the trams, those trams with blue-tinted windows that my father told me about, haven't existed for years), and as I, standing in front of the Agustin Nieto building, read the black marble plaque that describes the assassination in more sentences than strictly necessary, Sara, thinking I wasn't looking, crouched down at the curb-I thought she was going to pick up a dropped coin-and with two fingers touched the rail as if she were taking the pulse of a dying dog. I kept pretending I hadn't seen her, so as not to interrupt her private ceremony, and after several minutes of being a hindrance in that river of people and putting up with insults and shoves, I asked her to show me exactly where the Granada Pharmacy had been in those years when a suicidal man could buy more than ninety sleeping pills there. A year and a half after Konrad Deresser's suicide, Gaitan's murderer had been taken by force inside the pharmacy to prevent the furious mob from lynching him, but he'd been dragged from the pharmacy by the furious mob, which had punched and kicked him to death and dragged his naked body to the presidential palace (there is a photograph that shows the body leaving a trail of shredded clothing behind like a snake shedding its skin: the photo isn't very good, and in it Juan Roa Sierra is barely a pale corpse, almost an ectoplasm, crossed by the black stain of his sex). There we were, standing where Josefina must have stood, facing the road along which, on that April 9, 1948, the ectoplasm of the assassin and the people who had taken it upon themselves to lynch him had gone. "No, I didn't know Enrique was alive," Sara was saying. "And see how things stand: if your dad wasn't dead, I wouldn't be able to believe it. I'd think it was one of that little woman's lies, a halfway intelligent fabrication to justify the grotesque action of selling herself for that interview. Actually, I'd prefer to be able to do what so many people do: convince myself. Convince myself that it's not true. Convince myself that it's all Angelina's invention. But I can't, and I can't for a reason: your dad is dead, and in some way he was killed for going to see him, for visiting Enrique. I bet you've thought of this: if Enrique weren't alive, Gabriel's death wouldn't mean anything." Of course it had already occurred to me; I didn't need to say it, because Sara already knew. (Since our conversations for the book I got used to not saying things that to Sara would be superfluous. Sara knew: that was her mark of identity.) She went on: "Of course you can get all philosophical, ask, for example, why should his death mean anything, does any death ever mean anything. We could be very nihilistic and very elegant. But none of that matters, because Enrique isn't alive for us. If he was, he would have called me by now, or he might even have come to the funeral, no? But none of that. Alive or dead, in Medellin or in seventh heaven, it's all the same, because Enrique wants to be dead to me, he's spent fifty years willing it so. And I'm not going to be the one to spoil that now. I'm not going to be the one who meddles in his life without being invited, and much less now that your father's dead."