‘No, but this is how I’m fated to be… I wasn’t like this earlier, you know? I wasn’t like this at all…’
‘Who made you like this, then?’
‘My tutor, because my father is rich. After I got through the fourth year of secondary school, they found me a tutor to prepare me for the National School. He seemed a serious enough guy. He had a beard, a pointy blond beard and glasses. His eyes were blue, almost green. I’m telling you all this because…’
‘And?’
‘And I wasn’t like this before… but he made me like this… Then, when he left, I went to find him in his house. I was fourteen. He lived in an apartment in Juncal Street. He was a smart guy. He had a library as big as this room. He was a demon, but how he loved me! I went to his house, the houseboy showed me into his bedroom… He bought me all these silk clothes and knickknacks. I dressed as a woman.’
‘What was he called?’
‘Why do you want to know his name… He taught in two departments in the National School and hung himself…’
‘Hung himself?’
‘Yes, he hung himself in a café toilet… Oh, you’re so gullible!.. Ha, ha… don’t believe a word I say… It’s all lies… Isn’t it a lovely story?’
Annoyed, I said to him:
‘Come on, che, leave me alone; I’m going to sleep.’
‘Don’t be mean, listen up… you’re really moody… you’re not going to believe a word I’ve just said… I told you the truth… all is true… my tutor was called Próspero…’
‘And you’ve been like this ever since?’
‘What could I do?’
‘What do you mean, “What could I do?”… you could have gone to a doctor… some specialist in nervous diseases? Anyway, why are you so dirty?’
‘It’s the fashion, lots of guys like dirty clothes.’
‘You’re a degenerate.’
‘Yes, you’re right… I’m crazy… but what would you have me do? Look… sometimes I’m in my bedroom, it’s night, you have to believe me, it’s like a wave comes over me… I get the smell of rented rooms in my nostrils… I see the light is on and I can’t… It’s like the wind drags me out… I go to see the people who live in those rented rooms.’
‘The owners, why?’
‘All this searching is pretty sad; us girls have an arrangement with two or three of the guys who have rooms to rent and they give us a ring if some kid turns up who looks worthwhile.’
After a long pause, his voice became lower and more serious. You might have thought he was talking to himself, venting his troubles.
‘Why wasn’t I born a woman?… instead of being a degenerate… yes, a degenerate… I could have been the young mistress of my house, I’d have married a good man and looked after him… and I’d have loved him… instead… like this… bedhopping, shame… guys in white overcoats and patent leather shoes who recognise you for what you are and follow you… and steal everything you’ve got, down as far as your stockings. Oh! If only I could find someone who’d love me for ever, for ever.’
‘But you’re crazy! Can you really still dream about such things?’
‘What do you know about it! I’ve got a friend who’s been living with a guy who works at the Savings and Loan Bank for three years now… how he loves him…’
‘That’s obscene…’
‘What do you know? If I could, I’d give all my money to be a woman… a poor little woman… And I wouldn’t care about getting knocked up and cleaning his clothes, as long as he loved me… and went out to work for me…’
As I listened to him, I was astonished.
Who was this poor human being who could say such terrible and novel things? Who asked for nothing more than a little love?
I got up to stroke his forehead.
‘Don’t touch me!’ he cried out. ‘Don’t touch me. My heart is breaking. Go.’
Now I was in my bed, motionless, afraid of making any noise that would startle him to death.
Time passed slowly, and my conscience that was displaced by strangeness and fatigue gathered in this one space the silent pain of our species.
I still thought that I could hear his words… There was an anguished visage somehow inside his black and twisted face, and with his feverishly dry mouth he cried out into the darkness:
‘And I wouldn’t care about getting knocked up and cleaning his clothes, as long as he loved me and went out to work for me.’
To get ‘knocked up’! The words came so smoothly to his lips!
‘Get knocked up.’
His whole miserable body would become deformed, but ‘she’, made glorious by being loved so deeply, would walk among the crowd and not notice it, only seeing the face of the one to whom she had so happily subjugated herself.
The trials of being a human! How many sad words did we still keep hidden in our guts!
The noise of a door being violently slammed woke me up. I quickly turned the lamp on. The young man had disappeared, and there was no trace that anyone had even slept in his bed.
Laid out on the edge of the bedside table were two five-peso bills. I took them eagerly. My pale face was reflected in the mirror, the white threaded with red veins, and my hair hanging down over my forehead.
In a low voice, a woman was imploring someone in the corridor:
‘Hurry up, for the love of God… if they find out…’
An electric bell rang distinctly.
I opened the window that gave onto the patio. A gust of wet air made me shiver. It was still dark, but down in the patio two servants were busy at a lighted doorway.
I went out.
My enervation began to dissipate once I reached the street. I went into a milkbar and ordered a coffee. The tables were all filled with taxi drivers and newspaper vendors. The clock hanging over a childishly painted rustic scene struck five.
I suddenly remembered that everyone here had a home to go to, I saw my sister’s face in my mind’s eye, and I went in desperation out into the street.
The trials of life came flooding once again into my spirit, the images I did not wish to see or to remember. And with my teeth clenched I walked down the dark alleys, past streets where the shops were protected by metal shutters and wooden boards.
There was money behind these doors, the owners of these shops were peacefully asleep in their rich bedrooms, and I was wandering the city like a dog.
I was filled with hatred, I smoked a cigarette and maliciously threw the butt onto some human bundle that was hunched in a shop doorway; a small flame danced among the rags, suddenly the wretch sat up as shapeless as a shadow and I started running, threatened by his gigantic fist.
In a second-hand shop on the Paseo de Julio, I bought a revolver, loaded it with five bullets and then hopped on a tram and headed to the docks.
Attempting to realise my desire of going to Europe, I ran up the hanging gangways of the transatlantic liners and offered myself for any task at all to any officer I saw. I went through passageways, into little rooms crammed with luggage and with sextants hanging on the walls, I spoke to men in uniform, who turned round sharply when I spoke to them and who seemed scarcely to understand my query and who waved me away ill-humouredly.
Over the walkways I saw the sea touching the horizon and the sails of extremely distant boats.
I walked in a daze, dulled by the bustle, by the screech of the cranes, the whistles and the voices of the porters unloading large bundles.
I felt a long way from my home; so far that even were I to change my mind about what I had resolved to do I would never be able to go home.
Then I stopped to talk with the bargees, who laughed at my offers, sometimes coming out of smoky kitchens to answer me, their faces set in brutish expressions, so that I left without waiting for an answer, and I walked along the edge of the docks with my eyes fixed on the oily violet waters that licked the granite with a guttural noise. I was tired. The vision of the enormous slanting ships’ chimneys, the movement of the chains, the shouts of the dockworkers, the loneliness of the slender masts, the attention now divided between a face that appeared at a porthole and a heavy piece of piping suspended over my head by a winch, all that movement composed of a mashing-together of all the voices, whistles, blows and knocks — all of this revealed me to be so small when faced with life that I no longer dared to have any hope.