And so from this point on the book becomes a tragedy, there’s no other option — and the rat is entirely to blame. The letter will arrive and the besotted poet will want to travel to Peru to ask for Georgina’s hand, and then what will the poor poets do, those boys with scanty mustaches who only a year ago were squatting on the ground, pissing pisco? And tragedy befalls the rat, too, which will never get the chance to gnaw at the envelope. The sailor on watch comes down to look for a piece of cargo and out of the corner of his eye spots movement in the mail sack; then comes the broom brandished in the air, the desperate chase, the shouting, stomping, curses, blows, the refuge that is not reached in time, the crack of the broom against the tiny body. Once, twice, three times. And, afterward, the ascension to the heavens: the rat is carried topside by its tail and, its eyes faltering as it dies, sees that other world whose existence it never suspected — the unknown deck of the ship and above it the blue sky in the middle of nowhere, halfway between La Coruña and Buenos Aires.
This has been life, it has time to think as it is tossed overboard, and this, it perhaps thinks as it sinks under the waves, this must be death.
III. A Tragedy
~ ~ ~
◊
After that first night, Carlos returns to the brothel every weekend. The girl is more surprised about this than anyone, as she had not expected to remain part of the novel.
Since the last chapter, she too seems to have undergone a number of changes. She is still a secondary character, it’s true, but now there is something subtly protagonistic about her. She even seems a bit more beautiful than before, and so it is a little less inexplicable that he wants to see her again. Perhaps her seemingly insignificant life deserves a few lines of attention — a whole page even.
But Carlos will never read any of the words relaying her humble tale. He will never see her attic room, the bed she shares with Mimí and Cayetana. He will not watch them sleep in one another’s arms or fight over the large bottle of perfume. Sometimes they laugh together, remembering a particular old man or a particular crooked cock, and he will never know anything of that laughter either. Hidden under the mattress there may be a photograph of a woman, clumsily patched and repaired, as if someone had torn it to shreds in rage and then remorsefully attempted to piece it back together. A single armoire for all of them, and in it this girl’s one street gown, which reeks of mothballs because it’s been so long since a customer has taken her out. Not even Carlos has. In front of the barred window, a chair to sit in, to gaze out at a world she barely remembers. And downstairs in Madame Lenotre’s room, there’s the account book that explains the need for the bars, noting that, in addition to the cost of food, laundry, and beauty products, not to mention the cost of two abortions and one molar extraction, the girl owes the house a total of three hundred forty-five soles.
One page. That’s more than enough for now. After all, her rickety bed and the book of debts and the pieced-together photograph and the bars on the window will never be important enough to appear in Georgina’s novel.
~ ~ ~
◊
He doesn’t even touch her. At least that’s what she says, and the girls are intrigued by the revelation. Customers with all manner of perverse predilections have passed through the brothel, but that particular deviancy — paying five soles a night in exchange for nothing — is unquestionably the most extravagant of all.
Whenever they see him sitting in the hall, shifting his hat restlessly from one hand to the other, the girls laugh. They call him Mr. Gob-Smacked. Your beau, Mr. Gob-Smacked, is here, they tell her, and she smiles or gets angry, depending on her mood. Mostly she gets angry. Anyone would say she’s beginning to have feelings for him. Or maybe what she’s really interested in are his generous tips. In any event, she sternly tells them to be quiet while she fixes her hair or adjusts her earrings, and then the girls laugh harder, and the madam scolds them — Shush, you ninnies, he’s going to hear you — in vain:
“Is he courting you to ask for your hand in marriage?”
“Has he introduced you to his parents?”
“Remember us when you’re a grand lady!”
As a customer he’s very easy to satisfy. There’s no need to check his thighs for syphilis sores or wash his cock in the sink. No need to fake panting or call him “master” or “stud” or shout out the ridiculous words that her customers find so arousing. All she has to do is lie beside him and talk if the gentleman wants to talk or simply be quiet if, as is sometimes the case, he prefers to spend the night smoking and staring at the ceiling. Sometimes he asks her about her life, and then she shrugs her shoulders and talks about her shared bed and the closed wardrobes, the endlessly increasing debts, the window bars. At other times it is Carlos who, taking the cigarette from his mouth, delivers some meaningless anecdote.
“I took an exam today.”
“I went to the docks yesterday. The dockworkers earn exactly the same amount that they did before, but now there’s not a single one protesting.”
“This morning I ran into Ventura and he asked me if I’d heard from José and I told him I hadn’t — it seems no one’s heard from him in weeks.”
Afterward he stubs out the cigarette, and as he does so, he lets the sentence trail off, as if he were erasing it. In some way these confessions seem to be linked to the act of smoking those cigarettes and then putting them out, grinding them fiercely against the metal ashtray.
One night he tells her he’s a poet. He looks at her solemnly when he says it, as if assessing the effect the news will produce. She doesn’t respond immediately. She doesn’t know much about poets except that they’re very poor men, practically beggars, who always end up dying of tuberculosis. And Carlos, who is always so hale and well dressed, doesn’t seem to be either of those things. A little thin, perhaps, though that probably doesn’t matter. So she smiles and even nods with feigned enthusiasm when he asks her if by chance she would like to hear one of his poems. Straightaway he pulls out a sheet of paper and reads for a long time in a voice that doesn’t sound like his. At first she interrupts him to ask the meaning of certain words. Then she doesn’t say anything. She lets gossamer and diadem and alabaster echo sterilely without opening her mouth. When he finishes, Carlos asks her if she liked it and she hastens to say she did, forcing a smile. And she adds: But you are getting quite thin, sir, you should eat a little more and get your strength up — they’ve just reported another tuberculosis epidemic around here.
Sometimes he doesn’t talk or look at the ceiling, and those are her favorite nights. The nights when he lies beside her and pretends to be thinking about trifling things but in reality is looking at her, only at her. It is a new look, one that seems to belong to that other world she can glimpse through the bars, and for a moment it makes her feel less like a whore. She senses that, in a way, he is not looking at her, not touching her — that what he seeks in her body is the shadow or memory of another woman. But still it’s flattering, and she wants the feeling to last. All night if possible.