I didn’t feel happy after my talks with Melchor, Ariel, Rubén and Nora (happy isn’t the word after Elena), but I did feel more in control of my grief. On all four occasions, I wept at some point in front of my enemies. And each time, with the exception of Melchor, they cried with me. As if to make up for it, Melchor was the first to reach out to me. A week after we met, he came by my office to invite me to lunch.
What is more harmful to us? If one isn’t prepared to love others, that mutilated love, that failure of our well-being, does it console or torment us? I couldn’t say exactly how long it was before I felt bad again, and I decided to have that get-together at my place.
It was painful, and at the same time oddly reassuring, to see for the first time Melchor, Ariel, Rubén and Nora, at whose hands I had suffered so much in the past, gathered at my house, smiling. At the same house where I had loved Elena, and had spoken ill of them in a confiding tone. In order to ease the rapport between my four guests, I made sure there was lively music and plenty to drink. They were all more or less punctual (Nora arrived last) and I casually introduced them to each other. Apart from Melchor and Ariel, of course, who knew each other from the university. Perhaps that was the first time they had met up in the evening.
After some initial awkwardness, I confess that the conversation became pleasant and, at times, jovial. As the hours went by, we even allowed ourselves to joke about our old quarrels. Melchor was droll, and unusually loquacious. To the point where I would even say that Ariel felt sick with jealousy and desperately sought my approval. Rubén maintained his guarded manner, though that didn’t stop him from being friendly and polite. Nora veered between pensive silence and fits of unbridled euphoria. During one of these, she made as though to kiss me. She corrected her own gesture without my having to recoil, and ended up planting her lips on my cheek.
In the early hours, slightly the worse for drink, I drew the attention of my four guests. I raised my arm and declared a toast to all those who truly know each other, that is, without innocence. Melchor, Ariel, Rubén and Nora seconded my toast amid applause. We continued opening bottles. Nora and Rubén started to dance, pressed against each other. It startled me to see them. Ariel sat down beside me and spoke in hushed tones about academic disputes. Melchor started browsing through my books and records. I smoked until I had a hole in my throat.
A little later, I don’t recall exactly at what time, I announced I was going down to buy cigarettes. Nora walked over to me, draped her arm round my neck and, putting on one of her sad little faces, asked me to bring her a packet as well. I said I would. I smiled. I looked at them all. Melchor, Ariel, Rubén, Nora. Then I left the house and locked the door.
A CIGARETTE
VÁZQUEZ CLEARED his throat, rolled up his right sleeve and slammed his knuckles into Rojo’s forehead. Rojo’s head disappeared for a moment, seemed to touch the back of the chair and bounced into place with an elastic shudder.
“Go easy,” Artigas warned.
“He’s a sonofabitch,” retorted Vázquez.
Artigas looked straight into Vázquez’s bulging eyes.
“Yeah, but go easy,” he said.
Vázquez gave a heavy sigh and examined his knuckles, which had begun to sting. He had forgotten to take off his wedding ring. Vázquez had just separated: he had been forced to teach his wife a lesson, and then leave her, the whore. He made to strike Rojo again, but Artigas intervened, gently raising his hands. Vázquez observed Rojo’s half-open bleeding lips. He whispered into his ear:
“Sonofabitch, I’m going to pull your teeth out one by one, you piece of shit.”
Contrary to what Artigas was starting to suspect, Rojo had heard that last remark as well as all the previous ones. He had noticed, as his face became disfigured by the punches, that his hearing had grown more acute. While the bridge of his nose, his throat, tongue and cheeks were becoming a shapeless pulp, Rojo heard with perfect clarity Vázquez’s raucous abuse and his hawking, the rushing sound of his own blood, the pounding of his veins, the electric buzz of the lamps trained on him, Artigas’s measured interventions, his own muffled groans, the endless alarm clock in the house which had gone off at seven o’clock sharp as it did every morning and had not alerted him to the danger. Behind the blinding haze of the lamps, he heard Vázquez’s voice:
“This piece of shit can’t hear a thing any more, Artigas.”
Rojo understood that Artigas responded in the affirmative and agreed they should finish things off, although he no longer recalled what it was they had to finish off, nor was he capable of connecting what they were saying to himself. He knew they were talking, talking about someone who had to talk and hadn’t talked, someone they had to beat up and find out, or find out and beat up, or something of the sort. What were they talking about? They were shouting so loud and he could only just see out of one eye. He tried to open it more, felt the pain of a seam being pulled off his eyelid and then the stab of real light, from the lamps, not his memory of the lamps. He saw Vázquez’s hulking back, and, above his shoulder, peeping out as from on top of a wall, Artigas’s perfectly shaven face, eyebrows and lips moving. Now the sound had gone out of everything. The room was like a television with the volume turned down. Closing his eyelid again, Rojo discovered Beatriz’s face offering comforting, healing words. For a moment his ribs no longer ached and he felt like smiling.
Suddenly Vázquez turned towards him. His shirt and tie were spattered with stains. What had Vázquez hurt himself with? Why was he shouting so much?
“Playing the tough guy, huh, Rojito?”
The sound had come back.
“Anyone would think you’re enjoying yourself, sonofabitch.” Rojo felt a grenade explode next to his mouth, somewhere soft. He tasted the bitter-sweet density of the blood and spat some of it out. Another grenade exploded on his chest: his throat became a spiralling corkscrew. The lamps dissolved and Rojo was on a very high swing, daydreaming, his face turned towards the sky, as if he were about to fall asleep. The sky was overcast and his mother was calling out to him. Then, for a split second, his mother had Beatriz’s naked form, her generous breasts. Then someone turned on the two lights and the ceiling came together again. Artigas was speaking to him very slowly:
“Listen, Rojo, we’re going to have to kill you.”
Vázquez was leaving the room.
“Believe me, I’m sorry,” Artigas added. “It goes with the job, you know that better than anyone.”
Rojo had a sudden flash of clarity. He opened his good eye, raised his head as much as he could and recognized Artigas’s sharp nose, his clear blue eyes, his perfect shave.
“Where’s Vázquez?” Rojo burbled.
Artigas grinned. He placed a hand on Rojo’s shoulder.
“Does it hurt a lot?” he asked; Rojo shook his head and Artigas grinned again. “You’re one of a kind, Rojo, one of a kind. You don’t miss a trick, do you? Vázquez went for a piss. That’s why I’m being honest with you, Rojo: it pains me to see you like this. I would have preferred to mow you down with the car when you left the house, but that idiot got it into his head we could worm something out of you if we were patient enough. Everyone has their breaking point, it’s just a question of finding it, Vázquez told me, he’ll have to spill the beans some time. And I replied: You don’t know Rojo, Vázquez, you don’t know him. And you can see, I was right.”