My Tender Matador Page 3

  No woman had ever managed to stir up such a storm inside his head. Not one had ever been capable of making him lose his concentration with such antics, such lightness of touch. He couldn’t think of even one of the many girlfriends he had given his heart to who was capable of putting on such a show for him, without any audience other than the mountains looming ever higher in the growing shadows. Not a single one, he said to himself, watching her with lowered eyes as he began to feel rather confused. He tried to regain the normal pulse of his feelings. He attempted to return to the cold calculations of numbers and time equations necessary for him to finish drawing up his plans. Because the day was passing quickly and he would not have a second chance to finish or correct them. That’s why he begged her please, for at least half an hour, please stop looking at him like that, as if she were piercing him with a dark flame that burned through his virility and demanded his affection. Would she please turn off the music, that tape foretelling ill fortune, that music from an old brothel that bloodied the afternoon before its time? She could put that on later and as often as she wanted, but right now he urgently needed to finish his work. The light is fading, I still have to take a few pictures, and we only have until six.

  They hardly spoke the whole way home. She dozed off, leaning against the window, and he covered her with his black pullover. The truth is that she wasn’t really asleep, she had just closed her eyes to recover from so much joy and be able to return to reality without major trauma. It was too much for only one day—too many emotions exploding in her chest—and she preferred simply not to speak, not to say anything so as not to befuddle her happiness. She remained still, lulled by the purring of the motor, almost without breathing when she felt Carlos’s hands draping her with the warm wool of his sweater. In such a state of ecstasy she pretended to be Sleeping Beauty so she could inhale the erotic vertigo of his potent armpit, the perfume of the marathon and of locker rooms in the fragrant folds of his body that made her head spin, tempting her tarantula fingers to slide along the seat until they reached those tight thighs, the muscles tensed by the pressure on the gas pedal. But she restrained herself; she could not use for love the dirty tricks she employed on the street. She could not confuse or wrongly interpret the constant brushing, unintentional, of Carlos’s leg against her knee. This was not the same pornographic electricity as on a bus, where this grazing of knees was a harbinger of something else, a proposition to touch, to knead, to rub saurian parts along the toll-free road. That’s why she froze the scene by pulling her leg away in a modest gesture. And she curled up snugly against the window, allowing herself to be swaddled in the luminous exhaustion of the day.

  When they arrived, the neighborhood looked like a provincial town lit dimly by a few streetlamps that could have been salvaged from the garbage dump. The children ran along the street to get out of the way of the car, and the same gang of teenagers stood around on the corner, cloaked in an acrid cloud of marijuana smoke. In the torpid air of dusk, music playing on several radio stations overlapped: the hard rock of Led Zeppelin, the revolutionary arpeggios of Silvio Rodríguez, and the urgent blast of the news bulletin coming from the neighborhood store:

  Radio Cooperativa, the radio of the majority, Manola Robles reporting. In a recent communiqué, the Ministry of the Interior says that the security forces in several towns have confiscated high-caliber weapons and leaflets that call for a popular uprising. These belong to the so-called Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front.

  Finally, baby, we’re here. We’ve got to unload the stuff carefully because—Ssshhhhh! Carlos silenced her as he listened closely while keeping his hands on the steering wheel. She also listened but didn’t pay any attention. No news bulletin was going to overshadow her romantic good-bye moment. So she picked up her yellow hat and her bouquet of wildflowers, gathered together the leftovers from the picnic, went into the house, and climbed the stairs, expecting Carlos to come up after her to say good-bye. When she heard the loud screech of acceleration, she managed to turn around just in time to see the rear of the car as it turned the corner, racing quickly away as if, with such a speedy departure, he was escaping from their pastoral novel and its scent of mallow.

  Nothing is perfect, she told herself, as she closed the door and put the flowers in water, opening the faucet all the way so that the stream of water would dislodge the fluvial knot jammed in her throat. Nothing is ideal, she insisted, in order to feel the crystalline warmth of pain moistening her eyes, barely wetting the blue watercolors of the wilting flowers that awaited the bitter histrionic dewdrops of her tears. But she couldn’t cry, no matter how many sad songs and sentimental arpeggios she tried to remember; she could never drain the tormented ocean of her life. Those dried-up boleros with so many words about transitory loves, so many cheap heart-wrenching lyrics, a hemorrhage of love with bloody ink … evil love, who do you think you are? … I gave you all myself … you wanted me to foreswear my love… you will stay and I will go … you said perhaps … I got used to you and now I wonder. Love in installments, in crumpled comic books, lost loves, dragged through the plaintive guaracha of the lonely maricón, the maricón starved for the “phantom kiss”; the maricón drugged by the imaginary touch of a hand, a kite brushing against the filthy sky of his flesh; the maricón, an eternal captive in the cage of his own prissy leprosy; the fru-fru maricón, trapped within his melancholic web of swindles and deceptions; the floozy maricón, sewing a backstitch into the warp of his own weave. So lonely, so trapped within his own cocoon that he can’t even cry without a spectator to appreciate the effort it takes to shed a tear onstage.

  It’s like throwing pearls to swine, she concluded, as she shook the water off the flowers, spraying shards of glass into the air transformed into a carnival by her transvestite gesture. Carlos doesn’t deserve a single tear, not a drop, no way was she going to waste the exquisite gem of her suffering on someone so ungrateful, so enigmatic. The way he just took off like that, without even saying ciao. Picking her up and dropping her as if she were a thing, one more box for the décor. And always telling her I’ll explain later, you wouldn’t understand, we’ll talk tomorrow. Did he think she was a fool as well as a queen, a mere warehouse for storing boxes and mysterious packages? Did that little shithead really think she didn’t know what was going on? All those meetings of bearded men in her house. Did they have that much to study? Imagine that!

  Really! If she did play the fool, it was only for his sake. If she put up with all those lies about boxes of books, it was to do a favor for her pretty boy. But she wasn’t going to put up with being humiliated. Who did that son of a bitch think he was to treat her like that? Just because he was a university student, and handsome, and young, and had those eyes that … only for his sake did she act like a señorita, because he intimidated her with those sweet eyes, he cowed her with his gentlemanly manners. If it wasn’t for that, if she didn’t love him so much, she’d show how brash she could be and send the lot of them to hell. She wasn’t worried about being alone again; there’d always be some bum who would pack her fudge in exchange for a plate of food. There would always be young men who would play the nice guy and carry her bag at the market, and later, once the door was closed, once they were inside the house, she wouldn’t have to say or do anything because they would start with the You live alone, I’m horny, let’s have some fun. There were always those men on the streets past curfew, drunk or stoned, who stayed out late and couldn’t make it home, and—well, anything’s better than getting arrested. There were more than enough unemployed men who, for a few pesos, for a cigarette, for a warm bed, would do her the favor without further ado. And she never had to go through such a song and dance to make them love her for just a little while. She didn’t have to bend over backward trying to be so ladylike, tossing heartfelt glances in Carlos’s direction so that every once in a while he would give her a friendly hug, making her so hot she would feel guilty for desiring so intensely that forbidden body. Everything would be so much easier if she d
idn’t have to put up with his bewitching presence. She would go back to cruising the streets, picking up the prick of the moment, fishing for erections with her miraculous spear. And she would let love, sheathed in that cursed word, spoil along with the rest of the picnic, along with the chicken bones that would rot on that hill in the Cajón del Maipo. Where she would never return, where she would never again dance like a ridiculous old lady for that ungrateful wretch.

  The knocks on the door echoed in her afflicted heart.

  You leave because I want

  You out of here.

  And when again I want

  You will return.

  Without my tenderness

  You cannot live.

  I am, and will remain, your master.

  As she rushed down the stairs trying to straighten out her few remaining clumps of hair, she knew she wouldn’t say anything to him; she wouldn’t even bring it up. Anyway, Carlos was so careless she could forgive him for anything, as long as she could see him appear once again in the doorway, like the sun rushing out from behind the clouds, to offer explanations. He would ask her not to get angry over such a minor thing. Something unexpected had come up, it was late and he had to return the car, she shouldn’t be so sentimental, so sensitive; she should look at him, enough already, let’s see a smile. The young man as beautiful as an emerald was asking her for a smile. How about a cigarette? he asked with his strawberry mouth, conquering her again with those puppy-dog eyes. What, did you think I was angry? But we had such a good time. Did you enjoy it? Anyway, the next time I go away, it might be forever. Carlos lowered his voice and looked at the mysterious boxes, and a curtain of emptiness unfurled over the moment. Then something pounded its way into her sissy-boy soul. Something Carlos was telling her contained a shard of truth. A fear, a foreboding, something intangible that darkened his pretty-boy smile. When will it be? The question caught Carlos off guard. What, when will what be? Your birthday. Carlos relaxed, and a smile of complicity spread over his face. Not yet. What are you going to give me? An arrow. And the bow? I will be your bow.

  The motorcade was on its way back after a long weekend during which the Dictator and his wife had aired themselves out in the mountain oasis of Cajón del Maipo. Just as he predicted, she had not stopped chirping from morning till night, when she would finally surrender to a heavy sleep, wearing the eye mask she got on the airplane to South Africa. But a few hours later, just as he was about to close his eyes, her irritating chatter started up again, as if she were talking in her sleep. She had been dreaming that they were traveling in an airplane, on their way back from that disastrous trip to South Africa. You see? I told you, I warned you thousands of times, you should have made absolutely sure those rude peasants were going to welcome you. But no, you and your this and you and your that and the president is a friend of yours. You were so sure they were going to welcome us like kings because they supported your government, because they were one of the only countries in the world that admired you for defeating Marxism. And what do you know, that’s what I get for listening to you, such embarrassment, such shame, so humiliating, my God, to arrive there and have to turn right around without even getting off the plane! Never in my life have I felt so wretched, so humiliated, and by those filthy Negroes, and it was all your fault for being such a stubborn old pig. Gonza warned me, he told me so many times that I shouldn’t go. The heat there is terrible, he said, and it’s so humid and there are so many resentful Negroes and so many uprisings. Better just to stay put. And Gonza threw me the I Ching and there it was. Didn’t I tell you? Do not cross the great water, remain still, that’s what that wise book said. But you, you never listen to me, you’re so skeptical, never trusting Gonza, who is such a good boy. Such a dear, he even lent me his pure silk caftan and packed my suitcases with light clothes and safari hats and insect repellents, so the mosquitoes won’t bite you. They tear you to pieces in those jungles, he warned me. And he gave me dozens of pairs of gloves so I could stretch out my hand like Queen Elizabeth, because there’s so much mange there and those black people always have sweaty palms. And have many pictures taken of you in white, all in white, he said. Like Marlene Dietrich in that movie. Do you remember? That one where she gets lost in the jungle with a young diamond hunter. In addition, he told me everything I need to know to be able to identify genuine precious stones, so they wouldn’t cheat me, because there are so many imitations, Señora, so many that glitter but are just glass. Buy yourself a necklace or, better yet, a tiara you can wear when you greet the pope when he comes to Chile, and you’ll look just like Princess Grace of Monaco. And for you, he recommended a very discreet tie clip and cuff links with tiny little diamonds you could wear with a black shirt. Because you’re not going to wear that uniform to the opera, I hope. Even though you are so obstinate, so pigheaded. You’re so unbearable when you get something into your head; you always end up doing what you want. You see, you see what you pulled off, the whole world knowing that we were turned away like that? I can only imagine what that Radio Cooperativa will say, how they’ll get a kick out of telling our sad tale. Because if they had at least let us into the airport, if they’d even said they were sorry, maybe just one night in Cape Town so I could wear that Persian tunic and pretend to be a tourist, go out and buy a little souvenir, something small, a pair of elephant tusks for the living room, a tiger skin for you to warm your feet on in your office while you memorize the speeches your secretaries write for you, in that cold room full of metal and swords and pistols and military knickknacks you take care of as if they were flowers. If at least they had sent a few presents with their aide-de-camp, that dirty African. And you, sending them arms, giving them support with your ideas about how to fight those black troublemakers. You are so foolish to sponsor cultural exchanges with them; all we get is trash from South Africa. If at least they had musicians like Gloria Simonetti, Antonio Zabaleta, Gonzalo Cienfuegos, some band like our wonderful Huasos Quincheros, then I could see the point. The only thing they have are diamonds, which don’t even do them any good because they don’t wear them. Can you imagine some native wearing Cartier earrings out there on one of those godforsaken savannahs? Because to tell the truth, that country is pretty damn ugly from the little I could see from the airplane. Just mud, dirt, and mist, just insects and animals and little black children with their bellies all swollen from starvation. Even so, we would have tolerated that poverty with dignity, because we Chileans have good manners, and we would never insult an illustrious guest. But to leave us like that in the lurch, standing there like idiots on that airplane? Sweating like pigs, suffocating from the heat, and they couldn’t even offer us something to drink, not even a glass of water? And I was fainting I was so thirsty, feverish like a camel. And you, all you could say was, Be patient, woman, we have to wait for the authorities to arrive so they can welcome us; there must have been some mix-up with protocol or they are getting the presidential suite ready. Calm down, don’t get hysterical, the limousine is on its way, they must still be putting flags up along the streets because we got here earlier than we said and we didn’t give them much warning. You know how these primitive countries are. Ask the stewardess for a drink, calm down, and try to understand. A drink? You know how fattening that is. For you everything can get fixed with a drink and your famous try to understand. You see, there was nothing to understand. You say that to make me look like the idiot, when I’m the one who ends up always being right. Gonzalo knew; why didn’t you listen to him? Can you imagine, two days stuck on that airplane with that infernal noise in my head? It seemed like we were going to spend our lives flying around without anybody letting us land. I felt like those filthy Marxists you sent into exile after September 11, who wandered around the world and nobody would offer them asylum. Because nobody likes you now, it’s not just the Communists anymore, like you used to tell me. Now it’s even your friends. I bet if Franco were alive he wouldn’t welcome us either. And let’s not even talk about that Somoza, your old pal Somoza, such
a good friend of your government. You see how he got himself blown up? Blasted into the air, just like what will happen to us.

  Luckily her battery ran out right then; fortunately she became silent, her hateful speech transformed into a grumpy snore. He preferred the insomnia caused by those thunderous bellows to a continuation of her rosary of ill fortune. That’s why now, in the limousine, he tried to avoid making any noise at all so as not to awaken her, so that she would continue to snore, buried under her hat, as the quiet motorcade made its way back to the city with the sirens turned off.