My Tender Matador Page 5

  The bus limped along through a withered Santiago, forever renewing its load of human cargo as passengers constantly got on and off. There was still so far to go before they reached the Barrio Alto, a full hour to cross the city. As downtown approached, the landscape changed. The sidewalks in front of many stores were decorated with placards selling thousands of imported trinkets, a carnival of stuffed monkeys and plastic utensils that had put precarious national industries out of business. So many things for sale, so much of everything out on exhibit and creating a collective hypnosis, because very few people actually bought anything—you could count on one hand the people who came out of the stores carrying packages that weighed twice what they should have because of the burden of debt that had just been incurred. Everyone else just looked, window-shopping with their hands in their pockets, fingering their coins for bus fare. But September was here and, in spite of everything, flags and other patriotic symbols hung in shop windows, decking out the urban landscape in a tricolor uniform. At some point she dozed off, lulled by the afternoon buzz. She had no idea how much time had passed when she was suddenly jolted awake by the violent braking of the bus, and there they were, approaching those green velvet promenades, clean wide streets where mansions and high buildings told the story of a different country. There weren’t many people on these deserted streets, just a few nannies taking their young charges out for a walk, a gardener pruning vines that hung from the balconies, maybe some old ladies with blue hair sipping cold drinks in a spectacularly manicured garden. Squinting, the Queen of the Corner read the names on the street signs as they sped by: Los Lirios, Las Amapolas, Los Crisantemos, Las Violetas. So many flowers. I’m getting off at Las Petunias, she said to the driver, who gave her a sarcastic look as he slammed on the brakes. A high gate blocked the street, and to one side a soldier wearing a camouflage uniform stood in a guard hut and pointed a machine gun at her. Hey, mister, where are you going? he shouted, looking at the package the Queen held tightly in her hands. I’ve come to deliver this to Señora Catita, who lives in that first house. She’s General Ortúzar’s wife and she’s expecting me. You can call her and ask. Wait here, the soldier said, as he turned back into the hut to make the phone call. When he returned, the expression on his face was more congenial. Go ahead, sir, you may pass, he said as he opened the iron gate. Very kind of you, young man, she intoned, as she noticed the dark, powerful hands that gripped the weapon. This soldier isn’t all bad, she thought, and judging by the length of those fingers he must have a birdie that hurts just to think about it.

  After she rang the doorbell of the enormous mansion, a voice shouted, “Come in, it’s open.” It was Doña Catita’s kind, chubby maid calling from the garden, inviting her to come in through the kitchen door. The señora is busy with some friends, but she says you should come in and wait for her. Would you like a cup of tea or something cold to drink? No, please don’t bother, I’ll just wait for her here, she answered, as the woman smiled and left her alone in the enormous kitchen with its shiny yellow tiles, its shelves of sparkling blue glasses and shimmering porcelain. How she would love to have a kitchen like this, so fresh and clean, with those little starched curtains stirring gently in the breeze, like in a hospital room. Because the truth of the matter is that with so many tiles and that whole row of silver knives hanging from the wall, this place looks like some kind of fancy doctor’s office, she thought, as she wandered around the spacious room, which didn’t smell like food at all. It must be because the rich eat like birds, just a few finger foods, whore d’oeuvres, a pat of diet margarine on a crust of synthetic bread. That was all they had ever offered her in this mansion dripping with money. Right here in this kitchen, every time she delivered something, after traveling for an hour on the bus, starving to death, the only thing they ever gave her was weak tea and a few crumbs of bread served with a whole tray of silverware and saccharine. That was it. Maybe these people never even used the dining room. Because they must have a dining room in such a huge house, she told herself, as she pushed open the door and got a blast of a dank musty smell, like in a museum. Through the room’s semidarkness, the black ebony of an enormous dining-room table shone like a lake at midnight. She felt along the wall for the light switch, found it, switched it on, and was momentarily dazzled by the flash that lit up the crystal chandelier. Heavy garnet-colored curtains hung over the picture windows, and two rows of chairs upholstered in dark brown velvet set the stage for a repast for ghostly diners. Ugh, how dreary! It looks like Dracula’s table! And it looks longer than the measurements Señora Catita gave me to make the tablecloth. I’ll just have to try it, I guess. Anyway, this sinister coffin will look more cheerful covered with champagne-colored linen. She very carefully pulled the tablecloth out of the plastic bag and shook it so that it billowed out like a sail over the shining table. A golden splendor illuminated the room as the Queen smoothed out the folds and straightened the edges embroidered with gardens full of angels and little birds that played and tumbled in the weave. Well, what do you know, it fits just right, as if it were custom-made, she mused, as she backed into a corner to admire her work. And there she stood, enthralled, as she imagined the banquet that was going to be held around this altar on September 11. She employed her flowery imagination to set the silverware at each general’s place, with the red cups on the right and the blue ones on the left. No, better the other way around, with the clear crystal in the middle, because there will be many toasts with champagne, white wine, and red wine to drink with the meat, because men like rare meat, almost raw, so that when they plunge in their knives the flesh opens up like a wound. She could see it so clearly, hear the men’s laughter as they sat around the table in their uniforms adorned with golden medals and military decorations. At first she sees them as solemn and ceremonious, while they listen to the speeches before the meal. Then, after the first, second, and third toasts, she imagines them relaxing, undoing the top buttons of their uniforms, slapping each other on the back, with a toast to the nation, a toast to the war, a toast to September 11 because they had killed so many Marxists. So many young people like her innocent Carlos, who was probably just a child when the military coup happened. From the depths of her fantasies of a faggot in love, she watched the chin-chin of the crystal turn into the shattering of broken glass and bloody liquor that ran down the sleeves of the happy generals. Red wine splashed on the table, seeped into the cloth, spread out into huge blots where her little birds drowned, where her sweet cherubim, like insects made of muddied thread, flapped their wings in vain in the thick flood. From afar trumpets played a military hymn that proudly kept beat with the laughter of the drooling generals biting into their juicy meats, savagely chewing on the greasy ribs, blood splattered on their teeth and staining their well-trimmed mustaches. They were euphoric, drunk, not only on alcohol but also on pride, an arrogant pride they vomited out in their hateful words, in the rude flatulence they let rip as they loosened their belts so they could devour the scraps, gorge themselves, suck on bare bones and fresh viscera, smearing on their makeup like some kind of ghastly clowns. The juice of the cadavers painted their lips, covering their bastard smiles with bloody lipstick they wiped on the tablecloth. Her sentimental sissy eyes watched as they turned her virginal tablecloth embroidered with so much love into a mayhem of murder and drool. Her seamstress sissy eyes saw the off-white linen turned into a violet-colored crime sheet, the drenched shroud of a nation where her angels and birds were drowning. The cavernous gong of a grandfather clock brought her to her senses, and she felt a powerful wave of nausea rising from the mouth of her stomach and the intense desire to escape, to snatch up the tablecloth, fold it quickly, and race out through the kitchen and into the garden until she got to the outside gate. Only then could she breathe—or, rather, gulp down a breath of air—to get the strength to reach the gate, where the soldier on duty asked her in a friendly way, What’s the matter, sir? Are you sick? You look pale. And she, without looking at him, answered, Don’t worry, it happ
ens at my age, I’m not a young man anymore. And she limped away, waiting anxiously to turn the corner to get away from the soldier’s impertinent eyes.

  Only after a few blocks was she able to ask herself why she had done that. Why had she had that fainting fit that would probably make her lose her best client? Señora Catita was going to be furious that she didn’t bring her the tablecloth. Bah! Old bitch! What does she think, that I’m going to wait all afternoon while she entertains her military girlfriends? Does she think I’m her slave? And all because she’s rich and the wife of a general! I also have my dignity, and like Carlos says, all human beings are equal and we all deserve respect. Clutching the tablecloth tightly under her arm, the Queen felt for the second time that day a wave of dignity that made her lift her head and see everything at the same height as her batlike eyes.

  And this is why

  You saw me so calmly,

  Walking serenely

  Under the more than blue sky.

  Already half the afternoon was gone and she hadn’t done anything she’d planned to do. Perhaps one day she would need that woman’s business. She shouldn’t have let herself be carried away by the whim of the moment. Oh, well, what’s done is done. The sun appeared from behind the clouds, dispelling fears of a downpour, and the city fell under the spell of that cuprous glow that drags winter’s withered remains along the pavement. She thought maybe she should take the first bus that came by and get home quickly, but it was still early and it had been so long since she had let herself be carried along on the uncertain wave of an impulse. For so many days her obsession with that doll named Carlos had kept her shut up in the house awaiting his unexpected visits. Thinking about him, imagining him so much a part of herself, the streetwalking twinkle-toed queen had lost all interest in the streets. She simply wasn’t as compelled as she used to be to catch the first rays of dawn while she searched for a man in the doorways of the night. Love had turned her into Penelope, the homemaker. Not completely, she reminded herself, squinting at the signs on the buses that skidded over the asphalt: Apoquindo, Providencia, Alameda, Recoleta—ah, that’s where I’ll go, she suddenly decided, remembering the girlies of Recoleta, her trannie sisters whom she had abandoned and hadn’t heard from for weeks. The city, buzzing through the window, seemed to get warmer as the bus descended from the Barrio Alto like a wagon loaded with human freight, tumbling through a labyrinth of avenues. Back again to the Alameda, with its gray buildings shrouded in smog, back downtown with its anthills of swarming humans, back to the banks of the Mapocho River, the market with its fried fish perfume, its fruit vendors in shirt-sleeves carrying their bundles in this laid-back translucent vitality. After all was said and done, it was her Santiago, her city, her people struggling between the abuses of the surviving dictatorship and the tricolor streamers floating in the September air.

  How does this Nina Ricci chapo look on me, Augusto? Gonzalo sent it to me from the Canary Islands. You see what a dear boy he is? Just imagine, with everything he’s had to do for that fashion designers’ conference, and still he remembered me. Because I asked him to send me a golden yellow one like they are all wearing there. I told him: Gonza, if you see a wide-brimmed hat like the one Princess Margaret was wearing in that picture in the magazine, send it to me, whatever the price, Augusto will pay you when you get back to Chile. And you see? He didn’t forget. He is such a good person! And don’t you go giving me that miserly look, imagining that it cost a fortune. It was only five hundred dollars, a steal, cheap compared with the fortune you spend on those rusty pieces of scrap metal in your arms collection. And I don’t say a word, I’ve never told you how that junk dirties my wallpaper. I never reproached you for that pistol of Hitler’s you wanted to buy in Madrid when we went there for Franco’s funeral. Just imagine paying thirty thousand dollars for a trinket like that. And to top it off, you weren’t even sure it was authentic. If I hadn’t pinched your arm, if I hadn’t realized that those counterfeiters had a basketful of pistols under the table, you would have made yourself the laughingstock of those Spanish crooks. I think they saw your Chilean face, and they recognized you from the pictures in the newspapers. Because honestly I have never seen so many photographers and so many true aristocrats as at General Franco’s funeral. Never, Augusto. We’ve never had the opportunity to associate with royalty. Because you can’t tell me that your general friends from the Club Militar are true aristocrats, not to mention their wives, who dress like maids on their day off. With those two-piece suits they buy on sale at Falabella department store or those ugly flowered robes that look like a costume out of that operetta The Flower Pergola. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed how they dress, how they look at me, how they greet me so respectfully and touch the fabric of my dresses and say, How elegant you are, Señora Lucy, how wonderful you look in that exquisite silk fabric. And all the time I just know they’re eating their hearts out with envy. Now don’t you look at me like that, like I’m some kind of gossipy old hag. There must have been some reason you married me, wasn’t there? Because when I was a little girl my mother taught me how to act like a lady and all the secrets of dressing well. At that moment the telephone rang in the next room and the First Lady, still cackling, left the bedroom to answer it. The Dictator was wearing dark glasses and lying on the bed in a daze, like a lethargic elephant, listening to his wife’s irritating verbosity. He watched her as she walked away, clicking her yellow high heels, and he remembered her when she was a seventeen-year-old student living a simple life in a small provincial town. She was a different person, a modest girl who had just graduated from a Catholic school and was attending her first party at the Club Militar. She looked so pretty in her lace dress full of flowers. She was sitting in the corner like a shy country girl when he asked her to dance. And she looked up at him with her birdlike face and said, But this music isn’t for dancing, Sergeant. It would be an insult to the armed forces to dance to a military march. Let’s talk about it, he said, as he sat down next to her. And that’s how it all began, that’s how they met, fell in love, and got married with the promise of having lots of children and living happily ever after. Putting up with her ever after was more like it, stoically tolerating her broken record of endless chatter that continued now, for a change, in the other room, as she talked into the telephone, then stopped, then continued talking as she entered the bedroom. It was Cata, General Ortúzar’s wife, inviting us to have dinner there on September 11. I told her I wasn’t sure, that I would confirm later because we have so many commitments that day. That Catita Ortúzar is fabulous, so refined; she told me she had ordered a tablecloth to be custom embroidered just for the occasion, but she was so depressed because she was having some problem with it and it wasn’t going to be ready for the eleventh after all. I told her we would do everything possible to be there, but if something came up and we couldn’t make it, please to offer my apologies to all the generals’ wives, all of whom are real ladies. Don’t you think so, Augusto? But the Dictator didn’t answer. Behind his dark sunglasses, he was in a deep sleep, dreaming about a huge funeral procession. Decked out in his full dress uniform, with the presidential sash strapped across his chest, he walked slowly behind the hearse, bells jingling on the four horses that pulled it. Two thousand drums played slow drumrolls to the pace of the march. All along the empty streets, which had been ordered evacuated in a drastic measure, hung large black crêpe bands fluttering languidly in the breeze. At every street corner, battalions in L formation shot salvos into the air as he passed. And falling through the thick gray smoke of the gunpowder, a spray of gray irises softened the metallic density of the funeral cortege. This was the only color allowed in the instructions he had left in his last will and testament. Because this was his funeral. Now that he thought about it, he realized that he was alone, the only protagonist in the entire ritual, completely stranded and abandoned as he marched through the deserted boulevards surrounded by his spoils of war. And he wanted to wake up, to open his eyes onto the warm morning i
n his bedroom, where only moments before he had tossed and turned like Nero in his bed, where the parrotlike chatter of his wife as she looked at herself in the dressing-table mirror sounded as if it were far away, barely a sharp whisper that kept him tied to this world, assuring him that everything had been a dream—more like a terrible nightmare—in which he was forced to trample on the dead flowers of his own funeral. He walked on and on through the softened asphalt of the city, sinking up to his knees in a sea of pitch and tar, cadavers, bones, and fleshless hands that pulled him down until he was drowning in the thick molasses. The blood-soaked mud stuck in his nostrils, sucking him into a thick soup that tasted like vinegar in his mouth, suffocating him as he mutely inhaled the terror and the wild pounding of his own heart crushing his chest, making him utter a desperate cry upon suddenly awakening in a cold sweat, trembling like a leaf, with his eyes open and his wife leaning over him, shaking him and saying, What’s wrong? There you go again, falling asleep with your hands crossed over your chest.

  She rarely went out, window-shopping as her girlfriends who lived across the city called it. Lupe, Fabiola, and Rana, her trannie sisters who rented an old house in the Recoleta neighborhood near the Cementerio General, in that dusty barrio full of low tenement blocks, alleyways, and street corners studded with liquor stores where the young slum dwellers hung out, spending their days guzzling and fermenting in the sun. So drunk and penniless, it was easy for her friends to lure them to their house and, once inside, drown them in more red wine and end up with all three of them baring their bottoms and sharing the slimy caresses of a macho in heat. Dearie, you just don’t know what you’re missing by not coming by more often, teased Lupe, the youngest of the three, a dark-skinned, vivacious queen. She was the only one who could still put on a good drag show, dressing up as Carmen Miranda in a miniskirt decorated with bananas that she shook in the faces of the drunken bums to bring them back to life. Lupe was the bait: she’d scrape men off the streets, men who had been thrown out of their homes, unemployed men who wandered around at night hiding from the patrol cars, men from the south who arrived in the capital with only the shirts on their backs. After pounding the pavement for weeks, looking for a job and sleeping in the plazas, they would find themselves with Lupe, and without a second thought they would follow her through Recoleta to the house where Fabiola and Rana would be waiting, knitting, two queens retired from the street but still in the market. In that house there was always some man willing to clean the soot out of an unknown chimney. This house might be poor, it might be ugly and humble because it doesn’t have curtains and satin pillows like yours does, and we don’t get visits from our university friends who read us love poems, Rana said sarcastically, but thank God we all sleep soundly at night and don’t need to take diazepam, because every night we can count on a little frosting to sweeten our hot-crossed buns. She punctuated the joke with a sharp outburst of laughter.