All Men Are Liars (10 page)

The thing is (forgive this digression), Alejandro had a vocation to share everything: food, readings, ideas, sex. If you put a plate of food in front of him, he insisted you try a little, too. If he was reading a thriller, he'd call you over and read aloud some paragaph he liked. If an idea occurred to him in the middle of the night, some piece of nonsense, he'd wake you up to tell you about it. And, as far as he was concerned, a bed was not a place in which to sleep alone. He said that only selfish people masturbate.

One morning, when Alejandro had gone to his spot on Calle Goya, I found an old bag full of what looked like dirty laundry. I opened it. There it was.
In Praise of Lying
, in clear, handwritten characters. There was no name on the title page, but I knew straightaway what this was. I read it all the way through. It was hours later that I finished the last page, with tears in my eyes, I swear on the memory of my father, God bless his soul. There was something there, formed of vowels and consonants, to which the word
literature
scarcely does any justice. Even when you give it a capital
L
.

I put all the things back as they had been and set off for the office with the manuscript. I called Urquieta, who must have thought that I wanted something else. I told him that I had to see him. He arranged to meet me in his café.

When I arrived, nervous and out of breath, Urquieta was already there, looking spruce in his hairpiece, and with a ready smile. He patted my wrist and insisted I tell him everything. I don't know if you ever spoke to Urquieta, but his voice was fatherly and measured, like a matinee idol's. It soothed me.

“I want to know what you think of this,” I said, placing the novel under his nose.

“Is it yours?”

“It's a friend's”

“A friend. I see.” And he smiled again.

“Read it,” I answered sternly. “Please. Read it.”

“You're not asking me to whip through it now, in one sitting . . .”

“Make a start,” I insisted, unflinching. “Later you can tell me what you think.”

Perhaps he hoped to make a conquest; perhaps the role of wise counselor appealed to him, or perhaps it was simply that he was an experienced reader who guessed that this effort would pay off. Urquieta obeyed. He placed his spectacles over his chubby nose, inspected the title page, commented on the calligraphy and color of ink, looked, in vain, for the name of the author, discreetly adjusted his wig, turned the page, and began to read.

No question about it: the man was a professional.

I didn't say a word. The waiter brought one coffee after another. Nearly an hour later, Urquieta looked up.

“Who wrote this?” he asked.

“First things first—what's your opinion?”

“Remarkable. From what I've read so far, very good. Excellent.”

“A masterpiece—don't you think?”

“I don't know yet. I haven't finished it. And I'd have to read it at least once more.”

“Señor Urquieta, I know that it is. I merely need you to confirm the fact.”

“My dear, I need more information. Who is the author? How did this come into your hands?”

“Señor Urquieta, I can't tell you more than this.
In Praise of Lying—
I know that you don't doubt it—is a unique work, important, magical. We have to publish it. I mean,
you
have to publish it. You can give it the exposure it needs. You can give it the reputation it deserves. Do it—for the love of art, Señor Urquieta!” I let my voice grow sweet. “Future generations will thank you for it.”

For some reason, Urquieta's eyes always appeared rather moist, as though he were constantly finding something funny or sad, and they also looked naked without the frame of eyelashes or eyebrows, like the eyes of certain old sheepdogs. Slowly, in the manner of a cautious buyer, he let his eyes run over the contours of my face, my neck, the curves of my blouse—and his imagination took care of the rest. It was well known that Urquieta liked to turn even the most banal or practical conversations into strategies of seduction, without much thought to the outcome. It was the chase he loved. If he found his companion even minimally attractive, Urquieta let his voice and gaze fondle her with lecherous impunity. Any discomfort this might cause didn't bother him in the least.

I let his eyes travel over me and watched him in turn, to see who would last longer. When pronouncing
T
s and
L
s, the old man let his tongue linger on his upper lip a fraction longer than was necessary, and there was an exaggerated pause before he answered my questions, fixing his gaze on some part of my body, as though staking claim to a territory. Several moments passed this way.

“For the love of art. Very well. Let's see. Leave the manuscript with me. Let's meet here again in three days. I'll give you my answer then.”

Two days later I received a message at the Martín Fierro. It was Urquieta, summoning me back to the café.

His first words were: “We'll bring it out in three months. I'll send a copy to the eight people who count. I thought about having a launch in one of the cafés, the Lyon or the Ballena Alegre. But now I've thought of something better. A bookshop. We'll invite them to the Antonio Machado. We'll have a presentation like they do in Paris—make it a proper event. It's going to set the world on fire.”

He put his hand on my arm. I don't mind confessing that I was genuinely grateful.

“You don't know how happy you've made me.” And I added: “But I must warn you—the author knows nothing about this.”

“He doesn't know that you've submitted it to me?”

“No.”

“But then how will we do the contract? Who's going to sign it?”

“I'll sign it. I'll take responsibility.”

“I don't like the sound of this. Why not let him know? Who is this elusive Pimpernel? What if he turns against us?”

But I also have my strategies. I knew that his bureaucratic instinct was no match for my charm.

“I know that you're not afraid of anyone,” I said, smiling.

“Then I'm going to need your help.”

“You can count on me,” I said, with relief.

“Day and night,” he said, smiling.

“Day and night,” I agreed.

“And now tell me. Who is the author?”

“Bevilacqua. Alejandro Bevilacqua.”

“The Argentinian? The one who shared a flat with Berens?”

“The very same. Now he shares mine.”

“I see. And why does he not want his name to be known? We'll have to put it on the cover.”

“Yes, of course—publish it, and he can find out about it then. But at the moment he doesn't even know that I've read it. The poor man was really traumatized by what he went through in Argentina. He insists that he isn't a writer, and yet here you have proof to the contrary.
In Praise of Lying
is going to give him a new start, I'm sure of it. A new life.”

“Very well,” concluded Urquieta. “We shall be the midwives at the birth.”

Urquieta might be a vulture, but he was an intellectual, too.
Birth
was the right word. Birth of the book, birth of the real, the secret Alejandro. I swear I was so happy, I almost threw myself on him, although Urquieta never needed any encouragement and he had already progressed from fondling my arm to slipping his fingers inside my sleeve and up between my dress and my armpit. But I didn't care. Alejandro was the writer I had always believed him to be.

Do you understand what I'm telling you, Terradillos, my inquisitive friend? He was a writer, a writer to the core, not like those others who passed through the Martín Fierro taking advantage of Quita's literary soft spot. They never were in the same league. I've been to countless poetry evenings, you know, when you had to keep an eye on the door, and also make sure that your poet didn't come out with some embarrassing remark or forbidden name—nothing that had a whiff of the Reds or Mother Russia. And even so, everyone would be waiting for some daring, blazing verse that would shine a light on us on those dark evenings. To no avail. God! To think of the times I must have listened to Berens—the most regular performer, of course, standing up on that little stage, in his imported suit, with his short, thin tie like a lizard's tongue pointing toward his navel, reciting his poems with a smile, as if he knew what they were about, while we, poor fools . . . Urquieta understood the difference perfectly. And he knew straightaway that this was the real thing, a true fighting bull.

I'll spare you the technical details, the sealed bids, the hushed telephone conversations, Quita demanding to know what was going on (because nothing escaped that woman), Quita gossiping with Gorostiza, who was another curious creature, Quita swearing on Saint Christopher not to tell anyone anything, Berens finding out (I don't know how), more swearing, more devious plans, more secret meetings. And then, all the arguments about design, about the print runs, the cover—which was one of the first designed by the artist Max. And finally the proofs, the reality of the printed page, the title
In Praise of Lying
and the author's name, Alejandro Bevilacqua.

I remember that it was raining on the afternoon that Urquieta arranged to meet me, to hand over the first finished copy, wrapped in brown paper. I was shaking. The following morning, after serving Alejandro his coffee, I set the little packet down in front of him. Alejandro opened it, took out the book, looked at me, looked at the cover, opened the book, closed it, opened it again, closed it again, wrapped it back up in the paper, and leaving it on the table, picked up his things and went, without saying a word.

That day was the launch, and you already know what happened. Manguel was all over me, like a bad rash, and I had to let him take me to a café and then home, just to get him to leave me alone. Alejandro hadn't come home. I waited for him all that night and the following day.

It was Sunday. That day everyone filed through my house. Quita, with the excuse that she had lost the key to the till, Urquieta, fatherly and solicitous. I told them time and again what I knew: why, how, where. Finally, at midday, I got rid of all of them and locked the door. A little later, Inspector Mendieta came to see me. It was he who broke the news to me.

You don't immediately understand something like that, even when it's explained to you clearly. You don't understand it, because you don't know how to understand it. You lack that space in your mind that would let you take it in. You are incapable of believing in the possibility of what they are telling you, because nothing of the sort has ever happened to you before. It is like a place that does not exist on your map of the world. You can't discover America if you have never told yourself that it could be there, on the other side of the ocean.

I spent the days that followed either in tears or asleep, expecting to see him walk through the door or to hear him calling from the other room. Sometimes I felt as though I had dreamed everything up: our meeting, our life together, our conversations between the sheets, the secret book.

The thing is, I don't know if these stories he was telling were mine, or his, or someone else's. You spend your life among words, listening, making sense out of what you say and out of what you imagine other people are saying to you, believing that something in particular happened like this or that, as a result of this or that, with these or those consequences. But it's never so simple, is it? I suppose that if we read about ourselves in a book, we wouldn't recognize ourselves, we wouldn't realize that those people doing certain things and behaving in a particular manner are us. I always believed that I knew Alejandro, that I knew him intimately, I mean, the way you might know a doll you've once taken to pieces. But it wasn't true.

Alejandro told me once about his crush on the girl puppeteer, back in Buenos Aires. He was very young then, and he had met that old German who made his living from puppet shows. The girl was his assistant, and Alejandro—who, even as a teenager, knew what he wanted—let the old man think he didn't mind having his bottom patted, his buttock squeezed occasionally, if it meant he could get closer to Loredana. In bed, he and the girl did everything, the works. Personally, I wouldn't have gone there, when you think what a baby Alejandro was at the time—I wouldn't even have taken my coat off for him. Loredana, on the other hand, was happy to go along with it, and while the old man spent hours untangling the strings on his puppets and eyeing up Alejandro, she would sit opposite the boy with her legs apart, her skirt rucked up and her panties mislaid somewhere, or else she'd forget to do up a button on her shirt, showing her tits and some lacy edging against her coffee-colored skin.

Alejandro could not stand to think of the girl going off without saying anything, and when he found out about her desertion he went after her to Chile. As I myself came to discover, on more than one occasion, Alejandro could not stand to be humiliated.

He told me that when he found her, in the restaurant room of that hotel, he treated her like a whore, in front of everyone. He described the things that they had done together. He threatened to go to the police. He accused the old man of corrupting her. He demanded money from them. Before returning to Buenos Aires, he gained access to the theater dressing rooms and charged around like a bull in a china shop. He tore off the puppets' clothes and painted enormous dicks onto the wooden bodies.

I don't know if you'll understand this, but when Alejandro told me these things it wasn't by way of a confession. He told them in bed, while he was running his hands over my body. He told me because it excited him, I think, and he probably thought that it excited me, too, to hear about it.

But to tell the truth, I hardly listened to him. I looked at him or, rather, I remembered him as he was that time I had first seen him in the Martín Fierro, feeling myself to be in love with him. I let my eyes travel over him, like someone traveling in the dark along a familiar road. I liked making mistakes, arriving at some unexpected part of his body, or confirming my hunch that this was a dark, passionate zone. I didn't mind if he wanted to tell me his life story—true or imaginary. I liked the sound of his voice, whatever it was saying. Not so much out of bed—but beneath the sheets everything is dreamlike. Whether or not these things had happened, or he simply believed them to have happened, was all the same to me.