All Men Are Liars (17 page)

I like talking to you alone, mouth to mouth.

Telling you all the things you don't want to say.

In love, there is one condition that is more terrible than the others. Overwhelming, exclusive, jealous, blind to all reason. Its language is coarse, brutal, abusive. Its gestures are sometimes gentle, at other times of a terrifying violence. It never speaks the truth, because it fears itself. And it lies to keep people from believing all the things that it is. It consists almost entirely in an imagined body: enormous hands, enormous eyes, enormous tongue, gigantic sex. Its limbs have atrophied, grown so small as almost to disappear. The lover has no legs or chin. The nose appears and disappears, as do the ears. A breath, a moan conjure them, and then they vanish again. In that amorous reality there are more bloodthirsty armies than the ones commanded by my father, packs of hounds more rabid than the five bitches in my worst nightmares. You may complain now, dreamer, of the nightmares I foist onto you. Thank your stars that you have been spared this other one.

I recognize this sense of suffocation that I'm feeling now, this sinking into mud. I was here before, but it was worse then, when my flesh still existed and my brain was working. Worse was the fear of hearing (and of not hearing anymore) the desired answer to the question.
When will I see you again?
She looks at me with those amused eyes and says that she doesn't know, and I'm not to worry—enjoy the moment.

To live in the present: the definition of hell.

I leave, with her perfume clinging to my clothes. I don't shower. In the office, on the bus, beneath the blanket, at night, I imagine that she is there. I can think of nothing else. I walk aimlessly. I eat, in no particular restaurant, boiled food, on starched tablecloths. I flick through books which I have no intention of reading. I go to the Lorraine, but don't watch the film. On the contrary, I can't wait for it to end so that I can go and stand at the entrance and look for her among the women who come out chatting with their boyfriends, or alone, or in gaggles of shrieking friends. She isn't there, of course. I return to the darkness of my street and fumble for the lock. I grow experienced in unlocking doors in the dark.

My mind repeats: she, she, she, she.
Ella, ella, ella, ella
. I try to hush it, but it's impossible. Two graceful volutes culminating in infinitely drawn-out lines. The city is full of inverted Ionic columns, like the extended facade of a Greek temple upside down. Everything is
ella
.

Don Belem dies. One of the sons returns from Brazil to close the business down. He offers me a job in São Paulo, but how can I go so far away from her? The man doesn't understand, and thinks I'm ungrateful. When saying good-bye to the other employees, he leaves me out. Returning home, I walk past the Military Circle, and remember that this is where Colonel Chartier has his office. I go in and ask for him. A corporal takes my documents and leads me to an office dominated by a gigantic desk and a gold-framed mirror. The ceiling is adorned with cherubs.

Inside the placenta bag in which I am sinking, something (a knife, a saber, a claw) has torn at the walls and is dragging me out, on a viscous and foul-smelling wave. One Roman torture consisted in making a prisoner drink wine, then thrusting a knife into his stomach. Like the wine in that Roman's stomach, I'm dragged along by a river I can't see. I spin around several times. I hear nothing, feel nothing. I hit the bottom.

In the watery gloom, I make out three tall military figures, their chests covered in phosphorescent medals. The first has no face, only an immense arc of sharpened teeth, through which protrudes a fat, purple tongue. The second is a tangle of hair, as rough as steel wool, as sharp as barbed wire. The third has the features of Colonel Chartier, well-shaven cheeks, a neat black mustache, dark glasses, a military peaked cap. In front of them are dozens of little naked people, raising their arms before this terrible triumvirate. Then the teeth begin to chew on the tongue, the tangle of hair bursts into flames, and Colonel Chartier's face breaks up, handfuls of worms pushing their way through the cracks. In unison, the triumvirate utters a howl and vanishes. In the darkness, some whitish, rough-edged residue remains, like phlegm.

Colonel Chartier steps out from behind the desk and takes my hand. My father has spoken of me to him.
How is my old friend? Lumbago troubles all of us. But what do you youngsters know of that! Life seems eternal to you. How old are you? Forty-one already? I don't believe it! Can you manage a coffee? Now then, Corporal, bring us two coffees. Well, well. Where were we?
And he offered me a job.

I never inquired as to the official name of the department led by Chartier. We called it COMMUNICATION, and the folders were marked with a capital
C
and a serial number. A secretary, practically a teenager, had the job of filing them. I never knew who used them, nor when, nor why.

Colonel Chartier declares:
As for you, all you have to do is pay attention. Your father told me that you have a special talent for that. “He has a bloodhound's sense of smell,” my friend Gorostiza said. And that's what we need here. People who know how to sniff the air, to catch things most people miss. These are treacherous times, my young friend. Anything could be a trap. The enemy looks just like you or me, and no sooner we're distracted than we'll have a knife at our throats. Civilization and Barbarism. I don't need to ask which side you're on.

My job entailed presenting myself in his office at eight o'clock in the morning to receive my instructions. After coffee with a dash of milk (it was never served black in Colonel Chartier's office), my six or seven colleagues and I, all men, would be handed a folder (C27658, C89711) with an address, a time, sometimes a name. I spent innumerable days sitting in a particular bar close to Congress or standing on the platform of the Pacífico station, waiting for something to happen, for someone to arrive.

In one pocket I carried a little book of poems, to while away the time; in the other, the identification badge they had given me, with the naval crest in embossed tin, which felt like my father's saber. Sitting in the bar, or standing at the station, I held the book from which I read in one hand while the other rubbed the crest, warming it with my fingers. At the end of the day, I would return to the office for a debriefing. Occasionally, I had to go out at night.

Whenever I saw what I had been sent to see, I gave a signal with my hand, and the agents got on with their work. I learned not to recognize them; it was they who looked out for me. Nor did I want to know anything about the people I was spying on. Their variety surprised me. It was impossible to generalize. There were all sorts. Gentlemen in overcoats. Workers. Pensioners with the newspaper tucked under their arms. Mulattos. Old ladies with blue rinses. Teenagers with acne. Young men who must have been university students or who worked, as I had done, in some anonymous insurance company. Ditto young women. The odd priest. The odd nurse. The occasional secondary-school teacher.

Once I was sent to spy on an ex-colleague, a woman of about forty who had worked in accounts at Belem Exporters—Chela something-or-other. I had scarcely noticed her when we were working in the firm. Reserved, well turned out, invariably in very high heels, she was, someone told me, a widow with two children. Now she appeared very agitated, her hair disheveled. She was carrying a briefcase which she kept opening and closing. As she got off the train, I immediately recognized her, and motioned with my hand. I think that she saw me and thought that I was waving to her. When the agents closed in on her, she shouted and started to run, but then one of her heels broke, and she almost fell onto the tracks. She looked up at me, or at least in my direction, as she sprawled on the ground. I left before they took her away.

Thick and sticky filaments of phlegm cling to my body, hindering my movements. Its tentacles almost seem to have a life of their own, the way they roam over my arms and legs, my neck and face. It's like being clasped to the bosom of a jellyfish, like growing another layer, slimy and warm, over my own skin. It's as though I've been turned inside out, my organs exposed, my guts intertwined with this fibrous filth. They tighten my throat, strangling me with gelatinous fingers, finding new methods of suffocation. The filaments probe my nose and mouth, filling my lungs to the point of bursting. And once more, all around me, the dust cloud. The phlegm has disappeared. I move forward in a space I cannot see.

If I could stop thinking, even for a moment, I could rest, regain strength. If I could cease, for a moment, vomiting this string of images, of words, of things past.

I try to focus on a dark point, on a pinprick of nothingness. Impossible. The point expands, fills with twinkling lights, each light something lived, something remembered. And I go back to the beginning. My parents' house. The bitches. My siblings. The poems. The city at night. My elusive lover. Blood and broken bones. My reports. Her.
Ella
.

Sometimes I inform on boys and girls who are really very young.
It's a way of protecting them,
Colonel Chartier tells me.
It's our duty as fathers of the nation
.

I see them gathering outside the school gates (I still live in the little room on Calle Alsina), and I stand close to the newsstand, pretending to be choosing sweets, watching them. It occurs to me that I am rather like a satyr, hidden in the undergrowth, spying on nymphs. Or like the elders devouring Susanna with their eyes, nostalgic for their erections. Or like some depraved pornographer, flashing open his dirty raincoat in the playground.

I watch and make notes. Sometimes I can hear them. They tell each other nonsense, lark about, inventing a rhetorical world and a new golden age. Demonstrations, petitions, declarations, a whole vocabulary of banner waving and end-of-year speeches. I was fifteen once, too.

I make my lists. I question the doorman, perhaps a waiter, the uniformed police officer who barely understands what I am asking him. And then I hand in my homework on time—I'm never late.
You and punctuality are like twin brothers,
says the Colonel.

And we go back to the start.

Every so often, at unpredictable and overlengthy intervals, I would see her. We met almost by chance; I would receive a note proposing a date, or I would be bold enough to call her at work, in some faculty office. One day, I left my book for her, beside the bed. I never knew if she had read it. I didn't dare ask her. It was enough to know that it was there, at her side. It meant that I was there, too, my words on her lips, my tongue in her mouth.

I can see that my story is exciting you, my dreamer. It's making your blood flow faster, prompting you to delve into your own memory in search of amorous memories. I warn you: don't follow me. My hunting grounds are dangerous. All of them begin as tended gardens which sprout suddenly into jungles, into minefields, into quicksand. You won't reach the other side.

Two simultaneous events changed everything.

There is a first moment (we don't realize it's the first) when we cross the threshold of a forbidden room, somewhere we ought never to enter. We do it without thinking. A key accidentally placed in the wrong lock, the door unintentionally opened, the splashes of blood on the floor that we ought not to have seen—just like in fairy tales.

Two events: her telling me, as we woke up,
I can't see you again. Not anymore
. And then that morning, on the letter of instructions, her name heading a new list of quarries.

She doesn't want to see me anymore, because she wants to see the other man. I say “other” because I am not unique. I am one of two, one among many. I want to know who my rival is. Who has privileges over her. Who is this person causing my dismissal from her presence.
You don't know him. What does it matter to you?
And she smiles. I grab her hair. I yell at her to answer me. She refuses. I shout louder. I shake her, I yank her hair harder, as though to tear it from the fearful, distant face looking back at me. I slap her. She utters a name.
What?
She repeats it.
Say it again.
She says it again, crying. My open hand is still hitting her. And now, for sure, I've crossed to the other side and the door is closing behind me.

There is a condition of love more terrible than the others: I repeat this like a litany. It is almost the sum of my learning. I can't help it. Sometimes it remains latent, like a snake, sleeping beneath the sheets. More often it bursts into flames, like a salamander, consumed by its own heat. I know this monster down to the last detail. It has three heads and a triple, avenging shadow. I could not stop it even if I wanted to. And I don't want to. I want everything to burn. Her, especially, silently screaming.

I like talking to you alone, mouth to mouth.

Telling you all the things you don't want to say.

The name she mentioned is not on the list. I pick up my pen and add it, clearly writing it beside hers. I go home, shower, dress, set off for work. At midday, I position myself at the door to Casa Gold, where the rings in the shop window announce engagements and anniversaries, silver and gold weddings. I am no longer a disinterested professional, spying for other people. What I'm doing now is personal—private business.
How is it possible to be betrayed like this?
I ask as people come and go, rarely bumping into each other, borne along on sinuous currents that hardly touch each other. The vision of the multitude dissolves. Images of her are superimposed onto others, this time of butchery, of dismembered bodies, Bluebeard's brides with bloodied stumps and stomachs cut open.
Let everything end so that she will end,
I say to myself. And I am still waiting.

Various people begin to assemble. I don't know why they are demonstrating. Nor do I want to know. I don't read the banners, I don't listen to the chants. I don't see her in the growing crowd either, but I know she's there—I can smell her. And doubtless him, too. A common cause. Both of them guilty. Both of them condemned. The surge of people hides them, but does not protect them. If I stretch out a hand, I can touch them.