Kiss of the Spider Woman (27 page)
Read Kiss of the Spider Woman Online
Authors: Manuel Puig
Tags: #Regional.Latin America, #Fiction.Magical Realism, #Fiction.Literature.Modern, #Acclaimed.Horror 100 Best.Index
—No, I don’t think so. I don’t know . . . Go on.
—Next day, at the paper, the guy sees how everyone’s busy trying to find the article on her, and they can’t. Obviously, because he’s got it locked up in his desk. And since they can’t find any of the stuff, the editor-in-chief decides to forget the whole story, because it’d be practically impossible to gather so much material all over again. So the guy’s relieved, and after hesitating a little . . . he dials her number. And he tells her she can relax, there’s no chance the article is ever going to be printed. She thanks him, he asks her to forgive him for all he said yesterday, and to see him again, and suggests where and when. And she accepts. He asks the boss if he can leave work early; the editor-in-chief gives him the rest of the day off, saying he’s been looking overworked for a couple of days now. All this time she’s busy getting ready to go out, in a black two-piece suit, those really smart ones they wore back then, very fitted, and without any blouse on underneath, and a diamond brooch on the lapel, and a white tulle hat, like a white cloud behind her head. And her hair in a bun. And she’s already got her gloves on, white to match the hat, when she suddenly thinks twice about the risk involved in this rendezvous, because the magnate walked in just at that minute, while she was busy trying to figure out whether or not to go. And the magnate, who’s middle-aged, with gray hair, about fifty or so, a little heavy, but presentable enough as a guy, he asks her where she’s running off to. She says shopping, he offers to come along, she says it’ll be such a bore for him, she has to pick out fabrics. The magnate looks like he suspects something, but doesn’t openly reproach her. Then she responds by telling him he has no right to put on a bad face, because she always does whatever he asks, she’s dropped the idea of returning to the theater, hasn’t she? and of radio singing, but it’s really the limit when he dares to look at her like that just because she’s going out shopping. Then the magnate tells her to go ahead, to buy anything she wants, but if he ever catches her lying . . . it won’t be her he takes his revenge out on, he knows well enough he can’t live without her, but he’ll wreak his vengeance on any man who dares to go near her. The magnate leaves, and moments later she does, too, but she doesn’t know what to tell the chauffeur, because the magnate’s threat is still ringing in her ears: “I’ll wreak my vengeance on any man that dares to go near you.” Meantime the guy is waiting for her at some posh bar, and he’s looking and looking at the time, and begins to realize she’s not coming. He orders another whiskey, a double. Another hour goes by, two hours, and by then he’s totally drunk, but tries to pretend not to be, getting up and walking stiffly out of the bar. He goes back to the office, sits at his desk and asks the errand boy to go get him two containers of coffee. And he sets himself to work, trying to forget everything. Next day he shows up earlier than usual, and the editor-in-chief is happy to see him, and pats him on the back for coming in so early to help out, because it’s a tough day ahead of them. He buries himself in his work and even finishes up early, and hands in the assignment to the chief, who congratulates him on how it’s written, and tells him he can have the remainder of the day off. So then the guy leaves, and goes off to have a few glasses with some reporter friend who asks him along; he refuses at first, but the other guy insists—but no, wait, it’s the boss himself that invites him to have a drink, right there in his private office, because since the guy’s managed to solve the whole day’s problem, which happened to be an article on some gigantic embezzlement high up in the government, the boss wants to celebrate a little. Then after a drink or two, the guy goes down into the street, feeling gloomy, the scotch gave him the blues, and before he realizes what he’s done he’s standing in front of her house. He can’t resist and goes in and rings the buzzer of her apartment. The maid asks, who is it? He says he wants to talk to the lady of the house, it’s just five o’clock then, so she’s having tea with the magnate, who has brought her an extravagant surprise, an emerald necklace, to ask her forgiveness for the scene he made yesterday. She orders the maid to tell the reporter she’s not at home, but he’s already barged into the room. Then she tries to handle the situation by telling the magnate what happened with the business of that article, and thanks the guy, and tells the magnate how he wouldn’t accept any money, so she really doesn’t know what more to say in order to settle the affair, but him, the guy, furious at seeing her holding on to the magnate’s arm like that, he says the whole thing makes him sick and all he wants is for them to forget him once and for all. Neither she nor the magnate have a word to say; the guy walks out, but leaving a piece of paper on the table, with the lyrics of the song written for her. The magnate stares at the girl; her eyes are flooded with tears, because she’s in love with the reporter and can’t deny it any longer, especially to herself, which is worst of all. The magnate looks hard at her eyes and asks her to say exactly what she feels for that creep of a newspaperman. She can’t answer, there’s a knot in her throat, but then she sees how red in the face he’s getting; well, she has to swallow somehow and say, that creep of a newspaperman means absolutely nothing to me, but I just met him over the problem of that news article. And the magnate asks her for the name of the newspaper, and when he finds out it’s the one that’s been relentlessly investigating his ties with the mafia, he asks her for the name of the guy, too, so as to in some way try to bribe him. But the girl, terrified that what the magnate actually wants to do is revenge himself on the guy . . . refuses to tell him his name. Then the magnate gives her a heavy slap across the face, knocking her to the floor, then leaves. She just lies there sprawled on the carpet that’s made of real ermine, her pitch black hair against the snowy white ermine, and the tears twinkling like stars . . . And she looks up . . . and sees over on one of those taffeta hassocks . . . a sheet of paper. She gets up and reaches for it, and reads . . . “Even though you’re a prisoner, in your solitude your heart whispers still . . . I love you. Black flowers of fate . . . cruelly keep us apart, but the day will come when you’ll be . . . mine forever, mine alone . . .” and presses the paper all crumpled to her heart, which is probably just as crumpled inside as that piece of paper, just as much . . . or even more.
—Go on.
—The guy, for his part, is destroyed, he doesn’t return to work and wanders around from bar to bar. At the newspaper they look for him but can’t find him; they call him on the phone and he answers, but as soon as he hears the boss’s voice he hangs up on him. Days go by, until suddenly he finds on the newsstands, in the same daily paper he was working for, an announcement promising for the next edition an exclusive inside story about the private life of a famous star now retired from show business. He trembles with rage. He goes to the press office, where everything is all closed because it’s very late. The nightwatchman lets him in without suspecting a thing; he goes up to his old office and discovers they’ve jimmied the locks on his drawers to put another reporter at his old spot, and so of course they found all the material there in the desk. Then he goes to the printers, which is a long way from there, and so by the time he arrives at the place, it’s already morning and he sees that the afternoon edition has already started rolling off the presses. So out of despair he grabs a sort of hammer and smashes up the machinery destroying the whole printing of the afternoon edition, because the inks get dumped all over, and everything, everything is totally ruined. Damage running into thousands and thousands of pesos, into the millions, it’s an act of outright sabotage. He disappears from the city, but they kick him out of the union so he can never again work as a newspaperman in his life. Drifting from drunken binge to drunken binge he one day arrives at a beach, in search of his memories: Veracruz. In some crummy dive, facing the sea, right at the foot of the harbor, a colorful local orchestra, they’re playing on that instrument that’s like a table full of sticks . . .
—A xylophone.
—Valentin, you know everything . . . How do you do it?
—Go ahead. I want to know what happens.
—Okay, right on that same instrument, they’re playing a very sad song. And the guy, with his penknife he’s scrawling into the table, which is full of carved hearts, names, dirty words, too, and he’s inscribing some lyrics to the song while he’s singing it. And it goes: “When they speak to you of love, and its fascination . . . and they offer you the sun, the moon and the stars . . . If you still think of me . . . don’t say my name! because your lips might recall . . . what love is about . . . And if they ask about your past, just go ahead and lie, say you come from a very strange world . . .” and then he begins to imagine her, and actually to see her at the bottom of that glass of brandy, and she starts swirling around there, until she swells up to a normal size and starts walking around the miserable dive, and looking at him, she sings the rest of the stanza . . . something suggesting that she doesn’t know what love is, and that she doesn’t know what pain is, and that she has never, never cried . . . And then he sings back to her, looking at her, right in the middle of all those stumblebums that are too drunk to see or hear anything, and he tells her that wherever he goes, he talks about her love, like some golden dream, and then she comes in with something like that he should forget his bitterness and never tell people that her farewell was what really broke his heart, and then he caresses the transparent memory of her, sitting beside him there at the table, as he answers her, “. . . and if they ask about my past, I’ll make up another lie, and say I come from a very strange world . . .” and the two of them then, looking at each other with tears in their eyes, they end on like a duet but in a low, low voice that’s barely a whisper, “. . . because I’ve triumphed in love, and I’ve conquered all heartaches, and I’ve never . . . never cried . . .” and when he dries his eyes, because he’s ashamed to be a man and crying like that, and he can see clear now, she’s obviously nowhere beside him. Desperate, he grabs the glass to hold it up to the light, and doesn’t see the reflection of anything but himself all disheveled there in the bottom of the glass, and then with his whole strength he hurls it against the wall, smashing it to bits . . .
—Why are you stopping?
— . . .
—Don’t start doing that . . .
— . . .
—Goddamn it! I said there’s not going to be any unhappy feelings here today, so there’s not going to be any!
—Don’t shake me like that . . .
—Because today we don’t let the outside in.
—You frightened me.
—And don’t get sad on me, and don’t be frightened either . . . The only thing I want is to keep my promise to you, and make you forget about anything that’s ugly. I swore it this morning; you’re not going to have to brood about things. And I’m going to keep my word, damn it, because it doesn’t cost me anything. It’s so easy to make you stop that brooding . . . and while it’s in my power, for at least this one day . . . damn it, I’m not going to let you brood about things . . .
CHAPTER
13
13
—I wonder how it is outside tonight.
—Who knows? Not cold, but very humid, I guess. So it must be kind of cloudy, Molina, with most likely a low ceiling. enough to block the street light and send it back down.
—Mmm . . . probably.
—And the streets damp, especially the cobblestones, even if it’s not raining, and a little fog in the distance.
—Valentin . . . with me the humidity makes me nervous, because it makes me itchy all over, but not tonight.
—I feel good, too.
—The meal sit well with you?
—Yes, the meal was . . .
—Boy, not much left . . .
—It’s my fault, Molina.
—We’re both to blame; we ate more than usual.
—How long has it been since you got that last package?
—Four days. Well, for tomorrow there’s at least a little cheese, a little bread, some mayonnaise . . .
—And there’s orange marmalade. And half a marble cake. And some guava paste.
—And nothing else, Valentin?
—Yes, a piece of glazed fruit. The glazed pumpkin you put aside for yourself.
—I can’t bring myself to eat it, it looks so pretty. But tomorrow we’ll split it in half.
—No, it’s for you.
—No, tomorrow we have to eat the prison food, and for dessert we’ll share the glazed pumpkin.
—We’ll discuss that tomorrow.
—Mmm, I don’t want to think about anything now, Valentin. Just let me dawdle.
—You sleepy?
—No, I’m fine, I feel peaceful . . . No, I’m more than peaceful . . . But don’t get angry if I tell you the silly truth of it. I’m really happy.
—That’s the way it should be.
—And the good thing about feeling really happy, you know, Valentin? . . . It’s that you think it’s forever, that one’s never ever going to feel unhappy again.
—I feel really good, too. Even this rotten piece of cardboard they call a mattress feels nice and warm, and I know I’m going to sleep fine.
—I feel nice and warm in my chest, Valentin, that’s the good thing. And my head feels so empty—no, that sounds stupid: my head’s like filled with warm mist. All of me feels like that inside. I don’t know, maybe it’s that I still . . . can feel . . . how you touch me.
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