Thus Were Their Faces Page 10

  I tried to analyze the process, the form in which my thoughts developed. My visions were involuntary. It was not hard to recognize them; they always appeared in the company of certain unmistakable signs, which were always the same: a slight breeze, a curtain of mist, a tune I cannot sing, a door of carved wood, a clammy feeling in my palms, a little bronze statue in a distant garden. It was useless to try to avoid these images: in the icy regions of the future reality rules.

  I then understood that to lose the ability to remember is one of the greatest misfortunes, since events, though infinite in the memory of normal beings, are extremely brief, indeed almost nonexistent, for one who foresees them and then merely experiences them. Those who do not know their destinies invent and enrich their lives with hopes of a future that will never turn out the way they imagine. That imagined destiny, prior to the real one, exists in a sense, and is as necessary as the other. The lies my girlfriends spoke sometimes seemed truer than the truth. I have seen expressions of bliss on the faces of people who live on always frustrated hopes. I think that the essential lack of memories, in my case, did not proceed from a lack of memory: I think that my thoughts, so busy with seeing the future, so full of images, didn’t have time to dwell on the past.

  Leaning out on the balcony, I would see the children, on their way to school, passing by with the faces of grown-ups. That made me shy of children. I could see the future afternoons full of conversations, rosy or lilac clouds, births, terrible suffering, ambition, unavoidable cruelty against human beings and animals.

  Now I understand the extent to which I viewed events as final memories. They replaced memories so inadequately. For instance: if I were not about to die, then this rose, right now here in my hand, would not live in my memory; I would lose it forever in a tumult of visions of a future destiny.

  Hidden in the shadow of courtyards, of hallways, in the icy atrium of the church, I meditated constantly. I tried to take charge of my memories of my girlfriends, of my brothers, of my mother (always the most significant ones). It was then that the touching vision of a forehead, of certain eyes, of a face began to haunt and pursue me, forming my desires. That face lingered for many days and many nights before taking shape. The truth is: I had the burning desire to be a saint. I vehemently wished for the face to be God’s or that of the infant Jesus. In church, in etchings, in books, and in medallions I searched for that adorable face: I didn’t want to find it anywhere else, didn’t want it to be human, or contemporary, or true. I don’t think anyone has ever had so much trouble recognizing the danger signs of love. How I gave in to my adolescent tears! Only now can I remember the light yet penetrating aroma of the roses Gabriel gave me, while gazing into my eyes, as we left school. That prescience would have lasted a whole lifetime. In vain I tried to delay meeting him. I could foresee separation, absence, forgetting. In vain I tried to avoid the hours, paths, and places that favored a meeting. My prescient caution should have lasted a whole lifetime. But destiny put the roses in my hands and put the real Gabriel before me without my feeling surprise. My tears were useless. Uselessly I copied the roses on paper, writing names and dates on the petals: a rose can be invisible forever in a rose garden, before our window, or in the hands of the lover who offers it to us; only memory will preserve it intact, with its perfume, its color, and the devotion of the hands offering it.

  Gabriel would be playing with my brothers, but when I appeared with a book or with my sewing basket, and sat down on a chair in the courtyard, he would leave his games to offer me the homage of his silence. Few children were as astute. He made little airplanes of flower petals, of leaves. He caught fireflies and bats; then he tamed them. From closely watching the movements of my hands, he learned to embroider. He embroidered without blushing: architects made house plans; he, when he embroidered, made plans of gardens. He loved me: at night, in the dark courtyard of my house, I could feel his involuntary love growing with all the naturalness of a plant.

  Without knowing it, how I hoped to penetrate the chaste memory of those moments! Without knowing it, how I yearned for death, the only keeper of my memories! A hypnotic fragrance, the rustling of eternal leaves on the trees, comes to guide me along the paths, now so long forgotten, of that love. Sometimes an event that seemed labyrinthine to me, so slow to develop, so practically infinite can be expressed in two words. My name, written in green ink or with a pin, on his arm, on him who filled six months of my life, now fills only a single sentence. What is it to be in love? For years I asked the piano teacher and my girlfriends. What is it to be in love? Remembering a word, a look within the complexity of other spaces; multiplying and dividing and transforming these things (as if they were displeasing to us), comparing them unceasingly. What is a beloved face? A face that is never the same, a face that is ceaselessly transformed, a face that disappoints us . . .

  A silence of cloisters and roses was in our hearts. No one could guess the mystery that linked us. Not even those colored pencils or the jujube candies or the flowers he bestowed on me gave us away. He would write my name on the trunks of trees with his penknife, and when he was being punished he would write it with chalk on the wall.

  “When I die I will give you candies every day and write your name on all the tree trunks in heaven,” he once told me.

  “How do you know we’ll go to heaven?” I answered. “How do you know there are trees and penknives in heaven? Are you sure that God will let you remember me? Are you sure that in heaven your name will be Gabriel and mine Irene? Will we have the same faces, and will we recognize each other?”

  “We’ll have the same faces. And even if we didn’t, we would recognize each other. That day during Carnival celebrations, when you dressed up as a star and spoke with an icy voice, I recognized you. With my eyes closed, I’ve seen you so many times since then.”

  “You’ve seen me when I wasn’t there. You’ve seen me in your imagination.”

  “I saw you when we were playing nurse and patient. When I was the one who was wounded and they were blindfolding my eyes, I guessed when you were coming.”

  “Because I was the nurse, and I had to come. You could see me under the blindfold: You were cheating. You always cheated.”

  “In heaven I’ll recognize you without cheating. I’d recognize you even in disguise, I’d see you coming even with my eyes blindfolded.”

  “Then you believe there’ll be no difference between this world and heaven?”

  “Only what bothers us now will be lacking: some family members, bedtime hours, punishments, and the moments when I don’t see you.”

  “Perhaps it’s better in hell than in heaven,” he said to me another day, “because hell is more dangerous and I like suffering for you. To live in flames because of your guilt, to save you continually from the demons and fire, would be a source of joy for me.”

  “But do you want to die in mortal sin?”

  “Why mortal and not immortal? Nobody forgets my uncle: he committed a mortal sin and they didn’t give him the last rites. My mother told me, ‘He’s a hero—don’t listen to what people say.’ ”

  “Why do you think about death? Usually young people avoid such dark, depressing topics of conversation,” I protested one day. “Right now you look like an old man. Look at yourself in the mirror.”

  There was no mirror nearby. He looked at himself in my eyes.

  “I don’t look like an old man. Old men comb their hair in a different way. But I’m already grown up, and familiar with death,” he answered. “Death is like an absence. Last month, when my mother took me to Azul for two weeks, my heart stopped and, with deep sorrow, I felt not blood coursing through my veins but cold water. Soon I will have to go far away, indefinitely. I console myself imagining something simpler: death or war.”

  Sometimes he lied to move me to pity: “I’m sick. Last night I fainted in the street.”

  If I criticized him for lying, he’d answer, “One only lies to people one loves: truth leads us to make many errors.” />
  “I’ll never forget you, Gabriel.” The day I said that I had already forgotten him.

  Without anxiety, without weeping, already accustomed to his absence, I withdrew from him before he left. A train pulled him from my side. Other visions already separated me from his face, other loves, less touching farewells. I last saw his face through the pane of the train window, sad and in love, erased by the superimposed images of my future life.

  My life turned sad, but not for lack of amusements. Once I confused my own destiny with that of a character in a novel. I should confess: I confused the face of an illustration I foresaw with a real face. I waited for a conversation between two characters that I later read in a book which was set in an unknown city in 1890. The antiquated clothing of the characters didn’t surprise me. “How fashions are going to change,” I thought with indifference. The figure of a king, who didn’t look like a king because he only appeared in the plate of a history book, devoted his fond glances to me in the autumn twilight. Up until then, the texts and characters of books had not appeared to me as future realities; it’s true that before I never had the chance to read many books. The books belonging to one of my grandfathers were stored in a room at the back of the house; bound with twine and wrapped in spiderwebs, I first saw them when my mother decided to sell them all. For several days we inspected the books, dusting the volumes with rags and feather dusters, gluing back the loose pages. I read during the moments I was alone.

  Far from Gabriel, I understood by some miracle that only death would let me recover his memory. The afternoon when no other visions, no other images, when no other future disturbed me would be the afternoon of my death, and I knew I would wait for it holding this rose. I knew that the tablecloth I would embroider for months on end, with yellow daisies and pink forget-me-nots, with garlands of yellow wisteria and a gazebo surrounded by palm trees, would be used for the first time the night of my wake. I knew that this tablecloth would be praised by the guests who had made me weep ten years earlier, when I heard the voices, a chorus of female voices, repeating my name, disfiguring it with sad adjectives: “Poor Irene,” “Unfortunate Irene!” Then I heard other names, not people’s names but those of little cakes and plants, uttered with pained admiration: “What delightful palm trees,” “What madeleines!” But then with the same sadness, and with the insistence of a psalm, the chorus repeated, “Poor Irene!”

  The false splendor of death! The sun shines on the same world. Nothing has changed when everything has changed for only one being. Moses foresaw his own death. Who was Moses? I thought that no one had ever foreseen his own death. I thought that Irene Andrade, this modest Argentine woman, had been the only one in the world capable of describing her death before it happened.

  I lived, waiting for life’s limit that would draw me closer to memory. I had to put up with infinite moments. I had to love the mornings as if they were the last ones; I had to love certain shadows in the main square and Armindo’s eyes; I had to get sick from typhus fever and cut my hair. I met Teresa, Benigno; I visited the Fountain of Love and the Sentinel in Tandil for the first time. In Monte, in the railroad station, with my mother I drank tea with milk after visiting a lady who taught needlework and knitting. In front of the Garden Hotel I saw the death agony of a horse that looked as if it was made of clay. (It was tormented by flies and by a man with a whip.) I never went to Buenos Aires: some calamity always prevented the trip I planned. I never saw the dark outline of the train in Constitution Station. Now I never will. I will die without seeing Palermo Park, the Plaza de Mayo all lit up, and the Colón Theater with its boxes and its desperate artists singing, their hands on their breasts.

  I agreed to being photographed against a sad backdrop of trees with beautiful, tall hair, wearing gloves and a straw hat decorated with red cherries, so battered they looked real.

  Slowly, I carried out the last episodes of my destiny. I will confess that I was oddly mistaken when I foresaw the photograph of myself: although I found it similar, I didn’t recognize my own image. I felt indignant with that woman who, without neglecting my imperfections, had usurped my eyes, the position of my hands, the careful oval of my face.

  For those who remember, time is not too long. For those who wait it is inexorable.

  “In a small town everything is quickly over. There won’t be any new houses or new people to meet,” I thought, trying to console myself. “Here death arrives more quickly. If I had been born in Buenos Aires, my life would have been interminable, my sorrows would never end.”

  I remember the solitude of the afternoons when I sat in the square. Would the light hurt my eyes so I would weep of something other than sorrow? “She’s thirty years old and still has not married,” some glances told me. “What is she waiting for,” others said, “sitting here in the square? Why doesn’t she bring her sewing? Nobody loves her, not even her brothers. When she was fifteen she killed her father. The devil possessed her—God knows in what form.”

  These dreary, monotonous visions of the future depressed me, but I knew that in the rarefied space of my life, where there was no love, no faces, no new objects, where nothing happened anymore, my torment was coming to its end, my happiness was beginning. Trembling, I was coming closer to the past.

  The coldness of a statue took possession of my hands. A veil separated me from the houses, drew me away from the plants and people: nonetheless I saw them clearly outlined for the first time, minutely present in every detail.

  One January afternoon, I was sitting on a bench by the fountain in the square. I remember the stifling heat of the day and the unusual coolness brought on by the sunset. Surely somewhere it had rained. My head rested on my hand; in my hand was a handkerchief: a sad pose, at times inspired by the heat, yet at that moment inspired by sorrow. Someone sat down next to me. She spoke to me with a woman’s soft voice. This was our exchange:

  “Excuse my impertinence. There isn’t time for formal introductions. I don’t live in this town; chance brings me here from time to time. Even if someday I will sit in this square again, it’s unlikely that our conversation will be repeated. Perhaps I’ll never see you again, not even in a store, or on a railway platform, or in the street.”

  “My name is Irene,” I replied. “Irene Andrade.”

  “Were you born here?”

  “Yes, I was born and will die in this town.”

  “I never thought about dying in a particular place, no matter how sad or enchanting it might be. I never thought of my death as a possibility.”

  “I didn’t choose this town to die in. Destiny assigns places and dates without consulting us.”

  “Destiny decides things but doesn’t participate in them. How do you know you’ll die in this town? You’re young and you don’t look sick. One thinks of death when one is sad. Why are you sad?”

  “I’m not sad. I’ve no fear of dying and destiny has never disappointed me. These are my final afternoons. These pink clouds will be the last ones, shaped like saints, like houses, like lions. Your face will be the last new face; your voice will be the last one I hear.”

  “What has happened to you?”

  “Nothing has happened to me and, happily enough, few things are left that will happen to me. I feel no curiosity. I don’t want to know your name, I don’t want to look at you: new things disturb me and only delay my death.”

  “Haven’t you ever been happy? Don’t certain memories fill you with hope?”

  “I have no memories. The angels will bring back all my memories on the day of my death. The cherubim will bring back the forms of all the faces. They will bring back all the hairstyles and ribbons, the positions of arms, past shapes of hands. The seraphim will bring me taste, sound, and fragrances, the flowers I received as gifts, landscapes. The archangels will bring back conversations and farewells, light, the silence of reconciliation.”

  “Irene, it seems to me as if I’ve known you for a long time! I’ve seen your face somewhere, perhaps in a photograph, with tall h
air, ribbons of velvet, and a hat decorated with cherries. Isn’t there such a picture of you, with a sad backdrop of trees? Didn’t your father sell plants a long time ago? Why do you want to die? Don’t lower your eyes. Don’t you admit the world is beautiful? You want to die because everything becomes more definitive and more beautiful at times of parting.”

  “For me death will be a time of arrival, not of parting.”

  “Arrival is never pleasant. Some people couldn’t even arrive in heaven and feel happy. One must get used to faces, to the places one has most loved. One must get used to voices, to dreams, to the sweetness of the country.”

  “I’ll never arrive anywhere for the first time. I recognize everything. Even heaven sometimes scares me. The fear of its images, the fear of recognizing it all!”

  “Irene Andrade, I’d like to write your biography.”

  “Ah! What a favor you would do me if you could help me cheat my destiny by not writing my biography. But you will write it. I can already see the pages, the clear script, and my sad destiny. It will begin like this:

  I never felt so passionately eager to see Buenos Aires lit up on Independence Day, for sales at department stores festooned with green streamers, or for my birthday, as I was to arrive at this moment of supernatural joy.

  Ever since I was a girl I’ve been as pale as I am now . . .

  from

  THE FURY

  THE HOUSE MADE OF SUGAR

  SUPERSTITIONS kept Cristina from living. A coin with a blurry face, a spot of ink, the moon seen through two panes of glass, the initials of her name carved by chance on the trunk of a cedar: all these would make her mad with fear. The day we met she was wearing a green dress; she kept wearing it until it fell apart, since she said it brought her good luck and that as soon as she wore another, a blue one that fit her better, we would no longer see each other. I tried to combat these absurd manias. I made her see that she had a broken mirror in her room, yet she insisted on keeping it, no matter how I insisted that it was better to throw broken mirrors into water on a moonlit night to get rid of bad luck. She was never afraid if the lamps in the house went out all of a sudden; despite the fact that it was definitely an omen of death, she would light any number of candles without thinking twice. She always left her hat on the bed, a mistake nobody else made. Her fears were more personal. She inflicted real privations on herself; for instance, she could not eat strawberries in the summer, or hear certain pieces of music, or adorn her house with goldfish, although she liked them a lot. There were certain streets we couldn’t cross, certain people we couldn’t see, certain movie theaters we couldn’t go to. Early in our relationship, these superstitions seemed charming to me, but later they began to annoy and even seriously worry me. When we got engaged we had to look for a brand new apartment because, according to her, the fate of the previous occupants would influence her life. (She at no point mentioned my life, as if the danger threatened only hers and our lives were not joined by love.) We visited all of the neighborhoods in the city; we went to even the most distant suburbs in search of an apartment where no one had ever lived, but they had all been rented or sold. Finally I found a little house on Montes de Oca Street that looked as if it were made of sugar. Its whiteness gleamed with extraordinary brilliance. It had a phone inside and a tiny garden in front. I thought the house was newly built, but discovered that a family had occupied it in 1930 and that later, to rent it out, the owner had remodeled it. I had to make Cristina believe no one had lived in the house and that it was the ideal place, the house of our dreams. When Cristina saw it, she cried out, “How different it is from the apartments we have seen! Here it smells clean. Nobody will be able to influence our lives or soil them with thoughts that corrupt the air.”