in the tub. I needed to clarify my thoughts, so I stayed there until I felt more refreshed.
Little by little, I was able to get full control of my thoughts. I tried to think with absolute
precision because I had the feeling I had arrived a crucial point. Which thoughts were the
starting point? The ideas were: perverse woman, Maria, prostitute, pleasure, simulation.
These words, I thought, must represent the essential point, the main truth from which I
must begin. I made repeated efforts to place them in the right order until I was able to put
them together in this terrible, but unmistakable, fashion: Maria and the prostitute had
shown a similar expression; the prostitute simulated pleasure; Maria ,therefore,
simulated pleasure; Maria was a prostitute.
“Whore!” I shouted repeatedly several times, jumping out of the bathtub with my body
still dripping.
My mind was now functioning with the lucid ferocity of my best days. I saw clearly
that it was necessary to end things, and that I must not let myself be fooled by her
sorrowful voice, or her simulations. I had to let myself be guided by logic, and I must
continue without fear of the final results, the suspicious expressions, the pained gestures,
and the ambiguous silences, of Maria.
It was as though the images of a nightmare were moving rapidly under the glow of a
monstrous spotlight. As I quickly got dressed, I thought about all the suspicious things:
our first conversation on the phone with the amazing capacity of simulation, and the way
she did it with her change of voice; the dark shadows surrounding Maria that were
revealed by so many enigmatic things; what she said about her fear of “hurting me” that
could only mean “I will hurt you with my lies, with my inconsistency, with my ulterior
motives, and with the simulation of my sentiments and feelings,” since she could not hurt
me by really loving me; the painful scene of the matches; and how at first she had shied
away from my kisses, and how she had only agreed to physical love when it would have
forced her to admit her aversion or, at best, her maternal, or brotherly, feeling of love,
and kept me from believing her spurts of pleasure, or her words and expressions of
ecstasy; and besides, her real attitude toward sex could hardly have come from her
experience with a stoic person like Allende; and her expression of love for her husband
only revealed once more her capacity to deceive with apocryphal feelings and sensations;
and the family circle formed by a group of hypocrites and liars; and the self-possession
and the efficiency with which she had deceived her two cousins with the nonexistent
stains on the door; and actions during supper at the farm as well as the jealousy of
Hunter; and those words she had admitted on the edge of the cliff: “once she had been
mistaken”; but how?, and with whom?, then “the cruel and tormenting actions” of that
other cousin, words that came from her lips unconsciously, when she didn’t answer my
request for an explanation since she didn’t hear me, she did not listen to me, because she
was caught up in the memory of her childhood, in what was perhaps the only authentic
confession she had ever made when I was there; and, finally, that horrendous expression
of that perverted or degenerate woman, or whatever she was. Then, that filthy bitch who
had laughed at my paintings and the the fragile creature who had encouraged me to paint
them, both had the same expression at different times! My God, to think that between
certain passages of Brahms and a sewer, there are only hidden and sinister underground
passages!
XXXIII
Many of the assumptions I drew from that lucid, but phantasmagoric evaluation were
hypothetical, things that I couldn’t prove, although I was still certain I was not mistaken.
However, I suddenly realized that until then I had ignored one important possibility of
finding what I wanted to know: the opinion of other people. With great satisfaction and
with more intense clarity, I thought for the first time about the procedure, and also the
perfect person: Lartigue. He was an intimate friend of Hunter. It is true that he was also
a despicable person: he had written a book of poems about the vanity of human nature,
and he complained about the fact that he hadn’t been awarded the National Prize. But my
scruples were not going to stop me. With repugnance, but with determination, I called
him on the phone and told him I urgently had to speak with him. I went to see him at his
house and praised his book; and then (with his great disgust, because he wanted to keep
on talking about his book), I asked him, point blank, a question I had already prepared:
“How long has Maria Iribarne been Hunter’s lover?”
My mother never asked if we had eaten an apple, since she was sure that we would
deny it; she asked how many have you eaten, wisely acting like she already knew what
she wanted to find out: then, subtly drawn by her quantitative tone, we would say that we
only had eaten one apple.
Lartigue was vain and self-centered, but he was not stupid: he suspected there was
some strange reason for my question, and he tried to avoid it by answering:
“I don’t know anything about that.”
And he went back again to say more about the book and the prize. With great disgust,
I shouted:
“What a great injustice has been done to your book!”
I started running away. As I said, Lartigue was not stupid, but he didn’t realize that
what he said was already enough to let me know what I wanted.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon. Maria should now be back in Buenos Aires. I
called her on the phone from a café (I didn’t have the patience to wait until got back to
my studio). As soon as she answered, I said:
“I need to see you right away.”
I tried not to show my hate, because I was afraid that she would suspect something and
would not come to see me. We agreed that we would meet in Recoleta, in the place we
usually met.
“Although I don’t know what we will gain by this,” she added, sadly.
“Many things,” I insisted; “Many things.”
“You think so?” she asked with a tone of desperation.
“Of course.”
“Well, I’m afraid that we will only do ourselves a little more harm, and destroy even
more the fragile bridge that connects us, and hurt us with even more cruelty. I have come
back to Buenos Aires since you asked me to so often, but I really should have stayed on
the farm. Hunter is ill.”
“Another lie,” I thought.
“Thank you very much,” I said curtly. “Then we agree we will see each other at five
o’clock.”
Maria assented, with a sigh.