him (although that was possible given Maria’s temperament), but that I wanted to clarify
the business of “brotherly love.” As I expected, Maria took a long time to answer. She
must have been trying hard to figure out what to say. Finally, she said:
“I have said that I sleep with him, not that I desire it.”
“Ah!” I said triumphantly. “That means you do it without wanting to, but making him
believe that you desire it.”
“I have not said that,” she murmured slowly.
“Because it’s evident,” I went on implacably. “If you acted like you didn’t feel
anything, and didn’t desire him, if you acted like the physical union is something you
only do because he loves you, because you admire his higher spirit, and so forth, Allende
would never sleep with you again. It other words, the fact that you continue doing it
shows that you are capable of deceiving him, not only about your feelings, but also about
your sensations. And that you are capable of a perfect imitation of pleasure.”
Maria wept silently, and stared at the ground.
“You are incredibly cruel,” she was finally able to say.
“All right, let’s set aside the consideration of ways of acting: I only want to know the
reason. The reason is that you are capable of deceiving your husband for years, not only
about your feelings, but also about your sensations. The conclusion could be that this is
only the first time; if so, how do I know that you haven’t also been deceiving me? Now
you can understand why I have so often tried to ascertain your true feelings. I can always
remember how the father of Desdemona warned Othello that a woman who had deceived
her father was also able to deceive another man. And nothing has been able to make me
forget this fact: that you have been constantly deceiving Allende for years.”
For a moment I felt the desire to increase the level of cruelty, and though I realized the
vulgarity and the stupidity, I added:
“Deceiving a blind man.”
XX
Even before I said that phrase, I felt a little sorry. Behind the fact that I wanted to say
it and feel a sort of perverse satisfaction, a purer, more tender self was resolved to take
the initiative once the cruelty of these words took their effect and, in a way, I had already
silently taken the part of Maria, even before I said those stupid, useless words (what good
could possibly come of them?). So, before they started to come out of my lips that other
self was horrified as if, in spite of everything, it hadn’t really believed that I would say
them. And as they were being said, it started to take control of my consciousness and my
will, and almost arrived at its decision in time to keep the phrase from being finished.
And by the time I finished it (because in spite of everything, I did finish it), it had taken
control of me and was making me ask for Maria’s forgiveness, to humiliate myself before
her, and admit my stupidity and my cruelty. How many times that accursed division
between my different selves had been guilty of atrocious things! While one part of me
wanted to take a positive attitude, the other one denounced the fraud, the hypocrisy, and
the false generosity; while one wants to insult a human being, the other feels sorry for
him, and accuses me of being guilty of the same things I am criticizing in others. While
one makes me see the beauty of the world, the other points out its ugliness and the
ridiculousness of all feelings of happiness are. Unfortunately, it was already too late to
close the open wound in Maria’s soul (and this is what my other self, sunken of a sort of
filthy cave was sure of with malevolent satisfaction), it was now irremediably late. Maria
bent over in silence, with complete exhaustion, while her look (how well I knew it!)
raised the drawbridge that sometimes stretches between our spirits; it was now the hard
look of two impenetrable eyes. The idea that, this bridge had been raised for good,
suddenly occurred to me, and in my sudden desperation I did not hesitate to submit
myself to the greatest humiliations: to kiss her feet, for example. All I accomplished was
for her to look at me with pity, and for her eyes to soften. But out of pity, only with pity.
As she left the studio, she assured me once again that she did not have hard feelings
toward me, and I immersed myself in a total annihilation of willpower. I remained there
without being able to do anything, in the middle of the studio, thinking of that permanent
bridge like a fool. Until I suddenly realized there were several things that I had to do.
I ran out into the street, but Maria was nowhere in sight. I took a taxi to her house,
because I thought she wouldn’t go there right away, and I hoped to meet her before she
arrived. However, I waited there in vain for more than an hour. I called on the telephone
from the café, and they told me she wasn’t there, and hadn’t returned since she left at four
(the time she left to go to my studio). I waited for several more hours. Then I called on
the telephone again, and they told me Maria wouldn’t come home until later that night.
Feeling desperate, I went out to look for her everywhere, that is, in the places where
we usually went, or where we met each other: the Recoleta, the Avenida Centenario, the
Plaza Francia, or Puerto Nuevo. I didn’t find her in any of those places, and I finally
realized that the most likely thing was exactly that she would go anywhere, except for
those places. I started to go back to her house again, but it was already very late and she
probably would have already entered. So I called on the telephone again and, in fact, she
had returned; but they told me that she was already in bed and that she would not be able
to speak on the phone. She had mentioned my name, however.
Something had broken between us.
XXI
I went home, feeling totally alone.
Usually, that feeling of being alone in the world came mixed with an arrogant feeling
of superiority. I felt scorn for other people; I pictured them as filthy, ugly, incompetent,
stupid, and mean. My solitude didn’t bother me, it felt practically Olympian.
But at that moment, as in many other similar ones, I found myself alone as a result of
my own worst attributes and the base things I had done. At times like that I felt the world
was despicable, but I understood that I was also part of it. In those moments I was
invaded by a fury of annihilation and was tempted by the idea of suicide, I drank until I
was drunk, and I looked for prostitutes. And I feel a certain satisfaction in proving my
baseness, and in verifying that I am no better than the foul creatures around me.
That night I got drunk in a little café. I was in the worst of my drunkenness when I felt
so much disgust for the woman I was with, and for the sailors around me, that I ran out of
the café. I walked down Viamonte until I came to the docks. I sat down there and wept.
The dirty water below me constantly tempted me. Why should I have to suffer like this?