realized that he was blind. After that I understood the reason for the abnormal number of
books.
“You
must be Castel, right?” he said to me cordially, extending his hand.
“Yes, Senor Iribarne,” I answered, offering my hand with confusion, while I tried to
imagine what kind of relation there could be between him and Maria.
As he was motioning for me to go and take a seat, I noticed that he was smiling, with a
slight expression of irony, and he added:
“My name isn’t Iribarne, and don’t call me senor. I am Allende, the husband of Maria.
Accustomed to listening and then, after interpreting silences, the immediately added:
“Maria always uses her maiden name.”
I was petrified.
“Maria has often talked about your painting. Although I became blind a few years ago,
I can still imagine fairly well how things look.”
It seemed as though he was trying to excuse himself for being blind. I didn’t know
what to say. What I wanted was to be by myself, somewhere out in the street, so that I
could think about all of this.
He took a letter out of his pocket and handed it to me.
“Here is the letter,” he said with straightforwardness, as if it was nothing important.
I took the letter and was about to put it away when Allende added, as if he had seen
what I was going to do:
“Go ahead and read it. Although, since it’s from Maria, it is probably not anything
urgent.”
I was trembling. I opened the envelope while he lit a cigarette, after offering me one.
I took out the letter; there was only one sentence:
I also am thinking of you.
Maria
When Allende heard me fold the paper, he said:
“Nothing urgent, I suppose.”
“No, nothing urgent.”
I felt like some kind of monster, seeing that man smile as though he was looking at me
with his eyes wide open.
“That’s the way Maria is,” he said like he was talking to himself. "Many confuse her
impulses with urgencies. Maria has a habit of doing things quickly, things that don’t
change anything. How should I put that?”
He looked at the ground abstractedly, as if he were searching for a clearer explanation.
After a moment, he said:
“Like someone who is lost in the desert and quickly finds themselves in a completely
different place. You understand? The speed doesn’t matter, since she is always in the
same setting.”
He smoked for a moment, as if I was not there, and then he added:
“Although I don’t know whether that’s exactly what it is either. I am not very good at
metaphors.
I couldn’t wait to get out of that accursed place, but that blind man didn’t seem to be in
any hurry. “What an abominable comedy this is!” I thought.
“Now, for example,” Allende went on, “she gets up early and tells me that she is going
to the farm.”
“To the farm?” I asked unconsciously.
“Yes, our country farm. That is, the farm of my grandfather. But now it is the hands
of my first cousin, Hunter. I suppose you know him.”
This new revelation filled me with anxiety, and at the same time with disgust: what
interest could Maria have in that cynical womanizer? I tried to calm down, thinking that
Maria wasn’t going to the country because of Hunter but, rather, because she liked to be
alone out in the country, and because the country farm belonged to her family. But I still
felt quite depressed.
“Yes, I have heard things about him,” I said, with bitterness. And before Allende was
able to continue talking, I added, brusquely:
“I have to leave.”
“Good gracious, that’s too bad,” Allende said. “I hope we will see each other again
some time.”
“Yes, of course, naturally,” I replied.
He accompanied me to the door. I shook his hand and left immediately. While I was
in the elevator, I said to myself again with anger: “What an abominable comedy this is!”
XIII
I needed to clear things up and try to think calmly. I walked down Posadas to the side
of Recoleta.
My mind was in pandemonium: several different ideas, feelings of love and hate,
questions, resentments, and memories, were all mixed together and kept on reappearing.
For example, why on earth did she want me to go to her house to get a letter and then
meet her husband? And why hadn’t she told me she was married? And what the devil
did she want to do on the farm with that degenerate Hunter? And why hadn’t she waited
for my telephone call? And that blind man, what sort of a creep was he? I already said I
had a pour opinion of humanity and, as for blind people, I could care less. I feel about
them like I do for some animals, cold, slimy, and silent, like snakes. Then, if I add the
experience of me reading there in front of him this letter from a woman who was saying,
I am also thinking of you, it would not be difficult to guess the revulsion I was feeling at
that moment.
I tried to organize my thoughts and feelings and proceed methodically, as I always do.
I needed to start at the beginning, and the beginning (at least right now) was evidently
when we talked on the telephone. And in that conversation there were various things that
were unclear.
To start with, if the fact was that she was having relations with other men, as that letter
in front of her husband seemed to indicate, why was her voice so impersonal and business
like until the door was closed? Then what did it mean when she told me that “when the
door is closed they know they shouldn’t bother me”? Evidently, she must often close the
door when she talks on the telephone. But it wasn’t likely that she would shut herself off
to have an trivial conversation with friends of the family; that must mean that it was when
she spoke with other people like me. How many were there? And who were they?