First, I thought about Hunter, but then I excluded him; why speak to him on the phone,
if she could see him whenever she wants at the farm? In that case, who were the others?
I wondered if that took care of the matter of telephone calls. No, it wasn’t finished;
there was still the problem of her answer to my specific question. I though bitterly that
when I asked her if she had thought about me, after so may vague things, she only said,
“didn’t I tell you that I thought about everything? That business of answering a question
with a question did not help very much. In fact, the proof that her answer was not clear
was that she herself felt it was necessary the next day (or that same night) to respond in a
more precise way, with a letter.
“So lets think about the letter,” I said to myself. I took the letter out of my pocket and
read it again:
I also think about you.
Maria
That letter was nervous or, at least the person who wrote it was nervous. That’s not the
same thing, because if the first was true, it showed a real emotion and, therefore, it was a
positive solution for my problem. Whatever it was, I was deeply moved by the signature:
Maria. This simplicity gave me the vague idea of closeness, a vague idea that she was
already a member of my family and so, in a way, she belonged to me.
Alas! My feelings of happiness are so short-lived… For example, that feeling did not
stand up to even the slightest analysis: and didn’t her husband also call her Maria? And
certainly Hunter would call her that too; what else could he call her? And what about the
rest of the people she talked to with the door closed? With the door closed there certainly
wouldn’t be anyone who would call her, “Miss Iribarne.”
“Miss Iribarne!” Now I understood why the housemaid had hesitated that time I made
the telephone call. How ridiculous! When you thought about it, it was another sign that
that sort of call wasn’t completely new. Probably the first time someone asked for “Miss
Iribarne” she would have corrected them, stating that it was Mrs. But then after getting
more calls like that, the housemaid would just shrug her shoulders, and think that it
wasn’t worth it to correct it. She hesitated, of course, but she didn’t correct me.
Turning back to the letter, I thought that there were several possible interpretations. I
started with the most unusual thing: the way in which I received the letter. I remembered
the way the housemaid apologized: “I’m sorry, but I didn’t have your address.” It was
true, she never asked me for my address, nor had I ever thought about telling her what it
was. But the first thing I had done, was to look for her address in the phone book. It was
not possible to think that her attitude was attributable to an inconceivable laziness. So the
only reasonable conclusion was that Maria wanted me to go to her house and see her
husband. But why? That fact led to a very complicated situation. It could be she liked
to use her husband as an intermediary. It could be it was her husband who liked it that
way. Or it could be both of those things. Besides those pathological possibilities, there
was a natural one: Maria had wanted me to know that she was married so that I would see
that it it would be difficult to let things go any further.
I am sure many of those who are now reading this will prefer this last hypothesis and
think that only a man like me could choose one of the others. When I had a few friends,
they often laughed at my mania of always choosing the most complicated possibility.
And I ask myself,
why does reality have to be simple. My experience has taught me that,
on he contrary, it is almost never that way. And when there is something that seems to be
very clear, something that seems to have a simple cause, behind it there are always more
complicated motives. An ordinary example: people who give alms usually feel that it
makes more generous and better than those who do not give. I can’t help but feel disdain
for such a simplistic theory. Any one knows, you will never solve a beggar’s problem
(any real beggar) with a peso, or a piece of bread. All it does is solve the problem of the
person who buys some spiritual tranquility and his title of generosity for almost nothing.
Just think how stingy these people are when they only give one peso a day to reassure
their spiritual tranquility, and the comforting vanity of their kindness. How much more
spiritual purity, and how much more courage it takes to overcome the existence of human
misery than this hypocritical ( and frequent) way of behaving!
But let’s get back to the letter.
Only a superficial spirit could be satisfied with a hypothesis like this, since it would be
shattered by the simplest analysis. “Maria had wanted me to know that she was married
so I would see that it it would be difficult to have things progress further.” Very nice.
But in that case, why resort to such an awkward and cruel method? Couldn’t she have
told me about it herself, on the phone? And if she didn’t want to tell me personally,
couldn’t she have written to me? There was still another serious argument: in that case,
why didn’t the letter say that she was married, and ask me to accept just being friends?
No sir. On the contrary, the letter was supposed to strengthen our relations, to encourage
them, and lead them down a more dangerous path.
So evidently that left the pathological hypotheses. Was it possible that Maria enjoyed
using Allende as an intermediary? Or was it him that looked for these opportunities? Or
had fate been playing games by causing two people with similar characters to meet?
But then I began to regret having considered these possibilities with my habit of having
to endlessly analyze all words and deeds. I remembered how Maria had looked at that
tree in he plaza while she listened to what I was saying; I remembered her timidity, and
how she fled after our first encounter. And I began to be overcome by an overwhelming
feeling of tenderness. It seemed like I was a fragile creature in a world that was cruel and
so full of ugliness and misery. I felt the same as I had felt many times since that moment
when, in the art gallery, there was a person who felt the same way I did.
I forgot about my futile arguments, and my cruel deductions. I tried hard to imagine
her face, her look—that look that reminded me of something I could not define—her
profound and melancholy form of reasoning. I felt like the strong desire for love that I
had felt during so many years of solitude had now centered on Maria. How could I have
thought about so many absurd things?
So then I tried to forget about all of my stupid deductions regarding the phone call, the
letter, the country farm, and Hunter.
But I could not do that.
XIV
The following days were hectic. In my haste I had not asked when Maria would return
from the country farm. Later on the same day that I went to her home and spoke with