We sat down on a bench. I squeezed her arm and repeated her name stupidly, many
times. I was not able to say anything else, and she remained silent.
Finally, I asked her forcefully, “Why did you go to the farm?” “Why did you leave
me alone? Why did you leave that letter in your house? Why didn’t you tell me that you
were married?”
She didn’t answer. I pressed on her arm. She moaned.
“You’re hurting me, Juan Pablo,” she said softly.
“Why don’t you say anything? Why didn’t you answer my questions?”
She still didn’t say anything.
“Why? Why?”
She finally answered:
“Why does everything have to have an answer? Let’s not talk about me. Let’s talk
about you, about your work, and your preferences. I have constantly thought about your
painting, and about what you told me in San Martin Plaza. I want to know what you are
doing now, if you have painted anything or not.”
I pressed on her arm again with anger.
“No,” I responded. “I do not want to talk about me, I want to talk about the two of us;
I want to know if you love me. Only that: if you love me.”
She didn’t answer. Frustrated by her silence and by the darkness that didn’t let me see
her expression and guess her thoughts, I lit a match. She quickly turned around and hid
her face. I grabbed her head with my other hand and forced her to look at me; she was
crying silently.
“Ah… So then you don’t love me,” I said bitterly.
However, as the match was going out I saw she was looking at me tenderly. Then, in
total darkness, I felt her hand caress my face. She told me softly:
“Of course I love you… Why do we have to say things like that?”
“Yes,” I answered, “but how do you love me? There are many ways to love. One can
love a dog, or a child. I am talking about love, true love, do you understand?”
I had a rare intuition; I quickly lit another match. Just like I had intuited, Maria’s face
was smiling. That is, she wasn’t smiling then, but she had been smiling a millisecond
before that. I have often turned around when I had the feeling that someone is spying on
me from behind only to find nobody was there; and still, I could tell that the emptiness
surrounding me was recent, and that something had just disappeared, as if a slight tremor
was vibrating nearby. This was something similar.
“You were smiling,” I insisted angrily.
“Smiling?” she asked, with astonishment.
“Yes, smiling; I am not someone you can deceive easily. I always pay close attention
to little details.”
“And what details have you noticed?”
“There was still something in your face. The after-affect of a smile.”
“And what was there that I could smile at?” she insisted sharply.
“At me, at my naivety, at my question if you really loved me, or only like a child, what
do I know… But you were smiling. Of that I have no doubt.”
Maria suddenly stood up.
“What are you doing?” I asked anxiously.
“I am leaving,” she answered tersely.
I jumped up like a spring.
“What do you mean you’re leaving?”
“I said I am leaving.”
“What do you mean you’re leaving? Why?”
She didn’t answer. I grabbed her arms and started to shake her.
“Tell me why you are leaving?”
“I am afraid you wouldn’t understand me.”
I was furious.
“What? I ask you something which, for me, is a matter of live or death, and instead of
answering me, you smile, and then you’re annoyed. Of course I wouldn’t understand.”
“You are imagining that I smiled,” she answered tersely.
“I am sure of it.”
“Well, you are mistaken. And it hurts me terribly that you would think that.”
I didn’t know what to think. In truth, I had not seen a smile, but something like a trace
of one, on a face that was now serious.
“I don’t know, Maria. Forgive me” I said despondently. “But I was so sure that you
had smiled.”
After that I was silent, still feeling despondent. After a moment I felt her hand take
hold of my arm tenderly. Then I heard her say, weakly, and painfully:
“But how could you think that?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” I said, almost weeping.
She made me sit down again, and she caressed my face tenderly, like she had done
before.
“I warned you I would do you great harm,” she said after a few moments of silence.
“Now you can see that I was right.”
“It was my fault,” I responded.
“No, perhaps it has been my fault,” she said pensively, as if she was talking to herself.
“How strange,” I thought.
“What is strange?” Maria asked.
I was astonished, and I even thought (may days afterward) that she had even been able
to read my thoughts. Now, today, I am no longer sure that I might not actually have said
those words out loud without realizing it.
“What is strange?” she asked me again since, in my confusion, I hadn’t answered her.
“It is strange about your age.”
“My age?”
“Yes, your age. How old are you?’’
“How old do you think I am?”
“That’s exactly what is strange,” I answered. “The first time I saw you, I thought you
were a girl who was about twenty six years old.”
“And now?”
“No, not now; at first I was puzzled, because something about your appearance made
me think…”
“What did it make you think?”
“I made me think of something many years ago. Sometimes I feel like I must have
known you when I was a child”
“How old are you?”