“That’s all right. But I still don’t understand the reason why you felt like you had to
destroy his letters.”
“I already told you, they made me feel depressed.”
“But you could have kept them without reading them. And that only proves that you
read them again, until you burned them. And if you read them again, it must have been
because there was something in them that attracted you.”
“I never said that he wasn’t attractive.”
“You said he wasn’t your type.”
“My God, My God. Death isn’t my type either, but just the same it often attracts me.
Richard attracted me something like the way I am attracted by death, or the void. But I
think one shouldn’t turn themselves over passively to feelings like that. Maybe that is the
reason I didn’t love him. That’s why I burned his letters. When he died, I decided to
destroy everything that prolonged his existence.”
She still felt depressed, and I could get another word from out of her about Richard.
But I should also say that it wasn’t really Richard that bothered me most, since by now I
knew enough about him. It was the unknown persons, the shadows she never mentioned
that, nevertheless, I felt were still moving about silently and mysteriously in her life. The
worst things I imagined about her were those anonymous shadows. They tortured me,
and today I am still tortured by a word that escaped from her lips in a moment of physical
pleasure.
But of all those complicated interrogations, there was one the threw tremendous light
on Maria and her love.
XIX
Obviously, since she had married Allende, it was logical to think that once she must
have felt something for that man. I should say that this problem, that we could call “the
Allende problem,” was one that obsessed me the most. There were several enigmas that I
wanted very much to clarify, but especially these two: had she loved him before?, and did
she still love him? These two questions could not be considered all by themselves, since
they were related to others: if she didn’t love Allende, who did she love? Me? Hunter?
One of those mysterious persons on the telephone? Or, was it possible that she loved
different people in different ways, like it happens with certain men? But it was also
possible that she didn’t love anyone, and that, one after another, she told each one of us
poor devils that we were the only one, and that the others were nothing more than
shadows with whom she had only a superficial, or apparent, relationship.
One day I decided to clarify the Allende problem. I began by asking her why she had
married him.
“I loved him,” she said.
“So now you don’t love him.”
“I didn’t say that I stopped loving him,” she responded.
“You said “I loved him.” You didn’t say, “I love him.”
“You always questions words, and then you twist them so they’re unbelievable,” Maria
protested. “When I said I married him because I loved him, I didn’t mean I no longer
love him.”
“Ah, then you do love him,” I said quickly, as though I was trying to catch her saying
something that contradicted something she had told me earlier.
She remained silent, looking hurt.
“Why don’t you say anything?” I asked.
“Because it seems useless. We’ve had this same discussion many times in almost the
same form.”
“No, it’s not the same as other times. I asked you if you loved Allende now, and you
told me you did. I seem to remember that once before, here in the doorway, you told me
that I was the first person you had loved.”
Maria was silent again. I was irritated not only because she was contradictory, but also
because it was always so difficult to get her to make any declaration.
“So what’s your answer?” I asked her again.
“There are many ways to love, and be loved,” she answered, exhausted. “You will
think that now I can no longer love Allende in the same way I did when we were married
many years ago.”
“In what way was that?”
“What do mean, in what way? You know what I mean.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“I have told you many times.”
“You have told me, but you have never explained.”
“Explained!” she said bitterly. “You have said many times there are many things that
you can’t explain, and now you tell me to explain something so complicated. I have told
you quite often that Allende is a great companion for me, that I love him like a brother,
that I take care of him, that I feel a great tenderness for him, a great admiration for his
calm spirit that, in many ways, is superior to me in every way and that, in comparison to
him, I feel ungenerous and guilty. How could you ever imagine that I don’t love him?”
“I’m not the one who said you don’t love him. You yourself have told me that now it
is not like it was when you were married. Perhaps I ought to conclude that when you
were married you loved him like you say you now love me. On the other hand, several
days ago, in the port, you told me I was the first person you had truly loved.”
Maria looked at me sadly.
“All right let’s forget this contradiction,” I continued. “And let’s go back to Allende.
You said you loved him like a brother. Now I need to have you answer a single question:
Do you sleep with him?”
Maria looked at me with even greater sadness. She was silent for a while, and then she
asked me with a sad voice:
“Is it necessary that I also have to answer that?”
“Yes, it’s absolutely necessary,” I insisted.
“It seems horrible that you are interrogating me like this.”
“It’s quite simple: you only have to say yes or no.”
“The answer is not that simple: one can do it, and not do it.”
“All right,” I said coldly. “That means yes then.”
“All right: yes.”
“Then you desire him.”
I made that affirmation carefully watching her eyes; I did it with a bad intention; it was
the best way to make several conclusions. It’s not that I thought that Maria really desired