#CuentosEnInfobae: "Shadows on frosted glass", by Juan José Saer

To Biby Castellaro

How complex time is, and yet how simple! Now I'm sitting on the Vienna armchair, in the living room, and I can see Leopoldo's shadow undressing in the bathroom. It seems very simple when thinking "now", but discovering the extent of that "now" in space, I immediately realize the poverty of memory. The memory is a very small part of each "now", and the rest of the "now" does nothing more than appear, and that very rarely, and in a very fleeting way, as a memory. Take the case of my right breast. At the time it was cut off, how many other breasts were slowly growing into other breasts less worn by time than mine? And in this moment when I see the shadow of my brother-in-law Leopoldo projected on the glass of the bathroom door and I reach for the empty bodice, stuffed with a false cotton breast placed on the white scar, how many hands they go to how many true breasts, with trembling and delight? That is why I say that the present is largely memory and that time is complex, although in the light of memory it seems very simple.

I am the poet Adelina Flores. Am I the poetess Adelina Flores? I am fifty-six years old and have published three books: The Lost Path, Light in the Distance, and The Harsh Darkness. Now I see the shadow of my brother-in-law Leopoldo projected enlarged on the glass of the bathroom door. The door does not lead to the living room, but to a kind of antechamber, and only by chance, because it is closer to the front door, which I have left open to get some air, I have brought the Vienna armchair to this place and I am swinging slowly on it. Vienna's chair creaks slightly. I couldn't stand my room, and not just because of the heat. That's why I came here. It is difficult to bear the sunsets of this terrible January locked up among dusty books. Susan is out. She never goes out, but today she said that her right leg hurt and she asked for an appointment with the doctor. So she's been out since six. Rocking slowly, I watch Leopoldo carefully unbutton his shirt, take it off, and then turn around to hang it on the hook in the bathroom. Now he begins to unbutton his pants. I notice that my hand is on the handful of cotton that forms the bodice on the right side of my body, and I lower his hand. I have seen cities and countries grow and change like human beings, but I have never been able to bear that change in my body. Neither does the other: because although I have remained intact, I have seen that apparent immutability alter over time. And I have discovered that many times it is what changes in one that allows one to remain the same. And that what remains intact can change it for the worse. Leopoldo's shadow is projected on the frosted glass, in a strange way, moving, now that Leopoldo bends down to take off his pants, bending down to unsheath one leg first, standing up when he does, and bending down again to take out the other, standing up another. once right away.

("Shadows" "Shadows on" "When a shadow on glass I see" No.) That boy, what was his name? Tomatis. He once told me what he thinks of me, at the round table on the influence of literature on the education of adolescents. I didn't want to be on that college stage. But the editor came to me and said: "Don't you think that if you came out more often in public to expose your points of view, The Hard Darkness could get out a little more, Adelina?" So I saw myself sitting on stage in front of a full house. There were hundreds of faces looking at me waiting for me to give my opinion, in that cold and echoing room. Tomatis was sitting at the other end of the table. I made a short exposition, although the presence of all those waiting people inhibited me a lot. (Leopoldo carefully adjusts the pants, holding them by the cuffs, with his arm raised to preserve the crease. Then he folds them and begins to pass them over the crossbar of a hanger: I see him.) When I finished speaking, Tomatis began to laugh. "Miss Flores," he said, laughing and looking thoughtful, "has said beautiful words about the condition of human beings. Too bad they're not true. I say, Miss Flores, has she been leaving her house lately?» The hundreds of people who were sitting watching us burst out laughing. I didn't say another word; and when the round table ended and we went to the lunch offered by the university, Tomatis sat next to me. He spent the whole time chatting and laughing, smoking and drinking wine. And in an aside he turned to me and said: «Don't you believe in the importance of fornication, Adelina? I do believe. That happens to you, the older generation: you have fornicated too little, or failing that, not at all. Knows? It is said that you have one less breast. No, I'm not drunk. Or yes, maybe a little yes. It's true? Don't you think you killed him yourself? I think so. Knows? I like you very much, Adelina. He's got a couple of sonnets lying around that are worth a look. Forgive my frankness, but that's who I am. You should fornicate more, Adelina, you know, break the straitjacket of the sonnet—because inherited forms are a kind of virginity—and start with something else. I bet my head that you are capable of getting ahead. You who have it nearby, pass me that bottle of wine. Thank you". I remember the place perfectly: a downtown restaurant with red and white checkered tablecloths, dirty dishes, leftover fish, and half-empty bottles of red wine. Now Leopoldo has taken off his underpants and is looking at him. He is completely naked. He leans down to drop it into the laundry basket on the side of the bathroom, next to the tub. I can see his shadow enlarged, but not disproportionately so, on the frosted glass of the bathroom door leading into the antechamber.

At this moment, only that shadow is 'now', and the rest of 'now' is nothing but memory. And sometimes, so different from "now", that memory, that it is something to start crying. It is terrible to think that the only thing visible and real is nothing more than shadows. If I think that at this very moment bathers are walking around in bathing suits under the calm trees of the Parque del Sur, I know that this is not now, but rather a memory. Because it is possible that at this moment there is not a single bather in the South Park, or, if there is one, they are not walking precisely under the trees that I think I remember; they may even be all lying on the sand on the beach, or in the water, while the setting sun turns the lagoon red and two boys throw a rubber ball at each other, which rumbles silently as it hits the sand. land. But I like to imagine that at this time, in the neighborhoods, the girls walk around in groups of three or four arm in arm, freshly bathed and perfumed, and that groups of boys watch them from the corner. I can see the downtown streets full of cars and buses and Susana slowly going down the stairs to the doctor's house, carefully because of her sore leg. It is as if she is here and at the same time in every part. It is so complex and yet so simple! Now I turn my head slightly and see the screen that opens onto the patio. I glimpse the curtained windows and the last glow of the afternoon that penetrates the living room through the large green curtains. I also see the empty, abandoned armchairs—and how many times have Susana, Leopoldo, or I or the visitors sat in them!—covered in flowery Provençal. The flowers are green and blue, on a white background. There is a floor lamp, next to one of the armchairs, turned off. But I've brought my mother's old Vienna armchair from my room and I've sat on it —I'm rocking slowly— so that the air from the street crosses the living room and permeates like cold water or like a smell on my body. Now that I don't see the frosted glass bathroom door, what is projected on it? Surely Leopoldo's naked body—Leopold's naked body!—but in what position? Will he have his arms raised, scratch his chest with both hands, touch his hair, or lean back slightly to look in the mirror? It's terrible, but that now, so close, is nothing more than a memory; and if I turn my head again towards the door that leads to the antechamber the "now" of the empty and abandoned armchairs with flowered covers, and the curtains through which the twilight penetrates, it will be nothing more than a memory. I turn my head; now. Leopold's shadow has disappeared. He has to be seated, relieving himself. ("I see a shadow on glass. I see." "I see a shadow on glass. I see.")

In the empty glass one sees nothing more than the diffuse glow of the electric light, turned on inside the bathroom. It is one of those terrible days of January, of ashen light; It's not cloudy or anything, but the light has an ashen color, as if the sun had gone out long ago and the reflection of a dead light reached the planet. My simple gray dress and gray hair condense this moist and dead light, and are as if haloed by a putrid glow; and as I have just bathed I have done nothing but condense moisture on my old white skin full of veins like quartz. My arms rest on the curved wood of the Vienna chair. In time, if I am alive, I will take on the color of the mat on the chair, I will gradually become yellowish and shiny, polished by time. That is the basis of its simplicity. In that it only polishes and simplifies and preserves the unalterable, reducing everything to simplicity. They tell me it destroys, but I don't think so. All it does is simplify. What is fragile and pure flesh that turns to dust disappears, but what has a solid core of stone or bone, that becomes soft and limpid over time and remains. Now Susana must be slowly walking down the white marble stairs of the doctor's house, holding on to the handrail to take care of her sore leg; now she has just reached the street and stands for a moment on the sidewalk without knowing which direction to take, because she rarely goes out and always gets disoriented in the center of the city; she is in her blue dress, her glasses (they always think Adelina Flores is her, because of her glasses, and not me) and her black shoes with thick low heels, which have laces like men's shoes; She looks disconcertedly in different directions, because for a moment she doesn't know which one to take, while in the light of twilight people in a hurry and dressed in summer pass by on the sidewalk, and a roar of buses and cars on the street. Now with a movement of her head and a gesture that does not reveal the slightest sense of humor, removing her fingers from her lips, where she had put them mechanically when adopting a thoughtful attitude, Susana remembers in which direction the corner where she has to take the bus is. and begins to walk slowly, decrepit and rheumatic, towards her. There is like a fever that has taken hold of the city, over her head—and she doesn't notice it—in this terrible January. But it is a deaf fever, recondite, subterranean, stationary, penetrating, like the light of ashes that wraps the gray city from the sky in a morbid circle of condensed clarity. ("I see a shadow on a pane of glass. I see.") I see Susana slowly traversing the heavy, gray air toward the bus stop where she must wait for the sixteenth to take it home. That is if she has already left the doctor's because it is likely that she has not even entered the office yet and she is sitting reading a magazine in the waiting room. The ceiling of the waiting room is high; I have been there hundreds of times, very tall, and the set of wooden armchairs with the central table for magazines and the ashtray is too fragile and small in relation to that very high ceiling and the extension of the waiting room, which originally it was actually the hall of the house. ("Something I loved" "I see a shadow on glass. I see" "something I loved" "shadowed, projected" "shadowed and projected" "I see a shadow on glass. I see" "something I loved shadowed and projected") I can hear the slow, even creak of the Vienna chair. I know how to spend hours rocking slowly, my head leaning against the backrest, staring at a point of emptiness, without seeing it, inside my room, surrounded by dusty books, hearing the old wood creak as if I were listening to my own bones . From my room I have been listening for thirty years to the noises of the house and the city, like cloudscapes of sound accumulated on a white horizon. Now I hear the sudden noise of the flushing toilet and the rush of water in a rapid torrent, full of metallic tinkles; then the jet that refills the tank. Leopoldo's shadow reappears on the frosted glass of the door; he stands in profile; he must be looking at himself in the mirror. Will he shave himself? I see how she runs her hand over his face. He has kept the line, for so many years, but he has been filled with weakness and fragility. As I rock, going forward and coming back, the shadow first gives the impression of advancing, and then receding. He came home for me the first time, but then he married Susana. Everything is terribly literary. ("in the dark reflection") It was a relief, after all. But the first two years, before they got married and Leopoldo started working as a publicity agent for the city newspaper—the first publicity agent in the city, I think, and in that he was a real pioneer—the first two years we had fun like crazy, without resting a single day, coming and going day and night through the city, in winter and summer, until one day the day before we spent the entire day on the beach, when Leopoldo came home at night and told him He asked the late father for Susana's hand after dinner. But the day before had been a real party. It was a Friday, I remember perfectly. Leopoldo came to look for us very early in the morning, when it had just dawned; he was all in white, just like us, who wore white dresses and white beach hats as I'm sure no one in this blessed city has dared to wear until today. I carried with me Alfonsina's verses. She [she's going to shave, yes. Now she has opened the medicine cabinet and looks inside looking for the elements ("in the dark reflection" "on the transparency" "of desire") She raises her arms and begins to take out the elements.] It was already December, but it was cool in the morning. I drove Dad's Studebaker myself, and Susana sat next to me. Leopoldo was in the back seat, next to the picnic basket, covered with a white tablecloth. The air ("on the transparency of desire" "as on frosted glass"), fresh, clean, shone, penetrating through the hollow of the low windows that vibrated with the movement of the car. In the rearview mirror I could see Leopoldo's face turned slightly towards the window, looking pensively at the river. We went to a deserted beach, far from the city, on the Colastiné side. There were three willow trees leaning toward the river—the shadow seemed transparent—and yellow sand. We swam all morning and I read Alfonsina's poems to them: and when I got to where it says: "A point of heaven/will touch/the human house," I separated from them and went far away, among the trees, to start crying. They didn't notice anything. Afterwards we spread out the white tablecloth and ate chatting and laughing under the trees. We had prepared kidney —Leopold likes offal a lot— and I don't know how many other things, and we had left a bottle of white wine in the water all morning, just under the three willows, so that the water would cool it down. It was the best moment of the day: we were very tanned by the sun and Leopoldo was tall, strong, and he would laugh at anything. Susana was extraordinarily pretty. The laughing and chatting thing we all liked, but the best thing was that at a certain moment none of the three spoke more and everything was silent. We must have been like this for more than ten minutes. If I pay attention, if I listen, if I try to listen without any fear that the clarity of the memory will hurt me, I can hear how clearly the cutlery clicked against the porcelain of the plates, the sound of our heavy breathing echoing in an air so still that seemed deposited on a dead planet, the slow and opaque sound of water coming to die on the yellow beach. At one point I thought I could hear the grass growing around us. And right away, in the middle of the silence, the stares began. We were looking at each other for about five minutes, serious, frank, calm. We didn't do more than that: we looked at each other, Susana at me, I at Leopoldo, Leopoldo at me and Susana, terribly serene, and then I didn't care that at around five o'clock, when I came back quietly after having done a solo expedition to the island —and he would come back quietly to surprise them and make them laugh, because he thought they were still playing broomstick—, he saw them embracing each other from the undergrowth and heard Susana's voice speaking between gasps saying: «Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. But she can come. She can come. She can come. Yes. Yes. But she can come ». I saw them, clearly: he was lying on top of her and his bathing suit was below her knees. The part of her body that I had never seen was white, milky, and it seemed smooth to me and the thought of ever touching it turned my stomach. At that moment there was a rustle in the undergrowth and Leopoldo jumped to his feet, allowing Susana to fully see that she had let the straps of her bathing suit slide and had put her arms out between them in such a way that the bathing suit It had gone down to the belly. I already knew those parts of Susana's body that weren't toasted, I had seen them many times. But when Leopoldo jumped, with difficulty, with his bathing suit below his knee, he turned in the direction I was, out of modesty, since the noise had been heard in the opposite direction from where I was. I saw that, huge, shaking heavily, from a thicket of dark hair; I have seen it other times on horses, but not swinging at me. It was a second, because Leopoldo immediately pulled up his bathing suit and quickly sat down in front of Susana —and I couldn't see when Susana pulled up her bathing suit, straightened her hair and picked up the cards, but she was already waiting for him when he sat down hastily pawing two or three cards off the floor. I stayed motionless for more than fifteen minutes, until I saw them calm, and I felt that way myself. Then we bathed from twilight until nightfall—I think I can still hear the splash of our wet bodies that shone in the blue darkness—and the next day Leopoldo asked poor dad for Susana's hand.

At this moment I can see how Leopoldo, using his hand in a circular motion, fills his face with foam with the brush. He does it quickly; now he lowers his arm and the shadow of his face, on the frosted glass that also reflects the confused light inside the bathroom, has been transformed: the shadow of the foam that covers his cheeks looks like the shadow of a beard, a thicket of dark hair He raises his arm again and taps the tip of the brush on his chin, several times and gently, as if he had become thoughtful; but that cannot be seen. He puts down the brush and after a moment he raises both hands again, in one of which he has the razor, and begins to shave slowly, carefully. Slowly, carefully, Susana must already be going down the white stairs of the doctor's house, towards the street. She is going to stop for a moment on the sidewalk to get her bearings, because she hardly ever goes downtown. Leopoldo's shadow is now projected showing how he shaves, slowly, carefully, with the razor; now he switches the razor from hand to hand and runs the back of his free hand across his cheek, against the grain, to test the effectiveness of the shave. I know what he's going to do when he's finished shaving and bathing: he's going to take the sloth to the patio, among the pots full of begonias, ferns, amaranths, and maidenhairs, and he's going to sit on the sloth in the middle of the patio; she is going to be there for a while, smoking in the dark; she's going to say: "Are there any spirals left, Susana, my dear?" and then she's going to start humming under her breath. Every evening from September to March she does exactly that. After a moment she will pour the first vermouth with bitters and I will be able to tell when she is going to refill her glass because the clink of the ice against the walls of the half-empty glass will let me know that she is already finishing it. He goes to ("In confusion, suddenly, hardly"). I feel the bones of the Vienna chair creak. As soon as he's shaved and showered he's going to do it: he's going to take the sloth to the center of the mosaic patio, the orange canvas sloth, after putting on his freshly laundered pajamas, and he's going to smoke a cigarette before ( «I saw that it exploded» «I saw» «I saw the explosion of a body and of a» «and its» «the explosion» «I saw the explosion of a body and its shadow» «In confusion, suddenly, barely», « I saw the explosion of a body and its shadow») The ember of the cigarette, a red dot, will seem like a single eye, sleepless and without blinking, brightening with each puff. And when I hear the clink of ice against the cold walls of the glass, I'll know that he has had his first vermouth with bitters and that he is going to pour himself the second.

The time of each one is a thin, transparent thread, like sewing threads, to which the hand of God ties a knot from time to time and in which the flow seems to stop only because the slope loses linearity. Or as a straight line marked in pencil with a cross crossing it from stretch to stretch, which stretches illusorily before the eyes of the beholder because his vision divides the line into the fragments between cross and cross. The cross thing is fine, because the cross means death. Mom and Dad died in '48, within six months of each other. Peronism took dad away: it was something he couldn't stand. And mom finished six months after him, because she had always followed him. "After the first year of marriage," Mom told me on her deathbed, "she never had any consideration for me. But what can I do without it? I was wearing a gray tailored suit, I remember perfectly; Mom sat up and grabbed me by her lapels, pulling me towards her; she had extraordinarily wide eyes and a wrinkled, shriveled face, and she wasn't too old. I've never seen that. And it wasn't that she was afraid of death. She had never had it. She began to make a terrible effort, panting, blinking, stretching out her worn, smooth lips that were filling with saliva or drool—I don't know what it was—and I realized that she wanted to tell me something. She didn't get it. She died clinging to the lapels of my gray suit and — ("now silence weaves ditties") All these years I keep thinking about what mom tried to tell me. I had to make a terrible effort to tear her clutching hands from my lapels; and they were so taut and white that I could feel the fierce whiteness of bone and cartilage. When twelve years later they cut off my breast, I dreamed that I ripped my mother's hands from my lapels ("longer" "now silence weaves ditties," "longer") and that one of her hands took my breast . But she didn't take it to hurt me, but to protect me from something. That dream returns almost every night, as if a needle formed with my life, in a mechanical and regular way, a fabric with a single point. I know that tonight he will return. I'm going to wake up gasping and sobbing quietly in my lonely bed, surrounded by dusty books, close to dawn, but then I'm going to breathe a sigh of relief. They each secretly know the meaning of their own dreams, and I know that if Mama wants to take my breast to her grave, there is something well-intentioned about her, even though her act may seem bad—and it may be. We can only judge our actions in relation to what we have expected from life and what it has given us. It also gave Mom and me that morning—that knot, that cross—where Dad sat down very early to have breakfast with us. He went the day after joining the Peronist party. ("Now silence weaves" "longer" ditties) Dad was sitting at the head and we didn't speak to him because we could tell he was very nervous ("they last longer.") He didn't talk to us when he was irritated. The skin of her face had always caught my attention because of how white it was and how, however, on the upper part of her cheeks, near her cheekbones, faint, complicated networks of red veins had formed. Dad had his second cup of coffee and then leaned back in his chair and started snoring. They were hissing, dry, hidden and cavernous snores ("that last longer than the body" "and the shadow" "that last longer than the body and the shadow"). I first saw the fly traversing the network of red veins on the right cheek, like a black signal moving along a railway network drawn in red lines on a map projected on a transparent wall. But I didn't start muttering "Mom. Mama"—without looking away from Papa's face for a moment—until I saw the fly begin to descend, as easily as it might have done on a stone, from the cheekbone to the corner of the mouth, and then it went into the mouth. It didn't seem to have entered Dad's mouth, to have been running through Dad's body, but nothing more than a stone reproduction of him, because he didn't even snore anymore.

Now Leopoldo changes his razor again and continues shaving. When he leans towards the mirror to see himself better, the profile of his shadow disappears, cut straight by the wooden frame of the door, and on the glass the diffuse reflection is seen —like a few scales of light arranged in a concentric, pointillist way— of electric light. I rock gently in Vienna's chair. I turn my head and see how the gray light penetrates the room through the green curtains, making it even paler. Empty chairs know how to be busy at times—but that's just a memory. If I got up and reached the patio and raised my head, I could see a fragment of the sky, emptying itself into the hole left by the mossy, gray walls. Stepping out the door, he would look out at the empty, treeless street filled with one-story houses, facing each other in two straight, regular rows across the gray tile sidewalk and cobblestone street. At night, in the vicinity of the light on the corner, you can see the cobblestones shimmer dully. The insects flutter around the light, blind and clumsy, crash into the metal screen with a bang, then crawl across the cobblestone with broken wings. They can be seen in the morning crushed against the gray stones by the wheels of automobiles. At night I know how to hear his murmur. And when there were trees on the block, at this time the monotonous stridor of the cicadas began. They began separately, the first one very early, around five, and immediately another one began to be heard, and then another and another, as if there had been a million singing in unison. I couldn't bear it. Having given in and coming to live with them was already unbearable. I was afraid, always, to open a door, any door, the bathroom, the bedroom, the kitchen, and see him appear with it in view, swaying heavily, pointing at me from a thicket of dark hair. . I have never been able to look at him from the waist down, since that time. But the thing about the cicadas was already truly terrible. So I would get dressed and go out alone, in the evening; I told them I was short of breath. First he walked through the Parque del Sur, with its motionless lake of putrid waters, on which the dirty lights of the park were reflected; I crossed the irregular paths, and then I headed towards the center through San Martín, penetrating more and more the illuminated zone; from there I would go for a walk around the bus station and then I would go through the playground that stretched out in front of it before they built the Post Office building; I went to the dovecote, a cylinder of woven wire, with its pointed red dome, and listened for a long time to the tense flapping of the pigeons. I never dared to walk alone along the avenue of the port to cut the road and reach the suspension bridge on foot. He arrived at the bridge by bus or tram. I'd get off the tram stop and walk the two short blocks to the bridge, feeling the cool breeze from the river against my body and face. I liked to look at the water, which sometimes passes fast, turbulent and dark, but it emits a cold shimmer and a wild, unforgettable smell, and it is always better than a million cicadas hidden in the trees and—(«Ah») He came back later eleven o'clock, with broken feet; y mientras me aproximaba a mi casa, caminando lentamente, haciendo sonar mis tacos en las veredas, prestaba atención tratando de escuchar si se oía algún rumor proveniente de aquellos árboles porque («Ah si un cuerpo nos diese» «Ah si un cuerpo nos diese» «aunque no dure» «una señal» «cualquier señal» «de sentido» «oscuro» «oscura» «Ah si un cuerpo nos diese aunque no dure» «una señal» «cualquier señal oscura» «Ah si un cuerpo nos diese aunque no dure» «cualquier señal oscura de sentido» «Veo una sombra sobre un vidrio. Veo» «algo que amé hecho sombra y proyectado» «sobre la transparencia del deseo» «como sobre un cristal esmerilado» «En confusión, súbitamente, apenas», «vi la explosión de un cuerpo y de su sombra» «Ahora el silencio teje cantilenas» «que duran más que el cuerpo y que la sombra» «Ah si un cuerpo nos diese, aunque no dure» «cualquier señal oscura de sentido») Si podían oírse, entonces me volvía y caminaba sin ninguna dirección, cuadras y cuadras, hasta la madrugada. Porque estar sentada en el patio, o echada en la cama entre los libros polvorientos, oyendo el estridor unánime de ese millón de cigarras, era algo insoportable, que me llenaba de terror.

Ahora la sombra sobre el vidrio esmerilado me dice que Leopoldo ha terminado de afeitarse, porque ya no tiene la navaja en las manos y se pasa el dorso de las manos suavemente por las mejillas («como un olor» «salvaje» «como un olor salvaje») Había migas, restos de comida, manchas de vino tinto sobre el mantel cuadriculado rojo y blanco. Era un salón largo, y el sonido polítono de las voces se filtraba por mis tímpanos adormecidos, atentos únicamente a las fluctuaciones hondas de mí misma, parecidas a voces. Me he estado oyendo a mí misma durante años sin saber exactamente qué decía, sin saber siquiera si eso era exactamente una voz. No se ha tratado más que de un rumor constante, sordo, monótono, resonando apagadamente por debajo de las voces audibles y comprensibles que no son más que recuerdo («que perdure»), sombras. El me daba frecuentemente la espalda, mientras hablaba a los gritos con el resto de los invitados. Parecía reinar sobre el mundo. Yo lo hubiese llevado conmigo esa noche, me habría desvestido delante de él y agarrándolo del pelo le hubiese inclinado la cabeza y lo hubiese obligado a mirar fijamente la cicatriz, la gran cicatriz blanca y llena de ramificaciones, la marca de los viejos suplicios que fueron carcomiendo lentamente mi seno, para que él supiese. Porque así como cuando lloramos hacemos de nuestro dolor que no es físico, algo físico, y lo convertimos en pasado cuando dejamos de llorar, del mismo modo nuestras cicatrices nos tienen continuamente al tanto de lo que hemos sufrido. Pero no como recuerdo, sino más bien como signo. Y él no paraba de hablar. «¿De veras, Adelina? ¿No le parece, Adelina? ¿Que cómo me siento? ¡Cómo quiere que me sienta! Harto de todo el mundo, lógicamente. No, por supuesto, Dios no existe. Si Dios existiera, la vida no sería más que una broma pesada, como dice siempre Horacio Barco. Somos dos generaciones diferentes, Adelina. Pero yo la respeto a usted. Me importa un rábano lo que digan los demás y sé que a la generación del cuarenta más vale perderla que encontrarla, pero hay un par de poemas suyos que funcionan a las mil maravillas. Dirán que los dioses los han escrito por usted, y todo eso, sabe, pero a mí me importa un rábano. Hágame caso, Adelina: fornique más, aunque en eso vaya contra las normas de toda una generación.» Era una noche de pleno («contra las diligencias»). Era una noche de pleno invierno. Los ventanales del restaurante estaban empañados por el vaho de la helada. Y cuando nos separamos en la calle la niebla envolvía la ciudad; parecía vapor, ya la luz de los focos de las esquinas parecía un polvo blanco y húmedo, una miríada de partículas blancas girando en lenta rotación. Apenas nos separábamos unos metros los contornos de nuestras figuras se desvanecían, carcomidos por esa niebla helada. Me acompañaron hasta la parada de taxis y Tomatis se inclinó hacia mí antes de cerrar de un golpe la portezuela: «La casualidad no existe, Adelina», me dijo. «Usted es la única artífice de sus sonetos y de sus mutilaciones.» Después se perdió en la niebla, como si no hubiese existido nunca. Lo que desaparece de este mundo, ya no falta. Puede faltar dentro de él, pero no estando ya fuera. Existen los sonetos, pero no las mutilaciones: hay únicamente corredores vacíos, que no se han recorrido nunca, con una puerta de acceso que el viento sacude con lentitud y hace golpear suavemente contra la madera dura del marco; o desiertos interminables y amarillos como la superficie del sol, que los ojos no pueden tolerar; o la hojarasca del último otoño pudriéndose de un modo inaudible bajo una gruta de helechos fríos, o papeles, o el tintineo mortal del hielo golpeando contra las paredes de un vaso con un resto aguado de amargo y vermut; pero no las mutilaciones. Las cicatrices sí, pero no las mutilaciones. El taxi atravesaba la niebla, reluciente y húmedo, y en su interior cálido el chofer y yo parecíamos los únicos cuerpos vivos entre las sólidas estructuras de piedra que la niebla apenas si dejaba entrever. («las formaciones» «contra las diligencias» «contra las formaciones») Afuera no había más que niebla; pero yo vi tantas cosas en ella, que ahora no puedo recordar más que unas pocas: unos sauces inclinados sobre el agua, proyectando una sombra transparente; unas manos aferradas —los huesos y los cartílagos blanquísimos— a las solapas de mi traje sastre; una mosca entrando a una boca abierta y dura, como de mármol; algunas palabras leídas mil veces, sin acabar nunca de entenderlas; un millón de cigarras cantando monótonamente y al unísono («del olvido»), en el interior de mi cráneo; una cosa horrible, llena de venas y nervios, apuntando hacia mí, balanceándose pesadamente desde un matorral de pelo oscuro; una imagen borrosa, impresa en papel de diario, hecha mil pedazos y arrojada al viento por una mano enloquecida. Todo eso era visible en las paredes mojadas por la niebla, mientras el taxi atravesaba la ciudad. Y era lo único visible.

En este momento («Y que por ese olor») En este momento Susana debe estar bajando lentamente, con cuidado, las escaleras de mármol blanco de la casa del médico. Puedo verla en la calle («y que por ese olor reconozcamos»), en el crepúsculo gris, parada en medio de la vereda, tratando de orientarse («el solar en el que» «dónde debemos edificar» «el lugar donde levantemos» «cuál debe ser el sitio»). Está con su vestido azul, que tiene costuras blancas, semejantes a hilvanes, alrededor de los grandes bolsillos cuadrados y en los bordes de las solapas. Sus ojos marrones, achicados por las formaciones adiposas de la cara, como dos pasas de uvas incrustadas en una bola de masa cruda, se mueven inquietos y perplejos detrás de los anteojos. Está tratando de saber dónde queda exactamente la parada de colectivos. Leopoldo pasa ahora a la bañadera. Lo hace de un modo dificultoso, ya que advierto que su sombra se bambolea y se mueve con lentitud. Trata de no resbalar («de la casa humana») Ahora Susana descubre por fin cuál es la dirección conveniente y comienza a caminar con dificultad, debido a sus dolores reumáticos. Aparece envuelta en la luz del atardecer: la misma luz gris que penetra ahora a través de las cortinas verdes y se condensa en mi batón gris ya mi alrededor, como una masa tenue que resplandece opaca y se adelanta y retrocede rígidamente adherida a mí mientras me hamaco en el sillón de Viena. Atraviesa las calles de la ciudad, pesada y compacta. Puedo escuchar el rumor inaudible de su desplazamiento. Las calles están llenas de gente, de coches y de colectivos. El rumor de la ciudad se mezcla, se unifica y después se eleva hacia el cielo gris, disipándose. («el lugar de la casa humana» «cuál es el lugar de la casa humana» «cuál es el sitio de la casa humana») Ahora la escalera en la casa del médico está vacía. La vereda delante de la casa del médico está vacía. Susana extiende el brazo delante del colectivo número dieciséis, que se detiene con el motor en marcha. Susana sube dificultosamente. Alguien la ayuda. Susana siente («como reconocemos por los») en la cara el calor que asciende desde el motor del colectivo. Se tambalea cuando el colectivo arranca. Le ceden el asiento y ella se sienta con dificultad, agarrándose del pasamanos, sacudiéndose a cada sacudida del colectivo, tambaleándose, resoplando, murmurando distraídamente «Gracias», sin saber exactamente a quién («por los ramos») Estaba verdaderamente («por los ramos» «de luz solar») hermosa esa tarde, alrededor de las cinco, cuando Leopoldo se levantó de un salto, volviéndose hacia mí con el traje de baño a la altura de las rodillas —la cosa, balanceándose pesadamente, apuntando hacia mí—, dejando ver al saltar las partes de Susana que no se habían tostado al sol. No era la blancura lisa y morbosa de Leopoldo, sino una blancura que deslumbraba. Pero no piensa en eso. No piensa en eso. No piensa en nada. Mira la ciudad gris —un gris ceniciento, pútrido— que se desplaza hacia atrás mientras el colectivo avanza hacia aquí. Leopoldo abre la ducha y comienza a enjabonarse. Todos sus movimientos son lentos, como si estuviera tratando de aprenderlos («de luz solar la piel de la mañana») Como si estuviera tratando de aprenderlos y grabárselos. Se refriega con duros movimientos el pecho, los brazos, el vientre, y ahora sus dos manos se encuentran debajo del vientre y comienzan a refregar con minucia; eso es lo que me dice su sombra reflejándose sobre los vidrios esmerilados de la puerta del cuarto de baño. Mis huesos crujen como la madera del sillón, pulida y gastada por el tiempo, mientras me inclino hacia adelante y vuelvo hacia atrás, hamacándome lentamente, rodeada por la luz gris del atardecer que se condensa alrededor de mi cabeza como el resplandor de una llama ya muerta («Y que por ese olor reconozcamos» «cuál es el sitio de la casa humana» «como reconocemos por los ramos» «de luz solar la piel de la mañana»).

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Sé que lo que mamá quiso decirme antes de morir era que odiaba la vida. Odiamos la vida porque no puede vivirse. Y queremos vivir porque sabemos que vamos a morir. Pero lo que tiene un núcleo sólido —piedra, o hueso, algo compacto y tejido apretadamente, que pueda pulirse y modificarse con un ritmo diferente al ritmo de lo que pertenece a la muerte— no puede morir. La voz que escuchamos sonar desde dentro es incomprensible, pero es la única voz, y no hay más que eso, excepción hecha de las caras vagamente conocidas, y de los soles y de los planetas. Me parece muy justo que mamá odiara la vida. Pero pienso que si quiso decírmelo antes de morirse no estaba tratando de hacerme una advertencia sino de pedirme una refutación.

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