The Truce (9 page)

Today I dined with Vignale and Escayola. I'm still in shock. I have never felt the passage of time as rigorously as I did today when I faced Escayola for the first time after not having seen or heard from him in thirty years. The tall, nervous, joking adolescent has turned into a potbellied monster, with an impressive neck, soft and full lips, a bald spot with blemishes that resemble coffee drippings, and horrible bags under his eyes which shake when he laughs. Because now Escayola laughs. When he lived on Brandzen Street, the effectiveness of his jokes resided precisely in the fact that he told them in a serious manner. We would all die of laughter, but he remained unmoved. During dinner he told a few jokes, a dirty story I had known since college, and some supposedly off-colour anecdote drawn from his
experience as a stockbroker. The most he could accomplish was to get me to smile moderately and Vignale (a fellow who is always quite willing to please) to release a loud laugh so artificial that it sounded more like he was clearing his throat. I couldn't contain myself and told him: ‘Aside from gaining a little weight, the thing I now find most peculiar about you is that you laugh loudly. Before, you would tell the funniest jokes with a sensationally sad look on your face.' A flash of rage or perhaps impotence passed before Escayola's eyes, and he quickly started to explain: ‘You know what happened? I always told jokes with a great deal of seriousness, you're right, how well you remember! But one day I realized I was running out of topics. I didn't like telling someone else's jokes. You know, I was a creative person and the jokes I told had never been heard before by anyone. I would make them up and would sometimes attempt an actual series of jokes with a central character, as in short stories, and would get the most out of them for two or three weeks. Well then, when I realized I couldn't think of any more topics (I don't know what could have happened to me, perhaps my brain emptied out), and, like a good sportsman, didn't want to retire early, I started telling other people's jokes. At first I was selective, but then I quickly used up my selection, and began to add anything whatsoever to my repertoire. And the people, the fellows (I always had my circle of friends) started not to laugh, and not to find anything I said funny. They were right, but I didn't retire then either; instead, I thought of another recourse: I would laugh myself, in proportion to how much it mattered, in order to impress my listeners and convince them that my jokes were indeed quite hilarious. At first they would join me in the laughter, but they quickly started to feel deceived, to know my laughter wasn't exactly an omen of true humour. In this they were also right, but I could no longer stop laughing. And here I am, as you can see, trans
formed into a pest. Do you want some advice? If you want to keep my friendship, talk to me about tragic things.'

She comes to have coffee with me almost every day. The general tone of our conversation is always one of friendship. At most, friendship and something more. But I'm making progress with that ‘something more'. For example, we sometimes talk about ‘Us'. ‘Us' is that undefined link that now binds us together. But whenever we mention it, it's as outsiders. I will explain: we say, for example, that ‘no one in the office has noticed what's going on between Us yet', or that such and such a thing happened before Us began. But, in the end, what is Us? For now, at least, it's a kind complicity we're faced with, a secret sharing, a unilateral pact. Naturally, this isn't an affair, or an arrangement, or – much less – a betrothal. Nevertheless, it's more than a friendship. What's worse (or better?) is that she feels comfortable with this lack of definition. She talks to me with complete trust, humour, and I think even affection. She has a very personal and ironic point of view about her surroundings. She doesn't like to hear jokes about the office people, but she has them all well catalogued. Sometimes, in the café, she looks around, and makes a well-informed, accurate and unsurpassable comment. Today, for example, sitting at a table were four or five women, all of them about thirty or thirty-five years old. She looked at them carefully for some time and then asked me: ‘They're court clerks, aren't they?' Yes indeed, they were court clerks. I've known a few of them, at least by sight, for years. ‘Do you know them?' I asked her. ‘No, I've never seen them before,' she replied. ‘So then, how did you guess?' I asked. ‘I don't know,' she replied. ‘I can always recognize women who are court
clerks. They have very special characteristics and habits you don't see in other professional women. They either apply lipstick in one hard stroke, like someone who writes on a blackboard, have an eternally sore throat from reading out so many documents, or don't know how to carry their handbags because they've carried portfolios for so long. They speak haltingly, as if they don't want to say anything that goes against the codes, and you'll never see them gaze at themselves in a mirror. Look at that one, the second one from the left, she has calves like a runner-up champion athlete. And the one next to her looks like she doesn't even know how to fry an egg. They annoy me, how about you?' No, they don't annoy me (moreover, I remember a court clerk who is the owner of the most attractive bust in this universe and its surroundings), but listening to her enthusiastic discussion of the pros and cons of something amuses me. The poor clerks – mannish, energetic and muscular – continued talking, completely unaware of the harsh critic that, one table away, continued to add new reproaches regarding their appearance, posture, attitude and conversation.

Esteban's friend is shifty. He's charging me fifty per cent of my retirement bonus, but assures me I won't have to work a single day longer than necessary. The temptation is great. Well, it was great, because I've already agreed to his terms. He reduced it to forty per cent, though, and recommended I accept this offer before he changed his mind. He said he didn't do this with anyone; he never charged less than fifty per cent. He told me to just ask around, ‘because there are many abusive and unscrupulous people in my profession', and he was giving me this special price because I was Esteban's father. ‘I love Esteban like a
brother,' he said. ‘We played billiards every night for four years. And that makes you close, sir.' It was then I remembered my conversation with Aníbal on Sunday the 5th, when I told him: ‘Now, someone who wants to obtain something legal also offers a bribe. And this means total disorder.'

The 31st of May was Isabel's birthday. How far away she is. I once bought her a German doll that walked and moved its eyes for her birthday. I brought it home in a large and very stiff cardboard box. I placed the box on the bed and asked her to guess what it was. ‘A doll,' she replied. I never forgave her for that.

None of the kids remembered her birthday; or at least they didn't say anything to me about it. They have gradually moved away from paying homage to their mother. I think Blanca is the only one who really misses her, the only one who mentions her unaffectedly. Could I be to blame? In the beginning, I didn't talk about Isabel very much, only because it was painful. Now I still don't talk about her much, but it's because I'm afraid to make a mistake; I'm afraid to talk about another person who would have had nothing to do with my wife.

Will Avellaneda ever forget about me in this way? Here is where the mystery lies: before beginning to forget she has to remember, she has to begin to remember.

Time flies. Sometimes I think I should live hurriedly instead of trying to get the most out of these remaining years. These days, having scrutinized my wrinkles, anyone can say to me: ‘But
you're still a young man.' Still. But how many years of ‘still', do I have left? I think about it and start to hurry, and have the agonizing sensation that life is slipping away from me, as if my veins had opened and I couldn't stop the bleeding. Because life is many things (work, money, luck, friendship, health, complications) and no one is going to deny that when we think about the word Life, when we say for example: ‘we cling to life', we are likening it to a more specific, attractive and surely more important word: pleasure. I think about pleasure (any kind of pleasure) and I'm sure that's what life is. From then on it's the hurrying, the tragic hurrying of these fifty years which are fast on my heels. I still have, I hope, a few years of friendship, passable health, routine desires, and, all being well, some luck ahead of me. But, how many years of pleasure remain? I was twenty years old and I was young; I was thirty and I was young; I was forty and I was young. Now I'm fifty years old and I'm ‘young still'. ‘Still' means that it ends.

And that's the absurd part of our agreement: we say we're going to take it easy, let time pass, and then, later, we'll review the situation. But time passes, whether we allow it to or not, and each day makes her more desirable, mature, feminine and buxom, while, on the other hand, each day threatens me with becoming ill, worn out, less courageous and less indispensable. We have to hurry towards the encounter, because in our case the future is an inevitable non-encounter. All of her pluses correspond to my minuses and all of her minuses correspond to my pluses. I understand that for a young woman it can be an inducement to know that her man is someone who has lived, who exchanged his innocence for experience a long time ago, and who thinks with his head well set on his shoulders. It's possible that there would be an attraction, but how brief would it be? Because experience is good when it arrives hand in hand with vigour; afterwards, when the strength is gone, one
becomes a decorous museum piece, whose only value is being a reminder of what once existed. Experience and strength are contemporaries for a very short time. I'm now at that stage. But it's not an enviable situation.

Great. The Valverde woman broke up with Suárez and the entire office is in upheaval. Martínez's face was a poem. For him the break-up meant, plain and simple, the Assistant Manager job. Suárez didn't come to work this morning, but showed up in the afternoon with a bruise on his forehead and a funereal look on his face. The manager called him over and reprimanded him loudly. That means it's not just a simple rumour but in fact an official and authorized version.

Until now, we had gone to the movies together twice, but afterwards she would go home alone. Instead, today I accompanied her home for a change. She had acted very warm and friendly. Halfway through the film, as Alida Valli put up with the idiotic Farley Granger, I suddenly felt her hand resting on my arm. I think it was a reflex, but the fact is that afterwards she didn't remove it. Inside me there is a gentleman who doesn't want to force anything, but there is also another gentleman who obsessively thinks about hurrying.

We got off the bus at 8 de Octubre and walked the three blocks. It was dark, but simply the clear darkness of the night. The UTE, the old and dependable public utility company, was giving me a blackout as a present. We were walking side by side,
about three feet apart. But as I approached a corner (a corner with a department store that had a pool table illuminated by candle light on display), someone slowly appeared out of the shadow of a tree. Then, the three feet that separated us disappeared, and before I realized it she was giving me her arm. The owner of the shadow was a drunk, a harmless and defenceless drunk who was mumbling: ‘Long live the poor wretched and the National Party!' Meanwhile, I felt she was stifling a little laugh and loosening the tension of her fingers on my arm. Her house is number 368 and is on a street with a name like Ramón P. Gutiérrez or Eduardo Z. Domínguez, I don't remember. The house has an entrance hall and several balconies. The main door was closed, but she told me there was an inner windproof storm door reminiscent of stained-glass windows. ‘They say the owner wanted to imitate the stained-glass windows of Notre Dame, but I'm telling you, there's a St Sebastian on that glass who looks like Gardel.'

She didn't open the door right away. As she leaned gently back against the door, I thought about how its bronze railing must be digging into her spinal column. But she wasn't complaining. Then she said: ‘You're very good. I mean to say that you're well-behaved.' And I, who knows myself, lied like a saint and said: ‘Sure I'm very good, but I'm not sure that I'm behaving myself.' ‘Don't be cocky,' she said. ‘When you were young, weren't you taught that when one behaves oneself, one doesn't have to acknowledge it?' The moment had arrived and she was waiting for it: ‘When I was young I was taught that every time one behaves, one receives a prize. Don't I deserve one?' There was a moment of silence. I couldn't see her face because the foliage of a damn municipal pine tree was blocking the light of the moon. ‘Yes, you deserve it,' I heard her reply. Then her arms emerged from the dark and rested on my shoulders. She must have seen this move in some Argentine film. But I'm sure she
didn't see the kiss that followed in any film. I like her lips, I mean to say, their taste, the way they submerge themselves, open halfway, and slip away. Naturally, it's not the first time she's kissed someone. So what? After all, it's a relief to kiss on the mouth again, with trust and affection. I don't know how, or what strange step we must have taken, but the truth is, all of a sudden, I felt the bronze handrail sinking into my spinal column. I was at the door of number 368 for a half an hour. Lord, what progress. Neither of us said anything, but after this episode one thing was clear. Tomorrow I'll think about it. Now I'm tired, or I could also say: happy. But I'm too alert to feel completely happy. Alert about myself, about my good luck, and about that sole tangible future called tomorrow. Alert, that is to say: distrustful.

Perhaps I'm very fussy about the middle ground. Whenever I'm presented with a problem, I never feel attracted to extreme solutions. It's possible this is the root of my frustration. One thing is obvious: if, on the one hand, extremist attitudes provoke enthusiasm, influence others, and are signs of strength, then, on the other hand, poised attitudes are on the whole annoying, sometimes even disagreeable, and they almost never seem heroic. In general, one needs plenty of bravery (a very special kind of bravery) to maintain one's poise, but it can't be denied that to some it will look like a show of cowardice. Besides, poise is boring. And, nowadays, boredom is a great flaw that people usually don't forgive.