The Heart and Other Viscera Page 9

  Hidden among the sacks of animal feed, I watched him approach the spellbound Laura, drawing as close as possible in a move that almost forced him to sprawl across the counter and talk to her about dream animals that would never fill her cages, and which at that very moment—and at this point he would click his fingers dramatically—were ceasing to exist because of a bullet fired from the undergrowth, a sacrilegious projectile that had slowly ripened in the shotgun of the greatest predator on Earth. One species of animal disappears every quarter of an hour, he affirmed indignantly. And, as though declaring his love for her, Segismundo told her of the Siberian tiger hunted for its skin, of the turtle served as a delicacy in luxury restaurants, of the Tasmanian tiger, not seen since the 1980s. He wooed her with whales, whose brain grease she probably smeared on her face; the armadillo, under threat because its habitat was being devastated; the spiny anteater, used as a shooting target in some areas of Paraguay; the marsh deer, whose antlers were displayed as trophies; and almost all the primates, sold to laboratories for biomedical experiments. A requiem that every morning included different species, but which Segismundo always rounded off with the same terrifying pronouncement: over the past three hundred years, man had multiplied a thousandfold the rate of extinction of natural processes.

  And these improvised ecological lectures began to have their effect, to inject the poison of remorse for doing nothing into Laura’s previously carefree existence. Through my telescope, I soon noticed that this girl belonged to that minority of people who carry within them an impressionable, committed soul in which the problems of the world—and in particular those of the environment—strike home with astonishing ease. It took only a mention of them to make her turn against herself, to make her sizzle on her bed like drops of water in boiling oil. From that moment on, Laura flung herself up in the morning with a tortured soul and ran to complete her ablutions as quickly as possible in order to sweep from her mind the remaining cobwebs of a night’s sleep that instead of bringing calm had been a torment. Thanks to the prophecies about the devastating effects of climate change on the majority of the planet’s natural habitats—which the newscaster had seemed almost embarrassed to murmur after passionately listing the new transfers for the soccer season—her peaceful dreams had transformed into ghastly nightmares: an anguished procession of polar bears, seals, and caribou expiring in a resigned and harrowing silence in their realms of melting ice. But not even her morning run could soothe her. Those troubled awakenings and her frequent absentmindedness behind the counter only served to underline the power Segismundo had over her. It was no use to pawn my hours of sleep to learn more about the animal kingdom from the four or five encyclopedias I had checked out of the library, because I could only reel off the information in front of her as urgently as someone pronouncing a lifesaving spell, without ever endowing my words with the charm and naturalness of someone who had lived the experience. It was plain that all was lost. After months and months of observing the boring sway of my hook, Laura had decided to swallow the fresh bait destiny was dangling in front of her. It was only a matter of time, and much less time than I imagined, before she discovered she was in love with that dubious ecologist. The morning I confirmed that painful truth I bought from her a Pekingese that found it hard to respond to the name of Maybe the man of your life has always been right in front of you.

  Finally, a couple of nights later, the fateful moment arrived. Circles always close, for good or ill. I was spying on her Saturday afternoon with a bitter grimace on my face when, at about eight o’clock, Laura, who had spent hours slumped on the sofa, seemed to come back to life and became frenetically active. She was busy with her oven, showered and perfumed herself carefully, put on some music, and as a finishing touch lit the candles she had placed on the table. I didn’t need any further clues: her courtship had lasted exactly a month, like that of penguins, a period of elaborate nuptial singing that was now reaching its climax. With tears in my eyes, I watched her pace nervously round her apartment, dressed up like a princess for another man, awaiting the arrival of her champion, who suffered on behalf of every shot eagle, every chopped-down fir tree. I felt sorry for her. Laura had not yet been taught enough harsh lessons by life and, like the tadpoles of the Oophaga pumilio frog, had not yet had time to secrete her poisonous toxins, making her an easy prey for any predator.

  Shortly afterward, lowering the telescope, I saw him arrive, strolling along wearily with his washed-out jeans and his unkempt hair, like someone coming to collect payment for all the saliva he had spent. Just like the Bengal tiger, Segismundo hunted at night. He advanced furtively, upwind, and did not bring any wine to the table. My only wish was that Laura did not give herself to him as soon as she opened the door, that she might make him sweat a little before surrendering in a swoon, because there was a possibility that the ecologist would have no patience and that like a puma he favored lightning attacks, a powerful leap that lasted only a few seconds before exhausting itself. But Segismundo was a cunning old fox. He looked on poker-faced when Laura, no longer in her shop coat but perched atop high heels and squeezed into a dress with more-than-generous cleavage, ushered him into her lair. Even so, I could see he was excited at being presented with a shapelier body than he had been expecting, although he took the glass she offered him with a polite smile. He knew he had won before the game even started. Now he had to rein in his instincts, to control himself even if it was painful, to avoid at all costs flinging her onto the table and taking what was already his in the midst of ferocious growls. He had to pick the fruit without hurrying, allowing it to fall from the tree by its own weight. And so he was unfailingly well behaved throughout the dinner, only permitting himself to look her up and down with lustful eyes when she asked if he’d like a dessert. Laura lowered her head, blushing and submissive, like female crocodiles do when they smell the male’s musk.

  Segismundo was an independent, solitary sort, who, like, a panda, only gave up his solitude during the mating season. Then he sought out the closest female and competed with the nearby males for her. He had seen me off a long time since, and so Segismundo wiped the crumbs from his beard and finally stood up to claim his prize. The moment had come to spill something more than saliva. They went at it like wolves, launching themselves into a struggle that was all biting and gentle licking, until Segismundo seemed to grow bored with all this carrion-eating preamble and took up his position to the rear, where he sealed his efforts at seduction via the narrow channel, with sudden, doglike thrusts that lasted close to thirty minutes.

  Disgusted, I dropped the telescope. What now? When we love a woman we cannot have, there are only two alternatives: to forget or to become obsessed. And I had the whole night in front of me to choose between the two options. The animals gave me worried looks. In return, I offered them a strained smile, so that they would see I was fine, that I could take it, that life had long since immunized me against emotional traumas. That I had them. I don’t know how convincing I was. Contemplating my pets while the woman I loved was sleeping with a man who wasn’t me, I came to the philosophical conclusion that emotions were like animals: they came in all shapes and sizes and conditions, and you had to take care of them, feed them every day, clean them regularly. They lived in freedom among the trees, like native spirits, until someone captured them and shut them in a cage of devotion and timidity. And doubtless many of them did not survive. I could rid myself of the pain in my chest that my love for Laura had become in recent days—like someone abandoning a dog in a ditch—or I could go on feeding that angry animal until the cage it was in grew so old it fell to pieces. It was my decision.

  The next morning, Laura got out of bed at seven, careful not to disturb the sleep of her lover, who was snoring away like a sated beast. She put on her tracksuit, went out into the street, and began her morning run. By the pale light of dawn, Laura ran like never before, possessed by a schoolgirl enthusiasm that made me want to vomit. My car was waiting for her at the end of the street, en
gine running, like a wild animal ready to pounce. I wouldn’t either forget her or become obsessed by her. The dark paths of the night had led me to a third conclusion. Not without a certain sorrow, I had come to see that after all our destiny was not to love one another, or to choke to death during an end of year party. Maybe I had been put on this Earth to kill the woman I loved, and maybe she had been predestined to a mysterious, untimely death—that of being knocked down by a hit-and-run driver. Unfortunately, that’s how things stood: I could see Laura now in my rearview mirror, as if she were coming for an appointment, smiling in a way that was the opposite of the pain I felt. My heart was beating wildly and my hands stuck to the steering wheel with that cold sweat we only get when we have hepatitis or at crucial moments in our lives.

  I remember that day as one of exhausting sadness and acceptance. Laura, my beloved Laura, is no longer with us. She has gone to a better place. Whenever I pass by the pet store with my new dog, a spotty twentysomething stares back at me suspiciously from behind the counter. All circles close, more or less satisfactorily. I get on with my life: I translate Dickens and take walks round the neighborhood, and at night I delve into the garbage of the news to see if I can spot her face somewhere in the world, fighting to save seals or whales, or any other lost cause. And curled up at my feet, dozing all the time, is the Dalmatian, the last animal I bought from her before Segismundo appeared with suitcases to fulfill her destiny. A Dalmatian that is already starting to answer to its name: I couldn’t do it.

  The Brave Anesthetist

  One summer’s morning, a tailor was sitting at his table by the window, merrily sewing away, for he was in an exceedingly good mood, when a peasant woman came down the street peddling her wares:

  “Lovely preserves for sale! Lovely preserves for sale!”

  To the tailor’s ears, this sounded like heavenly music. He poked his head through the window and called out to her. Laden with her heavy baskets, the woman mounted the stairs to the tailor’s house, where he demanded to see all her jars. The tailor examined them carefully, thrusting his nose into each one. Perhaps he was tempted to dip his finger in them too—his forefinger, if not his thumb—to extract the sweet jam and daub it on the woman’s lips, accompanying this impertinence with the smile of an aging Lothario. For, regardless of whether he stitched for a living, the tailor was still a man, and no man can escape his condition, Elenita dear.

  It’s best you learn this now, my love. That way you will suffer less. There is little or no difference between a man and a rat. At first, you may find this hard to believe, because men are clever and know how to disguise it. But as soon as you turn into the beautiful young woman your looks predict, armies of them will assail you, concealing their verminous natures behind cheap smiles and expensive gifts. Once they have what they want, you will see how the best of them succumb to inertia, while the worst don’t even bother to go through the motions. They simply tear away their mask, revealing themselves to you unequivocally as selfish, insensitive, and above all disloyal.

  And so, Elena my dear, if this were real life instead of a children’s story, the tailor would be unable to resist the temptation to find out whether he was still attractive or not; whether all those gray hairs hadn’t simply lent him a dignified air; and that in his wife’s fortnightly caresses there wasn’t after all a hint of repulsion, or obligation, as he had started to suspect of late. He would smear his forefinger, if not his thumb, in apricot, and thus smothered would raise it to the lips of the preserve seller. She in turn would receive it calmly, with good humor, engaging her tongue, abandoning herself as though in a trance to her energetic licking. For if this were real life and not a children’s story, Elenita dear, there is no doubt that the preserve seller would be a young woman in her twenties, the type who knows the value of a pair of swaying hips and a plunging neckline. The sort of floozy that preys on older, married men who shower them with wisdom and promises. And by the time they cross the threshold, feel the warm embrace of luxury, see money winking at them wherever they look, they will already have employed all their wiles to banish any remorse the man might feel, transforming him in the blink of an eye into a slave of his desire. For if this were real life, the only strange thing about the story would be that the slut wasn’t selling encyclopedias instead of those stupid preserves.

  The story might seem less appealing, more insipid, without the forefinger, if not his thumb, rummaging inside the young woman’s fresh mouth, like a snail leaving a slimy trail of apricot. But the two of them would find a way to turn the act of browsing through an encyclopedia into a crescendo of caresses that could only end in a writhing possession on the dining room table, on the polished plank of mahogany where his wife and daughter sat down to eat every day, and at Christmas, his in-laws. That was where he was discovered, engaged in the treacherous penetration, deep in lace underwear, trousers round his ankles, his scrawny, hairy behind, never before illuminated from that angle, by that light accustomed only to embracing anodyne Sunday scenes.

  Not that the tailor was careless, or indeed even a tailor, incapable as he was of sewing on a button, but an anesthetist, Elenita dear, just like your father. A man whose job is simply to prepare the way for the surgeon, despite his attempts to give his profession a philosophical meaning; the bastard Morpheus, as I used to call him, although nowadays I’d just call him a bastard. No, he wasn’t a careless person; on the contrary, he couldn’t have been more methodical, to the point where the alarm clock hardly dared go off since he was already on his feet. He even went bald in an orderly fashion, his hairs falling out one by one. That’s why I am sure he abandoned himself to that coupling in the way he did, not bothering to look at his watch with that repulsive self-assurance of his, simply glancing at the position of the sun, three-quarters of an hour away from gilding the arm of the sofa. He abandoned himself with the nonchalance of a schoolboy, knowing exactly how much time he had, scrupulously dispensing the coming minutes—so many for the frantic copulation, so many for the postcoital embrace, a generous amount for her to put on her clothes without the kind of urgency that might emphasize the clandestine nature of the situation. And a few more seconds, just to be on the safe side, in case the girl proved excessively clingy and he had to reach for his checkbook. I’d like to believe that’s what it was like, Elenita dear, that testing out his prowess on a young body was enough for him, and that he wouldn’t try to prolong their brief encounter, much less fall under the spell of all that crude adolescence, that he would never dream of throwing away fifteen years of marriage.

  Of course this is the same story Daddy was reading to you, my sweet! Come along, close your eyes and try to fall asleep. Mummy has had a bad day, and she wants to go to bed too. Where was I? Oh yes, now comes the part about the flies.

  In the story, the tailor said goodbye to the girl, and used her preserves for strictly culinary purposes—that’s to say, he spread them chastely on a slice of bread. But his plan was spoiled by flies, naturally, a sort of plague sent by us women in response to his hypocritical behavior. Because he lied to all those children, made them think he was impervious to his inescapable, base instincts, he is now forced to contemplate the revolting troupe marching across his breakfast, some of them already camped out on the layer of apricot. In the end, the tailor seized a piece of cloth and used it to swipe at the affronted slice. When he pulled it back, he could see several insects encrusted in the preserves like amber decorations, affirming their miniscule existences with a tiny flutter of wings. He counted seven of them. And he considered this an extraordinary feat, worthy of being shared with the entire city.

  Thus, without further ado, he set about embroidering on a crimson sash the words Seven with one blow, then took to the streets so that everyone could read of his achievement. Which is doubtless what your father would have done, Elenita dear, if only he hadn’t been found out. For that is what men are: creatures that need to show off their accomplishments; vain troubadours crooning about their exploits, in partic
ular their sexual conquests. They even have places specially designed for these confessions, from squalid nightspots to sophisticated clubs, where they exchange lavish details of their adventures between desultory games of poker. And how many membership cards to such places did your father carry around in his wallet? How many scenes from his early morning joust might he have chosen to recount to his sweaty palms had the meticulous anesthetist not been foolish enough to marry a woman given to sudden bouts of forgetfulness, to cultivating a whole host of oversights, whose unpredictability he might have tried to map using color charts or computer programs so that in one of his diaries he could assign a day and an hour to my future lapses of memory?

  Clearly, he had predicted none that morning, judging from the look of surprise on his face when he saw me standing there, silent, bewildered; I would even say submerged in spiritual contemplation, framed opportunely by the doorway like a virgin in a niche. And you’d be surprised, Elena dear, how many things can go through a wife’s mind when she contemplates the spectacle of her husband beavering away between another woman’s legs. My devastating shock gave way to the most overwhelming horror; I veered from icy hatred to burning rage, instantly followed by searing shame, then clinical analysis, and ending with a surprising anamorphosis. Because, viewed from that unusual angle, the nodding donkey of that backside looked to me exactly like a huge, fleshless skull.

  I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. No word or gesture seemed appropriate to the scene, but I couldn’t simply fetch Don Zambrano’s documents and leave. Then my eye alighted on the green marble ashtray on the side table, and all at once I understood why we had never thrown it away, irrespective of how ugly it was and that neither of us smoked anymore. I realized then that the secret destination of that ashtray was your father’s skull, that it had been waiting with deadly patience to smash his head in, managing to pass unnoticed despite its size and garish color. As I raised it and took aim, I remembered with fondness the strange little man who had come to our wedding bearing that gift, had stood in a corner nibbling on some crayfish, and then disappeared, leaving the rest of us with only the mystery of his shy presence and the shells from his modest feast. And yet, despite the galvanizing force of my hatred, the ashtray traced an unfortunate arc far above your father’s head and crashed into the aquarium. After the impact, the sea appeared to spew onto the carpet.