Delirium (23 page)

I SMELLED IT
as soon as I opened the apartment door: it was the acrid scent of strangeness. It suffuses the house when Agustina isn’t herself anymore, when she’s in the middle of one of her crises, and I’ve learned to recognize it and make it part of my own sadness, which smells just like it; I know I’ve begun to exude the same scent.

After leaving Anita in Meissen the night of the Paloquemao bomb, I’d returned to Salmona Towers along Twenty-sixth Street, listening to the sirens of ambulances made invisible by the thick dust cloud of the disaster, the radio reporting forty-seven dead as well as an unspecified number of bodies in the wreckage, but I could only think about the shards that had surely cut Agustina’s feet. Miraculously, the explosion hadn’t shattered any of the windows of my apartment and I realized that nothing had happened to her feet because when I finally arrived, she had shoes on; she was fully dressed and wearing high heels and that surprised me. I interpreted it at first as an encouraging sign, because since the dark episode my wife had succumbed to slovenliness in matters of appearance, everything yielding to the pure centripetal force of her introspection except for the brief moments when she recovered some degree of consciousness of her physical existence. Madness is navel-gazing, my wife spends day and night in pajamas, or at most a sweatshirt, forgetting to eat, to listen, to look, it’s as if her entire horizon of events is contained within herself. That’s why I was surprised to see her in dark pants, high heels, and a jacket again, with her hair up, as if she were ready to go out but had to take care of a few things around the house before she left, these being essentially a compulsive transferring of objects from one place to another and back again, although what was happening now wasn’t the familiar hauling of containers of water, but rather a kind of domestic reorganization that obeyed no visible logic but that required all of her concentration and energy; anyone who hasn’t lived with a crazy person has no idea what boundless energy they can expend, the number of movements they make per second.

On her niece’s orders, Aunt Sofi is standing in a corner of the living room, afraid to move because each time she tries, Agustina gets angry and won’t let her; Agustina also orders me to stay where I am and establishes the rules of a new ceremony that we don’t understand, a fresh epiphany of dementia that involves Agustina exerting relentless control over her territory. We live on this side, Agustina on that side, and she is as careful as a goalkeeper or a customs agent to make sure no one crosses that imaginary boundary, My father is coming to visit me, she announces suddenly, my father warned me that if you were in my house, he would cancel his visit because he doesn’t want to see you here, stay over there, goddamn it, that’s where you bastards live and this is where I live, get back, you, get back, she shouts at me.

MEANWHILE I WAS THINKING
of you, which is what I do when I’d rather not think about anything, Agustina sweetheart, you might say I’m fascinated by the texture you take on in memory, smooth and slippery with no hint of responsibility or regret, it’s something like stroking your hair, the pure pleasure of stroking your hair, so long as there are no consequences; God played a dirty trick on us with the whole idea that one thing leads to another until it becomes some fucking unstoppable chain reaction, I swear that hell must be a place where they lock you up with the consequences of your actions and make you duke it out with them. That’s why I’d rather remember you the way I saw you the first few times that your brother Joaco invited me home after school and there you were and it was as if the air stood still, you were like nothing I’d ever seen before, the fanciest doll in the most expensive store in town, my rich friend’s gorgeous sister, which is maybe why you’ve gone around acting crazy ever since, to force us to remember that you’re flesh and blood and make us accept you with all your consequences.

Your brother Joaco is one of those people who never had to wear hand-me-downs, but I’m the kind of guy who only today, after all kinds of struggle, has the means to dress like Joaco Londoño, but I don’t, anyway, Agustina baby, because I allow myself the luxury of doing my own thing. So I’m a true phenomenon of self-improvement, a champion of self-help, but I’ll always bear the stigma of having shown up at the Boys School on the first day of classes looking all wrong, despite my efforts, and especially the efforts of my sweet mother, who bought me everything new, combed my hair the best she could, and sent me out with my skin shiny from soap and scrubbing, but she missed a few details, and after all how could she not, when the woman was a widow who had just arrived in the capital with barely enough money to live respectably, which more than explains the countless errors she made regarding my appearance and attire on that critical first day of school: for example, a cheap leather briefcase, a green wool cardigan she’d knitted herself, and scratchy wool pants, but among all these outrages, my lovely Agustina, there was one, the white socks, that was fatal, because to the cry of “White socks, black pants, homo alert,” your brother Joaco, young leader of the pack, came after me and beat me to a pulp, which I thank him for to this day because he walloped the whole fatherless-boy-from-the-provinces identity out of me once and for all, and that same afternoon I stole money from my mother’s purse to buy myself black socks and a pair of jeans, then I made her cry by announcing that she’d better not knit me any more cardigans because I wasn’t going to wear them, and I had scarcely recovered from the thrashing that Joaco gave me when I went after him myself and kicked the shit out of him, and I really did kick the shit out of him, even breaking a bone or two.

So then we were even, and from that moment on I devoted myself to imitating my friend Joaco in every way. Because at the Boys School, my pretty pale princess, I didn’t learn algebra or discover trigonometry or develop any kind of interest in chemistry; at the Boys School I learned to walk like your brother, to eat like him, to look at people the way he did, to say what he said, to despise the teachers for being of inferior social status, and, in a broader sense, to radiate contempt as a supreme weapon of control; how could Joaco not be my beacon and guide when my father was a stone in a graveyard where my mother and I left carnations on the Day of the Dead, and meanwhile his father had given him a brand-new Renault 9 with an incredible sound system when we were just kids in ninth grade; it was in Joaco’s Renault 9 that my ears were opened to the miracle of meesees braun yugotta lobleedotta by Yairman Yairmees, and how we admired Joaco because he was the only one who could pronounce Herman’s Hermits and sing Mrs. Brown you’ve got a lovely daughter with all the syllables; everything was dazzling, a revelation, when Joaco let me step into his world.

Blasting along full fucking throttle in that Renault 9 we blew through stop signs and red lights, showing off our alpha-male status by tossing coins at the prostitutes on the corners and parking at the Icy Cream, wild-haired and triumphant as young cannibals, to order hot dogs and malteds from the car, and how could I have suspected, recently arrived from the provinces and living in a dark little apartment in the respectable neighborhood of San Luis Bertrand, tell me, Agustina doll, how was I to know that there existed such a thing as a vanilla malted, that glorious invention, and that if you asked for it over the intercom they brought it to you in the car. The albums that Joaco had sent to him from New York, and the new smell of his Renault 9, and the golden freedom of boys without a license whizzing along the Northbound Highway, it was all too much for me, my heart beat with a strange, wild anxiety, and all I could do was repeat to myself, Someday this will all be mine, mine, mine, and meanwhile they sang Jesterdei by the Beekles and also the Sowns of Seilens by Simonan Garfoonkel, always cursing Simonan for having stolen the song from the Indians of Latin America, ending with the ultimate apocalyptic explosion, the cosmic orgasm that was Satisfackchon by the Roleen, AICANGUET-NO! SATISFACK-CHON! Those words became my battle cry, my wish, my mantra; my credo was Anaitrai!, my secret Anaitrai!, my magic spell Anaitrai! Go on, Joaco, tell me what Anaitrai means, what a powerful, amazing fucking word, but he was very conscious of the superiority that his command of English gave him over us and was happy to leave me hanging, It means what it means, he declared pompously, and then he sang alone, with his perfect accent, I can’t get no satisfaction ‘cause I try, and I try, and I try, and then I asked again, practically dying, Come on, man, don’t be a jerk, tell me what Anaitrai means, tell me what Aicanguet-no is or I’ll bust your face, but he, unyielding and remote, knew exactly what to say to put me in my place, Don’t beg, McAlister, you can only understand if you’re meant to understand it.

Of course I invented my own desperate tricks for social survival, like the time I discovered a Lacoste shirt among my father’s old clothes, worn out and faded from use and too big for me, but that didn’t matter, nothing could dim the glory of my discovery and with fingernail scissors I set myself the task of detaching the little alligator logo, and from then on I went to the trouble of sewing it each day to the shirt I was going to wear, you laugh, Agustina princess, and I’m laughing, too, but you have no idea how going around with that Lacoste alligator on my chest helped me have confidence in myself and become the person I am today.

Through the process of my systematic spying on that world of yours I came to realize the particular skill that I had and your brother Joaco lacked, and it was at your house and the Boys School that what I’ll call the divine paradox was revealed to me, the lowly boy from the provinces with the mother in house-slippers, the cramped apartment in San Luis Bertrand, and the crocheted doily on the television: I knew how to make money, princess, it was as easy for me as breathing, while your brother, the son of rich men and the grandson of rich men, himself raised with money, had lost the knack, and my insight was to understand early on that the Joacos of this world weren’t going to have anything but what they had inherited, and that it meant something when people here say, “Great-grandfather a mule driver, grandfather lord of the manor, son a man of leisure, grandson a beggar,” in other words, there’s a slow spiral downward, Agustina princess, with past splendor gradually losing its luster without anyone noticing and the original fortune dwindling until all that’s left are the mannerisms, the pomp, the sense of superiority, the grand gestures, the alligator on the Lacoste shirt conspicuous on the chest. Whereas I, who came from nothing, was acquiring a talent, Agustina darling, a skill born of necessity and despair: the gift of making money, cold hard cash.

But I was still lacking the most important thing, Agustina angel, the truly important thing amid all that lesser detail, and that was coming to my friend Joaco’s house and finding you there, doing chores with your mother, because then a sigh of truth rose from the very depths of my being, bursting from my chest, Oh, Mrs. Londoño, yugotta lobleedotta! Because year after year, growing up alongside us but out of reach, there you were, Agustina my love, Joaco’s incredibly beautiful sister, the farthest and strangest star, so slender and white, always lost in your own head like someone hiding with the junk in the attic, you were the gold medal, the grand prix reserved for the best of us, the only trophy that your brother Joaco could never snatch, because he might be the richest and get the best grades and wear name-brand clothes, he might be the shit at tennis and waterskiing, the one with the spring vacations in Paris and the eternal tan, but there was one thing your brother Joaco couldn’t have, Agustina angel, and that was you.

The second time I saw you was in the dining room of your house in La Cabrera, which to me seemed like a sultan’s palace, and there you were making little towers of cookies with butter and jam, Joaco and me at one end of the table and you at the other end alone under the big crystal chandelier absorbed in your towers, so little, so transparent, with your huge black eyes and your insanely long hair, your hair was so long, Agustina baby! Back then I think it almost reached the floor, and when I tore my eyes away from you at last, I looked around and realized that this room contained all the elements of my happiness, what I mean is that just then something clicked in my head and I knew that everything I needed to be happy was right there, those too-high ceilings, like they were meant for giants not humans, that chandelier of crystal prisms that sent bits of rainbow dancing over the white tablecloth, those vases so crammed with roses that it looked as if a whole rose garden must have been cut to fill them, that porcelain as delicate as eggshells, those heavy knives and forks that were nothing like the light, tinny utensils we used in San Luis.