Paula (45 page)

One of those warm June mornings in Caracas when storms gather early over the hills, Michael came down to my studio in the cellar to bring the mail. I was lost in the Amazon jungle with Eva Luna, Rolf Carlé, and their companions in adventure, and at the sound of the door, I looked up and saw an unknown figure crossing the bare room, a tall, slim man with a gray beard and eyeglasses, bowed shoulders, and an opaque aura of fragility and melancholy. It was several seconds before I recognized my husband and realized what strangers we had become. I searched my memory for the embers of the carefree love of our twenties, but could not find even ashes, only the weight of dissatisfaction and ennui. I had a vision of an arid future, growing old day by day beside a man I no longer admired or desired, and I felt a howl of rebellion rising from deep inside me. At that instant, the words that with fierce discipline I had left unspoken for years tumbled out in a voice I could not recognize as my own.

“I can't take any more, I want a separation,” I said, not daring to meet his eyes, and, as I spoke the words, that vague, flogged beast of burden pain I had carried for years lifted from my shoulders.

“I have noticed how distant you've been for some time. I guess you don't love me any longer and we should consider a separation,” he stammered.

“There isn't much to consider, Michael. It's been said now, so the best thing is to do it today.”

And we did. We called the children, explained that we had stopped loving each other like married people, although our friendship remained intact, and we asked their help in setting out the practical details of breaking up our home. Nicolás turned red, as he always does when he is trying to control a strong emotion, and Paula burst into tears out of compassion for her father, whom she always protected. Later, I found out that they weren't surprised, they had been expecting something like this for a long time. Michael seemed paralyzed, but I was infused with manic energy; I began to pull dishes from the kitchen, clothes from the closets, books from the shelves, and then ran out to buy pots and pans, a coffee pot, a shower curtain, lamps, food, and even plants, to set up a separate household. With the excess energy, I began putting together pieces of cloth in the sewing room to make a quilt, which I have today as a souvenir of those frenetic hours that determined the second half of my life. The children divided up our belongings, wrote a simple, one-page agreement, and the four of us signed it without ceremony or witnesses. Then Paula found an apartment for her father, and Nicolás got a truck to transport half our belongings. Within a few hours, we undid twenty-nine years of love and twenty-five years of marriage with no slamming doors, recriminations, or lawyers, only a few inevitable tears, because in spite of everything we had affection for one another and I believe that in a certain way we still do. That night, the storm broke that had been building up all day, one of those infamous thunder-and lightning tropical downpours that turn Caracas into a disaster zone: storm sewers back up, streets flood, traffic forms a series of gigantic serpents of stalled automobiles, and mud slides wipe out whole slums on the hillsides. When finally the truck of our divorce pulled away, followed by the children on their way to install their father in his new home, and I was alone in the house, I threw open the windows and doors to let the wind and rain blow in to sweep away the past; I began to dance and whirl like a maddened dervish, weeping with sadness for what was lost and laughing with relief for what was gained, while crickets and tree frogs sang outside, and inside the torrential rain streamed across the floor and the gale blew dead leaves and bird feathers in a whirlwind of farewells and freedom.

I was forty-four; I supposed that from then on my fate would be to grow old alone, and intended to be dignified doing it. I called Tío Ramón and asked him to oversee the matrimonial annulment in Chile, a simple procedure if the couple is in agreement, if you have money for a lawyer, and if you know a couple of friends willing to commit perjury. Running away from explanations, and to outwit my sense of guilt, I accepted a series of lectures that took me from Iceland to Puerto Rico, passing through a dozen North American cities. In that variety of climates, I needed all the clothes I had but decided to carry only what was indispensable; my looks were far from my mind, I felt bogged down, with no hope of reprieve, in a passionless maturity, so it was a happy surprise to find that, if a woman is available, there is no shortage of men. I wrote a document, with three copies, retracting the one I had signed in Bolivia in which I had said that because of Tío Ramón I would never meet any men, and sent it to Chile by certified mail. Sometimes it's fair to offer your arm to be twisted. . . . Those two months, I took pleasure from the embrace of a polar bear of a poet in Reykjavík, the company of a young mulatto in the torrid nights of San Juan, and a scattering of other memorable encounters. I am tempted to invent wild erotic rites to adorn my memoirs, as I suppose others do, but in these pages I am trying to be honest. At moments, I felt I touched a lover's soul, and even dreamed of the possibility of a deeper relationship, but the next day I took another plane, and my enthusiasm dissolved among the clouds. Weary of fleeting kisses, I decided the last week to concentrate on my work, after all, lots of people live a chaste existence. I could never have guessed that at the end of that numbing journey Willie was waiting for me and my life would be forever changed; my premonitions failed me miserably.

In a city in northern California where I gave my last lecture, it befell me to live one of those overblown love affairs that serve as fodder for the romances I translated in my youth. Willie had read
Of Love and Shadows;
he had suffered for the characters and thought that in that book he had found the kind of love he wished for but had never experienced. I suspect he hadn't known where to look; even then he was placing ads in the personal columns to find someone, as he candidly told me on our first date. Some of the responses are still rattling around in a drawer somewhere, among them, the dazzling photograph of a woman wearing nothing but a boa—a boa
constrictor
!—and with no comment but her telephone number beneath the photo. Despite the snake, or perhaps because of it, Willie didn't mind giving up a couple of hours to meet me. One of the women professors from the university introduced him to me as the last heterosexual bachelor in San Francisco. After I spoke, I dined with a group around a table in an Italian restaurant; Willie sat facing me, with a glass of white wine in his hand, saying nothing. I admit that I felt a certain curiosity about this Irish-looking North American lawyer with an aristocratic appearance and silk tie who spoke Spanish like a Mexican
bandido
and had a tattoo on his left hand. There was a full moon, and the velvety voice of Frank Sinatra was crooning “Strangers in the Night” as our ravioli was served. This is the kind of detail that is forbidden in literature; in a book, no one would dare combine a full moon with Frank Sinatra. The problem with fiction is that it must seem credible, while reality seldom is. I can't explain what attracted Willie, who has a past filled with tall blondes. As for me, I was drawn by his story. And also, why not say it?, by his blend of refinement and roughness, strength of character, and an intimate gentleness that I sensed thanks to my mania for observing people to use later in my writing. At first, he didn't have much to say; he limited himself to watching me from across the table with an indecipherable expression. After the salad, I asked him to tell me the story of his life, a trick that saves me the effort of making conversation: the man queried expounds while my mind wanders through other worlds. In this case, however, I did not have to feign interest; as soon as he began to speak, I realized I had stumbled upon one of those rare gems treasured by storytellers: this man's life was a novel. The samples he had revealed during that hour or two awakened my greed; that night in the hotel I couldn't sleep, I needed to know more. Luck was with me, and the next day Willie located me in San Francisco, the last stop on my tour, to invite me to view the Bay from a mountainside and have dinner at his house. I imagined a romantic date in a modern apartment with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge, a cactus beside the door, champagne and smoked salmon, but there was nothing of that sort: his house and his life resembled the scene following a shipwreck. He picked me up in one of those sports cars with barely enough room for two, where you ride with your knees clamped to your ears and your rear scraping the asphalt; it was embellished with dog hair, crushed soft drink cans, fossilized french fries, and toy guns. The drive to the top of the mountain and the majestic spectacle of the Bay impressed me, but I didn't expect to remember it very long; I've seen too many vistas and I had no thought of returning to the western United States. We descended along a curving highway bordered with large trees; a concerto was playing on the radio, and I had the sensation of having lived that moment before, of having been in that place many times, of belonging there. Later, I knew why: the north of California looks like Chile, the same rough coastline, hills, vegetation, birds, even the cloud formations in the sky.

Willie's one-story house, a washed-out gray with a flat roof, was on the water. Its one charm was a ruined dock with a sailboat that had become a nest for gulls. Willie's son Harleigh came out to meet us, a ten-year-old so hyperactive he seemed crazed; he stuck out his tongue at me while he kicked the doors and shot rubber projectiles from a cannon. On a shelf I saw ugly crystal and porcelain bibelots but almost no furniture, except in the dining room. Willie explained that the Christmas tree had burned and scorched all the furnishings, and then I noticed there were still ornaments hanging from the ceiling, with ten months' accumulation of cobwebs. I offered to help my host get dinner, but I felt lost in that kitchen crammed with appliances and toys. Willie introduced me to the other inhabitants of the house: his older son—who by a strange coincidence was born the same day of the same year as Paula—so drugged-out he could scarcely hold his head up, his companion, a young girl in the same straits, an exiled Bulgarian with his young daughter—they had come for one night and had settled in to live—and Jason, the stepson Willie had taken in after divorcing his mother, the only one with whom I could establish human communication. Later, I became aware of the existence of a daughter far gone in heroin and prostitution, whom I have seen only in jail or the hospital, where she frequently ends up. Three gray mice with chewed, bloody tails languished in a cage and several fish floated belly-up in a cloudy aquarium; there was also a monster of a dog that urinated in the living room and then happily trotted off to romp in the ocean—he would return at dessert time dragging the rotted corpse of some huge bird. I was ready to make a run for the hotel, but curiosity was stronger than panic, and I stayed. While the Bulgarian watched a football game on television with his little girl asleep on his knees, and the drug addicts snored in their particular paradise, Willie set to work: he cooked, threw loads of clothes into the washing machine, fed the numerous beasts, patiently listened to a surreal story Jason had just written and wanted to read aloud, and prepared the bath for his younger son, who at ten was incapable of doing it himself. I had never seen a father doing a mother's work, and was moved much more than I wanted to admit. I felt divided between a healthy aversion toward this unhinged family and a dangerous fascination for that man playing the maternal role. It may be that I began mentally to write
The Infinite Plan
that night. The next day, Willie called again; our mutual attraction was evident but we were aware it had no future because, in addition to the obvious drawbacks—children, pets, language, cultural differences, and lifestyles—we lived ten hours apart by jet. Even so, I decided to postpone my vow of chastity and spend one night with him, knowing it would be goodbye forever the next morning, as in a bad flick. We would not be able to carry out this plan in the privacy of my hotel, it had to be his house because he didn't dare leave his younger son in the care of the Bulgarian, the drug addicts, or the young intellectual. I arrived with my beat-up suitcase at that strange dwelling where animal fug was mixed with salt air and perfume from the seventeen rosebushes planted in wine barrels, with the thought that I might live one unforgettable night—in any case, I had nothing to lose. “Don't be surprised if Harleigh has a jealous fit, I never invite women friends home,” Willie warned me, and I sighed with relief, because at least I wouldn't find the boa constrictor rolled up in the bath towels, but the child accepted me without a second glance. When he heard my accent, he had confused me with one of a long line of frightened Latin housekeepers who had lasted no longer than the first cleanup. By the time he found out I was sharing his father's bed, it was already too late, I had come to stay. That night, Willie and I made love notwithstanding the exasperating child kicking the door, the howling dog, and the quarrels among the remaining boys. His room was the one refuge in that house; through the window, the stars and the ruined boat at the dock created an illusion of peace. Beside the large bed, I saw a wooden chest, a lamp, and a clock; farther away, a stereo. Expensive shirts and suits hung in the closet and in the impeccable bathroom I found the same English soap my grandfather always used. I held it to my nose, incredulous; I hadn't smelled that mixture of lavender and Creolin for twenty years, and the crafty image of that unforgettable old man smiled at me from the mirror. It's fascinating to observe the personal belongings of a man one is beginning to love, how they reveal his habits and his secrets. I turned back the bed and felt the white sheets and spartan duvet, I read the titles of the books piled on the floor, I poked through the bottles in the medicine cabinet and, apart from antihistamines and pills to worm the dog, found no medicines; I smelled clothing that had no hint of tobacco or perfume, and within a few minutes I knew a lot about this man. I felt like an interloper in this world with no hint of femininity, everything was simple, practical, and manly. I also felt safe. That austere room invited me to make a clean beginning, far from Michael, Venezuela, and the past. To me, Willie represented a new destiny in another language and a different country; it was like being born again, I could invent a fresh version of myself only for this man. I sat at the foot of the bed, very still, like an alert animal, with my antenna tuned in all directions, examining with my five senses and my intuition the signals in this alien space, registering the most imperceptible signs, the subtle information of walls, furniture, objects. This tidy room canceled the terrible impression of the rest of the house; I realized that there was a part of Willie's soul that longed for order and refinement. Now that we have shared a life for several years, everything has my seal on it, but I have not forgotten who he was then. Sometimes I close my eyes, concentrate, and am again in that room and see Willie before I came to him. I like to remember the smell of his body before I had touched it, before we melded and shared the same odor. That brief time by myself in Willie's bedroom, while he struggled with Harleigh, was decisive; in those minutes, I was prepared to give myself without reserve to the experience of a new love. Something essential had changed, although I did not yet know it. For nine years, ever since those unsettling times in Madrid, I had reined in my passions. The debacle of the troubador with the magic flute had taught me elementary lessons of caution. I hadn't lacked for lovers, it's true, but until that night in Willie's house I had not opened my heart to give and take without holding back; one part of me had always been on guard, and even in the intimate and special encounters that inspired the erotic scenes of my novels, I had protected my heart. Before Willie closed the door and we were alone and put our arms around each other—first with caution and then with a strange passion that streaked through us like lightning—I sensed that this was not to be a transitory adventure. That night we made love slowly, serenely, exploring maps and highways as if we had all the time in the world for our journey, speaking softly in an impossible patois of English and Spanish that ever since has been our private Esperanto, telling each other snippets of the past in pauses in between caresses, totally indifferent to the beating at the door and barking of the dog. At some moment there was silence, because I remember clearly the murmurs of love, each word, each sigh. Through the large window spilled a faint glow from the distant lights of the Bay. Accustomed to torrid Venezuela, I shivered with cold in that unheated room, even after I put on Willie's cashmere sweater that hung to my knees, wrapping me in an embrace scented with English soap. Throughout our lives, we had been accumulating experiences that perhaps helped us to know each other and to develop the necessary instincts to divine the other's wishes, but even had we behaved with the clumsiness of cubs, I think that night would have been decisive for each of us. What was new for him? For me? I don't know, but I like to think we were destined to meet, recognize each other, and fall in love. Or perhaps the difference was that we charted a course between two equally powerful currents: passion and tenderness. I was not concerned with my own desire; my body moved without impatience, without seeking an orgasm, with the tranquil confidence that everything would be fine. I surprised myself with tear-filled eyes, eased by sudden emotion, caressing Willie, grateful, and calm. I wanted to stay with him, and I wasn't frightened by his children, nor by fear of leaving my world to adopt a new country. I felt that our love could renew us, return a certain innocence to us, wash away the past, illuminate the dark corners of our lives. We slept in a tangle of arms and legs, soundly, as if we had been together always, exactly as we have every night from then on.