The House of the Spirits (44 page)

That seemingly interminable orgy lasted more than a year. Finally, Miguel finished his thesis, graduated, and began to look for work. When the pressing need of unsatisfied love had passed, they regained their composure and were able to return to normal. Alba made an effort to take an interest in her studies again, and he turned once more to his political activities, because events were taking place at breakneck pace and the country was torn apart by a series of ideological disputes. Miguel rented a small apartment near the place where he worked, and this was where they made love; in the year they had spent frisking naked in the basement they had both contracted chronic bronchitis, which dampened somewhat the attraction of their subterranean paradise. Alba helped decorate the new apartment, hanging curtains and political posters everywhere she could and even suggesting that she might move in with him, but on this point Miguel was unyielding.

“Bad times are coming, my love,” he explained. “I can't have you with me, because when it becomes necessary I'm going to join the guerrillas.”

“I'll follow you wherever you go,” she promised.

“You can't do that for love. You do it out of political conviction, and that's something you don't have,” Miguel replied. “We can't afford the luxury of accepting amateurs.”

His words seemed cruel to Alba, but it was several years before she was able to understand their full meaning.

*  *  *

Senator Trueba was already old enough to retire, but the thought had not even crossed his mind. He read the daily papers and muttered under his breath. Things had changed a good deal in the preceding years, and he felt overtaken by events that he had not expected to live long enough to have to confront. He had been born before the city had electric lights and had lived to see a man walking on the moon, but none of the upheavals of his long existence had prepared him for the revolution that was brewing in his country, right under his eyes, and that had everyone in a state of agitation.

The only person who did not speak about what was happening was Jaime. To avoid arguing with his father, he acquired the habit of silence and soon discovered it was far more comfortable. The only time he abandoned his Trappist laconism was when Alba went to visit him in his tunnel of books. His niece always arrived in her nightgown, her hair wet from the shower, and sat at the foot of his bed to tell him happy stories, because, as she put it, he was a magnet for other people's problems and irreversible disasters, and someone had to keep him posted about spring and love. But her good intentions clashed with her need to talk with her uncle about the things that preoccupied her. They never agreed. They shared the same books, but when it came time to analyze what they had read, their opinions were different. Jaime made fun of her political ideas and bearded friends, and scolded her for having fallen in love with a café terrorist. He was the only one in the family who knew about Miguel.

“Tell that spoiled brat to come and spend a day in the hospital with me. We'll see if he still wants to waste his time on pamphlets and speeches,” he said to Alba.

“He's a lawyer, Uncle, not a doctor,” she replied.

“I don't care. We need whatever we can get. Even plumbers would be a help.”

Jaime was convinced that after so many years of struggle the Socialists were finally going to win. This he attributed to the fact that the people had become conscious of their needs and their own strength. Alba would repeat Miguel's words: that only through armed struggle could the bourgeoisie be toppled. Jaime was horrified by any form of extremism and held that guerrilla warfare is only justified by tyranny, where the only solution is to shoot it out, but that it would be an aberration in a country where change can be obtained by popular vote.

“Don't be so naïve, Uncle. You know that's never happened,” Alba answered. “They'll never let your Socialists win!”

She tried to explain Miguel's point of view: that it was not possible to keep waiting for the slow passage of history, the laborious process of educating and organizing the people, because the world was moving ahead by leaps and bounds and they were being left behind; and that radical change is never brought about willingly and without violence. History confirmed this. The argument went on and on, and they became locked in a confused rhetorical exchange that left them exhausted, each accusing the other of being more stubborn than a mule. But in the end they kissed each other good night and both were left with the feeling that the other was an extraordinary human being.

One night at dinner, Jaime announced that the Socialists were going to win, but since he had been saying that for twenty years, no one believed him.

“If your mother were alive, she'd say that those who always win are going to win again,” Senator Trueba replied disdainfully.

But Jaime knew what he was talking about. He had heard it from the Candidate. They had been friends for years, and Jaime often went to play chess with him at night. He was the same Socialist who had had his eye on the Presidency for the past eighteen years. Jaime had first seen him behind his father's back, when the Candidate rode the trains of victory in a cloud of smoke during the electoral campaigns of his youth. In those days, the Candidate was a robust young man with the angular face of a hunting dog, who shouted impassioned speeches over the hissing and heckling of the landowners, and the silent fury of the peasants. It was the era when the Sánchez brothers had hanged the Socialist leader at the crossroads and when Esteban Trueba had whipped Pedro Tercero García in front of his father for spreading Father José Dulce María's strange interpretations of the Bible among the tenants. Jaime's friendship with the Candidate was born by chance one Sunday night when he was summoned from the hospital to make an emergency house call. He arrived at the appropriate address in an ambulance, rang the doorbell, and was ushered in by the Candidate himself. Jaime had no trouble recognizing him, because he had seen his picture many times and he had not changed much since the time he had seen him on the train.

“Come in, Doctor. We were expecting you,” the Candidate said.

He led him to the maid's room, where his daughters were attempting to help a woman who appeared to be choking. Her pop-eyed face was purple, and her monstrously swollen tongue was hanging from her mouth.

“She was eating fish,” one of the daughters explained.

“Bring the oxygen that's in the ambulance,” Jaime said, preparing a syringe.

He remained with the Candidate, sitting beside him next to the bed until the woman began to breathe normally and was able to get her tongue back in her mouth. They discussed Socialism and chess, and it was the beginning of a strong friendship. Jaime introduced himself with his mother's surname, which was the one he always used, never imagining that the next day the party's security service would inform the Candidate that he was the son of Senator Trueba, his worst political enemy. The Candidate, however, never mentioned this, and right up to the final hour, when they shook each other's hand for the last time in the din of fire and bullets, Jaime wondered if he would ever have the courage to tell him the truth.

His long experience of defeat and his knowledge of the people allowed the Candidate to realize before anyone else that this time he was going to win. He told Jaime this, cautioning him not to let anybody know, so that the right would go into the elections sure of victory, as arrogant and divided as ever. Jaime replied that even if they told everyone, no one would believe it—not even the Socialists themselves—and as proof he told his father.

Jaime continued working fourteen hours a day, including Sundays, and took no part in the political process. He was frightened by the violent turn the struggle had taken, polarizing everyone into two extremes and leaving the center to a flighty, indecisive group that was waiting to see who the winner might be so they could vote for him. He refused to be provoked by his father, who seized every opportunity to warn him of the handiwork of international Communism and the chaos that would sweep the country in the improbable event of a victory of the left. The only time Jaime lost his patience was one morning when he awoke to find the city plastered with angry posters that portrayed a full-bellied, lonely woman vainly attempting to wrest her son from the arms of a Communist soldier who was dragging him off to Moscow. It was part of the terror campaign organized by Senator Trueba and his co-religionists, with the help of foreign experts who had been especially imported to that end. This was too much for Jaime. He decided that he could no longer live beneath the same roof as his father. He closed the door to his tunnel, packed his clothes, and went to sleep at the hospital.

The pace of events escalated during the final months of the campaign. Portraits of the candidates were on every wall; pamphlets were dropped from airplanes and carpeted the streets with printed refuse that fell from the sky like snow. Radios howled the various party slogans and preposterous wagers were made by party members on both sides. At night gangs of young people took to the streets to attack their ideological rivals. Enormous demonstrations were organized to measure the popularity of each party, and each time the city was jammed with the same numbers of people. Alba was euphoric, but Miguel explained that the election was a joke and that whoever won, it would make no difference because you would just be changing the needle on the same old syringe, and that you cannot make a revolution at the ballot box but only with the people's blood. The idea of a peaceful, democratic revolution with complete freedom of expression was a contradiction in terms.

“That poor boy is crazy!” Jaime exclaimed when Alba told him what Miguel had said. “We're going to win and he'll have to swallow his words.”

Up until that moment, Jaime had always managed to avoid Miguel. He did not wish to know him, for he was tormented by a secret unconfessable jealousy. He had helped bring Alba into the world and had sat her on his knee a thousand times; had taught her to read, paid for her schooling, and celebrated all her birthdays. Feeling like a father, he could not shake off his uneasiness on seeing her become a woman. He had noticed her change in recent years, and had deceived himself with false arguments, even though his long experience in taking care of other human beings had taught him that only the knowledge of love could bring such splendor to a woman's looks. He had seen Alba mature practically overnight, leaving behind the vague shape of adolescence to assume the body of a satisfied and gentle woman. With absurd intensity he hoped against hope that his niece's infatuation would prove to be a passing fancy, because deep down he could not accept that she should need another man more than she needed him. Still, he could not continue to ignore Miguel. It was during this time that Alba told him Miguel's sister was ill.

“I want you to speak to Miguel. He'll tell you about his sister. Would you do that for me?” Alba pleaded.

When Jaime met Miguel in a neighborhood café, all his suspicion was swept away be a wave of sympathy, because the man across the table from him nervously stirring his coffee was not the petulant extremist bully he had expected, but a tremulous, sensitive young man who was fighting off tears as he described the symptoms of his sister's illness.

“Take me to see her,” Jaime said.

Miguel and Alba led him to the bohemian quarter. In the center of town, only yards away from the modern buildings made of steel and glass, streets of painters, ceramists, and sculptors had sprung up on the side of a steep hill. There they had built their burrows, dividing ancient houses into tiny studios. The craftmen's workshops had glass roofs to let the sky in, while the painters survived in dark hovels that were a paradise of misery and grandeur. Confident children played in the narrow streets, beautiful women in long tunics carried babies on their backs or anchored on their hips, and bearded, sleepy, indifferent men watched the stream of life pass by from chairs they had set up on street corners or in doorways. Miguel, Alba, and her uncle stopped before a French-style house that looked like a cream cake, with cherubs carved along the friezes. They ascended a narrow staircase that had been built as an emergency exit in case of fire but that the numerous subdivisions of the house had transformed into the only means of entrance. As they climbed, the staircase turned on itself and wrapped them in the penetrating smell of garlic, marijuana, and turpentine. Miguel stopped on the top floor before an orange door. He took out a key, turned it in the lock, and they went in. Jaime and Alba felt as if they had stepped into an aviary. The room was round, and capped by an absurd Byzantine cupola surrounded with windows, through which one could see all the rooftops of the city and feel close to the clouds. Doves had nested on the windowsill, adding their excrement and feathers to the spattered panes. Seated on a chair before the only table in the room was a woman in a ragged robe adorned with an embroidered dragon on its front. It took Jaime a few seconds to recognize her.

“Amanda . . . Amanda . . .” he whispered.

He had not seen her in more than twenty years, when the love they both felt for Nicolás was stronger than the love between them. In that time the dark, athletic young man with the damp slicked-down hair, who used to walk back and forth reading aloud from his medical textbooks, had become a man slightly curved from the habit of bending over his patients' beds. Though he now had gray hair, a serious face, and wire-rimmed glasses, he was basically the same person as before. But to have recognized Amanda, he must have loved her a great deal. She looked older than she could possibly have been, and she was very thin, just skin and bones, with a wan, yellow complexion and neglected, nicotine-stained hands. Her eyes were red and bloated, without luster, and her pupils were dilated, which gave her a frightened, helpless look. She saw neither Jaime nor Alba, looking only at Miguel. She tried to get up, but she stumbled and swayed. Her brother jumped to catch her, holding her against his chest.