Adam in Eden

Chapter 17

Up until this point of my life I have woven together the different threads of my existence with great skill. As I have explained, I lead my professional life with extreme seriousness, with no tolerance for frivolity or misbehavior on the part of my associates. My family life disguises my professional life. In Don Celestino Holguín’s home, I act like what I originally was: the poor kid who hit the jackpot with Priscila, Princess of the Carnival. But both disguises — professional and family — conceal, at the same time, my erotic life, my passionate surrender to L, with whom the hours of nuisance, formality, presumptuousness, and absence turn into moments of communication, freedom, naturalness, and presence.

L’s person, love, and company are so important to me. But does L realize how important? I have to admit that I don’t know. I don’t know because I also don’t really know who L is.

One could think of L as a frivolous being, diaphanous, a bird that flits around the garden from flower to flower sipping nectar. L gets excited at a Luismi concert and asks me to do such frivolous things as shaving my armpits, and does this, that, and the other.

But I’ve never seen anyone display such seriousness in everyday behavior. I have never seen an apartment better arranged than L’s. Everything is in its exact place, as if by magic. Sex unleashes chaos on beds, bathrooms, closets; nobody thinks twice about leaving underwear, shirts, and socks where they lie, evidence of passion, of erotic haste. Like the gnomes in fables, however, L has everything back in its place quicker than a cock can crow — quicker at least than I can enter the bathroom, shower, and return to the bedroom, at which time the room looks as though nothing had happened there. L is already dressed and waits for me in the living room, offering to make a cocktail for me. As though the scotch and soda were a prize for my small tour de force of lovemaking.

L knows that I’m an ambitious man. Everybody knows a lot about me from the newspapers, but L never asks me anything. I sometimes suffer a bit from that tacit barrier that L imposes: we come here to love each other, to be together, to fantasize. “If you want, Adam,” L says, “I can tell you what I do. I know what you do, and I don’t need any explanations: love me, I don’t ask for anything else; love me, Adam. .” I mention this about L because this afternoon, I don’t know for what reason, I feel compelled to say something about myself that I’ve never brought up before, though it’s something everybody already knows:

“I’m an ambitious man.”

L looks at me with “distance”—an affectionate distance, but distance nonetheless. L gathers ice cubes from the freezer and makes the usual sound by transferring them to a cut glass container, as if to disguise any importance that I may want to attribute to the conversation. I am grateful for this tone of normality. L brings me the glass of scotch and sits, smiling at my side.

L drinks an Orange Crush and listens to me with the distance between a scotch-on-the-rocks and an Orange Crush.

“I’m an ambitious man,” I repeat.

L catches my drift. “They say, Adam, that you’ve achieved everything that you set out to do.”

“I’m an ambitious man.”

“You’ve said so three times. Why?”

“Why do you think?“

“Okay. You have accomplished your previous ambitions. Now you have a new ambition. You’re a regenerated man. You’re Adam, the first man. .”

L caresses my hand for just an instant.

“What for?” L asks.

“You said it.” I return L’s caress and realize that my fingers have retained the cold of the glass of whisky that I’d placed on the table.

“No, I mean, what are you ambitious for? Why are you ambitious about whatever you’re ambitious for?”

The reader will understand that I can talk to L about everything and nothing, about the greatest and the smallest things, without fear of reprisals, misinterpretation, or any lies. And yet, I wonder whether this evening, which is unexpectedly upon us, I am authorized to speak even more openly, and whether my words, more than anything else, have been dictated by the dust storm that eclipsed the sun and darkened my large office windows at noon.

I dive into the trust that L gives me, counting on the temperature of that welcoming soul, which to me is a liquid thing, something fluid that contrasts with the stagnant waters of my family and professional life. L is water that flows tranquil and clear.

I can admit, just like that, that I feel threatened. My life has reached a kind of plain on which satisfaction prevails over the rest of my ambition, making my ambition feel tamed, like a tiger that once roamed the jungle freely, stalking its enemies, defeating the weak and, more importantly, subjugating the strong, but that has now accepted the rules of domestic peace, the cage in which he can both pace and remain still, eat without the risk of being eaten, sleep soundly, and observe the world from the heights of a voluntary prison because his own power is locked up in there, a domestic beast that I, Adam Gorozpe, can feed, dominate like any fluffy old fur ball or set free to roam the city, inflicting panic and sometimes sowing death. .

L expresses sympathy, resisting any impulse to put certainty into words: I know that. The very gradual change in L’s look implies a now what? And is there something that has shaken your confidence, Adam? Have they weighed down your wings, baby, are you flying lower today than you flew yesterday?

I say that, as we both know, I’ve always described my private life, my career, and the society in which I live, as a paradoxical cage of freedom. I am free because my life is what I am, caged, yes, because all human society is a cage, but a cage dominated by Adam Gorozpe, do you understand?

“I don’t deny the limits of my freedom. I endure them because I have more power than freedom, do you understand me? Do you believe me?”

As in the opera by Puccini set in a bohemian garret, L says, very softly, “Yes.”

L would never demand an explanation, and I admit that it is hard for me to give one. A doubt gnaws at me: does L deserve anything less than my total honesty? At what point is being honest with a lover supplying ammunition for a future firing squad? Is being honest with the person who now, at this moment, conjugates and captures my passion, also giving this lover weapons to use for revenge when we are no longer lovers?

The reader will understand that my other sexual relationship, with Priscila, already proceeds with established, unbreakable rules of conduct. She is who she is and does what she does: everything is foreseeable as confirmed by twenty-one years of living together. Nothing changes in Priscila and my marriage. I never demand change or, God forbid, a divorce. Priscila is my continuity, my permanence, and if she doesn’t give me great joy, at least she does give me security and peace. In that sphere, things are the way they are. Priscila says stupid things. Don Celes hollers. Abelardo leaves home. The maid gets a slap.

Here, with L, my soul is satisfied, though satisfaction itself might presage dissatisfaction in that today’s sweetness includes the promise of unforeseen bitterness. That’s the great erotic toss-up: if you give it all to me today, can you take it all away from me tomorrow? We feel free from the matrimonial knot that becomes a noose around the condemned man’s neck. And we feel threatened because, without the legal commitment, freedom, because it is free, can free itself from all obligations, leaving one lover abandoned on a solitary island with no company other than regrets, the twisted ordeals of jealousy, nostalgia, all the debts of love’s sadness. .

What about divorce? Separation? Neither of these matters to a couple who desire each other and who satisfy their desire. Nothing else matters. And nothing else matters because passion covers all the spaces of existence. Passion leaves no window, door, or hole through which to escape. Is sincerity a virtue or is it the condition of erotic terror and ardor? This is what I need to find out with L, despite many reservations, fears, and surprising audacities, on this twilight evening darkened by the dust storms of the city’s dry season.

December seems so very far away!