Purgatory

5. Fame is nothing but a breath of wind

‘Purgatorio’, XI, 100

I open the cuttings file Nancy Frears gave me and notice that some of them are missing. I know that when she gave it to me there were photos of Emilia with her father at the funeral of the film director Leopoldo Torre Nilsson and at a gala given by the comandantes for the king and queen of Spain, but I’m confusing what I see with the things Emilia told me. There are many ant trails in my memory and on this point all of them seem to get entangled. I call one of my doctors and ask if these distractions mean anything. ‘We’ll know if there’s any need to worry after we’ve examined you. Are you writing?’ he asks. ‘Yes,’ I tell him, ‘a novel.’ ‘In that case, be careful. It’s your imagination that’s making you ill.’ I go back home, and start going over the papers and the notes I have collected.

I started at the end: with the photograph of Dr Dupuy taken in the main studio of Canal 7 during the twenty-four-hour benefit programme in aid of the soldiers fighting in the Malvinas. It is date-stamped in the top right-hand corner, May 20, 1982, with the time, 23.12. Emilia watches from a distance as her father comes onto the set. It looks to me as though at any moment she might turn her back on him. She finds it difficult to hide her hostility, her displeasure. They have not lived in the same house now for three years, and I know that Emilia would have left Buenos Aires if an increasingly slender umbilical cord did not tie her to her mother, whose body is now little more than a sigh. I don’t have the dates clear in my head, but I think I remember that Ethel Dupuy died shortly after the programme: she left this world as suddenly as she had entered it. Emilia told me she was cremated in a private, almost secret ceremony and that she herself, ‘just me, no one else’, scattered her ashes in the Río de la Plata, its waters swollen with all the dead.

In the photo, you can see the programme’s presenters in the background: they sit pensively on plastic chairs. I suppose they are charged with keeping alive the patriotic fervour the dictatorship has whipped up in the populace to mask the poverty, the inflation, the sense of imminent ruin. At the start of that year, the comandantes of the junta, feeling the country slipping through their fingers, grasp desperately for a lifeline: they invade the icy islands, send soldiers trained in the tropics of the Argentinian north-east where cold is unknown. Those in power are different now, the successors to the admiral and the Eel, though their imaginations are still bleak, empty horizons. The British fleet is on the far side of the world and no one expects them to take the trouble to defend a few shitty rocks inhabited by nothing but cormorants and wind, wind and 2,200 of Her Majesty’s subjects, melancholy penguins and wind. Against all expectations, the English launch a counter-offensive; Dupuy calculates that, within eight to ten weeks, defeat is inevitable. Even so, he wants the new comandantes to stay at the tiller until the state has weathered the storm. They need to stand firm — but how? When they are as stupid as all the others, as blind to everything that is not white and red and yellow? The stupidest of them are still stealing orphans from hospitals, snatching babies from the wombs of women in labour. There are still many gullible enough to see the country only as the happy, world-beating country depicted by the biddable media. Talk about our crushing victories in the air and on the sea, Dupuy instructs them. Show them photographs of pitiless, corrupt British soldiers. Show them Thatcher with fangs like Dracula. Run the headline: we’re winning! People are celebrating our armies’ victories, pouring into the streets wearing armbands, waving flags just as they did during the 1978 World Cup. Our onslaughts are lethal, the newspapers repeated in unison. Thatcher, they said, is running scared. Professor Addolorato uttered dirges on Spanish radio stations which Dupuy was forced to republish in La República: ‘My poor country is fighting an unequal battle against the third largest power on the planet, supported by American imperialists. The Argentina waging this war is not what the ignorant and ill-informed call the military dictatorship. No, all of Argentina is locked in this struggle: its women, its children, its old people.’ An eloquent opportunist, Dupuy is forced to concede. The British leak the news that Argentinian soldiers are falling at the front without even defending themselves, not from heroism or from enemy shrapnel but because they’re dying of cold. They have little ammunition, their rations of food have run out. Dupuy announces that he is going to launch a huge appeal for solidarity. Live on the same television channels that broadcast the World Cup, the greatest artists and celebrities in the nation will take donations: jewellery, money, chocolates, anything and everything, patriotism must be transformed into largesse and, more importantly, into a chorus of praise to the comandantes. He is still inspired by Orson Welles’s lessons in the art of illusion. What a son of a bitch, Welles, he thinks with a mixture of admiration and resentment. The bastard put him in a difficult position with the Eel and the admiral. Shortly after rejecting his offer to direct the documentary that would have heaped praise on it, he mocked Argentina and filmed The Muppet Movie, a pathetic trifle for retarded children. Dupuy has heard that he makes his living falling back on his past as a clown. What he cannot forgive is that it was his voice used in Genocide, a tasteless documentary about the Nazi concentration camps in which, in passing, there is mention of prison camps in Argentina. He had better not dare try to set foot in Buenos Aires.

The success of the twenty-four-hour solidarity appeal is beyond his wildest expectations. At precisely 6 p.m. every television in the country is turned on; even those in hospital join in singing the national anthem. The great Libertad Lamarque cries as she recites the poem ‘La hermanita perdida’²³. Famous actors and comedians come down from their pedestals and sell flowers in the streets. The television studios are besieged by old women who have spent sleepless nights knitting scarves and socks for the poor soldiers who are freezing. In a few short hours, there is a staggering pile of jewels, heirlooms, first communion medals, wedding rings. In the grocery shops there is not a tin of meatballs, sardines or beans left on sale — anything that can be eaten has been handed over. ‘So that our brave boys can go on fighting,’ sings Lolita Torres to the cameras through the night.

Emilia marches on the television studio with the mothers and wives of the disappeared. Like them, she has covered her head with a white scarf. She hopes her father will see her, will have her thrown out. Nothing would ease her contempt better than a good scandal. But this is something that will not happen, because Dupuy wants only to forget his daughter, to force her, he doesn’t yet know how, to go far away. In the streets, the crowds wave flags. In another photo taken in the studio, I can make out Nora Balmaceda. I barely recognise her. I’ve seen her picture in magazines and in a couple of documentaries, always with her rosebud mouth larded with lipstick and her eyelashes thick with mascara. But what appeared that night on television was her corpse. She is standing, barely able to hold herself up. I don’t believe, like so many of the others I recognise in the photograph, she would go so far to hide her story. On the contrary, she would be only too happy to tell it as long as there were cameras pointed at her. She would tell all: the novels she didn’t write, her travels, her affairs with famous sportsmen, her affair with the admiral. On her right, an elderly woman, still clinging to her flag, is picking up her false teeth which have fallen on the floor. What patriotic fervour, what religious devotion there is in that photograph. In the last photo, a messenger with slicked-back hair and patent-leather shoes is standing next to Dupuy and whispering something in his ear. He is in civilian clothes, wearing a suit that looks as though he borrowed it, and just this detail is enough to recognise that he is a military orderly. The photo is marked May 21, 1982, at 12.03 a.m. The messenger must be telling Dupuy that the British Army has surrounded the Argentinian troops defending Port Stanley and that the government has ordered them to defend it to the last man.

The war carries on for a few more days, and then it is over. The president shuts himself away in his office, drinking bottle after bottle of Old Parr, and then resigns. On the heels of the invented triumphs comes despair. ‘We have lost a battle, let us not lose the country,’ Dupuy says in a radio interview. He is the only major figure who dares to show his face. That same afternoon, he meets with the comandantes who have survived the disaster and asks them what they want him to do with the donations from the solidarity appeal. ‘Is there much?’ they ask. ‘Oh yes,’ he tells them, ‘almost sixty million dollars, and 140 kilos of gold which I’d suggest melting down into ingots. There are tons of tinned foods, chocolates, sacred pictures, letters for the soldiers and two whole hangars bursting with winter clothes.’ The comandantes look at each other, confused. Dupuy sets them straight. ‘Almost all of it is rubbish. The scarves and woollen vests are in bright colours and might easily draw attention to the soldiers. The best thing to do is dump it all. Not the gold and the money, obviously. As for everything else, we should ship it out on two Hercules planes, though we’d be running the risk of the British getting their hands on everything, including the planes.’ ‘What do you suggest, Doctor?’ asks one of the comandantes. ‘I suggest we cover our backs, save face. If anyone asks about the contributions, we tell them we sent everything we could and that, since the islands were in British hands, we don’t know what they did with them. We can also say that everything else was put into accounts reserved for the armed forces and the missions. We won’t exactly be lying. We have to give up a percentage to dispel any doubts. I would also suggest that this operation be classified a state secret. If it were up to me, I’d order that history books be immediately rewritten to include these heroic deeds before people start publishing all sorts of bullshit. I’d say that London had plans to invade Tierra del Fuego and that we were merely defending ourselves against the first and third largest powers in the world.’ ‘Professor Addolorato has already said that,’ one of the comandantes pointed out. ‘In that case, get Addolorato to write the books.’ Dupuy was offended. ‘All I know, señores, is that when the truth is unfavourable, it must be made to disappear as quickly as possible.’ He withdraws, leaving a copy of La República on the new president’s desk. On page one it reads: ‘The time has come for humility. Let us give politicians the opportunity to govern. Let us offer them the wisdom of our military leaders. This country must go on being a country of freedom, of the cross and the sword.’

Some of the other photos in the file sadden me. I see Emilia and Dr Dupuy standing next to the coffin of Leopoldo Torre Nilsson. I read the date: September 8, 1978. The celebrities gathered in the funeral chapel are almost the same as those who, four years later, will be caught up in the fever of the solidarity appeal for Las Malvinas. The same as those who cheered at the World Cup until they were hoarse. The darkest year of that murky dictatorship was 1978. In December, the comandantes celebrate their three world triumphs: in football, in hockey and in beauty, when a twenty-one-year-old girl from Córdoba is voted Miss World. I don’t think Torre Nilsson would have approved of how his funeral chapel is staged in the photographs: the dark cedar coffin with eight ornately carved handles to carry it, the crucifix that looks as though it might drop onto his head, the wreaths and flowers that shroud him in their heavy perfume, the poster for Martín Fierro hanging next to the crucifix (he must have requested the poster: he considered Martín Fierro his finest film, I still think it was one of his worst). He would have been ashamed that in death, this most private moment, his wasted, shrunken body should be exposed for all to see.

I met him one night in October 1958 in a restaurant near that very funeral chapel. I was surprised to discover he was even more shy than me — in itself something of a feat — giving up each word with infinite care as though they were joys that he was losing forever. I chattered away, telling him about the deaths I had seen at the cinema and those I had been dreaming about for weeks. ‘Some deaths are ridiculous,’ I told him, ‘and I forget them as soon as the film is over: the living dead, zombies, ghosts. I’m more moved by the personification of Death in Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal, and the funeral of a village girl I saw recently in Carl Dreyer’s Ordet.’ I told him the scene had made me cry and that later I was disappointed because the girl came back to life. Torre Nilsson smiled magnanimously. ‘Ah, Ordet,’ he said. ‘I think in the film Dreyer is denying the idea of death, portraying it as a sort of divergence from life, like an eclipse, after which it is possible to reappear.’ ‘What is irreparable,’ I said, ‘is the obscene way in which the dead are put on display. From that there can be no return.’ I am remembering that phrase as I look at the photos of Dupuy, the admiral and Addolorato standing before his defenceless body feigning grief.

In another of the photos, Emilia is greeting an actress who appeared in a number of Torre Nilsson’s early films and who, for years, had vanished off the face of the earth. The woman looks frightened, as though she has just been caught doing something terrible and wants to hide away. Until twenty years ago, the newspapers carried on publishing stories about what had happened to her, all of them false. Once she was dead, they lost interest and she fell into oblivion. Sometimes I see the startled expression of that former actress staring back at me from a poster in the film club, always the same face, eyes gazing into the middle distance, lips twisted in a foolish smile. Emilia mentioned her in passing that morning we went to see Mary Ellis’s grave. She told me that Torre Nilsson had taken her and turned her into a unique character, terrified of sex, constantly afraid of being raped. Later, other directors took advantage of her naive defenceless image to transform her into the perfect victim: a teenage girl who has her virginity taken in a brothel, a country girl who swears eternal love to a rogue in an empty church convinced that, though there are no witnesses, this oath is enough for them to be legally married. Going from one melodrama to the next confused her. One day she woke up not knowing who she really was and ran off the set of her last film. She got on the first bus she saw and disappeared without a trace. She never told anyone what happened in the months that followed. She had no family, only a neighbour she occasionally went out with for pizza. Maybe she was living in a hotel in a small town, maybe she ran away to the beach because when she came back she was very tanned. No producer every called her again. She went back to her old house, to her old routine of going out for pizza with her neighbour and became a dressmaker. Ever since she was a girl she had liked drawing dresses, cutting out patterns, embroidering, making costumes for her dolls. She opened a small shop, took in two stray cats and never spoke about the past again. She emerged from her obscurity only to say goodbye to the director who had discovered her and changed her life. She had intended only to spend a few minutes in the funeral chapel, to leave a flower, say a prayer. The dead man mattered less to her than that part of her life which had already died. On the huge poster hanging beside the door of the chapel she saw herself, cowering in the shadows of two men. Seeing herself like this, on display, it seemed as though this funeral was hers too and she almost fled. Emilia saw the woman leaving, looking as though she was about to faint, and went to help her. It took a moment before she recognised her. She was no longer the teenage girl in the poster. She was overweight, dishevelled and looked like a middle-class housewife. She had met her long ago in the house on calle Arenales when the actress had come with Torre Nilsson to ask Dupuy to intercede with a reactionary censor who was busy cutting swathes out of the finest films of the day, from Buñuel and Stanley Kubrick to Dreyer and Fellini. Childbirth and kissing, however reverently done, could not be seen anywhere near a church. He had banned two of Torre Nilsson’s films and was threatening to bowdlerise a third. ‘I don’t know what my father said to him,’ Emilia told me. ‘All I remember is that the girl was crying when she left. At the time, she looked like a schoolgirl — she wore a blouse with a big lace collar and ribbons in her hair. She had the same astonished expression she had in her films, as though her body shifted untouched from fantasy to reality. The trembling woman in the funeral chapel was a different person, she was short and fat with a double chin.’ Emilia took pity on her and took her outside for some fresh air. Then she invited her to go for coffee at a cafe on the corner and sat with her until she had calmed down. That was all. Emilia didn’t tell me that it was at that moment the photograph I’m looking at now was taken. The rest of the story I know from the notes and cuttings she left in North 4th Avenue.

The more I delve into Emilia’s life, the more I realise that from beginning to end it is an unbroken chain of losses, disappearances and senseless searches. She spent years chasing after nothing, after people who no longer existed, remembering things that had never happened. But aren’t we all like that? Don’t we all abuse history to leave some trace there of what we once were, a miserable smudge, a tiny flame when we know that even the deepest mark is a bird that will leave on a breath of wind? ‘One human being is more or less the same as another; perhaps we are all already dead without realising it, or not yet born and do not know it,’ I said to Emilia one of the last times I saw her. ‘We come into the world without knowing it, the result of a series of accidents, and we leave it to go who knows where, nowhere probably. If you hadn’t loved Simón you would have loved someone else. You would have done so joyfully, with no guilt, because you cannot love what you do not know.’ She didn’t like this idea because she could not conceive of a world without Simón and loving made sense only if it meant loving him. I don’t think I understood at all that afternoon. Now, I would say I was an optimist, that the mere fact of existing or loving is enough to give meaning to everything. This is not how Emilia feels, and she is right. I realise this when I find a map among the papers that she left: the map of a city that stretches out in time not in space, and maybe because of that, an impossible city. There are transparent edges with dates beneath which the city is always different. In the centre is a vast palace next to a lake or reservoir. Above the palace, in capital letters, is written the code word to her life, Simón. The map is torn, wet with drool and with tears. It has no edges, sectors, bearing, no scale, and I don’t think it is necessary to ask where they are.

I have already spent hours unearthing what is hidden in the folds and on the backs of the photographs and clippings given to me by Nancy Frears. Perhaps there is nothing worthwhile here, perhaps that part of Emilia’s life I do not know is a lunar desert or an insignificant outcrop like Kaffeklubben. I begin reading one of her notebooks. ‘I know D is a dressmaker and I’ve asked her to make me some dresses. ’ The cellphone I always carry with me rings and I set down the notebook. It is noon. Not many people know I have a cellphone and I don’t recognise the number calling. I answer, convinced someone has misdialled and prepared to listen to an apology.

‘It’s me. Emilia,’ says the voice. It’s her.

I’m startled. She has taken me so much by surprise that it takes a moment before I react. I don’t even remember where I thought she was hiding.

‘I’ve been looking for you all over,’ I tell her. ‘Nancy was out of her mind with worry — she called the police. You caused a terrible commotion. Where are you? Can I call you?’

‘A commotion,’ she says. Her voice sounds completely calm. ‘There’s no reason to be worried. I’m fine, I’m better than I’ve ever been.’

‘I’m glad,’ I say. ‘But if the police find you, they’ll pick you up.’

‘I didn’t do anything, I’m free to go wherever I like.’

‘Of course. It’s just that you left without telling anyone. At the police station they asked if you were suicidal, if you’d been depressed. One of the officers thought you might have been kidnapped, that you might even be dead. You took the Altima.’

‘What a waste of time. The people in this town have no idea how to fill the lives they don’t have.’

‘They’re looking for your car,’ I tell her. ‘Sooner or later they’re bound to find you. Can I see you?’

‘That’s why I’m calling, so we can meet up,’ she says.

‘Sure, just give me a place and a time. I’m free right now.’

‘Not now. Tonight, eight o’clock. At Toscana, the restaurant where we first met.’

‘Toscana doesn’t exist any more,’ I remind her.

‘It doesn’t matter. The best places are those that don’t exist, just like on maps. I won’t be coming alone.’

‘So where then?’ I insist. ‘I don’t want to miss you. Once I’ve seen you, I’ll need to let the police know. I hope you understand.’

‘I understand. Eight o’clock then, at Toscana.’

‘On the corner there,’ I repeat so there’s no mistake. ‘Who are you with, Emilia?’

‘With Simón. We’ll both come. Tonight you’ll get to meet him.’

I held onto the photos and the clippings for a long time. I don’t know what to think. Obviously I’ll be waiting for her at eight o’clock on the corner of George and Paterson. Toscana does not exist but there is a point in reality where it does not matter whether or not it exists. Who is this Simón with her? I know that Simón Cardoso is dead, several witnesses testified to that fact. Tortured, a bullet through his forehead: it is all there in the transcripts of the trial of the comandantes. Maybe the man I’m going to meet is an impostor, an illusion created by Orson Welles from beyond the grave. If it doesn’t matter to Emilia, I don’t see why it should matter to me.

I’ll give her back the press cuttings tonight, I’ll ask her permission to publish what little I already know of her story. I could spend what remains of the afternoon taking notes on some of the other things she’s written in the folder. Most of it is unimportant, comments about the soap operas that were on television back then and also an account of the cruel incident which caused the rift between Emilia and her father. On one of the cuttings, I notice a small red circle and, underneath, a line from Dante’s ‘Purgatorio’ in the meek, childlike handwriting that was Emilia’s at the time: Quel color che l’inferno mi nascose. I know the line, it is one of the most famous lines of the poem: ‘That colour that in me Inferno had concealed’. Nothing in Emilia is chance, which meant that in writing that line she was alluding to a hidden story, one that burned her up inside, but one that she did not want to forget.

I’ve mentioned that when my cellphone rang, I had been reading one of her notebooks: ‘I know D is a dressmaker and I’ve asked her to make me some dresses. ’ This was just the beginning. At the end of November, the Spanish royal family were to visit Argentina and Dupuy wanted his daughter to accompany him to the gala ball the Eel was planning to throw. The doctor ordered a dinner jacket from his tailor and told Emilia to track down the finest fashion designer in Buenos Aires, suggested she call someone at Para Ti for advice. ‘I don’t trust you to decide what to wear,’ he told her, ‘and when you are my escort, you can’t afford to be anything less than the queen.’ He wanted her to wear a dress like the one Audrey Hepburn wore in Funny Face, though the only things Emilia had in common with Audrey Hepburn were her long legs and her dancer’s neck. ‘I want a dress that is simple but unforgettable,’ he said, ‘and just this once, I’ll let you wear your mother’s diamond earrings for the evening.’ Ethel could not wear anything now, not even the filmy skin that sheathed her body. She was covered with sores from her terrible allergies and even the touch of her nightdress made her whimper like a kitten; for most of the five days she spent in the mansion on the calle Arenales she was almost naked, soothing her tender skin in a lukewarm bath. Emilia did not leave her side: she sang to her as she sang to her dolls as a child, brushed her hair, stroked her head until she finally realised that she would be better taken care of in the home. On the sixth day she drove her mother back and returned to the loneliness and the torment of paying the debt which Dupuy implacably demanded.

Towards the end of 1978, the newspapers and the radio broadcast only what they were allowed. They had been doing so for some time, and by now fear and compliance had become habit. If human beings could disappear, if the houses where the destitute took shelter and the savings of the credulous and the old could disappear, why would inconvenient truths not also disappear? And so readers pretended to know nothing, telling themselves ignorance was bliss. The comandantes left it to Dupuy to take care of the unreality and concentrated solely on the armed repression. Madrid and Barcelona were hotbeds for fugitive extremists and it was vital to make the best possible impression on the king and queen of Spain, to give them a glimpse of the happiness and prosperity that flourished in Argentina. Dupuy was not about to permit any dissent from the media, not so much as the flutter of an angry wasp’s wing. ‘You should go so far as to prohibit making jokes about the royal couple,’ the Eel had told him. ‘I don’t want any gossip, any rumours, any stories about the past.’ Argentina was walking on eggshells and Europe was a flank which could not be ignored. The United States had been foolish enough to elect a president who appointed inquisitive, meddling diplomats. He was fanatical about human rights and the subversives were determined to use what little breath they still had to disrupt the royal visit. The honour of the nation was at stake.

Dupuy dispensed with the services of the journalist who had done such sterling work with the European papers before the World Cup. She might be able to pass as the wife of a carpenter, or even as a reincarnation of the Virgin in spite of her weight, but it was unthinkable that he could present her at a royal gala. He needed a journalist who was more ruthless, more refined. The admiral recommended Héctor Caccace who worked for his newspaper and whose manner was as graceful as his prose (officers and lawyers still talked about ‘good and bad pens’). Dupuy had never heard of the man and had his people make discreet enquiries. Caccace, his informants advised him, was cunning, a coward, maybe, but deferential to those in power. He was mortified by his surname Caccace — Caca sounded like Shit — and was taking steps to change it. In fact his cousin, Estéfano Caccace, a tango singer who was the toast of milongas at Club Sunderland, worked under the stage name Julio Martel to avoid such scatological connotations. Héctor had got ahead by arming himself with an arsenal of literary quotations which he wore everywhere like a whalebone corset. He knew which knives and forks to use, kissed the hands of ladies, effusively praised their gowns with little French phrases. Dupuy called him into his office and within five minutes decided he would do. He was a little affected but his pretentiousness could pass for elegance; there would be no complaints about him at the royal gala. Later, Caccace phoned him. He did not know how to apologise for his discourtesy, he waffled endlessly, infuriating Dupuy, and finally explained his problem to the doctor. ‘Having read the invitation, it’s clear that formal dress is required, and I don’t own a tuxedo.’ ‘Don’t waste my time with such foolishness,’ Dupuy interrupted him. ‘Go and rent one at Casa Martínez like every other journalist.’ Caccace hesitated a moment and then brought up the subject of the starched shirt front, the cufflinks, the shoes. ‘They’ll cost another hundred thousand, probably a hundred and twenty,’ he calculated, ‘and I haven’t got the money.’ ‘Come by my house and I’ll give it to you,’ Dupuy said contemptuously. ‘I’ll give you the money and a copy of the contract. Just do your job and stop fucking me around.’

Meanwhile, Emilia entrusted the making of her dress to D. She was quick, discreet and talked little. Her speech was peppered with clichés, but her work displayed more originality and talent than many of the fashion houses. She asked Emilia to get her a length of crêpe georgette and showed her the design she was working on. It was a tailored off-the-shoulder dress of clean, simple lines with broad straps and a silk trim around the waist. ‘What colour would you prefer?’ D asked. ‘I don’t know if I can wear something like that,’ said Emilia, ‘I’ll feel naked. It’s so daring, and as you probably know, my husband is not around, he disappeared. I’m more or less a widow.’ ‘I don’t know where my husband is either,’ said D. ‘They came to our house one night and took him and he’s never come back. I spent a year and a half searching for him. This country is a wasteland, a tragedy. Everything fades, disappears. What if I make the dress in black?’ ‘OK,’ Emilia accepted, ‘I’ll feel more comfortable wearing black. But I’d like the neckline higher, no décolletage.’ ‘Oh no,’ D protested, ‘do you want to ruin all my hard work? What about a square neckline? They’re very fashionable at the moment.’ ‘What should I wear over it? It needs to be something light because the weather is getting warmer and by the time the king and queen get here it will be worse.’ ‘A silk cape would suit you better than a shawl,’ said D. ‘Or maybe crêpe rather than silk, something you can drape lightly over your shoulders but can take off easily.’ ‘White? Ivory?’ suggested Emilia. D was not persuaded. ‘Against a black dress, ivory or white will just look like you bought something off the peg. How about pink? Dusky pink is very popular this summer. If you like I can trim the waist of the dress with dusky pink crêpe too.’

Emilia arrived at the gala like Cinderella in her fairy coach. Her mother’s earrings lit up her face with a radiance that seemed to come from another body (she knew from where). Even the Eel came up to greet her, surprised. ‘M’hijita, how pretty you look.’ He was wearing a full dress uniform bedecked with medals. Dupuy shook the Eel’s hand, bowed to his wife — who was wearing a long blue dress to cover her bloated legs. There was a flight of marble steps up to the main hall. Reality had been left outside with the few families of beggars who scavenged for food in the garbage. The great hall, where a quarter of a century earlier Evita had received the destitute, was a copy of the Grand Hall in the Paris Opera House, the ceiling and the pillars extravagantly and ornately gilded. Inside, the hall was lined with mirrors which endlessly reflected the chandeliers, the jewels, the huge platters of lobster and caviar. Emilia had nightmares about mirrors. Her mother’s dressing room had floor-length mirrors, even mirrors on the ceiling. As a little girl Ethel had threatened to lock her in there and ever since she had not been able to shake off the nightmare of being hundreds of Emilias, endlessly reflected, none of them the same, because no reflection was exactly like another. She spotted Caccace in the distance running after a large platter of quails’ eggs and popping two and three into his mouth at a time. From time to time he took out a little pad and made notes. The king and queen had not yet arrived, but they were clearly due at any moment because the crowd, forgetting protocol, were elbowing each other at the top of the stairs behind the Eel. Emilia decided to stay at the back of the room near the window where Juan Manuel Fangio, a former racing-car driver, was trying to avoid the stifling heat. Emilia too was beginning to feel suffocated and she draped her cape on a chair between two curtains. She heard applause and moved closer so she could get a glimpse of the king and queen, who looked very young and very happy. The king was wearing a dinner jacket just like everyone else. Next to him, the queen looked tiny. Emilia stopped, incredulous when she saw the dress she was wearing. She had read somewhere that the queen only wore Spanish couture, designs specially made for her by Balenciaga and his disciples. But the dress she was wearing that evening was almost a perfect copy of Emilia’s dress. D always insisted that she had very little talent. ‘What I do is really simple,’ she’d say, ‘it’s nothing much.’ And here was the queen wearing a dress that looked just like the one made by her dressmaker but which had probably cost a hundred times more. It was the same design, subtly tailored with dusky pink trimming about the waist, broad shoulder straps and the same square neckline that Emilia had found so intimidating. The only difference was the colour; the queen’s dress was white. The designer at Balenciaga or whoever it was had also given the queen a matching cape: dusky pink crêpe tied with an almost invisible red cord. Emilia didn’t know where to put herself; she was terrified the queen would notice the coincidence. She felt embarrassed and ashamed, but at the same time proud of her dressmaker. She was relieved that she had taken off her cape. She watched as the queen, hemmed in by the crowd, fanned herself impatiently, never once losing her smile.

The waiters glided from one group to the next carrying silver salvers which were picked clean within seconds. Caccace came over to Emilia, prattling incessantly. He explained to her who was who, how the room they were in was modelled on the Second Empire architectural style. He went on and on. The queen too seemed to be suffering from all the hand-kissing, the cigar smoke, the terrible humidity, the stultifying heat. She walked towards one of the windows to get some air, taking off her cape and handing it to one of her ladies-in-waiting.

The Eel’s wife was sweating profusely. She came over to Emilia, gasping for breath, weighed down by her swollen legs. ‘That’s a beautiful dress you’re wearing,’ she said, ‘but you really should take your dressmaker to task for copying the queen’s dress. He’s French, isn’t he? An Argentinian would have made something more fitting.’ Caccace took a step forward, but just as he was about to kiss her hand and introduce himself, she took a step back. The Eel’s wife stumbled and apologised. ‘Excuse me, how embarrassing, I think I might faint.’ Emilia gestured almost imperceptibly to one of the waiters and together they led her to a chair. Caccace trotted after them, still prattling, still making notes in his little pad. Emilia whispered something in her father’s ear as he passed; Dupuy urgently summoned the Eel’s personal physician, who within ten seconds had unobtrusively taken her pulse and given her some water to drink. He stayed with her until she got her breath back. Everything happened so quickly that nobody seemed to have noticed and perhaps nobody would have known had Caccace not tactlessly reported it in the admiral’s newspaper. Dupuy indignantly phoned the editor and demanded that he immediately fire that childish chimpanzee. Those were his very words; he was proud of his little alliteration.

The king and queen stayed another two hours at the party without anything else worthy of note happening. Just one trivial episode, which went unnoticed, proved the beginning of a secret scandal. On her way back from the toilet one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting stopped, her back turned, to smooth the creases from her skirt and her blouse, and in doing so exposed a glimpse of her hip as she stepped into the hall. Her skin was very pale and above the iliac crest there was an all too obvious, alluring beauty mark. The lady-in-waiting was pretty and also flirtatious. One of the admiral’s bodyguards glanced over and smiled at her lasciviously. She returned his smile. This was enough for the guard, in a white dress uniform, to approach her and make a proposition. The lady-in-waiting let out a peal of laughter and, as she walked away, nudged him with her arm. She returned to the great hall, not realising the row she had unleashed behind her. Her gentle nudge had caused the guard, who was drinking tomato juice, to stagger. Not wanting to spill juice on his uniform, he jolted himself upright holding the almost full glass and spilling the juice over Emilia’s cape. It looked like a scene from The Three Stooges. The guard was probably a new recruit, a midshipman, perhaps simply a cadet, and was appalled at his clumsiness. The admiral was implacable and this blunder could earn him a week in the brig. He was relieved to see that no one had noticed and, not giving it another thought, picked up the cape and put it in his case. He was intending to send it to a dry-cleaner’s and then return it to its owner.

Emilia was finding the evening increasingly stifling; she despised the feigned chivalry and was beginning to feel that she was no one, that her place was the nowhere Simón now inhabited. She ached for Simón. She thought how different her life would have been had he not disappeared. Together they would had fled the bloody ruins that the country had become. As soon as her mother no longer needed her, she would take what little money she had managed to save and leave. She didn’t know where she would go, but she trusted that Simón would guide her. She went over to her father and told him she couldn’t stay a minute longer. ‘I’ve kept my promise,’ she said, ‘I’m leaving.’

‘Don’t even think of going out into the street half naked like that,’ Dupuy said.

‘There are lots of taxis just outside,’ she said. Before her father could grab her arm, she headed back to look for her cape. It wasn’t where she had left it, but on a chair between two curtains almost at the back of the hall. She slipped it over her shoulders and, relieved, headed outside.

The king and queen moved from one group to another, gracefully acknowledging the bows and curtsies. The air in the hall was increasingly muggy. The ladies’ dresses were mercifully light, but the gentlemen, all wearing starched shirts and dinner jackets, were dripping with sweat. Even the king appeared to be exhausted. His brow glistened and he had to mop it. The queen gave him a slight, barely perceptible gesture. The king approached the Eel and said: ‘We are extremely grateful, Presidente. Argentina is a magnificent country.’ The Eel applauded and the crowd followed suit. The queen went to look for her cape but could not find it. She called one of her ladies-in-waiting and asked that it be brought to her. The lady-in-waiting went to the cloakroom but returned empty-handed. ‘How strange,’ said the queen, ‘I gave it to one of you.’ ‘I left it over here,’ said a lady-in-waiting. Everyone in the hall joined the search for the missing cape, as rumours and gossip whirled around the room. ‘Someone stole it.’ ‘I didn’t see her wearing a cape.’ ‘Pink, did you say?’ ‘Really? The cape she was wearing when she arrived was black.’ ‘Who knows where she put it.’ ‘If it isn’t found, it will be a terrible embarrassment for the country.’ ‘I’m sure that some subversive has stolen it.’ Within five minutes, the whole room was in uproar. The toilets were checked, the kitchen, the servants, wardrobes; people checked behind curtains and under tablecloths. No one dared to leave. One of the aides-de-camp asked if they might be allowed to check the ladies’ handbags; Dupuy dismissed him with a curt gesture. ‘This is an honest country,’ he said. ‘The people here are respectable people. There are no thieves among us.’ ‘Her Majesty’s pink cape.’ ‘The pink cape!’ The words echoed around the room. The waiters and the ladies-in-waiting ran about like headless chickens but nothing was found. In Argentina, so many things disappeared overnight, so many people inexplicably ceased to exist that it hardly seemed surprising the queen’s cape should suddenly become unreal — one more sinister trick in the sleight of hand that was commonplace in Argentina.

Eventually it grew late, too late. The queen covered herself with a shawl one of her ladies-in-waiting had been wearing and the guests had no choice but to leave with the king and queen. At 2 a.m., the only people left in the hall were some of the guards, an aide-de-camp and the doormen. They competed with each other, snooping around, interrogating the kitchen staff who were clearing away the platters of canapés. At some point in the early hours, the chief of police arrived with a federal judge who insisted on investigating what was clearly a robbery. This would have been the end of the matter if, shortly before 3 a.m., one of the doormen went up to the judge, clapping his hand to his forehead. ‘A pink cape, you said? I think I saw it. One of the ladies left early wearing a pink cape. Maybe it was her own, I don’t know.’ The man was distressed, pale, he was afraid of losing his job. He described the lady in question, looked at the photographs they showed him of the guests at the gala and finally identified Emilia. ‘That’s her!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m sure that’s her.’ At 3.30 a.m. the chief of police phoned Dupuy. He apologised profusely for disturbing him at such a late hour and explained that he would be calling at the house on calle Arenales in ten minutes. ‘Is it something serious?’ asked the doctor. ‘I hope not. I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.’

When Dupuy answered the door to him, Emilia was in bed. The chief explained what had happened and the doctor began to worry. ‘My daughter left the reception before I did,’ he explained, ‘I haven’t seen her. She was certainly wearing a pink cape when we arrived. Maybe it looked like the one the queen was wearing. I never pay any attention to such things. But this matter needs to be cleared up. I’ll go and wake my daughter.’ He burst into Emilia’s room, turned on the lights. He would have shaken her, shouted at her, but he did not want the police to overhear. Emilia sat up in bed. Her father’s furious tone completely bewildered her. She wasn’t worried by his anger, she was sure she had done nothing wrong, and she thought it was a bit much for the chief of police to call at their house at 3.30 a.m. to clear up what was probably just a mix-up, a simple mistake. She saw the cape which D had designed for her draped across the chair next to her mother’s bed where she usually read. She saw the black dress lying on the floor. She hadn’t had the energy to hang them up when she got back from the party. She had been exhausted and wasn’t planning ever to wear them again. ‘Look, there’s my cape over there,’ she said to her father. ‘It’s mine.’ ‘Look at it carefully,’ Dupuy commanded. ‘It’s impossible the capes could be exactly the same, that would be too much of a coincidence.’ ‘Give me a minute, Papá, I’m in my nightdress. I’ll get up and look.’ ‘I have no intention of leaving this room,’ said her father. ‘The police are waiting. Get up right now. I’m not interested in your modesty.’ Emilia held the cape up to the light and saw nothing untoward. ‘It’s mine, I’m sure it is,’ she was about to say when she noticed in one of the folds a slender, almost invisible, red cord. The detail made her start, but she remained calm. If it was not her cape, then she would give it back and that would be that. She studied it more carefully. Under the collar was a tiny, exquisitely embroidered escutcheon, the royal Spanish coat of arms with a lion rampant and a three-towered castle in the upper quadrants flanked by the pillars of Hercules and bearing the motto Plus Ultra. The needlework was so delicate that, with a magnifying glass, it was possible to read the words. It was not her cape. She had made a mistake. The suffocating heat, her desperate need to get away. Now she remembered that her cape had not been where she had left it and, without a second thought, she had taken the first cape she had seen. She laughed at her gaffe. She would be happy to see the queen and offer her apologies. She would show her that the two capes were like two peas in a pod and the queen would immediately understand. She was sure the queen would say: ‘I could just as easily have made the same mistake. I’d like to know who your dressmaker is.’ And Emilia would tell her about D. But where was D’s cape? Somewhere in the hall, she supposed, with the lost property. She would explain the situation to her father and he would have it tracked down. She had spent her whole life watching him solve other people’s problems. She brushed back her hair, smoothed her nightdress. ‘Papá,’ she called. Dupuy was still in her room with his back to the bed, his hands on his hips. ‘It looks like they were right. The cape I picked up isn’t mine. There’s a simple explanation — the two capes are almost identical.’

‘You dare to say that, as though this were some trivial mistake?’ Nothing now could contain Dupuy’s fury. ‘The police already see this as an act of subversion. It would take very little to trigger a diplomatic incident. Give me your cape too. If they are identical, then we can get out of this mess by showing them both.’

Emilia stammered an apology. ‘I can’t find mine. I don’t know where I left it. I think I must have picked up the wrong cape as I was leaving.’

‘Give me the one you’ve got right now,’ said Dupuy, snatching it from her. ‘I have people waiting who have been up all night because of your blunder. And don’t even think about going back to bed. We need to have a serious talk, I will not have a thief as a daughter.’ He summoned up the self-righteous smile he always used in difficult situations and went out to deal with the police. As he went, he concocted the version of the incident which would be published by the papers. Emilia did not deserve his protection; it was his good name that he needed to save.

She sat on her bed waiting for him, her hands shaking. Nothing could appease her father when he was angry. Emilia knew that the only sensible thing to do at such times was to say nothing, to retreat into herself like a tortoise and wait for the storm to pass. She and Chela had long since learned that their mother’s anger could be placated with a hug. Her father, on the other hand, did not understand such affection. His feelings, if he had feelings, were like ice and never appeared on his face. On those rare occasions when he touched her, Emilia bristled and felt an irresistible urge to pull away. It was an almost animal instinct which her mind ignored. Dupuy’s reactions were unpredictable and the way he was behaving now terrified her. She pulled her legs up onto the bed, hugged her knees to her chest. Simón, she whispered, Simón.

She heard footsteps. Heard him opening the drawers of the cupboards and the wardrobes, slamming them shut, moving the tables in the hall. If her mother had been there, she would have rushed to her side to protect her. But they had taken her back to the home on Sunday. She was alone. At any moment, Dupuy would burst into her room and demand an explanation. She would give him one. As soon as he was calm, she would talk to him. She stared at the glimmer of light creeping through the window. It would be dawn soon. If today was like every other day, her father would soon begin his inflexible routine: the bath, the frugal breakfast of coffee, the round of meetings. It was possible he wouldn’t have time to talk and she could go back to bed. She was half dead with exhaustion.

The double doors of the bedroom opened slowly, Dupuy standing between them, filling the space completely. ‘Make yourself decent this minute,’ he ordered. He gave her no time to take her robe from the hanger but grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to the dressing room which Ethel had used when she was still allowed to make decisions for herself. The walls and the ceiling were covered with mirrors leaving only the parquet floor. It had been one of Ethel’s expensive extravagances; she liked to linger there contemplating the fleeting reflection of her body in the world. As a little girl, Emilia had been afraid that the mirrors would swallow her mother up and the woman who emerged would not be the same, but someone who looked like her. One afternoon, finding the dressing room door ajar, she had steeled herself to sneak in to take a quick look. She saw nothing to justify her fears; dresses hanging from a chrome rail flanked by shelves which held hats, shawls, scarves, gloves, bras, silk stockings, lace panties. And everywhere there were shoes, hundreds of them. As she tiptoed out, she was startled to see her night light come on as though the mirrors were a siren song calling to it.

After her mother became ill, the room, like many in the house, fell into disuse. Dupuy ordered that the clothes be given to the Sisters of Charity and had the shelves and the rail removed, postponing until later the delicate task of removing the mirrors, replastering and repainting the room. He would have it done while he was away on business, when he wouldn’t be bothered by the comings and goings of builders, the hammering, the paint, the dust.

That morning, it occurred to him that the room could also be used to punish. Very few people have a phobia of mirrors, but in those who do the effect is magical and immediate: a strange and subtle form of torture. Emilia had struggled like an animal whenever Ethel had asked her to go in. To him, and perhaps to Ethel, it had merely been an amusing game. But their daughter’s terror was genuine. Mirrors gave her nightmares, made her lose control of her body. He was glad he had not had them removed. Now they would be the perfect means by which his daughter could pay for her crime. He knew her all too well. She was a resentful girl who had thought she could keep the queen’s cape as a trophy. This was why she had taken advantage of the crowds to exchange one for the other. She didn’t give a damn about the irreparable damage it would cause her father’s spotless reputation. If she were not a Dupuy, he would have turned her in and let the police do whatever they wanted, but while she still bore his name he could not do so. The mirrors would break her once and for all and, if he was lucky, turn her into a vegetable like her mother.

Collapsed in a heap next to the dressing room, Emilia no longer struggled. Dupuy pushed her inside, threw a blanket at her and said, as he closed the door: ‘You’re not coming out of there until the other cape is found. And if there is no other cape, you’re never coming out. You’re dead to me. And you can forget about your mother.’

Though sounds from outside the room were muffled, Emilia thought she heard him leave. She would not let herself be beaten by her fears. She had already been locked up for a whole night and she had survived. Simón was with her, Simón was her rock. So as not to lose her head, she would keep her mind a blank. No thoughts, no images, like Buddhists. Only the zero that was God. She would die of exhaustion, of fever, of madness, of anything rather than let her father hear her scream or beg or grovel. Her throat felt dry. She would hold out. (The night light was not as bright as her childhood memories of it.) If there was anything of her in the mirrors, she did not see it. She could make out a few blurred images of some other being. In primary school, she had been told to read Through the Looking-Glass where reality was reversed. Alice did not disappear, but she was unreachable; no one could catch her. Ever since, she had had recurring dreams about that strange world. On the last page of Through the Looking-Glass it says that people in a dream can also be dreaming of us and that if those dreamers should wake we would flicker out like a candle. Emilia did not care whether she flickered out if the dream meant having Simón back. It even occurred to her that Simón might be drawing maps of the infinite in which words and symbols were reversed. She was exhausted, her throat burned with thirst. She lay on the floor of the dressing room, leaned her head against one of the mirrors and gradually fell asleep in the secret hope that the glass and quicksilver would melt into a silver cloud just as it did in Through the Looking-Glass and she could leap across the threshold to a place where everything would begin again.

When she woke, she saw that someone had left a bottle of water in the room while she was asleep, a full teapot, some toast and some cheese. Bringing food all this way and bending down to set them on the floor was not something Dupuy would do. If someone else knew she was locked in here, it was a sign that she would not be left to die. But they were obviously not going to let her out either. The mirrors formed a smooth wall with no cracks, concealing the lines of the door. She felt as though she were in a tomb, sealed up forever. Her eyes were now able to make out the empty space weakly lit by the lamp paradoxically called a night light. Emilia ate and drank only what she needed and put the water that remained to one side. She felt more confident. Seeing herself endlessly reflected in the mirrors had a hypnotic effect. She brushed her face against the smooth, indifferent surface. I can see my whole body, standing, she thought. My face sees the whole body, disappears into the mirror and finds paths there, but what about the rest of my body? Why is there no sense of sight in the mind that thinks, the nose that smells, the vagina that pulses? Was she one being or was she many? If many, how would Simón ever manage to find her? Perhaps he could see her from the other side where reality was inverted and was trying to reach her, unable to recognise her among all the reflected Emilias. She remembered a movie with a scene at a funfair, in a Magic Mirror Maze. A man was trying to kill another man; a woman was trying to kill one of the men or maybe both of them, she wasn’t sure now, but in the mirrors there were lots of men, whole cities of people, lights that multiplied. Emilia thought that with a little patience she could loosen a block of the parquet, take it out and use it to smash the mirrors. She ran her fingers along the floor, feeling for a crack, but it seemed solid. Near the edge, her fingers chanced upon something unexpected. Taking it in the palm of her hand she saw it was one of her mother’s hairpins which had survived being swept up or sucked up by a vacuum cleaner. That something of her had refused to leave was some sort of secret message, a sign that if something persists, endures, it is because it was created to last. She moved closer to the mirror and saw her mother take Simón’s hand, saw her walking with him towards the white nothingness, saw them both reflected in the ceiling mirrors calling to her. She wanted to go with them but she did not know how to get to the other side, how to pass through. Desperately, she pounded on the mirrors begging them not to leave. ‘I’m coming,’ she screamed, ‘I’m coming, tell me how to get to there.’ They went on walking towards the void, not hearing her, until the whiteness of the other side opened its ravenous lips and devoured them. Suddenly, Emilia saw herself transformed into a thousand hateful people, her whole being waging war on itself, this being that had never struggled to enter reality. ‘Wait for me, I’m coming, I’m coming.’

I know that, the day she left the room, Emilia left her father’s house and moved back to the apartment overlooking the Parque Lezama where she had lived those first short, happy months as a married woman. She went on working at the Automobile Club and visiting her mother two or three times a week. Lost in the mists of the old people’s home, every morning Ethel woke less of a person and went to bed less of a body. She was like Señor Ga²⁴, a character created by Macedonio Fernández who has had a lung removed, his kidney, his spleen, his colon, and then one day Señor Ga’s valet calls the doctor and asks him to come and see to a pain in his foot; the doctor examines him, and shaking his head gravely tells him there’s too much foot and draws a line for the surgeon to cut. Emilia’s mother was like the country was back then; what she feared she would be like it would be twenty years later. I know that it was there, in San Telmo, that Emilia got the letter from her paternal aunt saying she had run into Simón in a theatre in Rio de Janeiro, the letter that convinced her to begin her search, to climb the seven terraces of her purgatory of love.

The story was restless, it didn’t stop shifting, indifferent to the defeats, the deaths, to the ever more fleeting joys. Back then, I was living in Caracas learning from my reading of Parmenides that non-being is not a half-measure, that what is not necessarily must not be, I read little Heraclitus because Borges had already used him up, I was rereading Canetti, Nabokov and Kafka, I was working like a dog, writing books that other people signed, this was the life I had been given and since I had no choice I did not complain. Meanwhile, Argentina tried to reconquer the Malvinas, lost the war, the military dictatorship foundered in its own corruption, Raúl Alfonsín won the first democratic elections and Julio Cortázar returned to Buenos Aires to shake the hand of the new president, went back to Paris without managing to get an audience and died alone two months later; Borges, who was ill, left for Geneva and did not want to go back, he was buried in Plainpalais cemetery without ever being awarded the Nobel Prize; Manuel Puig died too, in a hospital in Cuernavaca, but that was much later; all the great Argentinian writers went abroad to die because there was no room in the country for more dead. The last census recorded a population of 27,949,480; housewives wept floods of tears over the misfortunes of Leonor Benedetto in the soap opera Rosa de lejos, and Alfonsín put the admiral, the Eel and their most conspicuous collaborators on trial; the Eel spent his trial reading — or pretending to read — The Imitation of Christ by the Augustine monk Thomas à Kempis; and three military coups threatened to bury democracy; and Alfonsín was forced to step down before his time because of rampant inflation and because children scavenging in garbage bins for food fell like pollen in the streets; and he was replaced by Carlos Menem who pardoned the comandantes, sold off the few assets Argentina still possessed, constantly, vainly, talked about the poor, and let those responsible for the bombings of the Israeli Embassy and the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina go unpunished; and Charly García jumped from the ninth-floor window of a Mendoza hotel into a half-full swimming pool, climbed out without a scratch and that night at his concert sang: ‘The person that you love could disappear, those who are in the air could disappear’; and I went back to Buenos Aires intending to stay there forever but I didn’t stay. Emilia’s cape never surfaced, I reread Parmenides and learned that being also hides in the folds of nothingness.

As I pull up at the corner of Paterson and George it starts to rain. As I expected, Toscana no longer exists. The house on the corner is no longer a river nor does it weep²⁵, I thought, quoting a poem that came to mind, but the river is still there. I feel sure that when I look out the window I will see a river flowing where once I saw the Pampa of Buenos Aires with cattle grazing, rolling their great eyes upwards now and then to the inclement heavens. Once again I feel that in maps we can be whatever we choose, grassland, Amazonian jungle, ancient city, but also that, inside us, maps can be whatever they choose, aimless asteroids, creatures from the future or the plush bar that now sits where Toscana once was, a bar called Glo¯ which, right now, at eight o’clock, is giving salsa lessons. I stand under the eaves waiting for Emilia for ten or twelve minutes and still the rain does not ease. Finally, I see her calmly emerging from the parking lot across the way. She is alone. I don’t want to pester her with questions about her disappearance, about why she has come alone. I am prepared for the unbelievable, since I know that Simón is dead and I realise now that I don’t know what happened between them, if indeed anything happened. I gesture to her to explain that it would be impossible for us to have a conversation in Glo-. By the door, there is a menacing sign informing us that the salsa class goes on until 9 p.m.

‘Let’s go to Starbucks, then,’ she says. ‘For the Aztecs, time is circular, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be circular for us too. Look around you, the place is full of Mexicans.’

It’s true: the river has disappeared and a great dark sun now lours above the street, the Fifth Sun of the Aztecs. It was in Starbucks we first talked, that first Saturday we met, before we went to Toscana; time is gradually running backwards, a slow canon like those of Bach, a Musical Offering that leaps backwards in time, in tone, the worm Ouroboros ceaselessly devouring its tail and growing younger; step by step reality returns to its place, plays its last chords here where it played the first, we wander through nothingness with the certainty that it is nothingness and always at the end of the void appears the face of God, the Something.

I tempt fate:

‘Hey, Emilia,’ I say, ‘how is Simón going to know we’re not at Toscana, at Glo- how will he know we’re waiting for him here?’

‘He always knows where to find me. And if he loses me, I know where to find him. We lost each other once. It will never happen again.’

While we wait, I try to forget that I’m anxious. An unfamiliar feeling of vertigo overtakes me and I try to stave it off with tales like the one I am telling her now. ‘Years ago I had a dream,’ I tell her. ‘I was in a seedy dive bar. In the dream, it was noon. By the window, I saw several women about your age sitting at one end of a long table peering into corners in which other creatures came and went like flickering shadows. The shadows called to the women but could not make them hear. The women tried to embrace the shadows but could not touch them. The bar began to empty out, night ushered in the blaze of morning, the sun stripped to become night, and the women and the shadows went on trying to embrace, went on calling to each other in vain until they occupied my whole memory.’

I tauten the string. I say:

‘As I told you, I eventually wrote that dream but in an even more dreamlike way. In my story you are all the women in that bar and all the shadows are the loved one who returns: Simón. But I don’t see it like that any more. I need to make some changes to those pages. I’ve read the notes you left with Nancy. I went over the transcripts of the trial of the comandantes. I’m going to put the facts back into the reality they came from. Simón is not coming tonight. According to the transcripts, three witnesses saw him murdered—’

‘Simón is not dead,’ she interrupts me angrily, as though my words could somehow kill him all over again.

‘You told me he was with you, that I’d get to meet him tonight. How much longer are we going to wait for him?’

‘It’s not up to me. He’ll do what he wants to do. And I know what I want to do, I want to follow him wherever he goes. I love him more with every day that passes. Without him, I don’t exist.’

‘I’d like to meet him. Anyone who can inspire such deep, such enduring love is from another world.’

‘Simón is the same as he always was. One, continuous and indivisible, motionless, occupying the same space ever since time is time.’

Either I’m not hearing what I’m hearing or Emilia is unconsciously quoting Parmenides. I follow the thread of her memories, decide to go with them wherever they lead. I ask her: ‘When did you find him? The last time I saw you, you were still looking for him.’

‘Friday, a week ago. We spent the weekend alone in my apartment until Sunday night and then we left together. I was afraid of routine, of reality, of the repetition that destroys everything. He didn’t care if life just took its course. He’s — how can I explain this? — on the margins of life, watching as things shift, disappear, are reborn.’

Then I listen as she tells me what she experienced. She tells the story as I will write it: the meeting at Trudy Tuesday, the journey back to the apartment on North 4th Avenue in the Altima, forgetting the Altima at the Hammond offices, her surprise at discovering that Simón stills loves her with the beauty and the passion he did thirty years ago. ‘Better than it was back then,’ she says, ‘because now he knows how I think, he can anticipate my every wish.’ She tells me about her disastrous wedding night, the joy of her honeymoon, Dupuy’s services to the Eel and everything that followed. Her cowed obedience to her father’s orders, the cowed obedience of the country to every crack of the military whip. She tells me about her mother’s madness, the visits to the old people’s home, Simón’s stay in an old people’s home (perhaps the same one, perhaps another) where he learned the laws of the eternal noon. ‘I have everything I ever wanted now,’ she says, ‘I’m happy.’

The Amtrak station is a few blocks away. I think I heard the whistle of trains several times while Emilia was talking but now I can hear only the bellowing of a passing train which returns us to the night where we never were. She drops her car keys on the table and says: ‘Give them to whoever you like. To Nancy, to the police. I’ve parked the Altima in the lot just over there, on level two.’

‘What about you? What are you going to do?’

‘I already told you. I’m happy. That’s all I want.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Simón is waiting for me in a boat by the riverbank. We’re going to sail upriver together. Who knows, maybe we’ll run into Lieutenant Clay, sailing up the river to find Mary Ellis. We’ll fire a harquebus in a salute to Mary Ellis. I’ve always loved happy endings.’

‘The river is very low,’ I tell her. ‘A lot of boats have been running aground. If you lean out over the bridge, you can see them. You won’t be able take a boat anywhere now, certainly not a sailboat. The river’s narrow, it’s barely a trickle.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says. ‘It will grow broader and deeper just for us.’