The Armies

~ ~ ~

I am old, but not so old as to go unnoticed, I thought, as I climbed down the ladder. My wife was waiting for me with two glasses of lemonade — her way of saying good morning. But she looked me over with a somewhat haughty sadness.

“I knew they would make fun of you one of these days,” she said. “Looking over there every morning, aren’t you ashamed?”

“No,” I said. “What should I be ashamed of?”

“Of yourself, at your time of life.”

We drank our lemonade in silence. We did not talk about the fish or the cats as we usually do, or about the oranges, more of which we gave away than sold. We did not pick any flowers, the new blooms, we did not discuss possible changes in the garden, which is our life. We went straight to the kitchen and had breakfast, each absorbed in our own thoughts; in any case the black coffee, the soft-boiled egg, the slices of fried plantain absolved us of grief.

“Actually,” she said at last, “I’m not worried about you, since I’ve known you for forty years. Or them. There’s no hope for you three. But the children? What is that lady doing, walking around naked in front of her son, in front of poor little Gracielita? What kind of example are they setting?”

“The children don’t see her,” I said. “They walk right past her as if they really do not see her. Whenever she takes her clothes off, and he sings, the children play at her side. They’re simply used to it.”

“You don’t miss a trick, do you? I think you ought to ask for help. From Father Albornoz, for example.”

“Help?” I was shocked. And worse still: “Father Albornoz.”

“I hadn’t given a thought to your obsessions, but I think at your age they’re detrimental. The Father could listen to you and help you, better than I could. To me, to tell you the truth, you don’t matter anymore. My fish and my cats matter more to me than a pitiful old man.”

“But Father Albornoz,” I laughed in amazement. “My former pupil. To whom I have myself confessed.”

And I went back to bed to read the paper.

Like me, my wife is a teacher, also retired: the Secretary of Education owes us each ten months’ worth of pension payments. She taught in a school in San Vicente — she was born and raised there, a town six hours from this one, where I was born. I met her in San Vicente, forty years ago, in the bus terminal, which in those days was an enormous corrugated-zinc shed. There I saw her, surrounded by sacks of fruit and orders of cornbread, dogs, pigs and hens, amid the exhaust of the motors and the prowling of the passengers waiting for their buses to leave. I saw her sitting alone on a wrought-iron bench, with room for two. I was dazzled by her dreamy black eyes, her wide forehead, her narrow waist, the ample backside under a pink skirt. The white, short-sleeved, linen blouse showed off her fine, pale arms and the intense darkness of her nipples. I went over and sat down beside her, as if levitating, but she immediately stood up, pretended to fix her hair, gave me a sidelong glance and walked away, feigning interest in the notices outside the transport office. Then something happened which distracted my attention from her uncommon rustic beauty; only such an incident could wrench my eyes from her: on the next bench was a much older man, rather fat, dressed in white; his hat was white too, as was the handkerchief poking out from behind his lapel; he was eating ice cream — just as white — clearly anxious; the color white was stronger than my love at first sight: too much white, also the thick drops of sweat soaking his bullish neck; all of him trembled, and that was in spite of being directly beneath the fan; his hefty body took up the whole bench, he was sprawled out, absolute master of his world; on the fingers of each hand he wore silver rings; there was a leather briefcase beside him, overflowing with documents; he gave the impression of total innocence: his blue eyes wandered distractedly all over the place: sweet and calm, they looked me over once but did not give me a second glance. And then another man, exactly the opposite, young and bone-jutting thin, barefoot, in a T-shirt and frayed shorts, walked up to him, put a revolver to his forehead and pulled the trigger. The cloud of smoke from the barrel was enough to envelop me; it was like a dream for everyone, including the fat man, who blinked and, at the moment of the shot, looked as though he still wanted to enjoy his ice cream. The one with the revolver fired only once; the fat man slid to one side, without falling, his eyes closed, as if he had all of a sudden fallen asleep, abruptly dead, but without letting go of his ice cream; the murderer outthrew the gun far away — a gun that nobody made any attempt to look for or pick up — and walked unhurriedly of the bus station, without anyone stopping him. Except that a few seconds before throwing the gun away he looked at me, the fat man’s nearest neighbor: never before in my life had I been struck by such a dead look; it was as if someone made of stone were looking at me: his gaze made me think he was going to shoot at me until he had emptied the chamber. And that was when I saw: the murderer was not a young man at all; he must have been no more than eleven or twelve. He was a child. I never knew if they followed him or caught him, and I never tried to find out; after all it was not so much his look that nauseated me: it was the physical horror of discovering that he was a child. A child, and that must have been why I was more afraid, and with reason, but also without reason, that he would kill me too. I fled from him, from where he had been, hunted for the bus station toilet, not yet knowing whether to piss or vomit, while cries rose into the air. Several men gathered around the corpse, no one decided to give chase to the murderer: either we were all afraid, or it did not really seem to matter to anyone. I went into the lavatory: it was a small space with broken opaque mirrors, and at the back, the only cubicle looked like a crate — also made of corrugated-zinc sheets, like the terminal itself. I went and pushed the door and saw her just as she was sitting down, her dress bunched up around her waist, two thighs as pale as they were naked narrowing in terror. I said an anguished and heartfelt “Pardon me” and immediately closed the door at a speed calculated to allow me to take another look at her, the implacable roundness of her rump bursting out from under the hitched up skirt, her near nudity, her eyes — a rumble of fear and surprise and a hint of remote pleasure in the light of her pupils at knowing herself admired; of that I am now sure. And fate: we were assigned adjoining seats on the dilapidated bus that would take us to the capital. A long trip, more than eighteen hours, awaited us: the pretext to listen to each other was the death of the fat man in white in the terminal; I felt her arm brush against my arm, but also all of her fear, her indignation, the whole heart of the woman who would be my wife. And the coincidence: we shared the same profession, who could have imagined? Two educators, forgive me for asking, what is your name? (silence), my name is Ismael Pasos, and you? (silence), she was only listening, but finally: “My name is Otilia del Sagrario Aldana Ocampo.” The same hopes. Soon the murder and the incident in the toilet were forgotten — but only apparently, because they went on recurring, becoming associated, in an almost absurd way, in my memory: first death, then nakedness.

Today my wife, ten years younger than me, is sixty, but she looks older, she moans and walks hunched over. She is not the same girl she was at twenty sitting down on a public toilet, her eyes like lighthouse beams over the hitched up island, the join of her legs, the triangle of her sex — indescribable animal — no. Now she is old, happy indifference, going from here to there, in the middle of her country and its war, busy with her house, the cracks in the walls, the possible leaks in the roof, although the shouts of the war burst in her ears, she is just like everyone, when it comes right down to it, and I am happy for her happiness, and if she loved me today as much as she does her fish and her cats perhaps I would not be peering over the wall.

Perhaps.

“From the first time I met you,” she says that night at bedtime, “you’ve never stopped spying on women. I would have left you forty years ago if I thought you would take things any further. But no.”

I listen to her sigh: I think I can see it, it is a vapor rising in the middle of the bed, covering us both.

“You were and are just a naïve, inoffensive peeping Tom.”

Now I sigh. Is it resignation? I do not know. And I shut my eyes tight, and nevertheless listen to her.

“At first it was difficult, I suffered from knowing that apart from spying on women you spent the days of your life teaching boys and girls to read at school. Who could imagine? But I kept an eye out, and I repeat this was just at the beginning, for I saw you never really got up to anything serious, nothing bad or sinful that we would live to regret. At least that’s what I believed, or wanted to believe, for heaven’s sake.”

The silence can also be seen, like the sigh. It is yellow, it slips through the pores of the skin like fog, it climbs up the window.

“That hobby of yours made me sad,” she says as if smiling. “But I soon got used to it: I forgot about it for years at a time. And why did I forget? Because you used to be very careful not to be seen; I was the only witness. Well, remember when we lived in that red building in Bogotá. You spied on the woman in the building opposite, day and night, until her husband found out, remember. He shot at you from the other room, and you told me yourself that the bullet parted your hair. What if he had killed you, that husband, that man of honor?”

“We wouldn’t have a daughter,” I said. And I dared, finally, to surrender: “I think I’m going to go to sleep.”

“Tonight you’re not going to go to sleep, Ismael; for so many years you’ve been going to sleep every time I want to talk. Tonight you’re not going to ignore me.”

“No.”

“I’m telling you at least to be discreet. I have to point it out to you, as old as you may be. What just happened is degrading to you, and degrading to me. I heard the whole thing; I’m not deaf, as you seem to think.”

“You’re a spy too, in your own way.”

“Yes. Spying on the spy. You’re not discreet, as you used to be. I’ve seen you in the street. Ismael, you practically drool. I thank heaven that our daughter and our grandchildren live far away and don’t see you at it. How shameful with the Brazilian, with his wife. Let them do what they like, it’s fine, we are each master of our own flesh and its corruption; but for them to find you up a ladder like a sick man spying on them is a shame that applies to me too. Promise me that you won’t climb up there again.”

“And the oranges? Who’s going to pick the oranges?”

“I’ve already thought of that. But it won’t be you, not anymore.”