When Díaz Grey with sheer indifference accepted being left alone, he began to play the game of recognizing himself in the only memory, shifting, by now undated, that he wished to retain. He saw the images from this memory and saw himself as he carried it around and made corrections to it to prevent it from dying, redressing the depletion at every awakening, propping it up with unplanned inventions, as he leaned his head against his office window, as he took off his white coat in the evenings, as he grew bored, smiling throughout long evenings in the hotel bar. His life, he himself, were now nothing more than that memory, the only one worthy of being evoked and corrected, of its meaning being counterfeited, over and over again.
The doctor suspected that with the years he would end up believing that the first memorable part of the story portended everything that happened later with several variations; he would end up acknowledging that the perfume of the woman – it had been wafting toward him throughout the whole trip from the front seat of the car – contained and encapsulated all subsequent events, everything he now remembered denying, everything that would perhaps achieve perfection in his dotage. He would then discover that Red, the shotgun, the violent sun, the legend of the buried ring, the premeditated discrepancies in the crumbling chalet and even the final bonfire, were already in the perfume of unknown brand that on certain nights, even now, he managed to smell on the surface of sugary drinks.
After the trip along the coast, at the beginning of the memory, the car turned off the main road and started to climb, slowly and uncertainly, until Quinteros stopped and turned off the headlights. Díaz Grey did not want to learn about the landscape; he knew the house was surrounded by trees, high above the river, isolated amid the dunes. The woman didn’t get out; they walked away. Quinteros handed him the keys and the folded banknotes. The flame of the lighter she brought to her cigarette might have fleetingly touched their profiles.
“Don’t leave, and don’t get impatient. Along the beach to the right is the town,” Quinteros said. “Above all, don’t do anything. We’ll figure out how to resolve this. Don’t try to see me or call me. Understood?”
Díaz Grey climbed to the house, pretending to try to hide his white suit as he zigzagged between the trees. The car drove back to the road and accelerated until the sound of the motor mixed with that of the sea, until he was left listening only to the sea, his eyes closed, tenaciously repeating to himself that he was alive in a month in autumn, remembering the last few weeks spent almost exclusively signing morphine prescriptions in Quinteros’s shiny new office, looking slyly at Quinteros’s English lover – Dolly or Molly – who put them in her purse and placed ten-peso bills on the corner of the table, never giving them to him directly, never speaking, never even showing that she saw him and was attentively following the quick and obedient movement of Díaz Grey’s hand over the prescription pad.
The sunny days that repeated themselves at the beach before Red’s arrival turned into one single day in his memory, of normal length but able to contain all the events: an autumn day, almost hot, which could have, in addition, contained his own childhood and the multitude of desires that had never been fulfilled. He did not need to add a single minute to see himself at the left end of the beach chatting with the fishermen as they pulled crabs apart for bait; to see himself walking along the shore toward town, to the store where he bought his food and got just slightly tipsy, returning a monosyllable for every one of the shopkeeper’s assertions. On the same almost boiling hot day, he was also swimming in the beach’s complete solitude, inventing, among so many other things, a rotten log floating on the waves and a triplet of gulls shrieking over it. He climbed up and slid down the dunes, hunted insects among the stubble of the shrubs, anticipating the spot where the ring would be buried.
And, moreover, while this was taking place, Díaz Grey yawned in the hallway of the chalet, stretched out on a beach chair, a bottle next to him, an old magazine on his lap; rusted, useless, and vertical against the trunk of the vine, the shotgun he found in the shed.
Díaz Grey was with his bottle, his disappointment, his magazine, and the shotgun when Red appeared from the trees and started climbing up to the house, his jacket slung over one shoulder, his large back bent. Díaz Grey waited until Red’s shadow touched his own legs; he lifted his head and looked at the unkempt hair, the thin and freckled cheeks; he was filled with a mixture of pity and revulsion, which would remain unchanged in his memory, stronger than any willpower of memory or imagination.
“Dr. Quinteros sent me. I’m Red,” he said with a smile; with one arm leaning on his knee, he waited for the astonishing alterations his name would enact on the landscape, on the morning that was beginning to wane, on Díaz Grey and his past. He was much more burly than the doctor, even as he was, hunched over, constructing his premature hump. They barely spoke; Red exposed the edges of his small teeth, like a child’s, stuttered, and turned to look toward the river.
Díaz Grey could continue motionless, just as alone as if the other hadn’t arrived, as if the other hadn’t stretched out his arm and opened his hand to let his jacket fall, as if he hadn’t squatted down until he was sitting on the veranda, his legs dangling, his torso bent too far toward the beach. The doctor recalled Red’s clinical history, the bombastic description of his pyromania, as written by Quinteros, in which this red-haired semi-moron, known user of matches and petrol cans in the northern provinces, appeared to be attempting to identify with the sun and interject his own immolation into the maternal darkness. Perhaps now, looking at the reflections on the water and the sand, he was evoking, poeticized and imperious, the blazes he had confessed to Quinteros.
“Don’t you eat?” Red asked in the afternoon. Then Díaz Grey remembered that the other one was there, bent over, his round head dangling toward the sand, which the swirling winds were beginning to raise. He let him into the house and they ate, he tried to get him drunk in order to find out something that didn’t interest him: if he’d come to hide or to keep watch over him. But Red barely talked at all while he ate; he drank every glass he was offered, then went to lie down, barefoot, in a corner of the house.
Then the rainy days began, a stretch of fog that tangled in and hung from the trees, quickly fading, sometimes erasing and at others reviving the colors of the leaves crushed in the sand. He isn’t here, Díaz Grey thought, looking at Red’s huddled and silent body, seeing him walk around barefoot, push through the humidity with his shoulders, shake himself like a wet dog.
With one arm half bent, with a smile that revealed the long wait for an impossible miracle, Red took charge of the shotgun. He began by bending over it at night next to the lamp, to handle it, brooding and awkward, and oil the screws and the springs; in the mornings he would penetrate the fog with the shotgun slung over his shoulder or dangling against his leg.
The doctor looked around for remnants of boxes, paper, rags, gathered a few almost-dry branches, and one night lit a fire in the fireplace. The flames shed light on the hands folded over the open shotgun; Red finally lifted his head and looked at the fire, staring, his face showing only the absentminded expression of one who is helped to dream by the oscillation of the light, the soft surprise of the sparks. Then he stood up to reposition the logs, handling them carelessly; he sat back down on the small kitchen stool that he favored and picked up the shotgun again. Long before the fire burned down, he went outside to inspect the night, where the fog was turning to drizzle and was already sounding on the roof. He returned, shaking off the cold, and the doctor saw him move nonchalantly past the radiance of the embers, which turned his drenched face red, then lie down on his bedding and immediately fall asleep, his face to the wall, hugging the shotgun. Díaz Grey threw a rag over his muddy feet, stroked then patted his head, and let him sleep, transformed into a dog, feeling once again alone for more days and nights until one morning there was intermittent sunshine. Then they went down to the beach – Red saw him go out and followed him, stopping to aim the shotgun at the few birds he was capable of imagining, then trotting until he almost caught up – and they walked along the shore to the town. With a beach bag full of food and bottles they returned under an already sullen sky; the doctor could see Red’s wide bare feet pressing into the various spots where the ring would be buried.
It rained all day, and Díaz Grey rose to light the lamp one minute before he heard the sound of the motor on the road. Here begin the moments that feed the rest of the memory and endow it with variable meaning; and, just as the days and the nights before Red’s arrival turned into a single day of sunshine, this piece of the memory expanded and was renewed on a rainy afternoon, lived inside the house.
He heard them talking as they climbed to the chalet; he recognized Quinteros’s voice, guessed that the woman who stopped to laugh was the same; he looked at Red, motionless and silent, hugging his knees on his stool; he placed the lamp on the table, lit between him and those who were about to enter.
“Hello, hello,” Quinteros said. He was smiling, overstating his satisfaction; he touched the woman’s shoulder, as if urging her to utter a greeting. “I think you know each other, don’t you?”
She held out her hand and in one question mentioned boredom and loneliness. Díaz Grey recognized the perfume, knew her name was Molly.
“Things are almost all arranged,” Quinteros said. “You will soon return to your cotton and your iodine, and with squeaky-clean credentials. I had no choice but to send you this beast; I hope he doesn’t bother you, and that you can tolerate him. I couldn’t arrange anything else; careful with the matches.”
Molly went over to the corner where Red was rocking back and forth making the stool creak. She touched his head and leaned over to ask him useless questions, offer her own obvious answers.
Díaz Grey understood, and was touched, that she had been able to discover, with a single glance, perhaps from the smell, that Red had turned into a dog. He leaned over, playing with the wick of the lamp, to hide his face from Quinteros.
“I’m having a great time. The best vacation of my life. And Red doesn’t bother me; he doesn’t talk, he’s in love with the shotgun. I can carry on like this indefinitely. If you’d like something to eat…”
“Thanks,” Quinteros said. “Just a few more days, everything is being arranged.” The woman continued to shrink along with Red’s smile, her raincoat sweeping the floor. “But I think I’m going to spoil your holiday. Would it be a problem if Molly stayed here a few days? It’s a good idea to take her out of circulation.”
“Not for me,” Díaz Grey said; he quickly moved the tremor of his hand away from the lamp. “But for her, to live here…”
He stepped away from the table, pointing to the walls of the room, moving in and out of the zone of perfume.
“She’ll manage,” Quinteros said. “That’s true, right, you’ll manage? Two or three days.”
“I have Red here to sing to me.”
“She’ll explain it to you if she wants,” Quinteros said.
He took his leave almost immediately, and the two descended with their arms around each other, slowly, in spite of the rain wetting and flattening the woman’s hair.
Now Quinteros disappears until the end of the memory; in the motionless, singular rainy afternoon, she chooses the spot where she will set up her bed and guides Red through the task of emptying out the small room that faces west. When the bedroom is ready, the woman takes off her raincoat, puts on some beach shoes; she adjusts the position of the lamp on the table, imposes a new lifestyle, serves wine in three glasses, deals out the cards, and tries to explain everything using nothing but a smile, as she smoothes down her damp hair. They play one hand after another; the doctor begins to understand Molly’s face, her restless blue eyes, whatever hardness there is in her wide jaw, in the ease with which she can liven up her mouth then abruptly render it inexpressive. They eat something and start drinking again; she says goodbye before she goes to bed; Red drags his bed closer to the door of the woman’s bedroom and lies down, the shotgun on his chest, one heel grazing the floor so that Díaz Grey knows that he isn’t asleep. They play cards again until the moment when she has too much to drink and drops the ones Red has just passed to her, by merely opening her fingers, in a more definitive way than if she had slammed them violently down on the table, thereby establishing that they will not play another round.
Red rises, gathers up the cards, and starts throwing them into the fire. All that’s left, the doctor thinks, is to caress Molly or talk to her; to find and say a sentence that is clean but alludes to love. He stretches out his arm and touches her hair, lifts it off her ear, releases it, picks it up again. Red places the shadow of the shotgun on the table, now holding it by the barrel. Díaz Grey lifts her hair and lets it go, each time imagining the soft blow she must feel against her ear.
Red is talking over their heads, shaking the shotgun and its shadow; he repeats the name of Quinteros, finishes then begins the same sentence again, giving it a more confused and transparent meaning, depending on whether Molly looks at him or lowers her eyes. The shotgun slams down on Díaz Grey’s wrist and pushes it against the table.
“You can’t do that,” Red shouts.
Díaz Grey again lifts her hair off her ear with barely outstretched fingers; Molly lifts her hands and brings them together over her yawn. Then Díaz Grey feels the pain in his wrist, and he thinks, now without any recompense, that it might be broken. She places one hand on each of their chests. Red sits back down on his stool next to the dark fireplace, and Díaz Grey strokes the pain that rises up his arm, pushes his painful hand against Molly’s mouth, which retreats, resists, and opens. Then comes the moment when the doctor decides to kill Red, and he sinks into the humiliation of concealing the fish-cleaning knife between his shirt and his belly and walks past the other until the cold blade turns warm, until Molly moves forward, from the door, from alternating corners of the room, stretches out her arms and confesses, alluding to a personal and imprecise misfortune.
The doctor, free of the knife, is lying in bed, smoking; he hears the patter of the drizzle on the roof, on the surface of the still afternoon. Red paces back and forth in front of Molly’s door, the useless shotgun over his shoulder, four steps, return, four steps.
The sound of the water on the roof and in the foliage grows furious, then expires; now they wander around in expectant silence, scrutinizing the grey landscape from doors and windows, parodying the stance of the statue on the veranda, one arm outstretched, all the senses united on the back of a hand. She and Díaz Grey, at least. Red has a presentiment of misfortune and walks around in circles inside the room; he drags along the floor a groan and the barrel of the gun. The doctor waits for the pace of his steps to increase, become frantic, scare Molly, subside.
When Díaz Grey begins to make trips between the shed and the fireplace, carrying everything that can be burned, the other man keeps pacing and panting, practicing a song, which she doesn’t want to hear but that she pretends to accompany with a movement of her head. Leaning against the door frame, she seems both taller and weaker, dressed in her beach pants and her sailor shirt. Red drags his feet and sings; she sways her head with hope and guile, while Díaz Grey lights matches, while the flames rise and resound in the air. Without looking behind him, without trying to find out what’s going on, Díaz Grey enters Molly’s room. Lying on the bed, he repeats in a whisper the song Red was singing, looks at Molly’s fingers on the buckle at her waist, grows quiet as he imagines that matchmaking corresponds to silence. The rain can again be heard, and the clouds pull apart, holding the sad light of the endless afternoon of bad weather. Cheek against cheek at the window they watch Red walk away, cross the beach at a diagonal until he reaches the shore, the strip of sand and water that borders a line of hardened foam.
“Molly,” Díaz Grey says. He knows it’s imperative to suppress the words so that each can deceive himself or herself, believe in the importance of what they are doing and draw toward them the already reluctant sensation of what is abiding. But Díaz Grey cannot resist calling her by name. “Molly,” he repeats, leaning into her last scent. “Molly.”
Now Red is standing stiffly next to the cold fireplace, the shotgun resting on the toes of one foot. She is sitting at the table and drinking; Díaz Grey keeps his eye on Red while still seeing Molly’s teeth, stained with wine, exposed in a reiterated grimace that never tries to become a smile. She puts down the glass, shudders, speaks English to nobody in particular. Red remains on guard in front of the dead fire when she picks up a pencil and writes down some verses, forces Díaz Grey to look at them and keep them forever, no matter what happens. There is so much despair in the part of the woman’s face that Díaz Grey dares to look at that he moves his lips as if he were reading the verses and carefully puts away the piece of paper while she fluctuates between passion and tears.
“I wrote it myself, it’s mine,” she lies. “It’s mine and it’s yours. I want to explain to you what it says, I want you to learn it by heart.”
Patient and tender, she forces him to repeat, corrects him, encourages him:
Here is that sleeping place,
Long resting place,
No stretching place,
That never-get-up-no-more
Place
Is here.
They go out to look for Red. Arm in arm, they follow the path they saw him take previously, at a different moment of the inclement afternoon; they descend, annoyed; they walk diagonally to the shore and continue along it to town, to the grocery store. Díaz Grey orders a glass of wine and leans on the counter; she disappears inside the shop, shouts and whispers in the corner with the telephone. She wears, upon her return, a new smile, a smile that would strike fear in the doctor if he caught sight of it directed at another man.
They return along the road under the light drizzle that reappears in order to confront them. She stops.
“We didn’t find Red,” she says without looking at him. She lifts her mouth for Díaz Grey to kiss and leaves a ring in his hand when they pull apart. “We could live on this for months, anywhere. Let’s get my things.”
As they speed up their steps along the shore, Díaz Grey looks in vain for the sentence and the kind of gaze he’d like to leave for Red. Now there is, near the shoreline, a rotten piece of driftwood rising and falling on the waves; there’s a triplet of gulls and their cries swirling in the sky.
She sees the car before Díaz Grey does and starts to run, slipping in the sand. The doctor sees her climb a dune, her arms spread wide, lose her footing, and disappear; he is left alone to face the small desert of the beach, his eyes stinging in the wind. He turns to protect them and ends up sitting down. Then – sometimes late in the afternoon, at other times right in the middle – he digs a hole in the sand, tosses in the ring, and covers it; he does it eight times, in the places Red stepped, in those he himself had marked with a single glance. Eight times, in the rain, he buries the ring, and walks away; he walks to the water, tries to confound his eyes by looking at the dunes, the emaciated trees, the roof of the house, the car on the slope. But he always returns, in a straight line, without hesitating, to the exact spot of the burial; he digs his hands into the sand and touches the ring. Lying down, face up, he rests, gets wet in the rain, and stops worrying; slowly he starts along the path to the house.
Red is stretched out next to the cold fireplace, chewing slowly; he has a glass of wine in his hand. She and Quinteros are whispering rapidly, face to face, until Díaz Grey approaches, until it is impossible for them to deny that they hear his steps.
“Hey,” Quinteros says, and smiles at him, stretching out his arm; his hat is still on, awry.
Díaz Grey pulls over a chair and sits near Red; he strokes his head and pats his back, harder and harder, waiting for him to get furious so he can punch him in the jaw. But the other keeps chewing, barely turning to look; then Díaz Grey lets his hand rest on his red hair and looks at her and Quinteros.
“Everything’s all arranged,” Quinteros says. “The benefit of the doubt, to repeat the words of the judge. If you were worried, I hope that now…Though, naturally, you can stay here as long as you want.”
He approaches and bends over to give him more folded banknotes. When Molly finishes putting on makeup and buttoning her raincoat up to her neck, Díaz Grey sits up and, under the light, under the woman’s face, opens his hand with the ring resting on his palm. Wordlessly – and now it must be accepted that this scene takes place late in the afternoon – she takes his fingers and bends them, one by one, until the ring is hidden.
“For as long as you want,” Quinteros says from the door. Díaz Grey and Red hear the sound of the motor driving away, the silence, the whisper of the sea.
Here ends, in memory, the long rainy afternoon that began when Molly arrived at the house in the sand; once again, time can be used to measure.
So, in a dramatic move, as if wishing to prove that he understood everything before Díaz Grey, Red sits up and turns toward the door, toward the rain that has stopped, a face humanized by surprise and anguish. He touches the doctor for the first time, grabs his arm and appears to gain strength from the contact; then he gets up and goes running out of the house.
Díaz Grey opens his hand, brings it up to the light to look at the ring, and blows off the grains of sand that are stuck to it; he places it on the table, slowly drinks a glass of wine, as if it were good, as if he still had things to think about. There’s time, he tells himself; he is certain that Red doesn’t need any help. When he decides to go out he finds, and examines with indifference the last moment that could be incorporated into the hazy afternoon: a strip of red light stretches high above the river. He lights a cigarette and walks along the side of the house where the shed is; he thinks indolently that he ended up keeping the ring, that he left on the table the piece of paper with the verses, that perhaps deliberate cynicism will be enough to cleanse him of the parody of passion and his ridicule.
When, in his office facing the square in the provincial city, Díaz Grey starts to play the game of knowing himself through this memory, the only one, he is forced to confuse the sensation of his blank past with that of his weak shoulders; that of the head with thin blond hair, bent against the window glass, with the sensation of loneliness suddenly accepted, when it was already insurmountable. He must also assume that his meticulous life, his own body deprived of lust, his bland beliefs, are symbols of the essential vulgarity of the memory he has struggled to keep for so many years.
At the preferred end of his memory, Díaz Grey lets himself collapse onto the wet sand on one side of the house. Red’s frenzy as he collects branches, papers, planks, and pieces of furniture, and places them against the wood wall of the chalet makes him laugh out loud, cough, and roll onto the ground; when he breathes in the smell of kerosene, he makes the other man freeze with an imperious whistle, then approaches him, slipping on the dampness and the leaves, takes a box of matches out of his pocket and shakes it next to one ear as he moves forward and slips.
1949