That whole week, Araceli kept sending me messages. In one she said: “Experiencing this love with him has given me back the confidence I’d lost, and I feel stronger now. I think I can even understand his affair with that little bitch. I just needed confirmation about myself. Thank you, my darling.”
Another day, I was in a medieval literature class—it was about Count Lucanor, I remember—when I received another of her messages: “Sweetheart, we just fucked three times in the Jacuzzi, I never even got that when I was his girlfriend! Forgive me for telling you. I know you understand me. I love you.”
My relations with these two women, Doctor, led me to think about myself. Both were frivolous and a little crazy, but they lived with an intensity I’d never known. I felt as if I was outside the world and started to think that the way they loved was normal. Of course, poetry helped me formulate the right questions, but also told me that I didn’t have any answers. Life had been needlessly cruel, expressing a wickedness that, when it came down to it, could only be in people. A wickedness that hovers in the air and suddenly chooses you at random. It’s not personal, I’m just a grain of sand, but how can any kind of faith be feasible when God has gone and there’s nothing to replace him? Those were the questions. I wrote and wrote, hoping to find answers. If there’s nothing at the end of the road, what can give light to the heart of man?
I spent nights and nights like that.
What were my sacrifices? what rituals? I wept for no reason, standing by the window, looking at the rain. Seeking the calming effect of the rain. I stood in front of the mirror and insulted myself. I undressed and hit myself. One night the doorman knocked at my door to tell me that the neighbors had heard cries, a strange moaning. I told him everything was fine. A strange Manuela was emerging, a mutant creature with scales, capable of surviving without clean air; an animal feeding on garbage, able to perpetuate itself in a world of wild beasts. Being that way, I told myself in one of the poems, the true monster was me, and so what salvation could I aspire to? Life itself was showing it to me, with its constant trials and brutal messages. I had it in front of my nose, on the page: it was poetry itself. This is how I summed it up (in a third poem): the ruthless impulse that had torn me away from life was the very same one that now fed into my only possible salvation. Humiliation, contempt, vileness, shame, and dishonor. Meanness and derision. I knew all these things because I had lived through them all. My eyes were like the windows of a solitary rocket about to explode in space. Through them, I could look at the world and, perhaps, feel protected. Closer to something that might resemble God, but wasn’t God. I could even fake a smile, a grimace that to everyone out there looked like a smile.
Days and nights passed, I don’t know how many. I remained vigilant, devoted to writing. I wandered naked and dirty through the apartment. I ate out of a big pan of rice that I’d cooked and from which I scooped whole mouthfuls with my hand. I drank water by sticking my mouth up against the faucets of the dishwasher and sucking it from there. I defecated and urinated. I slept on the carpet in the corner of the living room. I masturbated with a cucumber and then ate it. I looked at the rain through the window for hours, the wet rooftops of the city, and the people down there, that noisy mass in which the demon of adversity lay hidden. I felt cold and tried to imagine how every morning would be on this cold plain. I watched flies buzzing against the windowpane before squashing them. I became cruel to the little creatures that inhabited my world. I was the great predator.
I recovered my animal strength.
I wrote and wrote until something told me: it’s over, now it’s ready.
You’ve finished. It was a strange voice.
I was exhausted and went to sleep.
The next day, which was Saturday, at six in the morning, my cell phone rang hysterically until it made me jump. Who could be calling at this hour?
Banal reality had remembered me.
Damn, I said to myself seeing her name on the screen, it’s Rafaela. I felt miles away from her. What could have happened to that silly girl now? I was holding the telephone in my hand and by the time I made up my mind to answer it had already gone to voicemail, so I closed my eyes again. My pillow was still warm. The telephone rang again and I thought, should I answer? Calls at such an early hour are the devil’s work. I reduced the volume to zero, but then it started vibrating.
No, I said, no and no. I’ll call her later, after a good breakfast, when I’m fully awake.
That was worse, because after twenty minutes it was the entryphone that rang, again and again. I had no other remedy but to pick up. The doorman said: Señorita Rafaela is here for you. Shit, I thought, that fucks up everything. Let her up, I said. What stupid story could she have come with?
Opening the door, I found her in tears, had something happened to her the previous night? I took her over to the couch and said, breathe deeply, calm down, I’ll make us some coffee and we’ll talk, okay?
She hadn’t stayed up all night and she hadn’t taken drugs, quite the contrary. She brought with her the smell of soap and a recent shower. I poured the coffee and grabbed some cookies. I went with them to the living room and found her still crying.
“That son of a bitch has gotten me pregnant!” she suddenly burst out.
Shit, I said to myself.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I’m already quite late and last night, when I looked at the calendar, I said to myself, shit, so late? Twenty days. I got scared and went this morning to buy one of those tests they sell in drugstores. I did three different tests and all three were positive.”
She showed me the little plastic sticks with the red mark; I didn’t know much about these things but it must have been like she said.
“What are you planning to do?” I said. “Aren’t there clinics for that here in Bogotá?”
“For having an abortion?”
She said it with total contempt, as if the complete sentence was: “That’s what hookers and poor women do, those who have sex when they’re drunk or on drugs, not a beautiful rich girl like me.”
So I corrected myself and said:
“I mean, termination of pregnancy.”
She started crying again, took out her cell phone, and turned it on, angrily, nervously, as if waiting for something.
“The worst of it is that the bastard hasn’t sent me a single damned message since he left for Europe, unless that old bitch confiscated it! Do you think that’s possible?”
I said maybe he was somewhere without a network. Or maybe he lost it and had to buy a new one and didn’t know her number.
“What, like there’s no Wi-Fi in London or Paris? He hasn’t gone to the fucking African jungle. And if he lost it he could have sent me an e-mail, couldn’t he? or used Messenger, he doesn’t need to have my number for that!”
I didn’t have any other arguments, so I said:
“And why don’t you write to him and tell him?”
That also annoyed her. I had the feeling she’d come to me because she needed someone to yell at.
“Me? He’s the one who went away and left me stranded! I’m not writing to him no matter what he does to me, the bastard.”
I looked at my watch: it was barely eight in the morning. It wasn’t a good idea to offer her a drink.
“You should go to the gym and stop thinking about it,” I said.
That wasn’t a good idea either.
“Like it’s so easy to stop thinking! I’m pregnant by a son of a bitch who’s vanished into thin air, how can you think I should go to the gym?”
I’d run out of ideas.
“Would you like a drink?”
“I’m pregnant!” she cried furiously. “I can’t drink alcohol.”
Then she thought better of it and said, okay, what the hell, do you have rum and Coke? But have one with me.
I poured two Cuba Libres and we drank them slowly. It did her good, because after a while she stopped her yelling.
“I can’t tell my mother,” she said, “let alone my sisters. You’ll keep it secret, won’t you?”
My cell phone vibrated and I froze.
“Answer it,” she said, “I don’t mind.”
I looked at the screen: it was another message from Araceli. A photograph from the elevator on the Eiffel Tower. The note said: “It scares me to be so happy, and I miss you, my sweet girl. ILU.” There was no sign of the husband. I closed the messages and switched off the phone.
“Who’s writing to you at this hour?” she asked. “Your boyfriend?”
“No,” I said, “a friend from Cali. Nothing important.”
We served ourselves another Cuba Libre and she asked if she could hear some music. She took off her shoes and stretched out on the couch.
“This is a nice apartment,” she said, “do you rent it or is it your family’s?”
“I rent it, I got it very cheap. It belongs to a relative of my mother’s.”
“You’ve never told me anything about your family or your life,” she said, “do your parents live in Cali? Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“I don’t like talking about it,” I said. “I’m sorry, can we talk about something else?”
“Oh, sure, I’m sorry.”
She took a long slug from the glass and lay there looking at the ceiling.
“It’s really nice here, and very well located,” she said. “No sweat, if you don’t want to talk about your family I understand, I also hate to be asked certain things.”
She paused, then looked up again at the ceiling.
“What do you think he’s doing right now?”
“That depends,” I said. “Do you know where he is?”
“I think he’s still in London, he told me the conference lasts until the end of the month.”
“He’s probably in some meeting, bored, reading papers or taking notes. Maybe he’s thinking about you, or he’s in a store buying you something.”
“I don’t think so,” she said, “with that skinny witch he won’t have time for anything, unless he makes an excuse and gets away from her. But she won’t let him out of her sight for even a second. If she wasn’t famous too, I could tell you who she is. In fact, when you find out you’re going to say . . . What?!? I wish I could tell you, believe me.”
“I understand, don’t worry. It’s best you don’t tell me anything.”
Once again, she took out her cell phone and looked at it, this time with a degree of tenderness. Outside it was drizzling, the wind was making the branches of the trees knock together. It was a cold but mild morning. Somewhere not very far away, a bird sang.
“Do you really think I should tell him?” she said. “Why not? After all, he is the father. I’ll have to tell him sometime.”
“It’s up to you,” I said.
“Yes, but you gave me the idea. If you were pregnant and in love, what would you do? I mean, obviously if the same thing happened to you that happened to me.”
I thought about it. The idea was so alien to my life that it had almost never entered my mind, not even as a hypothesis.
“I’d make up my mind myself whether or not to keep it, before telling him anything, because if the man’s married it’s most likely he’ll want you to get rid of it. Especially if he already has children.”
Rafaela sat up abruptly on the couch. She looked at me.
“How do you know he has children?”
“No,” I said, keeping my cool, “it’s just a guess. Married men have children.”
“Oh, okay.”
I swallowed my saliva. I had to be more careful not to put my foot in it. Fortunately she was so engrossed in her story that a moment later she’d forgotten all about it.
“Do you think I have to decide alone?” she said, caressing the screen of her cell phone. “I guess it depends, because if he’s also in love, as he’s told me so many times, he’s bound to be happy about it. It would have been nice to receive the news together.”
“Only you can know that,” I said.
Still looking up at the ceiling, she took another sip of her Cuba Libre and said:
“He was the one who came looking for me and from the start he behaved very well, like a real gentleman. Things between us happened very quickly, and I was like, really surprised to see that the weeks went by and he kept calling me, and then he started taking me with him when he had to travel. We went to Lima, Mexico, Panama. I love traveling with him.”
She paused for a moment, took a sip from her glass and continued.
“I’d had a boyfriend for six years, but at that time I was very confused and had asked him for a break, time to think: that’s why I was free when I met him. When my boyfriend came back and said, Rafi, darling, how much longer are you going to think? I didn’t know what to do because I was already into the other guy, so I said to him: look, I don’t want to continue, you’re a terrific person and I love you, but no, do you understand me? He begged me, cried. He asked me if there was someone else, and of course, you never say that, especially not in a case like mine, so I said again, no, you don’t understand, I’m going through a big change right now, I’m not ruling it out in the future, Jimmy, that was his name, so don’t be too upset, relax for now, all right? I have to go through this alone. I prefer you not to be around because I don’t want you to suffer, I love you too much for that, and I respect you too much, do you understand me? He didn’t understand a damned thing obviously, but I got him off my back after three boxes of Kleenex. When he left my place, I forgot him after two minutes, and you know what the hardest part was? Changing the fucking favorites on my cell phone!”
We laughed. She wasn’t as stressed now as she had been.
“Look, if you want my advice, I’d say don’t keep it,” I said. “Don’t bring something like that into your relationship, because as far as I can see your relationship isn’t about making a home together but about being boyfriend and girlfriend, traveling and having fun. He’s with you because he wants to recapture his youth, and that’s fine. Take it easy, take it for what it is, and if it continues you’ll know. How many women end up alone and with kids because the man gets scared off? You’re young, and having a child is a big burden to carry for the rest of your life.”
The drizzle turned into a downpour, and there were some violent claps of thunder. The sky, at eleven in the morning, grew dark. Rafaela made a gesture of pride, but said nothing. She grabbed the telephone again, nervously.
“I don’t think you’ve quite understood what my relationship with him is like,” she said. “We go out together, we have a great time, like all couples. But the fact that he’s older and married doesn’t change a thing, because I’m not going with him just to pass the time. I left my long-term boyfriend and I have an idea of my future.”
She stood up and went to get more ice. Then a huge amount of rum and a little Coca-Cola. Things were getting complicated.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” she said. “I’m going to send him a message telling him. I bet you he answers within half an hour! That way you’ll see our relationship isn’t just a fling.”
She opened her messages and started to give rapid little taps on the screen. It seemed to me that she was demonstrating something to herself. Araceli and her husband were in Paris, and for a moment I imagined the bomb that was about to fall on them. Fortunately, Araceli had stopped asking about Rafaela.
Rafaela gave a last tap with her thumb and said, that’s it, it’s sent. She showed it to me. The message said: “I have to talk to you urgently. I had the test and I’m pregnant.”
Then she said:
“Shall we synchronize watches? It’s eleven forty. I assure you he’ll answer before twelve noon. And I’m not going to look at my phone again.”
“All right,” I said, “but let’s talk about something else because otherwise you’re going to go crazy.”
We spent the time drinking and watching a news bulletin. I couldn’t stop thinking about Araceli and praying that the guy didn’t get the message. This strange drama, that I was the only one to know all the ins and outs of, even though it wasn’t mine, had finally gained the upper hand.
My other life, the real one, was in a green notebook on the table. Every now and again I looked at it. My poetry was in there, and that was the only thing that mattered, the one thing that shielded me from all this nonsense.
When twelve o’clock came, Rafaela said, “I’m going to give that idiot another ten minutes before I take a look.”
She seemed uncertain. She stood up and walked a little dizzily over to pour herself another drink. I went to the kitchen and brought a plate with peanuts and potato chips. At last she made up her mind and grabbed her cell phone, but when she switched it on she turned pale. There were no messages, and what was worse, from what she said, he’d apparently already read hers. She lay back down on the couch, crying.
“The bastard! He read it and he hasn’t replied?”
I tried to calm her, telling her that maybe he was in a meeting, that there could be a thousand reasons.
“If he really loves me, he should have called by now.”
“Look at the calls, you did turn the volume down . . . ”
She crucified me with her eyes.
I suggested we go somewhere for lunch, because I didn’t have any food at home. We went down onto the street and walked as far as a hamburger joint, but she said, no, no way, let’s go somewhere nice. It’s on me. We took a taxi and went to a French restaurant. They gave us a table on the second floor and she asked for the wine list. To Rafaela, what was happening was inconceivable; whenever she looked at her phone her eyes filled with tears.
The food we asked for was really delicious and, in my opinion, overpriced. She seemed to need it. Suddenly her phone rang. She gave a gesture of surprise, happy and expectant, but when she looked at the screen her eyes darkened again. It was her mother. She answered and said quickly: Mother, I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you I’m not going to lunch with you, all right, bye.
By the time we finished lunch we were already very drunk, and we decided to split the check. Since I didn’t have any cash, I took out Araceli’s card. Rafaela took out another from Bancolombia and she confessed to me that he had given it to her in case she needed anything.
Both of us getting drunk on their accounts!
Rafaela wanted to continue the party in some bar, but I said no. I said I had to go to the library to consult some documents for an assignment, so she called another friend and left, very nervous and stressed, with the idea of continuing until nightfall. She was completely drunk. I made her promise she would call if he answered or there was any other news.
I returned home, went to bed, and practically didn’t leave it again until Monday, to go to class. Rafaela didn’t call again and the days passed. I felt a profound disgust with everything that had happened, but I couldn’t see a way out. Why is my world so small? I asked myself, and just at that moment the TV screen showed a globe, and a voice said: “The world is in your hands, dare to enjoy it.”
I started fantasizing about leaving the country. I had nothing to lose. I’d realized that I would always be alone. The one person who had looked into my heart was Araceli, but thinking about this thing with Rafaela and her fling with Araceli’s husband, an intuition told me that it was going to end soon. Something was about to break.
I gave up being happy in return for a little peace and quiet. I spent hours looking at the map of the world on my computer screen, repeating the names of distant cities, considering borders and countries. Where could I be safe? Accepting that I wasn’t trying to be happy or to regain my innocence, a great weight fell from my shoulders.
The day before Araceli came back, I had a call from Rafaela. She told me that the guy had finally replied, ten days later!
“And what did he tell you?”
“The bastard wants me to wait, and he’ll take care of everything. But then he really stabbed me in the back. You know what the son of a bitch asked me? If I’m sure it’s his! What the hell does he think I am? a call girl?”
Rafaela wasn’t crying anymore, now she was offended. Her eyes vomited hatred. I asked her what she planned to do.
“He’ll be here tomorrow and I’m going to make him pay, the bastard. What do you think of that, huh? I mean, like I was fucking a dozen guys.”
“Did you tell him you’d left your boyfriend?”
“Of course, he knows that perfectly well!”
She took a deep breath and said, shaking with anger:
“You were right, I should have decided what I was going to do about the baby before I told him, but how was I to know he was going to be such a bastard? If you could see him when he asks me for it, he gets down on all fours and lifts his tail, like a little dog. The fucking bastard! I’m already making inquiries about terminating the pregnancy. When I do that, will you come with me?”
I said I would, and that she should inform me if there were any changes.
Araceli arrived the next day but we couldn’t see each other until the end of the week. She said she and her husband were still at it like a couple of teenagers, that’s why she hadn’t come earlier.
“The only reason I was able to come today is that he had to go to a ranch in El Sisga for a meeting with one of the managers of a project.”
She gave me lots of hugs, squeezing me as if I were a cuddly toy.
“My darling! It’s such joy to see you when I’m so happy,” she said, “how have you been all this time?”
I told her about my reading and how I’d been working frantically on a book of poems.
“I’ve also been writing, sweetheart,” she said, “sit down, I’d like to read you some of my new poems.”
She read a series of odes and jolly verses that, to be honest, made me want to throw up. Hearing her, I came to a simple conclusion: anyone who’s really happy had better keep away from poetry, or be very careful with it. Then she asked with great interest about what I’d done, so I went to fetch my green notebook and showed it to her. We had already served ourselves a couple of malt whiskeys that she had brought from England, plus, Doctor, I forgot to tell you that she also gave me a sweater, a summer dress, and some pairs of semitransparent panties, very erotic and elegant.
Araceli started reading my notebook, at first skimming through, and then very engrossed. Every now and again she’d raise her eyes and look at me as if to say, very good, and continue reading.
“This is wonderful,” she said, “do you have a project in mind?”
I said no, it was just the result of some difficult days, things I’d written very roughly, by hand; the notebook was part of something that might be bigger, but I wasn’t yet clear what it might be. I’d thought to let it mature for a while, I said, I hadn’t even copied it onto the computer.
She hugged and kissed me with great tenderness. She wanted me to put on the clothes she had brought me, especially the erotic panties, and we went to bed. We fucked, and it was great, but she struck me as strange. Her body wasn’t responding in the same old way.
I got up to go to the bathroom and I saw that I had a message from Rafaela saying: “I’m with him in El Sisga, on a beautiful ranch. I’m making him eat dirt, because of the way he behaved. We’re talking a lot about our pregnancy. I’ll tell you about it.” In another message, she sent a photograph of the two of them naked on a wicker couch. Under the image, she wrote: “This one I took in secret, with the camera pointed at the mirror, while he was fucking me, you can see he really loves me, can’t you? He’s already told me so in every way possible.”
I hid the telephone. I was scared that in a moment of carelessness Araceli might try to look at it, the way she did with her husband’s phone. Although she seemed very calm. She didn’t even ask me about Rafaela.
We drank, made love a while longer, and even took a few pills. Around nine o’clock she got dressed and said she had to go. I saw her to the door. Before she went out, she asked me to lend her the notebook with the poems.
“I want to read it again more carefully, darling, you’ve written some really beautiful things,” she said. “Maybe I can help you find a structure. I have a few ideas, I think it’s about time other people knew about you.”
I handed it over to her and gave her a kiss.
“Take it and let me know.”
The final exams arrived and I finished the semester with good grades, Doctor, and then something happened that made me reconsider the ideas I had about life and what it had in store for me.
One afternoon, the head of the department called me to his office to tell me that he had the possibility of recommending someone for a scholarship in Spain to study literature and linguistics. He had thought of me and wanted to know if I was interested.
“Good,” Cristo Rafael said, “I’ll put your name down as a candidate and let’s keep our fingers crossed.”
I left the office walking on air.
I felt so happy that I wanted to share it with someone and I sent a message to Araceli, but she didn’t reply, so I continued walking along Seventh, alone, surrounded by traffic and people. I suddenly felt as if I was seeing all of this for the last time, and Bogotá, this inhospitable town that I was already starting to love, was transformed into something different. A city of prisoners.
I looked at the telephone and there was no message from Araceli. I told myself I was worse than Rafaela, obsessed with text messages, and I thought to call her. She replied immediately.
“Hi,” Rafaela said, “everything okay?”
“I have to tell you something, where are you?” I said.
After a while she appeared in a taxi. She picked me up and we went to a cafe on Avenida Chile.
“They already did the scrape,” she said, “in a clinic in the north; it was really very easy, it was the best thing. It’s a kind of surgical abortion. It was hard, but it had to be done. You were right. Starting out in life with a child on your back is stupid. What man will want to get involved with you? We talked about it a few times and he said he’d never agree to keep it. He’s reconciled with his wife and sees things differently. I thanked him for his honesty and took off after the operation.”
“And what happened with him? Aren’t you seeing him anymore?”
“Obviously he’d like that because he wants to fuck me, but as far as I’m concerned it’s all dead and gone. I’d like to turn over a new leaf and go back to leading a normal life.”
“So you’re not in love with him anymore?”
“No, and it’s his fault. He really made me eat shit and you don’t do that to a girl like me. In the long run it was better, because I was really hooked on him. I had such withdrawal symptoms that I even considered getting back together with Jimmy! Except that . . . can I tell you something?”
“Go on.”
“The poor guy took it so badly when I left him that he went downhill and started taking amphetamines and drinking. The break hit him hard but it also helped him, because one day, God knows what he was on at the time, he ended up in bed with another guy and something went click in his head. And now Jimmy’s bisexual, although more gay than straight. He even has a boyfriend!”
I found it incredible that so many things could have happened in her life in such a short time. Barely three weeks!
Well, in mine, too.
Life is an incredible series of ups and downs. Now Rafaela and I were the abandoned ones, and that was fine. The sensible thing was for Araceli to be with her man, at least until the next crisis, and it occurred to me that I wouldn’t be there when she experienced it. I hoped to be a long way away.
In the end I didn’t tell Rafaela about the scholarship, seeing that she never even asked me why I’d called her. She took it for granted that our chats should always naturally be about her and her problems. She was young, pretty, and rich. I’d known for some time now that my life was going to be solitary. We each have our own destiny.
July came and, with it, the longed-for call from Cristo Rafael.
“Manuelita, are you holding onto something?” he said. “The papers have just arrived from Spain, they’ve awarded you the scholarship!”
I was struck dumb, I couldn’t say a word.
“Come to my office, we’ll sign and get everything ready.”
I received the notification and signed that I accepted. I filled out a form with all the required information. In a few days they would e-mail me the scanned documents for requesting a visa. They gave me the tickets, the registration, a room in a university residence, and eight hundred euros a month, including the vacation months.
I left Cristo’s office and started walking up Seventh. That seemed to be my therapy. The city was no longer far away, but transparent. A city of musty glass that I could see against the light. At last I was leaving.
I called Araceli and left her a message. I wanted to tell her everything and give her back the bank card. She answered at around ten at night and said, darling, that’s wonderful news! You deserve it, you’ll be like a shooting star!
I told her I wanted to give her back the bank card and arrange about the apartment.
“Don’t worry about that, darling, that’s a minor matter. Continue using it until you leave, all right? Listen, I have to go because I’m at a dinner. A big hug, darling, and congratulations. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Then I called Gloria Isabel in Cali. I told her the news and she gave a cry.
“Oh, how proud and happy you’ve made me.”
I promised to visit her before I left. I couldn’t wait to leave, because I didn’t actually have anything particular to do during the vacation.
Three weeks later, more or less, I bought a ticket for Cali. I chose some trifles to take Gloria Isabel as gifts, and while I was waiting to board at the airport, going for a stroll and looking at the stores, I stopped in the bookstore. I passed my eyes over the spines of the books, opened a few, and read a couple of lines, until on the table of new releases I saw a new book by Araceli.
Songs of the Equinox, Araceli Cielo.
I felt quite excited. On the back cover was a quote from someone saying that with this collection, Araceli had “taken a new, forceful, and unerring step toward a poetic understanding of life.” How come she hadn’t told me anything? I assumed she’d been about to call me, occupied with everything that the publication of a book entailed. They must be the poems about her journey to Europe and I thought to myself, how corny they were! If she’s published them, I hope she’s done some work on them.
They were just announcing boarding when I got to the gate and hurried onto the plane. Once I’d settled in my seat, I took the plastic wrapper off the book and read the first poem. Then the second and the third. I looked at the opening lines of the others and glanced through them . . .
I started crying.
I couldn’t believe it.
They were my poems! My green notebook!
She’d made a few small changes: changed a few names, removed a few verses. I remembered the day she’d taken my notebook away with her. Araceli had known it was my only copy and now it would be my word, the word of an unknown provincial, against the word of a famous poet, a member of high society.
I felt as if I’d been raped for the second time. Brutally raped. But this time I was the one who’d opened the door and surrendered everything. This was the price I’d paid for all her kindness to me. What could I do now? Who was going to believe these poems were mine?
When I got to Cali I went to the bathroom in the airport, threw water over my face, and recovered. I didn’t want Gloria Isabel to notice anything. Vanessa had been allowed out of the clinic, so we spent the three days together. We went and ate cholados in Perro Park, watched a soccer match on TV—América de Cali was playing, and although it never got out of second gear it was still the team we all loved; on Sunday, I was invited to a club called Los Farallones and stuffed myself with fried plantains washed down with lulo juice; I did what tourists do, because this was my farewell. When would I return to Cali? I thought, looking at the city.
Perhaps never.
Every now and again I’d think about Araceli’s book and feel as if I’d been kicked in the stomach and couldn’t breathe. They were my poems! The words with which I’d somehow managed to tame my past, that sad wretched life I’d been forced to live. Was that what she’d wanted to steal? My anger was eating away at me, and the second night things got worse, because I found a number of reviews on the Internet, all very favorable, as well as interviews with Araceli in which she spoke with great self-confidence about my poems, as if they were hers, explaining them with a faraway look in her eyes, evoking mysteries and sufferings that she had never experienced.
I cried and cried, but this time with rage. With a sense of being powerless, too, because I couldn’t do anything.
I went back to Bogotá and concentrated on preparations for the journey. I already had the papers and the ticket. I just had to wait for the date. Cristo Rafael gave me the contact numbers of some friends of his and recommended some things I should see in Madrid.
The day before the journey I went to a restaurant and had dinner on my own. It was my farewell. I didn’t try to call Araceli, nor did she call me, even though she knew the date. It was understandable. The following day, before closing the door on the apartment, I left the bank card on the table. I handed the key over to the doorman and asked for a taxi.
In the airport I walked nervously up and down. I checked in my bags and headed for the international departure lounge. It was full of emotional people taking photographs of each other. Families saying goodbye to their children. I, on the other hand, was alone, but my strength derived from having nothing. I passed through the middle of this tearful crowd and felt strong again, as if I were the first living being to get up and walk after a great conflagration.
Go to hell, all of you! I thought.
Drug traffickers, rapists, murderers, thieves . . . Stay here with your damned fake god, in your country of blood and shit.
I’m leaving forever.
On the plane I thought once again about Araceli and in a fit of anger I grabbed my cell phone, the same one she had given me. I looked for Rafaela’s photographs and found the one from El Sisga. It had the date and the hour, plus the text saying: “I’m with him in El Sisga, on a beautiful ranch. I’m making him eat dirt, because of the way he behaved. We’re talking a lot about our pregnancy. I’ll tell you about it.”
And then the photograph of the two of them naked on a wicker couch, with the caption:
“This one I took in secret, with the camera pointed at the mirror, while he was fucking me, you can see he really loves me, can’t you? He’s already told me so in every way possible.”
I pressed Forward and looked for Araceli’s number. Before forwarding, I wrote her a laconic farewell. “Thank you for your help. I left the bank card on the table in the apartment and the keys with the doorman. Congratulations on your new book, which I’ve just read. I read the reviews, too. You’re a great artist. Goodbye.”
The message was sent with the photographs and Rafaela’s texts attached. This was my last gift to her.
That’s what I thought.
Then the plane taxied along the runway and when it eventually took off I felt quite dizzy. Rising through the clouds and plunging into the dark, murky sky, away from that country that had hurt me so much, I realized that at last I was free. And that’s how I ended up in Madrid, Doctor. And the rest, my life here, you already know.
Thank you for reading this.