Lamentably, Sandoval’s final illness and death weren’t sudden, and those of us who loved him had more than a year to get used to the idea. He himself took it with the same metaphysical sarcasm that he applied to everything. For whoever wished to listen (I mean among those close to him, because he was always restrained or even distant with outsiders), he declared that nobody had been clear-sighted enough to give proper credit to alcohol for its beneficial effects on his body, or to him for knowing enough to treat himself with it in such ferocious doses. It was obvious, he said, that this collapse, this shocking and irreversible physical decline, was due to his abstinence, which had broken the sacred equilibrium formerly produced in him by whiskey. He smiled when he said that, and those of us who’d always badgered him to stop drinking were grateful to be treated with such indulgence. Until the end, or almost, he kept working in the court.
During the last months of Sandoval’s life, I spoke frequently with Alejandra—more than with him, to tell the truth. When I did have Sandoval on the line, we confined ourselves (because the high cost of long-distance calls froze us, or because as typical men we considered any outward show of our sorrow basically a sign of weakness) to brief exchanges of small talk, avoiding with expert precision any reference whatsoever that was either very personal or very heartfelt or very melancholy. I asked no questions about his illness; he asked none about my enforced exile in Jujuy. I suppose the impossibility of seeing each other’s face as we mouthed conventionalities increased the stiffness of those conversations, but neither of us wanted them to stop.
And so I wasn’t surprised when the secretary handed me the telephone one day, saying simply, “Long-distance operator,” and through the echo and buzzing that provided the background for every long-distance communication in those days, Alejandra’s voice reached me: at first controlled, then shattered by grief, and finally serene, perhaps even relieved.
That night I traveled in an airplane for the first time. The grief I felt had taken on a curious form. I’d had so much time to prepare myself for bad news concerning Sandoval that comparisons between what I was feeling and my previous speculations about what I would feel afflicted me more than the plain and simple grief of having lost my friend.
From high in the night sky, I looked down on Buenos Aires, which offered an imposing spectacle. When I arrived at the airport, I felt on my own account the same emotional distance I’d felt on learning of Sandoval’s death. I wasn’t afraid, or even nostalgic. Nor, after six years, was I happy to return. For an instant, a pang of guilt went through me: I hadn’t informed my mother about my flying visit. I didn’t wish either to prolong it or to sadden her by letting her know that I’d spent a day twenty kilometers from her house, as opposed to almost two thousand, and I hadn’t gone to see her. It was better to wait until July, when she’d come to visit me, as she did every year.
The cab driver decided to edify me with a discourse whose object, I soon realized, was to explain why the British would never be able to reconquer the Malvinas with the wretched little fleet they’d just dispatched. I cut him off curtly: “Please don’t talk to me. I need to rest.” And in case my lack of interest made him suspect me of treason against our country, I added, “Besides, I’m Austrian.”
He sank into silence. While he drove me to Palermo, certain memories came into focus. I was almost happy to realize that they were causing me pain, because my coldness during the preceding hours had frightened me. Perhaps that was why I found myself wondering what that prick Romano was up to. Was he still eager to bump me off? This was no minor question—the response to it would determine whether or not I had to keep living in Jujuy—but I didn’t know anyone who could answer it. Báez had died in 1980. I hadn’t dared travel to Buenos Aires back then, even though four years had passed since Morales’s revenge and the attack I’d escaped by a hair. I did, however, write a long letter and send it to Báez’s son, because I thought—and still think—that children should know their parents’ true value. And beyond that, I was going to feel lost without Báez. That was the main reason why I planned to go from the airplane to the wake, from the wake to the burial, and from the burial back to the plane.
The wake was held not in Sandoval’s house but in a funeral parlor. I’ve always hated the sterile spectacle of our funeral rites, ever since I was a boy. Those gauzy shrouds, the candles, the fearful stench of dead flowers—they all seemed to me like vain artifices devised by bored illusionists to dissemble the honest and appalling bluntness of death. And so I entered the funeral parlor without stopping in the small chamber where the casket lay. Alejandra was getting through the midnight hours by trying to fall asleep in an armchair. I think she was happy to see me. She cried a little and explained something that had to do with the last treatment her husband had undergone, when there was no hope for anything but an impossible miracle. It sounded to me like a story worn out from having been repeated all day long, but I didn’t have the heart to interrupt her. When it seemed she’d finished, I ventured to speak: “Your husband was the best guy I ever knew.”
She turned her eyes away from me and stared off to one side. She tried blinking several times, but there was nothing she could do to suppress her tears. Nevertheless, she was able to reply, “He loved you so much and admired you so much. I think he stopped drinking so you wouldn’t be afraid for him when you weren’t here to help him.”
It was my turn to cry. We hugged each other in silence, finally able to ignore the false rituals of that place and honor the memory of her husband and my friend.
Afterward, she made me some coffee, and we talked a little about everything. As it was well past midnight, it was highly unlikely that any stray mourners would be coming in, at least not for the next several hours. Family members who hadn’t yet done their duty could be expected to show up early the following morning, before the burial service. So Alejandra and I had time to talk. I spent a good while bringing her up to date on my exile in Jujuy; she wanted to know all about Silvia. Pablo had told Alejandra we’d moved in together, but her woman’s curiosity required much more information than what Sandoval had been satisfied with in our letters and telephone chats. I began by telling her that Silvia was the younger sister of the clerk in a civil court in Jujuy and then went on to explain that in such a tiny milieu, Silvia and I couldn’t help meeting; that she was very beautiful; that the aura I carried around with me in those distant lands, the aura of the mysterious political exile with the obscure past, had perhaps aided my conquest of her; and that I loved her very much. When I finished, I believed I’d said everything, but that was where Alejandra’s interrogation began. I did what I could, without ever shaking off my surprise at the vast number of details one woman can wish to know about another. It was getting close to three when I finally persuaded her to go home and get some sleep. Nobody was going to come at that hour, I said. I think she liked the idea of my remaining alone for a while with all we had left of her husband. And I think I too anxiously welcomed the prospect.
There weren’t many people at the graveside. A few relatives, a couple of friends, several court colleagues. I didn’t know some of them, and the sensation that I was among strangers struck me as perhaps the most convincing proof of my own exile. I took comfort in seeing the familiar faces of some old coworkers, with whom I exchanged greetings and friendly conversation. Fortuna Lacalle and Pérez, our former bosses, were there as well. The retired judge had aged so much that his body seemed to be on the point of breaking into pieces, but his foolish face remained unscathed in the battle against the passage of time. Pérez was no longer a public defender; to the astonishment of all sensible men and women, he was now a judge on the sentencing court.
While the others were returning to their vehicles, I paused a moment to throw a handful of dirt onto the grave. I turned around to make sure there were no witnesses and saw that the rearguard of the departing group was made up of none other than our old clerk and our equally old judge. I picked up a big, wet clod of dirt and started breaking it into pieces. As I threw them, one by one, onto the little mound, I murmured a kind of prayer, a thoroughly profane prayer: “On the day when the assholes of the world throw a party, those two will welcome the others at the door, serve them refreshments, offer them cake, lead them in toasts, and wipe the crumbs from their lips.”
When I was finished, I walked away smiling.