MY APPETITE WAS PERFECTLY SATISFACTORY. I deemed it prudent to arrive in the dining area five minutes prior to dinnertime so as not to be caught offguard by the dinner bell. I found my relatives, the hotel’s owners, busily distributing napkins and breadbaskets. I decided, without further ado, to broach the subject of my window. I was not a paying guest at the hotel—my relatives owed me, from time immemorial, a certain quantity of money—but I was not well disposed to being treated as one who receives favors. My cousin, a none too sanguine man, prematurely gray, with large, pensive eyes and a tired expression, listened with equanimity, almost tenderness, to my order that the window be unstuck immediately. A solicitous silence was his sole reaction. Andrea, his wife, interjected:
“What did I tell you, Esteban? We are being buried in sand here. Anywhere you turn, there is sand; it’s infinite.”
A sudden enthusiasm came over Esteban.
“That’s not true, Andrea. To the south, there are crabs. On October 23rd of last year, no, it was the 24th, the pharmacist’s horse got stuck in the marsh; he disappeared into the mud before our very eyes.”
“I liked that parcel in Claromecó,” continued Andrea, with perverse resentment. “But Esteban wouldn’t hear of it. And here we are, in debt, in this hotel that only brings in expenses.”
Andrea was young and healthy, with lively eyes and regular features, but not at all good-looking. Her boundless resentment manifested itself in overwrought and aggressive amiability.
Esteban said, “When we first arrived, there was nothing here except a little tin hut, the sea, and the sand. Now, there’s our hotel, the New East End Hotel, and the pharmacy. The tamarisks have finally taken root. I realize that this is a slow season, but last year, all of the rooms were filled. The place is making progress.”
“Perhaps I have not expressed myself clearly,” I said, ironically. “What I want is for you to open my window.”
“Impossible,” replied Andrea with irritating calm. “Just ask Esteban. What progress? Two years ago, our lobby was on the first floor; now it’s the basement. The sand rises constantly. If we opened your window, the house would fill up with sand.”
The window was a lost cause. I am—at least on the surface—a good loser. In order to change the subject I begged my cousins to tell me what they knew about the sailboat foundered in the sand that I had seen during my afternoon walk. Esteban replied:
“It’s the Joseph K. It came in with the tide one night. When we first settled here there was another boat as well, but a storm came up and, from one day to the next, the sea carried it off.”
“My nephew,” said Andrea, “plays in that boat for hours. It’s a mystery to me that he doesn’t get bored. What could he be doing there, all alone, all day long?”
“It’s not a mystery to me,” replied Esteban. “That boat makes me wish I were a kid again.”
The gong of the dinner bell interrupted our conversation. A fat old woman was beating upon it zealously, smiling like a simpleton. They told me that she was the typist.
The guests didn’t take long to arrive. We sat marooned at one end of an excessively long table. I was introduced to the only person I had not yet met: Doctor Manning. He was small, pink-faced, wrinkled and taciturn. He was dressed as a fisherman and had a pipe permanently stuck in his mouth, covering him in ashes.
One chair was empty: Emilia was missing.
Andrea, assisted by a servant, served the table. Esteban ate listlessly. We had finished the pea soup when he stood with deliberate calm, went over to the radio, put on his eyeglasses, moved the dials, and deafened us with a bolero.
Somewhat insistently, I shot glances of admonition and reproach at the boy, Miguel. He avoided my gaze and stared, with feigned interest, at Mary. Doctor Cornejo was looking at her too.
“What beautiful rings!” exclaimed Cornejo, taking the girl’s hand firmly in his own. “The bands are fourteen carat and the rubies are perfect.”
“Yes, they’re not bad,” replied Mary. “I inherited them. My mother put all her money in precious jewels.”
I confess that, at first, Mary’s gems seemed more like costume jewels than the genuine article. There are, to be sure, similarities between modern baubles and the finest of ancient jewels—the color of the stones, the complexity of the settings, the symbolism of the design—that disorient the casual observer. My cousin, the hotel owner, did not appear to share in this confusion. Greed gleamed in her eyes.
Raising my voice excessively—the radio conspired against us—I asked Mary what interesting books she had read of late.
“Oh!” she responded. “The only books I read are those I translate. I’ll have you know that they make up a respectable library.”
“I hadn’t judged you to be such a hard worker,” I remarked.
“If you don’t believe me, go up to my room,” she said in a sarcastic tone. “There I have all the books I have translated. Why is it that I can’t be without my things? I love them so!… I also keep the manuscripts of the translations and the rough drafts of the manuscripts!”
We were on to the second course—some fowl a bit too tender for my taste—when Emilia arrived. Her eyes were shiny and red, as though she had just been crying. She had that fragile and solemn air of isolation of one who has been weeping. There was a general sense of unease, undiminished by each of our efforts to dispel it.
Mary asked us: “Would it bother you if I turned off the radio?”
“We’d be grateful,” I replied, politely.
The silence was a relief, but not a lasting one. With the music silenced, we now had nowhere to hide, and each of us was a shameless witness to the discomfort of the others and to the tragedy of Emilia. What secret enmity burned in that girl’s heart? A treatise remains to be written about the weeping of women; what one believes to be an expression of tenderness is, at times, an expression of hatred, and the sincerest of tears tend to be spilled by women who are moved only by their own predicaments.
With excellent pluck, Doctor Cornejo tried to reanimate the conversation. Aided by diagrams he traced with a fork on the tablecloth, he explained the complete tidal system of the South Atlantic coast. Then, to my cousins’ increasing alarm, he proceeded to design two improbable breakwaters for our beach. He went on to speak of the crab bogs, and modeled the positions, quite realistically, that we should assume in the event we were to fall into one.
At last we were beginning to forget about Emilia when Mary intervened:
“Oh, I’m as worried as Santa Lucía! The sand has made Emilia’s eyes look as though she’s been crying.” She turned to her sister. “Come by my room afterwards and I’ll lend you some eye drops.”
The delicacy with which Mary tried to disguise her sister’s crying was admirable. The latter didn’t even respond.
But Mary thought of everything.
Unlike half of humanity, she remembered that it was offensive to prescribe anything—even a few drops of aqua fortis—in the presence of a doctor. She exclaimed with her habitual grace:
“How silly of me, with a doctor present! Why don’t you take a quick look at my sister? What harm could it do?”
I put on my glasses and looked intensely at Emilia. I asked her deferentially:
“Do you have headaches after reading? Do you feel a burning in those pretty little eyes, like two balls of flame? Do you see flies that aren’t there? Do you see a green halo encircling lamps at night? Do your lachrymal ducts dilate when exposed to air?”
I interpreted her silence as an affirmative. I determined on the spot:
“Ruta foetida, one thousand. Ten drops upon waking. I have some vials in my medicine kit. If you’ll allow me, I’ll give you one.”
“Thank you, Doctor. That won’t be necessary,” replied Emilia. She seemed not to notice my attentions. She went on:
“It’s not the sand that made me cry.”
These words did nothing to dampen the intensity of the circumstances.
Doctor Cornejo, that vigorous volunteer, intervened:
“I have been summering at the coast for twenty years now, the last eight of them in Quequén. And so, my friends, I can assure you that there’s no beach more attractive than this for the study of the shifting of sand.”
He went on to lay out the plans, on the tablecloth, for a future plantation, intended to fix down the sand dunes. In the face of such determined fork strokes, my cousin Andrea began to tremble.
Doctor Manning retired to a distant table with the last of the grapes. I saw him take a miniature deck of cards from his pocket and begin to play game after game of solitaire.
“I can’t go for one day without hearing music,” said Mary, looking oddly at her sister.
“Would you like me to turn on the radio?” inquired Atuel.
“What? With a soloist present?” exclaimed Mary, revealing new proof of her extraordinary sensitivity. She approached her sister and, taking her by the arm, implored her with an affectionate expression:
“Play something from your repertoire, Emilia.”
She answered: “I don’t feel like it.”
“Don’t be that way, Emilia,” encouraged her fiancé. “The guests want to hear you.”
I deemed it the right moment to intervene.
“I am certain,” I said slowly and deliberately, “that the young lady won’t deny us the honor of hearing her play.”
Finally, Emilia had to accede. With poorly masked irritation, she was moving towards the piano, when Mary interrupted her.
“Emilia,” she said, “you should play the Forgotten Waltz, by Liszt.”
The pianist froze, staring rigidly at Mary. I thought I detected in her eyes, blue and diaphanous, the frigidity of hatred. Then, suddenly, her features calmed.
“I’m not in the mood to play such a happy piece,” she replied with indifference. “I’d prefer Debussy’s Clair de lune.”
“The Clair de lune does not suit your sensibilities. Your hands play it, but your soul is absent. The waltz, Emilia, the waltz.”
“The waltz!” I exclaimed, gallantly.
I do not consider myself an expert in musical matters, but I understood that it would strike the correct tone to support Mary’s motion.
Atuel interrupted:
“Poor Emilia! They won’t let her play what she wants.”
This sentence was an unjustifiable act of aggression against me. I let it go. I saw that Emilia was looking at Atuel with tears in her eyes.
Mary insisted on her request. Emilia shrugged her shoulders, sat down at the piano, thought for a few moments, and began to play. Mary’s critique had been justified: Emilia’s technique was more in evidence than her soul. The execution was, partially, correct; but one noted unfortunate hesitations, as though the pianist had forgotten, or never really knew, the piece she was performing. We all applauded. With a tenderness that moved me, Mary kissed her sister. Then she exclaimed:
“How well Adriana Sucre played that piece!”
Perhaps to erase the poor impression she’d left, Emilia launched, with lucid enthusiasm, into the crystalline chords of the Melancholy Waltz. But only the ancient typist was listening. The rest of us preferred to listen to the delicious childhood anecdotes that the music inspired so fortuitously in Mary. I can safely say that the two brief oral biographies Mary outlined for us—her, spoiled and adorable; Emilia, more ironic but equally affectionate—were works of art comparable, in their respective genre, to the music of Liszt. Emilia finished playing. Mary cried out to her:
“I was just telling these gentlemen about how our mother always favored you! Whenever one of your boyfriends would arrive, she would ask the piano instructor to play, and later would make them believe that it had been you playing all along. You should have used the same strategy today, for the Forgotten Waltz.”
“You’re right,” answered Emilia, “but don’t forget that I didn’t want to play it. And anyway, I don’t know why you insist on being so aggressive with me.”
Mary cried pathetically:
“Wicked! That’s what you are: a wicked girl.” She started to sob.
Atuel addressed Emilia:
“It’s true. You are heartless,” he told her.
We all surrounded Mary (except Doctor Manning who continued, drearily and distractedly, losing at solitaire). Mary cried like a girl, like a little princess (as Cornejo observed). Seeing her so pained and so beautiful served to prove to me—I say this selfishly—that I for one did have a heart. We were so busy with Mary that no one noticed that Emilia had retired, except perhaps little Miguel, who watched us, captivated, as though we were acting out a scene from the Grand Guignol.
Doctor Cornejo, in whom I was beginning to notice a decided inclination toward meddling in the affairs of others, proposed that one of us go in search of Emilia.
“No,” said Atuel, with unaccustomed good sense. “It’s best to leave hysterical women alone. Isn’t that the case, Doctor?”
I conceded the point.
Outside, the dogs took turns howling. The old woman who served as the typist went to the window. Smiling blankly, she exclaimed:
“What a night! What dogs! They barked this way when Grandpa died. We were at a beautiful seaside resort, just as we are now.”
She continued moving her head, as though still hearing music.
Suddenly, the howling of the dogs was drowned out by an immense moan; it was as if a gigantic, supernatural dog, out on the deserted beaches, were grieving all the world’s sorrow. The wind had come up.
“A windstorm. We must close the doors and windows,” declared my cousin.
A drumming sound, like rain, beat against the walls.
“Here it rains sand,” noted my cousin. Then she added: “Just as long as we don’t end up buried …”
Nimbly, the rotund typist closed the windows. She looked at us, smiling, and said: “Something is going to happen tonight! Something is going to happen tonight!”
Doubtlessly, these unsolicited words had a moving effect on Mary’s emotional soul.
“Where could Emilia be?” she asked, forgetting all resentment. “I demand that someone go and look for her.”
“I’ll overlook the demand, so no one will accuse me of weakness,” conceded Atuel. “Perhaps Doctor Cornejo would like to accompany me …”
The urgent howling of the wind outside contrasted with the scant still air inside, where we were suffocating together, gathered around a steadfast lamp. The wait seemed interminable.
Finally, the men returned.
“We’ve looked everywhere,” affirmed Cornejo. “She has disappeared.”
Mary broke into a new crying jag. We decided to ready ourselves for a rescue mission. We all ran off to our respective rooms in search of overcoats. I also outfitted myself in a wool cap, a plaid jacket and fur-lined gloves. I wrapped a Scottish scarf about my neck. I did not forget the magic lantern.
I was already on my way out when I remembered my medicine kit. I removed a vial of Ruta foetida—the inspiration of a worldly man.
“Here, take this,” I said to Mary, when I returned to the dining room. “Give it to your sister, tomorrow.”
This calm declaration had a radical effect on Mary. Too radical, in my opinion: minutes later, as I was heading towards the hotel’s exit, I saw, against the whiteness of the wall, two shadows kissing. It was Atuel and Mary. But I wish to be clear: Atuel was resisting; Mary was besieging him passionately.
“What are we,” I murmured, “but skeletons kissed by the gods?” With a heavy soul I continued on my way. Something cried out in the dark. It was the boy. I had stumbled over him. He looked at me for a moment—what was in his expression: contempt, hatred, terror?—and then he fled.
Four men, struggling, scarcely managed to push open the door. We found ourselves out in the night. The wind tried to knock us to the ground and the sand whipped us in the face, blinding us.
“This is not letting up,” my cousin predicted.
We split up in search of the lost girl.