“Don’t say that!” he pleaded through his tears.
His sister’s voice was inaudible under Manuel’s sobs. She waited patiently for him to calm down and then motioned to him to come closer, closer, until her chapped lips brushed his cheek. “That’s why when I’m gone you must forget me. Try not to think of me or torture yourself with memories, because when I close my eyes I always see you again as a six-year-old weeping and impossible to console, broken and quivering with fear. I’m afraid that when I leave you alone you’ll start crying again like that. You wouldn’t let me sleep then; now you won’t let me rest.” He tried to pull away, not wanting to hear what he knew was coming. But it was too late. Her long, slim fingers wouldn’t let him go. “Promise me, Manuel, promise you won’t suffer. You won’t let me become your greatest weakness. Don’t ever let anyone be that to you.”
He made that pledge to his sister like a crusader vowing to do battle. And when she closed her eyes, his grief was immense and silent.
He’d been asked dozens of times why he wrote, and he had a couple of good answers, more or less sincere, that he trotted out. The satisfaction of communicating, the need to put oneself into the lives of others. But they weren’t the truth. He wrote to maintain his vows under that truce, the armistice imposed as he made his way back to the palace, the only redoubt immense grief could not conquer, and the place where he wasn’t breaking his promise. There was no single moment of decision. It wasn’t something he’d thought out, and it wasn’t the culmination of a desire he’d always cherished. He’d never dreamed of becoming a writer. One day he sat down with a blank sheet of paper and started filling it with words. They welled up like the water from a mysterious spring and eventually became a series of books. He couldn’t name or locate the elusive source, for it changed constantly in his imagination. Sometimes it resembled the turbulent surface of the North Sea, other times it was like the Marianas Trench, and sometimes it appeared as an elegantly civilized Moorish fountain in some sun-drenched patio in Andalusia. All he knew was that the sea or trench or fountain originated somewhere in his mind. That’s where he’d discovered the palace. He could enter it whenever he wished, and that storehouse of happiness and perfection inspired him and took him away, providing the perhaps inexhaustible, sparkling source of new expression.
When the sales of his first novel reached numbers that made it impossible not to continue, he asked for two years’ leave from the university. Though no one said so, the assumption was that Manuel would eventually ask for an extension. The administration and faculty organized a party to mark his departure. They quickly forgot the annoyances that the articles and photos in the Sunday papers and cultural reviews had created for the entire university by profiling the young academic whose first novel was at the top of the bestseller list. With touching concern for his future, they came up in groups or individually to wish him luck and to warn him solemnly of the dire consequences of failure and the pitiless cruelty of a publishing world they’d never experienced or even tried to. For they were denizens of the ivory tower, that safe and welcoming place where they’d all greet him with open arms whenever he returned. Because they were sure he’d eventually be coming back after his little fling with literature’s great prostitute, the popular novel.
One must make a conscious decision to feel pain. He knew that he’d been lying to himself, claiming he couldn’t write, saying he was suffering too much to achieve the necessary state of grace. Nothing could be more wrong, because the truth was exactly the opposite. The palace was the site of ritual expiation, the healing place where wounds were cured. Three years ago in his uncertainty over álvaro he’d obstinately refused to go back there. Because of that masochistic stubbornness he’d wasted away like an angel sleeping outside the shelter of paradise. His soul was dirty and disheveled; his clothes were in tatters, and his body was crosshatched with bloody wounds. He would try to stanch the blood flow one moment, but in the next he would whip himself anew, inflicting just as many bloody cuts to exorcise his pain.
Months had gone by with no sign of the threat that only Manuel had believed to exist. Life had continued. Moments of gloom were diluted in the tranquil routine of daily life, and álvaro was able to smile again. The mysterious telephone calls to álvaro had ended. Whatever had happened and whatever had been threatening to destroy his world, the shadow had lifted. He was sure of it.
His editor was pressing him, insisting he commit to a delivery date for his next novel, even if only an approximate one, any response at all. With álvaro still at his side, he went back to the palace and resumed his writing.
FENG SHUI
He’d read in a book about feng shui that it’s a serious error to place a mirror in such a way that it reflects the image of a person who’s resting or sleeping. Evidently, the interior decorator for this hotel had been completely ignorant of that principle. Manuel’s face was clearly reflected despite the dim lighting. He found no relief from stiffness. Neither the nest of pillows nor the whiskey he’d drunk had loosened his limbs. In the mirror his body looked cramped and tense. That pale face and the way his two hands clutched the almost empty glass to his chest made him resemble a corpse arranged for viewing. In his mind he saw álvaro on that morgue slab.
As soon as he’d seen the body he was certain it wasn’t álvaro. The feeling was so strong that he even started to turn to say so to the police chief, who’d remained a discreet two steps behind him. The morgue technician, intimidated by the presence of such authority, had turned back the sheet covering the body, tucked it neatly across the chest, and retreated to his place.
álvaro’s face had a waxy sheen and—was it a trick of the light?—a slightly yellow tinge, like a mask of the man he had been. Manuel had stood there, absorbed, aware of the presence of the police officer behind him but not knowing what to do. He wanted to ask if he was permitted to touch his husband’s body, but he knew he’d never be able to find the words. He’d never again kiss that face now transformed into a crude copy of the man he’d loved, the man now beginning to fade away before his eyes. Even so he forced himself to keep looking, conscious that his brain was refusing to recognize álvaro in a stubborn effort to deny his death. Something was wrong with his perceptions. He couldn’t comprehend what was right in front of him, but the crudest details stood out with extraordinary clarity. The hair, for example: It was a bit long, wet and combed back. Why was his hair wet? The curly lashes splashed with drops of water and stuck together by that moisture. The bloodless lips, slightly open. A little cut above the left eyebrow, defined by clean edges that were too dark. And nothing more. He was tormented by the monstrously perverse anomaly that held him there unmoved like a disinterested observer, but he became aware of a growing pressure in his chest that made it more and more difficult to breathe.