Trafalgar - By Angelica Gorodischer
To
Hugo Gorodischer
Plus loin que le fleuve qui gronde,
Plus loin que les vaste foreês
Plus loin que la gorge profonde,
Je fuirais, je courrais, j’irais’.
Victor Hugo
MEDRANO, TRAFALGAR: Born in Rosario, 2 October, 1936. Only child of Doctor Juan José Medrano Sales, the city’s eminent clinician, who was chaired professor of Physiology in the College of Medical Sciences of the Universidad Nacional del Litoral and president of the Medical Society of Rosario, and his wife, Doña Mercedes Lucía Herrera Stone. He received his primary and secondary education at the Marist Brothers’ school. His parents hoped he would study medicine, but after a brief incursion into the university cloisters, the young Medrano chose to dedicate himself to commerce, an activity for which he undoubtedly possessed uncommon gifts, and from which he obtained great satisfaction, not solely in financial terms. The tragic deaths of Dr. Medrano Salles and Doña Mercedes Herrera in an automobile accident will be remembered. At that time (1966), Trafalgar Medrano was thirty years old, he had consolidated the commercial contacts established some time before, and his position in the world of business could be classified as brilliant. Outside of the expansion, perhaps unprecedented, of his business activity, his life is without—as he never ceases to remark—notable occurrences. He is single. He lives in the large home that belonged to his parents, in a residential neighborhood to the north of the city of Rosario, a big house, a little antiquated but which he refuses to modify, aside from having it painted every two years, and which during his repeated and sometimes extended absences is left in the care of his faithful servants Don Rogelio Bellevigne and Doña Crisóstoma Ríos de Bellevigne. His offices operate in the building located at 1253 Córdoba Street, attended amiably and efficiently these last twenty years (when they moved from those on the top floor in the 700 block of Mitre) by doña Elvira Suárez de Romegiali and the accountant Servidio Cicchetti. He is a member of the Rosario Pelota Club, the Jockey Club, of The Circle, of the Argentine Academy of Lunfardo. At the death of his parents, he donated Dr. Medrano’s scientific library to the Medical Society of Rosario. He possesses, however, a very rich and varied library composed of works of narrative, detective stories, and science fiction, whose volumes in some cases originate in unexpected places. He displays extremely simple tastes: fine cuisine, without excesses; fine wines, even more sparingly; cats, music, black coffee, cigarettes, reading (Balzac, Cervantes, Vian, Le Guin, Lafferty, Villon, Borges, Euripides, Métal Hurlant, Corto Maltés, to cite only a few of his favorites); the company of friends, among whom he names with particular affection Ciro Vázquez Leiva; Dr. Hermenegildo Flynn, physician; Sujer and Angélica Gorodischer; Dr. Nicolás Rubino, attorney; Dr. Simeón Páez, also attorney; Miguel Ángel Sánchez; Roberto Brebbia; Carlos Castro; and distinguished poets such as Jorge Isaías, Mirta Rosenberg, Francisco Gandolfo, et cetera. He owns a number of notable works by the visual artists of Rosario, who also figure among his friends. One can admire in his home pictures by Luis Ouvrard, Gustavo Cochet, Juan Grela, Pedro Giacaglia, Hugo Padeletti, Leónidas Gambartes, Francisco García Carrera, Juan Pablo Renzi, Manuel Musto, Augusto Schiavoni, et cetera, and a very beautiful sculpture by Lucio Fontana, the Smiling Girl. He habitually frequents the Burgundy, the well-known establishment that has seen pass through its premises in the 1100 block of Córdoba so many of the city’s leading personalities, and he collects gramophone records with recordings of tangos by his favorite orchestras.
(Who’s Who in Rosario. Edited by the Subcommittee for Public Relations of the Association of Friends of the City of Rosario. Rosario: La Familia Press, 1977.)
From here on, dear reader, kind reader, even before you begin to read this book, I must ask you a favor: do not go straight to the index to look for the shortest story or the one that has a title that catches your attention. Since you are going to read them, for which I thank you, read them in order. Not because they follow chronologically, though there is something of that, but because that way you and I will understand each other more easily.
Thank you.
A.G.
By the Light of the Chaste Electronic Moon
I was with Trafalgar Medrano yesterday. It’s not easy to find him. He’s always going here and there with that import-export business of his. But now and then he goes from there to here and he likes to sit down and drink coffee and chat with a friend. I was in the Burgundy and when I saw him come in, I almost didn’t recognize him: he had shaved off his mustache.
The Burgundy is one of those bars of which there aren’t many left, if there are any at all. None of that Formica or any fluorescent lights or Coca-Cola. Gray carpet—a little worn—real wood tables and real wood chairs, a few mirrors against the wood paneling, small windows, a single door and a façade that says nothing. Thanks to all this, inside there’s a lot of silence and anyone can sit down to read the paper or talk with someone else or even do nothing, seated at a table with a cloth, white crockery dishes, and real glass, like civilized people use, and a serious sugar bowl, and without anyone, let alone Marcos, coming to bother them.
I won’t tell you where it is because one of these days you might have adolescent sons or, worse, adolescent daughters who will find out, and good-bye peace and quiet. I’ll give you just one piece of information: it’s downtown, between a shop and a galería, and you surely pass by there every day when you go to the bank and you don’t even see it.
But Trafalgar came over to me at the table right away. He recognized me, because I still have the appearance—all fine cheviot and Yardley—of a prosperous lawyer, which is exactly what I am. We greeted each other as if we had seen each other a few days before, but I calculated something like six months had passed. I made a sign to Marcos that meant, let’s see that double coffee, and I went on with my sherry.
“I haven’t seen you in a long time,” I said.
“Well, yes,” he answered. “Business trips.”
Marcos brought him his double coffee and a glass of cold water on a little silver plate. That’s what I like about the Burgundy.
“Also, I got into a mess.”
“One of these days, you’re going to end up in the slammer,” I told him, “and don’t call me to get you out. I don’t deal with that kind of thing.”
He tried the coffee and lit a black cigarette. He smokes short ones, unfiltered. He has his little ways, like anyone.
“A mess with a woman,” he clarified without looking at me. “I think it was a woman.”
“Traf,” I said, getting very serious, “I hope you haven’t contracted an exquisite inclination for fragile youths with smooth skin and green eyes.”
“It was like being with a woman when we were in bed.”
“And what did you do with him or with her in bed?” I asked, trying to prod him a bit.
“What do you think one does with a woman in bed? Sing Schumann’s Lieder as duets?”
“Okay, okay, but tell me: what was there between the legs? A thing that stuck out or a hole?
“A hole. Better put, two, each one in the place where it belonged.”
“And you took advantage of both.”
“Well, no.”
“It was a woman,” I concluded.
“Hmmm,” he said. “That’s what I thought.”
And he went back to his black coffee and unfiltered cigarette. Trafalgar won’t be hurried. If you meet him sometime, at the Burgundy or the Jockey Club or anywhere else, and he starts to tell you what happened to him on one of his trips, by God and the whole heavenly host, don’t rush him; you’ll see he has to stretch things out in his own lazy and ironic fashion. So I ordered another sherry and a few savories and Marcos came over and made some remark about the weather and Trafalgar concluded that changes of weather are like kids, if you give them the time of day, it’s all over. Marcos agreed and went back to the bar.
“It was on Veroboar,” he went on. “It was the second time I’d gone there, but the first time I don’t count because I was there just in passing and I didn’t even have time to get out. It’s on the edge of the galaxy.”
I have never known if it is true or not that Trafalgar travels to the stars but I have no reason not to believe him. Stranger things happen. What I do know is that he is fabulously rich. And that it doesn’t seem to matter a bit to him.
“I had been selling reading material in the Seskundrea system, seven clean, shiny little worlds on which visual reading is a luxury. A luxury I introduced, by the way. Texts were listened to or read by touch there. The rabble still does that, but I have sold books and magazines to everyone who thinks they’re somebody. I had to land on Veroboar, which isn’t very far away, to have a single induction screen checked, and I took the opportunity to sell the surplus.” He lit another cigarette. “They were comic books. Don’t make that face—if it hadn’t been for the comic books, I wouldn’t have had to shave my mustache.”
Marcos brought him another double coffee before he could order it. That Marcos is a marvel: if you drink nothing but dry sherry, well chilled, like me; or orange juice—not strained—with gin, like Salustiano, the youngest of the Carreras; or seven double coffees in a row like Trafalgar Medrano, you can be sure that Marcos will be there to remember it even if it’s been ten years since you went to the Burgundy.
“This time I didn’t go to Seskundrea, it wouldn’t do for the luxury to become a custom and then I’d have to think up something else, but I was taking aspirin to Belanius III, where aspirin has hallucinogenic effects. Must be a matter of climate or metabolism.”
“I’m telling you, you’ll end up in the slammer.”
“Unlikely. I convinced the police chief on Belanius III to try Excedrin. Imagine that!”
I tried, but I was unable to do so. The police chief of Belanius III abusing himself with Excedrin lies beyond the limits of my modest imagination. And then again, I didn’t make a great effort, because I was intrigued by the bit about the woman who probably wasn’t one and by the thing about the mess.
“Belanius III is not that close to Veroboar, but once I was there I decided to try with more magazines and a few books, just a few so as not to frighten them. Of course, now I was going to stay a while and I wasn’t going to offer them to the first monkey who might appear so he might sell them and keep my cut, forget it. I parked the clunker, put my clothes and the merchandise in a suitcase, and took a bus headed for Verov, the capital.”
“And customs?”
He looked at me condescendingly: “On civilized worlds there aren’t customs, old man. They’re cleverer than we are.”
He finished the second coffee and looked toward the bar but Marcos was waiting on another table.
“I was determined to talk to someone strategically situated who could tell me where and how to organize the sale. For a commission.”
“So, on civilized worlds there aren’t customs, but there are bribes.”
“Bah, more or less civilized. Don’t be so picky: everyone has their weaknesses. There, for example, I had a big surprise: Veroboar is an aristomatriarchy.”
“A what?”
“Just that. A thousand women—I assume they’re women; young—I assume they’re young; gorgeous.”
“You assume they’re gorgeous.”
“They are. That you can see from a mile away. Rich. You can see that from a mile away, too. They alone hold in one fist all of Veroboar. And what a fist. You can’t even sneeze without their permission. I’d been in the hotel two minutes when I received a note on letterhead with seals in which I was summoned to the Governor’s office. At 31 hours, 75 minutes on the dot. Which means I had half an hour to bathe, shave, and dress.”
Marcos arrived with the third double coffee.
“And unfortunately,” said Trafalgar, “save in the homes of The Thousand, although I did not have time to see them, on Veroboar there are no sophisticated grooming devices like those on Sechus or on Vexvise or on Forendo Lhda. Did I ever tell you that on Drenekuta V they travel in oxcarts but they have high-relief television and these cubicles of compressed air that shave you, give you a peel, massage you, make you up—because on Drenekuta men use makeup and curl their hair and paint their nails—and dress you in seven seconds?”
“No, I don’t think so. One day you told me about some mute guys that danced instead of talking or something like that.”
“Please. Anandaha-A. What a lousy world. I could never sell them anything.”
“And did you arrive in time?”
“Where?”
He drank half the cup of coffee.
“At the Governor’s office, where else?”
“A magnificent Governor. Blonde, green eyes, very tall, with a pair of legs that if you saw them, you’d have an attack.”
He’s telling me about splendid women. I married one thirty-seven years ago. I don’t know if Trafalgar Medrano is married or not. I will only add that my wife’s name is Leticia and go on.
“And two hard little apples that you could see through her blouse and some round hips.” He paused. “She was a viper. She wasted no spit on ceremony. She planted herself in front of me and said: ‘We wondered when you would return to Veroboar, Mr. Medrano.’ I thought we had begun well, and I was wrong like an a*shole. I told her it was very flattering that they should remember me and she looked at me as if I were a piece of cow manure the street sweeper had forgotten to pick up, and she let fly—do you know what she said to me?”
“No idea.”
“‘We have not looked favorably upon your clandestine activities in the port of Verov.’ What do you say to that?”
I didn’t say anything.
“There’s no need to recite the whole conversation. Besides, I don’t remember it. Those witches had executed the poor guy who tried to sell my comic books,” he drank a little more coffee, “and they had confiscated the material and decided I was a delinquent.”
“And you took her to bed and convinced her not to execute you, too.”
“I did not take her to bed,” he explained very patiently.
“But you told me.”
“Not that one. After informing me that I had to address her by her title, which was Enlightened Lady in Charge of the Government of Verovsian.”
“Don’t tell me every time you spoke to her you had to say all that.”
“That’s what I’m telling you. After informing me, she told me I could not leave the hotel without authorization and that of course I must not try to sell anything and that they would advise me when I could return. If I ever could. And that the next day I had to present myself before the members of the Central Government. And that I should retire.”
“Wow.”
“I went to the hotel and smoked three packs of cigarettes. I wasn’t liking this at all. I had my food brought to my room. The hotel’s food was disgusting, and this was the best in Verov, and to top it off the bed was too soft and the window didn’t close well.”
The remaining coffee was surely cold but he drank it anyway. Marcos was reading the racing section in the paper: he knows everything there is to know about horses and a bit more. He has a son who’s a brand-new colleague of mine, and a married daughter who lives in Córdoba. There were no more than two other occupied tables, so the Burgundy was much more peaceful than Veroboar. Trafalgar smoked for a while without speaking and I looked at my empty glass, wondering whether this was a special occasion: I only drink more than two on special occasions.
“The next day I received another note, on letterhead but without seals, in which I was told that the interview was with the Enlightened and Chaste Lady Guinevera Lapis Lazuli.”
“What did you say?” I jumped in. “That was her name?”
“No, of course not.”
Marcos had put down the paper—he had collected at one of the other tables—and now he was coming with the fourth double coffee. He didn’t bring me anything, because this didn’t look like a special occasion.
“Her name,” said Trafalgar, who never puts sugar in his coffee, “was something that sounded like that. In any case, what they told me was that the interview had been postponed until the next day because the enlightened, chaste and so forth, who was a member of the Central Government, had begun her annual proceedings before the Division of Integral Relations of the Secretariat of Private Communication. The year there lasts almost twice as long as here and the days are longer and so are the hours.”
Frankly, I didn’t give a damn about Veroboar’s chronosophy.
“And what does all that mean?” I asked.
“What did I know?”
He fell quiet, watching three guys who came in and sat down at a table at the back. I’m not sure, but it seems to me one of them was Basilio Bender, the one who has a construction firm, you must know him.
“I found out later, bit by bit,” Trafalgar said with the cup of coffee in his hand, “and I don’t know if I understood it completely. So the next day, same story, because the enlightened one continued with her proceedings and the next day too and the next day the same. On the fifth day, I tired of the blonde matriarchs and their secretaries, and of being shut up in the hotel room, of the garbage I had to eat and of pacing twenty square meters thinking that likely they would hold me on Veroboar for an indefinite period. Or they’d shoot me.”
He broke off for a moment, irritated in retrospect, while he drank the coffee, and that made four.
“Then I bribed the waiter who brought me my food. It wasn’t difficult and I had already suspected as much because he was a skinny guy with a hungry face, rotten teeth, and threadbare clothes. Everything is wretched and sad on Veroboar. Everything except for The Thousand. I’ll never go back to that lousy world.” He thought about it. “That is, I don’t know.”
I was getting impatient: “You bribed him. And?”
“That scared the guy half to death but he found me a telephone book and he informed me that to interview a member of the Central Government you had to be formally dressed, damn it.”
“Traf, I don’t understand anything,” I practically shouted. “Marcos, another sherry.”
Marcos looked at me with surprise, but he took out the bottle.
“Ah, I didn’t tell you that in the last of those notes they informed me that since the enlightened one had finished her proceedings, she would remain shut up at home for five to ten days. And since they weren’t summoning me to the office, I wanted her home address so as to go see her there.”
“But they had forbidden you to leave the hotel.”
“Uh-huh.”
Marcos arrived with the sherry: a special occasion.
“I had to do something. Five to ten days more was too much. So that night, since I didn’t know what constituted formal dress on Veroboar and the skinny waiter didn’t either—how would he know?—I dressed as if I were going to be a groomsman: tailcoat, white shirt with pearl buttons, satin bowtie, patent leather shoes, top hat, and cape. And walking stick and gloves.”
“Go on.”
“You can’t imagine the things I carry in my luggage. Remind me to tell you what formalwear on Foulikdan is. And what you have to put on if you want to sell anything on Mesdabaulli IV,” he laughed; I won’t say hard, because Trafalgar isn’t very expressive, but he laughed. “Once dressed, I waited for the signal from the skinny guy and when he informed me over the house phone that there was no one downstairs, I left the hotel and took a taxi that was already waiting for me and that covered some five kilometers at a man’s pace. We arrived. My God, what a house. Of course, you don’t know what houses are like on Veroboar. Scarcely better than a slum. But Guinevera Lapis Lazuli was one of The Thousand and a member of the Central Government. Old man, what a palace. Everything in marble and crystal half a meter thick in a garden filled with flowers and fountains and statues. The night was dark. Veroboar has a rickety little moon that gives almost no light, but there were yellow lamps among the plants in the garden. I crossed it, walking briskly as if I lived there, and the taxi driver watched me open-mouthed. I reached the door and looked for a bell or a knocker. There was none. Nor was there a door handle, but if there was anything I couldn’t do, it was stand there waiting for a miracle. I pushed the door and it opened.”
“You went in?”
“Of course I went in. I was sure they were going to shoot me. If not that night, the next day. But I went in.”
“And?”
“They didn’t shoot me.”
“I had already noticed that.”
“There was no one inside. I coughed, clapped my hands, called. No one. I started walking randomly. The floors were marble. There were huge, round lamps hanging from the ceiling on chains encrusted with stones. The furniture was of gilded wood, very elaborately worked.”
“What do I care about the decoration of Lapis Lazuli’s house? Do me the favor of telling me what happened.”
As you see, I preach but I don’t practice. Sometimes Trafalgar drives me nuts.
“For a while, nothing happened. Until somewhere around there I pushed on a door and I found her.”
The sherry was good and cold, and the guy I think was Bender got up and went to the bathroom.
“Was she blonde, too?” I asked.
“Yes. You’ll excuse me, but I have to talk about the decoration of that room.”
“If there’s no other choice.”
“There isn’t. It was monstrous. Marble everywhere in various shades of pink on the walls and the floor, and black on the ceiling. Artificial plants and flowers sprouted from the baseboards. Plastic. In every color. Corner cupboards holding censers with incense. Above shone a fluorescent moon like a tortilla hung by transparent threads that swayed when I opened the door. Next to one wall there was a machine the size of a sideboard that buzzed and had little lights that turned on and off. And against another wall, an endless, golden bed, and she was on the bed, naked and watching me.”
I seriously considered drinking a fourth sherry.
“I had prepared a magnificent poem that consisted in not versifying, or in versifying as little as possible, but the scene left me breathless. I took off the top hat, I made a bow, I opened my mouth, and nothing came out. I tried again and I started to stammer. She kept looking at me and when I was about to set in with the whole Enlightened and Chaste Lady, et cetera, she raised a hand and made signs for me to come closer.”
I never noticed when, but he had finished the fourth coffee because Marcos arrived with another cup.
“I went closer, of course. I stopped at the side of the bed, and the machine that buzzed was on my right. I was nervous—do the math—and I reached out a hand and started to feel around to see if I could turn it off without taking my eyes off her. It was worth it.”
“She was just a woman. What’s the big deal?”
“I told you, I think she was. What I’m sure of is that she was really hot. By that point, I was too. With my right hand I found a lever and I lowered it and the machine shut off. Without the buzzing, I started to feel better. I bent down and I kissed her on the mouth, which evidently was the right thing under the circumstances because she grabbed me by the neck and started to pull downward. I tossed the top hat away and used my two free hands for the two little apples, this time without a blouse or anything.”
“Nice night.”
“More or less, you’ll see. I undressed in record time, I threw myself on top of her and I said something like girl, you’re the prettiest thing I’ve seen in my life, and I assure you I wasn’t lying, because she was pretty and warm and I already felt like a gaucho bard and king of the world all in one, and you know what she said to me?”
“How am I going to know? What did she say?”
“She said, ‘Mandrake, my love, don’t call me girl, call me Narda.’”
“Traf, cut the crap.”
“It’s not crap. I, who was in no state to be thinking in subtleties, charged in with everything, although I felt like I was screwing a nutcase.”
“Was she chaste?”
“What do you think? Maybe she was enlightened, but chaste she was not. She knew them all. And between the little screams and the pirouettes, she kept calling me Mandrake.”
“And you called her Narda.”
“What did I care? She was pretty, believe me, and she was tireless and tempting. Whenever I eased up a bit and dozed, holding her, she ran her fingers and her tongue over me and she laughed at me, poking her nose into my throat, and she nibbled at me and I got back to work and, knotted together, we rolled across the golden bed. Until at some point in one of those somersaults, she wised up to the fact that the machine was shut off. She sat up on the bed and gave a howl and I thought, why such a fuss? It’s as if you start howling because the water heater shut down.”
“But that wasn’t a water heater, I’m just saying, right?”
“No, it wasn’t. I wanted to go on with the party and I tried to grab her so she would lie back down but she yelled louder and shouted questions at me, what was I doing there? I said to her, what a terrible memory you have, my dear, and she kept on yelling who was I and what was I doing in her room and I should leave immediately and she tried to cover herself with something.”
“Nutcase barely says it,” I commented.
“Ah, that’s what I thought, but it turned out that no, the poor thing was partly right.”
He was quiet for a while and then he remembered I was there. “Did I tell you I had undressed in record time? Well, I dressed even more quickly, I don’t know how, because although I didn’t understand what was happening, I had the impression that the matter was becoming uglier than I had supposed. And while I grabbed my shirt and held up my pants and stuffed the bowtie into my pocket all at the same time, I thought it would really have been handy to be Mandrake, so as to, with that magnetic sweep of my hand, appear fully dressed. And right then, I knew I was Mandrake.”
“But, really!”
“Don’t you get it?” he said, a little put out, as if anyone could get anything in all that jumble. “I was dressed like Mandrake and I have, I had, a mustache and black hair, a little slicked down. And The Thousand had confiscated the comic books.”
“And Lapis Lazuli had read them and she had fallen in love with Mandrake, I understand that. But why was she yelling if she thought you were Mandrake?”
“Wait, wait.”
“Because what more did she want, given the way your little evening was going?”
“Wait, I’m telling you, a person can’t tell you anything.”
The ashtray was full of unfiltered cigarette butts. I gave up smoking eighteen years ago, and at that moment, I regretted it.
“I finished getting dressed and ran out of there with the cape and the top hat in my hand and without the walking stick or the gloves while the blonde wrapped up in a silk sheet—a golden silk sheet, believe it or not—and threatened me with torture and death by dismemberment. I don’t know how I didn’t get lost in all that marble. Her screams could be heard all the way to the front door. On the street, not a single taxi. I ran two or three blocks, in the dark, through a silent neighborhood in which surely five or six of The Thousand lived, because each house occupied at least a block. After an avenue wider than that one in Buenos Aires, when the slum began, I found a taxi. The driver was a sallow old man who wanted to talk. Not I. Maybe I would have become sallow, I’m not saying no, but I didn’t want to chat. I climbed the stairs three at a time—there was no elevator in that filthy hotel—I went into the room, I took off the tailcoat, I shaved off my mustache, I put on a blond wig—I already told you that on my trips, my luggage has everything—and glasses and a cap and a checked jacket and brown pants and I started putting things into my suitcase. And right in the midst of that the skinny guy, who had taken a special interest in my affairs not thanks to my overpowering personality, but thanks to the possibilities of my billfold, showed up and found me flinging around underwear.”
“Tell me, Traf, why were you running away from a handful of women who were stunning and also layable from what I can see, or from what I hear?”
He was midway through the sixth coffee and we were alone in the Burgundy. It was getting late but I didn’t even look at the clock, because I didn’t plan on leaving until I had heard the end. Leticia knows that occasionally, occasionally, I get home very late, and she doesn’t mind, so long as it remains only occasionally.
“You were never on Veroboar,” Trafalgar said, “nor did the Governor holler at you, nor did you meet the hungry, fearful skinny guy or the guy they shot for two dozen comic books, an asthmatic mechanic who had purulent conjunctivitis and was missing two fingers on his left hand and wanted to earn a few extra bucks so as to go two days without working at the port. Nor did you see Lapis Lazuli’s house. Misery, grime, and mud and stench of sickness and rot everywhere. That’s Veroboar. That and a thousand frighteningly rich and powerful women who do whatever they want with everybody else.”
“You can’t trust women,” I said.
I have four daughters: if one of them heard me, she’d strangle me. Especially the third one, who is also a lawyer, God help us. But Trafalgar cut me off at the pass: “From a few things I’ve seen, you can’t trust men, either.”
I had to agree and I haven’t traveled as much as Trafalgar Medrano. Mexico, the United States, Europe and that, and summers in Punta del Este. But I’ve never been on Seskundrea or on Anandaha-A.
“It may seem to you that I was, shall we say, too cautious, but you will see I was right. I realized that if the blonde from the Central Government caught me, she’d dismember me for sure.”
He finished the coffee and opened another packet of unfiltered black cigarettes.
“The skinny guy gave me a few details when I told him I was in a mess, although I didn’t clarify what kind of mess. The position of The Thousand is not hereditary, they aren’t daughters of notable families. They come from the people. Any girl who’s pretty, but really pretty, and manages (which is no easy feat or even close) to pull together a certain sum before she starts to get wrinkly, can aspire to be one of The Thousand. If she manages, she repudiates family, past, and class. The others educate her, they polish her, and afterward they set her loose. And the only thing she has to do from there on out is enjoy herself, become richer all the time, because everyone works for her, and govern Veroboar. They don’t have sons. Or daughters. They’re supposed to be virgins and immortals. People suspect, nevertheless, that they are not immortal. I know they’re not virgins.”
“Yours wasn’t.”
“Nor the others, I’d bet my life. They don’t have children, but they do make love.”
“With who? With The Thousand Males?”
“There are no Thousand Males. I suppose, in secret, among themselves. But officially, once a year, all planned in the Secretariat of Private Communication. They make an application and while they wait for an answer, the rest congratulate them and send them little gifts and have parties. At the Secretariat they always tell them yes, of course, and then they go to their houses, dismiss the servants, set the stage, connect the machine, and lie down. With the machine. The one I turned off. The machine gives them two things: one, hallucinations—visual, tactile, auditory, and everything—which follow the model they’ve selected and which is already programmed into the apparatus. The model may exist or not, it can be the doorman of the ministry or a creature imagined by them or, in my case, a character from a story in one of the damned comic books that I myself sold to the mechanic. And two, all of the sensations of orgasm. That’s why Lapis Lazuli was in seventh heaven with what she believed were the effects of the machine and she thought, I imagine, that the illusion of going to bed with Mandrake was perfect. How could it not be perfect, poor girl, since I had arrived just in time. The electronic romance lasts a few days, the skinny guy didn’t know how many, and afterward they return, smug as can be, to govern and to live like kings. Like queens.”
“The skinny guy told you all that?”
“Yes. Not as I’m telling you but instead full of mythological flourishes and fabulous explanations. While I put my things in the suitcase. He even helped me. I closed it and ran out because I knew the potatoes were about to burn and I knew why, and the skinny guy ran after me. So much courage had already caught my attention. But while we descended the three floors he started telling me, gasping, that he had a daughter prettier and blonder than Ver.”
“Ver?”
“The sun. And that he was saving so that one day she could become one of The Thousand. I stopped short on the second floor and I told him he was crazy, that if he loved her he should marry her to the fried-cakes seller or the cobbler and sit down to wait for her to give him grandchildren. But he was crazy and he didn’t hear me, and if he did hear me, he didn’t pay any attention: he asked if I was rich. Like I tell you, you can’t trust men, either.”
“You gave him the money.”
“I kept on going down the stairs by leaps and the skinny guy found me a taxi.”
“You gave him the money.”
“Let’s not talk about the matter. I got into the taxi and I told the driver, who I don’t know if he was old or if he was sallow or if he was both things or neither, that I would pay him double if he would take me to the port at top speed. He flew and I paid him double. I was looking behind the whole time to see if Lapis Lazuli had set the dogs on me.”
“She hadn’t set anything on you.”
“Are you kidding? I beat them by a hair. I turned on the motors but I was still touching the ground when they arrived with sirens and searchlights and machine guns. They started to shoot and that’s when I lifted off. They must have shot all of them for letting me escape. Or maybe they dismembered them in my place.”
“What an escape.”
He drank his coffee and grabbed his billfold.
“Leave it,” I said, “my treat. To celebrate your return.”
“I was in no shape to celebrate,” he hesitated before putting his billfold away. “I detoured a little and went to Naijale II. You can sell anything there. And buy for a song a plant from which the chemists of Oen derive a perfume that cannot be compared to any other from any other place. Imagine the state I was in that I didn’t unload the merchandise and I didn’t buy anything. I went to a hotel like a decent person and I spent a week eating well and sleeping as well as I could. Apart from that, the only thing I did was go to the beach and watch television. I did not drink alcohol, I did not look at women, and I did not read comic books. And I assure you that on Naijale II all three are of the first quality. Afterwards, I came home. I had an awful journey, sleeping jumpily, mistaking my route every moment, making calculations that probably aren’t worth anything because I don’t know how long a pregnancy lasts on Veroboar. I didn’t ask the skinny guy and if I had asked him he would have told me about the pregnancy of his wife, who must be an old lady, more scrawny than he, and how do I know if The Thousand have the same physiology as the common women? How do I know they aren’t altered? How do I know if they can or can’t get pregnant? And if they can, how do I know if Lapis Lazuli got pregnant that night? By Mandrake? How do I know if The Thousand aren’t machines too and if they haven’t executed (or worse) the skinny guy’s daughter just like all those who aspired to be like them, a matter of keeping the money while they keep on making love with other machines?”
“You were in bed with her, Traf. Was she a woman?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Too bad,” I said. “If they were machines, you would have no reason to return to Veroboar.”
I paid, we stood up, and we left. When we went out, it had stopped raining.