Strelitzias, Lagerstroemias, and Gypsophila
It had been so long since I’d seen him! Me busy with my books, he travelling, we had talked on the phone a few times and had promised to see each other and it seemed the moment never came. And one fine day, with no previous phone call, we ran into each other on the pedestrian mall, big hug and how are you and you look very well and, very formal and proper, we went into the Burgundy to have a coffee. Marcos served us personally because, he says, none of those clumsy waiters when Trafalgar comes in, although his waiters are never clumsy.
“Two coffees,” Trafalgar said after the greetings.
“And a big glass of soda water,” I said.
Just a few minutes and we had the coffees in front of us. I looked at him a little surprised.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Ummm . . . ,” I said, with a now what do I say face.
“Yes,” he said, “I gave up smoking. So what?”
“You-gave-up-smo-king,” I enunciated.
“Yes. Eritrea doesn’t like me to smoke.”
“Eritrea? What do you have, a cat or a dog or a canary allergic to smoke?”
“My daughter. Eritrea is my daughter.”
I think I fainted. Maybe not, but nearly: the world started spinning around like a top, of course the world is always spinning, but not so fast, and the most I could do was hold on tight to my chair and close my eyes.
When I managed to open them, Trafalgar was fanning me with the Burgundy’s coffee menu and Marcos was patting my hand and telling me I was going to be just fine.
Then Trafalgar began to tell me, little by little and detailing every encounter, because the thing had already been going on for years, but I swear it is all true.
THE FIRST TIME
“I can’t be responsible for her,” said Guinevera Lapis Lazuli or whatever her name was.
“She” was a little girl not this high off the ground who played at jumping, talking to herself, and throwing a colored ball up in the air.
“She’s yours,” said Guinevera, “so your alternatives are to take her with you or put her in an orphanage.”
Trafalgar almost had an attack, one because he remembered his adventure with Lapis Lazuli and two because the girl was undoubtedly his, black eyes and impertinent jaw and a way of lifting her head; and then also because thinking of letting her go to an orphanage made him feel like a heartless swine. And Trafalgar is many things, but a heartless swine he is not.
He called her: “We’re going on a trip,” he said. “Do you know who I am?”
“My papa,” she said and won him over forever.
Two words, only two words and she had achieved what no one else had, so far as I know—and, for the record, I know plenty about Trafalgar. The number of women who had tried not only to win him but to keep him by force of sweet nothings and those Barbie and Doris Day or whatever type things, and not one ever got anywhere save that little pipsqueak who said “my papa” and okay, all set. Cursed be those loudmouthed machistas who make themselves out to be supermen and a baby won’t make them cry because men don’t cry but they do turn to butter.
“What’s her name?” he asked Guinevera because he couldn’t meet the child’s (black) eyes.
“Eristemiádica Perlingheredisti.”
Which sounds more like Greek but is Veroboariano.
“You’re crazy,” Trafalgar said and he left with the girl and this is something: he brought her to Rosario.
On the trip he told her: “Your name is Eritrea from now on, okay? Eritrea Perla Medrano.”
She agreed and repeated it softly as if it were a Jabberwocky, Eritrea Perla Medrano, eritreaperla Medrano, eritreaperlamedrano, et cetera. And the thing is, he liked those names: they resembled the nonsense Lapis Lazuli had given him and they were, like his own, the names of battles, two instead of only one: the Italians marching to conquest and Pearl Harbor attacked by the Axis.