maybe because I don’t feel she participates in my efforts to make a living in these difficult times; it’s not easy for me, with my doctorate in literature, to resign myself to delivering dog food, and I fault Agustina for her innate lack of interest in productive activities, which simply don’t suit her. She’s very active, or, as it’s fashionable to say now, creative; she’ll knit, embroider, bake, lay brick, shovel, hammer, so long as the end product has no practical or profitable purpose, and Wednesday, as always, when I left Agustina alone at home, she was busying herself at an arbitrary chore to disguise her inability to commit herself to a regular job, with her hair disheveled and gathered carelessly on top of her head in a way that always seems seductive to me even though it means that today once again she won’t be going out to look for work.
Her way of not fixing her hair means that she doesn’t want to be bothered with anything having to do with reality, and yet it fills me with desire and, like everything about her, makes me tremble at the privilege of keeping company with such a splendidly beautiful creature who so charmingly refuses to grow up, a refusal that each day deepens the sixteen-year age difference between us, she still so young and I no longer young at all. Shoeless in red tights, and still in her pajamas at eleven in the morning, she’s perched on a ladder with the brush in her hand, shouting, Ciao, amore, over the Rolling Stones at full blast, and then at the last minute she runs to the elevator to ask me for the millionth time whether I really think the moss green she’s chosen for the walls of our living room is a warm color. From inside the elevator I tell her again, Yes, very warm, yes, darling, it’s a very pretty, cozy green, and at that moment the two halves of the metal door close between us with the abruptness of a way of life ended, because upon my return four days later, a strange man in a hotel room gave me back an Agustina who wasn’t Agustina anymore.
I had called her Wednesday night from Ibagué to tell her that no, despite her fears nothing bad had happened to us, and yes, I really did think moss green was right for the living room, Thank goodness you like it, she replied, because it’s looking greener than a frog pond in here, and I hung up with the peaceful sense that all was well. The truth is, I didn’t call her again for the next few days, I don’t quite know why, I suppose so as not to neglect my children, or in order to prove to them that the time we had together now, at least, would be devoted to them unconditionally and without interruption. I returned to Bogotá on Sunday at noon, having promised Agustina that I’d be back by ten in the morning at the latest so that we could spend the rest of the day together as we usually did, but it had been impossible to get the boys out of bed early enough, so we’d left Ibagué a few hours later than anticipated.
But what’s important is that by noon I was in town, that the city was rainy and deserted, and that I left my sons at their mother’s house, Hurry up and get out, boys, I said, betrayed by my impatience to see Agustina and give her the presents I’d brought her from the hot country, a sack of oranges, a bunch of plaintains, and a bag of arrowroot cakes. So that’s over, I told myself, these few days with my sons were wonderful, but here we are back again, and it’s Sunday. It so happened that my haste to return was due in part to certain questions sown in me by
Baltasar and Blimunda
, the Portuguese novel I’d just read about a woman who was also a seer, and those questions were, If Blimunda is a seer, why shouldn’t Agustina be? What would’ve happened to Baltasar’s soul if he hadn’t trusted in Blimunda’s powers? How is it that Baltasar can believe in his wife, and I can’t believe in mine? All I wanted then was my quiet Sunday afternoon at home with Agustina, because our best times together
Her way of not fixing her hair means that she doesn’t want to be bothered with anything having to do with reality, and yet it fills me with desire and, like everything about her, makes me tremble at the privilege of keeping company with such a splendidly beautiful creature who so charmingly refuses to grow up, a refusal that each day deepens the sixteen-year age difference between us, she still so young and I no longer young at all. Shoeless in red tights, and still in her pajamas at eleven in the morning, she’s perched on a ladder with the brush in her hand, shouting, Ciao, amore, over the Rolling Stones at full blast, and then at the last minute she runs to the elevator to ask me for the millionth time whether I really think the moss green she’s chosen for the walls of our living room is a warm color. From inside the elevator I tell her again, Yes, very warm, yes, darling, it’s a very pretty, cozy green, and at that moment the two halves of the metal door close between us with the abruptness of a way of life ended, because upon my return four days later, a strange man in a hotel room gave me back an Agustina who wasn’t Agustina anymore.
I had called her Wednesday night from Ibagué to tell her that no, despite her fears nothing bad had happened to us, and yes, I really did think moss green was right for the living room, Thank goodness you like it, she replied, because it’s looking greener than a frog pond in here, and I hung up with the peaceful sense that all was well. The truth is, I didn’t call her again for the next few days, I don’t quite know why, I suppose so as not to neglect my children, or in order to prove to them that the time we had together now, at least, would be devoted to them unconditionally and without interruption. I returned to Bogotá on Sunday at noon, having promised Agustina that I’d be back by ten in the morning at the latest so that we could spend the rest of the day together as we usually did, but it had been impossible to get the boys out of bed early enough, so we’d left Ibagué a few hours later than anticipated.
But what’s important is that by noon I was in town, that the city was rainy and deserted, and that I left my sons at their mother’s house, Hurry up and get out, boys, I said, betrayed by my impatience to see Agustina and give her the presents I’d brought her from the hot country, a sack of oranges, a bunch of plaintains, and a bag of arrowroot cakes. So that’s over, I told myself, these few days with my sons were wonderful, but here we are back again, and it’s Sunday. It so happened that my haste to return was due in part to certain questions sown in me by
Baltasar and Blimunda
, the Portuguese novel I’d just read about a woman who was also a seer, and those questions were, If Blimunda is a seer, why shouldn’t Agustina be? What would’ve happened to Baltasar’s soul if he hadn’t trusted in Blimunda’s powers? How is it that Baltasar can believe in his wife, and I can’t believe in mine? All I wanted then was my quiet Sunday afternoon at home with Agustina, because our best times together
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