If there is a sound at Epidaurus
It can be heard up at the top, among the trees,
In the air.
Roberto Fernández Retamar
We were in epidaurus twenty-five years after roberto
And also heard from the topmost rows
The scrape of a match that down below
Was lit by our guide the same little plump woman
Who between temple and mausoleum
Between an ounce of socrates and a drop of thermopylae
Had told us how niarchos managed to
Pay no more than nine thousand drachmas
That is about three hundred dollars of tax a year
And in her youthful enthusiasm had announced
To the astonishment of five tourists from buenos aires
Experts in tato boresfn1 quotes
The upcoming and completely certain victory of the socialist papandreu
So we were in epidaurus breathing the transparent dry air
And contemplating the profuse immemorial greens
Of the trees that turned and turn their backs on the theatre
And their faces to the pale hollow
Greens and air probably not so different from
Those polycleitus the younger contemplated and breathed
When he was doing his calculations of eternity and enigma
And I too went down to the magical centre of the orchestra
So that luz could take the obligatory photo
In this place of such popular and solid memory
And from there I wanted to test the extraordinary acoustics
And thought hello líber hello héctor hello raúl hello jaimefn2
Very slowly like someone striking a match or crumpling a ticket
And so I could confirm how excellent the acoustics were
Because my secretive greetings could be heard not only on the terraces
But high in the sky with a single bird
And they crossed the peloponnese the ionic and tyrrhenian seas
The mediterranean the atlantic and nostalgia
And finally slid between the bars
Like a transparent dry breeze
Intramural
(A mere possibility)
Yesterday the lawyer came and gave me to understand that things are looking more hopeful. That it’s not impossible. That it’s possible. A mere possibility, I know. But I have to admit, it shocked me, I think my heart even started pounding. Not that I ever gave up hope. I always knew that one day I would meet you all again. But it’s one thing to imagine that an indefinite number of years have to go by before it happens, and very different when the prospect suddenly comes within the realm of the possible. I don’t want to get my hopes up. And yet I can’t help it. And that’s understandable, don’t you think? It was only the day before yesterday that I thought it likely I would be in here for many years to come, I’d even mentally prepared myself to get used to paying this tax, ‘to kiss the lash’ as that priest from Salto with the diabolical voice used to say, if you remember? Now though, when the possibility arises that perhaps, maybe, just maybe, that potentially it might be only a year now, or even less, it’s curious, but this period of time which is so definite – well, it’s somehow even more unbearable than that other indefinite, almost infinite period I had managed to resign myself to. We’re complicated creatures, aren’t we? And you and Dad, what do you think? Don’t say anything to Beatriz yet, we don’t want her to get her hopes up and then have her find they come to nothing; at her age that could be really damaging. The mere thought that I might see her soon, let’s say in a quantifiable length of time, gives me gooseflesh. To see you, and Dad, that’s another matter. You can imagine how much I want to look at you, to hug you. To talk and talk with you both, my God, that’ll be a real treat. But the thought of Beatriz sets me on edge. Five years without seeing a child, especially when she is so young, is an eternity. Five years without seeing an adult, however much you love them, are simply five years, even though that is tremendous, too. For example, you’ll find I have absolutely no paunch, and less hair (I’m not talking about the obvious work of the in-house hairdresser – it’s clearly receding in a way that has nothing to do with the orthodoxy here). I’ve lost a few incisors and molars, too (don’t panic – I didn’t write morals!) What else? Well, a few new freckles, birthmarks, one or two scars. As you can see, I know myself inside out. The thing is, in the kind of situation I find myself in, austere as a monastery, one’s own body inevitably becomes all-important. And that’s not down to any narcissism, it’s just because, for hour after hour, there are no other signs of life anywhere near. For my part, I know the old man will have quite a few more grey hairs. Not more wrinkles, though, because that old gypsy was born wrinkled. I remember when I was little I was always impressed by the wrinkles and lines he had around his eyes, and on his forehead. Apparently, that never stopped him hitting the jackpot with the ladies. I think that even when the old lady was alive he was still quite a flirt. And how will I find you? More mature, obviously, and therefore more beautiful. Sometimes the anxieties of the past leave a bitter grimace on a face; at least, that’s what the turn-of-the-century novelists used to write. Nowadays they don’t employ such corny turns of phrase, even though grimaces haven’t gone out of style, and bitterness is still as rife. But I know you don’t have that kind of grimace, and if you do, it doesn’t matter, I’ll cure you of it. Yes, you’re probably more serious, you won’t laugh as gaily, in the same spring-like way as you used to. But there’s also no doubt you will have retained and enriched your capacity for happiness, your vocation for making the very best of things. If what the lawyer suggested does in fact end up happening, I haven’t the faintest idea of how (and if) I’ll be able to join you. I mean: I don’t know whether they’ll let me leave the country. I know only too well that as far as that goes everything will be complicated, but it’s bound to be better than the present separation, which, right now, well, I can’t decide whether it’s unjust, absurd, or deserved. I’d prefer to travel, of course, because what’s left of my family here? Following Emilio’s death, there’s only Aunt Ana, but I don’t think I really want to see her; after all, she has never tried to visit me. They say she’s even frailer these days, that must be why. As for my other cousins, for obvious reasons, they can’t come to see me, and even if I do get out, I don’t think I could see them. To find work here would be very difficult, for all sorts of reasons, which is why I insist it would be best for me to travel, but it’s too soon to speculate about that (simply on the basis of the scanty information I have, it’s merely been hinted at by the lawyer) in any detail. Meanwhile, I think. About specific things. Faced with this new possibility, all of a sudden, I’ve stopped fantasizing, taking refuge in memories, reconstructing episodes from Solís or in our house, seeing shapes and faces in the damp patches on the walls. Now I’m focusing on concrete matters: work, studies, family life, all kinds of projects. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to complete my studies. Why don’t you try to find out at the university there what subjects they would recognize and which ones I’d have to retake? Just in case. And work? I know you have a good job, but I want to work as soon as possible. And don’t think that’s just machismo. You have to understand that all my life I’ve worked and studied at the same time, so I’ve grown used to it, and even to like it. Why don’t you and Dad start looking into that? You two know what I can do best, but with things as they are I’m not going to expect that any job will correspond exactly to my knowledge or vocation. I’m prepared to do anything, you understand: anything. Physically, I’ve nearly recovered, and I’m sure that there I’ll get completely better: always being careful, obviously, not to let my paunch spread again. My mouth starts watering as soon as I imagine I could have a normal life again, a life with you, Beatriz and Dad. For a fortnight now, I’ve had somebody to share my space with, my roommate, let’s say. He’s a great guy, we get on magnificently. And yet I don’t dare talk to him abo
ut this new possibility, simply because he doesn’t have it, not for now, at least, and if I give full rein to my euphoria (always with the intimate and inevitable suspicion I might be suffering from acute optimatitis), I’m afraid I might cause him, even indirectly, despair and sorrow. We are all generous, or at least we’ve learned to be so, in here, especially once the first stage is behind us, during which, of course, we are selfish, inward-looking, grim, even hypochondriacal; but generosity also has its limits, its territory and its impossibilities. I remember very clearly that a little more than a year ago, when J. got out, I myself had conflicting feelings. How could I not be pleased that someone like him, an exceptional guy, would be reunited with his wife and mother and able to work again and feel himself to be a complete human being? Yet his absence was also disheartening, first and foremost because J. was a wonderful person to share the twenty-four hours with, and secondly because his departure revealed to me how tough and sad it was, my having to stay behind. It’s odd, but good companionship doesn’t always mean talking or listening, sharing lives and deaths, loves and failures in love, telling each other the plots of novels we read long ago and no longer have with us, discussing philosophy and its offshoots, drawing conclusions from past experiences, analysing and re-analysing ourselves ideologically, exchanging tales of our respective childhoods or, whenever possible, playing chess. Often, real companionship consists in remaining silent, respecting the other person’s inability to speak, understanding that this is what he needs on this particular dark day, and then supporting him with our own silence, or allowing him to do the same for us, but, and this but is fundamental, without either of the two of us asking for it or demanding it, simply that the other person understands it for himself, in spontaneous solidarity. Sometimes, a good relationship, when you are cloistered or imprisoned, a relationship that has the potential to become a long-term friendship, is constructed more easily from timely silences than from ill-timed confessions. Some people even feel so obliged to share autobiographical experiences that they invent them. And it’s not always mythomaniacs or liars who do so although there are some of those here as well. Occasionally, they invent an episode out of kindness, as an act of courtesy towards their cellmate, believing it will entertain them, or help them forget their helplessness, or aid them to emerge from a pit of anguish, or revive their nostalgia and rekindle their memory, or even to pass the virus of fictional recollections on to them. Human beings are strange creatures when condemned to their own solitude, or when punishment consists in bringing them face to face every day with the loneliness of one, two or three of their fellows, when none of them ever chose to be in such close proximity. I don’t believe (not even after these recent harsh years) what that gloomy existentialist said about hell being other people, but I will admit that often other people are not exactly heaven.
Battered and Bruised
(The sleeping man)
Early evening. Silence outside and inside. If she chooses to look out through the shutters, Graciela knows what she will find. Not only will the path to the building be deserted, but so, too, will everything else: the flowerbeds, the streets within the development, the windows, the narrow balconies of Block B.
The only inhabitants on the move at this time of day are some strange bumblebees that come buzzing up to the shutters, but cannot find a way in. Every so often, from afar, a long way off, as if in almost imperceptible waves, come the sounds of shouting and laughter from a mixed-sex school twelve or fifteen blocks away.
So why bother to get up to look out of the shutters if she already knows what she’ll see? In the world outside, everything is routine; but here, inside, in bed, for example, there is something new.
Graciela stubs out her cigarette in an ashtray on the bedside table. She sits up halfway, leaning on her elbow. She studies her own naked body and feels a shiver run through it, but makes no attempt to reach for the sheet that lies crumpled at the foot of the bed.
She is still staring at the shutters, but nothing there rouses her interest. It is probably simply a way of turning her back on the rest of the bed, but she isn’t rejecting it; it’s more like the postponement of pleasure. Then, before turning round, before looking, she slowly moves her hand until it comes to rest on the sleeping man’s skin.
He twitches, like horses do when they are trying to shake off flies. The hand pays no attention to this and stays there stubbornly until the flesh is still again. Then Graciela turns her raised body to completely face the sleeping man. Still covering an archipelago of freckles with her hand, she sweeps her eyes over his body, up and down and back again, pausing at different points, nooks, tiny territories that over the previous few hours she has come to cherish and have sent her compass haywire.
She pauses, for instance, at the heavy shoulder that a few hours earlier she had caressed with her ear and cheek; at the downy chest; the strange, childlike belly button, staring back at her like an astonished eye, as it moves to the rhythm of his breathing; at the deep scar on his hip, the one he got in a barracks which he never mentions; at the unruly reddish hair of the lower triangle; at the magic sex resting now after all that commotion; and at the testicles that are uneven because the left one never recovered, but remains bruised and shrunken after the torture in that same nameless barracks; at the sturdy legs of the 800-metre hurdler he once was; at the rough, big feet, with their long, slightly twisted toes with one nail about to become ingrown.
Graciela removes her hand from this bodily terrain, and brings her mouth close to the other mouth. At that precise moment, a smile appears on the lips of the man, who may still be dreaming, and so she decides to pull back to get a better view of it, to imagine it more clearly, until the smile becomes a sigh or a gasp and then gradually vanishes until it is no more than a half-open mouth once again. She withdraws her own mouth, lips pursed.
Now she is lying on her back, hands behind her head as she stares up at the ceiling. From outside the silence still seeps in, along with the drone of the bumblebees, only now the laughter and shouts from the school can no longer be heard.
This isn’t Beatriz’s school and it doesn’t keep the same hours as hers, but Graciela raises her arm until she can see the time on her digital watch, a gift from her father-in-law. Moving her arm back behind her head, she says softly, as if to avoid waking the sleeping man too brusquely:
‘Rolando.’
The sleeping man barely moves. He slowly stretches out a leg and, without opening his eyes, lays his hand on the smooth belly of the wakeful woman.
‘Rolando. Up you get. Beatriz will be here in an hour.’
The Other
(Shadows and darkness)
The worst bit was letting time slip by without coming to an agreement about the future. Because it didn’t matter how many hours they spent talking about it or how often they plucked up the courage to raise the subject. All the arguments for and against came to nothing when he, Rolando Asuero, repeated once more that now classic gesture, that of the first day of Creation, taking her face in his hands and kissing her with a conviction that each time was more solid and mature, and left a more beguiling trace. And when he took off her clothes just as carefully and pleasurably as the first time, and she let herself be caressed and caressed him in return with a bodily joy that as it lit her up rapidly transformed her from seduced to seducer, that was the end of all the humiliations and pangs of conscience and arbitrary efforts to put themselves in the shoes of the absent one. They never made love at night, because Graciela did not want Beatriz to find out before Santiago himself knew. Graciela did not want her daughter, with a bemused look or by unintentionally overhearing something, to convert what was a clean, transparent act into a covert one, their mutual need into a mystery to be solved. That was why they got together in the afternoons, while the city was taking its siesta and the hum of the bumblebees buzzing round the flowers or at the shutters was the only sound to be heard.
Graciela had confessed that this set schedule had helped her overcome o
ne of her oldest prejudices, more deeply rooted in her habits than she had ever thought she was or had admitted to herself. She had never made love to Santiago in the afternoon, preferring complete darkness – to her, the sense of touch was supreme in any loving union. Santiago, who did not agree about the exclusive pre-eminence of touch, had nevertheless reluctantly resigned himself to her demand, which he attributed to nothing more than a poorly assimilated puritanism, and, above all, to her education at a convent school. There’s no going against heaven, he used to say to justify his inevitable concession to her. Graciela, though, had always steadfastly maintained that the Sisters were not to blame, that the ultimate responsibility was hers, because of an obscure sense of shame of which she wasn’t proud. Rolando, for his part, pretended to be very liberal and magnanimous, although in reality he was not at all happy with the details she went into of the nights she had spent naked with another man, and simply to exact a petty revenge, had asked her, What about before Santiago then, and she didn’t react indignantly, but was slightly ashamed to confess that before Santiago there was no one, and began to go on about the problem of shadows and darkness, saying, You’ve got the proof now, because making love as we do at siesta-time, even with the shutters closed, the semi-darkness is so luminous that everything is perfectly visible. Her desire for this other body was so strong, so overwhelming, the pleasure of uniting with him so tender, that at no moment had she insisted on her out-of-date need for darkness, and not only had she not abandoned her desire to touch and be touched, but had discovered, almost against her will, to what extent touch was amplified by the decision to look at the other’s body in all its manoeuvres, routines and new propositions, and to what extent the sense of touch was amplified when she was being looked at in all her mossy valleys, her hills. Only after the pleasure and release, when he, Rolando Asuero, lit a cigarette and then a second one and passed it to her, only then – or rather a short while later when she returned from the bathroom and cuddled up against him – it was only then that the absent person became present again between them, between the two sated, limp bodies.