Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12 (36 page)

 
Eliécer Cárdenas is one of Ecuador’s most respected literary
authors. He has won numerous writing awards, and his 1979 novel,
Polvo y
ceniza (Dust and Ashes),
about a real-life bandit hero who prowled the
border between Ecuador and Peru, is considered one of the canonical Ecuadorian
novels of the twentieth century. Readers can find extracts of that novel in the
appendix of translator Kenneth Wishnia’s academic study,
Twentieth-Century
Ecuadorian Narrative
(Bucknell UP, 1999).
 

Translated from the Spanish by KennethWishnia

What missteps will he make with the clumsy iciness of his scythe?

         —Carlos
Eduardo Jaramillo

 
He saw her again after—what, three or four years? It was her all
right, unmistakable with her cinnamon-colored skin and features that reminded
him of the native princess in a marvelous mural by Diego Rivera that he once saw
in a magazine. She was about to enter the building that he had just left a
moment before. She was wearing a pair of sheer white slacks and a lilac-hued
blouse cinched at the waist. Then her unforgettable profile got lost in the
crowd going in and out of the revolving doors.

He resolved to follow her and speak to her this time, although he had only caught
occasional glimpses of her over the course of his life. He had seen her for the
first time when he was already married and she was quite young. He saw her
riding a bicycle along the paths in a park and, struck from afar by her radiant
adolescent beauty, stopped to look at her, putting off some task that he doesn’t
even remember, to wait among the trees for her as she reappeared, riding toward
him on her girl’s bicycle. As she crossed his path a second time, she gave him a
smile that was full of mysteries and prophecies. Unable to follow the girl, he
decided to preserve her image in his memory.

He saw her again a year or two later. By then he had corrected the mistake of his
first marriage with a no-fault divorce that cost him the apartment he had paid
for on the installment plan and the secondhand car they had used to handle the
distance between their brand-new home and their jobs. They had no children.
Fortunately, their relationship had come apart before they seriously considered
bringing children into the world. He was drinking an espresso and meditating
bitterly on the fleeting nature of what people call love, which at that stage,
with his disastrous marriage weighing on his shoulders, seemed like some kind of
polite lie or magical spell whose purpose was to ease the despair, boredom, and
monotony that followed the brief delight of infatuation, which took a wrong turn
when they decided to spend their lives together, when he saw her through the
window of the café walking along the sidewalk. He recognized her immediately.
She was one of those women you don’t easily forget; her movements were feline,
confident, and vaguely threatening, and she was fully aware of the men gazing at
her, but remained in command of her own carefully crafted solitude. He paid for
the coffee and ran after the woman who, simply by reappearing before his eyes,
produced an emotion in him that he didn’t expect to feel anymore, but there it
was once again. As he followed her from a safe distance, he realized that she
was no longer the young girl of a couple of years ago, but a full-grown woman
who carried herself proudly, with a spring in her step, in complete control of
who she was. He imagined her with a boyfriend or a lover, and when she stopped
to look in a store window, he slowed down and looked at her, waiting for her to
notice him. She responded with a slight but radiant smile, and he kept walking
past her, thinking that it wasn’t worth the trouble of getting involved with
such a splendid girl while the splinters of his broken marriage were still
digging into his flesh and, well, because he still had some hope of getting back
together with the woman who had been his wife.

Many years passed, and he forgot about the woman he had seen a couple of times so
long ago. He traveled overseas on business and managed to grow quite bored with
Amsterdam, although as a consolation he became a fan of cold beer and solitary
walks, which gave him the opportunity to admire all the young blond women with
the whitest-white, velvety-smooth skin that they showed off with such
determination while strolling around the tulip-filled parks, their shadows
stretching off to infinity in the late-afternoon splendor that reminded him of
the golden polish on an antique and princely set of silver dinnerware.

He returned to his native land and got married again, and this marriage lasted
long enough to produce two children who transformed his home life into a
peaceful, all-encompassing haven: placid, maybe a bit monotonous, true, but that
was the trade-off for stability. Any marital disagreements they had were barely
noticeable as they dropped the kids off at a day-care center that was run like a
tiny sovereign state for children. It consumed a good part of the couple’s
budget, but they felt it was worth it for the good of the children, who were
attended on like demanding little monarchs. His wife worked very long hours and
rose up through the ranks to an important managerial position, from which she
toppled when Pedro, one of their little ones, died at the day-care center due to
an unexplained respiratory failure that the specialists attributed to a
congenital condition. There was nothing they could do about it. The child was
destined to pass away suddenly and unexpectedly. His mother found it impossible
to continue her career, as if quitting her job was the price she had to pay to
protect her surviving child. It was an irrational decision, made so abruptly
that it muddied their relationship to the point that, without knowing exactly
how it happened, it led to their separation. He felt bad for her, since she had
abandoned her dreams of success and had lost him as well due to the sudden death
of their little one. It wasn’t fair. But who ever said life was fair?

There was a period following the breakup of his second marriage when he started
to see the mystery woman more often. One time it was at a movie theater. She had
gone to see the same film and they exchanged looks in the lobby, their faces lit
up by the glow of the marquee. Shortly after, he spotted her on the corner while
he was riding the bus. It was only a fleeting vision, but clear enough for him
to realize that she was as magnificent as ever and that all those times he had
seen her, she had never been with somebody else. She was always alone, as if she
didn’t need anyone by her side. She stood out like a single flower against the
dull gray background of a vacant lot. Sometimes he thought about her. When he
found himself in the tiny apartment he rented after his second divorce, lying on
the bed with his shoes off and his hands clasped behind his neck, he would
entertain himself by imagining the long-awaited encounter with this mysterious
woman who, he supposed, was some kind of high point or milestone in his
life.

He wasn’t particularly religious, but since he was on his own again he
occasionally flipped through a Bible that someone had given him in the hopes
that it might bring him some comfort, and he read some verses that said that
there is a time for everything: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to
sow and a time to reap. Would there be a time for him to be with this mystery
woman who kept turning up with the randomness of a winning lottery number? He
saw her again during this period, three or four more times. They even said hello
when they saw each other, as if they were friends, but he always walked right on
by, regretting that he didn’t have the courage to stop and talk to her. She must
have thought he was a strange and timid little man.

He started to dream up stories about this woman: that she was always alone
because her lover was a jealous millionaire who insisted that she visit him on
the weekends at some luxurious hotel in the country or at an exclusive beach
with a dock full of yachts. Or, he imagined that she had sworn to become an
unsolvable riddle to all men because of some horrible betrayal during her
adolescence. Or that her mother or her father were invalids, and that caring for
them had used up her ability to show affection for others. He preferred to stick
with the image of the millionaire lover: that way, he could feel like he was
playing a small, tangential role in the beginning of a risky but worthwhile
adventure. Three years after that string of chance encounters with the woman, he
saw her once again. She was leaving a clothing store, carrying the kind of bag
used for feminine garments and accessories. Her movements were light and silky,
flowing like a creature who was not of this world. She seemed so distant and
unreal that for a few seconds he felt as if she were a product of his
imagination. Her hair was styled in the latest fashion, shimmering with an
iridescent glow that made him think of the black marble dome of a Hindu temple
in one of those exotic tourist brochures. He chose not to approach her, as
always. What could he possibly say to her? That they knew each other on account
of a bunch of completely random encounters? Should he play the fool by
introducing himself and offering his hand like some kind of pretentious
Casanova? But time is unforgiving, he thought, and he was afraid that they might
both be old and gray before they met again and finally had the opportunity to
talk. Would there even be another opportunity? The chance meetings were just
that, unlikely to be repeated.

In reality, he had given up hope of seeing her again during the two years that
had passed since the last time he saw her leaving a women’s clothing store. He
imagined, in his fantasy, that she had finally gotten tired of the putative
millionaire lover and had left him, or that her sick mother or father had died
and that she had finally decided to live her life freely, after putting it off
for so long. Later he thought, more realistically, that the laws of chance were
just playing their own mysterious games. After his second divorce, he never
committed the imprudent act of getting married again. A few relatively
short-lived relationships served to alleviate his loneliness and to satisfy the
sexual needs of a man approaching his mid forties. I wonder how old she is? he
sometimes asked himself, when he thought of her at all. Thirty? Thirty-two? She
wouldn’t be as fresh and attractive as before. Beauty was fleeting by nature,
that’s what made it so special.

So that when he saw her again, he felt a tremendous urgency, because this could
easily be the last chance encounter he would have with this woman whom he had
seen growing from adolescence to the fullness of womanhood in widely separated
bursts, and who was now beginning her inevitable decline. He ran inside the
building and headed for the elevators, but decided to take the stairs instead,
figuring he wouldn’t miss her that way, no matter what floor she was on.

He climbed the steps eyeing every female shape going up or down, hoping to find
the woman he was looking for. Panting for breath, he reached the top floor,
which wasn’t really a floor but an empty terrace made of lumpy concrete that was
crumbling in spots. She must have gone into one of the building’s many offices,
and trying to find her by checking each of the offices would be like searching
for a needle in a haystack. He decided to go back down the stairs and wait by
the entrance. She had to leave the building at some point.

He still had a number of business matters to attend to that morning, but he
shrugged his shoulders and resigned himself to spending a few hours waiting for
her. He was prepared to spend the whole morning waiting outside the building if
need be. But as he rushed downstairs, he grew worried about the possibility that
the woman might have left the premises while he was looking for her on the upper
floors. In the end, he planted himself by the doors like a nervous spy on his
first day on the job and began to scrutinize the people leaving the
building.

After a good three-quarters of an hour, it occurred to him to ask the uniformed
doorman if there was another exit to the building. He answered that yes, there
was another exit on the side street. All hope of seeing the woman vanished in an
instant: She could have left by the side door. And he might never see her again,
he thought. That day’s chance encounter with the rare milestone in his life that
she represented could have been the last. But he didn’t lose heart. If she
entered the building and he didn’t see her leave, it was possible that she
worked in one of the offices, or at least had some reason to visit one of them.
Studying the directory of the building’s occupants, he saw that it listed all
kinds of businesses: legal counseling, doctors and dentists, several real-estate
agencies, consulting services, even an employment agency. Where to start? Even
though he was falling behind in his work, he decided it could wait while he
conducted his investigation. If only he knew the woman’s name, at least, he
thought that night when he got back from the pub where he usually ate. If he
knew her name, it would be as easy as pie: He’d simply ask for her by name in
all the businesses and offices in the building. Or even better, look her up in
the telephone directory. But identifying someone whom he knew absolutely nothing
about was really a job for a professional investigator, way too much work for a
man who was actually pretty lazy when it came to doing anything beyond the
demands of his day job. Maybe he should trust his luck and hope that he might
run into her again someplace? He shook his head and decided to make himself a
cup of weak coffee so it wouldn’t keep him awake. He had run into her at least
seven or eight times by chance, and he was sure that the laws of chance or
coincidence wouldn’t help him anymore regarding the woman he had carelessly
allowed to slip past him for so many years.