Ghosts (13 page)

The appearance of Roberto caused a sensation. They all agreed that he
wasn’t like they had imagined him. Not that he was better or worse: different.
But that was just because he had really appeared. Even Carmen and Javier, who
already knew him, had imagined him differently. He seemed Argentinean, which
could be explained by the fact that he was, partly; although, of course, he was
far more Chilean than Argentinean. Inés looked at him with surprise when he
arrived: Hadn’t he brought anything? The bottles of wine? The ice cream? But
weren’t you going to bring them? he asked, looking even more surprised. There
had been a misunderstanding. After all that discussion about what they should
bring to the party! They had made careful, considered decisions, but then they
got mixed up about who was to bring it all. Soon everyone was laughing about it.
Especially Elisa Vicuña. Roberto was nice and very polite. Raúl Viñas invited
him to sit down with them—him and Javier—and they started
talking. He took off his dark glasses, revealing small green eyes, the eyes of a
good boy. You don’t look Chilean! exclaimed Carmen, while her husband expressed
the opposite opinion. There are so many kinds of Chileans! said Elisa. That’s
what I always say, added Roberto.

His arrival allowed Patri’s absence to go unnoticed. But not entirely,
because when she came into the kitchen, once all the fuss of greeting the
boyfriend was over, Inés, who was apologizing again to her
sister-in-law for the mix-up, asked: Where have
you been, kid? Just around, she replied, without going into details. Her mother
glanced across at her. Who knows where she got to, off in some mysterious
dream-world of her own, probably. Your boyfriend is so
good-looking, Elisa said to Inés Viñas. Do you think? Oh yes!

The table had to be taken out, so the men went to do it, or rather the
brothers, since they wouldn’t let Roberto help. But the table, as it turned out,
didn’t want to go through the kitchen door. They couldn’t tell if it was because
alcohol and nightfall combined had befuddled them, or if there was a geometrical
difficulty; in any case it proved to be difficult, indeed apparently impossible.
If it went in, said Javier Viñas, it must be possible to get it out. But
did
it go in? asked Raúl Viñas, joking
at first, but then, almost straight away, his mind was thrown into confusion by
a panicky doubt, as he wondered whether the table hadn’t been put in the dining
room before the walls went up. He remembered putting up those walls, but at the
time, he could have sworn, they were living on the ground floor. Just then,
while he was still in a daze, having got two of the legs out, he tilted the
table top slightly, and it came through, to unanimous applause. They put it in
what seemed like the best place, neither too far from the door (that is, the
light) nor too close. Half-light is always pleasant for dining, but
the heat made it even more intimate and mystical. The adults, seven if Patri was
included in the count, fitted around it perfectly. They set up a low table for
the children, with planks and trestles, as they generally did for more formal
meals: a kind of long coffee table, like the one the builders threw together for
their lunchtime barbecues downstairs. Seating was the problem. The family’s four
chairs and four benches were sufficient only for the adults. The solution was to
take another leaf from the builders’ book: they could go down and fetch the
boxes they sat on every day at lunchtime. All three of the men went, none of
them wanting to seem less polite, but also because several arms would be
required. They set off joyfully, following Raúl Viñas’s torch.

Meanwhile, Patri was busy setting the table. First she spread a pretty
white table cloth, and the rest happened almost automatically: plates, forks,
knives. As for the glasses, which the men had left on the floor, she had a
supernatural knack for guessing who they belonged to, and she never made a
mistake. In the kitchen, Iñes Viñas and her two
sisters-in-law were preparing the salads, and of course
chatting. The main topic was Roberto, considered from various points of view,
but one in particular. The unspoken question behind all the remarks, which were
magically transformed into preemptive replies, was: How did Inés Viñas avoid
getting pregnant? She seemed to be wondering too, as if she didn’t trust her own
thoughts or her life.

Elisa had put a melon into a tureen full of ice cubes, to cool it
down. Inés had made an innovative suggestion: wrap it in wet newspaper first,
then cover it with ice, so it would cool more quickly. The result was
sensational. The green and white rind was frosted. Elisa worked out when the
chickens would be done. When it came to timing, she was an expert and she liked
the courses to follow one another fairly rapidly; the children were happier that
way, and it meant her husband had less idle time for drinking.

Well, now they could begin. Carmen Larraín went out to ask the
men if they were ready. Of course they were, ready and waiting! Just one
thing: there were no napkins. She came back to the kitchen with the message,
and Patri raised a hand to her forehead: how could she have forgotten? She
always did. Her mother told her to check on the children once she had put
the napkins out. Meanwhile Elisa was serving the melon, with the help of
Inés Viñas, placing the slices on a long platter, and covering each one with
a sliver of ham. Carmen and Patri went to quiet the children down. Juan
Sebastián, who had been appointed head of the table, was barking despotic
orders, mainly at his siblings (he was slightly afraid of his cousins, with
their disciplined air).

The melon arrived, and the cook sat down: the meal was beginning.
There were two slices each for the grownups, and one (cut in two) for the
children. It wasn’t real sustenance yet, just a treat to whet the appetite. It’s
important to remember that, for this family, food was not a major concern. They
gave it almost no consideration. The melon was perfectly ripe; had they eaten it
a day later (or a day earlier), it wouldn’t have been the same. The sweetness,
with all its exquisite intensity, did not detract from the particular flavor of
melon, which was not, in itself, sweet at all. And the ham was perfect too; it
had a kind of salty warmth that contrasted aptly with the icy sweetness of the
fruit. After the melon came the salads, and then, almost immediately, the
chickens: perfectly golden, crisp, and moderately seasoned. To accompany the
poultry, Raúl Viñas had put aside some bottles of aged Santa Carolina, which he
bought at a good price from his favorite wine store. Chilean wines are so dry!
they all said, sipping it, with a touch of nostalgia, which they reined in so as
not to spoil the evening. They’re so dry, so dry! Paradoxically, that dryness
filled their eyes with tears. But overall, the meal was a thoroughly joyful
occasion; sometimes, in order for joy to be complete, a discreet trace of
sadness is required. In any case, the children were well behaved.

The only one who had a secret thought was Patri. Less an idea
than a feeling: she felt that she still had to do something; that there was
some unfinished business. What she really wanted was to stop thinking. She
didn’t like feeling that she was a mechanism performing a function, but
since she had told the ghosts that she “had to think about it,” she felt
obliged to do so. By nature she was particularly taciturn, but this
predicament helped her to see the usefulness of speaking. When you speak,
you automatically stop thinking; it’s like being released from a contract.
Or rather, as she said to herself, it’s like those stories in which an
especially handsome man appears, to whom the virile protagonist feels
inexplicably attracted, which he finds disturbing, understandably, until it
is finally revealed that the handsome man is in fact a woman in disguise.
Such is the dialectic of thinking and speaking. But having reached this
point in her reflections, Patri wondered if she wasn’t herself (and this was
the secret of all her thought) a woman in disguise, brilliantly
disguised.... as a woman. But she didn’t go down those
mysterious passageways, preferring to remain on the surface of her
frivolity, because there was also a dialectical relation between thought and
secrecy. Or, more pertinently in this case, between thought and time. It
simply wasn’t possible to go on thinking all the time. It would be like a
painter who has to delay the completion of a picture for technical reasons,
say to allow certain thick layers of color to dry, and meanwhile is assailed
by new ideas—a figure, a mountain, an animal, and so
on—which go on filling up the painting until the pressure of
multiplicity makes it explode.

The children kept escaping from their little table. Stunned by the
bliss of the meal, their parents let them be, except when they strayed out of
the circle of variably feeble light shed by the globe, because the darkness
beyond hid the irrevocable edges of the void, and those of the deep swimming
pool, which were dangerous if not so terrible. When they did stray, one of the
women would volunteer to go and bring them back, or frighten them into
submission with a scolding if that was sufficient. Patri, lost in thought while
all the others had gone rounding up the children, was the last to take her turn.
There had been a veritable exodus, and some stern words from Elisa had failed to
bring them all back to their places, so Patri pushed her chair back and went
into the darkness to see what she could see. She walked toward the back of the
terrace, to the left of the pool, until she heard the older children running
around the right side to get away. But she went all the way to the back anyway,
to make sure there were none left. There were no children, and once she was
close to the edge, she could see more clearly, because of the light coming up
from the houses and the streets. She stopped on the brink, but was not in any
danger, because of her pensive mood: she was continually stopping to think, and
that moment was no exception. Some ghosts appeared, floating in the air two or
three yards away. Night had made them majestic, monumental, perhaps because they
were illuminated from below by the glow coming from the Avenida Alberdi on the
other side of the block, and they looked like foreshortened figures, barely a
few golden lines in the darkness. They seemed more serious too, but there was no
way to be sure. In Patri’s eyes, at any rate, they had entered a spacious domain
of seriousness. For her, those volumes swimming in shadow, those volumes reduced
to lines, as if to suggest that they existed in a dimension of aggravated
unreality, seemed strangely, almost incredibly, solemn. The shadows served a
different function for the ghosts, since they had “nothing to hide” (because
they weren’t alive). I accept the invitation, said Patri. A minute before
midnight I’ll jump off here. Here? asked one of the ghosts, as if he had not
heard. Yes, here. Ah. It’s more practical, said Patri, feeling obliged to
explain. Then they nodded; and that simple movement, indicating that they had
heard, made them seem less serious. One of them said: Thank you for the
confirmation, young lady. Everything is ready for the feast.

When she came back to the table, she noticed that her mother was
looking at her strangely, and wondering briefly what she was thinking. Over the
chicken bones and empty salad bowls, the diners were speaking of this and that.
By a curious coincidence, all of them, without exception, had been born in the
city of Santiago, the most beautiful city in the world, as they readily agreed,
having already made up their minds. The way they praised Santiago, they could
have been employed by a travel agency.

It’s a pity you can’t see the stars in Santiago, because of the smog,
said Roberto. I’ve seen them, said Raúl Viñas, leaning forward. Under close
observation, some of Raúl Viñas’ mannerisms, such as a certain way of swaying
his head, could seem to be typical of a drunkard. But it happened that his
brother, who didn’t drink, or never to excess, had the same mannerisms. So the
observer’s judgment had to be revised: they were family traits. Roberto was
constantly making this readjustment when he spoke with his future
brothers-in-law. I’ve
seen
them, said Raúl Viñas, leaning forward and exaggerating the
swaying movement of his head. Yeah, all right, very clever, replied his sister’s
boyfriend, I’ve seen them too, otherwise how would I know they exist? I didn’t
discover them in Argentina. But I saw them in the old days, when I was a kid.
I’ve seen them just recently, said Raúl Viñas. And his brother Javier repeated
his words. Listen Roberto, they said, Listen.... (Right from
the start they had decided to dispense with formalities, since they were going
to be brothers-in-law; and the women had done the same.
Otherwise Roberto would have felt uncomfortable.) Since they weren’t agreeing
about what they had seen in Santiago, they moved on to not agreeing about
something closer to hand. The same thing happens here, said Inés Viñas, although
there’s no smog. It’s because there’s too much street lighting. Some people
think you can’t have enough, Carmen pointed out. But you can see them here too!
said Javier Viñas. Don’t you believe it, Roberto replied. Hey kids, let’s do a
test, cried Elisa, then she asked the children to behave, because it was going
to be dark for a while. She went to the kitchen, and switched off the light.
They all threw their heads back and looked up. When their pupils dilated, an
immense starry sky, the whole Milky Way in its rare magnificence, appeared
before them. You can hardly see it, said Raúl Viñas. I can see it clear as
anything, said Javier. Yes, it’s true. Yes, yes. They all looked up and
abandoned the conversation. There are the galaxies! said Javier’s children. If
only we had a telescope!

While the others were going into raptures about the stars, Patri felt
that she could see her family in the sky, her beloved family, and realized that
she was bidding them farewell. It wasn’t true what they said about the dead
being turned into stars for the living to see: it was the other way around. She
couldn’t say that she was sad to be leaving them for ever, but she saw them
scattered over the black sky, each a beautiful, everlasting point of light, and
felt a kind of nostalgia, not in anticipation but almost as if she were looking
back already. She was telling herself that as long as a sacrifice is worthwhile,
it is possible. The thing is, the stars were so far
away....
The kids were right: they needed a
telescope; but that would have made them look even more distant. She moved her
head slightly, and felt that the stars, remote as they were, had entered her.
The “state of farewell” implied a certain detachment. That detachment or
doubling affected thought as well, and under its influence Patri conceived the
following analogy. In the course of his everyday activities, it occurs to a man
that in an ideal state of perfect happiness, satisfying all the requirements set
out by the philosophers (and some have been extremely particular in these
matters, not so much because they were naturally fussy, although they were,
because most of them were bachelors, but mainly because they got carried away by
their ontological deductions), he would be doing exactly what he is doing now,
not something equivalent, but the very same thing, as if in a parallel world. Of
course not if his work was really terrible, as so much work is, but these days,
thought Patri, quite a few people live without working, so the objects of this
man’s hypothetical comparisons would be a walk, a session at the gym, a train
trip to the suburbs, that sort of thing, and it wouldn’t require a great
imaginative effort to arrive at the conclusion that there could indeed be a
perfect identity between what he is doing in reality, and what he would be doing
at the same time, on the same day, in a state of perfect happiness (individual,
social and even cosmic happiness, if you like, the end of alienation, etc.
etc.). In fact it wouldn’t require any imaginative effort at all, because there
would be no need to call on the imagination; all he’d have to do would be to
modify his gestures, or their form: slightly slower movements, a conceited
little smile, the head held slightly higher.... It’s always the
way, she thought: you look up at the starry sky, and before you know it you’re
thinking about other worlds. How idiotic!