Ghosts (14 page)

Of course, the stars over Santiago, said Javier, are completely
different. What do you mean different? he was asked in surprise and
bewilderment. They’re not the same, he replied. Appalled, Raúl Viñas put his
head in his hands. What a dumb thing to say! We’re in the same hemisphere!
What’s that got to do with it? Neither brother knew whether to credit the
other’s implausible ignorance or assume it was an exercise in mutual
leg-pulling. The women laughed. Elisa Vicuña, who was justly reputed
for her intelligence, backed up her brother-in-law: But they
are
different. It’s true, said
Roberto, supporting her. Raúl Viñas had no choice but to yield, mainly because,
on that point, he actually was in agreement. Of course they’re different, he
said, but that doesn’t mean they’re not the same constellations, the same
arrangements, the same stars, if you like. They all looked very carefully at the
stars. Was there anything familiar about them? They couldn’t say there was, but
they couldn’t say there wasn’t either. What I think, said Patri, is that they’re
the same but back to front.
Exactly
,
said Raúl, Patricita is right. Point of view is everything, said Carmen. And to
think we’ve seen those stars from the other side, said Inés Viñas, poised
between melancholy and delight. But their necks had begun to hurt, and since the
children had taken advantage of the darkness to escape and tear around like
little devils, they switched on the light again. They emerged from that plunge
into the starry darkness smiling more broadly, and saw each other with different
eyes, which were, of course, logically, the same. They drank a toast: To the
stars of Chile. There’s a current that carries the stars away! said Raúl Viñas,
between mouthfuls.

Soon the fruit was served and they were tasting it. All the family
preferred fruit to desserts, which was lucky for the mistress of the household,
because it meant less work, although she still had to peel, pit, and remove
seeds, especially for the children. When they told Roberto, he couldn’t believe
it. It turned out that he was exactly the same. His devotion to fruit was
matched only by his aversion to desserts; serving them after the finest meal was
enough to spoil all the pleasure retrospectively. He was sure that Inés must
have mentioned it, that quirk of his, but no, on the contrary, Elisa Vicuña had
been worried that he wouldn’t be satisfied with plain fruit, served in the
primitive style. Even so she hadn’t wanted to spoil the rest of the family’s
pleasure. It was almost telepathic, a coincidence that proved he was meant to be
part of the family. And what fruit! Glorious nectarines, so ripe they were
violet, mosque-shaped apricots, bunches of green and black grapes,
each one sublime, bleeding strawberries, Anjou pears with snow-white
flesh, purple cherries, big black plums, all the abundance of nature, civilized
to a supreme degree of refinement by grafting and husbandry, to the point where
any improvement in flavor would almost have been imperceptible. Nothing less
could satisfy this family of insatiable fruit-eaters; luckily fruit
was cheap in summer.

Did you know, said Elisa, that we have ghosts on this site? Real
ghosts? they asked. Well, they’re never real, are they? But you can see them,
every day, at siesta time. And other times, added Patri. Yes, other times too.
The conversation moved on to ghosts. Everyone could contribute an experience, a
memory, or at least something they had heard. It was the ideal subject for
storytelling.

Raúl Viñas told the story of the ghost who was walking along and,
distracted by the sight of a plane flying over, fell into a well. In the well
there was a hare, and they struck up a conversation. The hare (a male hare,
while the ghost, as it happened, was the ghost of a woman) had also fallen in by
accident, and had stayed there, not because he couldn’t get out (it wasn’t a
very deep well) but to rest. Were you watching the plane flying over too? asked
the ghost. No, said the hare, I was running away. Uh huh? said the ghost, her
curiosity piqued. What from? The hare shrugged his shoulders, difficult as that
may be to imagine. He went on to explain that in fact he was always running
away, from everything, so in the end he didn’t really distinguish between
reasons for flight. But you should, advised the ghost. Why? said the hare. Why
run away more quickly from what seems to be more dangerous, and more slowly from
what seems a lesser threat? That would be a grave mistake, because you can
always judge wrongly, and even if you don’t, the lesser threat could turn out to
be fatal. The ghost concurred, and said reflectively that it had been rash of
her to offer advice on a subject she knew nothing about. Understandably enough,
since her specialty—appearing—was the opposite of flight.
The hare sighed, envying his chance companion’s lot: how wonderful not to have
to worry about preserving your life! Except that you have to start by losing it,
the ghost remarked wisely. Ah, but then.... You
see.... No, sorry, but you’re
mistaken....
Allow me
to....
They were so absorbed in their
philosophizing that they didn’t notice the arrival of a hunter, a bad sport as
we shall see, and inept too, who looked over the edge of the well, and seeing a
defenseless hare at his feet, cocked his shotgun (that sinister “click” finally
brought the hare and the ghost back down to earth, but all they had time to do
was freeze), and fired: bang. Since he was a poor shot, he hit the ghost, who of
course he hadn’t seen. Transparent as air, blood spurted from a wound on the
left side of her chest. The hare had no time to pity her, since, like the
classic moral at the end of a fable, he had leapt out of the well with a single
bound, and was already far away, fleeing as fast as he could.

Javier Viñas told the story of the old watchmaker who could tell what
time it was by observing the positions of ghosts, which led him, by association,
to depressing reflections on the decline of his trade. All things analog were
losing ground, and the tendency seemed to be irreversible. It saddened him to
hear people say “Eleven fifty-six, seven thirty-nine,
two-o-one” as they walked past his poky little shop. Nobody
said “it’s just gone twenty to two” because even a child would have replied,
“You mean one forty-one? Or one forty-two?” Now his only
clients were little old men like himself with some broken-down
antique, an Omega, a Vacheron Constantin, or a Girard Perregaux, and he was no
longer surprised when one of them decided that it wasn’t worth repairing, and
walked past the next day with a Japanese watch on his wrist. Soon no one would
know that the hour is made up of two halves. Already the ticking of a watch was
a thing of the past: the heart was an outmoded organ. Because the ticking of a
watch was “like” that of the heart; in other words, they were analogs. And
analog watches were the old ones, the ones with hands. It was true that there
were also imitation analog watches, with hands, which operated digitally, but
that was ostentatious or condescending, and gave the old watchmaker little hope.
He spent the day sitting still, feeling depressed, stiller and more depressed
each day, staring at the back wall of the shop, where two ghosts showed the
time, all day long. They were two child-sized ghosts, so punctual and
patient that the watchmaker found it natural for them to be there, showing the
time. And the stiller he became, the more natural the slow, sure movement of the
ghost-hands seemed. But he shouldn’t have been so complacent. Because
one afternoon, the ghosts came down from their places and said to him with a
mischievous smile: Time passes, you stupid old miser, technology changes, but
not human greed, and “backwards” people like you just spread gloom, which has
spoilt life for ghosts. Aren’t you ashamed? The old watchmaker was so
astonished, he couldn’t even open his mouth. He felt himself being swept up by
an impalpable force, into the air, and carried to that place by the back wall
where the ghosts had shown the time. Now he was showing it, his body marking the
hour, as on the first clock faces, before the invention of the minute hand.
Meanwhile the real ghosts had vanished.

Not to be outdone, the women told ghost stories too. Inés Viñas told
the story of a portraitist who abandoned his art as a result of specializing in
ghost portraits. The ghosts materialized only to pose and then disappeared
again. It was frustrating for the artist not to have any enduring reality with
which to compare his work. But that was not the worst thing. The worst thing was
that the ghosts rationed their visibility in a rather drastic manner, and didn’t
even materialize in their entirety; only the feature that the artist was copying
at a particular moment appeared, and not even that: just the line, the mere
brush-stroke....
They duplicated his
work so perfectly that the exasperated painter broke his brushes, stamped on his
palette, kicked the easel over, and bought himself a Leica. Which only made
things worse, much worse.

As for Carmen Larraín, she told them about Japanese ghosts. In the
Celestial Empire, when an elder died, there was a general reckoning of where he
had left the bones on the plate every time he ate fish. If the positions formed
a satisfactory circle, he went to Paradise. If not, he became a ghost whose task
was to teach the children good table manners. And those who did not succeed in
that mission, she concluded, became ikebana instructors.

Finally, instead of telling a story, Roberto made an observation:
ghosts, he said, are like dwarves. Thinking about them in abstract terms, you
could come to the conclusion that they don’t exist, and depending on the kind of
life you lead, you can go for months or years without seeing one, but sooner or
later, when you least expect it, there they are. That’s just a result of life’s
general conditions, the chances and coincidences that make up existence; for
example, it can happen that in a single day, you see two dwarves, or two dozen,
and then you don’t see any more for the rest of the year. Now looking at it from
the other side, from the dwarf’s point of view, the situation’s very different,
because the dwarf is always present to himself, as he is: 44 inches tall, with
his big head, and his short, bandy legs. He is the occasion that prompts casual
passersby to say, that night: “Today I saw a dwarf.” But for him, dwarfhood is
constant, continual, and merits no special remark. It’s perpetual appearing,
occasion transformed into life and destiny.

Isn’t Patricita going to tell us a story? they asked, looking at her;
it was true that she hadn’t said a word. The children had approached the table
and were listening to the stories with gaping mouths. Patri thought for a moment
before speaking: I remember a story by Oscar Wilde, about a princess who was
bored in her palace, bored with her parents, the king and queen, bored with the
ministers, the generals, the chamberlains, and the jesters, whose jokes she knew
by heart. One day a delegation of ghosts appeared to invite her to a party they
were giving on New Year’s Eve, and their descriptions of this party, which
included the disguises they would wear and the music to be played by the ghost
orchestra, were so seductive, and she was so bored, that without a second
thought that night she threw herself from the castle’s highest tower, so that
she could die and go to the party. The others pondered the moral. So the story
doesn’t say what happened at the party? asked Carmen Larraín. No. That’s where
it stops. Must have been a bit of a surprise for the girl! said Elisa, giggling.
Why? Because ghosts are gay, of course! Raucous guffaws. That Oscar Wilde, he’s
priceless! said Roberto, choking with laughter. They all thought Elisa Vicuña’s
reply was a great joke, in the surrealist mode. An inspired one-liner.
Patri, however, only laughed so that they wouldn’t think she was upset; the idea
had shocked and distressed her. At that moment, the children were pointing at
the moon, which had been rising in the sky, partly hidden by the neighboring
buildings, partly eclipsed by the absorbing conversation. They all looked up. It
reminded them that they were dining outdoors. It was a very white full moon,
without haloes, the kind of moon you could spend your life watching, except that
in life the moon is always changing.

When Elisa got up to prepare the coffee, Patri was quick to follow her
into the kitchen, saying “I’ll give you a hand.” The rest of them went on
talking and drinking wine. Raúl Viñas drank four glasses in the time it took the
others to finish one. The result was an exquisite inebriation that went
unnoticed in social situations, but sent his whole body into orbit, endowing it
with a peculiar movement, shifting it to places where no one thought it was.
Once they were alone, Patri asked what Elisa had meant by the quip that had gone
down so well. But, my girl.... her mother began, and here the
expression “my girl,” so common in the familiar speech of Chileans, so normal
that even daughters sometimes use it without thinking when addressing their
mothers, also took on a broader sense, which neutralized the typically Chilean
connotations. The language shifted to its most abstract level, almost as if
Elisa were speaking on television: But my girl, we never know what we mean, and
even if we did, it wouldn’t matter. You’re always saying things don’t matter,
said Patri, in a slightly reproachful tone, which, as always in their
conversations, was tempered with affection. But as Elisa put the water on to
boil, spooned the coffee into the pot, passed the cups to her daughter so that
she could check they were clean and put them on the tray with the saucers and
the little spoons, she became very serious. There were things she needed to say
to her daughter, things that really did matter. They had spoken so much,
half-jokingly, about the “real men” who were destined to make them
happy, and they had made light of them so often, that in their respective
imaginations, the subject had lost its gravity. She had to restore it, by
reasoning if need be, and there was no time like the present, now, before the
end of the year. How can I tell you, she said to her daughter, then stopped and
thought. Patricita, I’m afraid you’re not the most observant member of the
family. Come on, tell me, tell me, said her daughter, without a trace of
self-pity, maintaining her characteristic reserve.