Mascara

OTHER BOOKS BY ARIEL DORFMAN

In this novel of deception and betrayal, the reader will be hard pressed to find human beings who show a hint of loyalty to one another. It is particularly gratifying, therefore, to acknowledge in real living people a quality that the characters, in
Mascara
at least, do not possess.

The unflagging faithfulness which Nan Graham, my editor, has shown toward me, my family and my work has sustained us all during the harrowing times when I was writing this novel. Not to mention her intelligence and stubborn insistence on making my writing as clear and direct as possible. Nor could the novel have been finished without the encouragement, almost day by day, of my agent, Andrew Wylie, whose enthusiasm for this book, fortunately, was contagious.

S
o we’re finally going to meet, Doctor. Face to face, so to speak. Two o’clock this afternoon in your consulting room. Your nurse just confirmed our appointment. After lunch, that is, she said to me. As if I had any interest in lunching with you, Doctor.

Yes, Doctor, I’m talking to you, Mavirelli, or whatever your name is. It’s true that I’m speaking softly and just as true that you’re not even present yet. A pity your ears are less nimble and far-reaching than your fingers. You could prepare yourself for what I’m going to propose today at two. Instead of assuming that I’ll deliver my unconditional surrender.

Not a chance, Doctor. If you really knew me, your deceiving hands wouldn’t touch upon such a bizarre idea. But we won’t have time to further our acquaintance. So this story that I’ll tell to the face of yours that’s in my head will have to do. If many years ago I had taken the precaution to stuff your features inside my camera, if I had snapped a photograph of you, things would be different now. You’d be the one asking me for an appointment.

Of course you won’t receive me at two o’clock sharp. You’ll give yourself time to look at me, at both of us, through a half-open door, some one-way mirror. You’ll tell yourself you know everything about me that there is to know.

But you know nothing of my eyes, Doctor. Your spies cannot have informed you of them. They would have had to be present five days ago when I exercised my own right to look, when I gave myself the time to calmly contemplate, through the slit in the curtains of my window, that woman who called herself Patricia. What
better way of beginning to explain to you who I am, what I want? Of course, it makes no difference where one begins to tell a story: we always reach the same ending, don’t we?

As for so-called Patricia, nobody was going to open the door to her. At least I wasn’t, and there was nobody else at home. So I took my time examining her bit by bit. That’s right, as if she were undressing. That’s why zoos are such a pleasure, Doctor; they were when I was a kid. That terrorized animal—she was far more frightened than the first time she came to my door, it was spilling out of her, far more—that animal which called itself, for now, Patricia couldn’t guess that someone was giving her the once over.

She’s going to ring the buzzer, I thought. A first, energetic sounding; then a couple of vacant moments; after that a timid chirp of a buzz that doesn’t want to show impatience, a longer period in which she won’t know what to do, if she should stay or leave, one last attempt, the long wait before she withdraws. A camera would have captured for later a sequence of Patricias, with one face after the other decomposing, fear rising in her like water that can’t be flushed away. Entertainment for a few minutes—maybe that Friday morning’s lone offering.

But it wasn’t my intention to take her picture. At least not then. The camera’s always ready and more so on a holiday; the feet, always prepared to follow the person these eyes of mine have chosen. But not that morning. Nor was Patricia’s face steeped in a mystery worth exploring. If she was coming back to my house again, it was because she was still stuck with the same problem she had when she came to see me the first time, the day before yesterday. Her problem had two legs attached to it, and those two legs were probably somewhere nearby, out of sight around the corner, hoping for a refuge they wouldn’t get, at least here. Or so I had sworn at the time. When the supposed Patricia would tire of ringing and these eyes would tire of scanning her, each of us would return to our little dilemma, I to the list I had in my hand, thanks to you, Doctor, the list of contacts who had passed themselves off as my allies and whom I had been calling systematically on the phone, crossing them out one by one with what might almost be pronounced satisfaction, because I was merely confirming a disloyalty I had always anticipated, and she, she, on the other hand …

But that’s not the way it went. Not even the corner of her mouth trembled, not even the thinness of those lips that her careful ochre-red rouge was trying to disguise, not even an eyelash. She pushed her finger into the buzzer and the initial shrillness sounded in the house and went on, like a sour lemon of a trumpet, went on here in this head of mine. These eyes measured the paleness of that pressed finger, the contrast with the calm liquid quiet of the rest of her body, the fury of the trapped bee in that finger, and they realized all of a sudden that the vixen knew for a certainty that there was someone at home and that the someone was none other than myself. Because a while ago the phone had interrupted the silence, and this mouth had muttered a hello, hello, with the idiotic hope that it would be one of those who had vowed their faithfulness to me, returning my calls, offering to find a witness against you, Doctor Maravirelli, before next Wednesday, at the preliminary hearing on our lawsuit.

On the other end of the line, they hung up.

“Son of a bitch!”

Someone had been calling periodically since the accident. I had come home directly from the police station, without even approaching—I would have to have been crazy—the hospital as they had recommended, limping from the pain, and the phone was already ringing. That same Wednesday—Christmas Eve, Marivelli, that first call. You work fast. That first empty hum on the line when I answered—and the knowledge that someone was tracking me down. Since then, over and over and over, that muffled purr and then these hands sweating for minutes on the dead receiver, unable to reconstruct the face of that enemy from the muted breath on the other end, the identity of the person—or persons?—that you have hired to destroy me, Doctor. The same shadow that, undoubtedly, during the last few days has been calling without respite each name in this address book of mine, in alphabetical order, as if he had the booklet itself to consult. Phoning to murmur rumors to each of them, perhaps threats. Until nobody wanted to answer my calls—sorry, he’s not at home—scared of my voice—if you want to leave a message …

I should have worried, Mavirelli. It’s been so many years since I have had that sort of experience, people denying me what I demand.
People who owe me everything, whom I have made into celebrities, saved from an insipid existence. I thought it would be enough to go to my office on Monday, enough to look up their files and their photos, and the traitors would crawl back on their knees to beg forgiveness. Then I would not only flourish three, four, as many as twenty witnesses in your face, Doctor Mierdavelli, I would also find out who was acting as your lackey, who was punching my number with a long finger. And in the worst of cases there was always one name you couldn’t know about, one at least that wasn’t in my booklet. I was in no hurry. It was a holiday, the day after Christmas, and there were no elevator boys on the job. Climb to the fourteenth floor? With this bandaged leg? Better to wait till Monday.

A mistake. Not to have rushed to my files right away. Yes, and also a mistake to have shouted son of a bitch. Daughter of a bitch would have been more accurate, or simply bitch, because the buzzer’s persistence was revealing the true identity of the person who had called and hung up this morning.

But not the other times. It hadn’t been her then. Patricia wasn’t collaborating with you, Marvirelli, she wasn’t your spy, or your informer. Probably didn’t even know you. Our accident—and that’s what it was, Doctor, an entirely unexpected, fortuitous collision of cars which neither of us desired—that accident had occurred precisely a couple of hours after she had come to see me that first time. Her neutrality attracted me. That’s what forestalled my urge to disconnect the buzzer and let her rot there forever or until the police would come to carry her off, pseudonym and all. Down there, at my door, was one person in the world who was not in my address book and who had therefore not been poisoned by your flunky’s efforts, Doctor. I rose with difficulty from my chair. One person who wasn’t prejudiced against me, who might even be neutral. One person to have a little fun with. I towed my damaged leg down each step of the stairs. Patricia, exasperating as she was, was better than no one. With each painful step, I thought of another reason to open the door. Until I found myself, in fact, opening the door. A mistake.