Necropolis (47 page)

We'd spend the days in those motels, on the outskirts of towns, most of the time in silence because he'd be writing a lot, or reading one book after another, so I'd kill time listening to music on my iPod or going on Facebook and chatting day and night with invisible friends and even having steamy affairs on the internet, because I couldn't spend one whole day without talking to somebody, without finding out about other people's lives, without somebody asking me things, and while I was chatting I'd be making imaginary journeys, looking at photographs of countries, cities, lost towns. Once I looked up the motel where we were staying on the internet and when I couldn't find it I had the feeling we were already dead and none of what I saw around me was real. After a time I became like him. I preferred to stay in the room, sitting on the carpet, with the laptop on my knees and my headphones on.

The only thing we shared was prayer, and the hours in church, with him on his knees, in an attitude of supplication and penitence, and me behind, pressing my hands together, and asking God, or rather, imploring Him to explain why He had given me such a strange destiny, why, Lord? why, when you know that I'm a woman like any other, with human desires and rages? That was what I asked God, over and over again, without any hope, because my prayers were never answered, I don't know why, maybe because of the sins I'd committed or the things I'd neglected, there were certainly plenty of those. A few years passed and one day he said: I'm going on a journey, Wanda, I'll be back in six months, I have to go alone, wait for me in the Comfort Inn on Sausalito Drive, I'll be there the first week in September. When he said this, he already had his things on his back, and he just walked out without looking back. I couldn't ask anything, only listen and obey. I saw him getting smaller in the distance. I'd never before felt so unhappy to be his companion, so I begged God: make him turn around and come back, let him be by my side when I open my eyes, let me see him sitting on the balcony when I wake up. But it didn't happen. What I did find was a book he'd wrapped for me. On every page there was a hundred-dollar bill and a note saying: Wait for me on Sausalito Drive.

I collected my things and went to a hotel in the center, near the bay and with a view of the sea. From there I called my daughter, but when they wouldn't put her on to speak to me I went out and bought her a whole lot of gifts and asked for them to be delivered to her. Then I had dinner in a nice restaurant, and had Mexican tacos, and without thinking twice ordered a margarita with a double shot of tequila. The first led to a second and then a third, and then five more; then I went to a bar I'd often been to when I was a teenager and drank three more, one after the other. In the bathroom, I bought two grams of coke. I started taking it right there, and drank some more. It was like I was seeing my life coming back in the opposite direction. I fell into the darkness like a body falling in water and sinking, hearing reality in the distance as if it was a bus I'd missed that had left with all my bags on it.

When I opened my eyes I was in a bed next to an unknown man who was snoring. My legs hurt. I slipped out without making a noise, and that was when I saw that my money had been stolen. Fortunately, the book was still in the hotel and there were still lots of pages, so I went back to tequila and cocaine, a long party that never ended, I'd go from one bar to another, from one mirror to another, mirror, mirror on the wall, until one day I looked at the calendar on my cell phone and saw that it was September 3, six months had already passed! I drank a million coffees, swam in the pool and took a little more coke until I could remember what José had told me, the Comfort Inn, and that was where I went. When I'd paid the taxi, all I had left was three ten-dollar bills, one of five, and a few coins, but it was enough. I rented a room and sat down on the carpet to wait. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I screamed.

He arrived two days later, as if everything was normal. Hello, Wanda, are you sick? He looked after me for about a month, stopped me drinking and taking drugs again, but then our life resumed its old rhythm: silence and motels, journeys on Greyhound buses, walks on obscure back roads, long mornings in local churches, and the occasional book signing. One night I found a snake in the shower and fainted. Thanks to that, José agreed to go up a category and we started staying in slightly better places; he also got in the habit of inspecting my room before he went to his just in case.

One year later, one morning before breakfast, he again said the same thing: I'm going on a journey, I'll be back in six months, the book is in your case. This time, though, I managed to say, why don't you take me? but he replied, I can't, not yet, wait for me at the Comfort Inn, first week of March, and again he disappeared into the crowd; as I watched him getting smaller and smaller I felt my legs go weak and my brain was like a railroad station in New Mexico, filled with confused immigrants. I opened the minibar and drank all the little bottles one after the other. Then I went to a 7-Eleven and bought three bottles of JB, as green as emeralds, and drank them over the next two days without leaving my room, eating nothing but yogurt.

In the book there was a large amount, twenty thousand dollars, so I made another attempt to contact my daughter. The result was the same and again I jumped into the void, submerged myself in an ocean of alcohol, but when I came up again I felt disappointed. Only three weeks had passed. What was I going to do with the rest of the time? I'm sorry to be telling you all these sordid details, but I decided to add something to the drugs and the alcohol and hired two male prostitutes, two Spanish guys who were really depraved and did things to me like the things you see in Sabina Vedovelli's movies. I have only vague images of that, because to tell the truth I was so out of it I can barely remember. Better that way. José kept his promise and came back on the date he had told me, stayed with me for another year and then left again. His journeys were becoming a ritual, and I was also starting to get used to that plunge into dark waters that left me exhausted, ready for his return.

Two years later, something new happened, which was that his laptop got damaged and he had to buy a new one. I managed to get hold of the old machine and tried to get into it, but I couldn't so I hired a specialist. The man charged me seven hundred dollars, but anyway now I could get into the files and see what was there: his drafts of books, his rejected poems and the final versions, his personal pages, which didn't really have much. It was when I connected it to the internet that things turned good, because that was when I saw all those e-mails from a travel agency confirming flights from Miami to Johannesburg via Sao Paulo, the first leg on Continental Airlines and the second with Varig.

I was puzzled, what on earth was José doing in Johannes­burg? And worse still: why didn't he take me with him if his route took in my native country, Brazil? why did he go every year? who did he have there? Through the e-mails I found out that whenever he arrived in Johannesburg he would rent a hotel room for three days and then disappear. Where did he go? My theory was that he was going into the jungle to spread the word of God, he wouldn't have been the first to do that with native tribes. The next time he left on a journey I was prepared. After saying goodbye to him I went to the travel agency and asked to speak with the employee who had done the ticket for him. The man received me in his office, but said he couldn't reveal Mr. Burnett's itinerary–that was the name on his passport–unless I could prove I was his wife by bringing in a marriage license. I changed tactics and stroked his penis through his pants. I said that if he gave me that simple piece of information I'd give him a blowjob in the bathroom of the bar across the street. The man agreed to give me a copy of the complete printout: flights, hotel, times, everything. When he'd finished I changed my mind and said, listen, wouldn't you prefer a hundred dollar bill? My gums are bleeding and I wouldn't like to get blood on you. Then I went and called the hotel in South Africa and asked for Burnett and they said, he's arriving tomorrow, madam, would you like to leave a message? Yes, I said, there are problems with the transportation to the jungle so he'll have to wait. There was a silence at the other end, until the person said, what jungle are you referring to, madam? I thought it was weird that somebody in Africa should ask me that, but I had to keep up the lie. Mr. Burnett hired transportation from his hotel to the jungle, but there have been some problems and he'll have to wait. Another silence on the line. There must be some mistake, he said, Mr. Burnett can't have rented any transportation, because on Friday he's taking the Tupolev to Tristan da Cunha, we booked it for him.

I hung up, and went and looked up Tristan da Cunha on the internet and, to my surprise, it turned out to be a tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic, halfway between Africa and America, with a population of three hundred. Why the hell had José been going there all these years? I confess I still don't know.

A strange silence descended, interrupting Egiswanda, and at that moment the lights came on.

Immediately a voice announced that the danger was over and that we could go back to our rooms. The light from the generator had started working and reality, after that horrible flickering, seemed to have returned to us. But we weren't the same anymore. In the light I recognized some of the shadows: there were Kosztolányi and Supervielle, and I even thought I saw Kaplan in the distance. Our faces were haggard. Marta was so pale she worried me, and Egiswanda, who I had never seen in the light, looked really grim-faced. From the way they were both looking at me I assumed they were struck by my appearance, too.

It was clear that the situation was moving quickly, that our days at the conference were coming to an end.

We went up in the elevator, after a long wait for our turn. When we reached the floor where my room was, Egiswanda looked at us anxiously and said, can I stay with you a while longer, I feel a bit scared. Marta hugged her and said, of course, our room is also yours, I think we should drink something. We sat down on the bed with some gins from the mini-bar and Egiswanda continued her story.

One day José himself said to me, why do you never ask me where I go? to which I replied: because I know perfectly well you won't answer and I'm not stupid. José was silent for a long while, lost in thought, and finally said: you'll come with me soon to live in another country, I'm getting everything ready for that; it will do you good, you and the people who need you, the moment is coming, you just have to wait.

Time passed and one day he said, get your bags ready, we're going on a journey. I thought he was referring to a change of motel, but he said, no, we're going to travel together, bring your passport, and that's how we came to this conference. Of course he didn't want us to share a room and asked me not to be close to him. He said: stay in your room and think about important things like your destiny or the destiny of the world, I'll come for you when I need you. The day of his talk, he asked me to go and hear him, saying: only by listening to me will you finally understand who I am, and that was what I did, I went to hear him. I listened to him eagerly, drinking in his every word. I cried. I got goose bumps. I got wet. I felt all that, listening to him. It was what I'd been waiting to hear for years and I assumed there would be a change in our life. First the journey and then his words, why wouldn't I have imagined that everything was about to change? Men like José, who love humanity, aren't capable of loving one particular person; that's something they have in common with the prophets. When he finished his talk I met him in the corridor and tried to speak to him, but he brushed me aside, saying we would talk later, he would come and find me.

I was in my room waiting for him, with the TV on, and had no idea what had happened. I found out in the most brutal way, because I kept calling his room until the switchboard operator answered, and said, we're terribly sorry, the guest in that room has just had an accident. I went to reception and that's where I heard the news. I almost fainted. They also gave me a letter, they said they'd been going to take it up to my room but had been distracted. A letter? I recognized José's handwriting on the envelope and when I opened it I found another envelope inside, with these words written on it: Don't read this today, wait until tomorrow. I went into a corner to cry, trying to hide my grief from everyone, but then I said to myself, if he's not here anymore there's no reason for me to hide, I'm not harming anyone and I deserve to be able to cry for him, after all the sacrifices and the sad, solitary life I'd lived with him. I deserved to cry rivers of tears in that lobby where nobody knew I was his wife, which was why nobody had a kind word, nobody bothered to talk to me with any kind of tact, it was just: the man slit his wrists, they took his body to the morgue; I tried going to his room but, as I walked toward it, I felt his presence and got scared. I thought he was watching me and was going to fly into a temper, seeing me break the rules: never approach him, only wait for him to come, so I went back to my room and lay down on the carpet to cry, I wanted to drink but I couldn't swallow the alcohol, I'd lost even that, and besides, he wouldn't be there to take care of me anymore, so I cried and cried until there were no more tears left, until the last cell of grief left my body, and I was empty, and this city and this destruction and all that's happening here seemed to me the ideal place from which to go away, and I even imagined that if I slit my wrists I could still get to him, get to where he was before he moved off and squeeze his hand and fly together to who knows where, I don't know what there is after death, because deep down I'm not very religious. The world hurts me without him, the light and the air, everything hurts me without him. This conference and its delegates hurt me. The world is still turning, as if nothing had happened. I can't believe it, José's death can't go unnoticed, like the fall of a dead leaf in a forest. It can't be. I've read the letter about ten times or perhaps a hundred, and I know parts of it by heart. I have it here, would it bother you if I read it aloud? Marta wiped the tears from her cheeks and said, no, please, Wanda, read it.