The Case of Lisandra P. (17 page)

Candaulism—Sexual arousal caused by the spectacle of sexual intercourse between one's usual partner and a third person (or several).

Choreophilia—The condition of being sexually aroused when dancing.

Dendrophilia—Sexual arousal caused by trees.

Emetophilia—Sexual arousal caused by vomit.

Endytophilia—Sexual arousal caused by making love with a person who is fully clothed.

Erotophonophilia—Sexual arousal contingent on the death of another human being; common in serial sex killers.

Formicophilia—Uncontrollable sexual arousal caused by small animals (snakes, frogs) and insects (ants) crawling over the genital organs.

Godivism—Sexual urge to exhibit oneself naked on horseback. Exhibitionism on a bicycle may be considered a form of Godivism.

Hierophilia—Erotic arousal caused by sacred objects.

Lactophilia—Erotic arousal caused by breastfeeding women.

Maieusophilia—Sexual attraction to pregnant women.

Merinthophilia—Sexual arousal brought on by being tied up.

Pentheraphilia—A state of sexual arousal caused by one's mother-in-law.

Pygmalionism—Sexual arousal caused by statues.

Scatophilia—Sexual stimulation caused by excrement or acts of defecation.

Siderodromophilia—Sexual arousal from riding in trains. This fantasy may combine several factors: the intimacy of the compartment and its unavoidable promiscuity, the risk-free exhibitionism offered by a train going through residential districts, and the motion of the train itself.

Somnophilia—Repeated, intense, uncontrollable sexual interest in seeking erotic contact (caresses, oral-genital caresses, without forcing or exerting violence upon the person) with a person who is asleep.

Stigmatophilia—Repeated, intense, uncontrollable sexual interest in seeking out an erotic partner who has tattoos or scarifications or whose skin has been pierced in order to accommodate gold jewelry (rings or studs), particularly in the genital area.

Trichophilia—Sexual arousal caused by hair.

Undinism—Urinary eroticism; sexual arousal associated with urinating either on oneself or on the genitals of a partner of the same or opposite sex.

Zoophilia—Sexual attraction to animals. The act itself is not systematically illegal, depending on the country.

I almost forgot.

Pedophilia—Sexual attraction to children.

Lisandra was the one who closed the lid. Suddenly. The music box, slammed shut as her lips stilled, silent. Over this abominable litany she knew by heart. They were no longer dancing. The two of them stood motionless in the middle of the studio. Pepe was holding Lisandra in his arms and she had her head against his chest. She was nothing but a body locked inside a claustrophobic thought, a voiceless body, as if after an exorcism, a body that had been emptied out. She was beyond sorrow, and Pepe was stunned. He was holding his hand over Lisandra's eyes the way you hold your hand over the eyes of a dead person. He had heard enough. To be sure, he had managed to make her talk, but he could not understand her wandering; he would have had to go through this labyrinth of jealousy himself to have the slightest hope of understanding what torture it must represent. It was impossible to go on speaking; words seemed pointless to him compared to the sordid grace of the thoughts Lisandra had just shared with him. Even deep inside himself, he dared give voice to only a few words, which came to him in a rush:
You're imagining things. Maybe Vittorio isn't guilty. Maybe you're inflicting your own vision of the world on him—those are your fears you are projecting onto him; you have no proof he is cheating on you, and even if he were, he hasn't left you, that counts for something. This is a passing thing, I assure you, believe me, I
ought to know, and even if he eventually left you, it wouldn't be the end of the world, you'll get over it, you'll meet someone else; you're young, you're beautiful, you're intelligent, don't reduce yourself to that love alone, Lisandra, don't reduce yourself to love; there are so many other beautiful things in life.
But in the end Pepe didn't say anything, because amid all this madness, he was struck by Lisandra's extreme lucidity, and he knew that she would have already made all these attempts to reason with herself on her own, and certainly more than once. Pepe's silence was a sign of helplessness, not disapproval, and yet that was what Lisandra took it for. Once it has been triggered, paranoia does not affect only one's love life, it spreads like a contagion to every layer of one's social nature.

“Do you think I am despicable?”

How could she think this? Pepe squeezed Lisandra tighter in his arms to indicate that she was not. You do not squeeze someone tight in your arms if you find them despicable. And eventually he began to speak, without quite realizing it, a simple statement that did nothing to alter Lisandra's pain but which, in his opinion, would rank it among the sorrows one knows will be forgotten someday. “You're so young.” Lisandra arched her back, incensed: without Vittorio, her age hardly mattered to her, she could not go on living.

“I do wish I could help you.”

“You can't help me. No one can help me.”

“You can't let yourself be destroyed like this. You have to speak to Vittorio, tell him everything. He can help you, it's his profession, he'll understand.”

“You don't go about having psychoanalysis with the love of your life. You don't open up the depths of your soul to someone when they are part of it. You cannot reveal your vision of the other person.”

“Then go and see someone else, another shrink. It's not as if there aren't plenty of them around.”

Lisandra had thought about it. But she was afraid they might know each other, they might meet, these individuals are above all conference-goers.
Lisandra Puig. Oh, she's your wife?
And they talk among themselves, and Lisandra could not bear to become the topic of the discussion, an intellectual quandary for Vittorio. You could fall in love with an intellectual quandary—it was even common to the point of vulgarity in their profession, to fall in love with a case—but that was before you'd slept with the “case” in question. Once you've slept with the “case,” and slept with her again and again, the case loses its charm, becomes a deviancy like any other.

“Well then, go and see someone else, someone who is not a shrink. A doctor.”

For him to knock her out with antidepressants, no, thank you, Lisandra wanted none of that. But one day she did go and see someone all the same. It was her friend Miguel who had recommended him. He knew her well, Miguel. He had come by the house, he had noticed that she wasn't well, and he had left the address on the table in the living room, silent and modest the way he always was. In the waiting room the radio was playing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23. Lisandra smiled. Miguel is a great musician; Lisandra thought this must be a sign, she really believed this doctor would be able to help her. She told him she was jealous. She asked him if he could help her. He answered that it wasn't as simple as all that. She replied that she knew perfectly well that “it wasn't as simple as all that”; she just wanted to know whether he could help her. The man opened an enormous red book and while he was running his finger hurriedly through the pages, he embarked on a thorough interrogation: “Can you stand tight clothes? Turtleneck sweaters? Do you bruise easily? Do you prefer red or white wine? Do you have trouble waking up in
the morning? Do you have hot flashes? Why do you keep turning around? Does the sound of the light bother you? Do little noises in general bother you? Are you subject to tinnitus? To repeated sore throats? Do you have a tendency to keep your sorrow to yourself? When you cry, do you have spasms, or do you sob, calmly? Do you get cold easily? Do you suffer from neuralgia? Headaches? Muscle contractions? Menstrual pain? Irregular periods? Accompanied by cramps?” Lisandra concentrated hard on her replies. Answered so thoughtfully. Reading more into them than what they signified. She would have liked for the litany never to stop. She could have spent her entire life answering these questions. She suddenly had the impression that this man could do anything, that he was going to save her.
The result.

“Are you claustrophobic?”

“No.”

“Are you subject to vertigo?”

“No.”

“Are you—”

“Actually I am. I do get vertigo. In the staircase. When I go down.”

“And when you go up?”

“No. Only when I go down.”

The man went on for a while with his questions and then he closed his book. He got up and went to open a small cupboard behind him, full of numerous transparent tubes filled with tiny white granules. He took one of them and poured the equivalent of a small handful into an envelope, which he handed to Lisandra. “Take this tomorrow morning, under your tongue, before you eat.” Lisandra spent all evening and all night convinced that her salvation lay in the envelope. She placed it under her pillow, telling herself that by next morning the tooth fairy would have come and
gone. As she replayed the entire session in her head, repeating the questions and answers as best she could remember, she finally came to a realization, and knew it had all started there.

With the
staircase.

She couldn't go on pretending nothing had happened. If she really wanted to find a solution, she would have to begin to face the truth. It was with these very words that Lisandra turned suddenly to face Pepe. Abruptly. All at once she'd been disconnected from her jealous delirium.

“Do you want to help me, Pepe? But of course you want to help me. You're even the only one who can help me. With you I can go there. I can do it if you go with me.”

Pepe nodded without even knowing what he had agreed to, and Lisandra's face suddenly lit up and won him over to her cause, without any further questions. Lisandra then withdrew from his arms.

“You are right, Pepe, let's stop there, let's stop all this moaning. I have the solution. I've had it for a long time. And now I have to apply it; the time has come. I know what will fix everything. I know what I have to do. I simply have to find the courage to confront him.”

Pepe had loved her tone, suddenly so categorical, so positive, but he had never told her to “stop her moaning.” He would never have allowed himself to brush off her distress in that way. It was she herself who used those words, the words she had actually wanted to hear, the only words that could compel her to act and force her to leave behind her world of contemplative, destructive observation. Jealousy as mystical ecstasy. Lisandra left the dressing room wearing makeup and perfume, her hair done, her ponytail high on her scalp, freeing her face, and Pepe thought that here was the woman he knew, at last. Still wearing her sunglasses, but stable and focused now. She hadn't exactly perked up—for that she would have had to
experience a joy she didn't feel—but strong, yes; the strength now came from the strength of her body. If Pepe had not been her confidant, he would never have imagined that Lisandra's soul was so full of dark thoughts. They took the bus, hardly speaking. Pepe could not help but wonder what
solution
Lisandra had been referring to. But he no longer had the nerve to ask her anything. He was being extremely cautious—cowardly, perhaps—he didn't want to start anything, set anything off. He was still in shock after her terrible monologue. And besides, Lisandra was so focused, she kept biting her lips and sighing deeply, staring straight ahead. Pepe felt embarrassed. He wondered if she was thinking back over everything she had confessed to him; he thought perhaps he ought to tell her that he would never speak of it ever again, unless she wanted to. Suddenly Lisandra turned and looked at him. She wanted to stop off in the neighborhood of San Telmo.

“I have a present to buy.”

Pepe watched her go into the shop, not understanding what she could possibly want there. What impulse purchase had she suddenly gotten into her head? He gazed at the shop sign swinging in the
wind.

A toy store, a strange place for a jealous soul to find comfort. Lisandra did not stay there very long. A little while, all the same, enough for Pepe to grow worried and hesitate to go and find her. But Lisandra had made him promise to wait outside and not come into the store. Pepe looked at the little green shop, a sweet place, the way neighborhood shops often are. At last Lisandra came out. She went up to Pepe, her gaze vacant, her hands behind her back.

“Pick a hand.”

“I don't know . . . the right hand.”

Lisandra opened her right hand and gave him a little porcelain cat and then she opened her left hand, which held another one exactly the same.

“I took two of the same, one for you, one for me . . .
because a porcelain cat doesn't meow over love.
*
The truth sometimes lies dormant in songs.”

Lisandra thanked Pepe for having been so kind to her. For listening to her. It had done her good to talk. She gave Pepe a hug and a kiss, then withdrew very quickly. Clearly, she did not want to prolong the moment.

“I'll get going now.”

“You don't want me to come with you anymore?”

“No, thank you, I'll be all right, Pepe. Now I can go home. Now I'm not afraid anymore.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Nothing.”

Lisandra shrugged. She was still a bit pale, but it was no longer with fatigue or weariness. It was excitement, Pepe would have staked his life on it: excitement. But what Pepe remembered very well above all, was that at that very moment he had an intuition that something definitive had been set in motion—and he wasn't just saying that now in light of what had happened; no, he really had felt a shiver, like a sort of unease. But perhaps his body was simply reacting to the sound of the sign creaking in the wind—“Lucas Juegos”—the kind of creepy noise that horror films are full of. “Lucas.” There was nothing frightening about the name. Lisandra waved to him one last time. Pepe didn't even have the presence of mind to wave back. He watched as her blonde head moved away, that beautiful hair of hers, but now Pepe knew why it did not seem to match her complexion. It was common knowledge that students often gave lessons to their teachers. That evening when he went home, Pepe asked his wife whether she was jealous, whether she had ever been jealous. His wife didn't turn around, but he knew she was crying: she lifted her shoulders, one after the other, to dry the corners of her cheeks where her tears must have been flowing. “If you're asking me, it must mean I no longer have any reason to be.” That night Pepe gave his wife a long kiss, too long for a kiss that wasn't asking for forgiveness. When he switched off the light, he thought about Lisandra, hoping she was all right, hoping she, too, was finding reconciliation with her husband, that at last she had “confronted him,” the way she had said she would. Her husband was going to help her: that was his job.

And now it looked like he, Pepe, had been a long way from the truth. He felt so guilty, he could not help but think that if he had let Lisandra go on doing her sinister dance from the door of her room to the chair at her desk, from the chair to the door, a round that was completely harmless in the end, nothing would have happened to her. Pepe had committed the sin of pride. If he had not gone looking for her that day, trying to remove her from her cocoon, which may well have been unhappy but was, in the end, a sort of chloroform, if he had not driven her to confess her tragic story to a witness, then none of this would have happened. Seeking liberation through words, is that really a positive thing? Pepe doesn't think so. Words set free are sometimes more dangerous than words that are silenced. He felt so guilty. But that's normal. It's troubling to see a living person on the day they are going to die; you always feel guilty afterward. You tell yourself that you could have, should have, stopped something from happening.

“Because all of this happened the day she died?”

“Yes. That afternoon.”

“So you are the last person who saw her alive. Other than her husband.”

“I don't know . . . perhaps.”

“And do you think that Vittorio killed her?”

“How should I know . . . Everything seems to point that way. A crime of passion, perhaps.”

“I'm not asking you if ‘everything seems to point that way,' I'm asking you if you, personally, think he killed her.”

“How I am supposed to know that? I don't know him. All I know about him is what Lisandra chose to tell me. I simply saw him waiting for her a few times, on the sidewalk, when he came to get her. I remember how he put his arms around her and they'd
go off down the street, the two of them, but that was already a few years ago, at the beginning of their relationship.”

“And of course you told the police that he no longer came to get her after class, that the good old days of marital harmony were long past.”

“The police? What police? No one came to question me. You're the only person who has come to see me to talk about Lisandra's death.”