Of Love and Shadows Page 6
Francisco Leal knew the magazine because he had once bought a copy for his mother. The only name he remembered was that of Irene Beltrán, a journalist who wrote with some audacity, a rare commodity in those times. For that reason, when he reached the reception desk he asked to speak with her. He was led into a spacious room lighted by a large window from which one could see in the distance the imposing bulk of the Hill, somber guardian of the city. He saw four desks with as many clacking typewriters and, to the rear, a clothes rack filled with richly colored gowns. A coiffeur dressed in white was combing out a girl’s hair while another girl awaited her turn, sitting as motionless as an idol, sunk in the contemplation of her own beauty. They signaled to Irene Beltrán, and the moment he saw her across the room he was attracted by her expression and by the amazing hair falling over her shoulders. She waved him over with a flirtatious smile, the last sign he needed to conclude that this girl would be capable of robbing him even of his thoughts, for he had imagined her, exactly as she was, in his boyhood books and adolescent dreams. As he drew nearer, his confidence evaporated, and he stopped before her, embarrassed, unable to tear his eyes from hers, made even more dramatic by makeup. Finally he found his voice and introduced himself.
“I’m looking for work,” he blurted out, placing the portfolio containing his prints on the table.
“Are you on the Blacklist?” she asked candidly, without lowering her voice.
“No.”
“Then we can talk. Wait for me outside and when I finish here I’ll join you.”
Francisco left the room, threading his way among desks and suitcases open on the floor and piled with stoles and fur coats like plunder from a recent safari. He bumped into Mario, the hairstylist, who glided by brushing a wig of pale hair, informing him in passing that this year blondes were very much in vogue. Francisco waited near the reception desk for a time that seemed very brief, entertained by a remarkable parade of girls modeling lingerie, children bringing stories for a children’s contest, an inventor determined to publicize his urinometer—a new instrument for measuring the direction and force of a stream of urine—a couple afflicted with amorous problems who were looking for the Advice to the Lovelorn, and a lady with jet-black hair who introduced herself as the composer of horoscopes and predictions. When she saw him she stopped dead, as if she had had a premonition.
“I read it on your forehead—you will experience a great passion!” she exclaimed.
Francisco had broken up with his most recent girlfriend several months before, and had determined to keep himself free of all amorous uncertainties. He sat there like a schoolboy who had been sent to the corner, not knowing what to say and feeling ridiculous. She explored his head with expert fingers, examined his palms, and without affectation pronounced him a Sagittarius, although she suspected an ascendant Scorpio, since he was marked by signs of sex and death. Especially death.
Finally this pythoness disappeared, to the relief of Francisco, who knew nothing about the zodiac and mistrusted chiromancy, divination, and other madness. Shortly afterward, Irene Beltrán appeared and he was able to see her full length. She was just as he had imagined her. She was wearing a long peasant skirt of chambray, a blouse of rough cotton, a multicolored woven sash cinching her waist, and was carrying a leather purse crammed as full as a mailman’s pouch. Amid a jangle of brass and silver bracelets, she held out a tiny hand with rings on every short-nailed finger.
“Do you like vegetarian food?” she asked and, without waiting for an answer, took him by the arm and led him down the stairs; like many other things in that publishing house, the elevators were stuck.
As they emerged into the street, the sun blazed down on Irene’s hair and Francisco thought he had never seen anything so extraordinary. He could not resist the impulse to reach out and touch it. She smiled, accustomed to producing amazement in a latitude where hair of that color was so rare. When they reached the corner, she stopped, removed a stamped envelope from her purse, and dropped it in the mailbox.
“No one writes to the Colonel,” she said enigmatically.
Two blocks down the street they came to a small restaurant, a meeting place for macrobioticists, spiritists, bohemians, students, and gastric-ulcer sufferers. At that hour it was full, but she was a regular customer. The waiter greeted her by name, led them to a corner, and seated them at a wooden table with a checked tablecloth. Without delay he served them lunch, along with fruit juice and a dark bread filled with raisins and nuts. Irene and Francisco savored the food slowly, studying each other. Soon they were exchanging confidences; she told him of her work on the magazine, where she wrote about prodigious hormones shot like bullets into the arm to avoid conception, masks of sea algae for erasing signs of age on the skin, love affairs of princes and princesses of the royal houses of Europe, processions of extraterrestrial or pastoral styles dependent on the caprice of each season in Paris, and other subjects of diverse interest. About herself, she said that she lived with her mother, an aged servant, and her dog, Cleo. She added that four years ago her father had gone out to buy cigarettes, and had disappeared from their lives forever. About her fiancé, Army Captain Gustavo Morante, she said not a word. Francisco would learn of his existence much later.
For dessert, they were served preserved papayas that had been grown in the warm northern regions. She caressed them with eyes and spoon, anticipating her pleasure. Francisco realized that she, like him, respected certain earthly pleasures. Irene did not finish her dessert, but left a bite on the plate.
“That way I can savor it later in my memory,” she explained. “And now tell me about yourself. . . .”
In a few words, since by nature and professional training he was more inclined to listen attentively than to talk, he told her that for some time he had not found employment as a psychologist and was looking for any respectable job. Photography had seemed a good possibility, but since he had not wanted to be like those amateurs who end up begging to photograph weddings, baptisms, and birthdays, he had come to the magazine.
“Tomorrow I’m going to interview some prostitutes. Do you want to come along and give it a try?” Irene asked.
Francisco accepted on the spot, brushing aside a shadow of sadness, thinking how much easier it was to earn a living by clicking a shutter than it was by placing his experience and hard-won knowledge at the service of his fellow man.
When the waiter brought their check, Irene opened her purse to pay, but Francisco’s father had given him what he called the strict upbringing of a caballero: courtesy, after all, had never stood in the way of revolutionary fervor. To the surprise and displeasure of the young journalist, Francisco reached for the check, ignoring the advances the liberationists had made in their campaigns for equality.
“You’re out of work, let me pay,” she insisted. In the following months, the check would be one of their few sources of argument.
Soon Francisco Leal had the first indication of the drawbacks of his new occupation. The next day, he accompanied Irene to the red-light district of the city, certain that she had made previous contacts. This was not so. They reached the district at dusk and wandered through the streets with such a lost air that a number of potential clients accosted the reporter, asking her price. After a period of observation, Irene approached a brunette who was firmly ensconced on a street corner beneath the light from multicolor neon signs.
“Excuse me, señorita. Are you a whore?”
Francisco prepared to defend Irene in the justifiable eventuality that the brunette should hit Irene over the head with her pocketbook, but nothing like that happened. On the contrary, she further inflated her breasts like two balloons ready to explode from her blouse and smiled, gladdening the night with the gleam of a gold tooth.
“At your service, honey,” she replied.
Irene explained why they were there, and the whore offered her collaboration with the good will people feel for the pr
ess. This attracted the curiosity of her companions as well as a few passersby. In a few minutes a group had formed, causing a certain urban congestion. Francisco suggested that they clear the way before a patrol car arrived, which happened every time more than three persons congregated without authorization from Police Headquarters. The brunette led them to the Chinese Mandarin, where the amiable conversation continued, now with the madam and other girls of the house, while the clients waited patiently and even offered to participate in the interview on condition that their anonymity be respected.
Francisco was not accustomed to asking intimate questions outside his consulting office or without therapeutic goals in mind, and he had to smile as Irene Beltrán conducted her long interrogation: how many men per night, what was the total pay, the special prices for students and old men, their diseases, sorrows, and abuse, the retirement age, and how much did the percentage increase for pimps and police? From her lips this questioning acquired the pristine air of innocence. By the time she finished her work, she was on excellent terms with the ladies of the night, and Francisco feared that she might decide to move to the Chinese Mandarin. Later he learned that she was always this way, putting heart and soul into anything she did. In the months that followed, he saw her on the verge of adopting a baby after an investigation about orphans, of plummeting from an airplane after some parachutists, and of fainting from fright in a haunted house where they suffered hours of terror.
After that night, he accompanied her on most of her assignments. The photographs contributed to the Leal budget and signaled a change in Francisco’s life, which was now enriched with new adventures. Contrasting with the frivolity and ephemeral glitter of the magazine was the harsh reality of the clinic in the working-class neighborhood of his brother José, where three times a week Francisco treated the most desperate patients, always with the sensation of helping very little because there was no consolation for such misery. No one in the publishing house suspected the new photographer. He seemed a tranquil man. Not even Irene knew of his secret life, although occasional hints piqued her curiosity. It would be much later, after they had crossed the frontier of shadows, that she would discover the other face of that gentle friend of few words. In the following months their relationship grew closer. They could not get along without each other; they became accustomed to being together at work and in their free time, inventing pretexts not to be apart. They shared their days, surprised at the number of their meetings. They loved the same music, read the same poets, preferred dry white wine, laughed in unison, were angered by the same injustices, and smiled at the same setbacks. Irene found it strange that at times Francisco disappeared for a day or two, but he eluded explanations and she had to accept the fact without questions. Her feeling was similar to Francisco’s during the time she was with her fiancé, but neither of the two knew how to recognize jealousy.
* * *
Digna Ranquileo consulted don Simón, known in every corner of the region for his medical successes, far more numerous than those of the hospital. Illnesses, he said, are of two kinds: either they cure themselves or they have no remedy. In the first instance, he could alleviate the symptoms and shorten the convalescence, but if he came across an incurable patient he sent him to the doctor in Los Riscos, thus protecting his prestige and, in passing, casting doubt on traditional medicine. Digna found him resting in a rush chair in the doorway of his house, three blocks from the town plaza. He was scratching his belly contentedly and conversing with a parrot shifting from leg to leg on his shoulder.
“I’ve brought you my little girl,” said Digna, blushing.
“Isn’t this the switched Evangelina?” was the healer’s brash greeting.
Digna nodded. Slowly the man rose to his feet and invited them inside his dwelling. They entered a large shadowy room lined with flasks, dried branches, herbs hanging from the rooftree, and printed and framed prayers on the wall; it looked more like the cave of a shipwrecked sailor than the consulting room of a scientist, which was what don Simón liked to call himself. He insisted that he had received a medical degree in Brazil, and to anyone who doubted him he displayed a grimy diploma with florid signatures and a border of golden angels. An oilcloth curtain isolated one corner of the room. Eyes rolled back in his head, and lost in concentration, he listened as the mother related the particulars of their misfortune. From the corner of his eye he glanced at Evangelina, detailing the marks of scratches on her skin and the pallor of her face, in spite of cheeks cracked by the cold and violet shadows beneath her eyes. He knew those symptoms, but to be completely sure he asked her to go through the curtain and take off all her clothes.
“I’m going to examine your girl, señora Ranquileo,” he said, depositing the parrot on the table and following Evangelina.
After examining her in great detail, and making her urinate into a basin in order to study the nature of her bodily fluids, don Simón corroborated his suspicions.
“Someone has cast the evil eye on her.”
“Is there a cure for that, don?” Digna Ranquileo asked, frightened.
“Yes, there’s a cure, but we have to find out who did it before we can find the cure, you understand?”
“No.”
“Find out who hates the girl and tell me so I can help her get better.”
“No one hates Evangelina, don Simón. She’s an innocent little girl. Who could have anything against her?”
“Some rejected man, or a jealous woman?” the healer suggested, glancing at his patient’s minuscule breasts.
Evangelina burst into disconsolate sobs, and her mother quivered with anger; she had watched her daughter closely and was sure she had not strayed, and even less could she imagine anyone who wanted to harm her. Besides, Digna had had less confidence in don Simón ever since she learned his wife was deceiving him, believing—rightly so—that he must not be all that wise if he was the only person in the village who did not know he had horns. She doubted his diagnosis but did not wish to be discourteous. With much beating about the bush, she asked for some medicine so as not to leave with empty hands.
“Prescribe some vitamins for her, don, to see if she can get over this. Maybe along with the evil eye she has the English disease?”
Don Simón gave her a handful of homemade pills and some leaves that had been ground to dust in a mortar.
“Dissolve this in wine and give it to her twice a day. You also need to put mustard plasters on her and douse her in cold water. And don’t forget the sweet chestnut tea. It always helps in these cases.”
“And if she takes all this will the attacks go away?”
“The fever in her belly will go away, but as long as she’s evil-eyed she won’t get any better. If she has another attack, bring her to me and I’ll do an ensalmo. Maybe she’ll need herbs and spells.”
Three days later, mother and daughter found themselves back for intensified treatment, because Evangelina was suffering an attack every day, always around noon. This time the healer took energetic measures. He led his patient behind the oilcloth, removed her clothing with his own hands, and washed her from head to foot with a mixture composed of camphor, methylene blue, and holy water, in equal parts, pausing with special attention on the areas most afflicted by the sickness: heels, breasts, back, and navel. Friction, fright, and the healer’s strong palms stained the girl’s skin a sky blue and made her shiver and shake so hard she nearly swooned. Fortunately, he then administered a calming syrup of agrimony, but that left the girl weakened and trembling. After the ensalmo, he gave Digna a long list of recommendations and various medicinal herbs: aspen to combat restlessness and anxiety, chicory for self-pity, gentian to ward off depression, gorse against suicide and weeping fits, holly to prevent hatred and envy, and pine to cure remorse and panic. He told them to fill a pan with springwater, throw in the leaves and flowers, and let them brew in the sunlight for four hours before bringing them to a boil over a slow fire.
He reminded Digna that for love impatience in innocents you must dose their food with alum and avoid letting them share a bed with other family members, because the fever is contagious, like measles. Finally he gave her a flask of small calcium pills and a disinfectant soap for her daily bath.
At the end of a week the girl had grown thin, her gaze was troubled and her hands tremulous, her stomach was constantly churning, but the attacks continued. Conquering her natural resistance, Digna Ranquileo then took Evangelina to Los Riscos Hospital, where a young doctor newly arrived from the capital, who expressed himself in scientific terms and had never heard of the megrims, the cholera morbus, to say nothing of the evil eye, assured Digna that Evangelina was suffering from hysteria. It was his opinion that they should ignore her and hope that when she grew out of adolescence she would also grow out of the attacks. He prescribed a tranquilizer that would fell an ox and warned her that if she kept having her fits she would have to be referred to the Psychiatric Hospital in the capital, where they would restore her good sense with a few electric shocks. Digna wanted to know whether hysteria caused the cups to dance on the shelves, the dogs to howl like lost souls, a noisy rain of invisible stones on the roof, and the furniture to rock back and forth, but the doctor preferred not to venture into such deep waters and limited himself to recommending that they set the dishes in a safe place and tie up the animals on the patio.
When she began taking his medication, Evangelina sank into a deep stupor that resembled death. It was all they could do to get her to open her eyes to be fed. They would put a spoonful between her lips and then splash her face with cold water to remind her to chew and swallow. They had to go with her to the privy, afraid that she would be overcome by sleep and fall in. She stayed fast in bed, and when her parents got her to her feet, she would take a couple of drunken steps and fall to the floor snoring. This dreamlike state was interrupted at midday for her usual trance, the only moment she roused to give any signs of vitality. Before a week had gone by, the pills prescribed at the hospital ceased to have any effect, and she entered a stage of sadness that kept her silent and sleepless both day and night. At that point the mother took the initiative and buried the pills in a deep hole in the garden where they would never be found by any living creature.