The Stories of Eva Luna Page 8

  Fortunato II married a trapeze artist, and they had a son they named Horacio. But one day wife-and-mother stayed behind, determined to be independent of her husband and support herself through her somewhat precarious calling, leaving the boy in his father’s care. Her son held a rather dim picture of her in his memory, never completely separating the image of his mother from that of the many acrobats he had known. When he was ten, his father married another circus artist, this time an equestrienne able to stand on her head on a galloping steed or leap from one croup to another with eyes blindfolded. She was very beautiful. No matter how much soap, water, and perfume she used, she could not erase the last trace of the essence of horse, a sharp aroma of sweat and effort. In her magnificent bosom the young Horacio, enveloped in that unique odor, found consolation for his mother’s absence. But with time the horsewoman also decamped without a farewell. In the ripeness of his years, Fortunato II entered into matrimony, for the third and final time, with a Swiss woman he met on a tour bus in America. He was weary of his Bedouin-like existence and felt too old for new alarms, so when his Swiss bride requested it, he had not the slightest difficulty in giving up the circus for a sedentary life, and ended his days on a small farm in the Alps amid bucolic hills and woods. His son Horacio, who was a little over twenty, took charge of the family business.

  Horacio had grown up with the instability of moving every few days, of sleeping on wheels and living beneath a canvas roof, but he was very content with his fate. He had never envied other little boys who wore gray uniforms to school and who had their destinies mapped out before they were born. By contrast, he felt powerful and free. He knew all the secrets of the circus, and with the same confidence and ease he mucked out the animal cages or balanced fifty meters above the ground dressed as a hussar and charming the audience with his dolphin smile. If at any moment he longed for stability, he did not admit it, even in his sleep. The experience of having been abandoned first by his mother and then by his stepmother had left him slightly insecure, especially with women, but it had not made him a cynic, because he had inherited his grandfather’s sentimental heart. He had an enormous flair for the circus, but he was fascinated by the commercial aspect of the business even more than by the art. He had intended to be rich from the time he was a young boy, with the naïve conviction that money would bring the security he had not received from his family. He increased the number of tentacles spreading from the family enterprise by buying a chain of boxing arenas in several capital cities. From boxing he moved naturally to wrestling, and as he was a man of inventive imagination he transformed that gross sport into a dramatic spectacle. Among his initiatives were the Mummy, who appeared at ringside in an Egyptian sarcophagus; Tarzan, who covered his privates with a tiger skin so tiny that with every lunge the audience held its breath, expecting some major revelation; and the Angel, who every night bet his golden hair and lost it to the scissors of the ferocious Kuramoto—a Mapuche Indian disguised as a Samurai—but then appeared the following day with curls intact, irrefutable proof of his divine condition. These and other commercial ventures, along with public appearances with a pair of bodyguards whose role it was to intimidate his competitors and pique the ladies’ curiosity, had earned him a reputation of being a shady character, a distinction he reveled in. He lived a good life, traveled through the world closing deals and looking for monsters, frequented clubs and casinos, owned a glass mansion in California and a retreat in the Yucatán, but lived most of the year in luxury hotels. He bought the temporary company of a series of blondes. He liked them soft, with ample bosoms, in homage to the memory of his stepmother, but he wasted very little energy on amorous affairs, and when his grandfather urged him to marry and bring sons into the world so the Fortunato name would not vanish without an heir, he replied that not even out of his mind would he ascend the matrimonial gallows. He was a dark-skinned, hefty man with thick hair slicked back with brilliantine, shrewd eyes, and an authoritative voice that accentuated his self-satisfied vulgarity. He was obsessed with elegance and he bought clothes befitting a duke—but his suits were a little too shiny, his ties verging on the audacious, the ruby in his ring too ostentatious, his cologne too penetrating. He had the heart of a lion tamer, and no English tailor alive would ever disguise that fact.

  This man, who had spent a good part of his existence cutting a wide swath with his lavish life-style, met Patricia Zimmerman on a Tuesday in March, and on the spot lost both unpredictability of spirit and clarity of thought. He was sitting in the only restaurant in the city that still refused to serve blacks, with four cohorts and a diva whom he was planning to take to the Bahamas for a week, when Patricia entered the room on her husband’s arm, dressed in silk and adorned with some of the diamonds that had made the Zimmerman firm famous. Nothing could have been further from the unforgettable stepmother smelling of horses, or the complacent blondes, than this woman. He watched her advance, small, refined, her chest bones bared by her décolletage and her chestnut-colored hair drawn back into a severe bun, and he felt his knees grow heavy and an insufferable burning in his breast. He preferred uncomplicated women ready for a good time, whereas this was a woman who would have to be studied carefully if her worth was to be known, and even then her virtues would be visible only to an eye trained in appreciating subtleties—which had never been the case with Horacio Fortunato. If the fortune-teller in his circus had consulted her crystal ball and predicted that Fortunato would fall in love at first sight with a fortyish and haughty aristocrat, he would have had a good laugh. But that is exactly what happened as he watched Patricia walk toward him like the shade of a nineteenth-century widow-empress in her dark gown with the glitter of all those diamonds shooting fire at her neck. As Patricia walked past, she paused for an instant before that giant with the napkin tucked into his waistcoat and a trace of gravy at the corner of his mouth. Horacio Fortunato caught a whiff of her perfume and the full impact of her aquiline profile and completely forgot the diva, the bodyguards, his business affairs, everything that interested him in life, and decided with absolute seriousness to steal this woman from her jeweler and love her to the best of his ability. He turned his chair to one side and, ignoring his guests, measured the distance that separated her from him, while Patricia Zimmerman wondered whether that stranger was examining her jewels with some evil design.

  That same night an extravagant bouquet of orchids was delivered to the Zimmerman residence. Patricia looked at the card, a sepia-colored rectangle with a name from a novel written in golden arabesques. What ghastly taste, she muttered, divining immediately it had come from the man with the plastered-down hair she had seen in the restaurant, and she ordered the gift to be tossed into the street, with the hope that the sender would be circling the house and thus learn the fate of his flowers. The following day a crystal box arrived bearing a single perfect rose, without a card. The majordomo also placed this offering in the trash. Different bouquets followed for the rest of the week: a basket of wild flowers on a bed of lavender, a pyramid of white carnations in a silver goblet, a dozen black tulips imported from Holland, and other varieties impossible to find in this hot climate. Each suffered the fate of the first, but this did not discourage the gallant, whose siege was becoming so unbearable that Patricia Zimmerman did not dare answer the telephone for fear of hearing his voice whispering indecent proposals, as had happened the previous Tuesday at two in the morning. She returned his letters unopened. She stopped going out, because she ran into Fortunato in the most unexpected places: observing her from the adjoining box at the opera; in the street, waiting to open the door of her car before the chauffeur could reach it; materializing like an illusion in an elevator or on some stairway. She was a prisoner in her own home, and frightened. He’ll get over it, he’ll get over it, she kept telling herself, but Fortunato did not evaporate like a bad dream; he was always there, on the other side of the wall, breathing heavily. She thought of calling the police, or telling her husband, but her horror of scandal p
revented her. One morning she was attending to her correspondence when the majordomo announced the visit of the president of Fortunato and Sons.

  “In my own house, how dare he!” Patricia muttered, her heart racing. She had to call on the implacable discipline she had acquired in years of small dramas played in salons to disguise the trembling of her hands and voice. For an instant she was tempted to confront this madman once and for all, but she realized that her strength would fail her; she felt defeated even before she saw him.

  “Tell him I’m not in. Show him the door, and inform the servants that the gentleman is not welcome in this house,” she ordered.

  The next day there were no exotic flowers at breakfast, and Patricia thought with a sigh of relief, or dejection, that the man must finally have understood her message. That morning she felt free for the first time in a week, and she went out for a game of tennis and a trip to the beauty salon. She returned home at two in the afternoon with a new haircut and a bad headache. On the hall table she saw a royal purple velvet jewel box with the name Zimmerman printed in gold letters. She opened it rather absently, thinking that her husband had left it there, but found a necklace of emeralds accompanied by one of those pretentious sepia cards she had come to know and detest. Her headache turned to panic. This adventurer seemed prepared to ruin her life; as if it wasn’t enough to buy a necklace from her own husband, he then had the gall to send it to her house. She could not throw this gift into the trash, as she had done with the flowers. With the case clutched to her bosom, she locked herself in her writing room. A half-hour later, she called the chauffeur and ordered him to deliver a package to the same address to which he had returned several letters. As she handed him the jewels she felt no relief; to the contrary, she had the impression that she was sinking into a quagmire.

  At the same time, Fortunato was slogging through his own swamp, getting nowhere, feeling his way blindly. He had never spent so much money and time to court a woman, although it was true, he admitted, that all his women had been quite different from this one. For the first time in his life as a showman, he felt ridiculous. He could not go on this way; always strong as an ox, his health was suffering, he slept only a few hours at a time, he was short of breath, he had heart palpitations, he felt fire in his stomach and ringing in his temples. His business was similarly suffering the impact of his love fever; he was making hasty decisions, and losing money. Good Christ, I don’t know who I am or what I’m doing here; damn it all, he grumbled, sweating, but not for a minute did he consider abandoning the chase.

  Slumped in an armchair in the hotel where he was staying, the purple jewel box back in his hands, Fortunato remembered his grandfather. He rarely thought of his father, but his memory often dwelt on that formidable ancestor who at ninety-some years was still cultivating his garden. He picked up the telephone and asked for long distance.

  The elder Fortunato was nearly deaf and, in addition, unable to adapt to the mechanism of that devilish apparatus that carried voices halfway around the planet, but the years had not affected his lucidity. He listened carefully to his grandson’s sorrowful tale, speaking only at the end.

  “So, the sly vixen is giving herself the luxury of snubbing my boy, is that it, eh?”

  “She won’t even look at me, Nono. She’s rich, she’s beautiful, she’s classy. . . . She has everything.”

  “Ummm . . . including a husband.”

  “Yes, but that’s not important. If I could only speak to her.”

  “Speak to her? What about? You have nothing to say to a woman like that, son.”

  “I gave her a necklace fit for a queen and she returned it without a word.”

  “Well, give her something she doesn’t have.”

  “What, for example?”

  “A good excuse to laugh, that always gets ’em.” And his grandfather nodded off with the receiver in his hand, dreaming of the pretty things who had given him their hearts as he performed his death-defying acrobatics on the trapeze or danced with his monkey.

  The next day in his office the jeweler Zimmerman received a splendid young woman, a manicurist by trade, she said; she had come, she explained, to sell back at half price the very emerald necklace he had sold only forty-eight hours before. The jeweler remembered the purchaser very well; impossible to forget such a conceited boor.

  “I need something that will crumble the defenses of a haughty lady,” he had said.

  Zimmerman had studied him a moment, and decided he must be one of those new oil or cocaine millionaires. He could not tolerate vulgarity; he was accustomed to a different class of customer. He rarely served clients himself, but this man had insisted on speaking to him and seemed prepared to spend an unlimited amount of money.

  “What do you recommend?” the man had asked before the tray where the most valuable jewels sparkled.

  “It depends upon the lady. Rubies and pearls look good on dark skin; emeralds on someone fairer; and diamonds are perfect for anyone.”

  “She has too many diamonds. Her husband gives them to her as if they were candy.”

  Zimmerman coughed. He disliked this kind of confidence. The man picked up the necklace, held it to the light with no respect, shook it like a sleigh bell, and the air filled with tinkling and green sparks as the jeweler’s ulcer twitched within him.

  “Do you think emeralds bring good luck?”

  “I suppose that all precious stones fit that description, sir, but I am not superstitious.”

  “This is a very special woman. I don’t want to make any mistake with the gift, you understand?”

  “Perfectly.”

  But apparently that was precisely what had happened, Zimmerman told himself, unable to restrain a scornful smirk when the girl returned the necklace. No, there was nothing wrong with the jewels, the mistake was the girl. He had imagined a more refined woman, certainly not a manicurist carrying a plastic handbag and wearing a cheap blouse. He was, nonetheless, intrigued by the girl, there was something vulnerable and pathetic about her, poor child; she would not fare well in the hands of that bandit, he thought.

  “Why don’t you tell me the whole story, my dear,” said Zimmerman finally.

  The girl spun him the tale she had memorized, and an hour later left the shop with a light step. According to plan, the jeweler had not only bought back the necklace, he had invited her to dinner as well. It was plain to her that Zimmerman was one of those men who are astute and suspicious in business dealings but naïve in every other regard; she would have no difficulty distracting him the amount of time Horacio Fortunato needed and was prepared to pay for.

  That was a memorable night for Zimmerman; he had planned on dinner but found himself in the grip of an unexpected passion. The next day he saw his new friend again and by the end of the week he was stammering to Patricia something about going to New York for a few days to attend a sale of Russian jewels saved from the massacre of Ekaterinburg. His wife was totally unmoved.

  * * *

  Alone in her house, too listless to go out and suffering that headache that came and went without respite, Patricia decided to devote her Saturday to recouping her strength. She settled on the terrace to leaf through some fashion magazines. It had not rained for a week and the air was still and hot. She read awhile, until the sun made her drowsy; her body grew heavy, her eyes closed, and the magazine slipped from her hands. At that moment she heard a sound from deep in the garden; she thought it must be the gardener, a headstrong old man who in less than a year had transformed her property into a tropical jungle, ripping out pots of chrysanthemums to make way for an efflorescence gone wild. She opened her eyes, stared half-seeing against the sun, and saw something unusually large moving in the top of the avocado tree. She removed her dark glasses and sat up. No doubt about it, a shadow was moving up there, and it was not part of the foliage.

  Patricia Zimmerman rose from her chair and walked forw
ard a step or two; then she saw it clearly: a ghostly blue-clad figure with a golden cape flew several meters over her head, turned a somersault in the air and, for an instant, seemed to freeze at the moment of waving to her from the sky. She choked back a scream, sure that the apparition would plummet like a stone and be pulverized on contact with the ground, but the cape filled with air and that gleaming coleopteron stretched out its arms and swung into a nearby medlar tree. Immediately, a second blue figure appeared, hanging by its legs in the top branches of another tree, swinging by the wrists a young girl wearing a flower crown. The first gave a signal and the holder released the girl, who scattered a rain of paper butterflies before being caught by the ankles. Patricia did not dare move while those silent, gold-caped birds flew through the air.

  Suddenly a whoop filled the garden, a long, barbaric yowl that tore Patricia’s attention from the trapeze artists. She saw a thick rope fall from the rear wall of the property and, climbing down it, Tarzan, in person, the same Tarzan of the matinées and comic books of her childhood, with his skimpy loincloth and live monkey on his hip. The King of the Jungle leapt gracefully to earth, thumped his chest with his fists, and repeated the visceral bellow, attracting all the servants, who rushed out to the terrace. With a wave of the hand, Patricia gestured to them to stay where they were, while the voice of Tarzan gave way to a lugubrious drumroll announcing a retinue of four Egyptian dancers who advanced as if trapped in a frieze, head and feet at right angles to their bodies; they were followed by a hunchback wearing a striped hooded cape and leading a black panther at the end of a chain. Then came two monks carrying a sarcophagus and, behind them, an angel with long golden locks and then, bringing up the rear, an Indian disguised as a Japanese wearing a dressing gown and wooden clogs. All of them paused behind the swimming pool. The monks deposited the coffin on the grass and, while the Egyptian maidens chanted softly in some dead tongue and the Angel and Kuramoto rippled their prodigious muscles, the lid of the sarcophagus swung open and a nightmarish creature emerged from inside. Once revealed, swathed in gauze, it was obvious that this was a mummy in perfect health. At this moment, Tarzan yodeled another cry and, with absolutely no provocation, began hopping around the Egyptians, brandishing the simian. The Mummy lost its millenary patience, lifted one rigid arm and let it swing like a cudgel against the nape of the savage’s neck, who fell to the ground, his face buried in the lawn. The monkey screamed and scrambled up a tree. Before the embalmed pharaoh could deliver a second blow, Tarzan leapt to his feet and fell upon the Mummy with a roar. Locked in legendary combat, their rolling and thrashing freed the panther; the characters in the parade ran to hide in the garden and all the servants flew back to the safety of the kitchen. Patricia was about to jump into the pool when, as if by magic, an individual in tails and a top hat appeared and with one snap of his whip stopped the cat, who fell to the ground purring like a pussycat, with all four paws in the air; the hunchback recaptured the chain, as the ringmaster swept off his hat and pulled from it a meringue torte that he carried to the terrace and deposited at the feet of the lady of the house.