The Woman from Uruguay Read online

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  A Note on the Author and Translator

  ONE

  You told me I talked in my sleep. That’s the first thing I remember from that morning. The alarm went off at six. Maiko had gotten into bed with us. You nestled into me and the words were whispered in my ear, so as not to wake him, but also I think to keep us from facing each other, from talking with our morning breath.

  “Want me to make you some coffee?”

  “No, my love. You two keep sleeping.”

  “You were talking in your sleep. You scared me.”

  “What did I say?”

  “The same thing as last time: ‘Guerra.’ ”

  “Weird.”

  “Very. ‘Guerra’? Meaning ‘war’?”

  I took a shower, got dressed. Gave you and Maiko a Judas kiss.

  “Have a good trip,” you said.

  “See you tonight.”

  “Be careful.”

  I took the elevator down to the garage in the basement and drove out. It was still dark. I didn’t put on any music. I went down Billinghurst, turned on Libertador. There was already some traffic, mostly semis closer to the port. In the Buquebus parking lot, the attendant informed me they were full. I had to go back out and leave the car in a lot on the other side of the avenue. I didn’t like that because it meant that when I came back that night I’d have to walk those two dark blocks along the abandoned train tracks with all my savings on me, in cash.

  At the check-in counter there wasn’t any line. I handed over my ID.

  “Fast ferry to Colonia?” the agent asked me.

  “Yes, and the bus to Montevideo.”

  “Coming back today, as well, on the direct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right …” he said, looking at me just a second too long. He printed my ticket and handed it to me with an icy smile. I avoided his eyes. He made me nervous. Why had he looked at me like that? Could they be making a list of the people who went and came back in one day?

  I went up the escalator to go through Customs. I sent my backpack through the scanner, circled through the empty labyrinth of ropes. “Next,” they called. The immigration officer checked my ID, my ticket. “Alright, Lucas, stand in front of the camera if you would, please. Excellent. Put your right thumb … Thank you.”

  I took my ticket and my ID and entered the departure lounge. The rest of the passengers were there already, in one long line. Through the glass I could see the ferry completing its maneuvers to dock. I bought the most expensive coffee and croissant in history (a sticky croissant, a radioactive coffee) and devoured them instantly. I went to the end of the line and heard some Brazilian couples around me, some French people, and some accent from elsewhere in Argentina, the North, maybe Salta. There were other men going solo, like me; maybe they were also going to Uruguay for the day, for work or to bring back cash.

  The line moved, and I walked down the carpeted hallways and got on the ferry. The biggest section, with all those rows of seats, looked a little like a movie theater. I found a place by the window, sat down and sent you a message: All aboard. Love you. I looked out the window. It was getting light now. A yellow mist had swallowed up the jetty.

  That’s when I wrote the email you later found:

  Guerra, I’m on my way. 2pm okay?

  I never left my email open. Ever. I was very, very careful about that. It comforted me that there was a part of my brain I didn’t share with you. I needed my lock on the door, my privacy, my shadow run, even if only for some quiet. It terrifies me the way couples become conjoined: same opinions, same degree of drunkenness, as if man and wife shared one bloodstream. There must be a chemical leveling that occurs after years of maintaining that constant choreography. Same place, same routines, same diet, simultaneous sex life, identical stimuli, shared temperature, income, fears, incentives, walks, plans … What kind of two-headed monster gets created that way? You get symmetrical with your partner, metabolisms synchronize, you operate as mirror images; a binary being with a single set of desires. And the kids are there to giftwrap that lockstep and slap an eternal bow on it. The idea is pure suffocation.

  I say “idea” because I think both of us fought against it despite the fact that we were slowly being conquered by inertia. My body stopped ending at my fingertips; it kept going into yours. A single body. There wasn’t any Lucas, any Catalina anymore. But then the hermeticism was punctured, cracked: me talking in my sleep, you reading my emails … In some parts of the Caribbean, couples name their kid a composite of their names. If we’d had a daughter, we could have called her Lucalina, for example, and Maiko we could have named Catalucas. That’s the name of the monster you and I were, decanting into each other. I don’t care for that idea of love. I need a nook of my own. Why did you go through my emails? Were you trying to pick the fight, to tell me how you really felt at last? I never checked your emails. You always left your inbox open, and that decreased my curiosity, true. But it also just wouldn’t have occurred to me to start rifling through your things.

  The ferry set sail. The dock got smaller. You could see a bit of the coast out the window, guess at the buildings, their outlines. What an enormous relief. To leave. Even if it was just for a little while. To get out of the country. The loudspeakers announced the safety guidelines—in Spanish, in Portuguese, in English. Life vests under every seat. A moment later: “We are pleased to inform you that the duty-free shop is now open.” Whoever invented the term “duty-free” is a genius. The more restrictions they put on trade, the more we like that term in Argentina. What a bizarre idea of freedom.

  Here I was, traveling to smuggle in my own money. My advance on my last book. The cash that was going to solve everything. Even my depression, my sense of imprisonment, and the great “of course not” overriding everything in my life. Not going out because I don’t have any money, not sending the letter, not printing the form, not inquiring with the agency, not letting on how mad I am, not painting the chairs, not handling the mold, not sending out my résumé. And why not? Because I don’t have any money.

  I’d opened the account in Montevideo in April. Only now, in September, were the advances from Spain and Colombia coming in, despite my having signed the contracts ages ago. If they had transferred the money in dollars to Argentina, the bank would have converted it into pesos at the official rate and then taken off the tax. If I went to pick it up in Uruguay and brought it back in bills, I could exchange it in Buenos Aires at the unofficial exchange rate and end up with over twice as much. The trip was worth it, worth even the risk that they’d catch me with the cash at Customs on the way back, since I was planning to cross the border with more dollars than anyone was allowed to bring into the country.

  The River Plate: never has its name—from the Spanish word for “silver,” and the South American for “cash”—been more apt. The water was beginning to gleam. I was going to be able to pay you back what I owed you for the months I hadn’t had any work, when we’d lived off your salary alone. I was going to be able to dedicate my time exclusively to writing for ten months or so, if I was careful about what I spent. The sun was coming out. My losing streak was coming to an end.

  I remember that day we actually paid the toll on the highway in coins. We were going to visit my brother in Pilar. The woman in the booth couldn’t believe it. She counted the coins, fifteen pesos in coins. “There’s fifty centavos missing,” she said. The h
onking had started behind us. “It has to all be there, count it again,” I said. “It’s fine, just go,” she said, and we took off laughing, you and I, but deep down there was something painful about it, I think, something we never confessed. Because you used to say: we have some issues with our finances, not with how much money we have. And I thought you were right. But I kept not finishing projects, kept not quite finalizing any deals with anyone. I didn’t want to teach, and a silence was born and grew bigger with every passing month, as the kitchen sink fell in and I propped it up with some cans, and the Teflon got scratched in our pots, as one of the light fixtures in the living room burned out and left us in partial darkness, as the washing machine broke, and the old oven began to give off a strange smell, and the steering wheel in the car shook like the a space shuttle making its way through the atmosphere … And my tooth ended up only half fixed because the crown was expensive, and we suspended your IUD until further notice, we owed two months at Maiko’s preschool, we fell behind on our bills, our premiums, and one day both our cards were declined at Walmart while Maiko threw a tantrum on the floor between the registers, and we had to return all the items we had put in our cart. We were angry and ashamed. Insufficient funds.

  We fought on the balcony, once, and then again in the kitchen, you sitting on the marble counter, legs crossed, crying, putting ice on your eyes. “I have to go to work tomorrow with my eyes like this, fuck,” you were saying. You were fed up with me, with my toxic cloud, my pollution. “You seem beaten,” you told me, “defeated. I don’t get what you want.” I was standing next to the refrigerator, anesthetized, not knowing what to say. I flailed about, I felt cornered and couldn’t think of anything better to talk about than my own frustration. I provoked you just to see what you would say. “If you want to limit your sex life to a couple of orgasms a month, you do that, I can’t live this way,” I told you.

  When I went out or finished a reading or spoke on some roundtable at some cultural center, I’d have a drink, and someone would come up and talk to me, a girl of twenty-five or a MILF of fifty, ask me a question, smile at me, want it, want me, and I’d think, just a couple of beers and then off to the telo, the hourly hotel, a little adventure, my fangs would come out, I was a lion tied up with deli string, “I have to go,” I’d say, a kiss on the cheek, “Too bad,” she’d say, “Yeah, I have a small child, bucket of cold water, he’ll wake me up tomorrow.” That’s it, c’est fini.

  And I’d go out into the night, get on a bus, get home, you’d be sleeping, I’d spoon you, hold you, nothing, you’d be exhausted, fast asleep. Maiko would come and get in bed with us early. We’d get up. We’d make him his Nesquik, take him to preschool, you’d go to the city center. “Chau, see you tonight,” and when you’d come back, you’d be tired and want to go to bed without dinner, and I’d watch TV, accumulating anger, venomous testosterone. We’d go on like that for months.

  “Am I supposed to congratulate you for not fucking some girl?” you asked me, “Am I supposed to say thank you?” You were raring for a fight, a big one. And you would not let it go. You’re good at arguing. “Tell me what it is you want,” you were saying. I didn’t say any more. I didn’t want to go on.

  At what point did the monster you and I were start getting paralyzed? We used to fuck standing up, remember? On the terrace at your apartment on Agüero, up against that wardrobe we painted together, in the shower, on the dining room table one time. We were splendid, wanting one another. Hungry for each other. From the front, lifting up your leg against the wall, from the back on the armchair, knocking over the table arrangements, you on top and arching suddenly like you were about to be abducted by an alien spacecraft. We’d think of things, we’d switch positions, rotating, dynamic, on fire. Gradually our beast with two backs grew hobbled, lay down, didn’t get up again, or got up only because the bed was there, because we were touching, horizontal, the beast now lazy, our orgasms derived from just one position, predictable missionary, or maybe you’d be facedown, almost absent. Together and alone. Or those nights when you were so tired you didn’t even make it all the way into bed, staying suspended between the quilt and the sheet, and later in the darkness I would get under the sheet and not even be able to spoon you, let alone slip my hand under the waist of your pajamas, or hold your breasts, or kiss your neck, we were separated by the taut fabric, next to each other but inaccessible, as if on two distinct planes of reality.

  Most nights it went like that. I lay awake on my back, listening to your breathing—and then, around two in the morning, the drip that we would never identify the source of, the exact sound of insomnia, the leak of the unconscious. The most annoying part was that it flowed irregularly, it was unpredictable; but it was accumulating somewhere, no doubt forming a puddle, creating more mold, rotting the plaster, the cement, weakening the structure of the household. I’d have to go to the armchair in the living room, surf the web a little more, fall asleep there, then go back to bed, defeated. Because I guess you were right, I was defeated, I don’t know exactly why or by whom, but I took pleasure in it. “I was down for the count for a long time, a lover of errors,” goes the song I’d sing drunk later that day.

  I’d defeated myself, I suppose. My mental monologue, my contrarian’s stand. When I’m not writing or working, the volume of the words in my head goes way up, and I am inundated. Doubts grew like vines, surrounding me. I wondered who you were seeing. Those late nights when you’d be so dressed up and tired after meetings and drinks with the foundation … And those subtle changes: you used to rarely be waxed, and now I could feel how smooth your legs were whenever I brushed against you in bed. My head flooded with questions. Were you prepping and preening for someone who wasn’t me? And where were you meeting him, Cata? In telos? You’d never been one for telos, but maybe that was precisely what now made you curious. I wondered who it could be, I had nothing to go on, I figured it might be a member of the board, maybe. The triangle of your pubic area, always so seventies, such a bush, now seemed pruned, reduced, a little sharper. “For my swimsuit,” you told me, and it’s true you said that in December, with yet another summer of invitations to pools and backyards on its way.

  You went to the gynecologist and got your yeast infection treated, and you made me take the same medication in case I had it, too. Were we getting it treated, getting rid of that odor, for him, whoever he was? Those late nights piled up, when you’d come back after dinner, at one, two in the morning, and from our bed I would hear you in the bathroom letting the water run a long time, lots of soaping, taking off your makeup, using the bidet, brushing your teeth. I’m almost certain you started smoking again, and who with? I could almost see you on terraces with a glass of champagne in your hand and a cigarette, your smoking style, your smile. All of that washed away on your pit stop in the bathroom. One time you actually showered before getting into bed. Another night I smelled cologne on you, strong, though I’ll admit I am sensitive when it comes to smells, hypersensitive, and it might have been that it was just from all the kisses goodbye at your big end-of-year dinner. Where was your heart among all those cardiologists? You withdrew more and more, hiding inside yourself and rooting around in me trying to find something. Whenever my jealousy would ruffle me I’d get the urge to email you a set of instructions on how to be successful as a secret lover: you don’t just have to be waxed and careful, you also have to keep a clean pair of panties in your purse, use the bidet before and after every fuck, keep your obsession in check, postpone dates when you have your period, block his cell. Successful secret lovers don’t get periods. They don’t call, they don’t give gifts. They don’t bite in bed or wear blush or perfume. They leave no traces on the surface of the body. They simply sizzle with pleasure. They activate the central nervous system, turn it on from within.

  I was so naive. I had no idea about anything, embracing my role as the cast-off old man. Fortunately I never emailed you. I ruminated, chewed on my insecurities. That was my unemployed position, the stance of a
man who can’t provide. That was my impotence, asking you if you could transfer me some money, semicovertly requesting ten thousand pesos from my brother while he barbecued, and those Excel spreadsheets you loved to make so much, my numbers in red, my debt increasing. None of it was particularly erotic, I’ll admit. And it’s true that Mr. Lucas was now slightly older, slightly less attractive. Or at least that’s how I felt. My back was giving out on me, the roll of fat on my skinny-guy’s belly getting more prominent, stray grays on my head and my crotch, and then there was my dick that from one day to the next seemed to lean slightly to the right, like my compass had gone crazy and abandoned the north to point a little to the east, toward Uruguay. That’s what it was more than anything: my mind was elsewhere. And sometimes when you came back early, you’d find me watching the sunset on the balcony, clinging like a prisoner to the rail we’d put in when Maiko took his first few steps.

  The vibration of the ship had put me to sleep. When I opened my eyes again, the sun had come out over the river. We were coming up on Colonia already. My phone got reception again, and there was Guerra’s email answering mine:

  Great. 2pm. Same place as last time. Then I said her name, to myself, up against the glass, looking out at the water that gleamed like liquid silver.

  “Magalí Guerra Zabala.”

  I repeated it twice.

  TWO

  They announced over the loudspeakers that we were about to arrive, informed those passengers who were traveling with their cars that they could now go down into the hold, but that they were “to not turn on their engines until instructed.” Splitting the infinitive. I went up close to the exit, one of the first, wanting to get a good seat on the bus. But there was an immediate agglomeration of people. Those moments when you feel like cattle at the slaughterhouse. Everyone watching the closed door. We were on the verge of mooing. Then it opened.

  I’m in Uruguay, I thought, walking down that tin sleeve with see-through nylon windows. I went through Customs almost on tiptoe and went out to where the buses were. There was a guy ahead of me who stopped to smoke a cigarette, so I got there first. Or that’s what I thought. When I got on, I realized the bus was full of people. Maybe they were from another ferry.