The Truce, Page 2

  Sunday 24 February

  It’s hopeless. My encounter with Vignale left me obsessed with the memory of Isabel. It’s no longer about discovering her image through the familiar anecdotes, the photographs, or through some gesture made by Esteban or Blanca. I know all of her characteristics, but I don’t want to know them second-hand but rather to remember them directly, see them before me in every detail, just like I see my face in the mirror now. And I can’t find it. I know she had green eyes, but I can’t feel her gaze on me.

  Monday 25 February

  I don’t see my children very often. Our schedules don’t always coincide and our plans and interests even less. They are polite to me, but because they are tremendously reserved, their politeness always appears to be merely the fulfilment of a duty. Esteban, for example, always holds back in order to avoid discussing my opinions. Could it simply be the generation gap that separates us? Or could I do more to try to reach them? Generally, I view them as being more incredulous than they are foolish, and more engrossed in thought than I was at their age.

  This evening we had dinner together. It had probably been two months since we all had a meal together as a family. I asked jokingly what we were celebrating, but there was no reply. Blanca looked at me and smiled, as if to inform me she understood my good intentions and nothing more. I then began to listen to the scarce interruptions of the sacred silence. Jaime said the soup was tasteless. ‘The salt is four inches away from your right hand,’ replied Blanca, and scathingly added: ‘Would you like me to pass it to you?’ The soup was tasteless. It’s true, but what difference did it make? Esteban reported that starting in six months our rent would be raised by eighty pesos. Since we all contribute, the situation isn’t too serious. Jaime began to read the newspaper. I think it’s rude when people read the newspaper while dining with their family, and I told him so. Jaime stopped reading the newspaper, but it was as if he hadn’t, because he continued being sullen and angry. I related my encounter with Vignale, trying to make light of it in an attempt to introduce a little levity to our meal. But Jaime asked: ‘Which Vignale is it?’ ‘Mario Vignale,’ I replied. ‘Is he partly bald and has a moustache?’ ‘The same,’ I replied. ‘I know him,’ said Jaime. ‘He’s a piece of work, a friend of Ferreira’s. Well known for accepting bribes.’ Deep down I’m glad that Vignale is a worthless piece of filth, and therefore have no qualms about brushing him off. Then Blanca asked: ‘So, did he remember Mum?’ I thought Jaime was going to say something, that he had moved his lips, but he decided to remain quiet. ‘Lucky him,’ Blanca added. ‘I don’t.’ ‘I do,’ said Esteban. How does he remember? Is it like me, with memories of memories, or directly, like someone who sees their own face in the mirror? Is it possible that Esteban, who was only four years old at the time, can possess her image, and that I, on the other hand, who has logged so many, many, many nights, am left with nothing? We would make love in the dark. Perhaps that’s the reason. I’m sure that’s the reason. I have a tangible memory of those nights, and it’s indeed direct. But what about the daytime? During the day we weren’t in the dark. I would arrive home tired, full of problems, perhaps even furious with the injustice of that week, that month.

  Sometimes we went over our bills, but there was never enough to pay them. Perhaps we spent too much time looking at numbers, the additions, or the subtractions and didn’t have time to look at ourselves. Wherever she is, if she’s there, what memory could she have of me? Ultimately, does memory matter? ‘Sometimes I feel sad, over nothing more than not knowing what I’m missing,’ murmured Blanca, while she served the peaches in syrup. We each got three and a half.

  Wednesday 27 February

  Today, seven new employees joined the office: four men and three women. They all had a splendid frightened look on their faces, and every now and then directed a glance of respectful envy at the veteran workers. I was assigned two young men (one eighteen years old and the other twenty-two) and a young woman, twenty-four years of age. So now I’m truly a boss: I have no less than six employees working under me. And for the first time, a woman. I’ve never trusted women with numbers. Furthermore, there’s another drawback: during their menstrual period and even the day before, if they are normally intelligent, they become a little silly; if they are normally a little silly, they become complete imbeciles. These newbies who started today don’t seem too bad. The eighteen-year-old is the one I like the least. He has a weak, delicate face, and a shifty, yet fawning look about him. The other one is eternally dishevelled, but he has a pleasant disposition and (at least for now) a genuine interest in working. The young woman doesn’t seem too interested, but at least she understands what is explained to her; furthermore, she has a wide face and a large mouth, two features that generally impress me. Their names are Alfredo Santini, Rodolfo Sierra and Laura Avellaneda. I’ll assign the two men to the merchandise books, and the woman to the Production Assistant.

  Thursday 28 February

  Tonight I spoke to a Blanca who was almost a stranger to me. We were alone after dinner. I was reading the newspaper and she was playing solitaire. All of a sudden she froze, holding a card over her head with a sad and lost expression on her face. I watched her for a few moments and then asked her what she was thinking about. With that she appeared to wake up, directed a distressed look at me, and, unable to contain herself, sunk her head into her hands, as if she didn’t want anyone to defile her weeping. Whenever a woman cries in front of me, I become defenceless, and even clumsy. I become desperate and I don’t know how to remedy it. This time I followed a natural impulse as I stood up, walked over to her, and began to caress her head, all without saying a word. Little by little she calmed down and her weeping convulsions subsided. When she finally lowered her hands, I dried her eyes and wiped her nose with the unused half of my handkerchief. At that moment she didn’t look like a twenty-three-year-old woman but like a little girl, momentarily unhappy because her doll had broken or no one would take her to the zoo. I asked her if she was unhappy and she said yes. I asked her why and she said she didn’t know. I wasn’t that surprised. I sometimes feel unhappy myself for no concrete reason. In contrast to my own experience, I said: ‘Oh, there must be some reason. A person doesn’t cry for no reason.’ And then she started to talk fast, urged on by a sudden desire to be honest: ‘I have the terrible feeling that time goes by and I do nothing, nothing happens, and nothing moves me to the core. I look at Esteban and then I look at Jaime and I’m sure they’re also unhappy. Sometimes (don’t get angry, Dad) I also look at you and think that I wouldn’t want to reach fifty years of age and have your temperament, or your poise, simply because I find them commonplace and worn out. I find myself with a great abundance of energy, but I don’t know where to apply it, nor what to do with it. I think you resigned yourself to being gloomy, and I think that’s horrible because I know you’re not gloomy. Well, at least you weren’t before.’ I replied (what else could I tell her) that she was right, that she should do everything possible to get away from us, from our orbit, and that I was happy to hear her shout her disagreement, which was like hearing one of my own shouts from long ago. Then she smiled, said I was very kind, and threw her arms around my neck, like before. She’s still a little girl.

  Friday 1 March

  The manager held a meeting with the five section directors. For forty-five minutes he talked to us about low staff output. He said that the Board of Directors made him aware of the situation, and that, in future, he wasn’t going to allow his position to be gratuitously undermined due to staff laziness (how he likes to emphasize ‘laziness’). So that from now on, etc., etc.

  What do they mean by ‘low staff output’? At least I can say that my people work. And not only the new workers, but the veterans too. It’s true that Méndez reads detective novels which he blatantly places in the middle drawer of his desk, all the while holding a pen in his right hand in preparation for the possible appearance of some manager. It’s true that Muñoz takes advantage of his trips
to the Excess Profits Department by stealing twenty minutes of leisure from the company and nursing a beer. It’s true that when Robledo goes to the toilet (at ten-fifteen, exactly) he carries either the colour newspaper supplement or the sports section hidden under his smock. But it’s also true that the work is always up to date, and during the hours when a transaction needs urgent attention and the drawer crammed with invoices circulates continuously, they all exert themselves and really work as a team. Each of them is an expert in their limited specialty and I can have complete confidence that things are being done correctly.

  Actually, I know quite well where the manager’s complaint was directed. ‘Shipping’ work lazily and, moreover, do their job badly. Today we all knew that his complaint was about Suárez, so why ask all of us to attend the meeting? What right does Suárez have to share his exclusive blame with all of us? Could it be because the manager knows, like all of us, that Suárez sleeps with the president’s daughter? That Lidia Valverde isn’t bad-looking.

  Saturday 2 March

  Last night, for the first time in thirty years, I dreamed about my hooded men again. When I was four years old, or perhaps younger, eating was a nightmare. It was then that my grandmother devised a truly original method to help me eat mashed potatoes without too much trouble. She would put on my uncle’s enormous raincoat, place the hood on her head, and put on a pair of dark glasses. Dressed in this terrifying fashion, she would come and bang on my window. Afterwards, the servant, my mother and some aunt of mine would arrive and in unison proclaim: ‘There’s Don Policarpo!’ Don Policarpo was some sort of monster who punished children who didn’t eat their food. Despite being frozen in my own terror, I still had enough strength to move my jaws incredibly fast and finish the tasteless, plentiful mashed potatoes. This was convenient for everyone. Threatening me with Don Policarpo was equivalent to pressing an almost magical button. In the end, it became a great amusement. Whenever someone came to visit, they would be led into my room to observe the amusing details of my panic. Because, besides the fear, there were my nights, nights filled with silent hoods, strange kinds of Policarpos who always had their backs turned and were surrounded by a thick mist. They always appeared in single file, as if waiting for a turn to enter into my fear. They never uttered a word, but moved heavily in a kind of intermittent sway, dragging their identical black tunics, which had been made out of my uncle’s raincoat. It’s curious: I felt less horror during my dream than I did when I was awake. And, as the years went by, the fear turned into fascination. Hypnotized, I witnessed the cyclical scene with that amazed look one only has under the eyelids of sleep. At times, while having some other dream, I had a dark awareness that I would have preferred to dream about my Policarpos. And one night, they came for the last time. They lined up in single file, swayed back and forth, remained quiet and, as usual, faded away. For many years, I slept with an inevitable anxiety, with an almost sickly sensation of expectation. Sometimes I fell asleep having decided to find them, but would only find mist and, on rare occasions, feel the palpitations of my old fear. Only that. Afterwards, I began to lose even that hope and callously arrived at a point where I began to tell strangers the easy plot of my dream. Eventually, I also forgot about that too. Until last night. Last night, when I was in midst of a dream more common than sinful, all of the images were wiped away and the mist appeared, and in the thick of the mist, all of my Policarpos. I know that I felt both inexpressibly happy and horrified. Even now, if I exert myself a bit, I can reconstruct some of that emotion. The Policarpos, the formless, eternal, harmless Policarpos of my childhood, swayed back and forth continuously and then, all of a sudden, did something totally unexpected. For the first time they turned around, just for a moment, and they all had my grandmother’s face.

  Tuesday 12 March

  It’s good to have an intelligent employee. Today, as a test for Avellaneda, I told her everything about the comptroller all at once. While I spoke, she took notes. When I finished she said: ‘Look, sir, I think I understood quite a bit, but I have doubts about a few points.’ Doubts about a few points … Méndez, who had earlier grappled with those doubts, needed no less than four years to dispel them. Afterwards, I put her to work at the desk to my right. Every now and then, I would sneak a look at her. She has pretty legs. Since she still doesn’t work spontaneously, she becomes tired. Furthermore, she’s nervous and restless. I think that my position (poor newbie) inhibits her a bit. When she says: ‘Mr Santomé’, she always blinks. She isn’t beautiful, but her smile is passable. Better than nothing.

  Wednesday 13 March

  When I arrived home from town this afternoon, Jaime and Esteban were screaming at each other in the kitchen. I managed to overhear Esteban saying something about ‘your rotten friends’. When they heard my footsteps, they stopped screaming and tried to talk in a normal tone. But Jaime’s lips were pressed together and Esteban’s eyes were shining. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked. Jaime shrugged his shoulders and Esteban said: ‘It’s none of your business.’ What an urge I had to punch him in the mouth. That’s my son, with that harsh face that nothing or anyone will ever loosen up. It’s none of my business. I walked over to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of milk and the butter. I felt worthless and ashamed. It didn’t seem possible that he could say to me: ‘It’s none of your business’ and that I could remain so calm, without doing or saying anything to him. I poured myself a large glass. It didn’t seem possible that he could scream at me in the same way that I should be screaming at him but, nevertheless, did not. It’s none of my business. Each sip of milk hurt my temples. All of a sudden I swung around and grabbed him by the arm. ‘Have more respect for your father, understand? More respect.’ It was stupid to say this now that the moment had already passed. Esteban’s arm was tense and hard, as if it had suddenly converted into steel or perhaps lead. The back of my neck hurt when I lifted my head to look him in the eyes. It was the least I could do. No, he wasn’t scared of me as he flared his nostrils and easily shook his arm free from my grasp and said: ‘When are you going to grow up?’ and left, slamming the door behind him. I don’t think I could have had a calm look on my face when I turned around to face Jaime and saw that he was still leaning against the wall. He smiled spontaneously and only said: ‘What nastiness, Dad, what nastiness!’ It’s incredible, but at that precise moment I felt my anger starting to solidify. ‘But it’s also that your brother …’ I said, without conviction. ‘Forget it,’ he replied. ‘At this stage there is no hope for any of us.’

  Friday 15 March

  Mario Vignale came to see me at the office today. He invited me to his house next week. He says that he found old photographs of all of us, but the fool didn’t bring the photographs with him. Naturally, the photographs represent the price of my acceptance of his invitation. I accepted, of course. Who isn’t attracted to his own past?

  Saturday 16 March

  This morning the new man, Santini, tried to confess something to me. I don’t know what it is about my face that always invites the trust of others. They look at me, smile, and some of them even pull that long face that precedes sobbing; after which they proceed to open their hearts. And, frankly, there are some hearts I’m not attracted to. The comfortable shamelessness and tone of mystery with which some men speak confidentially about themselves is incredible. ‘Because, you know, sir, I’m an orphan,’ he said from the outset in order to fasten me in pity. ‘Pleased to meet you, and I’m a widower,’ I replied with a ritual gesture intended to destroy his brazenness. But my widowhood moves him less than his own orphanhood.

  ‘I have a little sister, you know?’ As he spoke, standing next to my desk, he tapped his skinny, fragile fingers on the cover of my journal. ‘Can’t you leave that hand still?’ I screamed. He stopped, but not before smiling sweetly. I noticed he wore a gold bracelet with a little medallion attached. ‘My little sister is seventeen, you know?’ The ‘you know?’ is a kind of tic. ‘You don’t say? And is she good-looking?’ This re
ply was my desperate defence before the dykes of his final mimicry of scruples would burst, and I would find myself completely overwhelmed by his private life. ‘You don’t take me seriously,’ he said, pressing his lips together tightly, and he walked off to his desk, most offended. He doesn’t work very fast. It took him two hours to close out the month of February.