so I met Eduardo at a conference. He seemed relaxed. Later I’d think frivolous. He seemed sure of himself, as though he had no need to impress anyone, though with time I’d come to interpret this as narcissism. While narcissism is a natural part of the human make-up, whereby any discovery that refutes one’s self-image is rejected, Eduardo takes this to the limit. He verges on sociopathy, a diagnosis that has taken me almost thirty years to arrive at. At least I devoted myself to writing and not to my patients. It’s possible the poor things have had a terrible time with me, since it takes me years to arrive at a diagnosis. But anyway. Speed has never been my thing. I was struck by the fact that a fine-looking man like Eduardo would notice me. I’ve always been full-bosomed, maybe that’s what attracted him. That and the manuscript, or the fact that I was always very understanding and maternal with him. I still remember the time he called me ‘mami’. He was distracted, leafing through the newspaper; I asked him something – whether he’d booked an appointment with the urologist, something like that – and, not lifting his gaze, he said, ‘No, mami,’ and then went bright red with embarrassment. I burst out laughing.
We got married a year after we met. I’d only been with one man before him, in a relationship as strange as it was uncomfortable for the both of us. I was head over heels for Eduardo. I couldn’t believe such a dish had looked twice at a woman like me. And as well as being good-looking, he was fun, witty, self-assured, worldly, classy – in other words, everything I wasn’t. As something of a dowry, you could say, I offered him a manuscript, which he published to great success. It was a book about the kind of love that kills. He thought it was extraordinary and only proposed a few changes. He published it under his own name, and mine – Lucía Estrada – wasn’t mentioned anywhere. I must have been spellbound by Eduardo because it’s not that I didn’t care; it actually made me proud. All I could think was, He liked it so much he published it under his own name. I couldn’t believe it. And then I wrote another book, which he again published under his name, but this time I’d said, ‘Look, my love, truth is I’m no good at giving interviews, at responding to emails, at explaining the theories put forward here. So, if you want, you keep signing your name.’
And to my surprise he’d said he’d be happy to. I was sort of hoping he would say, ‘No, my love, you can do it, you deserve the recognition, how could you think I’d sign for you.’ But that’s not what happened. Three decades and sixteen books later, Eduardo is the second-most-prominent self-help author in South America. And we all know who the number one is.
At the start of our marriage, having a child was up for discussion. He hadn’t closed the door and I thought that he’d keep it open for me. But no. He didn’t want children. Nor did he want to live abroad, because here he had his fans and his business associates. I kept writing the books. That, at least, took me to all different places. He gave talks, I wrote. He signed books, I wrote. He went shopping, I wrote. He spent the weekend with a lover, I wrote. And that’s how it went for thirty-three years. It’s not like I’ve really suffered or anything. I’ve lived comfortably. I like books; I feel secure, calm around them. I’ve had a good life. Plus, I loved Eduardo so much that his happiness was also mine. And we had things in common, though in all honesty he didn’t much like talking about books. Actually, I’m not certain what bonded us, exactly – cooking, maybe, as he knew how to make three or four dishes, and when he cooked he talked to me about what he was doing. I’m not sure what we did together all those years, but I didn’t feel bitter, or unhappy. None of that. It was only when we separated that I came to a diagnosis: the neurotic patient, in this case Eduardo, fashions his world into a mirror, and expects a response that reflects his own expectations about himself. In other words, the patient sees his wife, his friends and his work as projections, his idealisations of what they should be. In this way, he doesn’t recognise the other as an independent being, because the other only exists as a reflection of his own unsatisfied needs. When the inevitable failure of an idealised expectation occurs, an irreversible frustration overcomes him, giving rise to the process that Freud, following Jung, calls ‘the regression of libido’. This is how I lived for three decades with a man who never knew me nor wanted to get to know me.
He was a man for whom the important thing was feeling loved, admired and respected by an anonymous but irrefutable mass. My existence was important to him only in that it continued to validate his sense of self.
The fact is, in my own way, I was happy. I suppose that my happiness consisted in the ‘negation of my own desires’, in ‘renouncing myself’ and even in ‘self-punishment’: Claire’s words. I served him well, in all senses of the word. The ironic thing is, I still serve him. Before finalising a divorce settlement, I moved to a small apartment in La Soledad, where I still write books for Eduardo, in exchange for a monthly allowance and the occasional furtive encounter, almost always infelicitous. He still seems to me drop-dead gorgeous, and funny, and so refined; he’s as adorable as they come. Though, as I said, I haven’t felt desire for a long time. The point is that Eduardo suffered a lot as a child. His father mistreated him, and he had to learn to put up defences, to protect himself. We shouldn’t be so quick to judge others. And that’s what I told Claire. No one is as good or bad as he or she seems. Eduardo was never a bad man. Although, there’s some truth to the idea that I became more and more a mother figure. Yes, a mother figure. I brought him his slippers. Made him coffee. Ran his bath. And he turned to me for comfort, for reassurance. My poor Edu.
The last time we saw each other, he tried to kiss me. We’d been to dinner at a new restaurant. He brought me home and asked if he might have a drink before he left.
‘I’m tired,’ I said, trying to get out of it.
‘Just one glass, my Lu-chia.’
One glass turned into the five or six that were in the bottle and a never-ending monologue. I nodded off at the other end of the sofa. Eduardo wanted to talk about his impotence, then leaned over to kiss me, and I pushed him away.
‘I can’t, my love, I’m sorry,’ I mustered the energy to tell him.
‘You can’t or you can’t be bothered?’ he asked, lighting a cigarette, not looking at me.
In the cold early hours of 23 July, he woke on the couch. I had settled a blanket over him before going to bed. I fell asleep at almost three in the morning and two hours later heard him. But what was he doing? I wondered this in a half-awake state, because I could hear him tripping and moving about in the little living room while murmuring into his phone. A loud thud got me out of bed. I went out to see what was happening. Eduardo was searching for his shoes in a rush. The living room was still in semi-darkness. He had knocked over the bottle of whisky and the little that remained had spilled onto the parquetry floor.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, alarmed.
‘I’m sorry, Lucía, I have to go.’
‘So early?’
‘A friend’s in trouble, he needs my help, I’ll tell you about it later.’
Eduardo left. Right away I emptied the ashtray of my ex-husband’s butts. I wondered how it was that someone over sixty could have a friend in trouble at this time of the morning. It could happen in adolescence, but at this age? It reminded me why I left him. Eduardo was selfish and, forgive me, thought more with his willy than his head. How I hated the smell of cigarettes. One of the good things about my new place was that no one smoked here. That, and the silence, the peace. I bought a yoga book for beginners, a special mat and a few candles. Eduardo made fun of me. He thought it ridiculous that at this stage of my life I wanted to learn something new. Every afternoon I dedicated an hour to it, and bit by bit improved. The simple fact that I didn’t have to accompany Eduardo on his trips any more gave me lots of freedom. One or two afternoons a week, I went to the cinema, sometimes for long walks down Park Way. I even thought about getting a dog.
I
