the gym with Tony, go out on Tony’s bike, have sex with Tony either, 1) on the beach, 2) in a cheap motel room, or 3) on the deserted terrace of a city centre hotel, where we’d walk in wearing dark glasses, like tourists seeking a glimpse of a panoramic view. On the terrace we would do it at midday, when the sun had already scared everyone away; we would do it standing up, me in front, against the balcony railing, with Tony taking me from behind. We would leave again swiftly, jump back on the bike and head to a kiosk to buy Coca-Cola and cigarettes. We talked about old movies, salsa songs and things we wanted to buy ourselves. Tony liked Calvin Klein fragrances, but he’d never had one: his mother never quite had enough money to buy one for him. Now he worked at his uncle’s stationery shop, but he still didn’t have enough.
Are you happy? he would ask, towards the end of the evening, as we lay beneath a tree in a park. I told him I was, because it was true. But something was missing. I knew what it was; Tony didn’t.
My father was far from pleased about me leaving university, and he told me as much, every time we crossed paths. I’d be arriving home, and he’d be setting out, at six, seven in the morning. I explained to him: I want to leave, and a degree in law is only useful in the country where you study it. Study something else. What? Anything, but study something, you’re the bright one, you’re our great hope. And he’d wink at me. Hope of what? My brother told me I should become an air hostess, that they’d give me the visa automatically and I would have more chances of getting out of here, at least for periods at a time. We were in his bedroom, it smelled of the Mexsana talcum powder he used to put on his feet. He was lifting dumbbells in front of the mirror and counting backwards: 33, 32, 31, 30… Why do you count backwards? I asked him. He told me it was more motivating that way: because One did not move, did not get further away, it was there, where it had always been, at the beginning. I thought that my brother was the smart one, but I didn’t tell him.
The next day, after the gym, I went to sign up for an air hostess course. If I liked it, I could carry on and get the diploma. Tony didn’t like the idea, because air hostesses aren’t shown any respect, he said. They are basically just trolley dollies, with men ogling their asses as they walk down those narrow aisles. If a guy grabs an air hostess’s ass, she just has to smile. And if they don’t let men grab their asses, it’s worse, because then they’re badly treated. If the toilet is out of order, they have to go and unblock it with a drinking straw. If the food is off, they have to eat it anyway, to keep up appearances. Tony had a lot of ideas about air hostesses, but I had just one: air hostesses could leave.
6
Brígida must have been pretty old, but she didn’t look it.
Black women don’t age, my mother used to say.
Brígida had dense hair in her armpits, stuck together with white clumps because of the bicarb she applied to stop herself smelling. She smelled anyway. A cruise ship had come in and Brígida stopped by Gustavo’s shack for some oysters. It was Thursday. I didn’t have to go to the Institute on Thursdays, and since I wasn’t going out with Tony anymore, sometimes I went to visit Gustavo. I lounged in the hammock reading magazines in English, for practice.
That Thursday, Brígida asked me the same thing she always asked me: whether I had a husband yet. No. If I had a boyfriend yet. I don’t know. And she laughed.
Lately, Brígida was going around with a granddaughter in tow, who frowned at me, her lips pursed. I ignored her, flipping the pages of my magazine, yawning now and again. Lately, it was Olga who saw to Brígida: she dealt with the oysters, negotiated the price, gulped one down and then talked to her about the product as if she was an expert on the matter. Brígida didn’t like oysters, only once did I see her swallow one. She screwed up her face – you could really see her age then – and then she spat it out and said: that’s like chewing on a pussy.
While Olga dealt with Brígida and I read in English and the granddaughter silently cursed me, Gustavo, at the worktable, told a story. The story would start with a precise anecdote and would end up god-knows-where. For example:
When I lived in Valparaíso, father had various market stalls and he had me peeling prawns until my fingers were swollen. He taught me how to peel a prawn: you grab it firmly by the tail, carefully pull off the head so that that it doesn’t bring all the meat with it, and then you take off the legs. The shell comes off on its own. And you leave the tail.
What do you leave it for? I interrupted sometimes, because if not, it would be like he was talking to himself, and I felt sorry for him.
So that the shape of the animal stays intact, it’s more elegant like that.
I don’t see anything elegant about it.
All the flavour’s in the tail, that’s why you have to suck it.
Suck it? Gross.
The tail holds the elixir of the animal, the soul of the animal, the essence of the animal.
Right.
It’s all there: in the tail.
Mm-hm.
After a while, Olga also tried to get involved, but she would say things that were completely irrelevant. Things like: the day before yesterday I saw a group of gringos walking through the city centre, their legs were covered in pus-filled blisters. And, as nobody replied, she would get bored and grumble her way into the shack and switch on the little TV that her sister had sent over from Venezuela.
And her in there and us out here.
I opened a beer, fanned myself with the magazine. Later I opened another beer, and one for Gustavo. The sun would get really strong, and it was hard to find a position in the hammock where I wouldn’t be blinded it by it. Gustavo went on:
…I remember that about Valparaíso, and I also remember Silvina. Silvina had thick, shiny hair that she wore in a high ponytail, and a colourful dress that she wore at weekends.
Just one?
I liked that dress because every time she wore it, she would bend down to me and ask, Do I look pretty, guagüita?
Gua-what?
Silvina was the last girlfriend of father’s that I met, because after that summer I never saw him again. He took a job on a ship and never came back. I went to Argentina.
Why Argentina?
Because that’s where mother was.
Hadn’t she been thrown into the sea?
…and once, father sent a letter, saying he was in Brazil, and that he had a girlfriend, not Silvina, but Mary-Erin, who was young and pretty.
And where was Niní?
…in the letter, father told me to get on a bus and go see him, that mother could pay for my journey and he would pay her back from there.
Why do you always say mother and father?
How else should I refer to them?
My mother, and my father, like everyone else does. Otherwise you sound like a character in a badly dubbed movie: like when you say luncheon, or valise or stockings, or motorcar, or galoshes.
I don’t say any of those things.
Yes,
