Laura Restrepo - Delirium

Portulinus wakes up at five in the afternoon and gets out of bed, although his mind is so scattered that it would be more accurate to say that he gets up without having completely awoken. He’s wearing a silk robe printed with a tangle of black branches on a forest-green background and the slippers that tend to lose themselves, which angers him so; his hair is plastered sideways from being pressed sweaty against the pillow and he’s still floating amid the passions of the dream that visited him during his nap. As if obeying an order, he takes up pen and staff paper and sits down at the piano, spending a few hours composing the song that for months has been buzzing in his ear, evading capture. From the garden, his wife, Blanca, spies on him through the latticework, happy to discover that Nicholas is composing again after months of idleness, “At last his creative energy is reborn”—she’ll write later in a letter—” and once again I hear the harmonies that spring from the depths of his soul.” Blanca, who also believes that her husband’s gaze has cleared a little, asks herself, Am I not the happiest woman in the world? suspecting that at this moment she really is. That’s why, entranced, she watches her husband through the latticework as he fills one page of paper after another, pretending to set down notes and beats to make his wife happy, or to convince himself of his own happiness. But he’s really only scrawling flies and fly tracks, black dots and wild strokes that are the exact transcription of his painful internal clamor.

There’s no point in asking what the bloody fighter boy he dreamed of was like, but rather what he is like, because Portulinus dreams of him often and has for years, which is what he tells his wife that night when the frogs, crickets, and cicadas pierce the darkness with their song. Blanca, my dear, he confesses to her, I dreamed of Farax again. Who is this Farax, Nicholas? she asks, visibly upset, and why does he always accost you in dreams? He’s just my inspiration, he answers, trying to calm her, Farax is the name I give my inspiration when it visits me. But is it a he, or a she? It’s a he, and he grants me the intensity of feeling that I need for life to be worth living. Tell me, Nicholas, she insists, is it someone you know? Have I ever seen him? Is he a dream or a memory? but Nicholas isn’t up to answering so many questions. His name is Farax, Blanquita darling, content yourself with that, and just then they’re interrupted by their daughter Eugenia, the quiet one, but she’s radiant now, bringing them the news that the piano student from Anapoima has knocked at the door again, asking for the Maestro.

The blond boy is back, she tells them, her heart pounding. What boy are you talking about? The one who came yesterday with the lead soldiers in his knapsack, he wants to know whether Father will give him piano lessons. To receive the visitor Portulinus went down to the spacious parlor with chairs set around the Blüthner rosewood grand piano that Portulinus had had sent from Germany and that today, a whole lifetime later, stands in Eugenia’s house in La Cabrera, in the capital, now an enormous, silent white elephant. Portulinus entered the parlor and saw that the visitor from Anapoima had sat down at the piano, though no one had given him permission, and was running a reverent hand over the precious dark-grained red wood, but instead of irritating Portulinus, this boldness struck him as a sign of character, and skipping the usual pleasantries he got straight to the point. If you want lessons, show me what you know, he ordered the boy, and the boy, although he hadn’t been asked, said that his name was Abelito Caballero and presented the list of references he had memorized, explaining that he’d come on the recommendation of the mayor of Anapoima and that he’d studied at the School of Music and Dance in Anapoima until he knew more than the only teacher, Madame Carola Osorio, which was why he wanted to receive more advanced training from Maestro Portulinus, but since the latter seemed uninterested in his story, the boy stopped volunteering information that hadn’t been requested and rolled up his sleeves to free his arms, shook his head to clear it, rubbed his hands to warm them, recited a prayer for God’s help, and began to play a creole waltz called “The Greedy Cat.”

Although timidity caused the boy to stumble here and there, Portulinus, who had begun to breathe heavily as if he were choked by some powerful internal trauma, could only murmur, Good, good, good, no matter if “The Greedy Cat” slid gracefully by or faltered. Good, good, good, sighed Portulinus and he couldn’t believe his eyes, that shimmering golden hair, those hands still a child’s and yet already skilled, that black silk bow the newcomer wore knotted around his neck as if he were a doll, the tanned leather knapsack still on his back. Nor could Portulinus’s ears believe what they were hearing, music that seemed to descend sweetly from on high to gradually inhabit the parlor’s shadows; all that was certain was that his heart as well as his senses were telling him that what was happening had to do with an old prophecy, that this was the longed-for fulfillment of a promise at last.

Trying to guess whether he would be accepted as a student or not, the boy lifted his eyes from the keyboard from time to time to cast a sidelong glance at the famed German teacher, who was sweating and puffing beside him in his robe and slippers, but he couldn’t decipher the teacher’s expression or understand the meaning of those good, good, goods that the Maestro muttered indiscriminately, whether he played well or made mistakes. When the piece ended, it was with apprehension that he sensed the great musician coming up behind him, brushing his shoulder with his hand, and saying, almost into his ear, I must call my wife; and then the Maestro made a great show of leaving, inclining his bulk forward and not watching where he was going, as if he were in a hurry to be somewhere else.

Abelito Caballero, left alone in the now silent room, suddenly became aware of an excessive weight on his back and realized that he hadn’t removed his knapsack, which he proceeded to do, and then blew his nose to clear the stuffiness brought on by the smell of damp that permeated the parlor. Folding his arms, he settled down to wait, until he spotted the flicker of a small presence in one of the corners. Getting up, he discovered, crouched behind a chair, the thin, shy girl who had come to the door yesterday and today. If you want, we can set up the military parade again, he said, and when she nodded, he took the lead soldiers out of his knapsack and they got to work, the two of them kneeling on the floor. I’m Abelito, I don’t think I told you my name yesterday. And my name is Eugenia, I didn’t tell you mine, either.

Meanwhile Portulinus went looking for Blanca all around the house and found her at last in the larder, What the devil are you doing in the larder, confound it Blanquita, come at once! there’s a prodigy in the parlor, he announced, dragging her by the hand, Come, Blanquita darling, come and meet him, it’s the boy, he’s playing “The Greedy Cat” on the piano, hurry, it’s the boy! it’s Farax! and she, alarmed to see her husband in such a state, tried to calm him and allay the intensity of his outburst, Don’t make things up, Nicholas, how can it be Farax when Farax only exists in your dreams, Quiet, woman, you don’t know what you’re saying, come, you must meet Farax.

SO THIS, AGUSTINA princess, is how we came to the end of the farce, because life sets the stage, and we little puppets dance to whatever tune they play for us. What happened was that this Dolores and the loser with the whip put on their act, a pretty vile spectacle but since there’s no accounting for taste when it comes to sex, I bet you can’t guess who was thrilled out of his skull by the cheap violence, well who but Spider, I don’t think I’d be exaggerating if I told you that nothing had ever sent him into such ecstasies, I swear I saw him turning purple in his wheelchair shouting at the pimp, Hit her harder! Stop playing, get serious! Hit her for real! and obnoxiously egging him on like a paralytic Nero sending the lions in to wreak havoc, drunk with delight.