Laura Restrepo: Delirium

This was on a Thursday, I can tell you the precise day, an ill-fated Thursday when the five of us were having our usual dinner at L’Esplanade: Spider Salazar, Jorge Luis Ayerbe, your brother Joaco, the gringo Rony Silver, and I, the four of them smelling of Hermès and dressed in Armani, all wearing those Ferragamo ties with little equestrian prints imported straight from the Via Condotti, Spider’s with little spurs, your brother Joaco’s with riding crops, Jorge Luis’s with saddles, and Silver’s with something like tiny unicorns, as if the four had come to some kind of sissy agreement. They all arrived at L’Esplanade dressed up like respectable people, but I came straight to the restaurant from the Turkish bath, still steaming and radiating tan, healthy to the toes of my sockless Nikes, and shirtless under my raw wool Ralph Lauren sweater; you know how I dress, Agustina doll, I don’t have to tell you, and I dress the way I do so that they never forget I’ve got them beat in the youth game, because any one of them could be my father, and any of their fiftysomething wives could be my mother, with those crocodile bags and big gold bracelets, and tailored pastel suits, while my thing is chicks by the dozen, top models, TV stars, architecture students, water-ski instructors, skinny little screwed-up long-haired beauties, Agustina, like you.

The truth is, if I’d chosen just one of them to set up house with, it would’ve been you, my little princess-in-waiting; it would almost certainly have been you, the one with the hottest little body, the prettiest and the craziest of them all. But never mind, why talk about setting up house, let Father Niccoló set up house for orphans and old people, let him shoot for sainthood; why should I care about homemaking, when it has nothing to do with me or my life, and I’m more than satisfied with what fate has seen fit to give me, a hot girl for every cold night, because if I’ve ever had a problem it’s been lack of appetite, there’s been so much sweet stuff that sometimes I get sick of it. And money-wise, too, I run circles around your hotshot brother Joaco, your dead father, Carlos Vicente, and plenty of the Bogotá old-money types, who know that when I’m paying they’re served caviar wholesale, in a deep dish with a soup spoon, and, Eat, you bastards, I tell them, gorge yourselves on Russian caviar and enjoy, since in your fancy houses all you get is five little eggs on a piece of toast the size of a coin.

DON’T BE SCARED, Bichito darling, the girl Agustina says to the smaller boy she’s holding close, this ceremony is to keep you safe and make you better. Like what happened to Achilles, Tina? the boy asks, already half recovered from his panic, Yes, Bichi Bichito, like when Achilles the Wrathful, and he interrupts her to complain, I like it better when we say Achilles, he who is covered in golden down, All right, when Achilles, he of the golden down, is bathed in the waters of the Styx to make him invincible, I like it more when we say in the waters of the Infernal River, It’s the same thing, Bichito, it means the same thing, what’s important is to remember that since they’re holding him by the ankle, that part of him is still vulnerable and they can hurt him there, No, Tina, they can’t, because later, when he’s big, Achilles the Wrathful returns to the Infernal River to dip his weak foot in and from then on his entire body is protected.

The problem is that their father is always after Bichi, he has it in for him because he’s the youngest, not like Joaco, Joaco is my other brother, the oldest of us three, and my father never hits him or tells him he’s done anything wrong, even when they call home from the Boys School to say that he lit a fire in the toolroom or did bad things to the caretaker’s dog, and when their father finds out he orders Joaco into his study and then scolds him, but halfheartedly, as if he’d like to praise him instead and make him see that deep down he likes his oldest son to be badly behaved, to be known as an ace soccer player, and to get good grades, So long as you’re at the top of your class, they’ll let you get away with things sometimes, says Carlos Vicente Londoño to his oldest son, Joaquín Londoño, who unfortunately doesn’t have the same name as his father but is just like him in spirit, and Joaco looks him boldly in the eye, Of the three of us, says Agustina, my brother Joaco is the only one who’s never scared, because Joaco knows that my father’s yellow eyes, his bushy eyebrows that come together in the middle, his big nose, and the peculiar way his index finger stretches longer than his middle finger are all traits they share, which is why father and son smile secretly, even when the vice-principal of the Boys School calls to say that Joaco will be put on probation because he’s been drinking beer at break, but Joaco and my father smile because they know that the two of them are essentially the same, one generation after the next, studying at the same boys’ school, getting drunk at the same parties, maybe even starting fires in the same place or tormenting the same old dog, the guard dog that hasn’t died yet and won’t die because its fate is to be there still when Joaco’s son, Joaco’s father’s grandson, is born and grows big enough to extend the miserable dog’s long agony over three generations. Listen Bichi, my pale-skinned little darling, we can’t blame my father for liking Joaco better, because after all you and I perform ceremonies that we shouldn’t, do you understand? we commit sins and my father wants to help us be better, that’s what fathers are for.

My father wanted his firstborn son to be named after him, Carlos Vicente Londoño, but because he was busy with work, he didn’t make it to the christening in time, or at least that’s what my mother says, and she’s probably right because my father was never one of those people who arrive when you expect them to, so since he wasn’t there, instead of giving the baby his father’s name, his godparents named him after the Virgin Mary’s father, that is, Joaquín, maybe thinking that he’d be better protected that way on his journey through this vale of tears, his godmother said that in the annals of the saints there is no Carlos Vicente because it isn’t a Christian name, who ever heard of Saint Carlos Vicente the bishop or Saint Carlos Vicente the martyr, so they convinced themselves that it was better to call him Joaquín, and it was then that the story of my father’s great frustration began. So that he would forgive her, Eugenia, the boy’s mother, promised him that their second son would be called Carlos Vicente, but then I was born and since I was a girl they named me Agustina and so the long wait got longer, the wait for the chosen one who would be given the Name, until it was Bichi’s turn to be born and by consensus and without discussion he was named Carlos Vicente Londoño, just as my father’s obsession dictated, but life is so fickle that my father never wanted to call him that, and so we had to invent all kinds of nicknames, like Bichi, Bichito, Charlie Bichi, Charlie, all not-quite-real names, like names for a pet.

Why should it be your fault, Bichi Bichito, for not looking like my father, for looking exactly like my mother and me; she, you, and I with skin that’s almost too white. Can you believe it, my mother was brought up to be proud of being Aryan, and who does she marry but someone who looks down on her for being washed-out and poor; whiteys, my father calls us when he sees us in our bathing suits at the pool at Gai Repos, the family estate in Sasaima, and before Bichi can ask her again what Gai Repos means, Agustina tells him: It means happy rest in one of the European languages that grandfather Portulinus could speak, he was the one who first came to Sasaima and bought the ranch; I’ve explained it to you a thousand times and this is the thousand and first time, but you never get it, you’re such trouble, Bichi Bichito, sometimes I think my father is right when he says that you’re the kind of boy who lives in the clouds and no one can make you come down.