Carlos Fuentes - Vlad

I listened to her quiet laugh.

“Okay, darling. Everything’s in order,” Asunción concluded. “I’ll pick up our little girl this afternoon, and we’ll see each other at dinner. And if you want, later we can celebrate the Assumption of the Holy Mother, the Virgin Mary, again.”

She laughed again, flirtatiously this time, while preserving the professional tone of voice that she automatically adopts at the office.

“Get some rest. You deserve it. Bye.”

I had barely hung up when the phone rang. It was Zurinaga.

“You were on the phone for a long time, Navarro,” he said impatiently, not in keeping with his habitual courtesy. “I’ve been trying to reach you for hours.”

“Ten minutes at the most, Sir,” I replied firmly and without further explanation.

“I’m sorry, Yves,” he said returning to his normal tone. “It’s just that I need to ask you a favor.”

“My pleasure, Don Eloy.”

“It’s urgent. You must go to Count Vlad tonight.”

“Why doesn’t he call me himself?” I said, trying to imply to him that being an “errand boy” was in keeping neither with Don Eloy Zurinaga’s character nor my own.

“They still haven’t installed his phone.”

“And how did he get in touch with you?” I asked, now, a bit annoyed. I was still filthy and sticky from lovemaking. My cheeks were pocked with stubble. Sweat had collected uncomfortably in my armpits, and there was a tickling sensation on my curly-haired head.

“He sent his servant.”

“Borgo?” I asked.

“Yes — why, have you seen him?”

He did not say meet . He said see .

The famous Count did not have, not by a long shot, the charm and grace of the Gypsy. I reminded myself that I had sworn never to return to Count Vlad’s house. The business was settled. Besides, I needed to show my face at the office, if only to keep up appearances. The absence of Zurinaga, the senior partner, was bad enough. If I, the second in command, were absent too, it would be asking for trouble.

“I’m going to swing by the office, Don Eloy,” I said firmly, instead of answering his peculiar question about Borgo, “and later I’ll stop by to see the client.”

Without saying a word, Zurinaga hung up the phone.

I was on my way to work, driving on the Periférico, the ring road around Mexico City. I inched my BMW through traffic at the pace of a tortoise on a mission.

I was worried to death about Magdalena, who was over at the Alcayagas’ house. But I felt a little better when I remembered that Asunción had said, “Don’t worry, dear. I’ll pick her up, and we’ll see each other at dinner.”

“So what time are you picking her up?” I’d asked.

“You know how children’s parties are; they go on forever. And María de Lourdes has enough activities scheduled to go on for weeks. There’s tag, hide and seek, you’re it! And, let me tell you, María has an arsenal of piñatas and goody bags stuffed with whistles and flutes. And there’ll be enough punch and cake to feed an army of children.”

She’d laughed as she finished. “Don’t you remember? Even you were once a child.”

The hunchback opened the door and brought his face much too close to mine, staring at me insolently. His breath reeked of yogurt. When he finally recognized me, he gave a fawning bow.

“Come in, Licenciado Navarro. My master is expecting you.”

I entered and searched in vain for the Count in the large living room.

“Waiting where?”

“Go on upstairs to the bedroom.”

I climbed a semicircular staircase that had no banister. The servant remained at the foot of the stairs. I don’t know whether he was overdoing a show of courtesy or of subservience, or whether he was just observing me with suspicion. On the upper floor, all the doors to what I reckoned were bedrooms were shut, except for one. I approached that one and entered a room with a wide bed. By that time it was already nine o’clock at night, but I noticed that the bed was still covered with black satin, and had not been turned down for the master to retire for the evening.

There were no mirrors in the room, but below where a mirror might have hung stood a vanity with all sorts of cosmetics, and a row of wig stands. While he combed his wig and applied his makeup, it seemed, the Count would have to imagine himself.

A light steam billowed from an open bathroom door. I hesitated for a moment; I felt as though I must be invading my client’s privacy. . But he said from within, “Come in, Mr. Navarro, come on in. Don’t be shy. .”

In the bathroom, the steam emanating from the shower filled the air. Count Vlad was washing himself behind a dripping lacquer door. I looked away. Still, curiosity got the better of me. Through the fog, I noticed that the bathroom too lacked mirrors. The bathroom also lacked the usual tools of hygiene: shaving brush, comb, razor, toothbrush, toothpaste. . As in the rest of the house, there were drains in every corner.

Vlad opened the door and emerged from the shower, showing himself naked before my discomfited gaze.

He had shed his wig and his mustache.

His body was as white as plaster.

He did not have a single hair anywhere — not on his head, not on his chin, not on his chest, not in his armpits, not around his genitals, and not on his legs.

He was totally smooth, like an egg.

Or a skeleton.

He looked as though he’d been flayed.

But his face was still wrinkled like a pale lemon, and his gaze remained hidden by those dark glasses that were almost like a mask, stuck on his olive-colored sockets and fitted on his tiny ears sown with scars.

“Ah, Mr. Navarro,” he said with a wide, red smile. “At last we see each other as we really are. .”

Standing next to a naked Central European count who liked to discuss the philosophy of life and death, I tried to lighten things up a little.

“Sorry, Sir, Count,” I said. “But I’m fully dressed.”

“How can you be so sure?” he asked. “Doesn’t fashion enslave and undress us all?”

At the edges of his affable smile, now without the fake-mustache disguise, two sharp canines glinted, yellow like the lemon color suggested by the pallor of his face when observed from up close.

“Excuse my indiscretion. Please, hand me my robe. It’s hanging over there,” the Count said as he pointed into the distance. “Let’s go downstairs,” he said hastily, “for dinner.”

“Pardon me. I have dinner plans with my family.”

“Your wife?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“Your daughter?”

I nodded. He let out a cartoonish laugh.

“It’s 9 P.M.,” he deadpanned. “Do you know where your children are?”

I thought of Didier, who was dead, and of Magdalena who had gone to Chepina’s birthday party and who should be back home by now while I remained here like an idiot in the bedroom of a naked, hairless, grotesque old man who was asking me at 9 P.M. if I knew where my children were.

I ignored his creepiness, confused.

“May I call home?” I asked.

Zurinaga had warned me. I had taken the precaution of bringing my cell phone. I took it out of my pants pocket and speed-dialed my house. I brought my hand up to my head. There was no answer. I heard my own voice tell me to “Leave a message.” Something kept me from speaking, a feeling of uselessness, of a lack of freedom, of being dragged against my will down a slope like the one that plunged behind this house into the domain of pure uncertainty, a realm without free will. .

“They must still be at the Alcayagas’,” I muttered to reassure myself.

“The Alcayagas? You mean the kind engineer who designed and built the tunnel behind this house?”