Cesar Aira - Ghosts

There was a soap opera that they watched at six. They loved the story, although, since they weren’t completely stupid, they realized how bad it was. But that didn’t really matter, as long as they didn’t lose the thread, and, surprisingly, they never did. Women lived in a world of stories, according to Elisa, surrounded, smothered, submerged by fascinating stories. Mother and daughter had watched a good many soap operas over the years and could safely say that they were all the same, but they didn’t regret having watched them. The plots always revolved around pregnancy and money. The link between the two themes was a woman who became wealthy, immensely wealthy, the better to scorn the man who had got her pregnant when she was poor. The charm lay in the incongruous balance between the superfluous and the important. With the benefit of her experience, Elisa could easily dismiss the questions of money as secondary and concentrate on the rest. Moving from the relative to the absolute, if only in fiction, made her happy. (For her daughter it was very different, although equally enjoyable.) Almost every evening at that time, they would sit down, just the two of them, in front of the television, to watch the story of young Esmeralda, who had risen from being a slave, held in secret on an anachronistic plantation in Costa Rica, to owning vast oilfields on the Arabian peninsula. They discussed the issues as they arose in the story. Elisa would try to point out certain things to her daughter, who obstinately refused to see them, or would only see them from her own point of view. It was a little one-student school, in which practically nothing was learned, although you never can tell. The question of pregnancy, for example, was more complex than it might have seemed at first. Elisa had got pregnant with Patri when she was as old as Patri was now. The father, so she said, was the best man in the world. He had disappeared from her life, like most childhood memories. That was the problem with men: they weren’t definitive, they weren’t right. But Mom, objected Patri, I’m going to find the right man in the end, like Esmeralda, I hope. In the end, yes, in the end, said Elisa emphatically, in the end…. maybe. But not before. And when you think about it, what’s a pregnancy? She pointed to the screen: Do you suppose that actress was really pregnant when all this was happening in the story? Of course not. You have to be very careful not to mix up truth and lies, reality and fiction. Yeah, but you really got pregnant, didn’t you? Or were you just an image, a hypothesis? Elisa laughed. It was true, in a way; that was what she had been. Amazingly her adolescent daughter had touched on a very deep truth, and yet, at the same time — there’s always another side to things — it was a truth composed of silences and suppositions. For example, she had never confessed the identity of “the best man in the world” to her parents. They had made an incorrect supposition. In fact, she thought, during a commercial break between chapters of the soap opera, she had made an incorrect supposition herself. Because later, a few years later, Raúl Viñas had appeared in her life, and everything had changed.

There you go, said Patri, as if she had hit on the most convincing argument: Isn’t he the right one? Her mother replied with a smile. All her friends and acquaintances knew what a loving couple Elisa and her husband were, a real example. For just that reason, there was something elusive about their love. If her daughter found that disconcerting, well, she was sorry, but there was nothing she could do. Some things took time to understand. And Elisa was as quick as anyone to recognize her husband’s faults, such as his fondness for drink. It was no more justifiable than any other vice, but Elisa came up with good explanations for it. For example, that by drinking glass after glass of wine, in interminable sessions, Raúl Viñas was gathering momentum in his quest for the infinite. It was like swallowing the sea, as they say, and what was wrong with that? It might be terrible to have that kind of thirst, but for those who don’t, it’s a magnificent spectacle. And another thing: Raúl Viñas was one the few happy men left on earth, or at least in Chile, where they would have stayed if Elisa Vicuña’s opinions had carried any weight. Happiness always brings happiness, and plenitude, in its wake.

But we’re poor, look at how we live, Patri replied, pointing to the stifling, cramped, unfinished apartment. But that doesn’t matter, girl, why should that matter? We’re healthy aren’t we, we have enough to eat, and beautiful children playing happily, and loving relatives and friends? You are so optimistic , said Patri, with the expression of someone confronting an utter impossibility. Her mother was laughing. Don’t you see, girl. I’ve been lucky. It’s not funny, Mom. But I’m not joking, sweetie. The thing is to find a real man, even if he has all the faults in the world. A real man. A real man. She repeated the phrase mechanically as their conversation languished — the story was beginning again. In all the splendor of her incredible beauty, the heroine signed the papers that would make her the legal owner of the Palace of Versailles, which the socialist government of France had sold to raise money for the development of advanced technology. This is so absurd, said Patri under her breath. Just like our lives, said her mother, who hadn’t taken her eyes off the screen. A number of typical soap-opera clues had led them to suspect that the heroine’s lover, a Japanese magnate whom she had supposed dead after a crash landing in the Azores, was about to reappear, and both of them knew that when he did, when he opened the door…. they would cry.

It must have been around seven, the soap opera had finished on a note of suspense, relating, of course to Esmeralda’s reproductive system (if she could be said to have one since, in a sense, she was an exquisite and luxurious reproductive system), and they had switched off the television, when they heard a din rising from below. Someone’s coming, said Elisa, announcing only one of the possibilities, although it was rather early for the guests to start arriving. But as the old saying goes: “Evening’s guests arrive by day.” If they do, she remarked, they’ll get a splendid reception, with half the family asleep. Within seconds she recognized the voices of the children, who didn’t even give them time to get up from their chairs: Juan Sebastián came running in shouting: Look what Aunty Inés brought me, one for each of us, this one’s mine, etc. etc. With urgent sign language Elisa implored him to lower the volume. It was as if the kid had a megaphone in his mouth. Can’t you see the others are sleeping? Yeah, yeah, OK, he conceded impatiently; but they had to understand, he was thinking about the presents. He had already put four toy cars on the table; they were made of plastic and all the same, down to the color: red. Blanca Isabel came in like a whirlwind and pounced. This one’s mine! They started shouting again, inevitably. The eldest child had of course taken the initiative of opening the packet. Each of them seized a car; although the cars were identical, there was an obvious advantage in being able to choose while the other two children were asleep. What a surprise they would get, poor suckers, when they found they could only choose between the two remaining toy cars, which where indistinguishable from the others! Juan Sebastián and Blanca Isabel reveled in their triumph. Elisa went to the door, which had been left wide open, and waited for her sister-in-law, who, influenced somehow by the soap opera’s delaying tactics, or simply because the children had come rocketing up, seemed to take forever to appear. Elisa’s curiosity was particularly piqued because her sister-in-law had arranged to come with her boyfriend, who still hadn’t met the family. If he had come too, it was odd that she couldn’t hear them talking. Or maybe they had stopped to look at the apartments? Maybe she had come early to help, and he’d be turning up later.