Gonzalo Torne - Divorce Is in the Air

“And are you going to operate down there?”

“I don’t dare. The stitches, the Betadine, absorbent sheets, drainage, destroying the bacteria in the colon with shots from a syringe, the dilations so the pelvic wound doesn’t close while the other scars heal, the probes. I can’t stand the idea. You can lose your libido, you can experience sudden, irrational nostalgia for the flap of skin you’ve spent years hating as if it were a tumor. The absence can be as sensitive as an amputated arm. I’m going to stay like this, I’ve had enough. I want the world to consider me a woman without going through another operation. And depending on how you look at it, the thing does function like a clitoris.”

Conversation is so mundane, full of words without any weight or intensity. So it’s really strange when it speeds toward intimate areas. I’m good at recognizing when words start to coil into blind curves, beyond which anything at all could be waiting.

“Can I touch?”

“Down there?”

“The breasts, I mean.”

“My breasts? Among people who’ve had the operation, mine are pretty ordinary. Don’t tell me you’ve never touched any?”

She ran her fingers through the mass of her hair and let it fall. You’d think she hadn’t learned the gesture by studying women, that it came naturally.

“Never fake ones. It’ll stay between friends. For old-time’s sake.”

I almost put on a glove (that was Dad’s ghost in me). I reached out my hand, then she pulled down the neckline of the blouse. The filling was less suggestive than the natural, sensual mass, but the skin was skin: soft, hot, with all its pores and sensitive circuitry. Her attitude helped, too: wanting to have them, to put them on. I didn’t prolong the contact.

“Thank you.”

“I can’t believe you’ve never touched one, Joan-Marc, but then you always were so naive. I can still see you jumping around on the court, that finer version of you. And it’s not that you’ve gotten fat, you’ve hardly put on weight at all. It’s just that no one told you the impression you gave: in class, on the playground, always so far beneath your potential. A wasted boy.”

I let him get away with all that sissy shit not because the shadow of touching him was still hanging over us, but because the overarching effect of the conversation, the alcohol, the enticing flirtation with the past, and the tug of camaraderie all came together, melting into an unconscious feeling of affectionate well-being: terrifyingly human sympathy. I didn’t want to leave. One more drink and I’d have asked her to dance.

“It’s late. We’d better stop.”

She didn’t say “get out,” she didn’t say “leave now.” She got up from the sofa, and the friendliness had vanished under the mask of cold serenity she’d perfected.

“You’re right. But let’s meet again, Eloise.”

She helped me on with the coat. She handed me my gloves.

“I can hear the effort every time you think ‘Eloy’ and end up saying ‘Eloise.’ I can’t stay in contact with you guys. You know, I never liked women as much as I do now that I’m like this. The metamorphosis demands a lot of discipline if you don’t want to break down halfway there. Descarrega is still alive within Larumbe, but I’m not going to let him come back, there’s no going back. This is my normal.”

“I understand.”

“No. You couldn’t understand. I appreciate you trying, though. I always thought you were a good person, after all. I’ll walk you out.”

We went down the stairs. From the ground-floor window the treetops reminded me again of an excited mammal. We must have an organ that still hasn’t been identified, because I sensed in the back of my neck that Eloise had stopped halfway down the stairs.

“Do you want to smoke? I like to smoke here, if you don’t mind, it relaxes me. I’ve thought of loads of things I’d still like to say to you, how silly. It’s like my mind speeds up when it’s time to say good-bye.”

“Give me one.”

“You talk, talk, and talk, only to find you haven’t even gotten started. You know, when I spent two weeks swollen up like I’d been run over by a truck, instead of dreaming of someone who would give me a hand, I thought about basketball. Once I could chew again, I went down to the port to eat rice with lobster and drink half a liter of house wine. Unfortunately it wasn’t such a nice day, but I still took a dip at five o’clock. The water was murky, full of algae and oil, and there were boys swimming, and there was the smell of grilled shrimp and mussels coming from the restaurants. The air gave me goose bumps, little bubbles of skin, and the sun ignited and extinguished scales of light on the sea, like that infinite surface was made up of a flickering swarm of blue butterflies. The idea disgusted me and I got out, water sliding down my new body, every drop hardening the sand it fell on. The boys were sunbathing, playing football, laughing out loud. I would have liked to introduce myself to any one of them — they all eat and sleep and go to work — have him show up all nervous at six to pick me up, and walk around like two friends until it got dark.”

“I get the idea.”

“You’d have to see it inside me, now that would be something. But you know, it doesn’t matter how many times they cut you, what they add to you, what they take out, your thoughts are still hidden in the brain, inside the skull, behind the frontal bone. A triple protection.”

“It’s not such a bad thing. Thoughts don’t tend to be all that pleasant.”

“In isolation they’re unrepresentative and unfair, sure. But I like to think that if we were to spread them out at the end of a life, and someone were to take the trouble to read them sympathetically, the result would be reassuring. Phobias, aggression…everything more manageable when you place it within a larger whole.”

I smiled at her. That was my only reply, all I was capable of. I’ve realized that I only know how to talk when I’m on the attack, going full speed, and as soon as my pulse calms I go blank. Eloise waited a second longer, leaning against the wall; it must have weighed her down to walk around with all that on her chest. For a while Helen had to sleep in a kind of harness, and even you had back pain sometimes.

“I envy the trees. They really know how to grow upward, and they have that system of aging and expanding that moves the earlier filth away from the core. With us it’s different, of course — you know, abandoned years, ones that no longer fit. But even if you let them rot they don’t go away, you’ll always run into people who remember them.”

She crushed her cigarette gently against the wall. I hadn’t even lit mine, and I put it in my pocket as a kind of souvenir. She tossed me the keys to the front door. We’d passed the ball thousands of times in practice, and I caught them in the air. It was a simple deadbolt lock. Behind the curtain of rain, the massed buildings trembled softly.

“Can I ask one final question?”

“I’m not saying a word about my prostate, Joan-Marc.”

“I assumed the anatomy class was over. It’s about Star Wars . Do you still have any of those figures?”

“Figures?”

“Boba Fett, Chewbacca, Lando Calrissian, C-3PO. You had hundreds. In a box shaped like the Millennium Falcon . I was so jealous.”

“You were jealous of me? Joan-Marc Miró-Puig was jealous, and of me — now that’s funny. No. None. I don’t even remember where they went, I’m sorry.”

We kissed each other on the cheek. Her perfume covered any hint of masculine aroma, and it was no more repugnant than any other thing you all spray on yourselves, reminiscent of burned wood, with the trace of cinnamon I grew up associating with Dad. My raincoat was getting soaked. I tried to open the umbrella and I felt her fingernails on my hand. A wall of water blurred the other side of the street.