Santiago Gamboa - Necropolis

It was clear that the situation was moving quickly, that our days at the conference were coming to an end.

We went up in the elevator, after a long wait for our turn. When we reached the floor where my room was, Egiswanda looked at us anxiously and said, can I stay with you a while longer, I feel a bit scared. Marta hugged her and said, of course, our room is also yours, I think we should drink something. We sat down on the bed with some gins from the mini-bar and Egiswanda continued her story.

One day José himself said to me, why do you never ask me where I go? to which I replied: because I know perfectly well you won’t answer and I’m not stupid. José was silent for a long while, lost in thought, and finally said: you’ll come with me soon to live in another country, I’m getting everything ready for that; it will do you good, you and the people who need you, the moment is coming, you just have to wait.

Time passed and one day he said, get your bags ready, we’re going on a journey. I thought he was referring to a change of motel, but he said, no, we’re going to travel together, bring your passport, and that’s how we came to this conference. Of course he didn’t want us to share a room and asked me not to be close to him. He said: stay in your room and think about important things like your destiny or the destiny of the world, I’ll come for you when I need you. The day of his talk, he asked me to go and hear him, saying: only by listening to me will you finally understand who I am, and that was what I did, I went to hear him. I listened to him eagerly, drinking in his every word. I cried. I got goose bumps. I got wet. I felt all that, listening to him. It was what I’d been waiting to hear for years and I assumed there would be a change in our life. First the journey and then his words, why wouldn’t I have imagined that everything was about to change? Men like José, who love humanity, aren’t capable of loving one particular person; that’s something they have in common with the prophets. When he finished his talk I met him in the corridor and tried to speak to him, but he brushed me aside, saying we would talk later, he would come and find me.

I was in my room waiting for him, with the TV on, and had no idea what had happened. I found out in the most brutal way, because I kept calling his room until the switchboard operator answered, and said, we’re terribly sorry, the guest in that room has just had an accident. I went to reception and that’s where I heard the news. I almost fainted. They also gave me a letter, they said they’d been going to take it up to my room but had been distracted. A letter? I recognized José’s handwriting on the envelope and when I opened it I found another envelope inside, with these words written on it: Don’t read this today, wait until tomorrow. I went into a corner to cry, trying to hide my grief from everyone, but then I said to myself, if he’s not here anymore there’s no reason for me to hide, I’m not harming anyone and I deserve to be able to cry for him, after all the sacrifices and the sad, solitary life I’d lived with him. I deserved to cry rivers of tears in that lobby where nobody knew I was his wife, which was why nobody had a kind word, nobody bothered to talk to me with any kind of tact, it was just: the man slit his wrists, they took his body to the morgue; I tried going to his room but, as I walked toward it, I felt his presence and got scared. I thought he was watching me and was going to fly into a temper, seeing me break the rules: never approach him, only wait for him to come, so I went back to my room and lay down on the carpet to cry, I wanted to drink but I couldn’t swallow the alcohol, I’d lost even that, and besides, he wouldn’t be there to take care of me anymore, so I cried and cried until there were no more tears left, until the last cell of grief left my body, and I was empty, and this city and this destruction and all that’s happening here seemed to me the ideal place from which to go away, and I even imagined that if I slit my wrists I could still get to him, get to where he was before he moved off and squeeze his hand and fly together to who knows where, I don’t know what there is after death, because deep down I’m not very religious. The world hurts me without him, the light and the air, everything hurts me without him. This conference and its delegates hurt me. The world is still turning, as if nothing had happened. I can’t believe it, José’s death can’t go unnoticed, like the fall of a dead leaf in a forest. It can’t be. I’ve read the letter about ten times or perhaps a hundred, and I know parts of it by heart. I have it here, would it bother you if I read it aloud? Marta wiped the tears from her cheeks and said, no, please, Wanda, read it.

Before doing that, Wanda asked if she could go to the bathroom to wipe her tears and freshen up, but what we heard were two loud snorts. She came out looking a little better, and said, you two are special, you’re the only people in all this mass of vanity who really care about José’s death. She picked up the letter and read:

Wanda,

My purpose isn’t to explain to you what happened to me, and notice that I’m speaking in the past tense, not in the future, even though as I write this nothing has happened yet. But it will happen. There are no reasons for certain things, and there doesn’t exist the slightest possibility of transferring experiences that are untransferable. Within three hours at the most, I will leave this frozen planet for good, and unlike Jesus Christ, my master, I won’t be coming back on the third day, because despite your admiration for me and the books I’ve written I’ve never been anything other than a total shit, a swindler. I’m not coming back after three days, among other things because nobody is waiting for me, with the possible exception of you. I am going to the world of the shadows, where I lived curled up before I was born, before somebody put their hand in that bag and pulled me out by the scruff of my neck and dumped me in the world, a hand that left me defenseless and in the most terrifying solitude, or, which amounts to the same thing, said, aha, my brother, I saw you, have a nice stay in this shithouse, you’re going to spend a few decades here, you already know that, the rest depends on you, you will see whether after a while you will be the grain that appears in the shit or the paper that cleans it or the stream of water that pushes it through the pipe, I give you those three possibilities, I’m feeling generous today — the hand continues — because, my friend, we’ll meet again during the race, and then the hand withdrew from the world with a nervous and rapid gesture, like someone pulling their hand out of a snake pit, and there I was lying on the street, bleeding and weeping, covered in entrails and shit, more alone than the first man on earth, without a trace of a past and without a history, my memories are the dirty walls of an orphanage, the concrete floor of a kitchen, the garbage piled up in the corners, a leaning lamppost filled with pigeons, anyway, I tried to do something in life and I don’t know if I succeeded, but it’s over now, what’s going to happen to me, in fact what’s already happening, can’t be changed, and that’s why I’m writing to you, let’s hope by the time you read this letter the situation in the city hasn’t gotten worse, because this is a farewell and a request, but let’s take things one at a time; first I’ll say goodbye and thank you for all the suffering and the deep faith you always had, accepting those silences and those abysses of mine, you were the strong one and I was the absent one, you were the island of air and clouds and me the nothingness; you knew how to respect my silences, which climbed all over yours and were harder to bear, and I say thank you, seriously, thank you, Wandita, my queen, what I am saying comes from the heart and there is something important: together with this letter there is a smaller blue envelope and a yellow one. Open the yellow one, you’ll find the details of a bank account into which I’ve transferred all the money I have, which now belongs to you, because you will have to carry on without me.