Evelio Rosero - The Armies

Today my wife, ten years younger than me, is sixty, but she looks older, she moans and walks hunched over. She is not the same girl she was at twenty sitting down on a public toilet, her eyes like lighthouse beams over the hitched up island, the join of her legs, the triangle of her sex — indescribable animal — no. Now she is old, happy indifference, going from here to there, in the middle of her country and its war, busy with her house, the cracks in the walls, the possible leaks in the roof, although the shouts of the war burst in her ears, she is just like everyone, when it comes right down to it, and I am happy for her happiness, and if she loved me today as much as she does her fish and her cats perhaps I would not be peering over the wall.

Perhaps.

“From the first time I met you,” she says that night at bedtime, “you’ve never stopped spying on women. I would have left you forty years ago if I thought you would take things any further. But no.”

I listen to her sigh: I think I can see it, it is a vapor rising in the middle of the bed, covering us both.

“You were and are just a naïve, inoffensive peeping Tom.”

Now I sigh. Is it resignation? I do not know. And I shut my eyes tight, and nevertheless listen to her.

“At first it was difficult, I suffered from knowing that apart from spying on women you spent the days of your life teaching boys and girls to read at school. Who could imagine? But I kept an eye out, and I repeat this was just at the beginning, for I saw you never really got up to anything serious, nothing bad or sinful that we would live to regret. At least that’s what I believed, or wanted to believe, for heaven’s sake.”

The silence can also be seen, like the sigh. It is yellow, it slips through the pores of the skin like fog, it climbs up the window.

“That hobby of yours made me sad,” she says as if smiling. “But I soon got used to it: I forgot about it for years at a time. And why did I forget? Because you used to be very careful not to be seen; I was the only witness. Well, remember when we lived in that red building in Bogotá. You spied on the woman in the building opposite, day and night, until her husband found out, remember. He shot at you from the other room, and you told me yourself that the bullet parted your hair. What if he had killed you, that husband, that man of honor?”

“We wouldn’t have a daughter,” I said. And I dared, finally, to surrender: “I think I’m going to go to sleep.”

“Tonight you’re not going to go to sleep, Ismael; for so many years you’ve been going to sleep every time I want to talk. Tonight you’re not going to ignore me.”

“No.”

“I’m telling you at least to be discreet. I have to point it out to you, as old as you may be. What just happened is degrading to you, and degrading to me. I heard the whole thing; I’m not deaf, as you seem to think.”

“You’re a spy too, in your own way.”

“Yes. Spying on the spy. You’re not discreet, as you used to be. I’ve seen you in the street. Ismael, you practically drool. I thank heaven that our daughter and our grandchildren live far away and don’t see you at it. How shameful with the Brazilian, with his wife. Let them do what they like, it’s fine, we are each master of our own flesh and its corruption; but for them to find you up a ladder like a sick man spying on them is a shame that applies to me too. Promise me that you won’t climb up there again.”

“And the oranges? Who’s going to pick the oranges?”

“I’ve already thought of that. But it won’t be you, not anymore.”

Every 9 March, for the last four years, we have been visiting Hortensia Galindo. On that day many of her friends help her to endure the disappearance of her husband, Marcos Saldarriaga, whom nobody knows whether God has in his Glory, or his Gloria has in hers — as the wagging tongues have begun to joke, referring to Saldarriaga’s mistress, Gloria Dorado.

We gather at dusk. We ask about his fate and the reply is always the same: nothing is known . In their house — friends, acquaintances and strangers — we drink rum. On the long concrete patio, where there are many hammocks and rocking chairs, a crowd of young people, including Saldarriaga’s twin sons, make the most of the occasion. Inside the house we old folks cluster around Hortensia and listen to her. She does not cry now, as she used to; perhaps she is resigned, but who knows? She does not behave like a widow: she says her husband is still alive and that God will help him find his way back to his loved ones. She must be forty or so, although she looks younger: she is young in spirit and in appearance, fleshy, more than exuberant, grateful for the company on the melancholy anniversary of her husband’s disappearance, and she gives thanks in an unusual way: when she says Thank God her open, trembling hands touch her breasts — two colossal round melons. Maybe I am the only one to witness this gesture, which she repeats each year: perhaps she seeks merely to point out her heart: who will ever know? Two years ago they even had music in the house and, whether God willed it or not, people seemed to forget the fearful fate that every disappearance is, and even the possible death of the one who is missing. People forget everything, good heavens, and the young especially, who have no memory even of today; that is why they are almost happy.

Because the last time there was dancing.

“Let them dance,” Hortensia Galindo said, coming out to the lighted patio, where the young people were happily switching partners. “Marcos would like it. He always was, and is, a joyful man. The best party will be the day he comes home.”

That was last year, and Father Albornoz left, extremely annoyed by her decision.

“So he could be alive, or he could be dead,” he said, “but either way, there has to be dancing.” And he left the house.

He could not have heard, nor did he want to hear, Hortensia Galindo’s reply.

“Even if he is dead: it was on the dance floor that I fell in love with him.”

* * *

We do not know if after what happened Father Albornoz will want to call on Hortensia Galindo today. Possibly not. My wife and I wonder as we cross the town. Hortensia’s house is on the far side from ours, and, arm in arm, we encourage each other to walk, or rather, she encourages me; the only exercise I take these days is climbing the ladder, stretching as far as I can, as if on a vertical bed, and collecting the oranges from the trees of my orchard; it is enjoyable exercise, unhurried, that suits me in the morning hours — what with all there is to look at.

Walking has become torture for me of late: my left knee hurts, my feet swell; but I do not complain in front of others, as my wife does, of varicose veins. Nor do I want to use a walking stick; I do not go to see Dr. Orduz because I am sure he would prescribe a stick, and I associate these sticks with death and have done so since I was a boy: the first dead man I saw, as a child, was my grandfather, leaning against his avocado tree, his head drooping, straw hat covering half his face, and a walking stick made from a guayacan branch between his knees, his stiff hands fastened to the handle. I thought he was asleep, but soon I heard my grandmother crying: “So you’ve finally died and left me, tell me what should I do now, die myself?”

“Listen,” I say to Otilia. “I want to think about what you said last night. You’ve made me ashamed to face people, what was that about me drooling in the streets? No, don’t answer. I’d rather be by myself for a few minutes. I’m going to drink a cup of coffee at Chepe’s and I’ll catch up with you.”

she stops walking and stares at me openmouthed.