David Unger - The Mastermind

“If something were to happen, one of us wouldn’t be there.”

“And the other person would know that and act accordingly. And plan to be back there at the same time the following year. Can we promise this to each other?”

“Oh, Guillermo. .”

They stare into each other’s eyes, then touch glasses and drink.

“There’s something else. Something we haven’t even realized.”

Maryam curls her body into Guillermo’s on the rug as if into a huge, absorbing sponge.

“We’re free, Maryam, totally free. Do you realize that?”

She nods, though her face shows worry. She knows that soon she will have to drive home and the battle royal between her and Samir will begin.

“Yes, like Prometheus.”

Maryam is now sleeping in the guest bedroom of their apartment. It’s her decision not to move out, but Samir tells Hiba that he’s banished her from their bedroom because she has admitted her affair with “Rosensweig,” even though she’s never admitted anything. Samir taunts his wife for sleeping with a Jew, though he knows that Guillermo and his wife have been attending the Union Church for years.

Maryam prefers to be alone — she no longer has to see Samir’s body. She no longer has to endure the rough texture of his skin next to her in bed, nor witness the spots that appear almost daily on his face, soon becoming moles.

Many men age gracefully, but not Samir. All of his physical deficiencies are amplified after her confession: his shoulders are unquestionably slouched, he shuffles more than he walks, and when he removes his shoes and puts on his slippers, a terrible smell permeates the living room. Maryam is certain that he wears the same socks for several days at a time just to upset her.

Though she can barely tolerate Hiba, Maryam makes sure the woman lays out clean socks and underwear on Samir’s bed every day for him after he showers. Though showering has become less frequent — does he want his wife to move out to escape the stench? She closes the door to her room at night, but the odor of dirty socks is inescapable as it slides into her bedroom from under the door.

In truth, her confession came at the right time: there’s no way she could have spent another night in his bed.

* * *

Guillermo and Maryam begin spending two afternoons together every week in his new apartment. With only three renters now in the whole building, it resembles a fortified castle, a private haven.

Since Samir refuses to grant her a divorce or annulment, Maryam realizes that she and Guillermo may never share a life together. In Guatemala they cannot live “in sin.”

“What’s wrong, my love?” asks Guillermo. They are sitting up in bed drinking green tea.

“It’s nothing, really.”

“I don’t believe you,” he says, brushing her hair from her forehead. “We shouldn’t keep secrets from one another.”

“Okay,” she says, setting her cup on her night table. “Where are we going?”

“By which you mean. .?”

“What’s our future?”

“I don’t know. Just imagine: only three months ago we had no future together, but now we at least have this—”

“You mean our twice-a-week tryst?”

“It’s more than that. I am out of my marriage—”

“And I’ll never be out of mine. I feel that I am still lying about us to my father. I am certain that Samir has told him. I should just tell him the truth and see what he says. It’s not right for me not to tell him.”

Guillermo knows that this will depress her further, but he cannot hide the truth. “You’re right, your father already knows. Samir called him the night you spoke with him. Ibrahim asked me not to talk about it, out of respect for him, and to remain discreet. I promised him I would. He does not approve of our affair in the least.”

“I wish you’d told me.”

“I’m telling you now. Didn’t you wonder why your father stopped inviting me to have lunch with you?”

Maryam slumps in the bed. She wants to hide under the sheets and pillows.

“Sweetheart,” Guillermo says to her.

“You shouldn’t keep secrets from me.”

“I promised your father.”

“My father’s not me. I need you to be honest with me. Samir and I are at a stalemate. All I can do is wish him dead. . or maybe we should just kill him.”

“What a wonderful solution, Maryam — both of us spending the rest of our lives in the penitentiary with Kaibiles, murderers, rapists, and drug addicts for having plotted to assassinate your husband. Even if we hired someone to kill Samir, what would we achieve? It’s true, 90 percent of the crimes in Guatemala are never solved, but this murder would surely be traced!”

Maryam raises her right eyebrow.

“I’m not joking. It’s easy to hire assassins. It’s done almost every day here. Do you know that only eight out of every one hundred crimes are ever prosecuted, and only one of the eight criminals is brought to justice? This means that 1 percent of all murders in Guatemala are solved, but if the killing involves an act of love, it goes up to 50 percent.”

“I couldn’t live with blood on our hands.”

“And neither could I,” Guillermo says. He knows they are simply talking loosely. There is no crime in talking about it, but he realizes he could easily contract someone to murder Samir and be done with him.

“There’s no hope. What are we waiting for?”

“What if you and I just eloped to some other country? I have friends in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica who could help us get set up. And my sister is still living in San Francisco, last I heard.”

“I couldn’t simply run away with my tail between my legs — not as long as my father is alive. It would literally break his heart if I went off.” She pauses. “And I don’t think you would want to get any farther away from your kids than you are already. Isn’t Mexico far enough away?”

“It is.” Guillermo gets up and heads to the bathroom.

When he comes back, Maryam has wrapped a sheet around herself and is sitting on the bed watching television. He glances at the set and sees a boy and a girl crying on the screen. “Watching a soap opera?”

“Not a soap opera, Guillermo, real life. A woman from Vista Hermosa went shopping to Paiz in her Ford Explorer. When she returned home, she parked for a second to open the gate and a car with tinted windows drew up and two men pounced on her. This was according to the maid, who saw everything from inside the house. They shot the woman dead. The thieves killed her to kidnap her car.”

“You can’t kidnap a car—”

“Damn it, Guillermo, you know what I mean. They hijacked her car. She has two teenagers. There they are crying,” she says, pointing to the TV. “The family is ruined. All this over stealing a stupid car!”

Guillermo sits down beside Maryam and hugs her tightly. All in all, this has not been a good day. Maryam is so upset over her life with Samir that she is feeling desperate, almost hopeless. And then the talk about their future further depresses her. And now this senseless killing.

“I can’t keep doing this,” Maryam says, bursting into tears. “I won’t do it. I love you, but this is going to kill me. Kill us. We need to find a way to get away from this life—”

“And take your father and his factory and my law firm with us?”

“You know I don’t mean that. It’s gotten to the point where it’s no longer safe to take a bus anywhere because you’ll be assaulted, robbed, or raped. Now you can’t even go shopping in your own car without being killed. The other day my maid Lucia was crying because her thirty-year-old nephew had just been killed — sprayed with thirty-two bullets because he refused to join the gang operating in his neighborhood. He was a good boy, attending the university, crossing the street to avoid the Maras until they said to him, You are going to be one of us . He kept walking away till they isolated him below La Plaza Berlin. They filled him with bullets and left him to die. Lucia’s sister Mirta wants to kill herself. He was her only son.”