Laura Restrepo - Hot Sur

From the first day I got into this whole adultery mess, I was looking for a way to end it. Think of it, Mr. Rose, as if you shot two arrows in completely different directions. That was me, trapped in infidelity and at the same time detesting it. I wanted to cut loose but I couldn’t; the more I tried the tighter the bindings became. And my passion for my brother-in-law grew with my regret. At the beginning, I wanted to end the affair with Joe because of Greg, the fear that Greg would find out; Greg’s explosion, if he were ever to find out; the end of our marriage; the loss of the green card; the fight to the death between brothers; the final judgment. But after what happened with Corina, my main reason for ending it with Joe was because of Joe, who had always inspired a bit of fear in me; after Corina, that fear became panic. Because I knew well what my dear brother-in-law was like in the sack, and I could attest for that, but I also knew about his more perverse side. He was Catholic, after all.

If Greg made a mistake with me it was that in the end I wasn’t very Catholic, and even less faithful. The complete opposite of his first wife, who I know almost nothing about because he never talked about her. I only knew that she had worn the ring of white gold that had belonged to her mother-in-law, and that Greg gave to me, with the cubic zirconia, on the day of our engagement, the very same one that they confiscated from me when they put me in here, and they haven’t given it back. Not that I need it. That piece wasn’t all mine, it had passed through a lot of hands before it got to me.

What else can I tell you about, what other clues may have foretold the tragic outcome? Well, there were weapons in the house, but what ex-cop doesn’t have weapons in the house? A few pistols, or revolvers or whatever, I don’t know the difference, never touched them, never even noticed them. Greg kept them well oiled and they were his pride and joy, because according to him the department had granted them to him. He used to leaf through weapons catalogs and subscribed to various magazines that he read in the bathroom, but not Playboy or Penthouse or anything like that, my Greg became aroused by other things. He locked himself up in the bathroom with Soldier of Fortune , the bible of mercenaries, or with Corrections Today , the essential source for the discovery of prison-security innovations. I know because he showed them to me, he wanted to share his passion with me, because in the end that was his world, the souvenirs of his profession, remembrances of his youth. Everyone has his stuff. And I respected it because Greg was a good man. Let’s say a man whose love for me was insecure, over the top, the kind of love an older man has for a much younger woman. He spoiled me as if I were his daughter, and I let myself be spoiled, although the excessive affection was a bit suffocating. In previous relationships with men my own age I had come to know plenty of insolence, and Greg’s love felt like an oasis. After he died, if he is in fact dead, I came to realize that living with him had been a privilege, because he was the only man who truly loved me or who still loves me, if he happens to be alive. Except for that whole nonsense that I told you about with Q & A , his outburst about that movie, I never once fought with Greg. Things went well from the moment we married until the night of his fifty-seventh birthday.

And now I’ll get back to the kapustnica. One night in the middle of the fall, Greg and I were making dinner at home, a special dinner because it was his birthday. Or I should say, he was making dinner, because remember, he cooked, I didn’t. I also had to work on the other side of the city and was getting home late, a very formally attired dinner and I was all stocked up with a bouquet of roses in one hand and a six-pack of Coors in the other. I was out of breath after climbing the five flights, because we are on the top floor and there is no elevator. When I went into the apartment, Hero ran out to meet me and as always began to do circles around me. You don’t know, Mr. Rose, how much I miss my dog, Hero. If at least they’d let me keep him, things would be easier in here. I have to hold back tears every time I talk about Hero. But to get back to that night. As soon as I walked into the apartment I was surrounded by a cloud of steam, and the smell of the kapustnica, which had been simmering for hours; Greg had taken the day off to devote himself to it. The windows of the house were fogged over, a Turkish bath of fermented cabbage, and among a pile of dirty pots he stood in front of the stove, a big spoon in hand. He was wearing his apron for special meals and he looked comical, I swear, I felt a certain tenderness seeing him like that, his red cheeks and the little hair left on his head, all sweaty with his belly bulging over the apron, which had a print design of two circles up top and a little triangle below representing the tits and the pubic area of a curvy young woman. Greg was very proud of his apron; he thought it was quite the joke to wear it, a stroke of genius worthy of a select group of males obsessed with the culinary arts.

I like to think you cook, Mr. Rose, and that you make traditional dishes from your country for your girl, or from your parents’ country, or your grandparents’. We don’t have Internet access here, so I haven’t been able to find out anything about your last name, Rose, although I’d like to think it’s from an ancient country where roses grow wild, and where your grandparents made leek-and-potato soup, or roasted a goat with rosemary, a country they had to flee from by ship because war and hunger had made the leeks, potatoes, and kids disappear. Only the pure roses remained, and no one could live on that. That’s why I imagine that when you prepare the potato soup for your girl, or the roasted kid, you do it in remembrance of your grandparents and dress up the table with a vase of roses. I don’t know, that’s what I like to think; as you know, we have time to fiddle our diddles here.

“Hi, sweetheart, good to have you home,” Greg screamed at me from the kitchen on the night of his birthday, and it was clear he was glad to see me, always glad to see me, kind Greg. And that’s what he always called me, sweetheart, and to me it sounded like a Sandra Bullock movie. Every once in a while his voice would tremble and he’d sing me an oldie by Nelson Eddy, as he explained to me, which went “sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart,” like that, a threesome, because sometimes he tried to be romantic, my Greg.

“The kapustnica is almost ready and it is a masterpiece, best one yet,” he told me. “And I couldn’t even find the Cantimpalos chorizo, the best substitute I’ve found here, I had to use a more common brand, but you can’t even tell it’s missing the Cantimpalos, come here, sweetheart, try it. So? Is it better with the Cantimpalos or without? What does it need? Someday I’ll take you to my country so that you can taste the kapustnica with our sausage, the authentic smoked sausage from our country. Meanwhile, we have to make do with what we have. Go on, sweetheart, set the table. Did you remember to bring me beer? Good, then bring out the wineglasses to do honor to this magnificent kaputsnica.”

“Beer in wineglasses, Greg? What gives?”

“Why do we have those glasses then if we are never going to use them?”

Beer in wineglasses, Cantimpalos chorizo, smoked sausage, or his mother’s ass, it was all the same to me. And if you want me to tell you the truth, Mr. Rose, I preferred it without any chorizo, or any roasted goat, or cabbage, or pork ribs, or onions, or garlic; but, of course, that’s not what I told Greg that night. Fortunately, I didn’t tell him and he died convinced that I appreciated his culinary efforts.