You may remember how I teased you. It wasn’t the same thing to love on a beach or in a hotel surrounded by lakes and snow as it was to live together every day. Besides, you were working in the same office. You’d end up boring each other. The novelty would wear off. Waking up together. Actually, it wasn’t very pleasant. She will see how you brush your teeth. You will see her take off her makeup, cream her face, put on her garter belt … I think you’ve done the wrong thing, Juan Luis. Weren’t you searching for your independence? Why have you taken on such a burden? If that’s what you had in mind, you might as well have stayed in Mexico. But apparently it’s difficult to escape the conventions in which we have been brought up. In the long run, although you haven’t followed the formula completely, you’re doing what Mama and Papa and everyone else has always expected of you. You’ve become a man of routine. After all the good times we had with Doris and Sophia and Marie-José. What a shame.
We didn’t write each other for a year and a half. My life didn’t change at all. My studies became a little useless, repetitive. How can they teach you literature? Once they put me in touch with a few things, I knew that I would be going my own way, I would read and write and study on my own. I went on going to class just for the sake of discipline, because I had to finish what I had begun. It’s so foolish and pedantic when they go on explaining things you already know, with phony diagrams and illustrations. That’s the bad thing about being ahead of your teachers, and they’re aware of it but hide it to keep their jobs. We were coming to Romanticism and I was already reading Firbank and Rolfe and I had even discovered William Golding. I had my professors a little scared, and my only satisfaction during that time was the praise I received at college: Claudia has real promise. I spent more and more time locked in my room. I arranged it to my taste, put my books in order, hung my reproductions, set up my record player, and Mama finally got tired of telling me that I should meet boys and go out dancing. They left me alone. I changed my wardrobe a little, from the cotton prints you knew to white blouses and dark skirts, tailored suits — outfits that make me feel a little more serious, more severe, more distant.
It seems we’ve arrived at the airport. The radar antennas are revolving and I stop talking with you. It’s going to be an unpleasant moment. The passengers are stirring. I take my handbag and makeup case and my coat. I sit waiting for the others to get off. It’s humid and cold and the fog conceals the mountains. It isn’t raining, but millions of unformed, invisible droplets hang in the air: I feel them on my skin. I smooth my straight blond hair. I enter the building and walk toward the airline office. I give my name and the clerk nods. He asks me to follow him. We walk along a long, well-lighted corridor and emerge into the icy afternoon. We move across a long strip of pavement that ends at a kind of hangar. I am walking with my fists clenched. The clerk does not attempt to make conversation. He precedes me, a little ceremoniously. We enter the storage room. It smells of damp wood, of straw and tar. There are many crates lined up in orderly fashion, as well as rows of barrels, and even a small dog in a cage, barking. Your box is partly hidden behind some others. The clerk points it out to me, bowing respectfully. I touch the edge of the coffin and for several moments I stand there without a word. My weeping is buried deep inside my belly, but it is as if I were crying. The clerk is waiting, and when he thinks it seemly, he shows me the various papers I have been negotiating for during the last few days, the permits and authorizations from the police, the department of health, the Mexican consulate, and the airline. He asks me to sign the final embarkation documents. I do it, and he licks the gummed back of some labels and affixes them to the coffin, sealing it. I touch the gray lid once more and we go back to the central building. The clerk murmurs his condolences and says goodbye.
After clearing the documents with the airline and the Swiss authorities, I go up to the restaurant, with my boarding pass in my hand, and I sit down and order a cup of coffee. I am sitting next to a large window and I can see the planes appearing and disappearing on the runway. They fade into the fog or emerge from it, but the noise of their engines precedes them or lingers behind like the wake of a ship. They frighten me. Yes, you know I am deathly afraid of them and I don’t want to think what this return trip with you will be like, in the middle of winter, showing in every airport the documents with your name and the permits that allow them to pass you through. They bring my coffee and I take it black; it’s what I needed. My hand does not tremble as I drink it.
Nine weeks ago I tore open your first letter in a year and a half and spilled my cup of coffee on the rug. I stooped hurriedly to wipe it up with my skirt, and then I put on a record and wandered around the room looking at book jackets, my arms crossed; I even read a few lines of poetry slowly, stroking the covers of the book, sure of myself, far removed from your still unread letter concealed in the torn envelope lying on the arm of the chair.
Sweet souvenirs of love now sadly pondered,
Yes, sweet they seemed when God did so assign,
In memory joined and bound, mine not to sunder,
With memory, too, they work my death’s design.
“Of course, we’ve quarreled. She goes out slamming the door behind her and I almost weep with rage. I try to get interested in something but I can’t and I go out to look for her. I know where she is. Across the street, at La Clémence, drinking and smoking nervously. I go down the creaking stairs and out into the plaza and she looks at me across the distance and pretends not to notice. I cross the garden and walk slowly up to the highest level of Bourg-de-Four, my fingers brushing the iron banister; I reach the café and sit down beside her in one of the wicker chairs. We are in the open air; in summer the café spills out onto the sidewalk and one can hear the music from the carillon of St.-Pierre. Claire is talking with the waitress. They are making small talk about the weather in that odious Swiss singsong. I wait until Claire stubs out her cigarette in the ashtray and I do the same, so as to touch her fingers. She looks at me. Do you know how, Claudia? As you looked at me, high on the rocks at the beach, waiting for me to save you from the ogre. You had to pretend you didn’t know whether I was coming to save you or to kill you in the name of your jailer. But sometimes you couldn’t contain your laughter and the fiction was shattered for an instant. The quarrel began because of my carelessness. Claire accused me of being careless and of creating a moral problem for her. What were we to do? It would have helped if I had had an immediate answer. But no, I retreated into my shell, silent and uncommunicative, and didn’t even try to avoid the situation and do something intelligent. There were books and records in the house, but I set myself to working some crossword puzzles.
“You have to decide, Juan Luis. Please.”
“I’m thinking.”
“Don’t be stupid. I’m not referring to that. I’m talking about everything. Are we going to spend our whole lives classifying documents for the United Nations? Or are we just living some in-between step that will lead to something better, something we don’t know about yet? I’m willing to do anything, Juan Luis, but I can’t make the decisions by myself. Tell me our life together and our work is just an adventure, and it will be all right with me. Tell me they’re both permanent; that will be all right, too. But we can’t act any longer as if our work is transitory and our love permanent, or vice versa, do you understand what I’m saying?”