My body is torn to shreds and my skin red-hot, said Marta when I entered the room. She was dancing about naked, completely drunk. But I’m happy, I want to spend my life with this burning, these pains that emerge after pleasure, oh, I want to sing, I want the walls to let my voice through and everyone to hear me and know about my happiness, I want the angels of this holy city to celebrate with me, instead of the bombs and the fires, I want the last judgment to find us singing, let’s drink, the world is going to end! I feel calm and fulfilled, I’m sorry, I think I’m in love. .
She went into the bathroom and from there called out, don’t wait for me, I need a long restorative shower, then you can tell me where you were and what you’ve been doing, what time is it? what does it matter where the hands of the clock are, the important thing is where we are, don’t you think? I said something but she had stopped listening, so I started making notes on my dinner with Kay and Sabina, trying not to think about the explosions. To cheer myself up I looked at the check from Citibank, a figure I had never before seen in relation to money, let alone money that would soon be mine. I was doing this when something novel and unforeseen happened. Another shell roared, the building shook, and the electricity went out. I stood up and went out on the balcony. There were a few flashes still visible, but the whole city was in darkness. I gazed for a while at that thick blackness, feeling slightly dizzy, and heard voices from the lower floors. People were opening windows and, like me, coming out on the balconies.
I went back into the room and heard Marta calling from the bathroom, why did the light go out? has something happened? I opened the door and said, we have to go down to reception, there’s a lot of bombing tonight, let’s go, hurry up.
She put on one of the white bathrobes and we went out into the corridor, where others were lighting the way with cigarette lighters. We ran to the stairs and found a swarm of frightened guests. I was sure the light would come back on or that the hotel’s generator would start working before we got down to the first floor, but neither happened. Marta looked for my hand and squeezed hard. I hate the dark, she murmured, which you may think is stupid coming from a country that’s in darkness most of the time, but that’s how it is, my analyst says it’s related to sexual fears, he may be right.
I saw the backs of the people moving in front of me in rhythm with their steps. Whenever one lighter went out another flared up, and so we had light all the time. By the time we got to reception I felt that I was in the bowels of the earth, the gallery of a mine dug centuries ago. Outside, the explosions were increasing in intensity and we were asked to keep calm. The manager stood up on a chair and said, we’ll go down a few floors to the sports club. We’ll be safe there because it’s an air raid shelter, but in any case there’s no danger, it’s purely routine, the light will come on again any minute now, could I ask you please to form groups of twenty and carry on down, it’s vital that everyone stays calm.
Near us somebody said: I know what happened, the defenders cut the lights off because a squadron of enemy planes has gotten through the antiaircraft batteries and anti-missile radar and is on its way here. The defense planes are already flying overhead. There’s going to be a battle in the sky, planes will crash onto the roofs and there’ll be fires, may God help us. Marta got scared and squeezed my hand hard. Another voice said: a missile of enormous power is heading straight for us from long range, that’s why they cut the electricity and made us go down, but a second voice rejected that, saying, long range missiles with nuclear warheads move according to pre-established GPS systems, and just turning the lights out won’t save a city from the impact, that might have been true in the days of biplanes and the Red Baron.
The sports club, with its sauna and Turkish baths and muscle-building machines, was covered in tiles. The groups advanced slowly, somewhat inhibited by the funereal atmosphere of the place. Marta and I sat down in a corner, on the track of a treadmill, and waited for everything to pass. It was only when she laid her head on my chest that I realized she was crying. Nothing’s going to happen, it’s just routine, in a minute the light will come back on, relax, but she said, that’s not why I’m crying, I wish my sadness were only fear, no, I’m crying because of Amos, I’m crying because I’ve realized that I love him with all my soul and because at this moment, when a woman needs her lover’s embrace, he’s embracing another woman, protecting another woman; I know he would be capable of putting himself in front of a grenade to save her, and here I am, wrapped in a bathrobe, with my body still trembling because of him, but I’m alone, in a poetic sense I mean, please don’t take it badly.
I interrupted her and said, I understand you but don’t think too much, and don’t keep going on about it, any moment now the generator will come on and everything will be the way it was. Then Marta said, you’re an angel, why the hell didn’t I fall in love with you? it would have been simpler. To tell the truth it never even occurred to me.
And what about your planned article on the life of a doctor in a city under siege? I don’t think I’ll do it, said Marta, I’m too involved personally and I wouldn’t be objective; I don’t want to violate journalistic ethics, that was one of the first things I learned in this fucking profession, ethics, and I’m not going to throw that overboard now. I think I’ll go with my earlier idea, something on Maturana and his tragic death, a summary of his life and the circumstances of his death, all that spiel, of course I’ll have to rely a lot on you, my dear, I’m a bit of a disaster when it comes to organizing my work. By the way, how did it go in Tel Aviv?
I told her about my encounter with Jessica, adding something I forgot to include in my notes, which is that she had been with the Universal Coptic Church for ten years, first in Miami, then in Bolivia and Ecuador, then in Nairobi, and finally in Tel Aviv; she had donated the property she had inherited from the Ministry to the order and thanks to that had been allowed to jump the queue in being assigned to the Tel Aviv branch, which was closer to the tomb of Jesus, where every true Christian longed to be.
The story seemed to calm Marta down, so much so that she stopped sobbing and was now making circles with her finger, saying, Amos is turning into an obsession, I can’t stop thinking about him, I feel his warmth and his smell, I feel his touch, being a woman is the dumbest thing in the world, always falling in love at the most inappropriate time, damn it, I’d rather be a male who fucks and forgets, so I said, but Amos hasn’t forgotten you, as far as I know, he simply isn’t here, that’s all, don’t think too much, don’t let your imagination run riot, think about your life just forty-eight hours ago, isn’t that too short a time to be making such a big thing out of this?
Marta looked at me with a hint of annoyance: you’re talking like an attorney, someone who analyzes and dissects, not like a writer, don’t you know that literature is filled with cases like mine? cases of women who turn their lives upside down overnight for love, without looking back? have you forgotten Twenty-four Hours in a Woman’s Life by Stefan Zweig? I mean, that woman took half the time I did, and I have more of an excuse than her, because I’m in the middle of a war, where love affairs are common because the fragility of life is so evident, have you forgotten Malraux’s La condition humaine? You should know all that.