My grandmother’s house was on a street near the docks. We crossed a long patio, after which we had to climb some stairs, and then we went through the dining room, where there was a table with a platter full of pastries. My mother had instructed me not to ask for one, so I told my grandmother:
“If you’ll give me one I’ll ask, if not I won’t.”
My grandmother was amused, and one of the times she hugged and kissed me I saw the green heart on her breast and asked her for it, but she didn’t give it to me. Before dinner I was allowed to play with a little girl named Ivonne. The girl’s mother wore a hat made of newspaper and her face and kerchief were sprinkled with tiny white feathers.
That night before going to sleep I saw a small bright ladder climbing the wall by the bed: it was the light coming in the slats of the shutters. Then I slept through the noise that got everyone else up in the middle of the night, when the lid of the candy jar slipped out from under my pillow and crashed on the floor. The next morning, while I drank my milky coffee, I kept hearing a strange screech and I was told it was Ivonne hiccuping — she seemed to do it on purpose. After breakfast she invited me to see a dead man in a room across the back patio. Her mother didn’t want to let her go because of her hiccups. I looked at the mother’s paper hat: the feathers, that morning, were purple. Then I thought of the dead man. Ivonne was saying:
“He’s all right, Mom, we know him. It’s that little old man who used to sell chickens.”
She led me by the hand and I hung on, afraid to let go. The little old man was alone, under a white sheet. Ivonne not only went on hiccuping and screeching but wanted to blow out all the candles around the coffin. Suddenly her mother came in, grabbed her by the arm, and dragged her out at top speed and me with her, still clutching her hand.
That same morning my grandmother gave me the green heart — and a few years ago these old memories were joined by some new events.
I was in a city in Argentina where the man in charge of organizing my concerts had done everything wrong from the beginning, until in the end nothing could be done. Meanwhile I’d had time to sample the downtown hotels from top to bottom and landed in a doubtful neighborhood in a suburb, where a friend rented a room. My friend’s parents had sent him a bed, and he let me have the top mattress. The nights were very cold and I had spent most of my money buying old newspapers, which I spread over a thin blanket and covered with an overcoat lent to me by the concert organizer. One night I woke my friend with a wild shriek. I also woke up and found myself holding a pillow against the walclass="underline" I’d been dreaming there was a hole in the wall and a smiling loony had stuck his head through it, wearing a hat made of newspaper. After thinking about it for a while, forcing myself to stay awake — I was afraid of going back to sleep and having the nightmare return — I remembered the hat worn by Ivonne’s mother.
I was so depressed, a few evenings later, strolling through the lights downtown, that suddenly I decided to pawn the green heart and go to a movie. After the show that night, I worked up the courage to write another friend I had in Buenos Aires asking for a loan. I already owed this friend a lot of money, but I could risk it because now the arrangements for my next concert, in a neighboring town, were looking good. That same night I thought of the lady with the newspaper hat again and decided to find out from my mother, who might know, what the hat meant and why the lady was always sprinkled with feathers. In my letter I mentioned remembering the lady always picking at something on her lap, as if plucking a bird.
When the money came I redeemed the green heart and moved on to the neighboring town, where everything went well from the start and I was able to stay in a comfortable hotel. I had been given a room with three beds, a double and two singles, all to myself, with permission to choose my bed. So, after a somewhat excessive dinner, I took the double bed and piled all the blankets from the other beds on it. The furniture in the room was dark with age and the mirrors were blurred and almost blind to the light.
The concert ended early and afterward I had time — before the stores closed — to buy books, colored pencils for underlining, and an indexed notebook I’d find some use for later on. As soon as I’d had dinner and taken the books to bed with me I thought of the movies and couldn’t resist the temptation: I got dressed again and went to see an old film in which a couple exchanged long kisses. I was very happy and didn’t want to go to bed, so I sat in a café where there was an ostrich. It was a very tame ostrich which wandered around with slow steps among the tables. I was staring at it absently, turning my tiepin over between my fingers, when suddenly it lunged toward me, plucked the pin from my hand and swallowed it. I watched in horror as the pin worked its way down the bird’s throat like a bulge in a sock. I would have liked to squeeze it back up, but the waiter arrived with my coffee and said:
“Never mind, sir.”
“Not at all! It’s only an heirloom!”
“If you’ll allow me, sir,” the waiter was saying, raising a hand like a policeman stopping a car. “The ostrich has swallowed all sorts of things before and always returned them. So, rest assured — tomorrow or the next day you’ll have your pin back, good as new.”
The next day the newspapers carried the reviews of my concert. But one of them appeared under a front-page headline that said: “Pianist’s stay depends on ostrich,” and was full of jokes.
That same day I received a letter from my mother in which she said Ivonne’s mother made powder puffs, that the swan down she used for them came in all colors, and that her plucking must have been when she was picking at the down in its envelope, because sometimes it was packed in very tight.
The following day the waiter at the cafe brought me my pin and said:
“What did I tell you, sir? It’s a very reliable ostrich — it always gives everything back.”
The next time I come to this little lost town for a rest, maybe the number of inhabitants will have increased with new memories. But the old greenish newspaper is almost sure to be here, as well as the quintuplets and the holes poked in their eyes with the pin.
“Lovebird” Furniture
The publicity for this furniture took me by surprise. I had been spending a month’s vacation at a nearby resort, not wanting to know what was going on in town. When I got back it was very hot and that same night I went to the beach. I returned to my room fairly early and in a bit of a bad mood because of what had happened to me on the trolley. I had caught the trolley at the beach and found a spot on a bench facing the aisle. Because it was still very hot, I had folded my jacket on my lap, and — since I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt — my arms were bare. Suddenly one of the persons going by in the aisle leaned over me and said:
“With your permission, please. .”
I said at once, “It’s yours.”
But by then — already too late — I was frightened. In a flash several things had happened. The first was that even before he had finished asking for my permission or I’d had a chance to answer, the man was already rubbing something cold — for some reason it felt like spit — on my bare arm. And by the time I’d finished saying “It’s yours,” I had felt a needle prick and seen the large syringe with letters on it. At the same time, a fat woman across the aisle had said:
“I’m next.”
I must have jerked my arm because the man with the needle said:
“Careful or it’ll hurt. Just hold still. .”