Never again would she keep me company from her bedroom. But the coincidences did not end with her death. Many years later, after my first books were published, I was invited to join a panel of judges for a short story contest the Chilean journal Paula organizes every year. I visited Santiago on a whirlwind trip filled with activities. Traveling the streets of this city, I thought of some of the kids who had shared part of my childhood. Had they returned to their countries with the arrival of democracy? And, if so, would they recognize themselves in these renovated and shiny streets, where years earlier their families had been persecuted? I thought of Ximena, of course, and also of a few others with tragic stories like Javiera Enríquez, whom I met later as a teenager, and who had lost her family when she was four years old. The one morning I had off, I asked to visit Pablo Neruda’s home in Isla Negra, an hour from the capital. Along with my ten-month-old son, I was accompanied by Silvia Ossandón, an editor from the magazine, whom I had become friends with. We were met by the person in charge of public relations for la Casa Neruda, a man who had lived in exile in Mexico and who immediately took a liking to me. His name was Bernardo Baltiansky. We spoke a little bit before my tour through the museum house. We discovered that in the eighties we had lived in the same neighborhood. As I looked at the innumerable collections of the late author of I Confess I Have Lived, at all the remnants of his time on earth, I had only one thing on my mind, Ximena. When I left I was going to ask this man if he had known her, if he could tell me something about her — any piece of information, any fact that would bring me closer to her would satisfy me. I needed to find a way to bring up the subject. While thinking about it, Bernardo told me that in his lifetime Neruda had written, traveled, carried out diplomatic duties, been married several times, and above all had built houses and furniture, a colossal oeuvre. Ximena in turn had passed through the world on feet unsure and slippery. Her time here had been short, but resplendent for those of us lucky enough to have seen her.
At the end of the tour, Bernardo invited us to have a drink in the museum café. The ocean waves lapped the sand a few meters away. It seemed like the water’s smooth persistence whispered secrets from the not too distant past when Chile’s coast had seen the most terrible atrocities, secrets no one was ready to hear, as if what those people most feared was waking the ghosts of the disappeared. Silvia reminded me that if we wanted to find an open restaurant we should leave soon. I asked Bernardo if he had known other Chileans in Villa Olímpica. As if he had expected the question, he answered yes, his sister had also lived there with her daughters.
“My niece committed suicide in one of those buildings,” he said.
Inside my body, I felt my blood turn as cold as the waves of the cobalt sea.
“What was her name?” I asked, knowing it could be no one else. Bernardo confirmed it. He also told me that some months before her death his niece had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, an illness that served to encompass all the unclassifiable disorders, and which also happened to be the diagnosis for Javiera Enríquez. Bernardo spoke of her without telling me anything I didn’t already know. Until he started talking about her painting.
“She was very talented. The best painting she did is still in my sister’s house. It’s of an immense tree that grew in Villa Olímpica, just in front of her house, where she spent many hours.”
“And your sister?” I asked, “does she still live there?”
“No, she lives in Santiago. If you’d like, we can call her.”
That evening I had promised to have dinner at my writer friend Alejandro Zambra’s house. When I got there, I told him the story and asked him to go with me to the woman’s apartment. It wasn’t far from where he lived and he readily agreed. As soon as Ximena’s mother opened the door, I saw the painting on the main wall of her living room. It had a power of attraction, like a face with a strong magnetism. At least that’s the effect it had on me. It really was a portrait of our tree, if trees can belong to people. On the volcanic rocks there were silhouettes of children sitting in front of one another and back-to-back, children whose faces couldn’t clearly be made out, pensive children who played neither together nor alone. Children like we had been. The painting moved me to tears. All of a sudden, that feeling of abandonment, a constant in those years, came back to life; but so too did the composure I had always maintained, in those days when letting others see me cry was the last thing I’d do. Habits we develop in childhood stay with us forever, and even though we are able by force of great will to keep them at bay, crouching in a sinister place in our memory, when we least expect them they leap into our faces like enraged cats. I focused on the other paintings Ximena’s mother was showing me and politely answered the questions she asked. It wasn’t a long conversation. I believe that neither of us was ready to open the floodgate of emotions for the fear of the torrents that would wash over us; our feelings were only exposed at their tips like icebergs moving beneath the surface. Even though it was my day off, I was on a work trip and didn’t want to enter into the vulnerable space that encroaches every time I invoke with words all those memories, a space from which it takes me several days to climb out. Nor did I want to hurt her or to put her in a similar state. In that house, Alejandro and I drank tea, spoke about literature, and let my son play with a Moroccan drum. I found out that Paula, her other daughter, had also returned to Santiago, had become a mother like me, and was a fan of Manu Chao. Then we left, leaving behind no trace but a forgotten pacifier.
After Ximena’s death, the presence of insects became much more frequent and commonplace, but no longer scared me. I had learned there were things much more terrifying than those diminutive little animals, venomous as they could be. I should also say that the insects were no longer as poisonous. Instead of burning bugs and tarantulas, I saw earthworms, beetles, and cockroaches. In my visions, the last in particular showed me friendliness, even kindness. Unlike other insects, cockroaches didn’t look at me with aggressive or challenging eyes, but the opposite; they seemed to be there to keep the other critters from coming to bother me. That’s why, whenever I found one in my room, instead of the usual nervousness, a mysterious calm would come over me.
Except for my grandmother’s mess, the apartment remained exactly as my mother had left it. Many of her clothes were still in the closet, like the old gray robe she almost always wore at home. We called it “the skin.” Her desk was the same, her pencils still sharp. Her library stood unmoved, including the I Ching. Everything gave the impression that she had only left for the weekend and at any moment would return to her regular life. Maybe we would have missed her less if we’d moved to a completely different place in which she had never set foot, where at least there wouldn’t be a trace of her to find. During the few times I was left alone in the house, I carefully went through her belongings, as if searching for an encrypted message that could tell me the exact date of her return and give me some sign that she definitely was coming back. And that was how, looking through her books and at pieces of paper slipped between their pages, I came upon a book whose title immediately caught my attention. It was a novella by Gabriel García Márquez, The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother. It was a Saturday morning. My grandmother had taken my brother to the mall near the house. I opened the book and began to read voraciously. Since my mother had left, I had set aside many of the things I liked to do. I didn’t even slide down the service staircase to refresh my body and mind when it was hot out anymore. In those months I read very little and wrote nothing at all. Books made my grandmother suspicious. She knew that in her daughter’s library there were some rather uncivilized works, such as those that explained new ways to approach sex. She didn’t like to see me in the study and every time she caught me prowling the shelves she complained.