— Teresa Seraphim
During the reading of the letter, which the Anarchist translated in a compassionate voice, three of my grandfather’s ribs, seized by pain, snapped. They sounded like rifle shots. Bloody saliva mixed with his silent tears. The bar, filled with comrades jammed around the Russian to hold him up when his knees went weak, seemed silent despite the heavy breathing, like that of a wounded bull, of my grandfather and of the soft murmur of the wise man’s voice. Those poor folk understood pain and, with pitying respect, witnessed the demolition of his heart. Wine ran down their throats, gurgling like a spring. The Freckle Trainer, to sweeten the mood, began to whistle, imitating a canary. So he could withstand these huge revelations, they gave the Professor of Shoeology large glasses of pisco. The floor began to spin, the walls became porous and let in the noise of the world, the laughter of children, the gossip of women, the clatter of broken-down vehicles, the cries of hucksters. Inside, a husband was dying; outside, the city continued on its indifferent march. Someone began to sing; another began to drum on the wine barrel; the entire block began to dance; the party exploded. From embrace to embrace, the victim, brutalized by drink, was passed around, kissing men as if they were his relatives, kissing hands that shoved him so he wouldn’t dissolve in a bitter river that would empty into death. He poured out vomit, blood, and pisco, and he finally fell down in a faint. They opened his mouth with a spoon and emptied half a bottle more down his throat. He was drunk for seven days. He visited, one by one, all the rooms in the tenement and embraced every single family — the old, the young, men, women, cats. Smiling, they allowed him to do it because a lovesick drunk was sacred there. He destroyed his clothes and, naked, insulted the moon. He ran around on all fours with the stray dogs. He threw all his shoes into a ditch and wept, wept, wept.
When he finally recovered from his drunkenness, he found himself in his room, with all the furniture Teresa had built reduced to a pile of broken boards. His mouth was bitter, not from alcohol but from sadness. A sadness that fastened itself to the inside of his chest like a somber crab. The images from the letter haunted him, buzzed in his brain: his wife’s sex receiving the phallus of a goy, all moist; her shrieking with joy, swallowing semen; her legs spread, offering herself, shaking her hips, forgetting him in the pleasure of being penetrated totally by another man, younger, handsomer, more intelligent, more skillful. She, Teresa, so good, capable of giving tenderness honestly, a pure caresses, giving her life to a monster, giving to the monster what she never gave to him. Oh, what a stab! What a savage blow! He considered her guilty, then innocent, then he pounded his head: “It’s my fault; I didn’t even know how to kiss her, giving myself to the liquor of her lips; not giving her my entire soul, choosing to grant it instead to God; not caressing her; not offering her the place of a total queen; never fastening my mouth to her sex as if I were dying of thirst; making her revolve around me; drowning her in obligations; boring her; giving her an iceberg for a home; possessing her with the thrusts of a billy goat; spitting my sperm into her belly; never trembling with excitement while staring at the landscape; never sacrificing sleep so we could spend the night together just talking nonsense, smelling each other’s skin, staring into each other’s eyes. I’ve lost her. And now that she’s not here, I finally know how much I loved her. I’ll feel her absence for the rest of my life. I love the empty space she’s left, where she is missing is now my place. The light is gone.”