That Year in Madrid E-Book

Daniel Chavarría

• Herausgeber: RUTH
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 291

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

"That Year in Madrid…", ideal for a transatlantic flight, is inspired by a real story. Moving along at the pace of a thriller, the novel is filled with humor and literary virtuosity, rendering an almost detective-like plot with twist and an ending that will surprise even de most astute readers.

Leseprobe

Original title in Spanish:Aquel año en Madrid…

Edition:Cecilia N. Valdés Ponciano and Heriberto Nicolás García

E-book edition:Claudia María Pérez Portas

Design:Enrique Mayol Amador

Desktop publishing:Raúl E. Soto

E-book desktop publishing and design:Roberto Armando Moroño Vena

© 2015, Daniel Chavarría

© 2015, Martin Karakas

© 2015,Editorial JOSÉ MARTÍ

ISBN 978-959-09-0698-5

INSTITUTO CUBANO DEL LIBRO

Editorial JOSÉ MARTÍ

Publicaciones en Lenguas Extranjeras

Calzada No. 259 e/ J e I, Vedado

Ciudad de La Habana, Cuba

E-mail: [email protected]://www.cubaliteraria.cu/editorial/editora_marti/index.php

No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means, electronic, reprographic, or otherwise, or transmitted through either public borrowing or rental, without the prior written permission of the Copyright owners. Details of licenses for reproduction may be obtained from CEDRO (Centro Español de Derechos Reprográficos, www.cedro.org) or www.conlicencia.com. EDHASA Ave. Diagonal, 519-52 08029 Barcelona. Tel. [phone]. Spain. E-mail:[email protected] The complete annotated catalogue of Edhasa is available at: http://www.edhasa.es More Cuban digital books at: www.ruthtienda.com Follow us: https://www.facebook.com ruthservices/

To Hilda, present in all my work.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This novel is based on real events. There are enough witnesses and documents that I could write about these events in the style of a memoir. However, I do not want to bear witness to a personal account, which, in essence, is a melodramatic love story.

Moreover, three of the main characters are still alive and I would hurt them by writing about intimate details of their private lives. To protect them, I have changed dates, places and names, and have added elements and fillings from my own fantasies that do not affect the central story. In as much as it is a novel, it has scenes and conversations that did not occur as they appear, and descriptions that go beyond what you would expect from a personal memoir.

INTRODUCTION

In May 1992, I was invited to do a book tour of several cities in Germany. After giving a seminar one Friday evening in Munich, I got together with a group of young people who were members of an organization that was setting up my tour; the group was a cultural association that promoted solidarity with Third World countries. We went to the house of the organization’s president. Someone asked me if I had ever been to Munich before. I answered that I had only passed through for a few hours, many years ago, and that I had been very disappointed with my brief visit.

A Bavarian asked me how it was possible to leave a city like Munich disappointed. This prompted me to write the story that you are about to read in the following chapters.

FIRST PART

From Buenos Aires (1953) to

Munich (1954)

Man labors, Aristotle says, upon a dual mission,

His first and most important care concerns his own nutrition,

His second, and the pleasantest, is afterwards coition

With any dame that proffers him the opportune position.

Archpriest of Hita,

The Book of Good Love, 71

1

n June 3, 1953, at the age of 19, I boarded a ship in Buenos Aires heading to Spain. I bought a third-class ticket aboard the Monte Urbasa, a packet boat registered in Bilbao. However, a mere 11 kilometers from Buenos Aires, before even leaving the exit canal, we collided with a Danish oil tanker entering the same canal. The accident resulted in one death, several injuries and a few fits of hysteria.

A 15-meter-long crack opened up in the hull of our boat. The Basque sailors acted very bravely in putting out a fire on the bow’s bridge, caused by the friction between the two ships’ gunwales.

Upon returning to Buenos Aires, I went to the shipping company, presenting myself as one of the survivors from the Monte Urbasa. The joke was enough to charm a good-hearted plump girl who worked for the company. As if I had just escaped from the Titanic, and eager to brag about my adventure, I told the story to my friends in Buenos Aires and even gave an interview to Radio Belgrano. Of course, this very first account received a few literary embellishments. In my version, the flames on the bow grew several meters higher, the couple of screams I heard at the moment of impact became a wailing collective hysteria, and the little Spaniard who wouldn’t let go of his suitcase turned into dozens of people running to try to save their luggage.

At first, I wasn’t truly aware of the real danger we had been in. Since I was a good swimmer and could see the coastline, I hadn’t been too afraid. The real scare came a couple of days later, when the chubby girl told me about the stories that were circulating around her office after the assessment from the adjusters at Lloyd’s. They had discovered that the fire aboard the Danish ship had reached the fuel tanks that, by pure chance, were empty at the time of collision. Had they been full of fuel, nobody would have survived the explosion.

I was euphoric. I loved the thought that my first maritime adventure had brought about such a dramatic turn of events. Live to tell. That saying had not been invented yet but, at the time and without knowing, I carried it inside me.

Although I found a whole array of excuses, the real objective of that trip was to escape boredom, to live dangerously, to become old in action. I aspired to be one of those grandfathers with a memory chock-full of adventures, and with the vague hope of sitting down one day and letting it all spill out onto paper.

On June 6, they moved us to the Charles Tellier, sailing under the French flag with a final destination of Le Havre and stopovers in Lisbon and Vigo.

I was one of the last to board, just two hours before weighing anchor. Passengers had begun to occupy their cabins at midday. By sunset, a crowd had started to move around the deck, filling the stairways and halls of the third class deck. The ship’s officers took to interrupting the festive or weepy goodbyes by rudely ushering the visitors away.

Three other young travelers had already settled in my cabin. After introductions, I found out that they were graduate students, from different branches of the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Buenos Aires. They and twelve of their friends were going to Madrid to take summer courses.

Half an hour later, I was leaning against the ship’s rail with one of them; let’s call him Enrique. That year the winter was cold as all hell. I was missing my chubby girlfriend, a real find for the warmth provided by her skin during those cold days. I was dreading the chill of that first night on the high seas in my green, iron cabin, which, being shared between four of us, was off-limits to the chubby girls from third class who eventually would become available to warm my bed.

As I was mulling over all of this, a few black curls flowing over an ermine winter coat swept away my longings for plump girls. Judging by her walk, she was a young woman. I couldn’t see her face, because her head was slightly turned towards another woman with whom she was talking—but I knew she was beautiful. The way she walked, she just had to be.

And, as a matter of fact, a couple of exciting, nervous calves peaked out from under that fur coat, stealing the scene. Her Achilles tendons shuddered with every step as if feeling out a slippery terrain. I recognized this walk, common among Asian women. It begins at the waist, and after a twin drumming of the hips concludes with a thrashing stomp of the instep.

Of the other woman, all I noticed was a shadow, a grey stain against the red walls of the dock.

The sight ripped me away from my conversation with Enrique. I guessed that she had come out to say goodbye to some passenger traveling in first class, judging by her coat.

When she was at the bottom of the staircase, I could see only her back; but when she stopped, maybe 40 meters from where I was standing, she turned slightly, exhibiting a profile of a small nose and normal features. Her skin was very dark.

When I saw her pull out a long red ticket from her pocket, the same kind that I had received from the agency for a third class ticket (first class tickets were blue). I suddenly panicked.

Even today, at 63, the proximity of beautiful women scares me a little, and at times excites me. But in my early youth, because of a neighborhood code, very much of the era, I was faced with a tragic dilemma: either aim the cannons directly at her, in genuine horror faced with very probable failure, or confront the self-loathing that would undoubtedly surface for being too cowardly to do anything.

And if that monument of a woman was going to share the same small deck of the ship as I, for nearly two weeks, then there would be no way of avoiding this dilemma. There was no way out.

I was really scared. I was so taken by her appearance that I considered her unapproachable. I remember having wished that she had a boyfriend, a husband, someone aboard to justify my passivity, without dishonor.

Before walking up the gangway, I saw her take off her jacket. She was an elegant and sinuous woman. My God! Instead of taking the lapels and pulling them backwards, she raised one shoulder until it brushed aside her cheek and thus freed her arm on this side. Then she slid her arm out of the other side with a slow, sensual movement as if caressing a breast or her skin with the palm of her hand. Finally, she handed her coat over to her friend with a flip of the wrist. They said goodbye with a brush of the cheeks, without any other sign of affection, common at the time.

It was at this moment, as she stretched out her neck for the goodbye, turning her face to one side, that my eyes captured a pulsating and inviting sign that “come on, take me, I’m ready” that other guys sniff out. No other woman, before or after, has ever awoken such a powerful urge in me, like that of a stray dog, and this at 40 meters away.

Who was this beauty who so easily bolstered my manly code of honor with such unexpected animal compulsion? How was it possible that I felt so excited, barely a few minutes after having discovered her?

I could now see that she was dressed in a one-piece gown with a wide, cream colored, pleated skirt and a wide belt. As she climbed aboard the boat (with short steps to negotiate the shaky gangway, a graceful waist and a mesmerizing rise and fall of her hips), panic careened through my marrow.

I must have become pale or something, because Enrique, who was talking to me, his back towards the dock, turned around all of a sudden.

Upon recognizing the girl, he made a sign of joy, raised one arm and screamed:

“Gaby!”

Could it be his girlfriend?—His wife?

She raised her head towards us and waved, smiling, her arm up high.

I felt an unexpected relief.

“Is she yours?” I couldn’t help myself from asking.

“I wish,” said Enrique smiling and watching her approach with unabashed admiration.

A minute later, Enrique introduced us:

“She’s the most beautiful of all my classmates,” he said. “Everyone in the Faculty of the Humanities is in love with her.”

“All of humanity, and with all their faculties in tact, must be in love with her,” my sheer terror made me blurt out.

“What a baroque compliment!” said Gaby with a natural roar of laughter and a look full of intrigue.

“Isn’t she pretty?” said Enrique, eating her up with his eyes.

“She’s prettier than…”

Emboldened by the first compliment, which had undoubtedly come out quite nicely and had made its effect, I hurriedly threw myself into a second. But having gotten bogged down in a comparative structure and realizing that I was about to say something boring and common or some tired old stupidity, I quickly ruled out using the names of goddesses, Venus, Venus de Milo, the Seven Wonders and various monuments that came to my mind. I instead finished my compliment with a Herculeanly stupid remark:

“She’s prettier than Paris.”

Nevertheless, the ridiculous remark made her shoulders shake from so much laughter. Once again, I had hit the nail on the head. She laughed and laughed, and looked at me with growing delight.

“Thank you, you’re very original.”

After my anomalous somatic replies—goose bumps, hard ears, electricity-generating marrow—having her in front of me, and being pleased with my amorous compliments, I made a daring response that I had not expected:

“Don’t thank me; much better would be to grant me a…”

“A what?”

“A real thank you.”

“Hmmmm…,” she replied immediately, already on guard. “It looks like your friend likes to fish with dynamite,” she said to Enrique.

“I’m not going to ask you for anything indecent,” I continued.

“…or compromising, uncomfortable or arduous?”

“I want you to let me touch your hair; only for a second, right there, that piece that falls over your shoulder, just the tip, s’il vous plait…”

“All right, go ahead, touch,” she walked towards me, dangerous and perfumed.

She laughed, and looked at me very self assuredly out of the corner of her eye.

I took a lock and rubbed it between my fingers. She had such intensely shiny hair that I had imagined was greased with some sort of hair cream, perfumed perhaps. I decided to smear my fingers and then clean them with my handkerchief to take her smell with me and keep it under my pillow. From a young age, I have suffered from several olfactory aberrations.

But she wasn’t using any type of hair cream; her hair was very dry. I ran my fingers under my nose and then to my lips and made a gesture of surprise:

“How do you get your hair to shine so much without using anything?”

She narrowed her eyes and looked at me with a mischievous and villainous glint:

“It’s just that, when I’m flattered, I light up like a fluorescent bulb.”

Believing that I was being given carte blanche, I lost control and rushed in:

“And who makes you feel so flattered?”

I wanted her to confirm the pleasure she received from my compliments, with Enrique as a witness, and I, victorious from the encounter.

I had no idea that her answer was going to be a bucket of cold water; the first in a long series that Gaby would dose me with.

“My husband,” she replied, coiling into herself in a gesture of enrapture; “this afternoon he has been more flattering and loving than ever.”

And like a victorious bullfighter, arrogantly and gracefully walking away, while glancing over his shoulder at the fallen bull, Gaby took her leave with a “see you later kid” look, full of ridicule and with the sparkling eyes of a killer.

Enrique couldn’t help himself from letting out a thunderous laugh; but he was kind enough not to comment on my resounding thrashing.

I pretended not to care and began to ask him about Gaby.

Her name was Gabriela Almanza, a strange, sensorial woman, brilliant in school, wooed by legions of university students and teachers. She was extremely flirtatious, uninhibited, but —beware—she was also very dangerous: she knew how to throw you a rope and then take it back. Enrique had already suffered from her. She was quite capable of playing along with any type of game without falling; but no one had ever known her to have an affair. She seemed to live a careful, peaceful life with a rich husband who was much older than she was.

“You like her, don’t you?” he asked me with certain masochism and an unquestionable dose of jealousy.

“Yeah, I like her; but I don’t think there’s anything there for me.”

“Anyways,” said Enrique, “they say that people really change a lot aboard ocean liners. If you like her so much, completely throw yourself at her, and see what happens.”

I wasn’t expecting that type of reply; it threw me off a little.

By now, the bucket of cold water had taken its effect. The hazy shades of the yellow twilight, which in my hallucinatory state had suddenly overtaken the afternoon, returned to their blazing brightness. My shortage of breath, my fevered state, my anxiety and the out-of-control euphoria that had diluted my marrow and hardened my plexus for those few instants of the ephemeral success of my compliments all suddenly disappeared. It was as if Gaby, in addition to the bucket of freezing water, had also brought me back to reality with a pair of hard slaps.

“You acted like an idiot,” I said to myself in the bathroom, deciding that, from now on, since we had to live together for a couple of weeks, I would try to be nice, fun and friendly; showing her that I had no hard feelings and wasn’t effected by the embarrassment that I had suffered. And no more amorous compliments. Still, I was afraid of our next meeting. What if she had decided to make fun of me in front of other people?

Then came the emotions of setting sail, which for me were full of significance. It was my first trip to Europe, my first Atlantic crossing. A dream was coming true. For the first time in my life, I would be living and taking risks all alone, in an unknown environment, far from my friends and family. My only reserves were 500 dollars that my parents had given me.

I had been to Buenos Aires a couple of times, traveling by river from the Colonia del Sacramento or from the little port of Carmelo in small boats that docked alongside the bank of the Tigre.

But I had never been on a transatlantic ship, and had never crossed an ocean. A few days earlier, when the unfortunate Monte Urbasa launched from the Buenos Aires wharf, upon hearing the ship’s horn sound off for departure and the bustle of setting sail, I felt a great sense of solitude. It reminded me of an uncle of mine who had thrown me into a deep river at the age of six to teach me how to swim.

The same feeling of solitude, and this time even stronger, came over me when the Charles Tellier cast off.

Four days earlier, I had been on the verge of being shipwrecked or blown to bits across the Rio de la Plata. And just a few hours ago, my hopes of sailing became shipwrecked against the reefs of Gaby. What was awaiting me on the other side of the Atlantic? Would it turn out to be true that what I really wanted was an intense life, as I had bragged about so much to my friends and family? After all, my peaceful life in Uruguay had its pros, didn’t it? In the future, would my day-to-day life become as exciting and dangerous as these past four days?

As soon as the ship’s hull parted from the wharf, I began to lament my recent idiotic boasting. In Montevideo, before friends and family, I announced that I would live in Europe for a few years; and that no matter how hard the uprooting, the homesickness and the poverty—all which I could not rule out—I would take care of everything on my own, without sending an SOS to anyone. It would be a decisive test of my development; the finishing touch to legitimizing my adulthood and independence.

But when the ship began to move, I reproached myself for all my bravado. Why the hell had I felt the need to shut myself off from any possibility of a quick return in case of an emergency?

I decided to move forward with a vague artistic calling; to show myself that I could be a well-travelled, educated, cosmopolitan person, and that I would forge myself into a facsimile of my archetype. So this time, when the ship’s horn shattered the atmosphere at the Buenos Aires docks for a second time, I was flooded with a mix of encouraging and ominous images, of umbilical cords and Rubicons, and I became metaphysical and gloomy.

That afternoon, while there was still abundant light as we moved out towards the high sea, I set out to find Gaby. I saw her on deck at a distance, in the company of another girl, with whom she seemed to be deeply absorbed in conversation. Fortunately, she did not see me.

During dinner, I sat down at a table with Enrique and a pair of Argentines with whom I got along with excellently; but Gaby did not come down to the dining hall.

In mid estuary, after sunset, I leaned over one of the stern’s rails. I was inadvertently standing very close to a middle-aged man who was crying all alone with his sight fixed on the lights of Buenos Aires, which were becoming increasingly faint and blurry in the distance.

I respectfully moved away; but that solitary weeping infected me with the very Rio de Plata-like sentimentality of the goodbye. A tango, proper for the occasion, came to mind, but I refrained from humming it even though I really wanted to, I also refrained from letting myself fall into an anticipated and Gardel-like nostalgia for Buenos Aires, with its lights forming the backdrop. I took refuge in my cabin, which was empty, and I slept alone with visions of Gaby.

After midnight, I was awoken by some horrendous snoring; it was César, one of the Argentines who were sharing the cabin. As smoking was prohibited in the cabins, I stepped out onto the deck. The grip of cold had tightened, and the ship swayed under a light rain.

Gaby’s comment—that I fished with dynamite—kept running through my head. Nothing could be further from the truth; from my very first skirmishes in elementary school, I have always been a shore angler with modest tackle who relied on lots of patience and good bait.

At the age of 16, I was already 5’9” and not too bad looking; but I was always very careful when planning an attack; I never used catapults, battering rams, stalking techniques or intensive grazing. Whenever an opportunity presented itself, I always held high the macho code of ethic, but never hurried and was always well assured of my methods. Up until today, I had never blindly rushed in, as I did with Gaby. I always checked to make sure there was solid ground before taking a step.

I was the first to be taken by surprise by my eagerness to touch Gaby that afternoon. Such an aggressive urgency to immerse myself in the smell of her hair was completely foreign to me. What had gotten into me?

Much later, when I recalled my physical anomalies and bizarre behavior that afternoon, I attributed it to the “ray” witnessed more than 2000 years ago by the Sicilians, those Greeks grafted into Italy, experts in matters of passion and the meteorology of the heart.

Already in the time of Theocritus, the ray had struck the shepherds of Syracuse, separating them from their idylls and leaving them with delirium, fits and uncontrollable urges.

Years later when I thought back about what happened to me that day with Gaby, I asked a diverse array of sexologists and doctors if the human female, or a few extraordinary human females, could secrete a certain selective pheromone that could stimulate excitement in certain males who are sexually in tune with her. With hard smiles, they explained to me that spectroscopically green females of ABC hormonal typology attract blue CBA males, but that this only occurs during the clinch or at close distances, or better said, at no distance. Somebody also assured me that science had never studied remote-controlled fits like the one I had had, with the half-a-block handicap that Gaby gave me.

With her comment to Enrique that I fished with dynamite, maybe Gaby took me for one of those wholesale seducers that, at the time, plagued both sides of the Rio de la Plata. But, surely, she interpreted the embarrassment and fright I displayed in her presence as the attack of a second-rate seducer.

The imminent and inevitable second encounter had me worried. Nevertheless, upon seeing me the next morning on deck, she greeted me amicably and introduced me by first and last name to three other people in her group. What a relief! This would make my future relation with her much easier.

She wore a pair of loose-fitting pants that nevertheless marked her flexible and mobile waist under a very tight jersey sweater. Her hair, so taut that it seemed to be straight, was gathered in a ponytail, with a peineta, like the Romero de Torres Andalusian ones. The olive skin of her face exhibited very rosy cheeks and a fascinating dimple. Her teeth, maybe a bit too big and voracious for my taste, were as radiant and shinny as her hair. She overflowed in health and vitality. She was an ornament to that deck and, to judge by the turned necks and side-eyed looks, I wasn’t the only one under her spell. Once, as I looked at her from behind as she walked down a hall, she reminded me of the racing horses I had recently seen; as they passed by me, their magnificent haunches inspired gyrating odalisques and clumsy visions.

While most people stumbled off-balanced, the way she walked down the deck came back to overwhelm me. Despite the swaying from side to side, her legs had the admirable effect of contravening the laws of gravity. Now, without a jacket and her torso well defined, her shoulders played an unperceivable balance measured by a type of nervous tic, which was no more than a pretext to show off the alluring way she turned her neck to one side.

I wouldn’t say that I relived the same energy as the day before. Some defense mechanism had kicked in that morning to save me from electrolysis of the marrow, goose bumps, fever and various hardenings; but she still managed to shake up my hormones.

I spent almost the entire second day close to her, with the group of Argentines. We played doubles ping-pong and, thanks to me, I must admit, we won. Being the competitive woman that she was, Gaby was very happy. Until very recently, I had played in the top-level in my country, and I easily crushed the best of them, an Art History teacher who headed the group of students.

Within the first 24 hours living onboard together, we established an uncommon familiarity with each other. There were three students from Córdoba and a few from Buenos Aires, who, studying different majors, knew each other only by sight. There prevailed a sense of urgency to get to know one another, and an intense firing round of indecent and incessant questioning was unleashed about work, family, money, marital relations, and personal phobias. I wasn’t about to be left behind; I asked and answered without any discretion, as if justified by the immediacy of our goodbye, which would come at the end of the crossing. We lived rushed; we had no time to be undressed inchmeal.

Gaby was the only exception. The few times that she was asked about some detail of her personal life, beyond the normal questioning of a social gathering, she would become cryptic and monosyllabic, or would dodge the question with some sarcastic and sententious remark. Her reluctance, even around Enrique and her other two classmates, was blatant. Not even now, under the effect of the intoxicating ocean breezes, was she willing to let her tongue loose.

Even though they were the same age as her, I noticed how the three of them treated her as if she were older. On board, from the first moment of contact with the rest, and without setting out to do so, she became the dominating personality among the 16 who made up the group, including the teacher-guide and me. She was warm, supportive and very friendly, but somewhat imperious in her attitude, in the way she looked at people with half-closed eyes, in the irony that enveloped her smile. She levied respect and kept her distance. Maybe it was nothing more than that devastating combo of beauty and lucidity that she displayed so brilliantly.

After becoming aware of her sense of reserve, I was very careful not to ask her anything.

On the third day, as we were crossing the stormy Santa Catalina Gulf in southern Brazil, I was overcome with seasickness and had to spend the whole day in bed. To my great surprise, Gaby showed up in my cabin. She brought me a product called Mareamin. I offered her a chair, but she preferred to sit on the edge of my bunk bed, which was the lower one. Her head rubbed against the upper bunk where César slept, so she placed an elbow on top of my legs so that she could lean back with one hand on her cheek. The light pressure of her side on one of my knees sent shivers through to my spine.

I had to make a real effort to concentrate on what she was telling me about seasickness and how to take the pills. We talked for a little bit. In private, at least with me, she lost much of the haughtiness she exhibited in public and was even inquisitive. She asked about my life. That afternoon was when I made the mistake of telling her my age.

With one finger, she began to trace the embroidered designs on my cover, and placed a tempting hand within my reach. I grabbed it, telling her how much I appreciated her visit and her concern for my condition. She let me hold it, and, little by little, my gesture of gratitude became more and more a caress. When it became too passionate she tried to pull it loose, but I kept hold of it. Then she moved to stand up and gave me a little slap, saying I was a bad boy and that boys should not be stubborn or capricious, nor should they make married women feel uncomfortable.

Lastly, with the pretext of straightening out my bedcovers, she rubbed her hand over my belly and my legs with bold self-assurance. She finished me off with a kiss on the cheek, and as she bent over me, I felt the mind-boggling sensation of one of her breasts as it rubbed against my chest.

She left me shivering. I couldn’t think about anything but her. I kept asking myself if her visit, the fact that she had let me take her hand and caress it for a prolonged length of time, and the suggestive way in which she straightened out my blanket indicated some change in the way she thought about me; or about her husband…

Under other circumstances, if I hadn’t become so transformed under her spell, if I could have been the same way I had been with so many other girls, I would have waited until receiving clearer signs.

Would I have hurt her perhaps?

I thought about that unmistakable look that women reward you with after an unfaked orgasm, those eyes, those lips, illuminated with infantile gratitude—unmistakable.

She had obviously liked my compliments, but to what extent? And why had she turned me down with such ridicule? Was it some sort of defense mechanism?—or some deontic notion of fidelity? Was she afraid of falling in love?

That thought stirred up my ego, driving me crazy. I slept emboldened, my head full of strategies for when I was to see her again.

The following day, I had begun to recite a declaration of love to her in the hallway when she abruptly interrupted me with an exquisite entreaty delivered in a hoarse and whispered voice. She put her hand against my lips, closed her eyes for a moment, and while I kissed her fingertips, she asked me to stop, to keep my composure, to not damage our friendship by asking her for what, aboard this ship, would be impossible.

Aboard this ship, aboard this ship, aboard this ship…!

From that moment on, that encouraging phrase would stay with me day and night.

Two days later, during a prolonged stopover in Rio de Janeiro, she accepted my sole companionship in discovering the city together. We were no longer aboard that ship. For the first time (and I must repeat this phrase because many things happened to me for the first time back then), I felt like one of those enviable characters invented by Hollywood.

Although I was capable of enough hypocrisy to conceal the fact to a connoisseur public, at the age of 19 I was a fanatic of cosmopolitan-type movies that featured exotic romances; and not only the best ones (Casablanca, Lady from Shanghai, etc.), but also many of the eccentric silly ones, where the Robert Taylors, Cary Grants, Glenn Fords and company dove head first into the abysses of strange Gildas, emerging from these fantastic adventures with their Eros rewarded and their hides intact.

And Rio, even though it did not provide all the exoticism desired by a son from the neighboring province of Cisplatina (as Brazilians called Uruguay during the time of their imperialistic deliriums), it did guarantee the ideal picturesqueness and temperature to initiate a romance with an uncanny woman such as Gaby.

It was an unusually hot day for winter. We sat down on a park bench and I read her some poems inspired by her. The first one, very cryptic and several pages long, was a beast wrapped in prose, a little of the spontaneous style of writing of some avant-garde writers. A total horror I imagine.

Armed with a kind smile, unusual for her, and with the pretext of reading my poetry as I read it out to her, she moved closer, leaning over my arm. When I had finished, she asked me to repeat it. She closed her eyes and listened to me with her forehead against my shoulder.

After reading each page, I placed them on her knees so that she would protect them from the wind. As I was putting down the third page, my hand became distracted and started to softly massage a muscle, as if I were only interested in innocently rubbing against the fabric.

She let me do it.

Then I read her a sonnet, this time without any groping.

When I had finished, she stood up, offered me her hand and I wrapped my arm around her waist.

Five minutes later, I suggested to her that we spend the rest of the morning in a hotel.

Without alarm or abruptness, she removed my hand from her waist, let loose a sigh, shook her head a few times, sucked her teeth, and moving apart slightly, she stopped to ask me if I knew what poliorcetics meant.

I didn’t.

“It’s the art of taking a walled city by storm.”

“And?”

“And a friend of mine has coined the term gynorcetics, the art of taking stupid women by storm.”

“Only the stupid ones?”

“Yes, because no intelligent woman would allow herself to be taken by storm by a few compliments and bedroom poetry.”

She left me cold.

Then she blurted out a lecture on how to make intelligent women fall in love: with a matured talent, a secure and recognized profession, a more advanced age, and a life rich in experiences. The kind of person who inspires admiration and offers protection, like the case of her husband, and also —why not?—with the added incentive of a comfortable material life.

“I would never have guessed that you were so conservative.”

“You didn’t understand anything,” was all she said to me, a little bothered. “I’m not looking for affairs with handsome 19-year-old kids. My husband is sufficiently young, attractive and virile for me to not need anyone else. Women don’t work like you guys do. No sane woman, satisfied with her husband, wants a lover for a weekend or for an unforgettable ocean crossing.”

So he was young, attractive and manly?

Well then, Enrique was misinformed. He had talked about an old man…

That was the second bucket of cold water to dash my mind within the last four days.