Trafalgar (23 page)

“And then she sees them?”

“She sees them. Obviously the brunette had that square chin and that air of
I’m in charge here
for a reason. The first year she pretended to drink the syrup but she didn’t drink any and she threw it away; she pretended to be asleep but she didn’t sleep at all, they carried her to the temple and she didn’t see anything nor did anyone appear to her. The second year, same story. The third year, she drank a few swallows and threw away the rest, she dozed a little and she woke up in the temple when she heard noises and whispers of people moving around her. And there, barely opening her eyes, she saw them.”

“The gods?”

“Yes, the gods, the drooling brutes, the sleepers.”

Jorge sat there with his mouth open and let his pipe go out and didn’t even protest when Trafalgar calmly started on another cup of coffee.

“First she felt panic, she told us,” Trafalgar said. “And then, like the good queen she was, and not only because she heard voices, she was absolutely enraged, she opened her eyes, stood up, and started yelling. And the beastly gods decided to beat it and she was left alone in the temple and she started to discover things. She found some doors, more or less hidden, through which the sleepers arrived from the other side of the mountain. And she deduced the rest. The brutes are in fact a kind of minor god, for household use only: beasts who only want to lie with the sun on their bellies and be fed and not be made to work and then have a big party with the reigning queen once a year. There’s only one god-like thing about them and it’s quite imperfect: a mild capacity for telepathic transmission—transmission, not reception. And in addition to the annual orgy, they use the priestess queen—who is elected, don’t forget, because she has something of telepathic reception—to give orders: that they be fed, that they be protected, that temples be built, that this and that and the other be done.”

“What garbage, old man.”

“Garbage is putting it mildly. The girl left the temple the next day very coolly, she got together a few technicians and told them the gods had ordered an expedition to who knows where and that in less than a day a ship had to be ready, equipped for a single crewmember, with furniture, food, books, pictures—anyway, everything we saw there. And that night she had the port cleared, she climbed into the ship alone and she took off and went as far away as possible and got as far as she could and almost killed herself landing on Donteä-Doreä which, unfortunately for her, had been deserted for centuries.”

“And had she been there a long time?”

“Fairly long. More than a Marrennen year, that’s why she was afraid. She had left the brutes deprived three years running and then she had escaped. And her successor must have gone into the temple at least once by now, and the brutish gods combine pleasure and practicality, so they must have given the order to look for her.”

“You got her out of there, I imagine.”

“Now I see that, yes, you’re a romantic, too, like Side, and not only because you’ve written the
Manifesto of a Romantic.
But don’t you see that woman is a walking danger? And that if she once defied and defeated the brutes, gods or sleepers or demons or whatever they are, she’s quite capable of defying and defeating them as often as she cares to? For myself, I’d have left her on Donteä-Doreä so she could work out the dispute once and for all when the Marrennen folk arrived. Relax, Side is a mechanic, not a poet, but he succeeded in having us take her along. Which is to say, he took her, because as for me, even if she were the very, very best of her kind, I wouldn’t touch her with tongs.”

“I can already see you being chased back and forth by the naked brutes.”

“The naked brutes don’t trouble me a bit, one by one or all together. She is the one to be feared. I saw her. I looked her in the eyes when I made is if to hit her and she confronted me. Look, Jorge, ever since I returned from Sebdoepp, where I unloaded the two of them, ever since then I’ve been asking myself who the invisible gods of Marrennen are. Listen, Marcos, how much is it? Don’t do that to me, I’m the one who invited you. Yes, because either the other queens who were named Piedad or Templanza or Caridad were nitwits and never brought themselves to talk about what they undoubtedly must have realized happened to them when they were asleep in the temple, or there is on Marrennen, poor Side, a race of gods who are not the brutes, they’re the queens. And they are the ones who hold the annual orgy, not the poor unfortunates. Belonging to that race would explain her lies. Although yes, I already know what you’re going to say, those lies can be explained with a dozen innocent reasons. But if the invisible gods are the queens, then Constancia escaped because she betrayed them, I don’t care how but certainly for a single motive: in search of more power.”

“I think you’re probably right.”

“Let’s be going,” said Trafalgar.

“I’d almost have preferred to have gone to the office and done all the things I’m behind on,” said Jorge as they left. “If you see a brunette, warn me so I can look the other way.”

When I managed to open them, Trafalgar was fanning me with the Burgundy’s coffee menu and Marcos was patting my hand and telling me I was going to be just fine.

Then Trafalgar began to tell me, little by little and detailing every encounter, because the thing had already been going on for years, but I swear it is all true.

THE FIRST TIME

“I can’t be responsible for her,” said Guinevera Lapis Lazuli or whatever her name was.

“She” was a little girl not this high off the ground who played at jumping, talking to herself, and throwing a colored ball up in the air.

“She’s yours,” said Guinevera, “so your alternatives are to take her with you or put her in an orphanage.”

Trafalgar almost had an attack, one because he remembered his adventure with Lapis Lazuli and two because the girl was undoubtedly his, black eyes and impertinent jaw and a way of lifting her head; and then also because thinking of letting her go to an orphanage made him feel like a heartless swine. And Trafalgar is many things, but a heartless swine he is not.

He called her: “We’re going on a trip,” he said. “Do you know who I am?”

“My papa,” she said and won him over forever.

Two words, only two words and she had achieved what no one else had, so far as I know—and, for the record, I know plenty about Trafalgar. The number of women who had tried not only to win him but to keep him by force of sweet nothings and those Barbie and Doris Day or whatever type things, and not one ever got anywhere save that little pipsqueak who said “my papa” and okay, all set. Cursed be those loudmouthed machistas who make themselves out to be supermen and a baby won’t make them cry because men don’t cry but they do turn to butter.

“What’s her name?” he asked Guinevera because he couldn’t meet the child’s (black) eyes.

“Eristemiádica Perlingheredisti.”

Which sounds more like Greek but is Veroboariano.

“You’re crazy,” Trafalgar said and he left with the girl and this is something: he brought her to Rosario.

On the trip he told her: “Your name is Eritrea from now on, okay? Eritrea Perla Medrano.”

She agreed and repeated it softly as if it were a Jabberwocky, Eritrea Perla Medrano, eritreaperla Medrano, eritreaperlamedrano, et cetera. And the thing is, he liked those names: they resembled the nonsense Lapis Lazuli had given him and they were, like his own, the names of battles, two instead of only one: the Italians marching to conquest and Pearl Harbor attacked by the Axis.

CHILDHOOD

They arrived home late but Crisóstoma was waiting for them with supper ready. That is, she was waiting for him and he showed up with the girl.

“She’s hungry,” Trafalgar said without offering further explanations.

Crisóstoma has the soul of a hen, she spread her wing and took her under it, soft and cozy. “But of course!” she scolded Trafalgar. “I’m sure you gave her nothing to eat, poor thing. What’s your name?”

She didn’t know who the girl was or why she was there but she wasn’t going to let her go hungry for anything in the world.

“Eritrea Perla Medrano.”

And then Rogelio arrived, in robe and pajamas, thanks to which Crisóstoma didn’t faint like me in the Burgundy, and the pipsqueak had both of them in her pocket within a minute and a quarter. They gave her thin oatmeal, a chicken drumstick, sweet potato conserve, and Coca-Cola. Not because Trafalgar drinks Coca-Cola,
vade retro,
but because Rogelio does and he always has a bottle in the refrigerator.

That same night, while Eritrea sucked on a candy (Rogelio once again—a bon vivant), between the three of them they removed the stereo and the old armchair and the floor lamp from the room next to Trafalgar’s bedroom and they made up the bed and put feather pillows on it, a little bedside table with a lamp with an alabaster shade that had been in the living room, and a little bell so she could call if she wanted something, anything at all, water or more Coca-Cola or company or for someone to tell her a story or whatever occurred to her.

The next day they went to the civil registry with Rogelio and Crisóstoma as witnesses.

“I’ve come to register the girl,” said Trafalgar.

“What?” said a fat lady with badly dyed ash-blonde hair and a doughy, underbaked face. “At that age and not registered yet?”

“No.”

After snorts and protests, the fat lady asked, “Name?”

“Eritrea Perla Medrano.”

“Daughter of?”

“Trafalgar Medrano, here’s my identity card.”

“Birth certificate?”

“I don’t have it. It was lost in the fire.”

The fat lady started to perspire.

“Name of the mother.”

“Mother unknown,” said Trafalgar.

“What do you mean, unknown?” exploded the fat lady.

“Well, see,” Trafalgar said and proceeded to tell the fat lady a whole novel about a frenzied orgy in which everyone with everyone—you follow me, right? And in which, well, when he got to the juicy details the fat lady, pale and sweaty, said good, that’s fine, unknown, yes, certainly, fire, what a shame, well, yes.

At school, things went splendidly well. Little starched apron, little braids, black shoes with white ankle socks, clean hands, freshly brushed teeth, and twenty cents for a cocoa and five little cookies during the long recess, adorable.

After about two months, they called him: “Señor Medrano, you must know that girls enter this institution before learning to read or, moreover, doing sums. Eritrea gets bored and of course, as she was previously taught that which it is the task of the school . . .”

“I beg your pardon,” said Trafalgar, “but no one taught her anything. She learns on her own, just from watching. She’s a very intelligent
girl,” and he restrained himself from adding, “like her father.”

“There is no doubt of that,” said the vice principal, her lips tight.

It seemed she did not like the girls of her school to be intelligent.

“We will attempt, of course, to discipline her a little, because as she is quick to learn, she spends her time, I don’t know, for example in haranguing her classmates to, in a manner of speaking, avoid calligraphy class or scare Señora de Romero, who teaches mathematics.”

“Look, better you not discipline her too much. I am of the opinion that children should be allowed to express themselves freely, ma’am.”

“Miss.”

“Miss. Discipline is very fine for barracks, but in school one has to be seeing what each student’s like and what she wants. Talk to the girls, see, and find out why they do what they do.”

“Very modern,” said the vice principal, almost without separating her lips, which was quite the achievement.