Chapter II - Blue Flowers

The mirror reflected the image of a man who was still young, in spite of some early wrinkles and hair and a beard that were turning white unexpectedly fast, and a three-year-old girl sitting on a stool. His daughter, he reminded himself, which was the way his thoughts tended to go lately when the girl was at home, his weekend thoughts since the separation. Standing in front of the mirror he was trying with an unpracticed hand to comb the girl’s long, curly red hair. From time to time she would complain, but on the whole she allowed herself to be combed, with a serious expression on her face, slightly smug, as though she felt sorry for her father, as though she understood the massive effort required to comb the hair of a three-year-old girl. Though this did not signify any clemency, any forgiveness, and nor did it mean she was inclined to make his job any easier. On the contrary, she stayed just where she was, unmoving, posing like a princess faced with a lowly subject. He felt incapable; something about her intimidated him. He had felt that way ever since the beginning, when she was just a dislocated baby placed into his arms in the maternity ward.

He held the baby for the first time one day after the birth; as his ex-wife liked to recall, he was the only man who’d managed to take twenty-four hours to get to the hospital, which was only ten minutes away from home. He had never been able to explain what had happened. The truth was, he couldn’t remember; he couldn’t remember, he had told his wife. She hadn’t said as much, but it was clear she would never forgive him. And she never did. Women can be terribly resentful, that was his conclusion. He arranged the curls as best he could on the girl’s shoulders.

“All set, Manuela, now we’ve just got to wait for your mother.”

“Dad!”

The girl held up a pink hair clip toward her father’s reflection in the mirror.

“You forgot.”

Right, he’d forgotten. He took the clip, examined how it worked. He pulled a lock of hair and arranged it in such a way that it wouldn’t fall into her face.

“Yeah, you’re right, it’s good now. You’re even more beautiful than before,” he said, forcing a smile, trying to start a conversation.

The girl showed no trace of any response; she jumped down from the stool and went off to play in her room. A princess, he thought. Haughty and arrogant. He’d talk to his ex-wife as soon as she arrived; she was spoiling the girl.

His ex-wife arrived with two rings of the doorbell announcing that it was her, one of those things that never changes. He got up off the sofa and went to open the door. She came in as though, instead of just her, there were a whole army entering the apartment, a crowd behind her, her perfume spreading through the rooms; every space felt immediately occupied by her. She kissed him on both cheeks.

“Hi, Marcos—you okay?”

“Hi, Marcos”—he’d never get used to his ex-wife calling him that, someone who for so long had called him “my sweet,” “my love.” She sounded so distracted now, so uninterested—“Oh, hi, Marcos”—he’d lived with the woman for years, they’d had a child together, a house, a joint account, a life, and one day all of it stopped existing and she became just a perfumed stranger who walked through the door and said, as she might say to anybody, “Hi, Marcos.”

“Yeah, okay.”

His ex-wife paid no attention to his answer, she was looking severely over the disorder of the apartment, the moving crates scattered around the living room, the few pieces of furniture that he’d bought, a parched plant he always forgot to water.

“Why don’t you clean up this mess? It’s been more than a month since you moved.”

He gave a distracted reply, as though her advice were aimed at someone else:

“I will, I’m going to tidy up, as soon as I get a bit of time.”

“Everyone’s got time, you’ve just got to want to do it.”

He pretended not to have heard. She smiled and changed the subject.

“And what about Manu, where’s she?”

His ex-wife loved calling the girl Manu. They’d argued about this countless times; they’d chosen Manuela, so why would you then call her Manu, Lulu, Bilu, or whatever else? What a ridiculous compulsion of her mother’s to ruin the lovely name, Manuela, by calling the girl by some nickname or other.

“Manuela’s in her bedroom.”

“Manu, darling!”

The girl came running to her mother, it was like they’d been parted for centuries, separated against their will. And now right before his eyes, they celebrated their reunion, so fervently longed for by them both.

“How are you, my love? Tell Mommy.”

And he just stood there, in the doorway, watching that moment. The two of them embracing, the girl with an affection, a passion, she would never show him. And he just stood there, imagining himself as an ogre or something.

“Want a drink?”

“No, thanks, I don’t have time. We still have to go by my mother’s.”

“Yes, of course, your mother. How’s she doing?”

“She’s fine, though her arthritis is still a problem, as you know.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“And what about the two of you? How was the weekend? Did she eat properly?”

The girl looked tired in her mother’s arms, her arms around her mother’s neck, as though she’d had a long wait, had been through an ordeal.

“It was great, Manuela drew several versions of Felipe, then we went out for a pizza. This morning we played a little game on the computer.”

His ex-wife put the girl down on the floor.

“Go on, sweetheart, go get your teddy, we’ve got to go to Grandma’s.”

The girl obeyed at once, he noticed. In two minutes she was back with the pink teddy bear. The girl held her mother’s hand.

This was the woman he had met when she was still very young. Both of them had trained as architects. She was now an interior designer, a famous interior designer who was booked to work on the most sought-after houses in the city. A dynamic woman, always had been; well connected, always had been. As for him, he was neither dynamic nor well connected. He’d never ended up working in architecture. Life had taken its own course. But he had things pretty good, he had no cause to complain. He handed over the backpack with the girl’s things.

“Thank you. Well, we’ll head off, you understand, my mother’s waiting.”

“Of course.”

“Manu, love, give your dad a kiss.”

The girl hesitated, but at her mother’s insistent stare she approached him. He crouched down for her to press her mouth quickly to his cheek.

“You ought to shave,” his ex-wife remarked as she said goodbye.

“I will,” he said automatically.

And there he stood with the door open, as they waited for the elevator. Mother and daughter, and later they would be meeting the grandmother. A kind of female clan, with a matriarchal lineage, a bond that united them and made them mysterious, inaccessible—he just stood there, forever excluded from their pact. He remembered a photograph his ex-wife had put on the coffee table in the living room, the three of them, grandmother, mother and daughter: the grandmother, a very elegant woman sitting in an armchair, her granddaughter on her lap, her daughter crouching down to be at their height. He would often sit in the living room and look at that photo. His mother-in-law, with whom he had a relationship that was polite though dry, his wife, who was increasingly a stranger, and his daughter, this girl who was so very distant. He looked at the two of them in the hallway, both silent; maybe those few minutes’ wait was making them uncomfortable. He felt uncomfortable, too. And when the elevator arrived, at last they could say goodbye.

“Bye, Marcos.”

“Bye.” He could barely hear his own voice.

As he closed the door, he felt both relief and sadness. It was almost as though his wife, his daughter and that whole line of women had ceased to exist. And he realized that he had longed all day for that moment, when the door closed and he was at last alone at home. Finally the time and the space he needed. The letter. The thought that had not manifested itself—buried by the presence of his daughter and by everything that presence signified—but which had somehow been with him, discreet, asleep but insistent, the whole day.

He went into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee. He returned to the living room, put the cup down on the table, picked up the blue envelope he had left there that morning, slightly hidden under electricity and gas bills. This time he had opened the envelope right away while still in the elevator, without the reluctance he had felt the previous day. Something was propelling him forward, impatience, curiosity. He looked at the letter carefully, the same handwriting, the same name, his address. In place of the sender’s name, just an initial. The fountain pen. That rounded handwriting. The envelope opened easily, opened in a kind of desperate longing. He noticed now that this time it didn’t have a stamp, a detail he hadn’t spotted that morning; it caught his breath for a few moments, the idea that she might be there, so close. That she might have dropped off the letter herself. He went over to the window, as though expecting to see her. Her quick, careful steps. Perhaps a shadow coming into the building, the long black hair, the red dress, her back naked, the envelope between her fingers. The address she believed to be her lover’s but that was now his, the apartment where he lived now, the moving crates still scattered around the living room, the view from the window. Could it be that, at some point, she had leaned right where he was leaning now on the windowsill, her eyes on the same sight he was looking at, the same landscape? He thought, Is that how it was?