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Fiction

A Separation

By Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles
Translated from Spanish by Ollie Brock
Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles eavesdrops on unhappy divorcées.

After a tumultuous delay (domestic battles, locum solicitors, heartless agents, judicial strikes, and sudden deferrals), Arturo was given confirmation of the appointment. When he received the news he remembered, with a touch of sentimentality, the long-gone moment when he had committed the rest of his life, in writing, to a woman he would have cut his own head off for. He could not have imagined then that cohabitation and time would be the only executioners.

On the day of the signing, Arturo arrived early. He wanted to avoid the daily farce of the traffic, the chance of a downpour, the closing of the motorway for some protest, or a standstill in the car park at the crowded courts. The desire for a true freedom, one recorded and recognized by the law, fueled his apocalyptic visions and the inevitable hypochondria. The call from the lawyer gave him an allergic reaction; an enormous rash turned his hands, arms, and shoulders a red that was as deep as it was imaginary. When he arrived at the office, a secretary informed him that, given that his appointment was scheduled for eleven o’clock that morning, he couldn’t be seen first thing. Arturo, nervous and skeptical, decided to wait out the end of his sentence in a nearby bar. It was there that, quite by chance, he met Julio, an old friend from university.

They had coffee. It was many years since they had seen each other. Arturo didn’t want to recount to his friend the latest wretched episodes from his life, and so he chose instead to spend their reunion asking for news of mutual acquaintances, remembering dreary anecdotes (worsened by melancholy), and allowing the time to pass in banal conversation. Arturo felt a stab of heat in his stomach when, at around ten o’clock, he received a text message. “Can we talk before the signing?” asked his ex-wife, who, at the moment he read the message, was still his legitimate spouse. This unexpected intervention disarmed him. For more than a year he had been alert to the possibility of an armistice or a cry for help. His last meeting with her had been a mounting exchange of curses. Since then, all of the work of communication and conflict had fallen into the hands (and the pockets) of the lawyers. Julio noticed how pale his friend was. When Arturo, who was tormented by the situation, told him some of what was happening to him, his old classmate spoke with the owner of the bar and discreetly ordered a bottle of whisky. The drinks were served in plastic cups. They toasted. Julio listened to the story without speaking, his eyes glued to the television set that was playing the highlights of a baseball game. The injured party set out, in a frank and overacted way, the elaborate disasters of his conjugal existence, as though he were the world’s only downtrodden, unhappy man. When he had finished, Arturo told him that his wife had just sent him a text message in which she suggested the possibility of a meeting. Julio refilled his cup. The ice cube melted under the touch of his thick fingers. “Arturo, listen. I don’t know what your situation is. I don’t know why you’re telling me what you’re telling me. It’s years since you and I have spoken. I know it’s not my problem, but I’d like to tell you my story. Maybe what happened to me will give you a few clues about what decision to take.”

It was more than five years ago that Julio had married a colleague, he told Arturo. He admitted that, until the moment of collapse, he had been in love with his partner, had even been happy. The first months of their marriage coincided with a good professional spell. The economic climate of the time allowed him to enrich the model of a prefabricated life to which he had always aspired by buying a house, a car, and even a Dalmatian. Later, they had a daughter. He had managed to carve out for himself a conventional and perfect world that, to his surprise, fell to pieces from one day to the next. “The problem,” he said as he finished his drink, “was that Cecilia went mad.”

It happened early one December. Julio went to pick the girl up from school, came home, washed, and when he came out of the shower he found his wife sitting on the edge of the bed. She was naked, her eyes were popping out of her head, there were scratches on her face. The mattress was covered in tufts of hair; a blood-stained pair of scissors sat on the pillow. Cecilia told him that she couldn’t stand him, that if she spent one more day in that house she would take the irrevocable decision to kill herself. In a trembling voice, the woman listed a series of things she found distasteful in him: morning breath, disgusting habits around food and hygiene, a vulgar sense of humor, flatulence in the small hours. Cecilia said that she hated her life, that she was allergic to the Dalmatian, and that, furthermore, she couldn’t stand the stupidity of a daughter she had only had to please him, so that he would stop delighting in his stupid idea of the perfect family. “I curse the day I met you. I curse all the days on which you touched me. I curse the day you raped me, and damned me forever with your rotten seed,” she yelled with conviction.

Julio reacted calmly. He didn’t take it seriously—he thought it was a fit of hysterics, a tasteless joke of the sort that prophets of astrology attribute to the wanderings of the planet Mercury. “I moved to a hotel with the girl,” he explained. He spent the night absorbed in careful reflection on what had happened in the last few years of his life. Julio analyzed, minute by minute, shot by shot, every event related to his marriage. He knew that, at the beginning of the relationship, they didn’t have much in common; that their tastes (gastronomic, musical, cinematic, literary) were somewhat divergent, but he had always appreciated these discrepancies as an excuse for living in constant discovery of the other.

Cecilia said that she didn’t want to see him. Julio tried to find allies in his unlikely bid for reconquest. He talked with his sister-in-law, with whom he had always maintained a respectful and honest relationship. To his surprise, she took the other side. Julio had to admit (she believed) that he alone was responsible for everything that had happened . . . “But, honestly, Arturo, I didn’t feel responsible for a thing. If I made a mistake, I didn’t see it; if I was harsh or unfair, I didn’t notice. I wondered, and still wonder, if the life I lived for more than five years was imaginary, if it was all something I just wanted to believe, a mirror image or a bad piece of theater.”

Julio’s memory, awakened by disillusionment, re-ran a series of anecdotes. Nonsenses, trifles, unimportant details that, according to his logic, couldn’t possibly be relevant. Whatever you like, for example. He spent more than four hours trying to decipher the meaning of that expression because, for a long time, it had been Cecilia’s only response. As he revisited those moments, Julio conceded to one of her complaints: they always ended up doing exactly what he wanted to do (he would choose the restaurant, the film, the wine, the brand of coffee, decide when they would meet, when they wouldn’t). “But,” he said, “if I did that it’s only because it seemed it was all the same to her. She never said ‘I don’t want to.’ She never made a face or bemoaned the invasion of a privacy that I always understood was something we shared.”

Julio poured himself another drink and shrugged. “We certainly didn’t have problems in bed.” He recounted how, up to the night of the accusation, the pair had enjoyed a fun and playful sex life. Time, Julio admitted, had dulled their devotion. The frenzy had stopped, the intensity, the inventiveness, the unusual positions, the delicious transgressions, the sweet torments. Their love had adopted the classic format of a physiological coupling that merely served to calm the nerves, deaden impulses and induce a deep sleep. “Cecilia said that making love with me disgusted her, and that it had always—from day one—disgusted her,” he told his friend. It was hard for him to realize that what had seemed to him like pleasure was in fact pain, that the only relief she had managed to feel at his side was when she could finally get him off from on top of her. “She never resisted,” Julio stressed. She never showed any distaste at being close to him, or at his body. Julio accepted some of the blame, admitted a certain responsibility and short-sightedness, but felt he couldn’t be so mad as to have missed the fact that his whole married life had been a pretense.

Arturo received a second text message. His wife was asking if he wanted to meet in an old bar near the clerk’s office; she said she wanted to talk about something important. They poured themselves another drink. Julio went on with his story. “I admitted defeat,” he said. Two or three times he tried to speak with her but she was blind with rage and wouldn’t exchange a word with him. She changed the locks on the house, made their separation public on social media and a group of bogus friends gave their approval to the decision. “I was the bad guy.”

Keep your daughter if you want, I’m not interested, she had announced, during a telephone conversation. The dog disappeared. A neighbor told Julio that the previous night he had heard strangled howls and that, when morning came, he had seen a suspicious shape at the farthest end of the garden. The hardest thing to bear were his daughter’s questions. One morning when the girl suffered an acute fit of bawling, Julio decided to give in and sign the papers. He spoke with the lawyer. Feeling bewildered, shocked, sad, hurt, and frustrated, he started the process of separation.

The divorce was bureaucratically slow and traumatic. The lawyers couldn’t come to an agreement. The courts, afflicted by strikes, holidays, substitute judges, and other contingencies, dragged out the trial to an irrational degree. The day he least expected it, a police squad arrived at Julio’s office. Cecilia had reported him for psychological abuse. The new laws, founded on gender equality and discourse, were on her side. The complaint came after a change of heart. At the last minute, Cecilia insisted on getting custody of the girl; she belonged to her, and he had absolutely nothing to offer her. “If you take charge of bringing her up, in ten or twelve years’ time we’ll suffer the humiliation of seeing her name in the classifieds,” she said, through her lawyer. “I loved that woman, Arturo—I respected her personally, professionally, and as a partner. We lived together for more than five years, she gave me a daughter. Her arguments made me very cautious about anything to do with the divorce. I didn’t want the girl to grow up overshadowed by fighting, I didn’t want our separation to become a trauma for her—but a moment arrived when, really, all I wanted was to hurt Cecilia.” A year after the big performance, Julio woke up one day with a fever. He could hardly get up. He called his office and said he wouldn’t be coming in. He showered, had some corn flakes with expired milk for breakfast, paced around the house for a while (two months before he had rented an apartment from a colleague) and had a clear revelation: hatred. He reviewed his feelings for Cecilia and found only a genuine and spontaneous feeling of scorn. He picked up his cell phone and called the lawyer: “It’s OK, we’ll do it your way.”

Arturo was listening closely. The story of his friend allowed him to let his mind wander, to recognize himself in another, and— most importantly—to kill time until eleven o’clock. He didn’t understand why, when the two of them hardly knew each other, Julio was telling him this sorry tale. He was afraid of looking at his cell phone but he couldn’t help it, and lowered his eyes to the screen every minute. Luckily for him, his wife hadn’t written again.

“A week before signing the divorce papers, Cecilia called me,” Julio said. “She said she wanted to see me, that we needed to speak.” She was calling a ceasefire. She didn’t make any claims or complaints, and she didn’t attempt to attack him physically. Cecilia floated the idea of forgiveness and suggested the possibility of a meeting. She admitted she had gone too far; she said that, for a few weeks, she had been taking part in a helpful and constructive therapy group. She suggested they go together, that they air their domestic difficulties under the eye of an expert in human relations; she said she wanted to live with her daughter and husband, with the man she loved; that she didn’t know what had happened, the city had worn her out, and so had work, and so had the stupidity of others, and that, in the grip of a horrible fit of anxiety, she had said and done some unacceptable things. Suddenly, the dog appeared; Cecilia said that a neighbor had found him wandering around a vacant lot. The girl played with him for a while. That night, from under the shelter of her naïveté, his daughter told him that this dog was very nice but that it wasn’t the same animal. Julio and Cecilia rustled up a romantic dinner (the sister-in-law took charge of the preparations). They talked about things they had never talked about before, owned up to mistakes, committed to a feasible level of tolerance, rediscovered the laughter and complicities of the days when they were engaged, and, as in the most heated encounters of youth, took full advantage of every minute of the night. “We started again,” Julio said. The lawyers had already set a schedule for making the separation official, but the day of the signing, we weren’t there.”

And, predictably enough, the madness returned. The new episodes, however, had a distinguishing feature: violence. Julio suspected that something was wrong on the day of a strange accident: the girl nearly drowned in the bathtub, supposedly after slipping. One morning, after a trivial argument (the orange juice had run out), Cecilia attacked him with a knife. In self-defense, Julio hit her in the face. According to him, the blow was a reflex, the inevitable effect of a sharp but spontaneous movement. Cecilia dropped her weapon and, when she realized she was bleeding from her nose, burst out laughing. “Now you really have fucked yourself, you idiot. I’m going to destroy you,” she shouted, before reporting him. The photo of the bruise, published on social media, turned Julio into a pariah. The news was a scandal. For the sake of the company’s image, his boss put him on a few days’ forced leave. The lawyer resigned, the girl passed into the custody of the mother. The money, tied up brokering the first signing, was starting to run out. “And here I am. I have to show up at this office every two weeks, be interviewed by a secretary who is of the opinion I ought to be in jail, that I’m an incorrigible abuser, and hope the new lawyer can at least stop that madwoman from harming the girl. I don’t know that woman, Arturo. She’s not the person I married. Or perhaps she was, but I was blinded by stupid feelings and I didn’t realize. Yes, I loved her, I admit it; but honestly, I want her to die, I want a car to run her over, a lightning bolt to split her in two, some angry drugged-up murderer to run into her. I don’t know what kind of problems you’ve got,” he said, “but if you took the decision to separate, if you thought something was wrong in your relationship and you’ve made it this far, don’t even think about getting back together with her. If at the last minute you have that coffee—or, even worse, that wine or that beer—you’ll be setting yourself up for another disaster. It’ll be your undoing, and you’ll never—listen to me—you’ll never get the chance to start again.”

Arturo listened to the lecture. His story did not remotely resemble the adventures his friend had lived through. His wife, he thought, suffered from a benign, conventional, hypocritical form of madness. Nothing compared with what he had just heard. The failure of his marriage had not followed the same course; his own experience had to do with mutual boredom, with fatigue, with the inevitable appearance of third parties. His friend’s story, however, allowed him to review the set of circumstances that had led him to feel so keenly that he was fed up with his partner. It confirmed his impression that, for both their sakes, it was best that they never see each other, speak, remember each other, or feel each other’s presence again. The cell phone rang, and Arturo picked it up immediately. “Didn’t you get my messages?” asked a woman’s voice. “Messages? What messages?” “The ones I sent you. I was saying I wanted to talk before the signing.” For a few prolonged, almost endless seconds, Arturo pictured the outcome of the meeting. He thought his wife would ask him for another chance, for more time—the horrifying idea of starting again. But reality cut through the romantic ideal. His wife just wanted to know if she had left the pair of high heels she had bought on their last trip to Rome at his house. She couldn’t find them anywhere. Considering that, after the signing, she didn’t want to hear from him again, she wanted to find out what had happened to her much-missed fetish. Arturo remembered that he had thrown them in the bin more than two months ago. He told her, though, that he hadn’t seen them. They agreed to meet at the court. They hung up without saying good-bye Arturo got up and clapped his friend on the back twice. Julio didn’t say good-bye; he spent the rest of the morning (and afternoon) drinking and talking to himself.

“Una Separación,” © 2014 Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles. Translation © 2014 by Ollie Brock. All rights reserved. 

English Spanish (Original)

After a tumultuous delay (domestic battles, locum solicitors, heartless agents, judicial strikes, and sudden deferrals), Arturo was given confirmation of the appointment. When he received the news he remembered, with a touch of sentimentality, the long-gone moment when he had committed the rest of his life, in writing, to a woman he would have cut his own head off for. He could not have imagined then that cohabitation and time would be the only executioners.

On the day of the signing, Arturo arrived early. He wanted to avoid the daily farce of the traffic, the chance of a downpour, the closing of the motorway for some protest, or a standstill in the car park at the crowded courts. The desire for a true freedom, one recorded and recognized by the law, fueled his apocalyptic visions and the inevitable hypochondria. The call from the lawyer gave him an allergic reaction; an enormous rash turned his hands, arms, and shoulders a red that was as deep as it was imaginary. When he arrived at the office, a secretary informed him that, given that his appointment was scheduled for eleven o’clock that morning, he couldn’t be seen first thing. Arturo, nervous and skeptical, decided to wait out the end of his sentence in a nearby bar. It was there that, quite by chance, he met Julio, an old friend from university.

They had coffee. It was many years since they had seen each other. Arturo didn’t want to recount to his friend the latest wretched episodes from his life, and so he chose instead to spend their reunion asking for news of mutual acquaintances, remembering dreary anecdotes (worsened by melancholy), and allowing the time to pass in banal conversation. Arturo felt a stab of heat in his stomach when, at around ten o’clock, he received a text message. “Can we talk before the signing?” asked his ex-wife, who, at the moment he read the message, was still his legitimate spouse. This unexpected intervention disarmed him. For more than a year he had been alert to the possibility of an armistice or a cry for help. His last meeting with her had been a mounting exchange of curses. Since then, all of the work of communication and conflict had fallen into the hands (and the pockets) of the lawyers. Julio noticed how pale his friend was. When Arturo, who was tormented by the situation, told him some of what was happening to him, his old classmate spoke with the owner of the bar and discreetly ordered a bottle of whisky. The drinks were served in plastic cups. They toasted. Julio listened to the story without speaking, his eyes glued to the television set that was playing the highlights of a baseball game. The injured party set out, in a frank and overacted way, the elaborate disasters of his conjugal existence, as though he were the world’s only downtrodden, unhappy man. When he had finished, Arturo told him that his wife had just sent him a text message in which she suggested the possibility of a meeting. Julio refilled his cup. The ice cube melted under the touch of his thick fingers. “Arturo, listen. I don’t know what your situation is. I don’t know why you’re telling me what you’re telling me. It’s years since you and I have spoken. I know it’s not my problem, but I’d like to tell you my story. Maybe what happened to me will give you a few clues about what decision to take.”

It was more than five years ago that Julio had married a colleague, he told Arturo. He admitted that, until the moment of collapse, he had been in love with his partner, had even been happy. The first months of their marriage coincided with a good professional spell. The economic climate of the time allowed him to enrich the model of a prefabricated life to which he had always aspired by buying a house, a car, and even a Dalmatian. Later, they had a daughter. He had managed to carve out for himself a conventional and perfect world that, to his surprise, fell to pieces from one day to the next. “The problem,” he said as he finished his drink, “was that Cecilia went mad.”

It happened early one December. Julio went to pick the girl up from school, came home, washed, and when he came out of the shower he found his wife sitting on the edge of the bed. She was naked, her eyes were popping out of her head, there were scratches on her face. The mattress was covered in tufts of hair; a blood-stained pair of scissors sat on the pillow. Cecilia told him that she couldn’t stand him, that if she spent one more day in that house she would take the irrevocable decision to kill herself. In a trembling voice, the woman listed a series of things she found distasteful in him: morning breath, disgusting habits around food and hygiene, a vulgar sense of humor, flatulence in the small hours. Cecilia said that she hated her life, that she was allergic to the Dalmatian, and that, furthermore, she couldn’t stand the stupidity of a daughter she had only had to please him, so that he would stop delighting in his stupid idea of the perfect family. “I curse the day I met you. I curse all the days on which you touched me. I curse the day you raped me, and damned me forever with your rotten seed,” she yelled with conviction.

Julio reacted calmly. He didn’t take it seriously—he thought it was a fit of hysterics, a tasteless joke of the sort that prophets of astrology attribute to the wanderings of the planet Mercury. “I moved to a hotel with the girl,” he explained. He spent the night absorbed in careful reflection on what had happened in the last few years of his life. Julio analyzed, minute by minute, shot by shot, every event related to his marriage. He knew that, at the beginning of the relationship, they didn’t have much in common; that their tastes (gastronomic, musical, cinematic, literary) were somewhat divergent, but he had always appreciated these discrepancies as an excuse for living in constant discovery of the other.

Cecilia said that she didn’t want to see him. Julio tried to find allies in his unlikely bid for reconquest. He talked with his sister-in-law, with whom he had always maintained a respectful and honest relationship. To his surprise, she took the other side. Julio had to admit (she believed) that he alone was responsible for everything that had happened . . . “But, honestly, Arturo, I didn’t feel responsible for a thing. If I made a mistake, I didn’t see it; if I was harsh or unfair, I didn’t notice. I wondered, and still wonder, if the life I lived for more than five years was imaginary, if it was all something I just wanted to believe, a mirror image or a bad piece of theater.”

Julio’s memory, awakened by disillusionment, re-ran a series of anecdotes. Nonsenses, trifles, unimportant details that, according to his logic, couldn’t possibly be relevant. Whatever you like, for example. He spent more than four hours trying to decipher the meaning of that expression because, for a long time, it had been Cecilia’s only response. As he revisited those moments, Julio conceded to one of her complaints: they always ended up doing exactly what he wanted to do (he would choose the restaurant, the film, the wine, the brand of coffee, decide when they would meet, when they wouldn’t). “But,” he said, “if I did that it’s only because it seemed it was all the same to her. She never said ‘I don’t want to.’ She never made a face or bemoaned the invasion of a privacy that I always understood was something we shared.”

Julio poured himself another drink and shrugged. “We certainly didn’t have problems in bed.” He recounted how, up to the night of the accusation, the pair had enjoyed a fun and playful sex life. Time, Julio admitted, had dulled their devotion. The frenzy had stopped, the intensity, the inventiveness, the unusual positions, the delicious transgressions, the sweet torments. Their love had adopted the classic format of a physiological coupling that merely served to calm the nerves, deaden impulses and induce a deep sleep. “Cecilia said that making love with me disgusted her, and that it had always—from day one—disgusted her,” he told his friend. It was hard for him to realize that what had seemed to him like pleasure was in fact pain, that the only relief she had managed to feel at his side was when she could finally get him off from on top of her. “She never resisted,” Julio stressed. She never showed any distaste at being close to him, or at his body. Julio accepted some of the blame, admitted a certain responsibility and short-sightedness, but felt he couldn’t be so mad as to have missed the fact that his whole married life had been a pretense.

Arturo received a second text message. His wife was asking if he wanted to meet in an old bar near the clerk’s office; she said she wanted to talk about something important. They poured themselves another drink. Julio went on with his story. “I admitted defeat,” he said. Two or three times he tried to speak with her but she was blind with rage and wouldn’t exchange a word with him. She changed the locks on the house, made their separation public on social media and a group of bogus friends gave their approval to the decision. “I was the bad guy.”

Keep your daughter if you want, I’m not interested, she had announced, during a telephone conversation. The dog disappeared. A neighbor told Julio that the previous night he had heard strangled howls and that, when morning came, he had seen a suspicious shape at the farthest end of the garden. The hardest thing to bear were his daughter’s questions. One morning when the girl suffered an acute fit of bawling, Julio decided to give in and sign the papers. He spoke with the lawyer. Feeling bewildered, shocked, sad, hurt, and frustrated, he started the process of separation.

The divorce was bureaucratically slow and traumatic. The lawyers couldn’t come to an agreement. The courts, afflicted by strikes, holidays, substitute judges, and other contingencies, dragged out the trial to an irrational degree. The day he least expected it, a police squad arrived at Julio’s office. Cecilia had reported him for psychological abuse. The new laws, founded on gender equality and discourse, were on her side. The complaint came after a change of heart. At the last minute, Cecilia insisted on getting custody of the girl; she belonged to her, and he had absolutely nothing to offer her. “If you take charge of bringing her up, in ten or twelve years’ time we’ll suffer the humiliation of seeing her name in the classifieds,” she said, through her lawyer. “I loved that woman, Arturo—I respected her personally, professionally, and as a partner. We lived together for more than five years, she gave me a daughter. Her arguments made me very cautious about anything to do with the divorce. I didn’t want the girl to grow up overshadowed by fighting, I didn’t want our separation to become a trauma for her—but a moment arrived when, really, all I wanted was to hurt Cecilia.” A year after the big performance, Julio woke up one day with a fever. He could hardly get up. He called his office and said he wouldn’t be coming in. He showered, had some corn flakes with expired milk for breakfast, paced around the house for a while (two months before he had rented an apartment from a colleague) and had a clear revelation: hatred. He reviewed his feelings for Cecilia and found only a genuine and spontaneous feeling of scorn. He picked up his cell phone and called the lawyer: “It’s OK, we’ll do it your way.”

Arturo was listening closely. The story of his friend allowed him to let his mind wander, to recognize himself in another, and— most importantly—to kill time until eleven o’clock. He didn’t understand why, when the two of them hardly knew each other, Julio was telling him this sorry tale. He was afraid of looking at his cell phone but he couldn’t help it, and lowered his eyes to the screen every minute. Luckily for him, his wife hadn’t written again.

“A week before signing the divorce papers, Cecilia called me,” Julio said. “She said she wanted to see me, that we needed to speak.” She was calling a ceasefire. She didn’t make any claims or complaints, and she didn’t attempt to attack him physically. Cecilia floated the idea of forgiveness and suggested the possibility of a meeting. She admitted she had gone too far; she said that, for a few weeks, she had been taking part in a helpful and constructive therapy group. She suggested they go together, that they air their domestic difficulties under the eye of an expert in human relations; she said she wanted to live with her daughter and husband, with the man she loved; that she didn’t know what had happened, the city had worn her out, and so had work, and so had the stupidity of others, and that, in the grip of a horrible fit of anxiety, she had said and done some unacceptable things. Suddenly, the dog appeared; Cecilia said that a neighbor had found him wandering around a vacant lot. The girl played with him for a while. That night, from under the shelter of her naïveté, his daughter told him that this dog was very nice but that it wasn’t the same animal. Julio and Cecilia rustled up a romantic dinner (the sister-in-law took charge of the preparations). They talked about things they had never talked about before, owned up to mistakes, committed to a feasible level of tolerance, rediscovered the laughter and complicities of the days when they were engaged, and, as in the most heated encounters of youth, took full advantage of every minute of the night. “We started again,” Julio said. The lawyers had already set a schedule for making the separation official, but the day of the signing, we weren’t there.”

And, predictably enough, the madness returned. The new episodes, however, had a distinguishing feature: violence. Julio suspected that something was wrong on the day of a strange accident: the girl nearly drowned in the bathtub, supposedly after slipping. One morning, after a trivial argument (the orange juice had run out), Cecilia attacked him with a knife. In self-defense, Julio hit her in the face. According to him, the blow was a reflex, the inevitable effect of a sharp but spontaneous movement. Cecilia dropped her weapon and, when she realized she was bleeding from her nose, burst out laughing. “Now you really have fucked yourself, you idiot. I’m going to destroy you,” she shouted, before reporting him. The photo of the bruise, published on social media, turned Julio into a pariah. The news was a scandal. For the sake of the company’s image, his boss put him on a few days’ forced leave. The lawyer resigned, the girl passed into the custody of the mother. The money, tied up brokering the first signing, was starting to run out. “And here I am. I have to show up at this office every two weeks, be interviewed by a secretary who is of the opinion I ought to be in jail, that I’m an incorrigible abuser, and hope the new lawyer can at least stop that madwoman from harming the girl. I don’t know that woman, Arturo. She’s not the person I married. Or perhaps she was, but I was blinded by stupid feelings and I didn’t realize. Yes, I loved her, I admit it; but honestly, I want her to die, I want a car to run her over, a lightning bolt to split her in two, some angry drugged-up murderer to run into her. I don’t know what kind of problems you’ve got,” he said, “but if you took the decision to separate, if you thought something was wrong in your relationship and you’ve made it this far, don’t even think about getting back together with her. If at the last minute you have that coffee—or, even worse, that wine or that beer—you’ll be setting yourself up for another disaster. It’ll be your undoing, and you’ll never—listen to me—you’ll never get the chance to start again.”

Arturo listened to the lecture. His story did not remotely resemble the adventures his friend had lived through. His wife, he thought, suffered from a benign, conventional, hypocritical form of madness. Nothing compared with what he had just heard. The failure of his marriage had not followed the same course; his own experience had to do with mutual boredom, with fatigue, with the inevitable appearance of third parties. His friend’s story, however, allowed him to review the set of circumstances that had led him to feel so keenly that he was fed up with his partner. It confirmed his impression that, for both their sakes, it was best that they never see each other, speak, remember each other, or feel each other’s presence again. The cell phone rang, and Arturo picked it up immediately. “Didn’t you get my messages?” asked a woman’s voice. “Messages? What messages?” “The ones I sent you. I was saying I wanted to talk before the signing.” For a few prolonged, almost endless seconds, Arturo pictured the outcome of the meeting. He thought his wife would ask him for another chance, for more time—the horrifying idea of starting again. But reality cut through the romantic ideal. His wife just wanted to know if she had left the pair of high heels she had bought on their last trip to Rome at his house. She couldn’t find them anywhere. Considering that, after the signing, she didn’t want to hear from him again, she wanted to find out what had happened to her much-missed fetish. Arturo remembered that he had thrown them in the bin more than two months ago. He told her, though, that he hadn’t seen them. They agreed to meet at the court. They hung up without saying good-bye Arturo got up and clapped his friend on the back twice. Julio didn’t say good-bye; he spent the rest of the morning (and afternoon) drinking and talking to himself.

“Una Separación,” © 2014 Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles. Translation © 2014 by Ollie Brock. All rights reserved. 

Una separación

Después de una accidentada espera (batallas domésticas, abogados suplentes, gestores desalmados, huelgas en tribunales e improvisadas prórrogas), Arturo recibió la confirmación de la cita. Cuando supo la noticia recordó, con un dejo de romanticismo, el lejano momento en el que empeñó por escrito el resto de su vida en compañía de una mujer por la que se hubiera dejado cortar la cabeza. No fue capaz de imaginar, entonces, que la convivencia y el tiempo serían los únicos verdugos.

El día de la firma, Arturo llegó temprano. Quería evitar la burla cotidiana del tráfico, la posibilidad de un aguacero, el cierre de la autopista por alguna protesta o el colapso del estacionamiento en los hacinados tribunales. El deseo de una libertad real, apostillada y reconocida por la Ley, reforzó sus delirios apocalípticos y la inevitable hipocondría. La llamada del abogado le produjo una reacción alérgica; un vasto sarpullido le coloreó las manos, los brazos y los hombros de un rojo tan intenso como imaginario. Al llegar al despacho, una secretaria le informó que, dado que su cita estaba programada para las once de la mañana, no podían atenderlo a primera hora. Arturo, nervioso e incrédulo, decidió esperar el fin del presidio en un bar cercano. Fue en ese lugar donde, por asuntos de la casualidad, se encontró a Julio, un viejo amigo de la universidad.

Tomaron un café. Tenían muchos años sin verse. Arturo no quería contarle a su compañero los episodios miserables de su vida reciente por lo que prefirió dedicar el reencuentro a preguntar por el destino de conocidos comunes, recordar anécdotas sin gracia (magnificadas por la melancolía) y dejar pasar el tiempo en la banalidad de la tertulia. Arturo sintió un golpe de calor en el estómago cuando, alrededor de las diez, recibió un mensaje de texto. «¿Podemos hablar antes de la firma?», invitaba su exmujer quien, para el momento de la lectura del mensaje, todavía era su legítima esposa. La aparición inesperada lo desarmó. Tenía más de un año atento a la posibilidad de un armisticio o un llamado de auxilio. La última entrevista con ella había sido un creciente intercambio de maldiciones. Desde entonces, todo el trabajo de comunicación y destrucción quedó en las manos (y en los bolsillos) de los abogados. Julio captó la palidez de su amigo. Cuando Arturo, mortificado por la situación, le contó parte de lo que le estaba pasando, su antiguo colega habló con el dueño del bar y, de manera discreta, pidió una botella de whisky. Sirvieron los tragos en vasos de plástico. Brindaron. Julio escuchó la historia sin participar, con la mirada clavada en un televisor que transmitía el resumen de un partido de béisbol. El doliente expuso, de manera abierta y sobreactuada, los descalabros exagerados de su vida conyugal, como si se tratara del único hombre burlado e infeliz. Al final, Arturo le dijo que su mujer acababa de enviarle un mensaje de texto en el que sugería la posibilidad de un encuentro. Julio recargó su trago. La piedra de hielo se deshizo bajo el roce de sus dedos anchos. «Arturo, escucha. No sé cuál sea tu situación. No sé por qué me cuentas lo que me cuentas. Tú y yo tenemos muchos años sin dirigirnos la palabra. Sé que no es mi problema pero me gustaría contarte mi historia. Puede que lo que me pasó te dé algunas pistas para tomar una decisión».

Hacía más de cinco años que Julio se había casado con una compañera de trabajo, le contó a Arturo. Reconoció que, hasta el momento del colapso, había estado enamorado de su pareja e incluso había sido feliz. Los primeros meses de matrimonio coincidieron con una buena racha profesional. La economía, entonces, le permitió enriquecer el modelo de vida prefabricada al que siempre había aspirado con la compra de una casa, un carro e incluso un perro dálmata. Más tarde tuvieron una hija. Había logrado labrarse un mundo convencional y perfecto que, para su sorpresa, se desplomó de un día para otro. «El problema —contó al terminarse el trago— fue que Cecilia se volvió loca».

Ocurrió a principios de un diciembre. Julio fue a buscar a la niña al colegio, regresó su casa, se bañó y al salir de la ducha encontró a su mujer sentada en el borde de la cama. Estaba desnuda, con los ojos desorbitados y algunos rasguños en la cara. El colchón estaba lleno de tiras de cabello, sobre la almohada reposaba una tijera manchada de sangre. Cecilia le dijo que no podía soportarlo, que si pasaba un día más en esa casa tomaría la irrevocable decisión de matarse. La mujer, con voz trémula, enumeró una serie de disgustos: el aliento matutino, asquerosos hábitos de comida e higiene, la vulgaridad del humor, flatulencias de madrugada. Cecilia dijo que odiaba su vida, que el perro dálmata le daba alergia y, además, que no podía soportar la estupidez de una niña que solo había tenido por complacerlo, para que terminara de regocijarse en su estúpida idea de familia perfecta. «Maldigo el día que te conocí. Maldigo todos los días en los que me tocaste. Maldigo el día en el que me violaste y me condenaste para siempre con tu podrida simiente», gritó convencida.

Julio reaccionó de manera apacible. No se lo tomó en serio, pensó que se trataba de un episodio de histeria, de un chiste de mal gusto de esos que los agoreros de la astrología atribuyen a las andanzas del planeta Mercurio. «Me mudé a un hotel con la niña», explicó. La madrugada estuvo enfocada en una reflexión atenta sobre lo que había ocurrido en los últimos años de su vida. Julio analizó minuto a minuto, fotograma por fotograma, todos los sucesos relacionados con su matrimonio. Sabía que, al principio de la relación, no tenían muchas cosas en común; que las aficiones de ocio (gastronómicas, musicales, cinematográficas, lectoras) eran algo dispares, pero siempre valoró esos desencuentros como una excusa para vivir en un constante descubrimiento del otro.

Cecilia dijo que no quería verlo. Julio trató de encontrar aliados en su compleja causa de reconquista. Habló con su cuñada, con quien siempre había mantenido una relación respetuosa y honesta. Para su sorpresa, ella tomó posición en su contra. Julio tenía que admitir (entendía la otra) que él era el único responsable de todo lo que había pasado… «Pero, honestamente, Arturo, yo no me sentía responsable de nada. Si cometí un error, no lo vi; si fui severo o injusto, no me di cuenta. Me pregunté y todavía me pregunto si la vida que viví por más de cinco años me la había imaginado, si todo fue algo que me quise creer, un espejismo o una obra de teatro mala».

La memoria de Julio, avivada por el desengaño, recreó una serie de anécdotas. Tonterías, menudencias, detalles insignificantes que, para su lógica personal, no podían tener ninguna relevancia. Lo que tú quieras, por ejemplo. Tardó más de cuatro horas en tratar de descifrar el significado de esa expresión porque, durante mucho tiempo, esa había sido la única repuesta de Cecilia. Al repasar esos momentos, Julio le dio la razón en uno de sus reclamos: siempre terminaban haciendo lo que a él le daba la gana (elegía el restaurante, la película, el vino, la marca de café, la reunión pertinente y la impertinente). «Pero —contó— si lo hacía de esa manera es solo porque a ella parecía darle lo mismo. Nunca dijo no quiero. No mostró mala cara ni denunció la supuesta invasión de una privacidad que siempre interpreté como algo común».

Julio se sirvió otro trago, alzó los hombros. «Los problemas no estaban en la cama». Contó que, hasta la noche antes de la denuncia, había mantenido con ella una carnalidad jovial y lúdica. El tiempo, reconoció Julio, adormiló la entrega. Había cesado la furia, la intensidad, los inventos, las posiciones raras, las transgresiones deliciosas, las pequeñas torturas. El amor había adoptado el formato clásico de un acoplamiento fisiológico que solo servía para calmar los nervios, matar las pulsiones y preceder al sueño profundo. «Cecilia dijo que hacer el amor conmigo le daba asco y que siempre, desde el primer día, le había dado asco», le contó a su amigo. Le costó darse cuenta de que lo que percibía como placer en realidad era dolor, que el único alivio que ella había logrado sentir a su lado era cuando, finalmente, lograba quitárselo de encima. «Nunca opuso resistencia», insistía Julio. Nunca sugirió antipatía por su intimidad o por su cuerpo. Julio aceptó algunas culpas, admitió posibles responsabilidades y miopías pero reconoció que no podía estar tan loco como para no darse cuenta de que toda su vida conyugal había sido un artificio.

 Arturo recibió un segundo mensaje de texto. Su esposa lo invitaba a encontrarse en un viejo bar cercano a la oficina ministerial; dijo que quería hablarle sobre un asunto importante. Se sirvieron otro trago. Julio continuó su relato. «Acepté la derrota», dijo. Dos o tres veces intentó hablar con ella pero, enceguecida e iracunda, no quiso dirigirle la palabra. Cambió las cerraduras de la casa, hizo pública la separación por las redes sociales y un grupo de amigos fantasmas dio el visto bueno a su decisión. «El malo era yo».

Si quieres, quédate con tu hija, no me interesa, anunció ella durante una discusión telefónica. El perro desapareció. Un vecino le contó a Julio que la noche anterior había escuchado dolorosos aullidos y que, en horas de la mañana, vio un montículo sospechoso en el punto más remoto del jardín. Lo más difícil de llevar eran las preguntas de su hija. Una mañana en la que la niña tuvo una fuerte crisis de llanto, Arturo tomó la decisión de rendirse y firmar los papeles. Habló con el abogado. Aturdido, impresionado, triste, molesto y frustrado, inició los trámites de la separación.

El divorcio, burocráticamente, fue lento y traumático. Los abogados no lograron llegar a ningún acuerdo. Los tribunales, condicionados por huelgas, días de asueto, jueces suplentes y otras circunstancias, alargaron el proceso por un lapso irracional. El día menos esperado, una comisión policial se presentó en la oficina de Julio. Cecilia lo había denunciado por maltrato psicológico. Las nuevas leyes, condicionadas por la equidad y el discurso del Género, apostaban a favor de ella. La denuncia vino precedida por un cambio de opinión. A última hora, Cecilia se empeñó en hacerse con la custodia de la niña, ella le pertenecía y él no tenía absolutamente nada que ofrecerle. «Si tú te encargas de la crianza, dentro de diez o doce años tendremos que pasar la vergüenza de ver su nombre en la página de anuncios», dijo ella a través de su abogado. «Yo quise a esa mujer, Arturo, la respetaba como persona, como profesional, como compañera. Vivimos juntos por más de cinco años, me dio una hija. Estos argumentos me hicieron llevar con mucha cautela todo lo que tenía que ver con el divorcio. No quería que la niña creciera bajo la sombra de la lucha, no quería que nuestra separación se convirtiera en un trauma, pero llegó un momento en el que, de verdad, lo único que quería era hacerle daño». Un año después del performance, Julio despertó con fiebre. No pudo levantarse. Llamó al trabajo y dijo que no asistiría. Se bañó, desayunó Corn Flakes con leche vencida, dio vueltas por la casa (desde hacía dos meses le había alquilado un apartamento a un compañero de la oficina) y tuvo una clara revelación: el odio. Revisó sus sentimientos por Cecilia y solo encontró un genuino y espontáneo sentimiento de desprecio. Buscó su teléfono celular, llamó al abogado: «Está bien, vamos a hacerlo a tu manera».

 Arturo escuchaba con atención. La historia de su amigo le permitía distraerse, reconocerse y, lo más importante, matar el tiempo hasta las once. No entendía por qué Julio, en ausencia absoluta de confianza, le contaba esa triste historia. Tenía miedo de mirar el teléfono celular pero no podía evitarlo, cada minuto bajaba la mirada a la pantalla. Para su fortuna, su esposa no había vuelto a escribir.

«Una semana antes de firmar el divorcio, Cecilia me llamó —contó Julio—. Dijo que quería verme, que necesitábamos hablar». Había bajado las armas. No hizo reclamos ni denuncias ni intentó atacarlo físicamente. Cecilia puso sobre la mesa la idea del perdón y asomó la posibilidad del reencuentro. Reconoció sus excesos; dijo que, desde hacía unas semanas, estaba participando en una eficiente y constructiva terapia de grupo. Lo invitó a que fueran juntos, a que expusieran sus dificultades de convivencia ante la mirada de un experto en relaciones humanas; dijo que quería vivir con su hija y con su esposo, con el hombre al que amaba; que no sabía que le había pasado, que la agotó la ciudad, el trabajo, la estupidez de los otros y que, bajo una horrible crisis de ansiedad, había dicho y hecho cosas inaceptables. De repente, el perro apareció; Cecilia dijo que una vecina lo había encontrado vagando por un terreno baldío. La niña jugó con él un rato. Esa noche, bajo el paraguas de la ingenuidad, su hija le contó que ese perrito era muy simpático pero que no era el mismo animal. Julio y Cecilia improvisaron una cena romántica (la cuñada se encargó de hacer los preparativos). Hablaron de cosas de las que nunca habían hablado, admitieron errores, se comprometieron a una plausible tolerancia, retomaron las risas y las complicidades de los tiempos del noviazgo y, como en los más intensos encuentros de juventud, gozaron a fondo cada minuto de la madrugada. «Volvimos a intentarlo —contó Julio—. Ya los abogados habían fijado un cronograma para establecer la separación, pero el día la firma no estuvimos ahí».

Y, como era previsible, la locura volvió. Los nuevos episodios, sin embargo, tuvieron un rasgo diferencial: la violencia. Julio sospechó que algo estaba mal el día que ocurrió un extraño accidente: la niña estuvo a punto de morir ahogada en la bañera, supuestamente se resbaló. Una mañana, luego de una discusión anodina (se había terminado el jugo de naranja), Cecilia lo atacó con un cuchillo. Al defenderse, Julio le pegó en la cara. Según él, fue un golpe reflejo, el efecto inevitable de un movimiento brusco pero espontáneo. Cecilia soltó el arma y, al darse cuenta de que sangraba por la nariz, tuvo un ataque de risa. «Ahora sí te jodiste, maldito. Te voy a destruir», gritó antes de denunciarlo. La foto del hematoma, expuesta en las redes sociales, condenó a Julio al oprobio. La noticia fue un escándalo. Su jefe, en beneficio de la imagen de la empresa, le dio unos forzados días de vacaciones. El abogado renunció, la niña pasó a la custodia de la madre. El dinero, empeñado en los trámites de la primera firma, comenzaba a agotarse. «Y aquí estoy. Tengo que presentarme cada quince días en esta oficina, entrevistarme con una funcionaria que considera que debo estar preso, que soy un irrecuperable maltratador y esperar a que el nuevo abogado pueda, al menos, evitar que esa loca le haga daño a la niña. Yo a esa mujer no la conozco, Arturo. No es la persona con la que me casé. A lo mejor sí lo era pero, aturdido por la estupidez de los afectos, no me di cuenta. Sí, la amé, lo reconozco; pero honestamente, quiero que se muera, que la atropelle un carro, que la parta un rayo, que algún asesino drogado e iracundo tropiece con ella. No sé cuáles sean tus problemas —dijo—, pero si tomaste la decisión de separarte, si consideraste que algo no iba bien en tu relación y has llegado hasta acá, no se te ocurra reunirte con tu mujer. Si te tomas ese café o, peor aún, ese vino o esa cerveza de última hora estarás apostando por un nuevo fracaso, será tu perdición y nunca, escúchame bien, nunca tendrás la oportunidad de volver a empezar».

 Arturo escuchó la lección. Su historia no se parecía ni remotamente a la peripecia que había vivido su amigo. Su esposa, pensó, padecía una locura benigna, convencional e histérica. Nada comparado con lo que acababa de escuchar. El fracaso de su matrimonio no había seguido los mismos derroteros; su experiencia había estado ligada al aburrimiento mutuo, al cansancio, a la aparición inevitable de terceros. La historia de su amigo, sin embargo, le permitió repasar el conjunto de circunstancias que lo había llevado a sentir de una manera tan vivaz el agotamiento por su pareja. Confirmó su impresión de que, por el bien de los dos, lo mejor era que no volvieran a verse, a hablar, a recordarse, a tenerse presentes. El teléfono celular repicó, Arturo respondió inmediatamente. «¿No has visto mis mensajes?», dijo una voz de mujer. «¿Mensajes? ¿Qué mensajes?». «Los que te mandé. Te decía que quisiera que habláramos antes de firmar». Durante un par de segundos, prolongados e intransitivos, Arturo imaginó el desenlace del encuentro. Pensó que su mujer le pediría otra oportunidad, un nuevo tiempo, la idea mortificada de volver a intentarlo. Pero la realidad refutó el ideario romántico. Su esposa solo quería saber si había dejado en su casa el par de zapatos de tacón que había comprado en el último viaje a Roma. No los encontraba por ninguna parte. Considerando que, después de la firma, no quería volver a saber nada de él, quería informarse sobre el destino de aquel añorado fetiche. Arturo recordó que, hacía más de dos meses, había tirados los zapatos a la basura. Le dijo, sin embargo, que no los había visto. Quedaron en encontrarse en el Juzgado. Trancaron sin decir adiós. Arturo se levantó y dio dos palmadas en la espalda de su amigo. Julio no se despidió; se pasó el resto de la mañana (y de la tarde), bebiendo y hablando solo.

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