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Fiction

The “I Ching” and the Man of Papers

By Guillermo Martínez
Translated from Spanish by Andrea G. Labinger
Guillermo Martínez watches a couple struggle with chance and unimaginable loss.

The man awakens with a start. His back feels numb. He had fallen asleep in the chair, and it takes him a moment to remember where he is, but it’s the second night, and the room with its row of beds and little heads hooked up to catheters is beginning to look familiar. There’s a dense odor of disinfectant and cologne, and from above comes the discreet hum of the blades of a fan. He has a cramp in one of his legs, and when he rubs his eyes he feels the roughness of his day-old beard on the palm of his hand. He tries to remember the nightmare that startled him awake, but the last traces escape his grasp and he thinks maybe it’s better that way. He stands and leans over the first bed in the darkness. Nothing has changed. The sheet drapes the small, thin body up to the neck; a tangle of blonde hair clings to the sweaty face, and the head remains still, at the same, slightly forced, angle, as though cruelly tugged upward by the tube emerging from the nose. Someone has replaced the IV bag during the night, as well as the damp cloth on her forehead. He, who had fallen asleep to the piercing cries of the little girl in the third bed and then, still half-asleep, had heard the loud, asthmatic snores of the boy on the respirator, like a swimmer about to go under, now wondered about the body’s different strategies against death, and whether his daughter’s deep torpor, that impenetrable stillness, was a kind of self-contained resistance or the sign of final surrender.

There’s a sound of footsteps in the corridor, and he looks at the clock: it’s his wife, coming to take over for him. The door opens and the wedge of light briefly allows him to see the other beds. The third one, the other little girl’s bed, is empty now. Falling asleep is dangerous, he thinks: during the night there are silent disappearances, unforeseeable substitutions. He feels his wife’s hand on his shoulder and the swift brush of her lips against his cheek. They stand there like two strangers, unmoving, gazing at an equally unmoving, strange spectacle.

“Nothing, right?” she says. She reaches out her arm to test the cloth on the child’s forehead. “It needs to be changed again.”

She leaves the room, and from across the corridor he hears the sound of a faucet running in the tiny kitchen where the nurses doze. When she returns and touches the child’s forehead, he sees something in her fear-widened eyes that neither of them has yet dared to say.

“When will the doctor be back?”

“In two hours.”

“Did he say anything else?”

He shakes his head.

“Just that we have to wait.”

“Something went wrong, didn’t it? She should have been out of the operating room in half an hour. That’s what they told us. Maybe it wasn’t appendicitis; maybe there was a complication.”

“I asked him, and he said no, but at night he came back to see her with another doctor. They said we’d have to wait twenty-four hours more.”

“Are you going to take a nap before your class?”

“Yeah, I’m going to lie down for a while.”

“Will you remember to look for the I Ching?”

Her voice echoes with an anguished, imploring tone, and in her eyes he sees the same despairing expression, like the raised arm of a shipwreck victim, that was there when they lost their first child, their son, as if everything around them had sunk and she didn’t care what he thought anymore. He tells her he’s already gone through the boxes one by one, but that he’ll look again.

“And the coins,” she says. “Don’t forget the coins. There needs to be a male image and a female one. I always used those English ten-pence coins, with the lion and the queen. They should be in the little red bank, in her collection.”

The man nods and leans over to kiss her. Unexpectedly, she embraces him and starts to cry, spasmodic, broken sobs punctuated by a hoarse, desperate moan. He feels the dampness of her tears on his face and neck. It’s been a long time since they’ve embraced.

She steps back, looks at him again, and automatically adjusts his shirt collar.

“Will you remember?”

*

The man turns the key and walks into the house. There’s a slightly different odor, the smell of an abandoned house. He hears nails scratching against the patio door and sees his dog’s wet snout pressed against the glass. His wife has left some toast and orange juice for him in the kitchen. The man opens the patio door and shares a piece of toast with the dog. It’s not yet dawn. He feels his way along the shadows of a hallway, enters his daughter’s room, and turns on one of the lamps. His wife, he notices, had been in there during the day. Everything’s tidy, as if she had picked up and touched each toy before replacing it on the shelves, and the bed from which they snatched their daughter in the middle of the night has been made again, with the Winnie-the-Pooh comforter carefully smoothed out. On the night table he sees a photo of his wife and himself, both smiling, deeply tanned and lying on the sand, a picture that his daughter took one summer at the beach when she was only four or five. He finds the bank inside a toy chest, a red tin mailbox that he brought her from one of his trips. He inverts it on the bed, and from the stash of coins from so many countries he separates three ten-pence pieces and puts them in his pocket. He turns out the light and climbs the stairs to his study.

Scattered on the floor, with their covers raised, exactly as he had left them the night before, are the dozens of cartons of books that had been shipped during the move. This house didn’t have bookshelves; at first there had always been some other more urgent task to attend to, and for a while now they had stopped thinking about it, as if they both knew it didn’t matter anymore, because in any case he was going to leave.

The man squats, opens the first box and empties it, stacking the books in tall piles. He tries to calculate the space that the books would occupy in the room. He’s determined to search all the boxes again. The book he’s looking for is black, very thick, with the title written in Chinese characters and the cover frayed at one corner. He’s sure he couldn’t have missed it. It was probably in one of the boxes that never arrived. He remembers her leaning over the book, in one of the early years of their marriage, when she couldn’t fall asleep at night. He remembers, too well, the gentle roll of the coins, waking in the darkness to find her side of the bed cold, walking downstairs guided by the sound of that rhythmic tumble, and seeing her in her negligée, her hair loose, the I Ching open on the kitchen table and beside it a piece of paper folded in half, with interminable successions of lines that looked like an SOS repeated in a strange Morse code. He recalls her talking at length, while he made coffee, about the man of the Red Samurai, the retreating armies, the chaste maiden and the old woman, the Duke of Chou, the care of the cow, the biting through tender meat, and the bloody tears that flow. He recalls the thousand little jokes he made at her expense and the answer she gave him, with an imperturbable smile, like a permanently winning card: the I Ching had predicted he would come into her life, the man of papers. That’s what she called him in her bursts of tenderness: my man of papers.

The man opens the second box, and a band of sunshine filters in through the window, like a hand, unexpectedly warm, on his face. A sharp pain rises from his middle up through his back. He tilts backward for a moment, then stretches out on the parquet floor and with half-opened eyes stares at the shifting cone of glittery dust suspended in the sunlight. He falls soundly asleep, not hearing his dog stealthily climb the stairs—breaking a household rule—and curl up in a ball beside him.

*

The phone rings downstairs. Once, twice. The man awakens and manages to reach the foot of the staircase before the answering machine picks up.

“I thought you might have fallen asleep,” his wife says. There’s background noise, as if she were in a public phone booth. “What time is your class?”

The man glances at his watch.

“I still have time for a shower. Any news?”

“They just took her into Radiology, and the doctor’s ordered more tests. He said we’d have to wait till the end of the day, but he wouldn’t tell me what they plan to do if she doesn’t respond . . .” Her voice seems to break and then, as if making an effort to compose herself, she asks him if he’ll come to the hospital directly from class.

“Yes, of course.”

“Then don’t forget to bring the I Ching to the University along with your other books.”

She always reminded him of the things he needed to do. He didn’t think his memory was as bad as she liked to claim, but in the beginning it had been a kind of game between the two of them, and he now realized it might be her only way to connect with him during their most turbulent times. True, there was something erratic about his memory, but there were also some firm, immutable recollections. He remembered each and every night of his son’s dying; he remembered her, still very young, muttering to herself as she tossed the coins, trapped in their hypnotic jingling, frantically trying to extract a different answer from the book. He remembered the day, sometime after the funeral, when the I Ching disappeared from the shelf in the dining room without his daring to ask her about it, and also the day when she started taking the pills that now allowed her to sleep through the night.

The man turns on the shower and quickly undresses. He has a long, muscular body, which he’s maintained since his days on the University swim team. He can still effortlessly backstroke the hundred laps that once were his daily routine. In that secret pact with his body, the part he feels he’s fulfilled consists of never having paid it too much attention. He comes out of the bathroom and throws on a short-sleeved shirt, glances at his watch again and decides there’s no time to shave. He goes upstairs to his study once more, picks up a Statistics text and a few pages of notes and drags his dog downstairs by the collar to put him back out on the patio. He makes sure the three coins are still in his pocket and looks for the car keys on the hall table. He starts out for the University, but turns off on a side street and parks in front of a bookstore. The clerk hears him out patiently and slowly shakes his head no. All they have is an abridged edition of the I Ching. The thick book with black covers and a prologue by Jung that he’s talking about has been out of print for a long time. The clerk doubts he’ll find it in any bookstore in the city. The man walks back to his car. He looks at his watch and heads down the street, driving slightly over the speed limit. When he enters the classroom, his students are already seated, and he hears a quiet rumble of resignation. He’s never been late before. Maybe, he thinks, they were all hoping he wouldn’t show up. The man crosses the classroom with long strides, steps up to the platform and begins to speak of medical pathologies, strange diseases, monstrosities. Have you ever noticed, he asks, that the first examples were always described in China? Could it be that the Chinese are more subject to deformities, to aberrations? Or is it just that there are so many of them? What is a rare disease, after all? A disease that shows up once in ten million cases, let’s say. But there are more than a billion Chinese: a disease that would be rare in any ordinary country isn’t so rare in China. Now, says the man, let’s think about prophetic dreams. We’ve all dreamed at one point or another that a close relative has died. Let’s suppose each person has a dream like that at least once in his life.

He pauses, as if he’s lost the thread; he’s just recalled, with devastating clarity, the nightmare he had in the hospital at dawn. He turns to the blackboard for an instant, pretending to be looking for chalk, and turns around again to face the class. What’s not so common, he says, is for the relative to actually die the next day. But then again, what does “not so common” mean? Our close relative, like all human beings, one day must die.

The man writes a five-digit number on the board. This is the number of days in a person’s maximum lifespan. Our relative might die on any one of these days. The prophetic dream could also occur on any given night, on any one of these days. But then the probability that the prophetic dream will come true is the same as the probability that these two independent events will coincide: the night of the dream and the day of the death. And that number is one we know how to calculate.

The man writes an equation, stops for a moment at the equal sign, as if he were performing a long mental calculation, and jots down a second number, nearly twice as long as the first. It’s a large number, but not so very large, he says. In Tokyo, in Buenos Aires, in New York, every night, routinely, someone kills a loved one in his dreams. Of course this person will be absolutely astonished if we try to convince him by any rational means that there was no mystery, no premonition, just the trivial evidenceof a statistic, almost as inevitable as the fact that every lottery game has a winner.

He erases the board energetically, and gradually, in the same somewhat indifferent and ironic tone, demolishes astrology, the Tarot, the hope of roulette tricks. His students could hardly have noticed the difference between this and any other class session. He’s just a little more distracted than usual and he hasn’t yet tried out one of his subtle, almost secret, jokes. He calls for the first break but remains at his desk as the classroom slowly empties. One of his female students from the front row comes forward with a dubious smile.

“But everything you said—the law of large numbers and all that—it doesn’t apply to the I Ching, does it? The I Ching predicts future events . . . it’s on a different level; it can’t be reduced to a roll of the dice.”

Every quarter, when he reaches this class on chance, there’s always someone that approaches him with that same alarmed expression, as if he’s challenged an intimate faith, much more enshrined than any religion. It’s almost always astrology, and he has to listen to naïve, passionate defenses and long explanations of astronomical coordinates and astral houses. Other times it’s the Tarot. In general he’s unable to make them understand: Yes, I’m very sorry, but it’s all the same, the blind indeterminacy of things. But until now no one had ever mentioned the I Ching.

“Then your book is never wrong?” asks the man, and his student doesn’t seem to notice the trace of irony.

“Never,” she says earnestly. “Everything it’s predicted for me has always come true. But you should only consult it for really important things.”

“Maybe you have a miraculous copy.”

“You don’t believe me, do you?” asks the girl, wounded.

The man looks at her. The girl has a frank, open expression, and in her face there is something radiant and terribly young, as if she hasn’t yet been exposed to life. Yes, he realizes, just this once, he would like to believe.

“The miraculous copy,” he hears himself say, “is like the miraculous coin, a very familiar case in Statistics. Imagine for a moment that all the inhabitants of this city toss a coin into the air twenty times in a row. It’s perfectly possible that one person’s coin, one out of all of them, might fall the same way all twenty times. Twenty heads in a row. That man will believe that his coin is miraculous, but of course it’s nothing inherent to the coin itself; it’s simply one of the possible configurations of chance. Now imagine all the people who have a copy of the I Ching. Imagine that after each consultation those who feel cheated by the oracle toss the book aside and only those for whom the oracle has predicted accurately remain in the game. Half, let’s say. And after the second consultation, half of that half, and so on. Even if the I Ching is as blind as a coin, in a big city it’s perfectly possible that there could be one copy that’s never wrong. That copy might be yours. What does your edition look like?” the man suddenly asks.

“The edition? But that’s got nothing to do with it, does it? It’s an ordinary edition, with a black cover.”

“With Chinese writing in gold?”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

“Could I borrow it? Just for today?”

“Today? But the book’s at my house.”

“I need it today. I could drive you home after class.”

An expression of unease with a touch of alarm spreads across the girl’s face, as though she’s had to readjust herself for a different sort of conversation or is beginning to wonder if she should intuit something else behind his words. But still she hesitates, undoubtedly because in his expression she sees none of the other indications, a sly smile, a change in tone, an insinuated intention in his gaze, something that would allow her to be sure of what he’s really offering. She sweeps a nervous hand through her hair and smiles feebly.

“But you don’t believe in the I Ching, do you?” Her smile lights up with a spark of playfulness. Or perhaps this is her way of inviting him to cross that invisible boundary, so that she might be sure exactly what she’s about to accept or reject. The man makes a weary gesture.

“No, in general I don’t, but it’s not for me. It’s . . .” He stops, as though he’s made a wrong turn. “It’s complicated to explain,” he says. “But it’s an important consultation, as you said before. I’d like to use your copy. Could I ask you for that small favor? I’ll get it back to you tomorrow.”

“Sure, of course,” the girl says, puzzled, and turns to go back to her seat.

“Thanks,” says the man. “So we’ll meet after class, then.”

Her residence is in the new student neighborhood, behind the park. During the brief journey they barely speak. He learns the girl’s name. From the toys on the back seat, the girl discovers that he has a daughter. When he parks in front of one of the apartment blocks, she timidly invites him up, and now, as she apologizes for the mess and searches for the book in a rattan bookcase, he stands in the doorway and for a moment feels like he’s returned to his student days, to his own chaotic room, and that he could know everything about her if he would only fix his gaze on each detail. The girl returns with the book and hands it to him. He runs a finger along the golden characters on the cover and feels its weight as he turns it over to look at the spine. He realizes it’s the first time he’s ever held the book in his hands.

“It’s an ordinary edition,” she says, as if it was something she’d warned him about before but was still afraid might disappoint him.

“It’s absolutely perfect,” the man says. “The miraculous copy is an ordinary copy of the ordinary edition.”

 *

The man climbs the hospital stairs; the coins jingle in his pocket at every other step. He crosses a patio and searches the labyrinth of hallways for his daughter’s room. A nurse who knows him intercepts him in the corridor before he can open the door, placing her hand on his arm. Your daughter, she tells him, was taken to the operating room: they’re going to perform a second operation. Your wife is waiting for you there. The man walks to the end of a passageway and climbs another flight of stairs, worn marble stairs with jagged edges that lead to a little waiting room. His wife rises from her chair and embraces him. When they draw apart he sees tracks of tears on her face.

“She just went in,” she says. “She’s behind that door. They don’t know what’s wrong with her. They’re going to operate again, but they couldn’t tell me what’s wrong with her.” She fixes her lost gaze on the book that the man still holds in his hand, and when he gives it to her, she clutches it to her chest for a moment.

“So you found it.”

“It’s not yours,” the man says. “I looked for it again, but it wasn’t there. It’s one I borrowed.”

“And the coins? Did you remember the coins?”

They’re alone in the waiting room. The man takes the three coins from his pocket and gives them to her. The woman retreats to the first step with the book. He turns away toward the row of empty chairs: he doesn’t want to see her there, leaning over the book once more as if it were some dark, terrible god, as if the past had returned, intact. But their son and their daughter, he thinks, are independent events. He listens to the tinkle of the coins tossed onto the marble. Once, twice, three times. Four. Five. Six. The six throws that determine the number of the hexagram. He lifts his head, unable to stop himself, and, terrified, watches the hand open the infallible book to one of its pages.       

Translation of “El I Ching y el hombre de los papeles.” © Guillermo Martínez, 2010. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2010 by Andrea G. Labinger. All rights reserved.

English Spanish (Original)

The man awakens with a start. His back feels numb. He had fallen asleep in the chair, and it takes him a moment to remember where he is, but it’s the second night, and the room with its row of beds and little heads hooked up to catheters is beginning to look familiar. There’s a dense odor of disinfectant and cologne, and from above comes the discreet hum of the blades of a fan. He has a cramp in one of his legs, and when he rubs his eyes he feels the roughness of his day-old beard on the palm of his hand. He tries to remember the nightmare that startled him awake, but the last traces escape his grasp and he thinks maybe it’s better that way. He stands and leans over the first bed in the darkness. Nothing has changed. The sheet drapes the small, thin body up to the neck; a tangle of blonde hair clings to the sweaty face, and the head remains still, at the same, slightly forced, angle, as though cruelly tugged upward by the tube emerging from the nose. Someone has replaced the IV bag during the night, as well as the damp cloth on her forehead. He, who had fallen asleep to the piercing cries of the little girl in the third bed and then, still half-asleep, had heard the loud, asthmatic snores of the boy on the respirator, like a swimmer about to go under, now wondered about the body’s different strategies against death, and whether his daughter’s deep torpor, that impenetrable stillness, was a kind of self-contained resistance or the sign of final surrender.

There’s a sound of footsteps in the corridor, and he looks at the clock: it’s his wife, coming to take over for him. The door opens and the wedge of light briefly allows him to see the other beds. The third one, the other little girl’s bed, is empty now. Falling asleep is dangerous, he thinks: during the night there are silent disappearances, unforeseeable substitutions. He feels his wife’s hand on his shoulder and the swift brush of her lips against his cheek. They stand there like two strangers, unmoving, gazing at an equally unmoving, strange spectacle.

“Nothing, right?” she says. She reaches out her arm to test the cloth on the child’s forehead. “It needs to be changed again.”

She leaves the room, and from across the corridor he hears the sound of a faucet running in the tiny kitchen where the nurses doze. When she returns and touches the child’s forehead, he sees something in her fear-widened eyes that neither of them has yet dared to say.

“When will the doctor be back?”

“In two hours.”

“Did he say anything else?”

He shakes his head.

“Just that we have to wait.”

“Something went wrong, didn’t it? She should have been out of the operating room in half an hour. That’s what they told us. Maybe it wasn’t appendicitis; maybe there was a complication.”

“I asked him, and he said no, but at night he came back to see her with another doctor. They said we’d have to wait twenty-four hours more.”

“Are you going to take a nap before your class?”

“Yeah, I’m going to lie down for a while.”

“Will you remember to look for the I Ching?”

Her voice echoes with an anguished, imploring tone, and in her eyes he sees the same despairing expression, like the raised arm of a shipwreck victim, that was there when they lost their first child, their son, as if everything around them had sunk and she didn’t care what he thought anymore. He tells her he’s already gone through the boxes one by one, but that he’ll look again.

“And the coins,” she says. “Don’t forget the coins. There needs to be a male image and a female one. I always used those English ten-pence coins, with the lion and the queen. They should be in the little red bank, in her collection.”

The man nods and leans over to kiss her. Unexpectedly, she embraces him and starts to cry, spasmodic, broken sobs punctuated by a hoarse, desperate moan. He feels the dampness of her tears on his face and neck. It’s been a long time since they’ve embraced.

She steps back, looks at him again, and automatically adjusts his shirt collar.

“Will you remember?”

*

The man turns the key and walks into the house. There’s a slightly different odor, the smell of an abandoned house. He hears nails scratching against the patio door and sees his dog’s wet snout pressed against the glass. His wife has left some toast and orange juice for him in the kitchen. The man opens the patio door and shares a piece of toast with the dog. It’s not yet dawn. He feels his way along the shadows of a hallway, enters his daughter’s room, and turns on one of the lamps. His wife, he notices, had been in there during the day. Everything’s tidy, as if she had picked up and touched each toy before replacing it on the shelves, and the bed from which they snatched their daughter in the middle of the night has been made again, with the Winnie-the-Pooh comforter carefully smoothed out. On the night table he sees a photo of his wife and himself, both smiling, deeply tanned and lying on the sand, a picture that his daughter took one summer at the beach when she was only four or five. He finds the bank inside a toy chest, a red tin mailbox that he brought her from one of his trips. He inverts it on the bed, and from the stash of coins from so many countries he separates three ten-pence pieces and puts them in his pocket. He turns out the light and climbs the stairs to his study.

Scattered on the floor, with their covers raised, exactly as he had left them the night before, are the dozens of cartons of books that had been shipped during the move. This house didn’t have bookshelves; at first there had always been some other more urgent task to attend to, and for a while now they had stopped thinking about it, as if they both knew it didn’t matter anymore, because in any case he was going to leave.

The man squats, opens the first box and empties it, stacking the books in tall piles. He tries to calculate the space that the books would occupy in the room. He’s determined to search all the boxes again. The book he’s looking for is black, very thick, with the title written in Chinese characters and the cover frayed at one corner. He’s sure he couldn’t have missed it. It was probably in one of the boxes that never arrived. He remembers her leaning over the book, in one of the early years of their marriage, when she couldn’t fall asleep at night. He remembers, too well, the gentle roll of the coins, waking in the darkness to find her side of the bed cold, walking downstairs guided by the sound of that rhythmic tumble, and seeing her in her negligée, her hair loose, the I Ching open on the kitchen table and beside it a piece of paper folded in half, with interminable successions of lines that looked like an SOS repeated in a strange Morse code. He recalls her talking at length, while he made coffee, about the man of the Red Samurai, the retreating armies, the chaste maiden and the old woman, the Duke of Chou, the care of the cow, the biting through tender meat, and the bloody tears that flow. He recalls the thousand little jokes he made at her expense and the answer she gave him, with an imperturbable smile, like a permanently winning card: the I Ching had predicted he would come into her life, the man of papers. That’s what she called him in her bursts of tenderness: my man of papers.

The man opens the second box, and a band of sunshine filters in through the window, like a hand, unexpectedly warm, on his face. A sharp pain rises from his middle up through his back. He tilts backward for a moment, then stretches out on the parquet floor and with half-opened eyes stares at the shifting cone of glittery dust suspended in the sunlight. He falls soundly asleep, not hearing his dog stealthily climb the stairs—breaking a household rule—and curl up in a ball beside him.

*

The phone rings downstairs. Once, twice. The man awakens and manages to reach the foot of the staircase before the answering machine picks up.

“I thought you might have fallen asleep,” his wife says. There’s background noise, as if she were in a public phone booth. “What time is your class?”

The man glances at his watch.

“I still have time for a shower. Any news?”

“They just took her into Radiology, and the doctor’s ordered more tests. He said we’d have to wait till the end of the day, but he wouldn’t tell me what they plan to do if she doesn’t respond . . .” Her voice seems to break and then, as if making an effort to compose herself, she asks him if he’ll come to the hospital directly from class.

“Yes, of course.”

“Then don’t forget to bring the I Ching to the University along with your other books.”

She always reminded him of the things he needed to do. He didn’t think his memory was as bad as she liked to claim, but in the beginning it had been a kind of game between the two of them, and he now realized it might be her only way to connect with him during their most turbulent times. True, there was something erratic about his memory, but there were also some firm, immutable recollections. He remembered each and every night of his son’s dying; he remembered her, still very young, muttering to herself as she tossed the coins, trapped in their hypnotic jingling, frantically trying to extract a different answer from the book. He remembered the day, sometime after the funeral, when the I Ching disappeared from the shelf in the dining room without his daring to ask her about it, and also the day when she started taking the pills that now allowed her to sleep through the night.

The man turns on the shower and quickly undresses. He has a long, muscular body, which he’s maintained since his days on the University swim team. He can still effortlessly backstroke the hundred laps that once were his daily routine. In that secret pact with his body, the part he feels he’s fulfilled consists of never having paid it too much attention. He comes out of the bathroom and throws on a short-sleeved shirt, glances at his watch again and decides there’s no time to shave. He goes upstairs to his study once more, picks up a Statistics text and a few pages of notes and drags his dog downstairs by the collar to put him back out on the patio. He makes sure the three coins are still in his pocket and looks for the car keys on the hall table. He starts out for the University, but turns off on a side street and parks in front of a bookstore. The clerk hears him out patiently and slowly shakes his head no. All they have is an abridged edition of the I Ching. The thick book with black covers and a prologue by Jung that he’s talking about has been out of print for a long time. The clerk doubts he’ll find it in any bookstore in the city. The man walks back to his car. He looks at his watch and heads down the street, driving slightly over the speed limit. When he enters the classroom, his students are already seated, and he hears a quiet rumble of resignation. He’s never been late before. Maybe, he thinks, they were all hoping he wouldn’t show up. The man crosses the classroom with long strides, steps up to the platform and begins to speak of medical pathologies, strange diseases, monstrosities. Have you ever noticed, he asks, that the first examples were always described in China? Could it be that the Chinese are more subject to deformities, to aberrations? Or is it just that there are so many of them? What is a rare disease, after all? A disease that shows up once in ten million cases, let’s say. But there are more than a billion Chinese: a disease that would be rare in any ordinary country isn’t so rare in China. Now, says the man, let’s think about prophetic dreams. We’ve all dreamed at one point or another that a close relative has died. Let’s suppose each person has a dream like that at least once in his life.

He pauses, as if he’s lost the thread; he’s just recalled, with devastating clarity, the nightmare he had in the hospital at dawn. He turns to the blackboard for an instant, pretending to be looking for chalk, and turns around again to face the class. What’s not so common, he says, is for the relative to actually die the next day. But then again, what does “not so common” mean? Our close relative, like all human beings, one day must die.

The man writes a five-digit number on the board. This is the number of days in a person’s maximum lifespan. Our relative might die on any one of these days. The prophetic dream could also occur on any given night, on any one of these days. But then the probability that the prophetic dream will come true is the same as the probability that these two independent events will coincide: the night of the dream and the day of the death. And that number is one we know how to calculate.

The man writes an equation, stops for a moment at the equal sign, as if he were performing a long mental calculation, and jots down a second number, nearly twice as long as the first. It’s a large number, but not so very large, he says. In Tokyo, in Buenos Aires, in New York, every night, routinely, someone kills a loved one in his dreams. Of course this person will be absolutely astonished if we try to convince him by any rational means that there was no mystery, no premonition, just the trivial evidenceof a statistic, almost as inevitable as the fact that every lottery game has a winner.

He erases the board energetically, and gradually, in the same somewhat indifferent and ironic tone, demolishes astrology, the Tarot, the hope of roulette tricks. His students could hardly have noticed the difference between this and any other class session. He’s just a little more distracted than usual and he hasn’t yet tried out one of his subtle, almost secret, jokes. He calls for the first break but remains at his desk as the classroom slowly empties. One of his female students from the front row comes forward with a dubious smile.

“But everything you said—the law of large numbers and all that—it doesn’t apply to the I Ching, does it? The I Ching predicts future events . . . it’s on a different level; it can’t be reduced to a roll of the dice.”

Every quarter, when he reaches this class on chance, there’s always someone that approaches him with that same alarmed expression, as if he’s challenged an intimate faith, much more enshrined than any religion. It’s almost always astrology, and he has to listen to naïve, passionate defenses and long explanations of astronomical coordinates and astral houses. Other times it’s the Tarot. In general he’s unable to make them understand: Yes, I’m very sorry, but it’s all the same, the blind indeterminacy of things. But until now no one had ever mentioned the I Ching.

“Then your book is never wrong?” asks the man, and his student doesn’t seem to notice the trace of irony.

“Never,” she says earnestly. “Everything it’s predicted for me has always come true. But you should only consult it for really important things.”

“Maybe you have a miraculous copy.”

“You don’t believe me, do you?” asks the girl, wounded.

The man looks at her. The girl has a frank, open expression, and in her face there is something radiant and terribly young, as if she hasn’t yet been exposed to life. Yes, he realizes, just this once, he would like to believe.

“The miraculous copy,” he hears himself say, “is like the miraculous coin, a very familiar case in Statistics. Imagine for a moment that all the inhabitants of this city toss a coin into the air twenty times in a row. It’s perfectly possible that one person’s coin, one out of all of them, might fall the same way all twenty times. Twenty heads in a row. That man will believe that his coin is miraculous, but of course it’s nothing inherent to the coin itself; it’s simply one of the possible configurations of chance. Now imagine all the people who have a copy of the I Ching. Imagine that after each consultation those who feel cheated by the oracle toss the book aside and only those for whom the oracle has predicted accurately remain in the game. Half, let’s say. And after the second consultation, half of that half, and so on. Even if the I Ching is as blind as a coin, in a big city it’s perfectly possible that there could be one copy that’s never wrong. That copy might be yours. What does your edition look like?” the man suddenly asks.

“The edition? But that’s got nothing to do with it, does it? It’s an ordinary edition, with a black cover.”

“With Chinese writing in gold?”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

“Could I borrow it? Just for today?”

“Today? But the book’s at my house.”

“I need it today. I could drive you home after class.”

An expression of unease with a touch of alarm spreads across the girl’s face, as though she’s had to readjust herself for a different sort of conversation or is beginning to wonder if she should intuit something else behind his words. But still she hesitates, undoubtedly because in his expression she sees none of the other indications, a sly smile, a change in tone, an insinuated intention in his gaze, something that would allow her to be sure of what he’s really offering. She sweeps a nervous hand through her hair and smiles feebly.

“But you don’t believe in the I Ching, do you?” Her smile lights up with a spark of playfulness. Or perhaps this is her way of inviting him to cross that invisible boundary, so that she might be sure exactly what she’s about to accept or reject. The man makes a weary gesture.

“No, in general I don’t, but it’s not for me. It’s . . .” He stops, as though he’s made a wrong turn. “It’s complicated to explain,” he says. “But it’s an important consultation, as you said before. I’d like to use your copy. Could I ask you for that small favor? I’ll get it back to you tomorrow.”

“Sure, of course,” the girl says, puzzled, and turns to go back to her seat.

“Thanks,” says the man. “So we’ll meet after class, then.”

Her residence is in the new student neighborhood, behind the park. During the brief journey they barely speak. He learns the girl’s name. From the toys on the back seat, the girl discovers that he has a daughter. When he parks in front of one of the apartment blocks, she timidly invites him up, and now, as she apologizes for the mess and searches for the book in a rattan bookcase, he stands in the doorway and for a moment feels like he’s returned to his student days, to his own chaotic room, and that he could know everything about her if he would only fix his gaze on each detail. The girl returns with the book and hands it to him. He runs a finger along the golden characters on the cover and feels its weight as he turns it over to look at the spine. He realizes it’s the first time he’s ever held the book in his hands.

“It’s an ordinary edition,” she says, as if it was something she’d warned him about before but was still afraid might disappoint him.

“It’s absolutely perfect,” the man says. “The miraculous copy is an ordinary copy of the ordinary edition.”

 *

The man climbs the hospital stairs; the coins jingle in his pocket at every other step. He crosses a patio and searches the labyrinth of hallways for his daughter’s room. A nurse who knows him intercepts him in the corridor before he can open the door, placing her hand on his arm. Your daughter, she tells him, was taken to the operating room: they’re going to perform a second operation. Your wife is waiting for you there. The man walks to the end of a passageway and climbs another flight of stairs, worn marble stairs with jagged edges that lead to a little waiting room. His wife rises from her chair and embraces him. When they draw apart he sees tracks of tears on her face.

“She just went in,” she says. “She’s behind that door. They don’t know what’s wrong with her. They’re going to operate again, but they couldn’t tell me what’s wrong with her.” She fixes her lost gaze on the book that the man still holds in his hand, and when he gives it to her, she clutches it to her chest for a moment.

“So you found it.”

“It’s not yours,” the man says. “I looked for it again, but it wasn’t there. It’s one I borrowed.”

“And the coins? Did you remember the coins?”

They’re alone in the waiting room. The man takes the three coins from his pocket and gives them to her. The woman retreats to the first step with the book. He turns away toward the row of empty chairs: he doesn’t want to see her there, leaning over the book once more as if it were some dark, terrible god, as if the past had returned, intact. But their son and their daughter, he thinks, are independent events. He listens to the tinkle of the coins tossed onto the marble. Once, twice, three times. Four. Five. Six. The six throws that determine the number of the hexagram. He lifts his head, unable to stop himself, and, terrified, watches the hand open the infallible book to one of its pages.       

El I Ching y El Hombre de Los Papeles

El hombre despierta en un sobresalto, con la espalda entumecida. Se ha quedado dormido en la silla y tarda un instante en recordar dónde está, pero es la segunda noche, y también la sala con la hilera de camas y las cabecitas conectadas a las sondas empieza a resultarle familiar. Hay un olor pesado a desinfectante y agua de colonia, y desde lo alto llega el sigiloso zumbido de aletas del ventilador. Una de sus piernas está acalambrada y al refregarse los ojos siente en la palma el roce áspero de la barba crecida. Trata de recordar la pesadilla que lo sobresaltó pero el último vestigio no se deja alcanzar y piensa que quizá es mejor así. Se pone de pie y se inclina en la oscuridad sobre la primera de las camas. Nada ha cambiado. La sábana amortaja hasta el cuello el cuerpo breve y delgado, una mata de pelo rubio se pega a la cara transpirada y la cabeza se mantiene quieta, en el mismo ángulo algo forzado, como si estuviese tironeada cruelmente hacia arriba por la sonda que sale de la nariz. Alguien repuso durante la noche la botella de suero y también el pañuelo húmedo sobre la frente. Él, que había escuchado hasta dormirse el llanto desgarrante de la  nenita en la tercera de las camas y luego, entre sueños, el fuerte ronquido asmático, como un nadador a punto de ahogarse, del chico del pulmotor, se pregunta por las diferentes estrategias del cuerpo contra la muerte y si el sopor profundo de su hija, esa quietud impenetrable, será todavía una forma de resistencia ensimismada o el signo del abandono final.

   Escucha pasos por el corredor y mira la hora: su esposa viene a reemplazarlo. La puerta se abre y el abanico de luz le deja ver por un instante las otras camas. La tercera, la cama de la otra nenita, está ahora vacía. Piensa que es peligroso dormirse: hay durante la noche desapariciones silenciosas, sustituciones imprevisibles. Siente la mano de su mujer en el hombro y el roce rápido de sus labios en la mejilla. Se quedan de pie como dos extraños, inmóviles, mirando un espectáculo también inmóvil y extraño.

   –Nada, ¿no? -dice ella. Extiende el brazo y comprueba con la palma el pañuelo sobre la frente-. Hay que cambiarlo otra vez.

   Sale de la habitación y él escucha a través del corredor el ruido de la canilla que se abre en la cocinita donde dormitan las enfermeras. Cuando ella vuelve y toca  la frente él ve en sus ojos agrandados por el miedo lo que todavía ninguno de los dos ha dicho.

   –¿Cuándo va a pasar otra vez el doctor?

–En dos horas.

–¿Dijo algo más?

Él niega con la cabeza.

–Sólo que hay que esperar.

   –Algo salió mal, ¿no es cierto? Tendría que haber salido del quirófano en media hora. Es lo que nos habían dicho. Tal vez no era una apendicitis, tal vez hubo una complicación.

   –Yo le pregunté y me dijo que no, pero a la noche vino a verla con otro médico. Dijeron que había que esperar otras veinticuatro horas.

   –¿Vas a ir a dormir antes de dar tu clase?

–Voy a tratar de acostarme un rato, sí.

   –¿Te vas a acordar de buscar el I Ching?

   La voz suena con un tono angustiado de imploración, y él ve en sus ojos la misma mirada desvalida, como el brazo en alto de un náufrago, de cuando habían perdido el primer hijo, como si todo se hundiera a su alrededor y ya no le importara lo que él pudiera pensar. Le dice que revisó una por una todas las cajas pero que volverá a buscarlo.

   –Y las monedas -dice ella-, no te olvides de las monedas. Tienen que tener una imagen masculina y una femenina. Yo usaba las inglesas de un cuarto, con el león y la reina. Deben estar en la alcancía roja, en la colección de ella.

   El hombre asiente y se inclina para besarla. Ella lo abraza imprevistamente y rompe a llorar, un llanto quebrado con espasmos y un quejido ronco y desesperado. Él siente que las lágrimas de ella le humedecen la cara y el cuello. Hace mucho tiempo que no se abrazan.

   Ella se separa, vuelve a mirarlo y le endereza con un gesto automático el cuello de la camisa.

   –¿Te vas a acordar?

(blanco)                                             

    El hombre hace girar la llave y entra en la casa. Hay un olor levemente distinto, el olor de una casa abandonada. Escucha un rasqueteo de uñas contra la puerta del patio y ve asomar en el vidrio el hocico húmedo de su perro. Su mujer le ha dejado en la cocina unas tostadas y jugo de naranja. El hombre abre la puerta del patio y comparte con el perro una de las tostadas. Todavía no amaneció. Avanza a tientas en la penumbra de un pasillo, entra en el cuarto de su hija y enciende una de las lámparas. Su mujer, advierte, estuvo durante el día allí. Todo está ordenado, como si ella hubiera alzado y tocado cada juguete antes de devolverlos a los estantes, y la cama de donde arrancaron a su hija en la mitad de la noche está ahora otra vez tendida, con el cobertor  de Winnie The Pooh prolijamente estirado. Ve sobre la mesa de luz una foto de él y su mujer juntos, sonrientes, muy quemados por el sol,  tumbados en la arena, una foto que su hija sacó durante un verano en el mar, cuando sólo tenía cuatro o cinco años. Encuentra la alcancía dentro de un baúl de juguetes, un buzón rojo de lata que él le trajo de uno de sus viajes. La da vuelta sobre la cama y en el tesoro de monedas de todos los países separa los tres cuartos y los guarda en su bolsillo. Apaga la luz y sube las escaleras hacia su estudio.

 Sembradas en el piso, con las tapas levantadas, tal como las había dejado la noche anterior, están las decenas de cajas con libros de la mudanza que habían llegado por barco. Esta casa no tenía bibliotecas; había al principio siempre alguna otra cosa más urgente para resolver, y desde hacía un tiempo habían dejado de pensar en eso, como si los dos supieran que ya no importaba, porque de todos modos él se iba a ir.

 El hombre se pone en cuclillas, abre la primera caja y saca en altas pilas los libros hasta vaciarla. Trata de calcular mentalmente el espacio que ocuparán los libros en el cuarto. Está decidido a revisar todas las cajas otra vez. El libro que busca es negro, muy grueso, con el título escrito en caracteres chinos y el lomo descosido en uno de los extremos. Está seguro de que no pudo habérsele pasado por alto. Probablemente estuviera en una de las cajas que nunca habían llegado. La recuerda a ella sobre el libro, en los primeros años del matrimonio, cuando no podía dormirse por las noches. Recuerda sobre todo el ligero redoble de monedas, despertarse en la oscuridad con su costado de la cama frío, bajar la escalera guiado por ese ruido en rítmicas cascadas y encontrarla en salto de cama con el pelo suelto, el I Ching abierto en la mesa de la cocina y un papel doblado en dos al costado, con sucesiones interminables de rayitas que parecían un pedido repetido de auxilio en un extraño código Morse. La recuerda hablándole largamente, mientras él prepara un café, del  hombre del Samurai rojo, de los ejércitos en retirada, de la mujer virtuosa y la mujer anciana, del duque de Chou, del cuidado de la vaca, de la mordedura tajante y las lágrimas de sangre que se derraman. Recuerda las mil pequeñas burlas que él le hacía y la respuesta que ella le daba, con una sonrisa imperturbable, como una carta de triunfo permanente: el I Ching le había predicho que llegaría él a su vida, el hombre de los papeles. Así lo llamaba antes ella en los arrebatos de ternura: mi hombre de los papeles.

 El hombre abre la segunda caja y un borde de sol entra por la ventana, como una mano inesperadamente tibia sobre la cara. Un fuerte dolor le sube desde la cintura por la espalda. Se echa hacia atrás por un instante, hasta acostarse enteramente sobre el piso de parquet y mira con los ojos entornados el cono de polvo movedizo y brillante suspendido en la luz del sol. Se duerme profundamente, sin escuchar que su perro sube con sigilo la escalera, quebrando una regla, y se ovilla a su lado.

 (blanco)

 Suena el teléfono en la planta baja. Una, dos veces. El hombre se despierta y logra llegar al pie de la escalera antes de que se accione el contestador automático.

 –Pensé  que podías quedarte dormido –dice su mujer. La voz le llega con ruidos detrás, como si estuviera en un teléfono público-. ¿A qué hora tenías tu clase?

 El hombre mira su reloj.

 –Todavía tengo tiempo de ducharme. ¿Alguna novedad?

 –Acaban de llevarla a Rayos y el médico encargó otros análisis. Dijo que hay que esperar a que pase el día, pero no quiso decirme qué harían si no reacciona -su voz parece quebrarse y luego, como si se esforzara por recomponerse, le pregunta si irá al hospital directamente después de la clase.

 –Sí, claro que sí.

 –No te olvides entonces de llevar el I Ching con tus libros a la facultad.

 Ella siempre le recordaba las cosas que debía hacer. Él no creía tener la mala memoria que a ella le gustaba atribuirle, pero había sido al principio casi un juego entre los dos y sabía que ahora era quizá  la única forma en que ella podía conectarse con él en las épocas más tormentosas. Su memoria tenía en todo caso un elemento errático, pero también algunos recuerdos duros e inamovibles. Podía recordar cada noche de la agonía de su hijo, podía recordarla a ella, todavía muy joven, murmurando para sí mientras arrojaba las monedas, atrapada en el tintineo hipnótico, tratando fanáticamente de arrancar al libro una respuesta distinta. Podía recordar el día, después del entierro, en que desapareció el I Ching de la repisa del comedor, sin que él se atreviera a preguntarle nada, y también el día en que ella empezó a tomar las pastillas con las que ahora dormía toda la noche.

 El hombre abre la canilla de la ducha y se desviste rápidamente. Tiene un cuerpo largo y musculoso, que conserva intacto desde la época en que integraba el equipo universitario de natación. Todavía ahora puede nadar, sin sentir el esfuerzo, los cien largos de espalda que eran su rutina diaria. En ese pacto secreto con su cuerpo la parte que presiente que él cumplió es no haberle prestado nunca mucha atención. Sale del baño y se echa encima una camisa de manga corta, vuelve a mirar su reloj y decide que no tiene tiempo para afeitarse. Sube una vez más a su estudio, recoge un libro de Estadística y unas hojas de apuntes y arrastra del cuello a su perro escaleras abajo para sacarlo otra vez al patio. Se asegura de que tiene todavía en el bolsillo las tres monedas y busca sobre la mesa de la entrada las llaves del auto. Arranca en dirección a la Universidad, pero se desvía en una de las avenidas y estaciona frente a una librería. El empleado que lo atiende lo escucha hasta el final y mueve en una lenta negación la cabeza. Solamente tienen una edición resumida del I Ching. El libro grueso de tapas negras con prólogo de Jung que él menciona está agotado desde hace mucho tiempo, no cree que pueda conseguirlo en ninguna librería de la ciudad. El hombre camina de regreso al auto. Mira su reloj y acelera en la avenida un poco más allá del límite de velocidad. Cuando entra en el aula sus alumnos ya están sentados y escucha un pequeño murmullo de resignación. Nunca antes había llegado tarde, y posiblemente, piensa, todos creían que ya no iría. El hombre cruza el aula con sus pasos largos, se sube a la tarima y empieza a hablar de patologías médicas, de enfermedades extrañas, de monstruosidades. ¿Nunca les llamó la atención, pregunta, que los primeros ejemplos siempre se hayan descripto en China? ¿Serán acaso los chinos más proclives a las aberraciones, a lo monstruoso? ¿O será simplemente que son muchos? ¿Qué es finalmente una enfermedad rara? Una enfermedad de la que se manifiesta un caso entre diez millones, digamos. Pero los chinos son más de mil millones; una enfermedad rara en un país cualquiera ya no es tan rara en China. Pensemos ahora, dice el hombre, en los sueños premonitorios. Todos hemos soñado alguna noche que un familiar cercano muere, podemos suponer que cada persona tiene al menos una vez en su vida un sueño así.

 Se detiene, como si hubiera perdido el hilo; acaba de recordar, en su claridad devastadora, la pesadilla que tuvo en el hospital a la madrugada. Se da vuelta contra el pizarrón por un instante, finge que busca una tiza y vuelve a girar para enfrentar la clase. Lo que no es tan frecuente, dice, es que al día siguiente el familiar, efectivamente, muera. Pero de nuevo, ¿qué significa “no tan frecuente”? Nuestro familiar cercano, como todo ser humano, debe morir algún día.

 El hombre escribe en el pizarrón un número de cinco cifras. Éste es el número en días de la vida máxima de una persona. Nuestro familiar puede morir en uno cualquiera de estos días. El sueño premonitorio ocurre también una noche cualquiera, en otro cualquiera de estos días. Pero entonces, la probabilidad de que el sueño premonitorio se concrete es la probabilidad de que coincidan estos dos sucesos independientes: la noche del sueño con el día de la muerte. Y este número sabemos calcularlo.

 El hombre escribe una ecuación, se detiene un instante en el signo de igualdad, como si estuviera haciendo una larga cuenta mentalmente, y anota un segundo número de casi el doble de longitud. Es un número grande, pero no tan grande, dice. En Tokio, en Buenos Aires, en Nueva York, rutinariamente, cada noche alguien mata a un ser querido en sus sueños. Por supuesto esa persona quedará absolutamente impresionada y no la convenceremos con esta cuenta, no la convenceremos con ningún razonamiento, de que no hubo nada misterioso, ninguna premonición, sino apenas la verificación trivial de una estadística, casi tan fatal como que haya un ganador en cada jugada de la lotería.

  Borra el  pizarrón con un modo enérgico y de a poco, con el mismo tono algo indiferente e irónico, demuele en su lección de estadística las martingalas, la astrología, el tarot. Sus alumnos apenas hubieran podido notar la diferencia con otro día cualquiera de clases. Está sólo un poco más abstraído que de costumbre y no ha intentado todavía ninguno de sus chistes suaves, casi secretos. Hace el primer intervalo pero no se aparta del escritorio mientras el aula se vacía lentamente. Una de sus alumnas de las primeras filas se acerca con una sonrisa dubitativa.

 –Pero todo lo que usted dijo y la ley de los grandes números no se aplica al I Ching ¿no es cierto? El I Ching predice acontecimientos del futuro… es otro plano, no puede reducirse a una tirada de dados.

   Cada cuatrimestre, cuando llega a esta clase sobre el azar, hay alguien que se le acerca con este mismo aire alarmado, como si él hubiera desafiado una fe íntima, mucho más protegida que cualquier religión. Casi siempre es la astrología y tiene que escuchar defensas candorosas y encendidas y largas explicaciones sobre coordenadas astronómicas y casas astrales. Otras veces es el tarot. En general no puede hacer nada para que entiendan que sí, lo lamento mucho, es todo lo mismo, la ciega indeterminación de las cosas. Pero nadie hasta ahora había mencionado el I Ching.

   –¿Tu libro nunca falla? –pregunta el hombre y su alumna no parece advertir el rastro de ironía.

   –Nunca –dice con seriedad-. Todo lo que me predijo siempre se cumplió. Pero sólo hay que consultarlo para las cosas verdaderamente importantes.

   –Tal vez tengas un ejemplar milagroso.

   –No me cree, ¿no es cierto? –dice la chica, dolida.

   El hombre la mira. La chica tiene una mirada clara, despejada, y hay en su cara algo radiante y terriblemente joven, como si no hubiera sido todavía expuesta a la vida. Se da cuenta de que sí, de que esta única vez, quisiera creer.

   –El ejemplar milagroso –se escucha decir- es como la moneda milagrosa, un caso bien estudiado en la estadística. Imaginá por un momento que todos los habitantes de esta ciudad arrojen al aire una moneda veinte veces seguidas. Es perfectamente posible que la moneda de uno, de uno entre todos, caiga del mismo lado las veinte veces. Veinte caras seguidas. Ese hombre creerá que su moneda es milagrosa, pero por supuesto, no es nada intrínseco de la moneda, no es  más que una de las configuraciones posibles del azar. Imaginate del mismo modo ahora a todas las personas que tienen un ejemplar del I Ching. Imaginá que después de cada consulta los que fueron defraudados por el oráculo abandonen el libro y sólo sigan consultando aquellos a los que el oráculo acertó en la predicción. Digamos, una mitad. Y luego de la segunda consulta, la mitad de la mitad, y así sucesivamente. Aún si el I Ching es tan ciego como una moneda, en una ciudad grande es perfectamente posible que exista un ejemplar que nunca se equivoque. Quizá ése sea el ejemplar tuyo. ¿Cómo es la edición? –pregunta el hombre de pronto.

   –¿La edición? Pero eso no tiene nada que ver, ¿no es cierto? Es una edición común, de tapas negras.

   –¿Con unas letras chinas doradas?  

   –Sí, es ésa.

   –¿Podría pedírtelo prestado? Sólo por hoy.

   –¿Hoy? Pero el libro está en mi casa.

   –Lo preciso hoy, sí; podría acercarte después de la clase.

   Por la cara de la chica cruza una expresión de desconcierto y algo de alarma,  como si tuviera que reacomodarse a otra conversación o empezara a preguntarse si debe entender algo más detrás de sus palabras. Pero vacila todavía, seguramente porque no ve en la expresión de él los otros indicios, una media sonrisa, un cambio en el tono, una segunda intención en la mirada, que le permita estar segura de cuál es el verdadero ofrecimiento. Se pasa una mano nerviosa por el pelo, y sonríe débilmente.

   –Pero usted no cree en el I Ching, ¿no es cierto? –La sonrisa se acentúa con un destello de frivolidad. O quizá fuera la manera de animarlo a cruzar ese límite invisible, para estar segura de qué era exactamente lo que estaba por aceptar o rechazar. El hombre hace un gesto cansado.

   –No, en general no; pero no es para mí. Es… –Se detiene, como si hubiera elegido un camino equivocado-. Es largo de explicar –dice-. Pero es una consulta importante, como dijiste antes. Me gustaría que fuera con tu ejemplar. ¿Puedo pedirte ese pequeño favor? Te lo devolvería mañana mismo.

   –Claro, claro que sí –dice la chica y retrocede confundida a su banco. 

   –Gracias –dice el hombre-; nos encontramos entonces después de la clase.

(blanco)

   La casa de su alumna está en el nuevo barrio estudiantil, detrás del parque. Durante el breve trayecto apenas conversan. Él se entera del nombre de la chica. La chica se entera de que tiene una hija por los juguetes en el asiento de atrás. Cuando estaciona frente a uno de los monoblocks ella le ofrece  tímidamente que baje, y ahora él, desde la puerta, mientras ella se disculpa por el desorden y busca el libro en una biblioteca de caña, siente que vuelve por un instante a su pasado estudiantil, a su propio cuarto caótico, y que podría saberlo todo sobre ella si sólo dejara fijar la mirada en cada detalle. La chica regresa con el libro y se lo extiende. Él pasa un dedo por los caracteres dorados de la tapa y siente el peso al girarlo para mirar el lomo. Se da cuenta de que es la primera vez que tiene el libro en sus manos.

   –Es la edición común –dice ella, como si fuera algo de lo que ya le había advertido antes, pero aún así temiera que el libro lo decepcionara.

   –Es absolutamente perfecto –dice el hombre- : el ejemplar milagroso es un ejemplar común de la edición común. 

(blanco)

   El hombre sube las escalinatas del hospital; en cada peldaño impar las monedas suenan en su bolsillo. Cruza un patio y busca en el laberinto de pabellones la sala de su hija. Una enfermera que conoce lo intercepta en el pasillo antes de que abra la puerta y le pone una mano sobre el brazo. Su hija, le dice, fue llevada al quirófano: van a operarla por segunda vez, su esposa lo está esperando allí. El hombre camina hasta el final de una galería y sube otro tramo de escalones, unos escalones desgastados de mármol, con los bordes dentados, que desembocan en la salita de espera. Su esposa se levanta de su silla y lo abraza. Al separarse él ve en su cara las huellas de las lágrimas.

   –Acaba de entrar –le dice-. Está detrás de esa puerta. No saben qué tiene. La van a operar otra vez pero no pudieron decirme qué tiene –Fija la mirada extraviada en el libro que el hombre aún tiene en su mano y cuando él se lo extiende lo lleva por un momento contra el pecho-. Lo encontraste, entonces.

   –No es el tuyo –dice el hombre-. Volví a buscarlo y no estaba. Es uno que me prestaron.

   –¿Y las monedas? ¿Te acordaste de las monedas?

   Están solos en la sala de espera. El hombre saca del bolsillo las tres monedas y se las alcanza. La mujer se refugia con el libro en el primero de los escalones. Él se da vuelta hacia la hilera de sillas vacías: no quiere verla así, inclinada otra vez sobre el libro como si fuera un dios oscuro y terrible, como si el pasado, intacto, retornara. Pero su hijo y su hija, piensa, son sucesos independientes. Escucha el repiqueteo de las monedas arrojadas sobre el mármol. Una, dos, tres veces. Cuatro. Cinco. Seis. Las seis tiradas que determinan el número del hexagrama. Alza la cabeza sin poder evitarlo y mira, aterrado, la mano que abre el libro infalible en una de las páginas. 

  

Marzo 2002 – Febrero 2003

 

 

 

 

 

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