Mále and the Masks

We'll see, Mále thinks, we'll see if it's worth it: 15 years ago, when I left everything behind, husband, son, what was I trying to accomplish? Wasn't it precisely to break with those two illusions: she herself, that is, she as she was then, what they had made of her up to that point, and, on the other hand, the world, that world? That Taliban-esque world: relatives, parents, husband, everyone? What did they mean, with respect to what did words such as disaster, loneliness, uncertainty, reconciliation, salvation, have any meaning? Did she exist, she herself, 15 years ago? Isn't she now herself? She managed to understand it during the darkest, most exalted phases of her life with Rafael. She understands it now, as she moves closer to the naked body of this illegitimate and hopeless archangel, Javier, and feels that she has plunged into a complete 180-degree turn. The only possible maneuver now is to fall. The only dictates she follows now are her own. And she can even project an image of piety and disdain toward the surrounding reality; an image, she tells herself, like the one that guilt-ridden and apologetic foreigners must recognize in the absolute outcasts on the streets of Calcutta or Madras transfigured by the illumination of two qualities: their total exposure and nothingness.

But a year ago, she could still manage those mistaken concepts, the ones that led her that night in August to the bar that, like a symbol, lay outside—barely a few meters away, but still, outside, excluded—the territory of the condominium.

Her 20-year-old son, who until recently had been living with her, had gone back to live with his father in order to pursue a university degree. In reality, judged by certain parameters, the situation had been a complete disaster, and the boy's father had demanded custody. He was probably right to do so, in any case, Mále thought.

The possibility of stabilizing herself—what a ridiculous piece of jargon, she thought—with a man with whom she had had a few encounters—intense, certainly, if intermittent—during the past 10 years, had vanished. Dr. Roberto Martínez, though attractive, as well as sympathetic to her in attitude and outlook, and even in those dreams of rebellious availability in the face of the established order, could never take the definitive step she was hoping for: that of breaking up his marriage, a step that would have included, as a fatal corollary, Martínez's flight from his family and an orbit which, it was obvious, he didn't really want to leave, as Mále had done, or had been forced to do, 15 years ago.

All in all, it was only destiny: destiny unfolding, no longer in the most surprising ways, but rather the most obvious and predictable ones. Perhaps that explains the success of the many diviners and readers of cards populating the city, Mále reflects: the predictability of destiny, its routines, its endless repetition.

She still feels the pressure of the events of 15 years ago—not only in the rupture inside her, but in its cause, the ensuing loss of customary rituals. To begin with, she, Mále, was the one who had left their home; what's more, she made it known why. It's simple, she had explained, my husband is an idiot and I'm his servant, an idiot's cook, his lover, the lover of someone who lacks all sexual imagination, and yet, at the same time, his sexual object, his housekeeper, his secretary taking down his messages, the cleaning lady, and so on. He panics or gets upset if I discover any other desires for anything else. He even gets scared if we're having sex and I ask for or insinuate the exploration of anything other than the most ordinary acts. You act like a whore, he says. And he gets furious and even mistreats me. He's even convinced that an attitude like mine deserves...