Free Guano by Louis Carmain Page A

that drunk men do or don’t do. But how was he to know? History had been too silent, like a woman who suddenly ups and leaves, taking the future with her. Shouldn’t the warning have been louder? Clearer, to be sure, than long evenings spent inside their heads, without smiling at one another? The men would blame each other the rest of their lives. They didn’t see the clues. Perhaps they had been thinking about themselves a little too much, shut away in their slight uncertainty. They would have to forgive themselves. Because History has been fooling men since the dawn of time. It is built on trivial things that come and go, and that no one notices, like the tide.
    The men in turn began their march. Their agitation was dulled by the alcohol. Their reflexes too. Hands sought support on the armchair, then on the doorframe. Then on the shoulder of a passing civil servant. Ribeyro and Salazar crossed the lobby this way, seeing each other to the door of city hall. Behind them, Simón tried to followtheir complicated advance, moving slowly toward a pedestal table, the exit, a rhododendron, the exit.

    Within the larger frame of History, Simón was living his own little story.
    He wanted to see Montse again.
    He wrote her notes. Their tenderness was veiled in amusing tidbits scattered through the sentences, like small defensive walls that would protect him from a response that was too passionate, prevent him from exposing himself to what he metaphorically called ‘a desert wind’ – what he meant was clearly the barren feeling of a refusal. So an anecdote protected the ‘see you again,’ a witticism minimized the significance of the ‘evening under the umbrella.’
    He rewrote most of the notes.
    Then he tried to have them delivered to her. Sometimes by a sailor, which didn’t work at all. A florist wandering the docks, pfft. A small boy whose confiscated hoop served as a means of barter: nada.
    Montse had not responded.
    The weeks of forced confinement in port grew longer; Simón’s worry increased proportionately. What could she possibly have against him? Why the silence? Had he invented what happened that night, the feelings it had given rise to? He thought about asking for shore leave to go to her house. Would it be unseemly?
    His questions could be summed up in a simple line that he had scribbled at the bottom of a report one night when he couldn’t sleep:
    Did I fall in love with a dream?
    One Sunday, at the end of the afternoon, there were developments. It was the evening before the fateful meeting where Simón had recorded nothing. Salazar had just come aboard the ship. He wastalking to Pinzón. Tomorrow they would meet Ribeyro with no great hope of reconciliation. So let’s seethe, my dear Pinzón, let’s scheme.
    Simón walked along the docks, on the verge of giving up, when he saw a woman dressed in black approaching. It was the Ortuño maid. She was walking in little hops, talking in little chirps. She greeted the florist, an acquaintance, and the young boy, a nephew, whose reclaimed hoop had fallen in the water.
    She stopped in front of Simón, slipped him an envelope hidden in the palm of her hand. It was from Mademoiselle. Then she hopped back to the town, disappeared, chirping all the way. You should have steered your hoop better. You have to be careful with what you have in life. Otherwise you end up with nothing to entertain you as you head into old age. Nothing but thoughts and memories. Which are dangerous.
    Simón looked at the sealed letter for a moment – burgundy wax, initials formed with dizzying spirals – and then carefully opened it. His heart was beating too loudly for him to read. He forced himself to stay calm, remembered his alphabet. He finally recognized an A, and then the letters that followed.
    Montse explained that her brother was not well. She had to take care of him. They had left a month before for Lambayeque