Free The Truce by Mario Benedetti

important thing is to go to bed with her; and after making love, the important things is to leave, each of us to our own bed, and ignore each other thereafter. Throughout the many, many years of playing this game, I haven’t remembered a single comforting conversation, or touching remark (mine or theirs), of the kind that are destined to reappear later, at who knows what awkward moment, to put an end to some hesitation so that we can decide to adopt a stance that requires a minimum amount of courage. Well, this isn’t entirely true. Six or seven years ago, in a hotel on Rivera Street, a woman made this memorable comment: ‘You make love with the look of a clerk.’
Wednesday 8 May
    Vignale again. He was waiting for me outside the office so I had no other choice but to accept his offer to join him for a cup of coffee; an inevitable prologue to an hour of his confessions.
    He’s radiant. Apparently, his sister-in-law was successful in her amorous offensive, so much so that they are now in the middle of a romance. ‘She’s so taken with me that it hardly seems possible,’ said Vignale as he caressed his very jaunty tie, cream-coloured with little blue diamonds, which really shows a striking evolution from the dark, very wrinkled brown ties he used to wear when he was just a plain, faithful husband. ‘Every bit a woman, and with a hunger accumulated over a long time.’
    I think about robust Elvira’s unfulfilled longing, and I don’t
even want to think about what will become of poor Vignale six months from now. But at the moment, happiness radiates through all of his pores. He sincerely believes she was seduced by his masculinity. But he doesn’t realize that as far as Elvira’s ‘accumulated hunger’ is concerned (poor Francisco surely can’t refute his beatific capon face), Vignale merely represented the closest man at hand, an opportunity to bring herself up to date.
    â€˜And your wife?’ I asked him, with an air of vigilant conscientiousness. ‘Just taking it easy,’ Vignale replied. ‘Do you know what she said to me the other day? That lately I’ve had a much better disposition. And she’s right. Even my liver is working properly now.’
Thursday 9 May
    I can’t talk to her in the office. It has to be somewhere else. I’m studying her schedule. She often prefers to eat in town. She has lunch with a friend, a fat woman who works for the London- Paris department store. But afterwards, they part company and she goes to a café at 25th and Misiones for a drink. It has to be a chance encounter. It’s the best way.
Friday 10 May
    I met Diego, my future son-in-law. My first impression:
    I like him. He has a determined look, and speaks with the kind of pride that (it appears to me) isn’t gratuitous, that is to say, which relies on some portion of his attributes. He treated me with respect, but without flattering me. There was something I liked about his overall attitude, and I think my
vanity appreciated it, too. He was very biased in my favour, that was obvious. And from what other source could that bias have come from if not from his conversations with Blanca? I would be really happy about this detail at least, if I knew my daughter has a good impression of me. It’s interesting; for example, I don’t care about Esteban’s opinion of me. On the other hand, I really do care about Jaime and Blanca’s opinions. Perhaps the overly elaborate reason is in that, despite the fact that the three of them mean quite a bit to me, despite seeing many of my impulses and inhibitions reflected in all three, in Esteban I’ve also noticed a kind of discreet hostility, a variation on hatred that he doesn’t dare confess even to himself. I don’t know which occurred first, his rejection or mine, but the truth is I don’t love him as much as I love the others. I’ve always felt distant from this son who