Free The Truce by Mario Benedetti Page B

sir?’ It is ridiculous for her to call me ‘sir’. ‘You have a smudge on your face,’ I replied, like a coward. She wiped off her cheek with her index finger (one of her very characteristic gestures, which stretches her eye downwards and looks unattractive) and asked: ‘What about now?’ ‘Now it looks impeccable,’ I replied, with a little less cowardice. She blushed, and I was able to add: ‘Now you’re no longer impeccable, now you’re pretty.’ I think she noticed. I think now she knows that something is happening. Or had she interpreted what I said as paternal flattery? It disgusts me to feel paternal.
Wednesday 15 May
    I was in the café at 25th and Misiones from twelve-thirty to two o’clock in the afternoon. It was an experiment. ‘I have to talk to her,’ I thought, ‘so she has to show up.’ I started to ‘see’ her in every woman who came by 25th. Now I didn’t really care if there wasn’t a single detail about this or that figure which would remind me of her. I was still ‘seeing’ her all the same; it was a sort of magical game (or idiotic, depending on one’s point of view) I played. It was only when the woman was a few steps away that I would experience a hasty mental retreat and stop seeing her, substituting the desired image for the undesirable reality. Until, all of a sudden, the miracle occurred. A young woman appeared at the corner and I immediately saw Avellaneda in her, the image of Avellaneda. But wanted to undergo the already familiar mental reversal, it turned out that reality was also Avellaneda. My God, what a shock. I thought my heart had become lodged in my temples. She was two steps away, next to my window. I said: ‘Hello, how are you? What are you up to?’ The tone was natural, almost routine. She looked surprised, pleasantly surprised I think, I hope. ‘Oh, Mr Santomé, you scared me.’ Without any emphasis and an indifferent gesture of my right hand I extended an invitation to her: ‘A cup of coffee?’ ‘No, I can’t, what a pity. My father is waiting for me at the bank to make a transaction.’ It’s the second invitation for a cup of coffee she has turned down, but this time she said: ‘What a pity.’ If she hadn’t said that, I think I would have either shattered a glass on the floor, bitten my lower lip, or driven my nails into my fingertips. But no, nonsense, that’s just not true; I wouldn’t have done anything. At most, I would have been left discouraged and empty, with my legs crossed, grinding my teeth, and my eyes hurting from looking at the same cup of
coffee for so long. But she said: ‘What a pity,’ and, moreover, before she left, she asked: ‘Are you always here at this hour?’ ‘Sure,’ I replied, lying. ‘Then let’s postpone the invitation for another day.’ ‘Well, don’t forget,’ I stressed, and then she left. The waiter appeared about five minutes later with another cup of coffee and said, looking out into the street: ‘What lovely sunshine, huh? One feels renewed. Makes you want to sing and everything.’ Only then did I hear myself. Unconsciously, like an old gramophone on which a record is placed and forgotten, I had arrived, without realizing it, at the second stanza of ‘Mi Bandera’.
Thursday 16 May
    â€˜I bet you don’t know who I bumped into,’ said Vignale on the telephone. My silence was, without a doubt, so provocative he couldn’t even wait three seconds to offer the answer: ‘Just imagine, Escayola.’ I thought about it. Escayola? It’s strange to hear that name again, the kind of old family name you just don’t hear any more. ‘You don’t say,’ I replied. ‘And how is he?’
    â€˜He looks like a dolphin and weighs fifteen stone,’ Vignale replied. Well, it turns out that Escayola