Free American Visa by Juan de Recacoechea Page B

hopeful about the future. I lived modestly, but I wasn’t hard up. I was healthy as a buck, my wife was a dedicated worker, and we had plenty of friends. Combining our two salaries, we were sometimes able to put aside savings. We dreamed of emigrating to Córdoba, Argentina and kept a collection of brochures, newspaper clippings, and letters from people we knew describing the city’s beauty and pleasant climate.
    Within a year our son was born and we baptized him Luis Alberto Carlos. He came out pearl-colored, with his mother’s black hair, bawling like there was no tomorrow. Antonia was attractive, thin, soft-spoken, and discreet. You barely noticed her during the day, but she used her imagination, repressed by years of studying at a Catholic girl’s school, to fill our nighttime lovemaking sessions with surprises. In spite of living in a poor, unstable, troubled country, I couldn’t complain. I had a satisfying existence—low on means, but high on hope.
    My only real worry was my father’s decline into a state of profound neurosis. He started getting irritable and any old thing ticked him off. One day he took me aside and confided to me that he’d lost his virility. I told him it was just a temporary problem that a good sexual-enhancement drug could fix, which consoled him.
    My little boy was growing up, happy and healthy. After working for four years as a teacher, I bought myself a motorcycle and became the envy of the neighborhood. How did it all go to hell? I remember that my wife always used to come down with colds, and then one day she had to go to the hospital with a fever and a nasty cough. The doctor who took care of her told me she had a spot on her lung, but that it wasn’t serious and she’d get over it with a little rest. After leaving the hospital, she quit working and tried staying home for a while. But as soon as she started getting active again, the symptoms reappeared: fatigue, night sweats, and a cough as stubbornly persistent as a leaky old roof. I blew all my savings on medicine, and before I knew it I was in debt and drinking more than usual. Bolivia was in bad shape back then; it’s always been in bad shape. I sent my wife away to Tupiza Valley to stay with an aunt who owned a grocery store, and to breathe warmer air. With the passing months she got noticeably better; she started to gain weight and she got her good looks back. Her sense of humor returned and so did the color to her face.
    The tragedy is that although the spot did disappear from her lung, Antonia no longer felt anything for me. At first she didn’t want to make love because she wanted to recuperate. Later, she needed time to feel like herself again. In the end, she just didn’t love me anymore. She didn’t even want me to touch her. My caresses were pure torture for her. I was too dumb to realize she’d latched onto another guy, a new-wave, right-wing, pro-military, boot-licking politician who’d gone from opportunistic trade unionist to labor advisor for the Armed Forces. While I taught English at a public high school to a bunch of do-nothings, she spent the whole afternoon in bed with that rich bastard. I couldn’t bring myself to kick her out of the house because our son was still so young. I swallowed it . . . I swallowed it, anxiously hoping that Antonia would get bored with that guy. I used to see him from time to time in town, strutting around with the other politicians, regular louts and sleazebags every one of them. I thought about buying a revolver and putting a bullet in his head, but killing him wouldn’t have solved anything. I would have gone to jail, my son would have died of hunger, and Antonia would have found somebody else.
    I went from brothel to brothel screwing tarts until I started getting an ungodly discharge that I was only able to cure with a mail-order medication from Germany. I became a self-denying cuckold who was still hopelessly in