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Fiction

Holding Pattern

By Juan Villoro
Translated from Spanish by Lisa M. Dillman
Juan Villoro misses connections.

“No matter what he is writing or talking about, or whom he is interviewing, Villoro always cuts through genres with the precision of a scalpel and with a humor reminiscent of Gogol.”—Javier Marías

I’m so uneasy with reality that I find planes comfortable. I surrender myself, resigned, to movies I don’t want to see and food I don’t want to eat, as if practicing a disciplined spiritual routine. A samurai with headphones and plastic knife. Suspended, my cell phone off, I enjoy the nirvana of having nothing to decide. That’s what flying is to me: a way to postpone the numbers that get through to me.

The last call I got before takeoff was from Clara. I was at the Barcelona airport and she asked anxiously, “Do you think she’ll come back?” She was referring to our cat, Única. “Any tremors?” I asked. Cats can predict earthquakes. Something—atmospheric vibrations—tells them that the earth is about to open up. Their chance to escape to the great outdoors.

Cats are seismological forecasters. Females are indoor cats, especially Angoras. That’s what we’d been told. But Única had already run away twice, and there had been no earthquake.

“Maybe she’s picking up on emotional tremors,” Clara joked over the phone. Then she said that the Rendóns had invited her to Valle de Bravo. If my flight didn’t get in on time, she’d go on her own. She really needed a weekend of sunshine and sailboats.

“Are you ever going to take a direct flight?” she asked before hanging up.

My life zigzags. For some reason, the cities I fly to always require connections: Antwerp, Oslo, Barcelona. I work for the company that produces the most insipid water in the world. That’s not a disparaging remark: you don’t drink our water for the flavor; you drink it because it’s so light in your mouth. A weightless luxury.

The planet’s always thirsty. Everybody has to drink something. And some demand the additional pleasure of weightless water.

I travel a lot to places that buy expensive water, so jet lag is my normal state. I’ve gotten used to deferred perception, things I see when I should be asleep. I read a lot during the long hours spent in transit, or think, staring out the plane’s little oval window. I often come up with ideas that strike me as mystical, but after landing they evaporate like liquid.

We take off late from Barcelona. We’re circling over London now, behind schedule. “We’re in a holding pattern,” the pilot informs us. No room for us.

The plane leans into a leisurely curve. We’ll circle like fruit flies until a runway clears. A glorious autumnal light makes the fields below glisten, the Thames shimmering like a knife blade, the city reaching out toward unexpected limits.

London’s an hour behind Barcelona. That time that hasn’t yet passed will help with the connection, but I don’t want to think about it. I’ll have to get the bus from Terminal 2 to Terminal 4 as if diving into the frenzy of an amusement park. I think about O. J. Simpson before his murder charge, when he excelled in his role as a man desperate for success, gaining yards, running on the football field and in ads where he was about to miss his flight. That’s what I like about airports. They’re all internal tension. The outside world disappears. You have to run to your gate. That’s it. Gate 6 is your only goal. O. J. was made for that, for running from interrupted phone calls, breakups, absent looks, bloody clothes.

The captain’s voice has been replaced with landing music. Techno-Flamenco. We circle, thousands of feet up in the air, as we clockwatch. How many connections will be missed on this flight? We’d worry less to different music. But in some remote office somewhere, someone decided that those sidereal gypsies made good music to land to. And maybe they do: the sound of modernity and oranges. Music for arriving, though not for waiting indefinitely, as gates close down below.

I’ve missed enough connections for Clara to suspect it’s all part of a plan. “That much bad luck just isn’t normal.” Frankfurt was closed due to snow. Barajas due to a strike. I’ve had to sleep in hotels where you feel like you’re wasting a good opportunity to commit suicide. You go from the seductive provisional order of the airport to the filth of what one should never endure. A rented bed in a place where no one is hoping to see you again.

Clara’s only partly right: my bad luck is normal, but not that bad. Once, beneath a rose-pink sky, I missed a flight out of Heathrow. The subsequent hotel was actually pleasant. Jumbo jets trundled down runways in the distance like shadow whales, and in the lobby I bumped into Nancy. She’d missed her flight, too. We worked for the same company in far-apart cities.

We had dinner at a pub where the Chelsea game was on. Neither of us likes soccer, but we watched the match with remarkable intensity. Those were borrowed hours. Nancy has extraordinary blond hair that looks like she washes it with the water we promote. I’ve always liked her, but only at that moment, in that time outside of time, did it seem logical to take her hand and play with her wedding band.

She left my room at dawn. I watched her silhouette on the cold street below. In the distance, a triangle of purplish lights indicated the intersection of two airport access roads. The control towers looked like two misplaced lighthouses, their radars spinning in search of signals. I inhaled Nancy’s perfume on my hand and was struck, like almost never before, by the artificial beauty of the world.

We saw each other again at meetings and conventions without alluding to the missed-flight encounter. When Clara suggested that my delays weren’t accidental, I thought of that lone episode and spoke in a way that incriminated me, like O. J. as if, when he put on his wife’s assassin’s black glove for the jury, it fit perfectly. I wanted to run, but I wasn’t in an airport.

“Is there someone else?” Clara asked. I told her there wasn’t, and it was true, but she just stared as if I was a TV with no signal, broadcasting snow.

Now here I am flying over Heathrow again. What are the chances that Nancy’s missing a flight, too? If we bumped into each other, could we ignore that geometry?

Nancy never implied that a repeat encounter was possible. Still, I couldn’t be indifferent to her uncertain tone when she said, “You know where you’re going when you take off, but heaven knows where you land.” Then she leaned back on my chest.

I flicked through the airline magazine. Alluring landscapes, the face of a famous architect, and then, totally unexpectedly, an Elías Rubio short story. Though he’s getting published more and more these days, coming across him is always an unpleasant surprise. Clara almost married Elías. She’s got a style that’s very attractive to men who aren’t married to her. I can’t read a single paragraph he writes without feeling he’s sending her messages.

I couldn’t think with that techno-Flamenco blaring, there wasn’t much time until my connection, and I was trying to come up with excuses that would prove to Clara that I hadn’t missed my flight on purpose. I needed another problem. That’s why I read the story. Elías is a reality-sucking leech. That’s partly why I’m so uneasy with reality.

The first time Única ran away we put up posters on telephone polls, left our phone number at the local vet’s, and went on a radio show about runaway pets.

Female cats don’t run away, but ours ran away. One afternoon, Clara asked me again if it really didn’t bother me that she couldn’t get pregnant. She’d just had a cup of Indian tea and her words smelled of cloves. I told her it didn’t and thought about the cat’s absurd name—Única, “only child”—which Clara had chosen with a bold stroke of humor and which, over the years, had morphed into a painful irony. I looked down. When I glanced back up, Clara was staring out at something in the yard. It was getting dark. There was an opaque, misty glimmer coming from behind a bush. Clara squeezed my hand. Seconds later, we made out Única’s coat, sullied during her absence.

That night Clara stroked my body with fingers like dry rain. Or at least that’s how Elías described it, having included the scene in its entirety in his story. The title was odious: “The Third Party.” Was he referring to himself? Did he still see Clara? Did she regale him with that sort of detail? The vile storyteller described one of her nervous habits very well: the way she twists her hair into a ringlet. She only lets it go when she makes a decision she can’t explain.

I continued reading and felt a chill down my spine: Elías was predicting our cat’s second disappearance. After making up with her partner—a third-rate talcum powder salesman—the heroine came to see that contentment was nothing but putting an end to anguish. The cat’s return had completed the picture: everything was back in place; still, real life demanded some kind of change, a fissure. The woman was reaching for her hair, twisting it into a ringlet, and letting it go. Without telling anyone, she was picking up the cat, taking it to the country.

Had that really happened? Did Clara get rid of the cat so she could blame it on my absences or prepare for her own? Elías was full of revenge fantasies (he was, after all, a writer), but the material for his story hadn’t come from his imagination. There were too many factual details. What did Única represent in the story? Was the woman setting herself free when she freed the cat? When Clara called me in Barcelona she talked about the cat as if speaking in code. It was only now, suspended above London, that I was realizing it.

Holding pattern: if I don’t get back on time, she’ll spend the weekend with the Rendóns, the couple who, one day long ago, introduced her to Elías Rubio.

The screech of metal: landing gear. I can still make my flight. Terminal 4, Gate 6.

Is Clara starting to predict my missed flights the way cats predict earthquakes? What does she miss, when she misses Única? What time is it in my country? Is she taking her hair and twisting it into a ringlet? Will she let it go before I reach my gate? Will dusk be rose-pink over Heathrow? Is someone else missing a flight? Is our plane displacing another plane that could still have landed on time?

The turbines roar deafeningly. We’re touching down. I feel my body numb, aware of segueing into another logic.

What happens on the ground. The geometry of the sky.

Translation of “Patrón de espera.” © Juan Villoro. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2012 by Lisa M. Dillman. All rights reserved.

English Spanish (Original)

“No matter what he is writing or talking about, or whom he is interviewing, Villoro always cuts through genres with the precision of a scalpel and with a humor reminiscent of Gogol.”—Javier Marías

I’m so uneasy with reality that I find planes comfortable. I surrender myself, resigned, to movies I don’t want to see and food I don’t want to eat, as if practicing a disciplined spiritual routine. A samurai with headphones and plastic knife. Suspended, my cell phone off, I enjoy the nirvana of having nothing to decide. That’s what flying is to me: a way to postpone the numbers that get through to me.

The last call I got before takeoff was from Clara. I was at the Barcelona airport and she asked anxiously, “Do you think she’ll come back?” She was referring to our cat, Única. “Any tremors?” I asked. Cats can predict earthquakes. Something—atmospheric vibrations—tells them that the earth is about to open up. Their chance to escape to the great outdoors.

Cats are seismological forecasters. Females are indoor cats, especially Angoras. That’s what we’d been told. But Única had already run away twice, and there had been no earthquake.

“Maybe she’s picking up on emotional tremors,” Clara joked over the phone. Then she said that the Rendóns had invited her to Valle de Bravo. If my flight didn’t get in on time, she’d go on her own. She really needed a weekend of sunshine and sailboats.

“Are you ever going to take a direct flight?” she asked before hanging up.

My life zigzags. For some reason, the cities I fly to always require connections: Antwerp, Oslo, Barcelona. I work for the company that produces the most insipid water in the world. That’s not a disparaging remark: you don’t drink our water for the flavor; you drink it because it’s so light in your mouth. A weightless luxury.

The planet’s always thirsty. Everybody has to drink something. And some demand the additional pleasure of weightless water.

I travel a lot to places that buy expensive water, so jet lag is my normal state. I’ve gotten used to deferred perception, things I see when I should be asleep. I read a lot during the long hours spent in transit, or think, staring out the plane’s little oval window. I often come up with ideas that strike me as mystical, but after landing they evaporate like liquid.

We take off late from Barcelona. We’re circling over London now, behind schedule. “We’re in a holding pattern,” the pilot informs us. No room for us.

The plane leans into a leisurely curve. We’ll circle like fruit flies until a runway clears. A glorious autumnal light makes the fields below glisten, the Thames shimmering like a knife blade, the city reaching out toward unexpected limits.

London’s an hour behind Barcelona. That time that hasn’t yet passed will help with the connection, but I don’t want to think about it. I’ll have to get the bus from Terminal 2 to Terminal 4 as if diving into the frenzy of an amusement park. I think about O. J. Simpson before his murder charge, when he excelled in his role as a man desperate for success, gaining yards, running on the football field and in ads where he was about to miss his flight. That’s what I like about airports. They’re all internal tension. The outside world disappears. You have to run to your gate. That’s it. Gate 6 is your only goal. O. J. was made for that, for running from interrupted phone calls, breakups, absent looks, bloody clothes.

The captain’s voice has been replaced with landing music. Techno-Flamenco. We circle, thousands of feet up in the air, as we clockwatch. How many connections will be missed on this flight? We’d worry less to different music. But in some remote office somewhere, someone decided that those sidereal gypsies made good music to land to. And maybe they do: the sound of modernity and oranges. Music for arriving, though not for waiting indefinitely, as gates close down below.

I’ve missed enough connections for Clara to suspect it’s all part of a plan. “That much bad luck just isn’t normal.” Frankfurt was closed due to snow. Barajas due to a strike. I’ve had to sleep in hotels where you feel like you’re wasting a good opportunity to commit suicide. You go from the seductive provisional order of the airport to the filth of what one should never endure. A rented bed in a place where no one is hoping to see you again.

Clara’s only partly right: my bad luck is normal, but not that bad. Once, beneath a rose-pink sky, I missed a flight out of Heathrow. The subsequent hotel was actually pleasant. Jumbo jets trundled down runways in the distance like shadow whales, and in the lobby I bumped into Nancy. She’d missed her flight, too. We worked for the same company in far-apart cities.

We had dinner at a pub where the Chelsea game was on. Neither of us likes soccer, but we watched the match with remarkable intensity. Those were borrowed hours. Nancy has extraordinary blond hair that looks like she washes it with the water we promote. I’ve always liked her, but only at that moment, in that time outside of time, did it seem logical to take her hand and play with her wedding band.

She left my room at dawn. I watched her silhouette on the cold street below. In the distance, a triangle of purplish lights indicated the intersection of two airport access roads. The control towers looked like two misplaced lighthouses, their radars spinning in search of signals. I inhaled Nancy’s perfume on my hand and was struck, like almost never before, by the artificial beauty of the world.

We saw each other again at meetings and conventions without alluding to the missed-flight encounter. When Clara suggested that my delays weren’t accidental, I thought of that lone episode and spoke in a way that incriminated me, like O. J. as if, when he put on his wife’s assassin’s black glove for the jury, it fit perfectly. I wanted to run, but I wasn’t in an airport.

“Is there someone else?” Clara asked. I told her there wasn’t, and it was true, but she just stared as if I was a TV with no signal, broadcasting snow.

Now here I am flying over Heathrow again. What are the chances that Nancy’s missing a flight, too? If we bumped into each other, could we ignore that geometry?

Nancy never implied that a repeat encounter was possible. Still, I couldn’t be indifferent to her uncertain tone when she said, “You know where you’re going when you take off, but heaven knows where you land.” Then she leaned back on my chest.

I flicked through the airline magazine. Alluring landscapes, the face of a famous architect, and then, totally unexpectedly, an Elías Rubio short story. Though he’s getting published more and more these days, coming across him is always an unpleasant surprise. Clara almost married Elías. She’s got a style that’s very attractive to men who aren’t married to her. I can’t read a single paragraph he writes without feeling he’s sending her messages.

I couldn’t think with that techno-Flamenco blaring, there wasn’t much time until my connection, and I was trying to come up with excuses that would prove to Clara that I hadn’t missed my flight on purpose. I needed another problem. That’s why I read the story. Elías is a reality-sucking leech. That’s partly why I’m so uneasy with reality.

The first time Única ran away we put up posters on telephone polls, left our phone number at the local vet’s, and went on a radio show about runaway pets.

Female cats don’t run away, but ours ran away. One afternoon, Clara asked me again if it really didn’t bother me that she couldn’t get pregnant. She’d just had a cup of Indian tea and her words smelled of cloves. I told her it didn’t and thought about the cat’s absurd name—Única, “only child”—which Clara had chosen with a bold stroke of humor and which, over the years, had morphed into a painful irony. I looked down. When I glanced back up, Clara was staring out at something in the yard. It was getting dark. There was an opaque, misty glimmer coming from behind a bush. Clara squeezed my hand. Seconds later, we made out Única’s coat, sullied during her absence.

That night Clara stroked my body with fingers like dry rain. Or at least that’s how Elías described it, having included the scene in its entirety in his story. The title was odious: “The Third Party.” Was he referring to himself? Did he still see Clara? Did she regale him with that sort of detail? The vile storyteller described one of her nervous habits very well: the way she twists her hair into a ringlet. She only lets it go when she makes a decision she can’t explain.

I continued reading and felt a chill down my spine: Elías was predicting our cat’s second disappearance. After making up with her partner—a third-rate talcum powder salesman—the heroine came to see that contentment was nothing but putting an end to anguish. The cat’s return had completed the picture: everything was back in place; still, real life demanded some kind of change, a fissure. The woman was reaching for her hair, twisting it into a ringlet, and letting it go. Without telling anyone, she was picking up the cat, taking it to the country.

Had that really happened? Did Clara get rid of the cat so she could blame it on my absences or prepare for her own? Elías was full of revenge fantasies (he was, after all, a writer), but the material for his story hadn’t come from his imagination. There were too many factual details. What did Única represent in the story? Was the woman setting herself free when she freed the cat? When Clara called me in Barcelona she talked about the cat as if speaking in code. It was only now, suspended above London, that I was realizing it.

Holding pattern: if I don’t get back on time, she’ll spend the weekend with the Rendóns, the couple who, one day long ago, introduced her to Elías Rubio.

The screech of metal: landing gear. I can still make my flight. Terminal 4, Gate 6.

Is Clara starting to predict my missed flights the way cats predict earthquakes? What does she miss, when she misses Única? What time is it in my country? Is she taking her hair and twisting it into a ringlet? Will she let it go before I reach my gate? Will dusk be rose-pink over Heathrow? Is someone else missing a flight? Is our plane displacing another plane that could still have landed on time?

The turbines roar deafeningly. We’re touching down. I feel my body numb, aware of segueing into another logic.

What happens on the ground. The geometry of the sky.

Patrón de espera

Estoy tan a disgusto con la realidad que los aviones me parecen cómodos. Me entrego con resignación a las películas que no quiero ver y la comida que no quiero probar, como si practicara un disciplinado ejercicio espiritual. Un samurái con audífonos y cuchillo de plástico. Suspendido, con el teléfono celular apagado, disfruto el nirvana de no tener nada qué decidir. La aviación es eso para mí: una manera de posponer los números que pueden alcanzarme.

La última llamada que recibí en tierra fue de Clara. Yo estaba en el aeropuerto de Barcelona y ella me dijo con angustia: “¿Crees que va a volver?” Se refería a Única, nuestra gata. “¿Ha temblado?”, pregunté. Los gatos intuyen los temblores. Algo, una vibración del aire, les permite saber que la tierra se va a abrir. El momento de huir a la intemperie.

Los gatos son sismólogos anticipados. Las gatas se quedan en casa, en especial las de angora. Eso nos habían dicho. Sin embargo, Única ha huido dos veces, sin terremoto de por medio.

“Tal vez registra temblores emocionales”, bromeó Clara en el teléfono. Luego comentó que los Rendón la habían invitado a Valle de Bravo. Si mi vuelo no llegaba a tiempo, ella iría por su cuenta. Anhelaba un fin de semana de sol y veleros.

“¿Algún día tomarás un vuelo directo?”, preguntó antes de despedirse.

Llevo una vida en zigzag. Por alguna razón, mis itinerarios desembocan en ciudades que obligan a hacer conexiones: Amberes, Oslo, Barcelona. Trabajo para la compañía que produce la mejor agua insípida del mundo. Esta frase no es despreciativa: nuestra agua no se bebe por el sabor sino porque pesa menos en la boca. Un lujo ingrávido.

El planeta siempre tiene sed. Todos necesitan beber algo. Pero algunos disfrutan más.

Viajo a cualquier sitio que reclame el deleite adicional del agua ligera. Esto significa que mi condición habitual es el jet-lag. Me he acostumbrado al desfase en la percepción, las cosas que veo cuando debería estar dormido. Leo mucho en las largas horas de desplazamiento, o pienso de cara a la ventanilla ovalada del avión. Con frecuencia doy con ideas que me parecen místicas y al llegar a tierra se evaporan como una loción.

Salimos con retraso de Barcelona. Ahora sobrevolamos Londres, fuera de itinerario. “Estamos en patrón de espera”, informa el piloto. No hay sitio para nosotros.

El avión se ladea en una curva parsimoniosa. Daremos vueltas en círculo, como moscas de fruta, en lo que se desocupa una pista. Una espléndida luz de otoño saca brillo a los prados allá abajo, el Támesis resplandece como la hoja de una espada, la ciudad se desperdiga hacia confines imprevistos.

En Londres hay una hora menos que en Barcelona. Esos minutos que aún no suceden son una ventaja para la conexión, pero no quiero pensar en ellos. Tendré que tomar el autobús de la terminal 2 a la 4 como si me sumiera en el frenesí de un parque temático. Pienso en O. J. Simpson antes de la acusación de asesinato, cuando sobresalía en su papel de desesperado de éxito que devoraba yardas en el futbol americano y en los anuncios donde estaba a punto de perder un avión. Eso me gusta de los aeropuertos. Sólo constan de tensión interna. El exterior se borra. Hay que correr en pos de una puerta de salida. Es todo. El destino se llama “puerta 6”. O. J. estaba hecho para eso, para correr lejos de las llamadas interrumpidas, el desamor, la mirada ausente, la ropa ensangrentada.

La voz del capitán ha sido relevada por música para el aterrizaje. Tecno-flamenco. Damos vueltas a miles de metros de altura mientras vemos el reloj. ¿Cuántos vuelos se van a perder en este vuelo? Si la música fuera distinta, nos preocuparíamos menos. En alguna oficina remota se decidió que se aterrizaba bien al compás de esos gitanos siderales. Es posible que así sea: un sonido de modernidad y naranjas. Música para llegar, no para esperar por tiempo indefinido, mientras las puertas se cierran allá abajo.

He perdido suficientes conexiones para que Clara sospeche que forman parte de un plan: “Tanta mala suerte no es normal.” Frankfurt cerrado por nieve, Barajas por huelga. He tenido que dormir en hoteles donde sientes que desperdicias una oportunidad de suicidarte. Del atractivo orden provisional del aeropuerto pasas a la sordidez de lo que no debe durar. Una cama alquilada en un sitio donde nadie espera volver a verte.

Clara sólo tiene razón en parte: mi mala suerte es normal, pero no es tan mala. Una vez perdí el avión en Heathrow, bajo un cielo rosáceo. El hotel accidental resultó agradable. Los jumbos recorrían las pistas a la distancia, como ballenas de sombra, y en el lobby me encontré a Nancy. También ella había perdido su vuelo. Trabajamos en ciudades lejanas para la misma compañía.

Cenamos en un pub donde transmitían un partido del Chelsea. A ninguno de los dos nos gusta el futbol, pero vivíamos horas prestadas. Nancy tiene un extraordinario pelo rubio que parece lavar con el agua que promovemos. Siempre me ha gustado, pero sólo entonces, en ese tiempo fuera del tiempo, me pareció lógico tomar su mano y juguetear con su anillo de casada.

Ella dejó mi cuarto al amanecer. Vi su silueta en el frío de la calle. A lo lejos, un triángulo de focos morados indicaba la confluencia de dos avenidas que iban a dar al aeropuerto. Las torres de control parecían faros a la deriva, los radares giraban en busca de señales. Respiré en mi mano el perfume de Nancy y entendí, como pocas veces, la belleza artificial del mundo.

Nos volvimos a ver en juntas y convenciones, sin aludir al encuentro de los aviones perdidos. Cuando Clara sugirió que yo me retrasaba adrede, recordé ese episodio solitario y hablé en un tono que me incriminó, como O. J. ante el jurado, cuando se puso el guante negro del asesino de su esposa, y le quedó de maravilla. Quise correr pero no estaba en un aeropuerto.

“¿Hay alguien más?”, me preguntó Clara. Dije que no, y era cierto, pero ella me vio como si yo fuera un televisor que sólo transmitía ceniza.

Ahora vuelvo a sobrevolar Heathrow. ¿Qué posibilidades hay de que también Nancy pierda un vuelo? En caso de encontrarnos, ¿podríamos ser ajenos a esa geometría?

Nancy no insinuó que un reencuentro fuera posible. Sin embargo, yo no podía ser indiferente al tono incierto en que dijo: “Sabes a dónde despegas pero no a qué cielo llegas”. Luego se recostó sobre mi pecho.

Hojeé la revista del avión. Paisajes codiciables, el rostro de un célebre arquitecto y, lo menos esperado, un cuento de Elías Ferrer. Aunque cada vez publica más, encontrarlo siempre es una sorpresa desagradable. Elías estuvo a punto de casarse con Clara. Tiene un estilo llamativo para los que no están casados con ella. No puedo leer un párrafo suyo sin sentir que le envía mensajes.

El tecno-flamenco aturdía mis oídos, quedaba poco tiempo para la conexión y yo empezaba a buscar excusas para explicarle a Clara que no había perdido ese avión adrede. Necesitaba otro problema. Leí el cuento. Elías es una sanguijuela que chupa realidad. En parte por eso estoy a disgusto con la realidad.

La primera vez que Única se fue de la casa pegamos carteles en los postes de la calle, dejamos nuestro teléfono en el veterinario de la zona, fuimos a un programa de radio especializado en fuga de mascotas.

Las gatas no se van pero la nuestra se había ido. Una tarde, Clara volvió a preguntarme si de veras no me importaba que no pudiera embarazarse. Había bebido un té de la India y sus palabras olieron a clavo. Le dije que no y pensé en el absurdo nombre de la gata, que Clara escogió como un valiente golpe de humor y con los años se transformó en una dolorosa ironía. Bajé la vista. Cuando la alcé, Clara miraba algo en el jardín. Oscurecía. Tras un arbusto había un brillo opaco, neblinoso. Clara me apretó la mano. Segundos después, distinguimos el pelo de Única, ensuciado por su ausencia.

Esa noche, Clara me acarició como si sus manos estuvieran hechas de una lluvia que no moja. Al menos, así describió la escena Elías, que la incluyó tal cual en su cuento. El título era odioso: “El tercero incluido”. ¿Se refería a sí mismo? ¿Seguía viendo a Clara? ¿Ella le contaba esas minucias? El infame cuentista describía bien un gesto nervioso, la forma en que ella se toma el pelo para formar un tirabuzón (sólo lo suelta cuando decide algo que no puede comunicar).

Sentí hielo en la espalda al seguir leyendo: Elías anticipaba la segunda desaparición de la gata. Después de reconciliarse con su pareja –un ínfimo vendedor de talco–, la heroína advertía que el bienestar no era otra cosa que sufrimiento detenido. El regreso de la gata había completado un dibujo: todo estaba en orden; sin embargo, la vida verdadera reclamaba un cambio, una fisura. La mujer se llevaba la mano al pelo, formaba un tirabuzón y lo soltaba. Sin avisarle a nadie, tomaba la gata y la llevaba al campo.

¿En verdad había pasado eso? ¿Clara se deshizo de la gata para atribuirlo a mis ausencias, o para preparar su propia ausencia? Elías estaba lleno de fantasías revanchistas (¡por algo era escritor!), pero la materia del cuento no provenía de la imaginación. Había demasiados datos reales. ¿Exageraba el desenlace para justificar la metáfora de la mujer que se libera a sí misma al liberar a la gata? Cuando Clara llamó a mi celular en Barcelona habló de la gata como quien repite una clave. Sólo ahora, suspendido en el aire de Londres, me daba cuenta.

Patrón de espera: si no llego a tiempo, ella pasará el fin de semana con los Rendón, la pareja que en una fecha ya difusa le presentó a Elías Ferrer.

Un rechinido metálico: el tren de aterrizaje. Aún puedo alcanzar mi vuelo. Terminal 4, puerta 6.

¿Empieza Clara a anticipar mis aviones perdidos como los gatos anticipan los temblores? ¿Qué extraña cuando extraña a Única? ¿Qué horas son en mi país? ¿Se acaricia ella el pelo y forma un tirabuzón? ¿Lo soltará antes de que yo llegue a la puerta de salida? ¿Habrá un atardecer rosáceo en Heathrow? ¿Alguien más pierde un vuelo? ¿Nuestro avión desplaza a otro que aún podía llegar a tiempo?

Las turbinas rugen en forma atronadora. Tocamos pista. Siento el cuerpo entumido, consciente de pasar a otra lógica.

Lo que sucede en tierra. La geometría del cielo.

©Juan Villoro

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