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Fiction

Meow

By Félix J. Palma
Translated from Spanish by Nick Caistor & Amanda Hopkinson

To Juan Bonilla, who endured the first part of this story

I can’t see it from the terrace, so I don’t know how big it is, or what color. The only thing I know is that every night, perched up on the roof, it wails my name at the moon. I’m no cat expert, but I think it has to be in heat; it sounds like a heartbroken child.  I might even say it’s terrifying.  It reminds me of the screams of those pale creatures  locked in basements in horror films. And I’m increasingly convinced she’s meowing my name.

Naturally, I’d love a second opinion. Someone I could ask: “Hey, listen, don’t you think that cat is meowing my name?” But Virginia left me two months ago, before the meowing began, as stealthily as she had come into my life. On a day like any other, she set off to buy lettuce to restock my denuded fridge and never returned, even though that very same morning, her body entwined with mine, she had assured me that now that she had found me, she would never leave. After her flight, I regretted that the two months of passion we had spent shut up in my apartment, far from the outside world, had left nothing more useful than happiness: no phone number, or address, or surname to complement the first name that, once she had disappeared, I found myself compulsively murmuring at all hours of the day, like a spell that no longer conjured her up. But that was how she had wanted it: two naked souls, stripped of their everyday identities and impurities, each one yearning for the other. She wanted her body, her greenish eyes, her damp hair, to be enough for me, that I should know nothing at all about her when we weren’t together. She wanted a love apart from the world, outside even of time, free from the binds of circumstance, a love composed solely of flesh and blood and electric skin. There would be time later for all the rest, all of the stuff that would render us worldly and wise and other. For the stuff that would probably destroy us. And I accepted her conditions, which revealed her to me as she wished to be seen: a wood sprite, an elfin being, the last throwback to a mythic lineage garlanded with fairies, fauns and elves, and about whom the only thing I needed to know was that she loved me like nobody else ever had or ever would. Although, if I had suspected that one fine day she would simply vanish, I’d have asked for every detail down to the address of her dentist. That way, I could have sought her in more accessible and likely places than in an enchanted wood.

Virginia, the woman who vowed she would never leave me, disappeared on an afternoon like any other some two months ago. Ever since, I have been unable to sleep at night. Darkness descends on the city and from my bed I watch the world, which at those small hours only emits the creaks of a drifting ship: the snorting fridge; the metallic belch of the  elevator secretly running through the building’s depths, a solitary car horn in the distance, like the lament of a dying man. I listen to it all scrupulously, but above all I listen for the cat, the only living thing that, apart from me, seems to be awake in this corner of the universe. Had I been called Evaristo, Froilan, or Salustiano, perhaps things would have been easier. Names like these are impossible for cats to pronounce. But I am called Juan, like my father, like my grandfather, like the fictitious Don Juan Tenorio. And the cat seems to be aware of this, for every night, with startling punctuality, she turns up on the roof and desperately, painfully, calls to me. She calls me like someone calling her lover.

I don’t want to think like this because it may be the first step toward losing my mind, but the truth is I can’t help it. I spend the whole day obsessed, waiting for nightfall, when I can have another chance to prove that I’m mistaken, that I’m not mad, and that the cat is not calling my name. Yet every time I hear more clearly that she is meowing my name: Juan, Juan . . . Tirelessly, yearningly.

I’m the only Juan in the building. I’ve checked the mailboxes. There are dozens of Antonios, numerous Pedros and Luises, even a Froilan, but no Juan. If that cat is calling to anyone, it has to be me. I’m the one she’s looking for. There’s no other possibility. The fourth time I hear her, fearing she’s turning me into an  insomniac, I decide to act. I knock on some of the doors. It seems no one hears a cat meowing desperately in the night. But this might be because I am the only occupant on the top floor. In the end, someone gave me a clue: maybe she belonged to our new neighbor, the girl who had just moved into the building. Ever since Virginia left me, I have turned my back to the world, so I was not surprised to discover we had a new neighbor of whom I knew nothing. In the state of self-absorption in which I find myself, I’d only have noticed her arrival if they had dragged a grand piano up the stairs for her. But the new neighbor arrived without musical accompaniment, muffled in the insulation of a tight silence. And from the terrace I assumed was hers, no cat would have had trouble reaching the roof. I could have done it myself. I think there can be little doubt about who the little pussycat who ruins my nights belongs to.

I resolve to end my ordeal and ring her doorbell in the middle of the afternoon. I can’t decide whether the woman who answers is beautiful or not, but she seems appealing enough. Thin, not too tall, one of those who would go to her grave with a smile.  Based on her clothes—a tight cropped top that exposes her pierced navel—and the sweat beading under her arms I deduce that I’ve interrupted a workout. Perhaps she was running on a machine or doing sit-ups on one of those contraptions you can store folded up beneath the bed, where a chamber pot used to be kept. I’ve always admired the kind of girl who can set aside a few hours a day to sculpt her body, possibly because I count myself among those who leave their shapes to chance and the wind. But I know nothing could possibly happen between us because we’re condemned to get off on the wrong foot. With perfect manners I enquire whether she has a cat. A female cat, she specifies. With even more refined manners I propose that she stick a ballpoint up the cat’s rectum, because I’m completely fed up with hearing her meow every night. But it goes without saying that we don’t live in a world where we can freely express ourselves. The woman’s smile vanishes, and she stares at me as if I had just dropped squid guts onto her trousseau. The dark circles under my eyes don’t seem to move her. With superlative manners she informs me that, despite the fact she would be more than willing to introduce a ballpoint—or any similar sharp object—into my rectum, she has not the least intention of doing so to her cat’s. Earplugs are available from any pharmacy, she concludes, beginning to shut the door.

That was when the pussycat appeared. And that changes everything. What can I possibly say? The sight of her moved me greatly. She’s a white cat, of such a delicious whiteness that I can’t help thinking that someone extremely skilled made her out of a snowball. She is neither plump nor emaciated, with a light, flexible body. And her eyes are of an indefinable green verging on yellow. But what surprises me most is the way she behaves. The cat stands stock-still in the kitchen doorway and studies me with a mixture of mistrust and rapture. Finally she overcomes her paralysis and advances slowly toward me with measured steps, as if I were some apparition that could vanish at any moment. Then, when she reaches me, she rubs against my legs with such sincere affection I become uncomfortable. Her rhythmic and ecstatic rubbing provokes a vague quiver of excitement. I pick her up and look into her eyes.

“Why do you call to me? What do you know about me?” I ask in a whisper so the woman won’t hear me.

The cat says nothing. She restricts herself to staring at me with a look that appears to conceal another behind it, a  double look. My neighbor breaks the silence. “I don’t believe it,” she says, shaking her head as if she has seen a miracle, “it’s the first time she has behaved like this with someone she doesn’t know.  She’s usually hostile. She doesn’t let anyone come near her, much less pick her up.”

I return the cat to the floor, from where she continues staring at me. It is as if she wants to be sure I got the message. But what message? What is she trying to tell me?

“Would you like coffee?” asks the woman, suddenly friendly.

I agree and she invites me in, still expressing her amazement, in a jumbled monologue, at the pussycat’s extraordinary behavior. It’s obvious she’s only just moved in, because the passage to the living room is a real obstacle course: crates, bags, and filing cabinets block the corridor and  spill into corners. She invites me to sit down on a narrow sofa in front of a table improvised from a  closet door and a few bricks.

“I’m going to make coffee and take a shower. Make yourself comfortable.”

I try to obey her, but it’s hard to make yourself comfortable with a cat in front of you that won’t stop scrutinizing you with a disconcertingly fixed stare. She has a gaze that could trip up a trapeze artist; render sleepwalkers self-conscious; make a man ask himself why no woman has ever looked at him that way. I feel obligated to respond to her attention, but how? Meanwhile her owner is busying herself in the kitchen preparing the coffee. From the amount of noise she makes, it would have been less work to build a pyramid. In the end, just as I am considering venturing into the kitchen to enquire whether she might need assistance in undertaking such a complicated procedure, I hear the water start to run in the shower. Her cat and I continue to study one another, without knowing what to say. I wonder whether the animal is absorbed in the same thoughts as I am, or if I am attributing a sensitivity and intelligence to her she doesn’t possess. After all, she’s only a cat. But why doesn’t she seem like that to me? Why do I have the uncomfortable feeling that for her being a cat is only an assumed role, a disguise?

I’m absorbed in these reflections when the girl reappears, wrapped in a yellow bathrobe, and carrying a little tray with two cups on it. As she walks over to the sofa, the garment intermittently opens, like the curtain of a puppet show, revealing a pair of soft pink thighs. I’d hardly be human if my pulse didn’t quicken when I notice that the only thing protecting the rest of her body is the precarious knot she fastened the bathrobe with, a knot that could so easily slip even in the hands of an idiot like me, useless at origami or cardiovascular surgery. Casually, she begins to serve the coffee, as though unaware of the sensuality exuded by her damp hair and the scent of soap on her skin, but I wasn’t born yesterday: I know she is setting a trap, that she is offering me my coffee with feigned insouciance, that she wants to rescue a bad day at the office and needs my help. As I take my cup I let her know she can count on me by giving her thigh a fleeting (and largely noncommittal) caress. We then launch into one of those banal and stupid conversations whose only aim is to pretend we are not animals, a preamble of words and smiles intended to civilize the imminent meeting of flesh. I think doves fluff up their crops.  We, the guardians of Creation, are more refined. With calculated disinterest, our bodies gradually gravitate toward each other, invading one another’s space, clearly extending an invitation. I guess she is trying not to think of something else. To forget about that bastard boss of hers. Or how she will ask me to leave when all this is over. For my part, I’m attempting not to think about Virginia. Yet, in truth, what the two of us should have been thinking about is the cat.

It all happens incredibly fast. When our lips collide, we hear a terrifying screech. Next comes a flash of white lightning, almost too fast to see. Before I can comprehend what has happened, the girl pulls away from me, howling with pain, covering her cheek with her hand. From between her splayed fingers spouts a torrent of blood. She flees to the bathroom and presses a towel to the claw marks scoring her cheek. I follow her, dumbfounded. Despite the impressive amount of blood, happily the wound does not appear to be too deep. The girl and the cat stare at each other, sizing each other up.

From that moment on I have a cat. The girl gave her to me, more or less. “Take this monster out of my home,” she ordered, “or I won’t be responsible for my actions.” I opened the door and beckoned to the cat. The pussycat did not even hesitate, but followed me straight to my apartment.

Now I spend most of the day in front of the television, with the cat curled up in a ball on my lap. Sometimes she licks my hands lovingly, and I absentmindedly stroke her hot, fluffy body. Most of the time, however, we simply stare at one another. We remain like this for hours on end. That’s when I think I asked the wrong questions. I should have asked her very different ones, like “Who are you?” or “Who is looking at me through your eyes?”

I don’t want to think in terms of reincarnation because I’ve never believed in that kind of thing, but sometimes, at about my third or fourth drink, I can’t resist opening the bedside drawer and once more unfolding the obituary I found in the newspaper the day after Virginia’s disappearance, and which I cut out without knowing why, perhaps prompted by the coincidence of name and age. Now, when I consider how the cat looks at me when I reread it, an absurd suspicion overwhelms me. Perhaps the name is no coincidence. Perhaps, after all, Virginia died on her way home, hit by a car or felled by a heart attack. The way it happened isn’t important. What’s important is that, as she said, having met me, she would never leave me.    


© F
élix J. Palma. First published as “Maullidos” in El Menor Espace, March 30, 2010. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2012  by Amanda Hopkinson and Nick Caistor. All rights reserved.

English Spanish (Original)

To Juan Bonilla, who endured the first part of this story

I can’t see it from the terrace, so I don’t know how big it is, or what color. The only thing I know is that every night, perched up on the roof, it wails my name at the moon. I’m no cat expert, but I think it has to be in heat; it sounds like a heartbroken child.  I might even say it’s terrifying.  It reminds me of the screams of those pale creatures  locked in basements in horror films. And I’m increasingly convinced she’s meowing my name.

Naturally, I’d love a second opinion. Someone I could ask: “Hey, listen, don’t you think that cat is meowing my name?” But Virginia left me two months ago, before the meowing began, as stealthily as she had come into my life. On a day like any other, she set off to buy lettuce to restock my denuded fridge and never returned, even though that very same morning, her body entwined with mine, she had assured me that now that she had found me, she would never leave. After her flight, I regretted that the two months of passion we had spent shut up in my apartment, far from the outside world, had left nothing more useful than happiness: no phone number, or address, or surname to complement the first name that, once she had disappeared, I found myself compulsively murmuring at all hours of the day, like a spell that no longer conjured her up. But that was how she had wanted it: two naked souls, stripped of their everyday identities and impurities, each one yearning for the other. She wanted her body, her greenish eyes, her damp hair, to be enough for me, that I should know nothing at all about her when we weren’t together. She wanted a love apart from the world, outside even of time, free from the binds of circumstance, a love composed solely of flesh and blood and electric skin. There would be time later for all the rest, all of the stuff that would render us worldly and wise and other. For the stuff that would probably destroy us. And I accepted her conditions, which revealed her to me as she wished to be seen: a wood sprite, an elfin being, the last throwback to a mythic lineage garlanded with fairies, fauns and elves, and about whom the only thing I needed to know was that she loved me like nobody else ever had or ever would. Although, if I had suspected that one fine day she would simply vanish, I’d have asked for every detail down to the address of her dentist. That way, I could have sought her in more accessible and likely places than in an enchanted wood.

Virginia, the woman who vowed she would never leave me, disappeared on an afternoon like any other some two months ago. Ever since, I have been unable to sleep at night. Darkness descends on the city and from my bed I watch the world, which at those small hours only emits the creaks of a drifting ship: the snorting fridge; the metallic belch of the  elevator secretly running through the building’s depths, a solitary car horn in the distance, like the lament of a dying man. I listen to it all scrupulously, but above all I listen for the cat, the only living thing that, apart from me, seems to be awake in this corner of the universe. Had I been called Evaristo, Froilan, or Salustiano, perhaps things would have been easier. Names like these are impossible for cats to pronounce. But I am called Juan, like my father, like my grandfather, like the fictitious Don Juan Tenorio. And the cat seems to be aware of this, for every night, with startling punctuality, she turns up on the roof and desperately, painfully, calls to me. She calls me like someone calling her lover.

I don’t want to think like this because it may be the first step toward losing my mind, but the truth is I can’t help it. I spend the whole day obsessed, waiting for nightfall, when I can have another chance to prove that I’m mistaken, that I’m not mad, and that the cat is not calling my name. Yet every time I hear more clearly that she is meowing my name: Juan, Juan . . . Tirelessly, yearningly.

I’m the only Juan in the building. I’ve checked the mailboxes. There are dozens of Antonios, numerous Pedros and Luises, even a Froilan, but no Juan. If that cat is calling to anyone, it has to be me. I’m the one she’s looking for. There’s no other possibility. The fourth time I hear her, fearing she’s turning me into an  insomniac, I decide to act. I knock on some of the doors. It seems no one hears a cat meowing desperately in the night. But this might be because I am the only occupant on the top floor. In the end, someone gave me a clue: maybe she belonged to our new neighbor, the girl who had just moved into the building. Ever since Virginia left me, I have turned my back to the world, so I was not surprised to discover we had a new neighbor of whom I knew nothing. In the state of self-absorption in which I find myself, I’d only have noticed her arrival if they had dragged a grand piano up the stairs for her. But the new neighbor arrived without musical accompaniment, muffled in the insulation of a tight silence. And from the terrace I assumed was hers, no cat would have had trouble reaching the roof. I could have done it myself. I think there can be little doubt about who the little pussycat who ruins my nights belongs to.

I resolve to end my ordeal and ring her doorbell in the middle of the afternoon. I can’t decide whether the woman who answers is beautiful or not, but she seems appealing enough. Thin, not too tall, one of those who would go to her grave with a smile.  Based on her clothes—a tight cropped top that exposes her pierced navel—and the sweat beading under her arms I deduce that I’ve interrupted a workout. Perhaps she was running on a machine or doing sit-ups on one of those contraptions you can store folded up beneath the bed, where a chamber pot used to be kept. I’ve always admired the kind of girl who can set aside a few hours a day to sculpt her body, possibly because I count myself among those who leave their shapes to chance and the wind. But I know nothing could possibly happen between us because we’re condemned to get off on the wrong foot. With perfect manners I enquire whether she has a cat. A female cat, she specifies. With even more refined manners I propose that she stick a ballpoint up the cat’s rectum, because I’m completely fed up with hearing her meow every night. But it goes without saying that we don’t live in a world where we can freely express ourselves. The woman’s smile vanishes, and she stares at me as if I had just dropped squid guts onto her trousseau. The dark circles under my eyes don’t seem to move her. With superlative manners she informs me that, despite the fact she would be more than willing to introduce a ballpoint—or any similar sharp object—into my rectum, she has not the least intention of doing so to her cat’s. Earplugs are available from any pharmacy, she concludes, beginning to shut the door.

That was when the pussycat appeared. And that changes everything. What can I possibly say? The sight of her moved me greatly. She’s a white cat, of such a delicious whiteness that I can’t help thinking that someone extremely skilled made her out of a snowball. She is neither plump nor emaciated, with a light, flexible body. And her eyes are of an indefinable green verging on yellow. But what surprises me most is the way she behaves. The cat stands stock-still in the kitchen doorway and studies me with a mixture of mistrust and rapture. Finally she overcomes her paralysis and advances slowly toward me with measured steps, as if I were some apparition that could vanish at any moment. Then, when she reaches me, she rubs against my legs with such sincere affection I become uncomfortable. Her rhythmic and ecstatic rubbing provokes a vague quiver of excitement. I pick her up and look into her eyes.

“Why do you call to me? What do you know about me?” I ask in a whisper so the woman won’t hear me.

The cat says nothing. She restricts herself to staring at me with a look that appears to conceal another behind it, a  double look. My neighbor breaks the silence. “I don’t believe it,” she says, shaking her head as if she has seen a miracle, “it’s the first time she has behaved like this with someone she doesn’t know.  She’s usually hostile. She doesn’t let anyone come near her, much less pick her up.”

I return the cat to the floor, from where she continues staring at me. It is as if she wants to be sure I got the message. But what message? What is she trying to tell me?

“Would you like coffee?” asks the woman, suddenly friendly.

I agree and she invites me in, still expressing her amazement, in a jumbled monologue, at the pussycat’s extraordinary behavior. It’s obvious she’s only just moved in, because the passage to the living room is a real obstacle course: crates, bags, and filing cabinets block the corridor and  spill into corners. She invites me to sit down on a narrow sofa in front of a table improvised from a  closet door and a few bricks.

“I’m going to make coffee and take a shower. Make yourself comfortable.”

I try to obey her, but it’s hard to make yourself comfortable with a cat in front of you that won’t stop scrutinizing you with a disconcertingly fixed stare. She has a gaze that could trip up a trapeze artist; render sleepwalkers self-conscious; make a man ask himself why no woman has ever looked at him that way. I feel obligated to respond to her attention, but how? Meanwhile her owner is busying herself in the kitchen preparing the coffee. From the amount of noise she makes, it would have been less work to build a pyramid. In the end, just as I am considering venturing into the kitchen to enquire whether she might need assistance in undertaking such a complicated procedure, I hear the water start to run in the shower. Her cat and I continue to study one another, without knowing what to say. I wonder whether the animal is absorbed in the same thoughts as I am, or if I am attributing a sensitivity and intelligence to her she doesn’t possess. After all, she’s only a cat. But why doesn’t she seem like that to me? Why do I have the uncomfortable feeling that for her being a cat is only an assumed role, a disguise?

I’m absorbed in these reflections when the girl reappears, wrapped in a yellow bathrobe, and carrying a little tray with two cups on it. As she walks over to the sofa, the garment intermittently opens, like the curtain of a puppet show, revealing a pair of soft pink thighs. I’d hardly be human if my pulse didn’t quicken when I notice that the only thing protecting the rest of her body is the precarious knot she fastened the bathrobe with, a knot that could so easily slip even in the hands of an idiot like me, useless at origami or cardiovascular surgery. Casually, she begins to serve the coffee, as though unaware of the sensuality exuded by her damp hair and the scent of soap on her skin, but I wasn’t born yesterday: I know she is setting a trap, that she is offering me my coffee with feigned insouciance, that she wants to rescue a bad day at the office and needs my help. As I take my cup I let her know she can count on me by giving her thigh a fleeting (and largely noncommittal) caress. We then launch into one of those banal and stupid conversations whose only aim is to pretend we are not animals, a preamble of words and smiles intended to civilize the imminent meeting of flesh. I think doves fluff up their crops.  We, the guardians of Creation, are more refined. With calculated disinterest, our bodies gradually gravitate toward each other, invading one another’s space, clearly extending an invitation. I guess she is trying not to think of something else. To forget about that bastard boss of hers. Or how she will ask me to leave when all this is over. For my part, I’m attempting not to think about Virginia. Yet, in truth, what the two of us should have been thinking about is the cat.

It all happens incredibly fast. When our lips collide, we hear a terrifying screech. Next comes a flash of white lightning, almost too fast to see. Before I can comprehend what has happened, the girl pulls away from me, howling with pain, covering her cheek with her hand. From between her splayed fingers spouts a torrent of blood. She flees to the bathroom and presses a towel to the claw marks scoring her cheek. I follow her, dumbfounded. Despite the impressive amount of blood, happily the wound does not appear to be too deep. The girl and the cat stare at each other, sizing each other up.

From that moment on I have a cat. The girl gave her to me, more or less. “Take this monster out of my home,” she ordered, “or I won’t be responsible for my actions.” I opened the door and beckoned to the cat. The pussycat did not even hesitate, but followed me straight to my apartment.

Now I spend most of the day in front of the television, with the cat curled up in a ball on my lap. Sometimes she licks my hands lovingly, and I absentmindedly stroke her hot, fluffy body. Most of the time, however, we simply stare at one another. We remain like this for hours on end. That’s when I think I asked the wrong questions. I should have asked her very different ones, like “Who are you?” or “Who is looking at me through your eyes?”

I don’t want to think in terms of reincarnation because I’ve never believed in that kind of thing, but sometimes, at about my third or fourth drink, I can’t resist opening the bedside drawer and once more unfolding the obituary I found in the newspaper the day after Virginia’s disappearance, and which I cut out without knowing why, perhaps prompted by the coincidence of name and age. Now, when I consider how the cat looks at me when I reread it, an absurd suspicion overwhelms me. Perhaps the name is no coincidence. Perhaps, after all, Virginia died on her way home, hit by a car or felled by a heart attack. The way it happened isn’t important. What’s important is that, as she said, having met me, she would never leave me.    


© F
élix J. Palma. First published as “Maullidos” in El Menor Espace, March 30, 2010. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2012  by Amanda Hopkinson and Nick Caistor. All rights reserved.

Maullidos

DESDE LA TERRAZA NO PUEDO VERLO, así que no sé qué tamaño tiene, ni de qué color es. Lo único que sé es que cada noche, encaramado al tejado, maúlla mi nombre a la luna. No soy ningún experto en gatos, pero creo que debe de estar en celo porque emite esos maullidos desconsolados tan parecidos a los sollozos de los niños pequeños. Bien mirado, podría decirse que suena incluso aterrador. Al oírlo, no puedo evitar pensar en el lamento de esos seres pálidos que, en las películas de terror, siempre encierran en los sótanos. Y cada vez estoy más convencido de que maúlla mi nombre.

Me gustaría tener una segunda opinión, claro. Alguien a quien decirle: ¿Oyes, ese gato no está llamándome? Pero Virginia me abandonó hace casi dos meses, antes de que comenzaran los maullidos, con el mismo sigilo con el que apareció en mi vida. Un día cualquiera, salió a comprar sus lechugas para repoblar mi deforestada nevera y ya no volvió, pese a que esa misma mañana,con su cuerpo trenzado al mío, me había asegurado que ahora que me había encontrado jamás me abandonaría. Tras su huida, lamenté que los dos meses de pasión que habíamos pasado encerrados en mi apartamento, ajenos al mundo exterior, no hubiesen dejado algo más útil que la felicidad, como un número de teléfono, una dirección, o unos apellidos que sumar al nombre que, una vez desapareció, me apliqué a balbucir a cada hora como un hechizo que ya no la invocaba. Pero ella había planteado así las cosas: dos almas desnudas, cepilladas de identidades e impurezas cotidianas, ardiendo la una en la otra. Quería que me bastase únicamente con su cuerpo, con sus ojos verdosos, con su cabello mojado, que nada supiera yo de lo que ella era cuando no estaba conmigo. Quería un amor fuera del mundo, incluso del tiempo, liberado de la costra de las circunstancias, un amor sólo de carne y huesos y piel eléctrica. Ya habría tiempo para lo demás, para aquello que nos volvería mundanos, sabidos, otros. Para aquello que probablemente nos desbarataría. Y yo acepté aquellas condiciones, que no hicieron sino presentarla ante mis ojos como ella quería: un espíritu del bosque, una criatura feérica, último pespunte de un linaje mítico jalonado de hadas, faunos y elfos, y de la que lo único que debía saber era que me amaba como nadie me había amado nunca y como nadie lo haría jamás. Aunque de haber sospechado que un buen día desaparecería, le hubiese exigido hasta la dirección de su dentista. Así podría ir a buscarla a algún sitio más fácil de encontrar que un bosque encantado.

Virginia, la mujer que nunca me dejaría, se fue una tarde cualquiera de hace dos meses. Y desde que se fue no logro dormir por las noches. La oscuridad se estira sobre la ciudad, y yo, desde mi cama, vigilo el mundo, que a esas horas sólo emite crujidos de navío a la deriva: el bufi do eléctrico del frigorífi co, el eructo metálico del ascensor recorriendo clandestinamente las entrañas del edifi cio, un claxon solitario, lejano, como el lamento de un moribundo. Escucho todo eso con suma atención, pero, sobre todo, escucho al gato, el único ser vivo que, aparte de mí, parece estar despierto a este lado del universo. Tal vez si me llamase Evaristo, Froilán o Salustiano las cosas serían más fáciles. Es prácticamente imposible que un gato pueda maullar esos nombres. Pero me llamo Juan, como mi padre, como mi abuelo, como el Tenorio. Y el gato parece saberlo porque todas las noches, con asombrosa puntualidad, acude al tejado y me llama con desesperación, con dolor. Me llama como quien llama a su amor.

No quiero pensar estas cosas porque temo que sean el primer paso para perder la cordura, pero lo cierto es que no puedo evitarlo. Paso todo el día obsesionado con ello, aguardando a que llegue la noche y poder disponer entonces de otra oportunidad para comprobar que en realidad estoy equivocado, que no estoy loco, que el maldito gato no me llama a mí. Pero cada vez percibo con mayor nitidez que es mi nombre lo que maúlla: Juan, Juan… Incansable, esperanzado.

Soy el único Juan que vive en el edifi cio. Lo he comprobado mirando los buzones. Hay docenas de Antonios, algunos Pedros y Luises, incluso un Froilán, pero ningún Juan. Si el gato llama a alguien, me llama a mí. Yo soy a quien busca. No hay vuelta de hoja. Al cuarto día de escucharlo, temiendo que el gato me genere un insomnio crónico, decido actuar. Llamo a algunas puertas, investigo. Al parecer, nadie oye a ningún gato maullando desesperadamente por las noches. Pero eso puede deberse a que soy el único vecino que vive en la última planta. Al fi n, alguien me ofrece una pista: tal vez sea el gato de la nueva vecina, la muchacha que acaba de mudarse al edifi cio. Desde que Virginia me dejó, he vivido de espaldas al mundo, por lo que no me sorprende que tengamos un nuevo vecino y yo no lo sepa. En el estado de pura introspección en el que me hallo sumido sólo habría reparado en su llegada si hubiesen tenido que subirle un piano de cola por las escaleras. Pero la nueva vecina ha llegado sin la banda de música, envuelta en la felpa de un silencio apretado. Y desde su supuesta terraza, un gato no lo tendría excesivamente difícil para alcanzar el tejado. Hasta yo podría hacerlo. Creo que no hay dudas de a quién pertenece el minino que arruina mis noches.

Resuelto a poner fi n a mi calvario, llamo a su puerta a media tarde. No logro decidir si la mujer que me abre es o no hermosa, pero parece agradable de acariciar. Delgada, no muy alta, de esas que sonríen hasta en los entierros. Por su indumentaria–una camiseta ceñida y corta que me permite ver el piercing que le adorna el ombligo–y las amapolas de sudor que han germinado en sus axilas deduzco que la he sorprendido en mitad de sus ejercicios. Tal vez estuviese corriendo en una cinta o haciendo abdominales en uno de esos aparatos de gimnasia que pueden guardarse plegados debajo de la cama, donde antes se escondía el orinal. Siempre he admirado a las chicas capaces de rebañar unas horas al día para esculpirse a sí mismas, quizá porque yo soy de los que, sencillamente, se dejan erosionar por el viento. Pero sé que entre ella y yo jamás ocurrirá nada porque estamos condenados a empezar con mal pie. Con suma educación, le pregunto si tiene gato. Gata, especifi ca ella. Con más educación aún le sugiero que le introduzca un bolígrafo por el recto porque estoy harto de oírla maullar todas las noches. Pero está visto que vivimos en un mundo donde uno no puede expresarse libremente. La mujer pierde la sonrisa y me contempla como si acabara de arrojar un calamar destripado sobre su ajuar. Mis ojeras no parecen conmoverla. Con suma educación me explica que, a pesar de que de buena gana introduciría un bolígrafo o cualquier otro objeto igual de punzante en mi recto, no piensa hacerlo en el de su gata. Venden tapones para los oídos en cualquier farmacia, concluye, haciendo amago de cerrar la puerta.

Entonces aparece el minino. Y eso lo cambia todo. ¿Qué puedo decir? Su aspecto me conmueve. Se trata de una gata blanca, de una blancura tan deliciosa que no puedo evitar pensar que alguien extremadamente habilidoso la ha creado a partir de una bola de nieve. No está gorda ni famélica, posee un cuerpo fl exible, ligero. Y sus ojos son de un verde indeciso que se mece hacia el amarillo. Pero lo que realmente me sorprende es su comportamiento. La gata permanece inmóvil junto a la puerta de la cocina, desde donde me estudia con una mezcla de desconfi anza y arrobo. Finalmente se decide a vencer su parálisis y avanza hacia mí lentamente, midiendo cada paso, como si yo fuese alguna aparición capaz de deshacerse en cualquier momento. Entonces, al llegar a mí, se frota contra mis pantalones con un cariño tan sincero que me incomoda. Su roce minucioso y arrebatado logra provocarme una vaga sacudida de excitación. La tomo del suelo y le miro a los ojos.

–¿Por qué me llamas? ¿Qué sabes de mí? –le pregunto en un susurro, intentando que la mujer no me oiga.

La gata no dice nada. Se limita a contemplarme con esa mirada que parece tener un doble fondo, esconder otra mirada debajo. Quien sí rompe el silencio es la muchacha.

–No puedo creerlo –dice, agitando la cabeza como si presenciara un milagro–, es la primera vez que se comporta así con un desconocido. Habitualmente es bastante huraña. No deja que nadie se le acerque, y mucho menos que la coja.

La devuelvo al suelo, y la gata continúa mirándome con fi jeza. Es como si quisiera confi rmar que he captado el mensaje. ¿Pero qué mensaje? ¿Qué intenta decirme?

–¿Le apetece un café? –pregunta la mujer, repentinamente amable.

Asiento y me invita a franquear su piso, mientras continúa manifestando su extrañeza ante la insólita conducta del minino en una suerte de soliloquio incomprensible. Es cierto que acaba de mudarse, pues la ruta hacia el salón se convierte en una auténtica carrera de obstáculos: cajas, bolsas y archivadores atestan el pasillo y se remansan en las esquinas. Me invita a sentarme en un estrecho sofá ante el que se alza una mesa improvisada con la puerta de un armario y unos cuantos ladrillos.

–Voy a preparar el café y aprovechar para darme una ducha –anuncia, desapareciendo hacia la cocina–. Ponte cómodo.

Intento obedecerla, pero es difícil ponerse cómodo cuando uno tiene delante una gata que no deja de escrutarlo con inquietante fi jeza. Posee una mirada capaz de desconcentrar a los trapecistas, de hacer que los sonámbulos se sientan observados, de lograr que un hombre como yo se pregunte por qué jamás ninguna mujer lo ha mirado nunca de ese modo. Me siento en el deber de corresponder a sus atenciones, pero cómo. Su dueña, entretanto, trastea en la cocina. Por la cantidad de sonidos que produce parece que preparar un café es una tarea semejante a la construcción de una pirámide. Al fi n, cuando comienzo a barajar la posibilidad de aventurarme en la cocina por si necesita asistencia en tan complicada labor, oigo correr el agua de la ducha. Su gata y yo continuamos observándonos, sin saber qué decirnos. Me pregunto si el animal está inmerso en las mismas cábalas que yo, o le estoy otorgando una sensibilidad y una inteligencia que no posee. Bien mirado, no es más que un gato. ¿Pero por qué no me lo parece? ¿Por qué tengo la incómoda sensación de que para ella ser gato es sólo un papel eventual, algo así como un disfraz?

En esas refl exiones ando ocupado cuando la muchacha reaparece, envuelta en un albornoz amarillo y portando una bandejita con dos tazas. Al caminar hacia el sofá, la prenda muestra de manera intermitente, descorriéndose como el telón de un guiñol, un juego de muslos suaves y rosados. No sería humano si el pulso no se me alterase al constatar que lo único que salvaguarda el resto de su cuerpo es el precario nudo con el que se ha atado el albornoz, un nudo fácil de deshacer hasta para un tipo como yo, incapacitado para la papirofl exia o la cirugía cardiovascular. Comienza a servir el café con naturalidad, como si ignorase la sensualidad que desprende su cabello húmedo y el olor a jabón de su piel, pero yo no nací ayer: sé que me está tendiendo una emboscada, que se me está ofreciendo con falso descuido, que quiere salvar un mal día en la ofi cina y necesita mi colaboración. Le doy a entender que puede contar conmigo esgrimiendo una caricia fugaz y poco comprometedora sobre su muslo al tomar mi taza. Iniciamos entonces una de esas conversaciones banales y estúpidas cuyo único fi n es fi ngir que no somos animales, un preámbulo de palabras y risas destinado a civilizar el inminente encuentro de la carne. Creo que los palomos hinchan el buche. Nosotros, los guardeses de la Creación, somos más refi nados. Con calculada despreocupación nuestros cuerpos van orientándose el uno hacia el otro, invadiendo el terreno vecino, brindándose con claridad. Supongo que ella se esfuerza en no pensar en otra cosa. En olvidarse del cabrón de su jefe. O en las palabras que usará para pedirme que me vaya cuando esto concluya. Yo, por mi parte, intento no pensar en Virginia. Pero, en realidad, de quien jamás debimos olvidarnos es de la gata.

Todo sucede increíblemente rápido. Un maullido espantoso nos sobrecoge cuando nuestros labios colisionan. Lo siguiente es un relámpago de blancor apenas entrevisto. Antes de que pueda comprender qué ha ocurrido, la muchacha se aparta de mí aullando de dolor, cubriéndose la mejilla con la mano. Entre la presa de los dedos se fi ltra un torrente de sangre. Huye al baño y se tapona con una toalla los arañazos que le marcan la mejilla. Yo la sigo, aturdido. Pese a lo aparatoso de la sangre, afortunadamente no parece una herida demasiado profunda. La muchacha y la gata se miran, midiéndose.

Desde entonces, tengo gata. La muchacha me la regaló, más o menos. Saca a ese monstruo de mi casa, ordenó, o no respondo. Yo abrí la puerta del piso y le hice a la gata una señal para que me siguiera, dándole la oportunidad de elegir. El minino no se lo pensó y me siguió hasta mi apartamento. Ahora paso la mayor parte del día ante el televisor, con la gata ovillada en el regazo. A veces, ella me lame amorosamente las manos, o yo acaricio distraído su cuerpo caliente y esponjoso. Pero la mayor parte del tiempo nos limitamos a mirarnos. Permanecemos así durante horas. Es entonces cuando pienso que equivoqué las preguntas. Tendría que haberle formulado otras: ¿Quién eres? ¿Quién me mira a través de tus ojos?

No quiero pensar en la palabra «reencarnación» porque nunca he creído en ese tipo de cosas, pero, a veces, alrededor de la tercera o cuarta copa, no puedo evitar abrir el cajón de la mesilla y desplegar de nuevo ante mis ojos la esquela que encontré en el periódico al día siguiente de la fuga de Virginia, y que recorté sin saber por qué, movido quizá por la coincidencia del nombre y de la edad. Ahora, cuando contemplo cómo me mira la gata al leer la esquela, me asalta una sospecha delirante. Tal vez el nombre no sea una casualidad. Tal vez, después de todo, Virginia muriese mientras regresaba a casa, atropellada por un coche o traicionada por su corazón. La manera no importa. Lo importante es que, como dijo, jamás iba a abandonarme ahora que me había encontrado.

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