Delirium by Laura Restrepo Read Free Book Online

brings back shreds of the tranquillity that was lost to Portulinus somewhere between Kaub and Sasaima, cities that would have little or nothing to do with each other were it not for the imaginary line that Portulinus has traced between them. For Portulinus, a man who knows alchemy and loves kabbalistic riddles, two is a number that makes it possible for him to shield himself, at least at the instant Blanca utters it, from the unbearable duality that interposes itself like a void between the sky and the earth, the beginning and the end, the male and the female, the tree and its shade, his love for his wife, Blanca, and his urgent need to escape her control.
    What a burden you’ve become, Blanquita, Portulinus tells his wife, how fat and earthbound, while I fly over your head, light and unfettered, and comprehend the symmetry of crystals, the pathways of the blood, numbers and their analogies, the march of the constellations, the stages of life. Suddenly he sees her with new eyes, one the eye of compassion and the other the eye of scorn. How small and fat you look to me down there, my little Lard Ball, and how limited in your understanding, he says to his wife, who not only is naturally thin but has lost several pounds since his cosmic forays became frequent, forays leading her to oscillate painfully between the impulse to send him to a home for the mentally ill and the suspicion that Portulinus does in fact understand, that he understands better than anyone the framework of the constellations, the music of the spheres, the mysteries of numbers, and the unfolding of crystals.
    Apparently this restlessness of his, the restlessness of a pining German, was related to a yearning to soar that drove him into a rage when it was frustrated, and that explains many of his attacks on Blanca, which were abandoned as quickly as they were launched, leaving him sunk again in the love bordering on idolatry that had tied him to her, and to her land, for more than two decades. You and me, Blanquita darling? The two of us?, he then would insist again, knowing that the only thing that could protect him from the onslaught of recklessness and the vertigo of flight was that number, the number two, which restored to him the rhythms of night and day and came as a refuge and a last chance, as absolution and the hope of a reunion between you, Blanca my love, life raft of my salvation, and me, Nicholas Portulinus, a castaway in the stormy waters of this deep unease.

    RECONSTRUCTING THE HOURS preceding my trip to Ibagué, I remember that despite Agustina’s annoyance at having been excluded from the excursion, she offered to help me prepare for it. Have you packed yet?, Yes, I’ve packed, Let me see, and against my will I showed her the suitcase where I’d put the few things I’d need, my bathing trunks and a novel by José Saramago. That’s all? She threw up her hands, of course, and added pajamas, four T-shirts, my toothbrush, toothpaste, the flask of Roger & Gallet that she gives me for all my birthdays and that, according to her, is the cologne her father always used, the beeper in case she has to send me some urgent message, Not the beeper, Agustina, there’s no service outside the city, All right, she agreed, not the beeper, but instead she slipped in a cap and several pairs of underwear, first labeling each item with the word
Aguilar
in big rounded letters, because one of her personal obsessions is that she labels everything we own, books, radios, rackets, suitcases, or overcoats, as if by stamping our name on things she were seeking to control them or make it clear that they must remain in their assigned places because, as people say, things have lives of their own. But Agustina, I protested, I’m not a schoolboy, and besides, who would ever steal the old rags I’m bringing with me, What do you mean who?, she teased, pulling my outdated trunks over her tight jeans, This little checkered number is to die for, with its triple-elastic