The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [7]
When she reaches the rear entrance of the Jaragua, a wide, barred gate for cars, stewards, cooks, chambermaids, porters, she doesn’t stop. Where are you going? She hasn’t made any decision. Her mind, concentrating on her girlhood, her school, the Sundays when she would go with her Aunt Adelina and her cousins to the children’s matinee at the Cine Elite, hasn’t even considered the possibility of not going into the hotel to shower and have breakfast. Her feet have decided to continue. She walks unhesitatingly, certain of the route, among pedestrians and cars impatient for the light to change. Are you sure you want to go where you’re going, Urania? Now you know that you’ll go, even though you may regret it.
She turns left onto Cervantes and walks toward Bolívar, recognizing as if in a dream the one- and two-story chalets with fences and gardens, open terraces and garages, which awaken in her a familiar feeling, these deteriorating images that have been preserved, somewhat faded, chipped along the edges, made ugly with additions and patchwork, small rooms built on flat roofs or assembled at the sides, in the middle of the gardens, to house offspring who marry and cannot live on their own and come home to add to the families, demanding more space. She passes laundries, pharmacies, florist shops, cafeterias, plaques for dentists, doctors, accountants, and lawyers. On Avenida Bolívar she walks as if she were trying to overtake someone, as if she were about to break into a run. Her heart is in her mouth. You’ll collapse at any moment. When she reaches Rosa Duarte she veers left and begins to run. But the effort is too much and she walks again, more slowly now, very close to the off-white wall of a house in case she becomes dizzy again and has to lean on something until she catches her breath. Except for a ridiculously narrow four-story building where the house with the spiked fence used to be, the house that belonged to Dr. Estanislas, who took out her tonsils, nothing has changed; she would even swear that the maids sweeping the gardens and the fronts of the houses are going to greet her: “Hello, Uranita. How are you, honey? Girl, how you’ve grown. Mother of God, where are you off to in such a hurry?”
The house hasn’t changed too much either, though she recalled the gray of its walls as intense and now it’s dull, stained, peeling. The garden is a thicket of weeds, dead leaves, withered grass. Nobody has watered or pruned it in years. There’s the mango. Was that the flamboyán? It must have been, when it had leaves and flowers; now, it’s a trunk with bare, rachitic branches.
She leans against the wrought-iron gate that opens to the garden. The flagstone path has weeds growing through the cracks and is stained by mildew, and at the entrance to the terrace there is a defeated chair with a broken leg. The yellow cretonne-covered furniture is gone. And the little polished glass lamp in the corner that lit the terrace and attracted butterflies during the day and buzzing insects at night. The little balcony off her bedroom no longer is covered by mauve heartsease: it is a cement projection stained with rust.
At the back of the terrace, a door opens with a long groan. A woman in a white uniform stares at her curiously.
“Are you looking for someone?”
Urania cannot speak; she is too agitated, too shaken, too frightened. She remains mute, looking at the stranger.
“Can I help you?” the woman asks.
“I’m Urania,” she says at last. “Agustín Cabral’s daughter.”
2
He woke, paralyzed by a sense of catastrophe. He blinked in the dark, immobilized,