A Dream Come True by Juan Carlos Onetti

Author:Juan Carlos Onetti [Onetti, Juan Carlos]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2019-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

IV

Life had always been difficult and beautiful, irreplaceable, and Prince Orsini didn’t have the five hundred pesos. He’d met the woman, sensed an adjective to define her precisely and carry her into the past; now he started to think about the man whom the woman represented and concealed, about the Turk who’d accepted the challenge. So he took a vacation from apathy and joy, and at nightfall, after lying to the champion, checking his mood and his pulse, he began to walk toward the grocery store of Porfilio Hermanos, the yellow album under his arm.

First, the rotting ombú tree, then the streetlamp hanging from the tree and its daunted circle of light. Then the barking dogs and the corresponding shouts: get out, shush, shoo. Orsini crossed the first light, was able to see the round, watery moon. He reached the sign for the store and entered respectfully. A man wearing baggy bombacha pants and espadrilles was finishing up his gin at the counter and saying goodbye. They were left alone: he, Prince Orsini, the Turk, and the woman.

“Good evening, young lady,” Orsini said, smiling and taking a bow. The woman was sitting in a wicker armchair, knitting; she looked up at him from the needles, nodded, and she might have smiled. A baby blanket, Orsini thought, incensed. She’s pregnant, knitting the layette, that’s why she wants to get married, that’s why she wants to steal five hundred pesos.

He made a beeline to the man, who had paused from filling paper bags with tea and was waiting for him, stupidly, behind the counter.

“This is the man I told you about,” the woman said, “the impresario.”

“Impresario and friend,” Orsini said, correcting her. “After so many years…”

He shook the man’s open and rigid hand and reached his left arm forward to pat him on the back.

“At your service,” the storekeeper said, and lifted his thick black mustache to show him his teeth.

“My pleasure, my pleasure,” but he had already breathed in the faint and acrid smell of defeat, had already calculated the Turk’s unworn youth, the perfection with which his hundred kilos were distributed around his body. There’s not a gram of excess fat, or a gram of intelligence or sensitivity; there’s no hope. Three minutes; poor Jacob van Oppen.

“I came about those five hundred pesos,” Orsini began, getting a feel for the density of the air, the shabbiness of the light, the couple’s hostility. They’re not against me; they’re against life. “I came to reassure you; tomorrow, as soon as I receive the wire from the Capital, the money will be deposited at El Liberal. But I also wanted to talk about a few other things.”

“Didn’t we already talk about everything?” the woman asked. She was too small for the rickety wicker chair; the shiny knitting needles were too long. She could be good or evil; now she had chosen to be implacable, overcome some long and dark deferral, exact her revenge. Under the light of the lamp, the outline of her nose was perfect and her light eyes sparkled like glass.

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