álvaro came back one morning in mid-September, but for weeks it was as if he hadn’t really returned at all. It was like jet lag, as if his essence had been left in some remote place and only the empty shell of a soul without breath or pulse had come back home. Even so, Manuel embraced the body that was his homeland, kissed those sealed lips, closed his eyes, and silently expressed his gratitude.
No explanations or excuses. Not a single word was spoken of what had gone on during those five days. The first night, while they lay in close embrace, álvaro said, “Thanks for trusting me.” Those words barred any possibility of an explanation for why he’d subjected Manuel to that hell. Manuel accepted it the way living flesh accepts a caress. He was so grateful and relieved; to his shame he embraced that humiliation and felt the euphoria of a condemned man who’s just been pardoned. Remaining silent, he again gave thanks for the miracle that had calmed his terrible distress and the stomach cramps he’d suffered for days on end. Over the following weeks, that torment manifested itself as nausea every time the two were apart, a pathetic reminder with a horrible weight of panic. It lingered for months, and Manuel was unable to write a word during all that time.
Frequently he would regard álvaro in silence as they watched a film or when his husband was sleeping. He was looking for some trace of betrayal. A relationship with another human being leaves upon the skin an indelible mark that’s subtle but impossible to erase. Jealousy is primeval; writers have poured out rivers of ink describing it and the blindness of those afflicted. He devoted stolen moments to the search for some sign he knew would destroy his heart.
There were a few. álvaro was unhappy, deeply sad and unable to hide it. He began coming home earlier, and on a couple of occasions he delegated to Mei the job of presenting projects when they involved firms outside Madrid. He turned down Manuel’s suggestions of going out for a film or dinner with the excuse he was too tired. And Manuel accepted the excuses, because álvaro really did seem tired, beaten down almost, as if he were carrying a great weight on his shoulders or dealing with some terrible guilt.
The telephone calls began. Manuel had always picked up the phone without a thought, with the exception of mealtimes, intervals they’d always designated as private time. álvaro began leaving the room to answer the phone. This offense was offset somewhat by his obvious displeasure at receiving the calls, but the demon of doubt continued to torture Manuel. Sheer panic prevented him from sleeping on those nights.
In those bygone times Manuel had become paranoid and watched for the least sign that would unequivocally confirm infidelity. Obsessed, he analyzed álvaro’s every expression and gesture whenever they were together. álvaro’s emotional attachment had neither lessened nor increased; any such change Manuel would have found suspicious. Sometimes remorse is accompanied by an effort to compensate, so as to make amends for shame. Nothing of the kind occurred. On the few occasions that álvaro took trips, he never spent more than a single night away. Except for those times Manuel insisted that he take two nights, urging, “There’s no need for you to knock yourself out by driving such a distance. Stay another night and come back in the morning.”
And when álvaro was away, Manuel subjected himself to lengthy, exhausting walks that sometimes lasted all day. He intended them to overcome his desire to run after álvaro, to tail him and turn up unexpectedly in the distant city where his husband was staying. They helped reduce the desperation of his welcoming hug upon álvaro’s return, for sometimes Manuel was so driven by anxiety that his embrace of welcome was almost physically painful. To a casual observer everything would have appeared to be in its place, for their lives went on just as always. álvaro tried to smile, but when he managed to do so, his smile was faint and melancholy and weighted with a tenderness that encouraged Manuel to believe álvaro would stay, that behind that expression Manuel was finally seeing the man he loved. The mere thought would be enough to sustain Manuel for days.
Only one sign, a single new clue, mystified Manuel. Frequently after a return, Manuel would catch álvaro observing him, almost certainly aware he was reading without taking in a word or sitting at his desk pretending to write. álvaro would look at him and smile confidently with that smile of a clever little boy. When asked about it, álvaro would shake his head with a shy refusal to answer and then would embrace Manuel as fiercely as a shipwrecked sailor clinging to a floating timber. That ardent hug left no space between them, blocked any gap through which doubt might slip, and caused Manuel’s heart to skip a beat. Manuel wanted to take that sudden fervent embrace as assurance and relief, but he didn’t dare see it that way.
Emerging from pain requires determination. Calls from his editor had become more frequent, and his excuses of alleged pains, colds, and medical tests were no longer working. His conscience wouldn’t let him exaggerate them, so he couldn’t keep it up. The novel then in draft, to become a grand success in just a few months, would be his best yet. Reading had been his refuge throughout his life, from the time his sister and he had been orphaned as small children and continuing through the years they’d lived with an elderly aunt. When his sister reached the age of adulthood, she took charge and moved them into their parents’ house that had stood empty all those years. Reading was the fortress from which he could defend himself as he struggled in a losing campaign to control the exultant instincts of his sexuality. Reading was a defense, a shield his timidity could use to arm itself, a guide to seeking relationships.
But writing was infinitely more than that. Writing was an interior palace with secret sites, gorgeous places, a complex of unlimited spaces. He explored them, laughing, running barefoot, and stopping to touch the beautiful treasures stored there.
He finished his academic studies summa cum laude and was invited to lecture on Spanish history at a prestigious university in Madrid. Not once in all those years of preparation or in his brief teaching career did he feel the need to write. In order to write he would have had to embrace the immensity of grief.
There’s a type of open grief that’s public, one of tears and mourning; and there’s another, immense and silent, that is a million times more powerful. He was certain he’d experienced such open grief: his rejection of the injustice of losing his parents, all the miserable cold of childhood loneliness, the grim public mourning that marked him and his sister as bereaved and damaged, and all the fears that arose in his spirit and made him weep night after night in panic as he clung to his sister and made her promise she’d never abandon him, made her pledge that this suffering was the price they were paying to become invulnerable.
He knew that somehow they’d both embraced that belief. And their lives validated it as they grew up. Nothing bad could happen anymore, and they were blessed with bold happiness. Sometimes he imagined that time as the odyssey of the last remaining soldier, the heroic valor of being the last survivor. Somehow he’d managed to convince himself that the death of their parents had filled their quota of catastrophe, and somewhere there was a book that recorded the accumulated disasters and hurts until they reached a level that couldn’t be exceeded. But he’d been mistaken. When they were both adults, destiny struck him at his only vulnerable point.
One of those last afternoons in the hospital she told him, “You have to forgive me for failing you. I always thought you were my weakest point, and the only hurt that could destroy me would have to come from you. But now it turns out that I’m the one who’s failing you.”