ENDLESS ESCAPE

I suffer from loneliness, but I know of no remedy that can cure it. I was wandering through the streets of Almaty, defying the harsh Kazakh December, with no better option than spending Christmas alone in my room at the Kazakhstan Hotel, when chance—assuming such a thing exists—placed Pedro Rivero in my path. He was the head of human resources at the cosmetics company where I had worked until 2012. The very man who now embraced me effusively, so far from home, was the one who had informed me I was fired.

“Incredible! Running into each other in Kazakhstan,” Pedro said.

“Yes, quite a coincidence,” I replied, biting back my words.

“And who are you spending Christmas with?”

“With some Peruvian friends,” I lied. “I’m with them negotiating the sale of a nuclear reactor.” I kept lying; I’m a specialist in the field.

“No, my friend!” Pedro objected, gripping my arms with hands that felt like vices. I should mention that Pedro is the closest thing to a sumo wrestler one can imagine. At one hundred and sixty kilos, with the swagger of a BelAZ truck, he could crush a small car with a single punch. “You’ll spend the holiday with compatriots. Peruvians?” He made a gesture of disgust that irritated me deeply; I have several good Peruvian friends. But it wasn’t easy to break free from Pedro’s grip.

I could say he dragged me to his house amid displays of affection and promises of a gargantuan feast. What could I say? What could I argue? Explain the reasons for my presence in Almaty? Confess that for a week I had been chasing Irina Makarova—my wife for the last seven years—seeking an impossible reconciliation? All I had achieved was freezing to death. Money wasn’t the issue: I could stay in Kazakhstan indefinitely. But for what?

Pedro shoved me into a red Lada Granta, we drove along Gornaya to Dostyk Avenue, and stopped in front of a massive building.

“I live here,” Pedro said, pointing at the imposing structure.

We entered the enormous lobby and, after ascending no fewer than twenty floors, reached the apartment where my “friend” lived. Almost immediately, a crowd of children between three and twelve years old rushed toward us, shouting in Kazakh and Russian a torrent of complaints, demands, requests, and pleas that I was incapable of understanding.

“Even though I don’t know a single phrase in this country’s language,” I said, “I assume these children are clamoring for their Christmas presents.”

“Exactly,” Pedro replied laconically.

“Are they all yours?”

“No! Just Vania, that five-year-old boy, and the seven-year-old girl, Ludmila.”

I observed those two children in particular and ended up accepting that the proposal of a man I had always hated—bound to me only by forced coexistence at the same company back in Buenos Aires—had not been so absurd after all.

I was introduced to the crowd and soon found myself wrapped in a tangle of hugs and handshakes. My host’s wife’s family was large: a dozen adults and a corresponding number of children, all Kazakh, who spoke to me with disconcerting naturalness, to which I responded with lip movements meant to resemble smiles. Raisa, Pedro’s wife—a petite blonde woman with enormous blue eyes—hugged me with a sweetness that unsettled me.

“You promised I’d spend Christmas with compatriots,” I protested when we were briefly alone.

“We are,” Pedro said. “My two children were born in Buenos Aires, but we came to Kazakhstan when they were very young.”

“Does your wife speak our language?”

“Neither,” he said. After that blunt statement, Pedro turned his back on me and devoted himself to the relatives and friends present, leaving me alone and isolated.

The children were all very likable, and I noticed they weren’t much different from kids back home. Despite the early hour, they had already managed to destroy most of their gifts. I watched them openly, though it didn’t seem to bother them. Ludmila, Pedro’s daughter, particularly caught my attention. She was a dark-eyed, dark-haired girl like her father, who showed no interest in playing with the others. It was possible one of the adults had hit or offended her, although more than hurt she looked annoyed and distressed. From time to time she sighed in a way I had never seen in a child that age.

I stopped paying attention to her and focused instead on the boredom of being stuck in that house, surrounded by strangers. I thought again of Irina and regretted not having resisted Pedro Rivero’s insistence. By now I would be in the lobby of the Kazakhstan Hotel, online, chatting with friends. Just to do something, I wandered through the rooms, admiring the décor and furniture. Rivero seemed to have done well for himself; perhaps he was still in the cosmetics business, having climbed the ladder thanks to timely backstabbing.

Eventually my wandering led me to a room with an open door. Without restraint I noticed that inside, little Ludmila, wrapped in a blanket, seemed to want to isolate herself from the world. I approached carefully, trying not to frighten her, and although convinced she wouldn’t answer, I asked her in Spanish if she was angry. To my surprise, after removing the blanket and staring at me for a few seconds as if I were an alien, she answered in my language.

“I’m not angry. I’m fed up with human stupidity, with hypocrisy, clichés, conventions—here and everywhere.”

The comment stunned me. It sounded like something an adult would say, not a seven-year-old child. And that was without even considering the language issue, a mystery I resolved to clarify immediately.

“You speak my language very well. Everyone here speaks Kazakh or Russian.”

“I lived many years in your country,” she replied without hesitation. What could “many years” mean for someone like her? Pedro had said they’d arrived in Kazakhstan when the children were very small.

“How many, exactly?” I asked, with a hint of mockery.

“More than thirty.”

She mentioned it casually, without acknowledging the incongruity of such information. Before I could say anything else, she continued:

“This is my ninth life. During my seventh, I was Alfonsina Storni, the poet. I killed myself in Mar del Plata on October 25, 1938.”

The universe turned inside out. Never, in all my time on Earth pretending to be an ordinary human being, had I met another creature like myself—another condemned to eternal rebirth in a different body, preserving the memories of a previous life with absolute clarity. I shuddered at the thought that I would have to wait at least ten or twelve years to establish a fruitful relationship with her. But I calmed down immediately: what are ten or twelve years for beings like us?

 

Original title: Fuga sin final

Translated from the Spanish by Sergio Gaut vel Hartman