The Secret in Their Eyes Read Free

are doing, no pathetic spectacles put on to extract a few seconds’ worth of compassion from fortunate people still able to function.
    So now I’ve been retired for two weeks, and I’ve already got time on my hands. It’s not that I can’t think of anything to do. I can think of a lot of things, but they all seem useless. Maybe the least useless is this one. For a few months, I can pretend to be a writer, as Silvia used to say when she still loved me. Actually, I’m mixing up two different periods and two distinct modes of address. When she still loved me, she’d talk confidently of my future as a writer, most probably a famous one. Later, when her love had wilted and died in the tedium of our marriage, she would say I just pretended to be a writer, and she’d say it with scathing contempt, speaking from the tower of irony she’d chosen to occupy, a fortification from which she liked to fire missiles at me. I can’t complain, because I’m sure I said equally evil things to her. How terrible that after ten years of marriage, what chiefly remains is the shameful inventory of the harm we did to each other. But at least it was possible to quarrel with Silvia. My first wife Marcela and I couldn’t even talk about my writing ambitions, or—come to think of it—about anything else. It hardly seems possible that I shared such large chunks of my life with two women ofwhom I retain, not without difficulty, a handful of hazy memories. Then again, my blurry recollection is yet more proof (as if more were needed) that I’m getting old. I’ve survived two marriages just to find myself facing a good stretch of time alone, roaming the arid plateau of bachelorhood. Life is long, all things considered.
    Anyway, I was never that serious about being a writer. Not when Silvia spoke the word admiringly, and not later, when she spat it at me sarcastically. I did have dreams (some dreams impose themselves on even the most skeptical hearts) that featured idyllic scenes of the writer at work in his study, preferably in front of a large window with a view of the sea, preferably in a dwelling built high on a rocky outcrop buffeted by wind and rain.
    Evidently, the habit doesn’t make the monk, because even though I’ve transformed my living room into a prototypical working writer’s sanctuary—I’m sure there’s a better way of saying that—it hasn’t yet done the trick. I can affirm, however, that I’ve made things quite pleasant in here. Of course, I don’t have the sea and the storms, but I’ve got a well-ordered desk: on one side, a ream of typing paper, blank, almost new; on the other side, a notebook that contains no notes; in the center, the typewriter, an imposing olive-green Remington barely smaller than a tank and made of equally thick steel, or so my colleagues in the court used to joke, years ago.
    I step over to the window. It overlooks, as I’ve said, no stormy sea, but rather a tidy little yard, twelve by fifteen feet. I gaze out at the street. As usual, there’s not a soul in sight. Thirty years ago, these empty streets were full of people, young and old, but now the young people have gone away, and the old ones have gone inside. Like me. It may sound funny, but maybe there are several of us; our desks are thoroughly prepared, and we’re going to write a novel.
    Deep down inside, I suspect that this page, which I’m resolutely filling with words, is going to wind up like its nineteen predecessors, crumpled into a ball and thrown into the opposite corner of the room, where there’s a wicker umbrella stand I inherited from I no longer know whom. After every false start, I yield to a lingering athletic impulse and try to toss my wadded rejections into that stand, with an elegant flick of the wrist and indifferent success. I get so excited when I score, and the small frustrations of my missed attempts increase my determination to such a degree, that I’m almost more interested in my next shot than in the