Ways of Going Home: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

know what I was doing with Claudia, why she was allowed to share our secret.
    I acted like the child I was and missed our meetings after that. I thought that was what I should do: forget about Claudia. But after a few weeks I was surprised to get a letter from her. She summoned me urgently, asking me to come see her anytime; she said it didn’t matter if her mother was home or not.
    It was almost nine at night. Magali opened the door and asked my name, but it was obvious she already knew it. Claudia greeted me effusively and told her mother that I was Raúl’s neighbor, and Magali made excessive gestures of delight. “You’ve grown so much,” she said, “I didn’t recognize you.” I’m sure they were performing a rehearsed introduction, and the questions the woman directed at me were entirely studied in advance. A bit bewildered by the situation, I asked if she was still an English teacher, and she answered with a smile that yes, it wasn’t easy to stop, overnight, being an English teacher.
    I asked Claudia to tell me what had happened: How had things changed so much that now my presence was legitimate?
    “It’s more like things are changing little by little,” she told me. “Very slowly, things are changing. You don’t need to spy on Raúl anymore, you can come and see me whenever you want, but you don’t have to make any reports,” she repeated, and all I could do was leave, brooding over a deep disquiet.

 
     
    I went to Claudia’s one or two more times, but I ran into Esteban again. I never found out if he was her boyfriend or not, but in any case I detested him. And then I stopped going, and the days went by like a gust of wind. For some months or maybe a year I forgot all about Claudia. Until one morning I saw Raúl loading up a white truck with dozens of boxes.
    Everything happened very quickly. I went up to him and asked where he was going, and he didn’t answer: he looked at me with a neutral and evasive gesture. I took off running to Claudia’s house. I wanted to warn her, and as I was running I discovered that I also wanted her to forgive me. But Claudia wasn’t there anymore.
    “They left a few days ago,” said the woman next door. “I don’t know where they went, how should I know that?” she said. “To another neighborhood, I guess.”

 
    LITERATURE OF THE PARENTS

 
     
    I’m advancing little by little in the novel. I pass the time thinking about Claudia as if she existed, as if she had existed. At first I questioned even her name. But it’s the name 90 percent of the women of my generation share. It’s right that she should have that name. I never get tired of the sound, either. Claudia.
    I like that my characters don’t have last names. It’s a relief.
    *   *   *
    One of these days this house will start to refuse me. I wanted to start to inhabit it again, organize the books, rearrange the furniture, fix up the yard a bit. None of that has been possible. But a few fingers of mescal are helping for now.
    This afternoon I spoke, for the second time in a long time, with Eme. We asked about the friends we have in common, and then, after more than a year of separation, we talked about the books she took with her or accidentally forgot. It seemed painful to go over the list of losses in such a civilized way, but in the end I even roused myself to ask for the books by Hebe Uhart and Josefina Vicens that I’ve missed so much.
    “I read them,” she said. For a second I thought she was lying, even though she never lies about things like that; she never lied about anything, really. That was exactly our problem, we didn’t lie. We failed because of the desire to always be honest.
    Then she told me about the house where she lives—a mansion, really, some twenty blocks from here, which she shares with two girlfriends.
    “You don’t know them,” she told me, “and they aren’t really my friends, but we make a good group: thirty-year-old women happily chatting about our