Symbiotic Encounter

Carmen Naranjo (Costa Rica)

We were lovers. My name is Ana. His is Manuel. We did not meet casually. Someone had told
Manuel about me. About my unusual way of living. About my liking street cats, about my
dreams, of a different world, about how night opens my eyes and makes me beautiful, about how
I say very little at times, and how, at other times, no one can get to keep me quiet, about how I
get carried away by expressive faces and write novels with interminable monologues. The same
someone had told me about Manuel, about his disastrous love affairs, his loneliness, his neurotic
habit of thinking seriously about the commonplace, that unremitting affliction that wore him
down through is pathological sensitivity. Later, that someone arranged an accidental meeting.

I arrived first. That damned habit of punctuality that makes me feel out of step.

I knew he had arrived. I recognized his voice and his manner of greeting with a cheerful hello.
He was not one of those who embrace with enthusiasm, who give cold and inexpressive slaps on
the back or who approach your cheeks with a loud or distant kiss.

When I thought the gathering would be over, I left without speaking to him. I said goodbye to the
group of people close by, the group with which, among other things, I spoke about recipes and
how to enhance one’s profile with dark earrings. Someone shouted at me close to the door: “How
can you leave when things are just getting started!” I replied without seeing him that I had
something else to do and that they should have a good time, and I said goodbye. I was glad to
maintain my reputation as a party-pooper and to make sure from the conversation that I hadn’t
made his acquaintance, in spite of advance preparations. “I will introduce him to you and I am
sure you will hit it off, that’s easy to see.”

Once in the street, I breathed easy—what a pleasure. I felt monologue was preferable to
dialogue, sentiment to sensation, choosing to being chosen. When I was almost at the street
corner, he stopped me. “You were trying to get away from me, but I came because of you, and I
don’t want to miss the opportunity. Can we have a cup of coffee together?”

His voice was imposing and convincing. It left no alternative. In the café, sitting face to face, our
feet touched and I felt that overwhelming energy. I was ready, definitely ready. I saw his mouth,
and words and kisses ran together. He kissed me, smelling of coffee and cigarettes. I kissed him
until the edge of the table made my waist hurt.

We walked hand in hand, kissing at each step until we reached my apartment. We spent an entire
week there, unable to differentiate between night and day, until we got tired with the crumbs in
the bed, the smell of tuna cans, the need to answer the telephone which, at the beginning we did
not hear but which finally became a jarring obsession.

I love you and I still love you, Manuel! You must understand that. Of course, things changed
because of the natural effect of mutually approved variations, which are also part of human
relations. All agreements come to an end and linger in memory.
We started cutting down to just weekends. At first, glorious ones, as if we hungered ever so
long. ; then they were more routine and less prolonged, and finally, almost unremarkable because
they had become predictable. Well what are we going to do this weekend?

We exhausted all the possibilities: surprise, forcible abduction, seduction, comedy, play-acting,
jealousy, suspecting infidelity, even bringing the rival lover.

You remember what we talked about. We always talked about ourselves, about how honest we
were, how happy and fortunate, about our marvelous affinity, how different we were from the
rest, about needing a special world of our own, and about how nobody understood our politics
because we still believed that Utopia was within reach if we just made the right changes. In
literature, our attention was riveted to the odd and unexpected.

One day, a friend asked me about the color of Manuel’s eyes. I replied quickly that they were
blue, a beautiful naive blue, sensitive and steady. Then I was unsure. Sometimes they were
almost green, the blue looks greenish when you look at mountains a lot. I was struck with the
realization that I did not know the color of his eyes. I have never really seen him eye to eye, our
caresses leaving us in a world of mist.

At that time we would argue about who was giving more in the relationship. I said that providing
the furnished apartment, rent, electricity and phone was enough to ensure my independence and
freedom. He asserted that between the meals, the vodka, the cigarettes, gasoline, and the extras
for eating out, he was left with just pennies which would soon disappear in tips. This can’t go
on. I’ve never had it so bad. With free woman and free conversation. What kind of mortgaged
man did I get? Praise be to God for his ingenious benefactions. In raffles, I only win the junk.

You told me I know nothing of austerity and thrift, that I was, by and large, a spendthrift. I really
don’t understand the anal-retentive obsession with savings, that vestige of chewing over again
and again what has already been digested. It’s the result of teaching that you cn double your
money with neither sowing nor harvesting.

What arguments we had. I saw you clearly. Your eyes on mine. Yes, your eyes on mine. I don’t
know how long we were looking at each other intensely and curiously. I discovered the color: a
dirty yellow, which reflects and changes everything, with fits of passionate looks and profound
coldness that freezes everything in sight. Too many details, one caught up completely in details,
down to savings and inveighing against waste. We kept on looking at each other as sweetness,
surprise, reproach and resentment filled our eyes. That was the last time we made love. We
finally averted or intense and penetrating eyes, we were trembling, sweaty, and orgasm past.

I recovered my voice long enough to say that we were mired in trivia. He begged forgiveness. It
will never happen again, today went sour for me. We decided to separate for a week, afterwards
things will be different because absence and missing each other give real substance to human
relationships. When the week was up, he arrived with his suitcase and dirty clothes, hungover
with bad breath. He felt sick, and I missed him. I could neither lie nor tell the truth, so I kept
quiet.
We each retired to our separate corners, each one in his space, just like animals measuring each
other. All night, I heard him vomiting. He could not keep anything down. He took to eating
prunes, and so, bits of half-digested prunes decorated the toilet seat cover and the bathroom. He
had the same reaction to guavas, cubaces, fried tortillas with cheese, macaronia la Bolognese and
combination pizzas.

I came to detest his trifles, their abundance: some niggling, some affected, many effeminate.

He was thin, which was why he was surprised to see his breasts growing and abdomen swelling.
Six months later, poor Manuel of my perplexity, the most horrible body one could imagine for a
man: a belly almost protruding to a point, enormous, drooping breasts, a slow, tired gait,
hunching over to hide himself. The nausea persisted, interrupting breakfasts, lunches, dinners
and conversations.

I suggested a visit to the doctor. The poor man did not want to go out, or work, he did nothing
but knit incessantly. He knitted scarves and sweaters, since his low blood pressure made him
tremble terribly and nothing could keep him warm.

Repugnant, he was, I put up with his mannerisms, trifles and conversations that boiled down to
the same things: I am dying,. I am no longer good for anything, this is a case of precocious
senility. He tried to indulge in sex, but I could not stand it. As he started to touch me, I pushed
his hands away. I told him it filled me with revulsion, and I started to vomit too.

We went to the doctor. After examining him nude, abdominal auscultation and seeing water run
out when the breasts were squeezed, he asked if we were transvestites. I told him we were not,
that it hadn’t yet come to that. Then he replied: The baby is fine. It will be delivered in December
by caesarian section, and if you give me exclusive research rights, I won’t charge you anything.

Me? The mother of Manuel’s baby? Or father to a child of his? That just couldn’t be. We both
decided against it, for in addition to being unheard of, it was ridiculous, we would be the
laughing stock of acquaintances and strangers alike. By common agreement, we proposed an
abortion. The doctors said that it would be suicide on Manuel’s part, and murder with respect to
the child a, and that I, the surviving member would be responsible for both consequences.
Ultimately a child does not come about just like that, and I had a great deal invested in it.

We asked for time to think it over.

We scrutinized our actions, our genitals, the different positions we had tried, attitudes, the games
we played. And there was nothing that could explain our bizarre situation. Witchcraft? Perhaps.
There is always that possibility, although we may not believe in it. The realization became clear
and clearer: that ophthalmic orgasm in which we exposed each other laid bare the truth and some
horrible demon maliciously deranged the scheme normally regulated by the division of sexes.

After fretting over it interminably and consulting a library of strange phenomena and
unbelievable occurrences (which made us experts in these subject without helping us at all), we
decided to cross the border so as to amuse only strangers.
Did he complain during the trip! He was such a nuisance1 He didn’t fit anywhere, what with his
nine months being almost up. If I detested him before, now I simply wished he would go away. I
was tempted to open the care door and throw him out on some deserted stretch of the highway.

Finally, we arrived. I left him at the door of the hospital to manage as best he could. The next
day, I got in line with the other visitors. I reluctantly approached the maternity ward. I asked for
Manuel, yeah, Manuel the freak. No one could tell me anything about him; they had never
treated a pregnant man at the hospital. I looked for him everywhere, in the morgue, at the
cemetery, in hotels, boarding houses, private clinics, bars. I was desperate: after all, it was my
child. That my child came out in a husky voice. I started to feel the presence of a moustache as I
talked. I went to see crones, quacks, and charlatans. Nothing. I was convinced that my child had
been stolen. I said this in the bass voice of an opera singer while I felt burdened with a beard that
swayed in the wind.

I returned to my apartment, manifesting all the signs of a defrauded father. The loneliness was
overwhelming because I felt mutilated; someone was walking around somewhere with a part of
me. I was hardened by the loneliness; just lke my face—scourged as it was by the razor—which
now needed shaving twice a day.