Fraudulent Fertilisation

Burán is a man in good phys­i­cal shape, five feet eight tall, straight dark brown hair and deep green eyes. A good sports­man, he loves na­ture and en­joys sim­ple things. He has an aver­sion to big meet­ings, noisy cel­e­bra­tions and stop­ping up all night. He hates su­per­fi­cial­i­ty and, above all, can­not stand au­thor­i­tar­i­an be­hav­iour of any kind. He dreams of a tol­er­ant world of free thinkers. Hav­ing one’s own ideas has al­ways been dan­ger­ous. His face is at­trac­tive with­out being beau­ti­ful; his marked fea­tures are har­mo­nious and trans­mit an image of bal­anced mas­culin­i­ty. Rober­to has a com­pli­cat­ed per­son­al­i­ty; from ado­les­cence he has been for­tu­nate in love, he has an ir­re­sistible in­flu­ence over some women. Over oth­ers he has no in­flu­ence, per­haps be­cause his charis­ma is made up of a con­junc­tion of im­per­cep­ti­ble nu­ances. His live­ly in­tel­li­gence, del­i­ca­cy and po­lite­ness, his ample vi­sion of the world, his ad­mi­ra­tion for the truth, are virtues val­ued by those who know how to ap­pre­ci­ate them. Any­way, his hon­esty, his health, his de­vo­tion to sport and his pleas­ant ap­pear­ance com­plete the pos­i­tive pic­ture he re­flects to the out­side world. Rober­to knows his lim­its and his val­ues, knows that he can taste fruits which ap­peal to oth­ers, with­out ever being a Don Juan or a heart­break­er. He’s not in­ter­est­ing in be­com­ing one ei­ther. He likes ‘pri­vate’ re­la­tion­ships, iso­lat­ed from the so­cial con­text. He does not ac­cept the ex­hi­bi­tion of his in­ti­ma­cies be­fore so­ci­ety, he prefers to get away from the world in order to be hon­est. He can’t al­ways man­age it, given that he has a propen­si­ty for spir­i­tu­al clo­sure.

A qual­i­ty that makes Rober­to stand out is his hon­esty: he never boasts of hav­ing it, but it guides his ac­tions. Through his pro­fes­sion of lawyer, he has main­tained con­tact with the crude re­al­i­ty of his coun­try, ob­serv­ing the con­flicts of the com­mon peo­ple and their am­bi­tions, and he has de­vel­oped a good an­a­lyt­i­cal ca­pac­i­ty. His in­stinct al­lows him to read peo­ple and his value judge­ments rarely fail him. He knows how to po­si­tion him­self in the exact place in each sit­u­a­tion. Peo­ple know they can trust him, he never gives away a se­cret or says some­thing im­bal­anced or out of con­text; this equi­lib­ri­um char­ac­teris­es his con­duct. Iron­i­cal­ly, his ra­tio­nal na­ture en­clos­es a po­et­ic, melan­choly, sen­ti­men­tal spir­it, a per­son­al­i­ty that likes to raise it­self above the ma­te­r­i­al, favour­ing the human, the emo­tion­al. But this as­pect of his per­son is buried be­hind a rigid struc­ture and an in­vis­i­ble cuirass pro­tects him from the sur­round­ing ag­gres­sion, iso­lat­ing his uni­verse. That re­sis­tant ‘ar­mour’ has be­come more solid fol­low­ing his di­vorce from Es­tela Maldívar, his first and only wife. His mar­riage to her last­ed fif­teen years. Al­though the split was am­i­ca­ble, Burán felt very lone­ly; his un­con­di­tion­al friends helped him adapt to a rad­i­cal change in his life. He is not a man who al­ters his af­fec­tions; keep­ing the in­ti­mate friends of his youth doesn’t leave him with much space to forge links with oth­ers. It could al­most be said that this is one of the rea­sons for his in­scrutabil­i­ty: he doesn’t want to be more gen­er­ous, it doesn’t in­ter­est him be­cause he al­ready has his valid in­ter­locu­tors. How­ev­er, Rober­to lacks some­thing es­sen­tial: the love of a woman. He’s got no short­age of lovers, he’s al­ways had them, but that’s not enough for him, he needs more. Rober­to de­sires noth­ing more than to feel deeply again. His ra­tio­nal­i­ty pre­vents him from get­ting car­ried away by im­puls­es, by cir­cum­stan­tial emo­tions. He can’t say ‘I love you’, not even when mak­ing love. That in­abil­i­ty to lie is not re­lat­ed to his need to be sin­cere, but with a cer­tain high­ly per­son­al ego­tism, be­cause fal­si­fy­ing his feel­ings is in­suf­fer­able to him, it does not give him any plea­sure and, in the end, he does not ob­tain any pos­i­tive re­sult from such be­hav­iour. He acts with sin­cer­i­ty to feel good al­though, in spite of this idio­syn­crasy, he some­times lies, be­cause some­times telling the truth can be very cruel, and he is not a bad man. In any case, when he promis­es to do some­thing, he does it. He sticks to his word. Sub­se­quent­ly, to ex­press love de­mands be­hav­iour from him in ac­cor­dance with such a feel­ing. He knows that women some­times pre­fer a lie, but even so, he con­sid­ers it too much of a com­mit­ment; per­haps that’s why he never swears love un­truth­ful­ly. He likes to be loved, but he feels un­com­fort­able keep­ing his mouth shut, be­hav­ing with ap­par­ent cold­ness, being un­af­fec­tion­ate be­cause of this. One re­la­tion­ship that makes him feel com­fort­able is that of friend-lover. That spe­cial link al­lows him to be on the level, housed on the un­sta­ble, im­pre­cise or un­cer­tain plane im­plied by the sex­u­al friend­ship be­tween a man and a woman. When an im­bal­ance aris­es, it re­sults in a break-up, gen­er­al­ly am­i­ca­ble. Ob­jec­tive­ly, no­body can say that Rober­to Burán is a man who takes ad­van­tage of his ‘in­ti­mate friends’; how­ev­er, on more than one oc­ca­sion, they haven’t thought the same thing, es­pe­cial­ly when the time came to split up, be­cause they fre­quent­ly feel used—a bare­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed ob­ject—and they are not happy just re­ceiv­ing con­sid­er­ate treat­ment or not being de­fraud­ed. Un­doubt­ed­ly, the woman in love prefers to be tricked, which al­lows her to jus­ti­fy her com­mit­ment, which gives con­tent and a moral base to her sub­jec­tion. Burán knows that in­side him he has a dense sub­stance, he sens­es that his feel­ings are sub­ject to an un­con­scious con­ti­nence, that they are tem­porar­i­ly dor­mant; the pres­sure they exert is enor­mous and erup­tion is im­mi­nent. The worst thing that can hap­pen is that his pas­sion is never ex­ter­nalised. It’s be­cause of this hid­den fever that in­flicts Rober­to that he car­ries out a veiled search, with spon­ta­neous in­sis­tence, quite sim­ply for a woman he can love. She’s not an ideal, ab­stract, being, a crea­ture that is the fruit of his imag­i­na­tion and be­liefs, no: Burán has his feet well and truly on the ground. He sim­ply wants to find some­one who will make pos­si­ble the mir­a­cle of mak­ing him feel that he is in love. He hopes one day to be able to say ‘I love you’, feel­ing it for real.

Some­times Rober­to laments being so com­pli­cat­ed; he can’t man­age to aban­don him­self to the dic­tates of his heart, nor re­sist those of his brain.

He car­ries his fifty years very deco­rous­ly, al­though he feels them heavy on his shoul­ders and re­mem­bers with nos­tal­gia the yes­ter­days that went by so fast. He often re­calls his youth, the child­hood of his daugh­ter, his teenage ro­mances, the pleas­ant mo­ments of the past (which are some­what blurred). The fu­ture looks wor­ry­ing, dif­fuse, in­ap­pre­hen­si­ble and un­cer­tain; the pre­sent slips away be­fore his eyes, more and more ephemer­al, sparkling. In short, Burán feels like an ob­serv­er at the edge of the su­per-high­way of life, where tran­sit is so fast he hard­ly has time to cap­ture more than a few scenes. Every­thing pass­es in front of him ver­tig­i­nous­ly; be­tween the sun­ris­es and sun­sets only a few min­utes go by; only one day in­ter­venes be­tween the week­ends. Each 31 De­cem­ber his toast en­clos­es the nos­tal­gia of a run­away year, van­ished into thin air, and the cer­tain­ty of an­oth­er one, fleet­ing, a liar, im­pos­si­ble to seize. Ever since he was young he has tried to en­large his areas of free­dom; he has never liked in­ject­ing him­self with life as if it was a drug nor drink­ing it down in one. he wants to enjoy it slow­ly and sub­stan­tial­ly, he doesn’t want to choke on it, nor live each in­stant with­out re­straint. He is not in­ter­est­ed in strong plea­sures, close to pain, nor look­ing in­ces­sant­ly for al­most or­gas­mic sen­sa­tions. On the con­trary, Rober­to Burán prefers to pause and savour each mo­ment, feel­ing the flavour and scent; he yearns to be aware of each mo­ment slid­ing slow­ly be­fore his eyes, putting down roots in­side him. When Rober­to thinks about hap­pi­ness, he imag­ines a peace­ful lake in the moun­tains, he loves the land­scapes of south-west Ar­genti­na (in no other place does his spir­it ex­pand with such ease). All his life he has looked for com­plete free­dom; to de­vote him­self ex­clu­sive­ly to what he re­al­ly likes doing, to fill the empty spaces in his soul with pure essences. It has al­ways been dif­fi­cult for him. In the early stages of his pro­fes­sion­al life he de­vot­ed him­self fully to work, mov­ing tran­scen­dent things, sac­ri­fic­ing even his clos­est friends; be­com­ing in­sen­si­tive. In the name of ef­fi­cien­cy, of eco­nom­ic se­cu­ri­ty, he re­nounced pri­mor­dial things. His fa­ther paid for his stud­ies, noth­ing else: he never gave him the pos­si­bil­i­ty of sump­tu­ous ex­cess. Late­ly he has reached the con­clu­sion that it was bet­ter that way. If his par­ents had not sep­a­rat­ed, per­haps he would have turned into a spoilt idiot, weak, faint­heart­ed. He is sat­is­fied that he fought be­cause it al­lows him to re­spect him­self. How­ev­er, re­ceiv­ing the fab­u­lous in­her­i­tance from his fa­ther had not dis­pleased him in the slight­est; the money makes the free­dom he has han­kered after more ac­ces­si­ble. Even when he was a man of lim­it­ed re­sources he never want­ed to pos­sess ma­te­r­i­al goods; he thinks they en­slave their owner, as does an old Jew­ish friend of his who be­lieves that ‘the most im­por­tant things in life are free’.

Mean­while, Ali­cia and Guiller­mo were ex­pec­tant, wait­ing for the mo­ment when it would be pos­si­ble to ap­proach Burán. They wait­ed for more than an hour, until a favourable op­por­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed it­self. Their chance ar­rived when least they ex­pect­ed it; the friends who were with him sud­den­ly went off to greet other peo­ple and Rober­to was left alone at a table full of sand­wich­es, snacks, pas­tries and drinks. Ali­cia and Guiller­mo moved in. He start­ed the di­a­logue.

“Ex­cuse me, sir, would you pass me the claret please?”

Burán did so im­me­di­ate­ly, nod­ding pleas­ant­ly; he was happy that night, not just be­cause of the in­au­gu­ra­tion of a friend’s busi­ness, but be­cause he had tem­porar­i­ly es­caped from his well of lone­li­ness. He had been shut off with­in him­self for months and his spo­radic af­fairs had not pro­vid­ed him with spir­i­tu­al com­pen­sa­tion; he need­ed a lit­tle en­ter­tain­ment of a dif­fer­ent kind, to vary his her­mit’s life a lit­tle. He care­ful­ly hand­ed over the jug of claret to Guiller­mo; he hadn’t no­ticed Ali­cia’s pres­ence until her honey coloured gaze land­ed on his eyes... Burán felt as if a warm cur­rent of ten­der­ness would over­whelm him. With­out know­ing why, he re­mem­bered an old au­tum­nal walk. Those shad­owy paths of the Per­al­ta Ramos woods, hid­den be­neath the splen­did ap­par­el of eu­ca­lyp­tus and pine trees. He was sur­prised, be­cause he couldn’t un­der­stand why look­ing at an un­known girl could re­call to him so clear­ly a pre­cise mo­ment of a dis­tant yes­ter­day, a di­aphanous and peace­ful April af­ter­noon, in the com­pa­ny of a woman he had loved very much in his ado­les­cence. Un­ex­pect­ed­ly, he ex­pe­ri­enced once again sen­sa­tions lived through on that re­mote and happy af­ter­noon; the aroma of the burn­ing leaves, the smoke that float­ed be­tween the trees, the pine nee­dles car­pet­ing the woods.

Burán didn’t hes­i­tate to in­tro­duce him­self.

“A plea­sure, my name’s Rober­to.”

“Pleased to meet you, my name’s Ali­cia; this is Guiller­mo, my cousin.”