Read Amulet for Free Online Page B

forehead (or tapped it, because I didn't have much strength after so many days without food) and I saw Elena walking down an empty street in Colonia Roma, I saw Elena walking eastward, toward the depths of the night, on her own, well dressed, limping; I saw her and I called out, Elena! But no sound at all came out of my mouth.
    And Elena turned to me and said she didn't know what she was going to do. Maybe go to Italy. Maybe wait until he comes back to Mexico. I don't know, she said to me with a smile, but I knew that she knew very well what she was going to do and that she was already resigned to it. As for the Italian, he was happy to let her love him and show him around Mexico City. I can't remember all the places we went together: la Villa, Coyoacán, Tlatelolco (that time I didn't go, it was just him and Elena), the slopes of Popocatepetl, Teotihuacán, and everywhere we went the Italian was happy and Elena was happy too, and so was I, because I've always enjoyed sightseeing and the company of happy people.
    One day, at the Casa del Lago, we even ran into Arturito Belano. I introduced him to Elena and Paolo. I told them he was an eighteen-year-old Chilean poet. I explained that he wrote plays as well as poems. Paolo said, How interesting. Elena didn't say anything because, by this stage, she was only interested in her relationship with Paolo. We went to have coffee at a place called El Principio de Mexico in the Calle de Tokio (it shut down a while back). I don't know why I remember that afternoon. That afternoon of 1971 or 1972. And the strangest thing is that I remember it prospectively, from 1968. From my watchtower, my bloody subway carriage, from my gigantic rainy day. From the women's bathroom on the fourth floor of the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature, the timeship from which I can observe the entire life and times of Auxilio Lacouture, such as they are.
    And I remember that Arturito and the Italian talked about theater, Latin American theater, and Elena ordered a cappuccino and was rather quiet, and I started looking at the walls and the floor of El Principio de Mexico, and immediately noticed something odd—I always pick up on things like this—a sort of noise, wind or breath, blowing up through the foundations of the café at irregular intervals. And so the minutes went by, with Arturito and Paolo talking about theater, Elena sitting quietly, and me turning my head from time to time, attentive to the receding sounds of what, by then, was undermining not only the Principio de Mexico but the whole city, as if I were being warned a few years in advance or a few centuries too late about the fate of Latin American theater, the double nature of silence, and the collective catastrophe of which improbable sounds are often harbingers.
    Improbable sounds and clouds. And then Paolo stopped talking with Arturito and said that the visa for Cuba had arrived that morning. And that was it. The noises stopped. The pensive silence was broken. We forgot about Latin American theater, even Arturito, who wasn't generally quick to let a subject go, although the theater he preferred was not Latin American at all but that of Beckett and Jean Genet. And we started talking about Cuba and the interview that Paolo was going to have with Fidel Castro, and that was that. We said goodbye on Reforma. Arturo was the first to leave. Then Elena and her Italian went off. Which left me standing there, drinking in the breeze on the avenue as I watched them walk away. Elena's limp was more pronounced than usual. I thought about Elena. I breathed. I trembled. I watched her limp away with the Italian at her side. And suddenly I could see only her. The Italian began to disappear, becoming transparent; all the people walking along Reforma became transparent. All my aching eyes could make out was Elena, with her overcoat and her shoes. And then I thought: Resist, Elena. And then I thought: Catch up with her and give her a hug. But she was going off