Gabriel Garcia Marquez


 
   Eyes of a Blue Dog


    Then she looked at me. I thought that she was looking at me for  the  first
time. But then, when she turned around behind the lamp and I kept  feeling  her
slippery and oily look in back of me, over my shoulder, I  understood  that  it
was I who was looking at her for the first time. I  lit  a  cigarette.  I  took 
a drag on the harsh, strong smoke, before spinning in the chair,  balancing  on
one of the rear legs. After that I saw her there, as  if  she'd  been  standing
beside the lamp looking at me every night. For a few brief minutes  that's  all
we did: look at each other. I looked from the chair, balancing on  one  of  the
rear legs. She stood, with a long and quiet hand on the lamp,  looking  at  me. 
I saw her eyelids lighted up as on every night. It was then that  I  remembered
the usual thing, when I said to her: 'Eyes of a blue dog.' Without  taking  her
hand off the lamp she said to me: 'That. We'll never forget that.' She left the 
orbit, sighing: 'Eyes of a blue dog. I've written it everywhere.'

    I saw her walk over to the dressing table. I  watched  her  appear  in  the
circular glass of the mirror looking at me now at the end of a back  and  forth
of mathematical light. I watched her keep on  looking  at  me  with  her  great
hot-coal eyes: looking at me while she opened the little box covered with  pink
mother of pearl. I saw her powder her nose. When she finished, she  closed  the
box, stood up again, and walked over to the lamp once more, saying: 'I'm afraid 
that someone is dreaming about this room and revealing my  secrets.'  And  over 
the flame she held the same long and tremulous hand that she had  been  warming 
before sitting down at the mirror. And she said: 'You don't feel the cold.' And 
I said to her: 'Sometimes.' And she said to me: 'You must  feel  it  now.'  And 
then I understood why I couldn't have been alone in the seat. It was  the  cold 
that had been giving me the certainty of my solitude. 'Now I feel it,' I  said. 
'And it's strange because the night is quiet. Maybe the sheet  fell  off.'  She 
didn't answer. Again she began to move toward the mirror and I turned again  in 
the chair, keeping my back to her. Without seeing her,  I  knew  what  she  was 
doing. I knew that she was sitting in front of  the  mirror  again,  seeing  my 
back, which had had time to reach the depths of the mirror and be caught by her 
look, which had also had just enough time to  reach  the  depths  and  return - 
before the hand had time  to  start  the  second  turn - until  her  lips  were 
anointed now with crimson, from the first turn of her  hand  in  front  of  the 
mirror. I saw, opposite me, the smooth  wall,  which  was  like  another  blind 
mirror in which I couldn't see her - sitting behind me - but could imagine  her
where she probably was as if a mirror had been  hung  in  place  of  the  wall. 
'I see you,' I told her. And on the wall I saw what was as if  she  had  raised 
her eyes and had seen me with my back turned toward her from the chair, in  the
depths of the mirror, my face turned toward the wall. Then I saw her  lower  he
eyes again and remain with her eyes always on her brassiere, not  talking.  And
I said to her again: 'I see you.' And she raised her eyes  from  her  brassiere
again. 'That's impossible,' she said. I asked her why. And she, with  her  eyes
quiet and on her brassiere again: 'Because  your  face  is  turned  toward  the 
wall.' Then I spun the chair around. I had the cigarette clenched in my  mouth.
When I stayed facing the mirror she was back by the lamp. Now she had her hands 
open over the flame, like the two wings of a hen, toasting  herself,  and  with 
her face shaded by her own fingers. 'I think I'm  going  to  catch  cold,'  she 
said. 'This must be a city of ice.' She turned her  face  to  profile  and  her 
skin, from copper to red, suddenly became sad. 'Do  something  about  it,'  she
said. And she began to get undressed, item by item, starting at  the  top  with
the brassiere. I told her: 'I'm going to turn back to the wall.' She said: 'No. 
In any case, you'll see me the way you did when your back was turned.'  And  no 
sooner had she said it than she was almost completely undressed, with the flame 
licking her long copper skin. 'I've always wanted to see you  like  that,  with 
the skin of your belly full of deep pits, as if you'd been beaten.' And  before 
I realized that my words had become clumsy at the sight of  her  nakedness  she 
became motionless, warming herself on the globe of  the  lamp,  and  she  said: 
'Sometimes I think I'm made of metal.' She  was  silent  for  an  instant.  The 
position of her hands over the flame varied slightly.  I  said:  'Sometimes  in 
other dreams, I've thought you were only a little bronze statue in  the  corner 
of some museum. Maybe that's why you're cold.' And she said: 'Sometimes, when I 
sleep on my heart, I can feel my body growing hollow and my skin is like plate. 
Then, when the blood beats inside me,  it's  as  if  someone  were  calling  by 
knocking on my stomach and I can feel my own copper  sound  in  the  bed.  It's 
like - what do you call it - laminated metal.' She drew  closer  to  the  lamp. 
'I would have liked to hear you,' I said. And she said: 'If we find each  other 
sometime, put your ear to my ribs when I sleep on the left side and you'll hear 
me echoing. I've always wanted you to do it  sometime.'  I  heard  her  breathe 
heavily as she  talked.  And  she  said  that  for  years  she'd  done  nothing 
different. Her life had been dedicated to finding me in reality,  through  that
identifying phrase: 'Eyes of a blue dog.' And she went along the street  saying
it aloud, as a way of telling the only person who could have understood her:

    'I'm the one who comes into your dreams every night and tells you: 'Eyes of 
a blue dog.'' And she said that she went into restaurants and  before  ordering
said to the waiters: 'Eyes of a blue dog.' But the  waiters  bowed  reverently,
without remembering ever having said that in their dreams. Then she would write 
on the napkins and scratch on the varnish of the tables with a knife: 'Eyes  of 
a blue dog.' And on the steamed-up windows  of  hotels,  stations,  all  public 
buildings, she would write with her forefinger: 'Eyes of a blue dog.' She  said 
that once she went into a drugstore and noticed the same  smell  that  she  had 
smelled in her room one night after having dreamed about me. 'He must be near,' 
she thought, seeing the clean, new tiles of the drugstore. Then she  went  over 
to the clerk and said to him: 'I always dream about a man who says to me: 'Eyes 
of a blue dog.'' And she said the clerk had looked at her eyes  and  told  her: 
'As a matter of fact, miss, you do have eyes like that.' And she said  to  him: 
'I have to find the man who told me those very words in  my  dreams.'  And  the 
clerk started to laugh and moved to the other end of the counter. She  kept  on 
seeing the clean tile and smelling the odor. And she opened her  purse  and  on 
the tiles with her crimson lipstick, she wrote in red letters: 'Eyes of a  blue 
dog.' The clerk came back from where he had been. He told her: Madam, you  have 
dirtied the tiles.' He gave her a damp cloth, saying: 'Clean it  up.'  And  she 
said, still by the lamp, that she had spent the whole afternoon on  all  fours, 
washing the tiles and saying: 'Eyes of a blue dog,' until  people  gathered  at 
the door and said she was crazy.

    Now, when she finished speaking, I remained in the corner, sitting, rocking 
in the chair. 'Every day I try to remember the phrase with which I am  to  find
you,' I said. 'Now I don't think I'll forget it tomorrow.  Still,  I've  always
said the same thing and when I wake up I've always  forgotten  what  the  words 
I can find you with are.' And she said: 'You  invented  them  yourself  on  the 
first day.' And I said to her: 'I invented them because I saw your eyes of ash. 
But I never remember the next morning.' And she, with  clenched  fists,  beside 
the lamp, breathed deeply: 'If you could at least remember now what  city  I've 
been writing it in.'

    Her tightened teeth gleamed over the flame. 'I'd like to  touch  you  now,' 
I said. She raised the face that had been looking at the light; she raised  her
look, burning, roasting, too, just like her, like her hands, and  I  felt  that
she saw me, in the corner where I was sitting, rocking  in  the  chair.  'You'd
never told me that,' she said. 'I tell you now and it's  the  truth,'  I  said.
From the other side of the lamp  she  asked  for  a  cigarette.  The  butt  had
disappeared between my fingers. I'd forgotten I was smoking. She said: 'I don't 
know why I can't remember where I wrote it.' And I said to her: 'For  the  same 
reason that tomorrow I won't be able to  remember  the  words.'  And  she  said
sadly: 'No. It's just that sometimes I  think  that  I've  dreamed  that  too.' 
I stood up and walked toward the lamp. She was a little beyond, and I  kept  on
walking with the cigarettes and matches in my hand, which would not  go  beyond
the lamp. I held the cigarette out to her. She squeezed it between her lips and 
leaned over to reach the flame before I had time to light the match.  'In  some 
city in the world, on all the walls, those words have  to  appear  in  writing: 
'Eyes of a blue dog,' I said. 'If I remembered them tomorrow I could find you.' 
She raised her head again and now the lighted coal was between her lips.  'Eyes 
of a blue dog,' she sighed, remembered, with the cigarette  drooping  over  her 
chin and one eye half closed. The she sucked in the smoke  with  the  cigarette 
between her fingers and exclaimed: 'This is something  else  now.  I'm  warming 
up.' And she said it with her voice a little lukewarm and fleeting, as  if  she 
hadn't really said it, but as if she had written it on a piece of paper and had 
brought the paper close to the flame while I read: 'I'm warming,' and  she  had 
continued with the paper between her thumb and forefinger, turning it around as 
it was being consumed and I had  just  read  '... up,'  before  the  paper  was 
completely  consumed  and  dropped  all  wrinkled  to  the  floor,  diminished, 
converted into light ash dust. 'That's better,' I said. 'Sometimes it frightens 
me to see you that way. Trembling beside a lamp.'

    We had been seeing each other for several years. Sometimes,  when  we  were
already together, somebody would drop a spoon outside and  we  would  wake  up.
Little by little we'd  been  coming  to  understand  that  our  friendship  was
subordinated to things, to the simplest  of  happenings.  Our  meetings  always
ended that way, with the fall of a spoon early in the morning.

    Now, next to the lamp, she was looking at me. I  remembered  that  she  had 
also looked at me in that way in the past, from that remote dream where I  made 
the chair spin on its back legs and remained facing a strange woman with  ashen
eyes. It was in that dream that I asked her for the first time: 'Who are  you?'
And she said to me: 'I don't remember.' I said to her: 'But I think we've  seen
each other before.' And she said, indifferently: 'I think I dreamed  about  you
once, about this same room.' And I told  her:  'That's  it.  I'm  beginning  to
remember now.' And she said: 'How strange. It's certain that we've met in other 
dreams.'

    She took two drags on the cigarette. I was still standing, facing the lamp,
when suddenly I kept looking at her. I looked her up and down and she was still 
copper; no longer hard and cold metal, but yellow, soft, malleable copper. 'I'd 
like to touch you,' I said again.  And  she  said:  'You'll  ruin  everything.' 
I said: 'It doesn't matter now. All we have to do is turn the pillow  in  order 
to meet again.' And I held my hand out over the lamp. She didn't move.  'You'll 
ruin everything,' she said again before I could touch her. 'Maybe, if you  come 
around behind the lamp, we'd wake up frightened in who knows what part  of  the 
world.' But I insisted: 'It doesn't matter.' And she said: 'If we  turned  over 
the pillow, we'd meet again. But when  you  wake  up  you'll  have  forgotten.' 
I began to move toward the corner. She stayed behind, warming  her  hands  over 
the flame. And I still wasn't beside the chair when I heard her say behind  me: 
'When I wake up at midnight, I keep turning in bed,  with  the  fringe  of  the 
pillow burning my knee, and repeating until dawn: 'Eyes of a blue dog.''

    Then I remained with my face  toward  the  wall.  'It's  already  dawning,' 
I said without looking at her. 'When it struck two I was  awake  and  that  was 
a long time back.' I went to the door. When I had the knob in my hand, I  heard 
her voice again, the same, invariable. 'Don't open that door,' she  said.  'The
hallway is full of difficult dreams.' And I asked her: 'How do you  know?'  And
she told me: 'Because I was there a moment ago and I  had  to  come  back  when 
I discovered I was sleeping on my heart.' I had the door half opened.  I  moved 
it a little and a cold, thin breeze brought me the  fresh  smell  of  vegetable
earth, damp fields. She spoke again. I gave the turn, still  moving  the  door,
mounted on silent hinges, and I told her: 'I don't think  there's  any  hallway
outside here. I'm getting the smell of country.' And  she,  a  little  distant,
told me: 'I know that better than you. What's happening is that there's a woman 
outside dreaming about the country.' She crossed her arms over the  flame.  She 
continued speaking: 'It's that woman who always wanted to have a house  in  the 
country and was never able to leave the city.' I  remembered  having  seen  the 
woman in some previous dream, but I knew, with the door ajar now,  that  within 
half an hour I would have to go down for breakfast. And I said: 'In any case, I 
have to leave here in order to wake up.'

    Outside the wind fluttered for an instant, then  remained  quiet,  and  the
breathing of someone sleeping who had just turned over in bed could  be  heard.
The wind from the fields had ceased. There were no more smells. 'Tomorrow  I'll
recognize you from that,' I said. 'I'll recognize you when on the street I  see
a woman writing 'Eyes of a blue dog' on the walls.' And she, with a sad smile - 
which was already a smile of surrender to  the  impossible,  the  unreachable - 
said: 'Yet you won't remember anything during the day.' And she put  her  hands 
back over the lamp, her features darkened by a bitter cloud. 'You're  the  only 
man who doesn't remember anything of what he's dreamed after he wakes up.'

    1950