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

listened silently for a couple of hours until I heard the pipes. The man had to be in the shower. I decided to take a risk. I got dressed, threw the ball at Raúl’s house, and rang the bell several times, but the man didn’t come out. I waited without ringing again. I saw him leave the house and walk down Odin, so I ran along Aladdin to circle the block and meet him head-on. I stopped him and told him I was lost, and asked if he could please help me get home again.
    The man looked at me with barely concealed annoyance, but he went with me. When we arrived he didn’t mention that he had spent the night at Raúl’s house. I thanked him and then I had no other option: I asked him if he knew Raúl, and he answered that they were cousins, that he lived in Puerto Montt, and that he had stayed at Raúl’s house because he had an errand to run in Santiago.
    “I’m Raúl’s neighbor,” I told him.
    “See you later, Raúl’s neighbor,” said the man, and he set off quickly, almost running.

 
     
    “It’s possible,” said Claudia, to my surprise, when I told her about the stranger. It was possible that Raúl had a cousin in Puerto Montt? Wouldn’t that cousin, then, be related to Claudia?
    “We have a very big family,” said Claudia, “and there are a lot of uncles in the south I’ve never met.” She serenely changed the subject.
    *   *   *
    There were five other men at Raúl’s house in the following months, and each time Claudia seemed unaffected by the news. But she had a very different reaction when I told her that a woman had stayed there, and not for one night, as usual, but for two nights in a row.
    “Maybe she came from the south, too,” I said.
    “Could be,” she answered, but she was obviously surprised, even angry.
    “She could be a girlfriend. Maybe Raúl isn’t alone anymore,” I said.
    “Yes,” she answered, after a while. “Raúl is single, it’s entirely possible he could have a girlfriend. In any case, I want you to find out everything you can about that possible girlfriend.”
    She seemed to be struggling not to cry. I looked at her closely until she stood up. “Let’s go inside the temple,” she said. She dipped her fingers into the bowl of holy water and used it to cool her face. We stayed on our feet next to some enormous candelabra with wax dripping from the candles—some new and others about to burn out—that people would bring when they prayed for miracles. Claudia put her hands over the flames as if to warm them; she dipped her fingertips in the wax, and played at making the sign of the cross with her wax-coated fingers. She didn’t know the sign of the cross. I taught her.
    We sat in the first pew. I looked obediently at the altar, while Claudia looked to the sides and identified, one by one, the flags that flanked the statue of the virgin. She asked me if I knew why the flags were there. “They’re the flags of the Americas,” I said.
    “Yes, but why are they here?”
    “I don’t know,” I answered. “Something about the unity of the Americans, I guess.”
    She took my hand and told me that the prettiest flag was Argentina’s. “Which one do you think is prettiest?” she asked me, and I was going to say the United States flag but luckily I kept quiet, because then she said the United States flag was the ugliest, a truly horrible flag, and I added that I agreed, the United States flag was really disgusting.

 
     
    For weeks I waited fruitlessly for the woman to return. Then she appeared, finally, one Saturday morning. She was a girl, really. I figured she was around eighteen years old. She could hardly have been Raúl’s girlfriend.
    I spent hours trying to hear what she and Raúl talked about, but they exchanged barely a few sentences that I couldn’t understand. I thought she would spend the night, but she left that same afternoon. I followed her, absurdly camouflaged by a red cap. The woman walked quickly toward a bus stop and when I got there,