The Unstable Order of Things - Chapter 2: “MARTÍNEZ”

I chose to study theatre on a whim, much like someone diving into a shallow, silted river without knowing what their feet might strike at the bottom. I knew with absolute certainty that I loathed mathematics, felt little for animals, and had no stomach for the law. During the final weeks of senior year—when nearly everyone else had settled on a career—we took a class trip to Buenos Aires to tour the landmarks. It was my first time in the capital. We visited the majestic Cathedral and the Casa Rosada; we took the subway to Recoleta to see the cemetery and grab a bite at one of those posh shopping centers, teeming with elegant, wealthy blondes. They carried bags of new clothes and shoes, reminding me of my mother in her prime.

One of those days, we trekked block after block down 9 de Julio Avenue toward the Teatro Colón. By day, under a blistering and oppressive morning sun, it didn’t strike me as anything special. We stood in a thick line for over an hour, fanning ourselves with tour tickets already damp from being clutched in our sweaty palms. Then, we stepped inside. The hall was immaculate; there is no other word for it. A dignified, nineteenth-century eclectic marvel, with its vermilion seats and distinguished balconies bathed in a vaporous, fiery glow—as if lit by thousands upon thousands of candles rather than the tiny bulbs adorning the dome, which was painted with figures of the arts.

I remember a girl rehearsing on stage. Her hair was pulled into a bun, and she wore a short-sleeved black dress that hit her knees over white tights. She stretched, spun on one foot, then both, then on her toes; she raised a leg until her knee touched her face, extending her arms, her torso, her neck. She would crouch, rise, and repeat. There was noise—shouting, the scraping of heavy objects. Two guided tours were being conducted simultaneously while a couple of stagehands set the scenery around her. Yet she remained there, balanced on the tips of her toes, her arms swaying to the rhythm of a non-existent melody. Her eyes were closed, consumed by her own movement, oblivious to the intrusive din, as if, in her world, nothing else existed.

I didn’t know if I liked acting. To be honest, I had never acted in my life until my university entrance exams. But I wanted that. I wanted to feel that freedom even if I had to fake it; I wanted someone else to feel what I felt watching her. During my first years of university, whenever I doubted my choice of major, I would think of the girl in the black dress at the Colón, dancing with captivating movements—an energy both absent and eternal. She drew you in as if she were merging with that warm light, as if she had belonged to the theater since the dawn of time.

Our first class of the semester was, fittingly, in the theater. The university’s playhouse was small and dim, decorated only by a red suede curtain older than sin and bright, multicolored lights aimed at the stage from the balcony. The seats where we sat to practice our scripts were made of black leather, cracked and weathered by time, divided into three sections stretching from the entrance to the performance space. The place smelled of acrylic paint and cheap perfume, but that day it reeked of stale air and dust—it likely hadn’t been opened in two or three months, not even to clear the cobwebs from the ceiling.

To an outsider, my friends and I didn’t fit together at all. Néstor claimed he was emo. He lined his waterlines with a black pencil his mother bought from the Avon catalog and wore striped long sleeves under short-sleeved graphic tees that bordered on grunge or Goth—though he only dared the look when he was alone with us. Patricio leaned more toward the “flogger” trend, though he usually just adopted whatever was in style. Every time he bought sneakers, he’d swap the laces for neon orange ones; occasionally, he’d show up with a matching streak of hair. As for me, I had never cared about my appearance. Back then, I hadn’t switched to contacts yet, so I wore these hideous, thick-lensed black frames that were always dirty and sliding down the bridge of my nose from their sheer weight.

We were heading for the front row as usual, joining the few classmates we hadn’t seen in a while, but before Patricio and Néstor could get ahead, I grabbed one of them by the arm and diverted us. I led them into a row right in the middle. It wasn’t that there were many of us in the fourth year of the Bachelor of Theater Arts, but where I sat us was the most strategic spot: not so far back as to be conspicuous, but not so close to Professor Sonia Martínez. Or simply Martínez, as we preferred to call her. She was a fixture in our world, having been our teacher before, and this year she was leading our Stage Production and Design seminars.

“What are you doing, Elías?” Néstor protested, shaking off my grip as we sat.

“I don’t want her to see me.”

“Martínez?” Néstor rolled his eyes. “Why?”

“I blew off the entrance assistantship. She’s been blowing up my inbox.”

“What do you mean you blew it off?” Patricio asked, surprised but still whispering. “You really wanted to do it. What happened?”

“And you didn’t even tell her?” Néstor pressed. They were indignant, as if I had personally insulted them.

“I forgot,” I admitted. The assistantship was the last thing on my mind. “By the time I realized, February was almost over.”

Martínez waited for the theater to settle before she began to speak. She was only in her thirties then. She was eccentric yet grounded; she often said that in another life, she would have liked to be a vedette in a show in Carlos Paz. Anyone else would have said Broadway or Las Vegas, but Carlos Paz was enough for her—it was more realistic. In the heat, she would appear in sarong-style dresses with vibrant paisley prints, dangling feather earrings, and blonde hair frizzed and matted with old gel, tied in a ponytail. I don’t remember Martínez ever losing her cool. My classmates were absolute idiots who never paid attention, but she never got angry. She was defined by her good humor, the tenderness of her words, her wild ideas, and her penchant for heated, ambiguous, or taboo topics.

When we finally fell silent, she welcomed us, speaking with great ambition about her expectations for us by year’s end. She told us about her vacation to Mar del Plata with her husband—how they stayed for a week and saw a different play every night. Martínez loved comedy. She told us how she watched Mirtha Legrand step out onto the balcony after her show, how she found a hundred-peso bill at a gas station, and how she’d taken a photo with Moria Casán that she’d show us once it was developed. Then, after that barrage of anecdotes, she dropped the bombshell: the faculty had decided we were to stage a play for the year-end finals, performed by us, and she was thrilled to announce it would be William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

After the shameful ruckus of our collective groans and cheers subsided, she began casting the roles. Hamlet was the first character she named, and she called my name out loud without hesitation. Everyone turned to look at me instantly, including her. She was sharp; I was never going to be able to hide. She looked at me with a mix of disdain and feigned sympathy. I gave a tight-lipped smile, visibly uncomfortable. I knew she was angry and confused, just as I knew the medical certificate in my backpack wouldn’t be enough to appease her.

Martínez continued with the casting. My friends landed lead roles too: Néstor was to play Claudius, and Patricio, Laertes. Class lasted no more than ninety minutes. When the others rose to leave, I approached the stage to speak with her. I left the certificate on the desk, and before I could even start my excuses, she had already read it. You didn’t need to be an expert at reading between the lines. Perhaps Martínez had known what I was trying to do the moment she saw me walking toward her.

I just looked at her. I don’t think I said much, if anything at all. I can barely recall the moment—I only remember her expressing her disapproval, telling me my friends should know because they would support me, that perhaps I should go back to the clinic, that it would be wise to seek help elsewhere. She told me to let people help, that I couldn’t do it alone, that my family should get involved, that they would change because “hope is the last thing to die.” And I ended up, as always, lying to myself—smiling and accepting her hug, promising I’d seek the help she recommended and that I’d get better. Because sometimes, people don’t care what you say, as long as it’s what they want to hear.

Ten minutes later, I stepped out of the little theater. Patricio and Néstor were sitting in the shade by the door, waiting for me. To my surprise, I wasn’t bombarded with questions. It was hot; they were impatient and hurried me along.

We had another class in two hours, and rather than trekking back to the dorms, they decided we’d go watch Juan Cruz—Patricio’s “almost-something”—play soccer at the fields near the Faculty of Agronomy. I say “almost-something” because I didn’t know a term for whatever their relationship was, and I certainly didn’t believe it truly existed. Juan Cruz had Patricio spellbound ever since the day he nearly ran him over with his motorcycle at a campus crosswalk. From my perspective, the guy was arrogant, haughty, and a bad person. He mistreated everyone, even his friends. I hated going to watch him play; I hated seeing him because I thought if he was like that with the world, it made my skin crawl to imagine how he treated Patricio behind closed doors.

But we went anyway because, despite everything, we were good friends. We accompanied him and shared smiles when he celebrated a pass, a move, or a goal. However, every time Patricio suggested it, Néstor would glance at me sideways with a restless unease, and I would give a subtle shrug. What can you do? I’d think to myself as Patricio clung to the chain-link fence, his fingers like claws, while we smoked a few paces behind. He’s infatuated. It’s like the guy sucked the soul out of him. There’s nothing to be done. You can’t just be empty, with nothing inside. I’d roll my eyes because I could sense a poetic, melancholic line coming. The heart needs what it needs, whether it’s love or suffering.

We walked slow, very slow. At least Néstor and I did; that humid early-April heat flattened us like slugs against the pavement. The university had dozens of fields, but Juan Cruz’s team always played on the same one—the most remote one, so far out of the way it would have taken less time to walk back to our hometowns. It was surrounded by rusted fencing that had loosened over the years. The ground was essentially packed dirt with thin patches of sun-scorched grass; the white lines marking the pitch had nearly vanished. The goals looked new, their nets intact without a trace of chipped paint, but the surrounding benches were made of ancient wood, swollen from years of rain.

By the time we arrived, the match had already started. You could hear the thud of kicks against the hard earth and the occasional isolated curse. There weren’t many people there, mostly girls. Patricio didn’t take long to latch onto the fence like a tick, trying to feign disinterest while being totally mesmerized by him—by his sweat-dampened hair and the red jersey, also soaked, clinging to the muscles of his broad chest. Meanwhile, we threw ourselves into the shade of a row of poplars nearby. Néstor opened a pack of cookies before shaking up a juice box. I lit another cigarette.

And then I saw him. I didn’t even have to look for him. I raised my eyes and there he was, running after the ball, tucking his long blonde hair behind his ears. He moved with the ease of someone who has been part of a group long enough to whistle brazenly at someone across the field, demanding they pay attention next time and send the cross his way. He was studying the game as if he’d known his teammates his whole life and his opponents even better—inserting himself, embedding himself, even mocking the unknown. I got the impression he had seen and lived it all, that nothing in the world could surprise him. His brow was furrowed, disheveled under a layer of sweat that shimmered in the brutal sun, his gaze high and commanding. He certainly hadn’t seen me, but for me, that was an advantage. I wouldn’t have minded sitting there and watching him forever, like someone watching the rain dry through a window.

“Look. That blonde guy lives with us,” Néstor said.

He spoke after a brief interval of silence and calm in which I had almost managed to forget the world. I came back to earth and looked at him. Néstor was pointing quite indiscreetly at Joaquín, following his movements across the field with his finger. The boy Joaquín had been calling for the ball finally passed it to him, and he secured the long-awaited goal. Everyone cheered, and Patricio applauded. As for me, every time I managed to formulate a thought in my brain claiming I already knew him, it would collapse like a wet sandcastle and I’d have to start over.

“Yeah, he looks familiar,” I finally replied.

“Come on, Elías. Where is your head?”

“Where it needs to be. College, maybe.” My friend gave me a flick to the head that left my ear ringing. “What do I care, Néstor?”

Economics won that match, soundly defeating the dentistry students. I don’t remember how many goals were scored, but Joaquín had put away enough to suddenly become a vital member of the team—as had Juan Cruz, whom Patricio didn’t stop talking about all the way back to the residence. However, I couldn’t focus on that. I have absurd memories of that soccer game. My friends weren’t surprised that I didn’t say a word. My mind was scattered yet focused on the information that had suddenly become available to it.

Patricio was the first to mention something. “Joaquín is Spanish,” he said. “Half-Spanish, actually,” he corrected himself later.

“He doesn’t have an accent,” I remarked, regretting it instantly.

“What do I care, Néstor?” Patricio mocked, imitating my voice. “I thought you didn’t know him?” They both laughed at me.

“I never said that.”

It was amazing that everyone in the residence knew him as if he’d lived there longer than us. “It’s because his mom is Argentine and his dad is from Madrid,” Patricio continued, but Néstor was quick to interrupt.

“That’s why he doesn’t have an accent,” he clarified for me. “Maybe he was born here.”

“Well, it’s the same thing,” Patricio complained. “But like Nancy told us, he has money. Lots of it. And she says he’s really good-looking.”

We laughed. “What does Nancy know? And really, what do you guys care?” I laughed back…

…"

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