There is redemption in Maqroll’s life, even joy, impermanent though it may be. It comes via three women and the time he has with them, as well as his memories of those times. One of them appears in the second of the seven novellas that make up The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Columbian author Álvaro Mutis. It’s called Ilona Comes with the Rain.
Álvaro Mutis, either as a third person narrator or as Maqroll in the first person, writes of these women rhapsodically. They are idealized figures; man-made women. They’re sexual and inscrutable; physical and comforting; innocent and knowing.
Despite the detail a story like Ilona provides, we never really know them.
In the second novella, we meet “the incomparable Ilona from Trieste,” one of Maqroll’s three great loves, and the female figure that comes closest to being realized as a person, perhaps because to some degree she has masculine qualities (as defined by the world of the novellas) and, to large extent, she mirrors Maqroll.
This was a permanent, organic, rigorous subversion that never permitted travel on the beaten path, the road preferred by most people, the traditional patterns that offer protection to those whom Ilona, without emphasis or pride but without any concessions either, would call ‘the others.’
The story is about another scheme, this one proposed by Ilona, but one Maqroll readily agrees to. From the outset, it’s temporary — both know their shared impatience with remaining in one place will give them itchy feet. In the short-term, however, it’s a way to make money and gives them something to do.
They will run a prostitute service of a particular kind: The women will have the pretense of being stewardesses for the various airlines of the world. It meets with great success but soon becomes tedious for adventurers like Maqroll and Ilona. They agree to an end-date when they will hand off the business and move on.
They come upon a woman named Larrisa who becomes one of their working women. She’s a cryptic figure until she tells her story. Here, Mutis presents us with a story-within-a-story. It’s a peculiar one; ghostly, and possibly delusional. We then return to the main story, with which the tale-within-a-tale connects.
Ilona and Larrisa develop a mysterious bond and we move to a conclusion that, in the world of Maqroll, is an inevitable one. It’s implacable destiny.
Ilona Comes with the Rain is a far more traditional story than its predecessor, The Snow of the Admiral. There is a clear storyline, it moves forward, and things happen. It comes to a clear conclusion and is a more satisfying story, in that sense.
However, the essence is the same, and the theme relentless. In the world of Maqroll, there is adventure, exciting initially, but always devolving into failure, and always informed by world-weariness. There are joys to be found, and they make the intolerable nature of existence tolerable. But they are fleeting. Fate awaits us. The losses accumulate. We will not win.