Читать книгу Southerly - Jorge Consiglio - Страница 5

Correspondence

What can be seen in the blink of an eye

if not the fleeting nature of sight?

Alberto Szpunberg

When I first came to Buenos Aires, Zulema, the woman who brought me up, wouldn’t hear anything about me living alone. ‘You’re so absent-minded, they’d eat you alive in two weeks,’ she said in her husky voice. When I think about her, the same image always comes to mind. I see her in the half-light of the kitchen. She’s standing, straight as a rod. Her eyes are two bugs. She hardly blinks. Her lips are slightly parted. In her right hand is a fly swatter; a cloth hangs from her left. She waits. She knows the fly’s flight range is limited. When it comes to a standstill, she’ll deliver the blow. She’ll immediately wipe away any traces. That’s the idea. Such a mission requires the greatest care, all her attention. That’s Zulema, with her glass of orange liqueur, her herbal tea, her lacquered hairstyle, her determination, which is like saying her strategies for survival. They deserve respect. The survival strategies, I mean. You’ve got to be on the ball. I’m sure she’s just the same today.

*

I live with my uncle Mundo and his ten-year-old daughter on the sixth floor of a building on Carlos Calvo Street. Let me explain: I had only ever seen my uncle and Angela, his daughter, in photos before coming here. Back in the village there was a lot of talk about them, particularly him: about his divorce, how brave he was to have taken responsibility for the child, and his prestigious job as a cardiologist at the Hospital Italiano.

The first time I saw him I was struck dumb. He was only slightly taller than I was. I had imagined him to be huge: in the photos he looked like a giant. There is one photo I remember in particular: Mundo is descending a staircase – I found out later that this was in the Hospital de Clínicas – with a colleague. It was a bright, sunny day. Both were wearing medical scrubs. The photographer was standing at the foot of the stairs, on the pavement. It looked like a natural shot. They were deep in conversation, pretending the camera wasn’t there. Mundo was trying to look assertive, powerful. His hands were frozen in a gesture that encapsulated his entire surroundings: the city, the people, the traffic, the traffic lights. I thought a guy like that couldn’t be less than six foot tall. These were assumptions I’d made at home in the village, the fantasies of a child. We met. He said to me: ‘Hello, Mariela.’ I opened my mouth but nothing came out. He repeated: ‘Hello, Mariela.’ I rubbed my hands and said: ‘But we’re the same height’. I have no idea why I said that. I heard myself say the words as if someone else had spoken for me. Then we fell silent. We looked at each other. I was waiting for a rebuke; he, I suppose, for an explanation.

*

Angela and I got on instantly. She was fascinated by me. I had just turned twenty: I took the role of older sister. She’d stroke my arms, sniff my clothes, stick her fingers into my pots of Hinds cream. Whenever we could we’d hang out and gossip. Saturday afternoons were our favourite time. She’d come to my room (which was the smallest, at the end of the corridor) with her brushes and combs. She’d spend hours doing my hair, telling me her secrets. And I would let her. I listened to her life in miniature and I sensed, I don’t know why, that she was in danger. Poor little thing. I envisaged her in the middle of a suspension bridge hanging over an abyss. Frozen with fear at the drop below. Bewitched, waiting for a voice, I assume her father’s, to encourage her on. Once, after eating an entire box of Lindt, she fixed her eyes on me. The chocolate had revealed something to her. She said: ‘Mariela: I’m afraid of myself.’ Those were her exact words: ‘I’m afraid of myself.’ She didn’t have to say it twice. ‘It’s okay, sweetheart,’ I said. I gave her a big hug. She was my cuddly toy, my lucky charm.

*

Ever since I moved in, Angela dropped hints that she wanted me to buy her a pet. My uncle, like all men, was sedentary, depressive. He refused to have an animal in the house. I didn’t care what he thought. We shared a very small past, or no past at all. That, and my lack of experience, were my armour. One day I went to a pet shop and bought a golden hamster, a cage, a water bottle and an exercise ball. Angela jumped for joy. ‘It’s for you, honey’, I said. ‘Give it a name.’ But the hamster lasted what hamsters last: no time at all. A week later, Angela had an allergic reaction. She came out in a rash on her neck, nose, cheeks and arms. Her eyelids swelled up. She couldn’t breathe properly. We had to rush her to A&E. They injected her with corticosteroids. The doctor broke the news: ‘There’s a risk of oedema of the glottis.’ I looked at him astonished. ‘I can’t believe it,’ I said. ‘The glottis is an opening in the larynx. Through which air passes,’ he clarified. I felt like I was going to die. Everything turned blue. I steadied myself against the back of a chair. I almost fainted.

I didn’t give up. A week later I bought a canary, but Angela had lost interest in animals. I was the one who became fond of the bird. I discovered the way in which birds make themselves present. How to put it. They’re unpredictable. Sometimes silent, keeping an ear to the ground; at other times, frenziedly chirping. They’re strange creatures. We give our canary birdseed, apple, a little carrot, but some days it won’t touch its food. ‘It’s melancholy’, the vet told us. It only eats when it wants to.

*

I hate how dingy the flat is. I’m used to sunlight streaming through the windows. In Carlos Calvo we had to have the light on all day long. The flat is a hole in the wall. That’s why it took me a while to clean the top shelf of my wardrobe. I only got round to it one Sunday a month after my arrival. I stood on a chair, opened the doors and dusted the inside. As I went to wipe the shelf with a wet cloth, I noticed some abandoned papers stuck right at the back. I brought them down. Two legal-size envelopes. One contained a letter and some photos; the other an X-ray and a guide to playing the piano. I started with the photos. There were four. Three in black and white and one in colour in which you could make out two old ladies on a patio full of potted plants. They were sitting on plastic chairs around a table with a bottle of Coke and four glasses. They were smiling. It was summer: they were wearing sleeveless flowery smocks. The other photos were even older. The scene was an empty beach. It seemed remote. It showed a young woman, about thirty, walking beside the shore. The other two were alike: the girl was wearing jodhpurs and a black polo shirt. In the background, partly hidden by the sand dunes, was a tower. At first I thought it was a lighthouse; then I realised I was mistaken. It was the chimney of a factory or something like that.

*

I pushed aside the other documents and concentrated on the photos. I spent several weeks studying them. I was obsessed. I couldn’t take my eyes off those images. Then I began working as an administrator at an estate agency and started studying at college. These two things kept me busy all day. I would leave the flat at nine in the morning and would get home at half ten at night, when I’d warm up some leftovers in the microwave, eat quickly and go straight to bed. Sometimes, I’d find my uncle slumped on the sofa watching a film. One evening, he got up, turned off the telly and made coffee. ‘I’ll keep you company,’ he said, and sat down opposite me with the cup in his hand. It was extremely uncomfortable. I didn’t know what to say and he didn’t say anything. He just watched me eat. I started talking nonstop. I got really nervous. This always happens to me. I told him about my job, the public transport system, my course and what I had found in the wardrobe. Mundo wasn’t really listening to me. I thought he was just pretending to pay attention but, a while later, as if he was thinking about something else, he asked me to show him my discovery. ‘What discovery?’ I asked. I suddenly realised what he was talking about. I got the envelopes and spread them out on the table. ‘Those two ladies used to live here,’ my uncle said. ‘Now they live in the countryside near Navarro. Their daughter rents the flat to us.’ Strange as it may seem, this was the first time I had connected those images with real flesh-and-blood people. Before that, the photos, the letters, the X-ray and the piano-learning guide had no people behind them. They were testimonies from another planet, traces of a distant civilisation.

*

I lasted just three months at the estate agency. ‘You have no sense of urgency,’ my now former boss said to me. He threw me out. I didn’t really understand but I kept my mouth shut and put up with it, as Zulema had taught me. Then, I packed up my things and shut myself in the toilet to cry. On the upside I now had more free time, and I never get bored. I found things to do. One was to return to my discovery. I found out that the X-ray was of a knee. Mundo held it up against the light. He couldn’t find any signs of fractures. One of the ladies must have had arthritis.

*

There were six letters. All written by different senders but all sent to the same recipient: Edda. The handwriting was alike. Not in their style but in other ways, different ways. How each writer experienced time, for example. This conditioned the lettering. They wrote about simple things, made promises, gave their opinions, recalled things, all backed up by the soundness of a syllogism. If I sniffed the letter, I could smell the hand that had written it. It was the perfume of another era. Similar to the fragrance Zulema used to wear in summer. All the letters had that atmosphere, what they described was the reflection of a different reality. In one, they spoke of a tree as if it were a man; in another, of a sudden south-easterly wind in El Tigre; in another, of holidays in the province of Córdoba; in another, they explained how to make rice pudding. There I was with my letters. Sprawled on the bed in Carlos Calvo Street. I read. I speculated. I immersed myself in Edda’s story, which was sweeping and fragmentary, and hence, better than my own life. I crept gradually closer like when I was little and wanted to catch a cricket, my heartbeat pounding in my ears.

*

One hot afternoon, the caretaker of the building invited me over to her place for an iced mate. She was plump, with bulging eyes, more oval than large. We both enjoyed watching one particular afternoon soap. We also liked avoiding our neighbours. These things created a bond between us. She smiled; I smiled. She was a chatterbox; I, a woman of few words. Gradually, almost reluctantly, I began talking. I asked her about the ladies who had lived in my flat. She remembered them but had trouble articulating herself. She didn’t give me any useful information. I asked about Edda. The caretaker rolled her eyes. She sniffed the air just like a deer or a guanaco. She sucked the straw down to the last drop. Then, she moved closer as if she were about to kiss me. She said: ‘Edda was wild. Bold. No one would dare step on her toes. Like Tita Merello.’ She didn’t have to say anything else. You could see the certainty in her eyes. From then on, in my eyes Edda would be Tita Merello, a woman who could settle on any shore. Or shape the shore to her liking.

*

I like to think there are hidden connections in life. Any act, for reasons unknown, can be connected to another act. One day I woke with toothache. I rushed to the dentist. I sat in the chair and opened my mouth. A guy with a poker face picked up some forceps at random. It was his métier. He felt powerful. He put in a temporary remedy. It fell out after a day and a half. He tried again. It lasted a week. Admitting defeat, he said: ‘I recommend extraction.’ He took the tooth out on a Saturday morning. Hearing the crunching of the bones and bursting into tears was one and the same act. Overflowing with emotion, the poker face said: ‘It’ll be over soon. Don’t move.’ I went home with half my face numbed by the anaesthetic. Every little while I probed my numb cheek with the tip of my tongue. I flopped down in front of the telly with Angela. She looked after me in her own way, with all the paraphernalia kids have around them. She brought me dolls, pencils and a paint box. She brought me water I didn’t drink, an uncomfortable pillow, and a comb so she could comb my hair. I wouldn’t let her. That was the first time I had ever been strict, and it went well, I was a natural. I hit the mark. Angela began to draw a dog but she wasn’t pleased with how it turned out. In a fit of rage she ripped the paper into tiny pieces. Inconsolable, she shut herself away in her room. Thankful for a bit of space I went to lie down on my bed, which I had been dying to do ever since I got home.

*

Poor health modifies your perspective. I’m sure of it. Even something as routine as the discomfort after a tooth extraction. It changes the way you see things. It’s like putting on new glasses. Everyone knows that the best place to read is in bed. In my case, I read magazines, whichever ones I can get my hands on, or that people lend me. I also read the letters sent to Edda. After the tooth extraction, I kept myself entertained with three in particular, which, in my opinion, were the best. One from a guy who tells her about making plum compote. Another from a relative who initially spoke about property deeds but then lost their train of thought and ended up talking about a dog. The last one was the best of all, because you could only make out the gist of it. It was hard to grasp the meaning. It was written by a woman. She had kneaded the story as if it were a ball of clay. Then she flattened it out and it seemed like it had never existed.

The signature was also almost illegible. It seemed to say Ileana, but I’m not sure. The confusion was in the handwriting and the way she told a story. Everything was tangled up. A real fankle, as Zulema used to like to say. The letter was dated April 2010. It spoke of events that had happened more than a decade earlier. Ileana and Edda had shared a bedroom in a mansion, out in the country. That I understood: a curtain pinned to the wall, a ceiling fan, the smell of lavender mixed with carbolic soap, the song of the lapwings. And the somnolence of the siesta. It read: ‘in sweet intimacy, the pleasant lethargy of the siesta’. Then, as if regretting what she had written, she changed the subject. She told stories about horses, and selling horses. But to finish the letter, as if her thoughts had taken on a life of their own, she returned to the subject of the bedroom. This time from a different angle: regret. She complained about the passing of time, that she had aged faster than she should have done. I tried to imagine Ileana’s face. I’m not very creative and the face that came to mind was Zulema’s. I thought about her crazy in love one summer afternoon. The other was Edda, whose image matched the photos, the picture of the patio. Both of them understand the importance of that siesta. They are somewhere remote. The ceiling fan barely ruffles the sheets. From outside comes the sound, not of silence, but of the stillness of the earth. Their eyes meet. Their gentle breathing has fallen into rhythm. They lie down, each in their own bed. They are forgotten to themselves. They talk of their little worlds as if they were vast. They smile. They smile at each other. They let time pass, they have no intention of sleeping. They would stay like this, just as they are, forever. One of them stands up. Or both, it doesn’t matter. And in that precise moment, when it is neither hot nor cold, when nothing else exists, they understand that passion, against all volition, has chosen just the two of them.