Читать книгу Resistance - Julián Fuks - Страница 14

8.

When you’re one of three children, being one of three children is enough and you’re already creating a multiple universe of complicities, exclusions and alliances. A game I might be retrieving intact from some secret corner of memory or I might just be inventing now, assigning roles like the person in charge, redeeming my own inaction with words. I can see, or invent, my brother summoning us silently, holding a finger to his lips: he wants us to gather all the cushions, pillows, mattresses we can carry without being seen, and pile everything up in the corridor, dividing the apartment into two halves. He wants us to build a great barricade together, not yet knowing, not even suspecting, that the great barricade will divide us, too.

Those were good moments, when we threw ourselves against that soft barrier, trying to clear the top in acrobatic leaps, committed only to impulsiveness, the inconsequence of bodies. We were siblings, and being siblings made it easier to appreciate the irresponsibility, to fantasise about an unlikely accusation by the adults, their censuring of the risks we were supposedly taking. In my brother’s jumps those risks became spectacular, and it wasn’t unusual for me and my sister to step aside just to watch, full of wonder at his skill, amazement at his courage. Some would say this was his way of dispelling his aggression, that by throwing himself into the void he was mastering his anguish and helplessness – the anguish that was reflected in our eyes and that we too dissipated merely by watching him. But none of that seemed to cloud the joy of those acts, none of that made the smile fade from his face, a smile that was so uncommon in him.

It wouldn’t be long before the smile would fade, as the game threatened to come to an end. We were siblings, and among siblings any coalition is temporary, any peace is fleeting, any sign of affection heralds the next inevitable attack, which might be brought on by the mildest word. At the first command I would find myself beside my brother, on one side of the barricade, cushions quickly piled up, and then battle would commence. My sister was now the enemy to be subdued, my sister who would soon give up on any counterpunches, bending beneath the dense hailstorm, lying face-down and shielding the back of her neck with her forearms. My sister’s curled-up body like a silhouette drawn on the ground – can I see that image or am I making it up? Do I add my puny blows to my brother’s or do I in that moment manage to defy him, to break our pact, to become my brother’s brother and denounce the cowardly acts being perpetrated there?

That night we waited in silence for our sister’s return, we waited at the kitchen table, by the door, wanting to be there when she arrived. When she arrived she was still inconsolable, she was still sobbing, and my father’s expression was stern. The front tooth that had been cracked would never be perfectly repaired, that was what the dentist herself had said: now it was half resin, and the colour of the tooth and the colour of the resin would never be the same. I don’t know how we reacted, my brother and I, if there was any anguish our eyes could express, any kind of sympathy, any polite pity. I think I wanted to sleep in her room, just for that night, but I was too ashamed to say so.