Читать книгу The President’s Room - Ricardo Romero - Страница 18

My mother is the one who goes into the president’s room the most often. Naturally, because she’s the one who cleans the house; the one who cleans the room. Once a week she goes in and cleans, and while she’s in there she leaves the door slightly ajar. When she’s finished, the door stays slightly open like that for a few hours so the floor can dry, because my mother prefers not to open the window. That’s when the lurking begins. My younger brother and I find any excuse to walk past the door and peek inside. It’s not that we’re forbidden from going in, but if we went in and were found out, we’d be subjected to the inevitable questioning, and we both want to avoid that. The long, tedious interrogations during which our parents look at one another every time we answer, and take notes (my father’s the one who writes the notes). Whatever answer we give, there’s always a seriousness to those occasions that scares us. It’s impossible to tell what we’ve done wrong. It’s impossible to tell if we’ve done anything wrong. There are never any consequences. So we stick to lurking, sneaking glimpses of the sliver of room we can see through the crack in the door. The same bookcase with the same books and objects on it, the edge of a desk, the coat stand in the corner, always bare. Nothing very interesting. Nothing new in the way things are arranged. And yet, once a week, every time our mother cleans the president’s room, my little brother and I succumb to temptation. We lurk. And at the same time, we avoid each other. This means we’re spying on each other as well as lurking. The spying is unnecessary, seeing as we’re not even there for the same reason. My brother is attracted to the things that have been accumulating in the president’s room since the time of my grandfather. What attracts me is the room itself. The desire to see it without furniture or ornaments. The president’s room just as it was in the beginning.