Читать книгу August - Romina Paula - Страница 11

5.

I haven’t stopped sleeping since I got here. I can’t, I just can’t stop sleeping. It’s a little bit embarrassing, because of your parents, who knows what they’ll think, that I’m depressed, maybe, I don’t know. Maybe not. Your mom leaves me a breakfast plate on the table with a little note whenever she goes off to work. She’s incredible, your mom. And I have the most bizarre dreams because I just don’t stop, I cross over from dreams into something else, I get into something else, into this very bizarre state. I mean, it’s your bed, it’s your house, your room, it’s all super strange, very weird. Even though it doesn’t really look like it did before. It’s been sort of neutralized, you know? I feel like, between the fact that your sister kind of lived in here for a while and the fact that it seems like it’s being used as a guest room now, it’s just become sort of transient. I always liked it that your parents kept your room going, like that they kept it up to date, so that way it’s neither yours nor not yours, I don’t know exactly how to explain it: it’s yours, but neutralized, taken down a notch. And yet you’re still there in certain things. Certain pictures are still there, the ones you cut out of magazines, the Berni you got from a magazine, or Pettoruti maybe? I don’t remember, and it doesn’t say, the one you cut out of the magazine, but it’s still there, tacked up on the bookshelf. Bulgo’s picture’s still there, too, under the plastic part of the desk, and next to it there’s a piece of Johnny Depp’s face that you can tell somebody tried to remove, but Johnny held on to the plastic, really gave it his all, and there he is, he’s still there, young and beautiful. There are a few more things. Mostly in drawers. But I already told you that. They didn’t give away all your stuff. Your mom kept quite a bit of clothing, some of it she wears; I took a thing or two too, back at the time, the blue pullover with the little balls, which I slept in until really recently, it’s pretty disgusting at this point, but I still couldn’t toss it, even if it means nothing now, I mean, the pullover. It’s weird to see your clothes, really odd, to see them here again, more or less intact, and just the very fact they still exist.

I talked to Ramiro, and it sounds like the mouse hasn’t left yet, but he has taken a couple of concrete steps. He bought a mousetrap (ugh, an inquisition), and he put a piece of cheese in it; he said the mouse hasn’t tried it yet but that now the whole kitchen smells like cheese. Meanwhile he put out poison for the mouse to eat, and he mixed it with who-knows-what-type of seeds for the mouse to nibble on, but apparently he was told that the poisoning takes whole entire days to happen, because the mouse takes such small bites it takes it a long time to die. This is horrifying. My humble household has quickly been transformed into a site of terror, institutionalized death, and everything, I don’t know, I find it disgusting just to think about. But Rama sounds pretty stoked about it. Like he’s gotten reacquainted with his bloodlust, his former vocation of roach catcher, that masculine thing/virility.

Today my plan is to walk around a little, get out, see if I run into anybody, by chance, I mean, although I kind of hope they don’t recognize me, like I won’t be going around ringing people’s doorbells; there’s very few folks I would actually like to see. After that I’m meeting your parents for dinner. Julián, for example, Juli’s somebody, one of the people I would (most) like and not like to see. Ever since I got here, since we started coming up on the valley, like even back on the bus, on that morning, as soon as I woke up and there started to be mountains I suddenly had the strongest sense of Julián, as though it had simply been anesthetized, put on ice or something, or in salt, that sense, all this time; I woke up and my nose had fogged up the freezing window, my face was cold and squashed, I scattered the condensation on the glass with the sleeve of my jacket, I saw the first light of morning over the peaks, not yet reaching the highway, and I felt—god—that memory in my body, in the view, everything, sense memory, sensations lodged there, memory mocking plans, mocking decisions.

And now that I think about it, those strange dreams I had last night also included Julián. I don’t quite remember what he was or anything, but I exited those dreams with still some sense of him. What I don’t get though is if that means I’d like to run into him or just the opposite. I know I’d like to hear, but just hear, what he’s been up to, but anything I might do, any movement I might make, could run the risk of being misinterpreted. I’m afraid of calling him and having his wife answer, I don’t know if he’s married, I don’t even know if he’s still in Spain or if he’s back, and if he’s back I don’t know if he came here or stayed in Buenos Aires, I doubt it, that I highly doubt, but I don’t know, I just have no idea. I don’t want to ask your mom, I don’t know why, exactly, I guess I’m slightly humiliated by the thought of her thinking I’m still into him or whatever, I don’t know. Maybe it’s not even that, maybe there are just certain answers I don’t feel like hearing, who knows. I hate that these things are like this, so tough, ex-boyfriends. The strange thing is going overnight from sharing everything with someone to no longer knowing anything about what they’re doing, the person you shared everything with and knew everything about, every day, everything that happened every day, and then, suddenly, from one moment to the next, nothing, and not even the option of giving them a call, or maybe you can call them anyway but then everything gets awkward, even the most basic things become uncomfortable. Losing all claims on the other person, losing them, completely, just like that, like it’s nothing. I hate that, that artificial death, that rehearsal for death: forcing yourself to accept this idea that that person’s disappearing, has disappeared, is gone from your life, and you no longer have any reason to expect to hear anything else about them ever. It’s absurd and overwhelming. If they’re still alive and still around, or even elsewhere, you want to know how they are, what they’re up to, I don’t know, something. Right? Isn’t that the logical response? I’ll see, I might end up going by his place this afternoon, by his parents’ place, to see what the situation is, I could end up ringing the bell, potentially find out something.