Читать книгу August - Romina Paula - Страница 14

8.

I mean. The ABCs of my psychology, my building blocks. Yesterday I saw Juli’s mom with a kid, with a baby, and today I wake up overwhelmed by him, because of him, because of dreaming him, exhaustively and at length. Dreaming seeing him, dreaming him talking, me still going through that same old awful thing of not being able and not wanting to simply let him go, and at the same time not wanting to stay with him. Or not being able to. I don’t know. The with-or-without-you thing, that whole thing, with or without you. Like Fanny, like Depardieu. That pit in your stomach, in your heart, that hole where nothing ever, nothing you can do is or ever will be enough. Ever. That sense of reduction, of absence. That’s what I felt, that pit, I felt it in my dream, having Juli there in front of me, and at the same time I was happy, I mean, a specific sense of happiness, so towards him, seeing him there, being face-to-face with him and knowing that I wasn’t going to shatter into a thousand pieces, at least not yet. That sensation too—that of my heart in my throat just from wanting to know, basically, if he’s okay, what he’s been up to. So in my dream we were talking, and he was telling me that he had kids and a wife or I don’t know if he was saying that, but the feeling was that he was with someone, and that there was something that wasn’t possible anymore for the two of us, that was it, impossibility, and, nonetheless, the undeniability of that which does remain, of what we do still feel, that chemistry, that charge, that need. It’s like I could ingest, devour him in those moments, so he would stay inside me forever. Or have him kill me, I also think that, I think that that could happen, and it’s almost like I want it to happen, like I’m expecting it to happen, for him to kill me. If I close my eyes or rest my head on my arms on the table, and he smoothes my hair, I think or I feel that in that moment he could crush my head in one fell swoop, kick me directly in the head and kill me, but I don’t open my eyes, I just stay there with my eyes shut, not feeling fear, only resignation, surrendering to that, surrendering to him, to his capacity to crush me. The death drive, I guess, and I guess it always felt like that with him, that death drive. Like being at the midpoint between wanting to avoid and needing to go ahead. Knowing, hearing that it would be good/would be better to get out of it, and nonetheless not being able to, not really, not being able to escape, and going going going on and on and on, as though magnetized, by something. Maybe the kid’s not his, maybe Susi was watching some other kid, why would it have to be her grandchild? Yesterday I didn’t have the guts to ask your parents any questions over dinner, I kept feeling so shocked about that baby that I didn’t want to talk about it at all, I’m sure it’s his, that he’s the father, and I need to kind of get used to the idea before it gets confirmed for me, I need to be able to handle the confirmation in a stoic manner, when it’s given. Right now I’m a wreck, I’m not sure why it’s killing me this way, obviously it was always there within the realm of the possible. I mean: he isn’t and wasn’t a part of my life anymore, even if he was before, and he’s free to do whatever he wants, and I always wanted him to do well, to be happy, or maybe not happy because maybe that’s too much to ask, but I did want him to get to some sort of stability, I guess, at least an emotional one. But now it’s hell for me that he has that, it makes me angry or sad that I couldn’t give it to him, and worse, still, that he’s been able to find it with someone else. Fundamentally, I can’t tolerate the idea that he’s had children with another person, another girl, another woman. The idea that there could be little hims in the world, and that they would have nothing to do with me, is painful, I don’t know why, or I don’t know why it’s so bad, I guess I hadn’t ever really imagined it, I’d always assumed he’d be kind of lost in the world, trying to reconstruct his life, and now it turns out that he didn’t waste any time at all, didn’t waste a single second, and obviously he wouldn’t have been on his own for this whole time, with his charisma, which you’ve got to give him. The son of a bitch is enchanting. Ali watches me, eyes wide, in that cat’s pose that’s somewhere in between complete surprise and watching like a hawk and beholding the face of a corpse. I find it funny when she looks at me like that: I hold her gaze, try to replicate her bewildered face, and for a while we just stare at each other. I wonder if she’s trying to convey something to me that I can’t quite understand, or whether she sees something in my face that I don’t know about. It’s such a bummer, this stuff with Julián. It really bums me out. He always really bummed me out. The same thing that attracts me to him bums me out about him, that’s it, really. What I find attractive depresses me, or I’m depressed by what I find attractive, I don’t know, I don’t know what order everything happens in.

Anyway, so dinner with your parents was great, albeit with me performing acrobatics the entire time in order to avoid or not broach certain topics. Basically they asked about my life in Buenos Aires, if I liked it, if I’d adapted, who I was hanging out with there, they noted how few people had made it in the city, that most of them had come on home (danger: Julián), they asked if I was happy with my job, and here I glossed over some stuff and only told them all the good parts, filtering out my fears, for their sake, emphasizing my flexible schedule and that I did with my time as I wished, that that really was great, and then they asked me about school, or no, I think they asked me about that first and with that I really laid it on thick, extolling all the many virtues, all the many benefits of institutionalized learning, citing more what I recalled of my hopes for college when I was about to go as opposed to what I found in fact upon arrival/ended up with. That yeah, I liked it, that yeah, it was taking me a while to graduate, that I still don’t have a board to lay stuff out at home but that I do have a big table, that when I have to I work at a classmate’s house, and that yes, I have met a ton of really cool people, and that there are all kinds of people, there really are, most of them from Buenos Aires, but from other places too, that there are just a lot of people period, so you get a little bit of everything, although I guess not everything everything, it’s an expensive major, the materials are all really expensive, yeah, really outrageous, and that my dad has to keep sending me an allowance for all the materials I need for my different classes, that, I mean, I got a scholarship but that my dad pays rent as well, which is a huge relief because if we had to pay rent we couldn’t go to school at all, definitely not. That yeah, that Ramiro is still in college too, but he’s kind of setting his own pace, taking it easier because he’s really into music right now, that he met some guys at school, I mean, he met one of them there and then through him the others, his group of friends, most of them from Buenos Aires or from the suburbs, all musicians, mostly rock, yeah, they have a band. Yeah, it’s great, Rami’s really into it and plays all day some days; he just bought a used keyboard from one of these guys, so now he’s doing both guitar and keyboard, and he’s beginning to compose. No, it doesn’t bother me at all, I actually really like it, I like the music they make, and I like having music and people around, that’s the main thing, is that I really like having people around. No, it doesn’t really bother me when I’m trying to study, that I either shut the door or go to some classmate’s house or some café, but in general it doesn’t bother me anyway, it actually helps me focus, I’d say it relaxes me. That in fact my boyfriend is the drummer for their band, so it could hardly bother me. Yes, exactly, Manuel, oh, yes, I’m very happy, that recently things have been getting serious between us. No, he’s from Mendoza, but he’s been living in Buenos Aires for forever. He’s just a little bit older, two years older than Ramiro. So that’s what they do, they have the band, they’ve been playing for quite a while, just that Rami joined them relatively recently because they had a fight with their guitarist, who was also their singer, so it was Rami and this other guy who sings who joined the band at the same time. He sings really well, it did the band a world of good to make that change, this guy really has an incredible voice, totally unique, and he also gets so enthusiastic about the band, about the group itself, in terms of the people too, which is really important. Reducido, that’s the name of the band: Reducido. Yeah, they play quite a bit, on the south side mostly, I mean of Buenos Aires, and in little nearby towns as well, they play quite a bit in small towns, they get quite a few gigs. Yeah, they usually do play with other bands, they’re still not appearing on their own yet, or I mean, very infrequently, but it doesn’t really make sense for them yet, they’re not that likely to draw enough of a crowd to pay to rent the space and move all their stuff around, I mean, one of the guys has a truck, so that transports all the equipment, but even so, the idea is to make some money, even if it’s just to maintain all their instruments and such. And for food and what have you. Yes, I’m super happy, Manuel and I are going very strong, oh, yeah, he’s very laid back, yes, yes, I really care about him (danger: Julián), he cares about me too, we care a lot about each other. No, yeah, he also works in a store that sells instruments, on Talcahuano, yeah, right smack in the middle of the city, that there are a lot of them there, yeah, that he gets a little bored, but it’s not that bad considering. And it’s actually not under the table or anything. And besides it’s only temporary: he wants to start teaching music classes in schools, he likes kids. So I mean I definitely can’t complain, and your mother says how it’s so great that things are going so great, and I say, no, absolutely, I definitely can’t complain, and cheers, I say, and they say cheers.

We walk home, because we’d gone to the place on Rivadavia, which, of course, still has that old Nicolás as their main waiter, who told me how I’d changed, kid, while meanwhile staring at my chest, which made me fairly uncomfortable, but anyway we came back on foot, and you can’t possibly imagine how cold it was, and your mom laced her arm through mine, and your dad was holding on to her, and that was how we walked on back to your place, all of us drunk, almost a family.

I still can’t figure out if I am happy or sad. All I know is that I’m here. I’m here, that’s the one thing I am sure of.