I await your answer anxiously and remain, kissing your feet. Accept the bracelet the color of your eyes.
LEANDRO.
Since I didn’t get a reply, I wrote to her again.
Dear Ifigenia:
I’ve thought about you so much that I can’t imagine anything apart from your face. I draw it desperately, but instead of your eyes I draw other eyes, and I am scared that you will come out of the painting transformed into a different person. I can’t remember the oval of your face, or your pretty hands. I get confused, I get disturbed, my thoughts get cloudy because I don’t know how to avoid this fear that seizes hold of me whenever I draw your mouth or your lips. Your mouth is what I prefer from your face, and indeed is the part I like best in everyone’s face. It makes me suffer, to see your mouth before it is completely drawn, when there is still the unremembered bit to draw, your underlip that pouts over your upper lip. I think I don’t know anything better than I know your face, but since I’ve started to draw it I can’t stop myself from adding features that don’t belong to it. How will I continue with this painting which does not look like you, where the hair is the wrong color, or the part-open lips are the wrong shape? My God, I don’t think I’d be able to cope with anyone who wasn’t you. It’s my fault, but I don’t think I’d be able to look at her in the eyes like I look at you. I hate this devilish tower! I wish that the world would quickly transform itself, that the stars in the sky would fall, or that somebody would switch off the lights so I don’t have to see you anymore. Now that I’ve finished my new portrait, I think I will be able to lie on the floor and sleep, at least if the person that I draw doesn’t come close to me and conquer me like you conquered me. I have finished, and I will send you this letter through the air. Ifigenia, please, never forget me. I am the saddest of people in this badly drawn tower. Never forget me.
LEANDRO.
The new girl Leandro had drawn came out of the painting.
“What’s your name?” he asked when he saw her.
“Alice in Wonderland.”
He looked at her and said: “I really should make some changes to you. I don’t like the shape of your face, or your mouth, or your eyes; I don’t like the way you’re looking at me. Please, get back into the frame. I will make a few changes, but before I do tell me something nice that I can remember.”
“I would like you to take me far away, deep down to the bottom of the sea.”
“I will draw you surrounded by shells and water and waves, and you will swim with the waves and go to the deepest part of the sea.”
Alice gets back into the frame and transforms; she jumps and leaps through the window, waving good-bye.
Dear Alice in Wonderland:
I write to you without much hope. I don’t think this letter will ever get into your hands. If you pass close to this window, you will see the envelope addressed to you and then you will stop walking. Perhaps then you will read my letter and find out that since I met you I haven’t done anything apart from think of you. I keep drawing you with all my soul, I put all my wit to the service of drawing you, because only like this will you appear again like on that beautiful day when I met you. The sun was shining in every corner of the tower, but it wasn’t the sun that lit us up, but you with your great big eyes. I thought it was a dream, and that you would be different. How wrong I was! Now I understand that my mistake was a test, and that I have to fight to see you again.
I have in my hands a pencil with which to draw you. For lack of time, I didn’t choose the best pencil, but the first one that came to hand…I am trying with all my might to draw you exactly as you are. I would like you to understand that you are different from all the other girls I have ever seen, and that even if it were possible to say that you looked like yourself, you wouldn’t then be the girl I met, so different are you from all others. Please, help me draw you. Don’t allow other faces to get in the way and make me forget your face. I need to see your face in order to draw it. When I was small I couldn’t draw very well and everything looked wrong. People didn’t like the way I drew my proportions. Now there’s no one to tell me that this is wrong, that you are different, much more beautiful and seductive, and that the pencil in my desperate hand is shaking. I beg you, help me with all your wisdom and I will be able to paint a portrait so good that it would be exhibited in any museum. I know I sound pretentious, but I am not. You must know that it is love that makes me pretentious. I am going to draw a sledge to come and find you. You will object that there is no snow, but I plan to draw the snow too. I will sketch lines that I have never drawn before. I think I’m on the right track. The sledge looks like all other sledges, and the snow like all snow. Would you like to come into the sledge with me? I will add in the reindeer who will draw the sledge, but before all that I must draw you carefully. The mouth is the hardest thing. How difficult the ears and neck and hands are as well. Where will I put them? What will your expression be? I propose to do something very, very hard. So many things! I don’t know if I will be able to achieve them all. I’m not a great painter, really, not even a great draftsman, some might say that I’ve never painted in my whole life. Don’t look down on me, Alice. Isn’t it possible that I can’t draw well because of you? Isn’t it possible that you have disturbed me? You didn’t make me lose faith in myself. I was never in the middle of a snowy landscape, I’ve never seen reindeer, I’ve never seen sledges, I’ve never seen you sitting in a sledge, wrapped in furs like a Russian woman, or a Chinese woman, or an Eskimo.
I’ve got an idea. I know how to make kites. A boy from school taught me how to make a six-sided one, very pretty. In my bag I have just the kind of paper you need for it, and the twine, and the sticks, and the ribbons for the tail. Now that there are so many planes and helicopters, it seems silly to build a form of transport as simple a kite; but the advantage is that I know very well how to draw one. I have meters and meters of cord. I will draw us a mermaid, in case it falls into the sea. Mermaids can swim, and she will take your letters as well. For greater security, I will send my letter in a bottle. I told you once that if we were ever separated without being able to communicate with each other, I would send you my letter inside a bottle, but probably you will not remember this, because you are a very modern girl and probably think that a message cannot travel in a bottle but instead has to go via telegrams and so on.
Good-bye, Alice. I can’t draw you. I’ve lost you.
LEANDRO.
* * *
—
The first thing I saw entering the room where I was working on my mother’s portrait was the portrait itself, broken on the floor. I stopped dead. Nothing could have hurt me more. I went closer, without thinking about what I was doing, I knelt down to touch the canvas and see if anything was missing, but everything was missing: I didn’t recognize what used to be the painting, I could only see the background with the green foliage. I understood immediately who had ruined the painting. The stains of the little paws, the claws and teeth revealed only one possible culprit: the dog. What is more, the fact that the dog had disappeared was highly significant. Where was he? Where was he hiding? I called him peremptorily. No one appeared. I searched in every corner. I was choking with indignation. I thought about punishing him. I had to punish him. How? I would make a whip with knotted cords, something I had learned about from a magazine. I drew it. It had three knots. I finished drawing it in a fury. I swished it through the air to hear it crack. I went around the corridors of the tower in a frenzy, forgetting about spiders and snakes, hitting whatever crossed my path with the whip, all the time shouting “Love, Love!” in different voices, trying to conquer him, to terrify him, to threaten him. Finally when there was no hope left I came close to the window to look out at the day, and I saw that Love was coming toward the tower with his head down, his legs bent, repentant. Love had one virtue: if he was sad he bent like a ball of wool, he almost disappeared. I felt tou
ched. The noise of the whip through the air died away. Love knew very well what he had done, and threw himself at my feet. I couldn’t say anything, and was ashamed and hid the whip underneath a chair. I felt guilty because I hadn’t thought about the painting for a long time, I had spent all my time thinking about Ifigenia and Alice. I bent my head as well, and when Love put his own head on my lap, half closing his eyes, I stroked him. No apology was ever sweeter.
* * *
—
With determination I started painting the ill-fated portrait again. I never worked with such eagerness, such submission to my task, such desperation. For hours I painted without a break, with half-closed eyes, approaching the canvas, stepping back. I prayed out loud for God to hear me, because my last chance to ever see my mother again depended on this drawing. Night and day I worked without stopping, until an intense light seemed to illuminate the sky and against the sky my drawing, this likeness of my mother that had been so difficult to obtain, became radiant, so radiant that I couldn’t look at it directly without shading my exhausted eyes. But when will my mother congratulate me, make that loving gesture so different from all others?
Waiting is difficult, but not even the Devil could prevent me from seeing her again. Everything he could try would be useless.
* * *
—
The inside of the tower was silent. Where could the bicycles be, the little girls with their bent faces, the spider, the snake, the Devil? Perhaps the Devil is not as powerful as we think, for if he were, then he would have come out of the little box already and opened the door. Is the Devil really as important as we think?
They always spoke badly about him to me. The strangest thing is that in carnival they always wanted to dress me as a devil. I realized it was for economic reasons. It’s the cheapest costume there is. It’s completely red. You can make his claws with those flowers, you know, sweetpeas, you can paint the mustache with a burnt cork, and the horns and the little jangling bells are cheap.
* * *
—
Leandro came close to the window, with a pencil and paper in his hand. He had to draw something, something very important that he didn’t quite understand, so disturbed he was by the latest occurrences: the sudden disappearance of Ifigenia, the arrival of the doctor and the mechanic, and more disturbing than all the rest, the impetuous exit of the automobile through the window. Where would they be now? He checked his watch for the first time since he had arrived in the tower. It had never occurred to him that he could check the time. He brought it close to his ear, and heard with emotion that it was still ticking. Nine o’clock, the little hands said. He leaned against the window frame and, standing there leaning into the air as he was, he started drawing an object, the most fantastical object in the world that he could remember: a pair of high-quality binoculars. It was hard to remember the labyrinth of those two tunnels that contained the lenses, it was hard to remember the mechanisms that advance and retract the mirrors, the little mechanical wheels, which also focus the image. Impressed by his drawing’s accuracy, he leaned back over the frame of the window and contemplated with such relish the lines he had drawn that for an instant he forgot the reason he had drawn them. It seemed to him as faithful and precise as one of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings, and it was completely finished. He extracted the high-quality binoculars from the paper. He looked through them as normal; next, he turned them around and looked again. He saw everything far away and very small, very very small. He focused the lenses. He looked eagerly through the window to the outside world, up and down. He looked at the horizon, staring as far as he could, so far that when the moment came he could hardly make out his own mother. Tiny, tiny, she was approaching, crossing a huge bridge, which was the distance between her and his eyes. She was coming closer but it was as if she were walking away, as if she were following a star. He could hardly see her, but it was her, no doubt about it, only she was so tiny she could have been his own daughter. His mother didn’t make any sign to show that she could see him but no sign was necessary. Leandro knew that she was seeing him as he was seeing her. Crossing any distance, crossing any silence; thanks to his high-quality binoculars, so perfect that they looked like one of Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions, but which he himself had drawn in order to see her, even if it were a tiny version of her, and to go to her side.
In his joy, Leandro leaned thoughtlessly out of the window and suddenly the binoculars fell from his hands. He tried to stop them falling, he cried out, it was too late. He felt sorry not to have remembered to draw a strap, such as people have for real binoculars and cameras.
Dear Alice:
How strange the world will seem to me when I get home, if I ever get home. I will recognize the entrance to my house, the trees in the garden whose names my mother taught me, the buddleia with its strange flowers, the dark green jasmine leaves, the jasmine flowers themselves, the blossom, some white, some yellow; the magnolia flowers so high in the trees I used to climb in order to gather a bouquet to sell in the street, but which unfailingly withered and whose petals turned dark brown; the little stones along the path that went around the house and which were so well raked by the gardener who came once a week to prune and water the plants. Could it be possible that Mother is waiting for me? There are days in which everything seems possible. Today is one of those days. I still have chocolates in my pocket; some of them are completely melted. This is how I like them best: a chocolate cream in silver paper. After eating it I lick the paper. Without the silver paper I wouldn’t like chocolate. The flavor is all in the wrapping. Still, it would be silly to buy chocolates simply because of the silver paper. It’s the same thing with people. One loves them for certain physical attributes, although this is not something you could tell everybody. Some days I feel attracted by a girl in a sky-blue dress. I wouldn’t like the same girl if she were dressed in black. Perhaps because I’m a boy I’m a little bit frivolous. I hope to correct this very soon. If someone were to ask me what the thing is that I would like to possess most in the world, I would answer: an automobile. Not a big, one but rather a tiny one, very tiny, so I could travel all over the world, with a circus tent in the trunk where the extra wheel is meant to go. I would put it up every night to go to sleep. In this topless tower I never felt sleepy. It’s the only advantage to being here. It would be very nice to go to other places together. Would you travel with me? But how will I get this letter to you? I beg you, you must explain it to me now, while you move away, or disappear, which wings I must wear to fly and reach you.
* * *
—
Will the images we’ve seen throughout our lives remain inside our eyes? Will we be like a modern camera, filled with little rolls of film; of course, rolls that don’t require to be developed? If I die before reaching my home, before seeing my mother whom I love so much, will she get to see the photographic film stored inside me? Will she see everything I did in this horrible tower that belongs to the Devil? I hope I look good in the pictures, and that Mother thinks that my hair looks nice and my clothes are clean, even if that’s not exactly the case.
Later, he thought that perhaps he would manage to be part of the history of photography: the first child who took pictures without a camera and who developed them without a darkroom. He tried not to be vain, but he was happy about the idea of becoming famous.
* * *
—
The silence was perfect. He could only hear the crickets, the birds, the noise of the sun rising (whenever the sun did rise). These were good moments to work. Leandro applied himself to painting his mother’s portrait. He thought he would never finish it. He felt relieved without the binoculars, even though he had suffered their loss so much to start with. Suddenly he saw his mother coming out of the picture. She was coming out to kiss him. At that very moment, the whole tower crumbled down. Among the beautiful dissolving ruins, only Love appeared, because the dog had followed him with the same jo
y that we feel at the end of a nightmare and at the magical beginning of a piece of creative work.
The garden appeared, with its flowers, its hammocks, with its birdsong, with its pines and cedars.
In the distance, Leandro saw his mother picking something up from among the ruins.
“Leandro! Where were you? I’ve been looking for you.”
“It’s me who was looking for you. What’s this?”
Leandro picked up a piece of glass from the floor and showed it to his mother.
“It’s from a painting. A moment ago it fell from the wall where I had hung it. But don’t touch it, you could hurt yourself.”
“Did you buy it from that man who came to sell you paintings, Mr. San Tan?”
“That’s right.”
“And is he still around here?”
“When these ruins fell, I heard a strange noise in the garden. That man appeared, he waved his hand in the distance and shouted out: ‘See you very soon!’ ”
Mother took a twig brush to sweep up the broken glass.
“Let me help you. You always do too much.”
“How changed you are! Where did you learn to be such a good boy?”
“Oh, I’ve learned a great many things.”
“Like what?”
“That the Devil is not so devilish. That insects and reptiles are not so bad, that drawing is not so hard, that falling in love is beautiful, that there’s nothing quite as good as having friends, that happiness exists, and sometimes happiness has the face of a dog. That being brave means being scared but not paying attention to it, not caring about the fear. That being locked in a tower can be almost fun; that writing keeps memories alive, and that seeing one’s mother again is the greatest happiness of all.”
The Big Book of Modern Fantasy Page 43
