So will you?
The question curled open. It flared its enormous petals. I looked around at the bookshelf with its childhood photo and its bride and groom facing the future with closed mouths, the blue painting and still curtains and the patio beyond it that had once held too many flowerpots to count, the wet man resting in the pool whose humming lullabies had accompanied me all night, and I let all of it tear me open to see that I already knew the answer. I could not live here another day. I could not stay here in this haunted house where I would never form what the book called a true identity, and though I might never be restored—though I did not want to be restored if it meant erasure—though I still didn’t know exactly where I was going or who I wanted to become or what it would take to carve the road of becoming, I knew in that moment that I wanted nothing more than to rip apart the self I had worn like heavy clothing that suffocates you but that you cling to for fear of the cold. I needed to be cold. I needed to be stripped down, hungry, alive—and also close to what was not alive, this phantom, because that, too, I thought, is who I really am. I wanted to spend a thousand and one more nights with this wet man, because he was linked to me and I to him. I wanted to be close to him and close to Perla, the stripped version of myself, I wanted to look in the mirror in the morning and know whom I was greeting, be capable of stroking her glass face no matter what she’d done.
The sun was ripe and heavy in the room. I had spent most of the morning perched here with the book as my sole companion. The guest was still asleep but I had catapulted to a space beyond sleep. All I could think of was the phone, sitting still and ready in the study. What would happen if I called my parents in Punta del Este, what would come out of my mouth. Do it now, I thought, before sense returns and fear sets in. I went to the study, sat in the plush leather chair, and dialed.
He wakes to the sound of her steps, walking away, down the hall. Last night rushes back to him and he thinks, Let tonight be the same, and the next night and the next, a long chain of incandescent hours, what a glorious future, the girl and him, sharing a room, sharing a sphere, his humming and her hair, his water and her thoughts, together and together and together.
The room is bright with day. The sofa’s aggression has been silenced forever. The melted clocks in their dry landscape do not tick. The swan still bends its head, but there is no sense of burden to the posture, only a bowing to the mysteries inside or around it. Now he loves them, clock and swan and sofa, the way a fish loves the coral reef and stone and current that make his water possible, without thought, without the slightest flicker of a fin, yes, here we all are, intrinsic to the ocean. He will stay in this communion as long as the fates allow, this room is everything and every thing is contained within this room, or will be when she comes and stays and he can drink the molten air of their shared presence, and this, he thinks, is the true curve of the world—now I glimpse it: all things are blended under the surface like the mass of us were blended in the water, it’s the separateness of skin and rock and mind that is the great illusion. We are not discrete; we are not solid. People and things and even cities are meant to flow together, they are meant to connect, and this is why we’re always full of longing, the way I long for the girl, and the girl longs for truth, and the truth longs for volume, and volume longs for people to hear it, and people long for—what?—for everything, air, home, violence, chaos, beauty, hope, flight, sight, each other. Always, whether to stroke or maim, each other, above all.
He glows with his new knowledge, wants to share it with her, waits for her return. But then he hears her voice from a room down the hall. She has left the door open. Is she talking to herself? No, she is on the phone. Her voice sounds tight; he has never heard her sound this way. He strains to listen. He strains to understand.
My father answered the phone on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Hi, it’s me.”
“Ah, Perla. Hello.” His mood was amiable, relaxed. “We were about to leave for the beach.”
“I was just calling to see how you were doing.”
“We’re doing great, terrific. The only problem is that we have to pack up so soon.”
“Yes.”
“And you? How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Are you sure? You sound strange.”
“Do I?”
“I said it, didn’t I? What have you been up to?”
He sounded as though he was really asking, and before I could stop myself, before I could pull the veil back over my own voice, I said, “Thinking.”
“Hm! About what?”
“A lot of things.” I paused. My hands were shaking. “For example, what exactly you did. And whether you would do it again.”
“Do what again?”
“The war. What happened at ESMA.”
We were both shocked by my words and timbre. Silence.
“Why are you bringing that up now?”
“It’s been on my mind.”
He made no sound, and I thought the pause would never end; I was convinced that he had withdrawn from the topic, shut the window, drawn the drapes. But then he said, very softly, “Perla. For God’s sake.”
“For God’s sake what?”
“Don’t do this.”
But even if I’d wanted to I couldn’t have stopped the woman who had taken possession of my body and tongue. “Did you know their names?”
“Whose names?”
“The people under your charge. The”—disappeared, destroyed, disfigured—“subversives.”
“Do you have to bring this up on my vacation?”
“Yes. I do.”
“Why?”
“I’ve been wondering about my parents.”
“Well, look, we never—”
“What did you do to my parents?”
He was silent again; it was a cavernous silence in which the question echoed, echoed, echoed. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I think you know, Papá.”
“Look,” he said, and now his voice was calm, carefully calibrated, a closely gauged voltage, “you’ve been talking to the wrong people.”
“I want you to answer me.”
“Somebody has confused you.”
“I’m not confused.”
“You are. It’s better to talk about this in person. We’ll be home tomorrow night, we can talk then and clear the whole thing up. All right?”
He would not answer. He would never answer. It was no use continuing, and also no use pretending that the bomb had not been launched. I imagined the woman who was playing the part of my mother, across the room from him, sitting stiffly in her bathing suit as she followed one side of the conversation. Perla, I thought, what have you done? “Fine.”
“None of this is what you think it is.”
My turn to go silent.
“Don’t let anyone put ideas in your head. You can’t be too careful these days, there are a lot of people out there spreading lies.”
I laughed, then—I couldn’t help it, the sound escaped before I had a chance to bite it down.
“What the hell is so funny?”
“Nothing.”
“Perla.” He sounded nervous now. “We’ll chat when I get home, I promise. And then you can ask me anything you like.”
Anything? Anything at all? Papá, this is our houseguest, don’t mind his dripping skin—have you met before?
“Okay?”
I was silent.
“Perla?”
I almost hung up or shouted at him, my hand burned to slam the receiver and my throat burned with unsaid words, but I did not do either because I suddenly saw my future clearly, one in which there would be no chat when he got home, a future in which I held this phone call in a locked drawer of my heart labeled THE LAST TIME I HEARD HIS VOICE. And this made me feel both free and numb, an arm on the brink of amputation, saying a dazed good-bye to the body. For this reason, and this reason only, I stayed on the phone.
I said, “Okay.”
“Be careful out there. Don’t think too much.” He paused, and I heard some shuffling. “Your mother sends a kiss.”
“Okay.”
“Well? Do you send one for us?”
He said it with a laugh, trying to ease the mood, but I could hear the strain in his tone, almost a begging. I thought of leaving him in that position, ending the call with his question suspended and unanswered—he had left my question in that same state, after all—and perhaps I should have, but I could not bring myself to do so. I was a coward. A coward, or just a daughter, after all. “Of course, Papá.”
“Hasta pronto. I love you.”
“Adiós.” I thought of saying I love you back; the words hung silent in my mouth; but before my mouth could comply, I saw my hand reach for the telephone cradle and press down. I heard a click as the line went dead.
I put the receiver down. The wood-paneled walls seemed to respire around me. Now you’ve done it, they breathed, you can’t turn back, the cutting has begun. Even though my father was across the water in Uruguay, I was convinced that he would burst through the door at any moment and rush up to me, his hands landing on mine with warm authority, Perla, what’s all this crap, you’re not going anywhere. And then he would find a way to make me stay. But of course he didn’t break through the door, I remained alone, and I wish I could tell you that I was glad he didn’t come, that I sat there victorious and elated with no trace of longing for his presence. That’s the story I would like to tell, but it would be a lie. I stared at the door for a long time. The walls bristled and pulsed around me. I felt sick. I felt gutted. I wanted to put my head down on the man called Héctor’s desk and sleep for days, weeks, the rest of my life. But they were coming home the following night; I couldn’t sleep yet, I had to act.
I picked up the phone receiver and dialed another number.
“Hello?”
“Gabriel.”
“Perla.” He sounded relieved and wary at the same time.
“How are you?”
“Fine,” he said curtly.
“I miss you.”
He was silent.
“I mean it.”
“Fine. Whatever.”
“Look, I know I’ve been horrible to you, I don’t even deserve to ask this and if I were you I don’t think I’d say yes, but I need your help.”
He was quiet for a moment, in which I tried not to fidget.
“With what?”
“I need to leave this house.”
“You want to go out somewhere?”
“I mean leave for good.”
He was quiet again, and this time I sat utterly still. I felt a kind of preternatural ease now that the words were out.
“Are you okay?”
“I am. I think so. Maybe more than ever.” Perla, I thought to myself, make some sense. No, to hell with that, it’s much too late for sense. “You were right.”
“About what?”
“About my parents.”
“Oh.” His voice became infinitely gentle. “Perla.”
“What you said on the beach. You were right.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Try me.”
“I will. But I want to do it in person.” Better, I thought, to show him the ghost than to try to describe the last few days. How could any of it ever be put into words?
“You’re brave, you know.”
“Me?”
“What you’re going through. I can’t even imagine.”
I closed my eyes. “I’m not brave. I haven’t gone through a thing, haven’t lived a single instant that could be called authentic life.”
“If it wasn’t life, then what was it?”
“I don’t know. I feel like I’m disappearing.”
“Maybe it’s the opposite.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe you’re finally appearing.”
I looked past the bookshelves to the window, with its shred of visible sky. “Out of nothing? And with nothing?”
“With your true self.”
“I don’t have a true self.”
“Of course you do.”
“It’s all been false.”
“What about us? Was that false?”
“No. No.”
Silence hung between us; I could almost hear him thinking. “Have you talked to your parents? I mean the—”
“—I know which ones you mean. They’re not here. They’re on vacation, they come back tomorrow night.”
“So you want to leave before then.”
“Right.”
“Do you need a place to stay?”
“If I could. For a little while. Until I find my own place.”
“How will you manage that?”
“I’ll find a job. I’ll drop out of school.”
“You can’t drop out.”
“Of course I can.”
“You don’t have to, Perla. You can stay with me.”
Gratitude rushed through me, mixed with relief. But then I tried to imagine our lives together—him, me, and the guest—with that ridiculous pool installed forever in his living room. It was too much. “Thank you, Gabo. Really. But you don’t know what you’d be getting into. There’s something I haven’t told you yet.”
The line between us seemed to prickle.
“It’s not what you think.”
“I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“And I don’t know how to say it. It can’t be said, I have to show you. Can you come over?”
“When?”
“Tonight, if you can.”
“How about nine o’clock?”
“Okay, nine o’clock. Could you drive? So I can take some things in your car.”
“Sure.”
“Thank you. I love you.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding.”
“Say it again.”
I laughed. “I love you.”
“Well then.” He sounded lighter. “See you soon.”
We hung up. I sat back in my father’s leather chair, the chair of the man I had always called my father. I tried to imagine Gabriel’s face on meeting the guest, his shock or disgust or fascination. I hoped he would not run away, and would agree to help me move the man to the backseat of his car. We’ll have to wrap him in a blanket, I thought, and perhaps a plastic tarp. I should take the red pool. I should take some of my clothes, books, childhood photos. Not everything, of course, just the things I can’t live without. Which may be no things at all. It may be that there’s nothing in this house that I can’t live without, that I could walk out with empty hands and survive. And then the exhaustion I had evaded all these hours swept its plush black hood over me, and I gave myself to sleep. I dreamed of ants, millions of them, scaling the oak in the yard, climbing and climbing toward the sky.
The light is fading. The corners lose their sun. There is so much he could shout into the gathering darkness. The turtle enters on slow legs and stands in the center of the room and it is good to see him. Clack, his hard jaws say to the shadows. Clack.
Hours have passed since the two phone calls, and she is still in the other room, completely silent. She must have fallen asleep. Let her rest, he thinks. And let her go. He cannot steal her life. He does not want to be a burden. How moving that she planned to take him. She is a kind girl—and courageous, too, the way she talked to the man who had been her father. But no, he cannot live with whoever she called next, whoever is coming tonight with a car and prying eyes. A certain Gabo. Whom she loves, she says, and he hopes this Gabo loves her back and will be good to her, treat her like the miracle she is. In any case, she has a place to go and you have to let her go. He looks around the room now and he loves it, loves the painting of the ship made with the same strokes as the sea, the curtains where he has seen shards of Gloria’s body, the walls that have sung with blinding light, the sofa with whom he warred, the porcelain swan that
longs to spread its hard white wings and tell its secrets in a slash of flight. Where else will he go? He has no idea. He will follow the pull. He closes his eyes and searches, dives, reels until he finds himself in the chamber with electric devices and trained men, he sees it clearly around him but it is different now, this is not his own memory, he is not the one tied to the mattress, it is an older hairy man who lies there writhing, he can see the man at the machine and the guard at the door and the doctor with his clipboard: the man at the machine is as calm as a captain at the helm of his ship, upright, broad-shouldered, prepared to steer through any waves that come; the guard is young and clean-shaven and earnest, he is doing his part to save his nation, he does not watch; the doctor makes notes on his clipboard as the man at the machine turns a dial and the small hairy naked man thrashes against his restraints, the doctor watching keenly, a man of science, he rubs his nose and nods to himself. He watches the four men from the ceiling. A dance, a strained choreography, four men in a bare room. He is lighter than air, floating, he can float out into the hallway and he must, something pulls him out into the hall and down it and he goes because she is not far and I must find her, past the shut doors of cells with covered peepholes, one after the other, he is not so much searching for something as moving toward it the way a shard of iron moves toward a magnet. The pull grows stronger as he travels up a flight of stairs and down a hall past a room where guards play truco, a card game, and watch television (and they seem bored, their eyes are glazed, they laugh but do not look at each other), down another hall to another room where he finds her. She lies shaking. She is curled up like a fetus, her belly is smaller now but not yet down to normal size. She is blindfolded and unrestrained, bleeding down her legs, the guards have just had a round with her, they have used her like a dog but you are not a dog, my Gloria, tesoro, mi vida, I am here with you and I will stretch the nothingness I’m made of and cover you like a blanket, can you feel me across the boundaries of space and death and time? Do you feel warmer, Gloria? I would like to swaddle you, enfold you with myself, the soft of my consciousness a layer to blunt the edge of any fall. He unfurls the swath of his naked mind and strokes her with it. It is her skin, the same skin he has touched on many sweaty nights and languid mornings, supple and a joy to touch, like the joy of coming home after a long journey. You. Come home. Her breathing softens, her thin fingers move in the air as if playing a very quiet song on a piano, sensing for wayward keys. She tilts her head back, and her lips part. Yes, Gloria, I’m here, I’m here. She feels him, she must feel him, he believes it with his whole translucent being, he feels her body relax beneath his intangible caress. They lie together for an infinite instant or a brief eternity. When the guards come in to cuff and take her, he drapes himself around her shoulders like an unseen weightless shawl and stays wrapped around her in the Army truck that rumbles through the night, toward the outskirts of the city, carrying its cargo of dazed blindfolded people pressed close together in the dark, naked people merging with each other and straining to breathe air thick with the smell of unwashed bodies. They cannot see where they are going but some of them must know, they hang their heads as if in sleep or prayer. Gloria sways with the motion of the truck. He sways with her, the human shawl, he knows this journey, recalls the truck that led to the airplane and he tries to stroke her body with the limp invisible cloth of his mind. Once, Gloria, we drove through the pampas and your profile was so beautiful against the wheat fields passing by, such long flat land, how I loved you then, how I love you now, remember the wheat fields, Gloria. The truck stops and the guards unload their cargo on a dirt field beside a barracks, command the people to line up in the beam of the headlights, though the people cannot see and so the guards arrange them with their own hands, the air is cool and fresh and he can feel Gloria take deep breaths of it, her first night air in months, dark and sweet with the breath of leaves and rocks and the lingering taste of the sun, and she has just inhaled deeply when the shots begin and the air stays coiled inside her, she never lets it go. The guards roll the crumpled bodies into the ditch nearby, already prepared, large enough to take the whole pile at once, a mouth in the earth that swallows them all. She is gone now, lost under one female body and one male and the spray of falling dirt, and he unwraps from the shell that does not hold her anymore and rises, rises, out of the mass grave and high over the land so that the guards and truck and disturbed slash of earth become small below him, now he knows, he has seen, he knows that it was earth that took her (not sea, not fire) and with this knowledge slashing through him he can surely find her, Gloria, the glint of you must be somewhere, burrowing through mountains, trapped in the bedrock, curled into tree roots, riding a river, roaming the blue vaults of the sky, I will rove and rove for you, and when I find you I will have so much to show and give and pour, we will be together soon, none of this is finished, we are not finished, it’s a girl, it’s a girl, her name is Perla, her hair is rich like yours and her mouth is yours God help her, I have spent moments with her that are safely folded in my memory, the moments live and live and cannot be undone, they are more powerful than bullets or planes and see, see, I carry them toward you, wherever you are. He is higher now, beyond the trees, so high he sees the city to the east, Buenos Aires, glimmering with the lights of the living on an ordinary night, these things all happened on an ordinary night, the river glimmers black and long beyond it and even though he doesn’t know what he’s becoming he is not afraid, he is ready to change, ready to search, ready to rise.
Perla Page 21
