After the induction, I was taken directly to my childhood. I heard the voice that guided me. Although I remembered having my eyes closed, I could see the images, I could even feel them. The professional wanted to know if I had been raped or abused. He hadn’t pronounced those words but something inside me, in that state, knew what he was asking. I only had a feeling of certainty that nothing of the sort had happened. I remember he asked me if I felt horror at the inner screen of my mind. I remember I answered that no, I didn’t feel horror, or anything of the kind. Although he invited me to look at the details of the images being reproduced on the screen of my psyche, none lasted long in my field of vision.
By some strange mechanics (a mind strategy?), that movie from my childhood insisted on reproducing backwards, always backwards, as if it had its own free will. No matter how effective the professionals' induction was, that film of my lifetime went straight back and I could not do anything to stop it. So I saw that occasion when I left school and mama came by with her new partner to pick me up; or when my seventh birthday was celebrated in the classroom; or when Brian gave me that first long-awaited kiss behind the statue of who knows who that humid afternoon of my sixth year; when, on another morning, my father took me to kindergarten and left me crying because I wanted to go with him; or when I begged my mother that I didn’t want to wear diapers anymore; when I woke to a frightening thunderclap in the middle of the night and my father stayed to sleep beside my bed; when I walked for the first time on my own; when I first ate; when some strong, warm hands took me and raised me to the ceiling; when I had to go through a tiny, inhospitable tunnel; when everything was dark ...
There were no more images but I stayed there in my intrauterine experience. I heard the voice of the doctor trying to bring me back, but I remained where I was as if that act of rebellion were the only thing I wanted to have control of. I saw nothing, yet heard everything. Everything. I remember the sound of my heartbeats. There was neither thinking nor interpretation. Then it happened so unexpectedly that it left me shaking in horror as well as in awe. I opened my eyes.
The eyes, inside a warm, liquid universe. Everything that happens in here, if anything can happen, is with the plasticity of extreme slow motion, as though there was no time but micro-times that allow me to record all the details. As an instinctive reflex, I move one leg. I think I make the movement rapidly but the result is very slow. At the moment, waves of that surrounding liquid, so similar to me, move me and shake even my bones. This is happiness, say my bones. I’m hearing. I know they are speaking normally, but each voice is split up inside me, thickened until I can open them in threads. There is another voice within those voices and I know what they are saying. Then it happens. I don't know what it is but something in my eyes, unexpectedly open, is mirroring the surrounding and gives me back my own reflection as a still-unborn girl. There I am. I do not know if it is my own reflection or if I am this to which I'm holding myself with my legs, that I now call the umbilical cord. A sudden agitation, uneasiness. I do not know what's happening. I become a part, something incomplete that needs another part for existence. I have the incorporeal idea of being light as the air between two empty spaces. I see those dense drops that make up the liquid substance within which I'm moving... I see a face reflected in each drop, a multiplication of mirrors of myself looking at me. I don’t know...I don’t know what is happening. It is not the Nothing. It is the Everything. I awake.
I know now how my terrifying condition has begun. When I tried to focus on the office, everything was like a living dream. Doctors' movements, light, objects —indeed the so-called inanimate things do vibrate because of the never-ending changes of the planet along space—, everything was moving slowly. Actually, the world around was not moving. It consisted of freeze frames that passed by, one after the other, but they could not complete a feeling of motion. I was aware I was being spoken to, but voice stream was so slow and dense that I did not understand what was being said. I myself was the only one who seemed to move fluidly. And suddenly a new experience happened.
My thoughts seemed to collapse by my side, literally speaking, and yet I could “hear” the thoughts of the objects —yes objects. Everything is so different when you run alongside the light! It is not a feeling. I can’t even say that it is an experience of the mind. Nevertheless... I know that I had gotten off the couch, that the professionals had attempted to stop me, but I could see them only as though they were freeze frames of a movie. The photographic panning effect did not even exist, so I could clearly see the ending point of their movements and anticipate or avoid them. I walked fluidly. I opened the door, reached the street. And what awaited me there was the worst of all horrors.
The lights on the advertising screens seemed to behave very oddly —as though they displayed several and incompatible colors at the same time, some kind of registering distortion. It was a living negative! I was experiencing the real "photograph" of the world, the shadow of light. And what if this were the truth of all that exists? What if the so-called real world were actually the shadow and what we see as a process of our vision was merely "the shadow of a shadow," which we called light? So that, those images projected on the back screen of the brain would be inverted shadows of the outer world, the "fake negative," which we interpret as a "developed light!" If so, how do we really dream? What would be the universe and the thoughts, and the kiss I some time gave and received? I realized that the horror experienced in my youth was not due to the "negative" itself but to the perception of reality as a "positive" movie straightaway processed by my eyes. I started to capture the meaning behind the meaning.
I kept walking the streets of the city. Dark reflections on the street. The reverse of scents. I could see the passersby with strobe movements as they got around. No one I encountered seemed to notice my presence. I knew the doctors were tracking me somewhere in the city. I stopped at a shop window. That glass did not participate in the phantasmagoric wonder. It was in positive! I saw my reflection in it. Now I did know who I was, what I was born for. Now I did understand I must move forward again. I no longer needed anyone to tell me the history of the world, I did know it. And as if everything had occurred with a single act, I felt the heat which had formed each molecule in that glass, its possibility, its intangible state. I passed through that glass. I merged with that image, like a returning Narcissus. I turned into the glass itself, into its first heat, its immateriality. I was a void that is finally filled with everything. Everything.
| VARIATIONS OF RENDEZVOUS |
Every casual encounter is
an engagement made beforehand.
J. L. BORGES, Deutsches Requiem
The main topic was referred to me by someone whose face has faded from my mind. It made me ponder obsessively on it but I achieved certainty as a recompense. Thanks to this story, I have verified the wakefulness of the universe and the dream of the flesh.
Now I am here, in this mansion on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, ripping the veil off the mysteries on paper, pen in hand. I am writing down strokes for rendering a tale, though I know full well that it is like a ghostly visitor who forces me to look. Fernanda is in one of the rooms upstairs or downstairs. I know her ritual —her movements, her stratagem. And I know her ritual as well as this spring evening light which penetrates the open windows of this room, like this November breeze which brings me the coolness of the nearby river and sways the white curtain with the insistence of a murmur.
Now she comes in with her tiny, nearly weightless steps. She looks at me, light and grief in her eyes. I look at her —Fernanda, I think. I ignore whether she knows that I know. But I look at her, and recognize my love in her yet young flesh, in her incipient wrinkles around the eyes. I thank her daring and kindness, and her calculated movements which barely hide a poorly concealed tension. I pretend not to notice her stiffness, and turn back to the sheet of paper (someone told me that literature shall be finished the very day another means for writing appears because words have
to be taken, touched like we do with the pen that carves the truths into the paper.) I return to the story right at the moment the man opens the door of his strange vehicle —strange to me although I have invented it —and he gets inside.
Once more this feeling of breathlessness and oppression in the throat. Another nostalgia for something though I cannot pinpoint what. Who is rushing me? Why must I always react like a maniac? This morning she told me my age is engraved on the bags under my eyes, though they amount to as many as one or two hundred more years. And she's right, for I can see it in the reflection of the rear-view mirror, that kind of screen that retains in my face, for a moment, each of the moments already gone by. And it’s true, as true as the state of panic with which, from time to time, I paralyze my life. What am I seeking? Why does what I can not find ache so? I better start the engine and go home, where she is, maybe expecting me, maybe forgetting me; maybe waiting and despairing. I go back
I leave the story, turning my gaze to the room's door. Fernanda is no longer there now, but him. He, much younger than I, beautiful and earthy-skinned, a hot shadow. It is time to leave —indeed, you can go out... your work day's over... oh, yes, see you tomorrow, as usual... And he is leaving, going out until tomorrow, as usual. Far off I hear the hoofbeats of steeds pulling carriages, or some other phenomenon-on-the-wheels for the bizarre rich: the calm riding of the automobile, that slides down along the tamped down avenue on which this mansion was built.
I close my eyes, seeking to concentrate on my phantoms, but the man in the strange vehicle (the one of this story I am building) has his own dreams, and I cannot control them. Outside and inside are shaking me up, past and future are disconcerting. I am troubled. I try to control myself, but my breathing is uncontrollable. I feel her presence.
I can smell his presence. He's close, pretty close. I know what moves me. The night is cool and forgettable. The moon always waits up there. I just have to wait for him to come out. And he's coming out. He's coming out, damn bastard! The moonlight betrays him.
My strategy turned out to be the most sensible, it wasn't a conventional raid. Clearly, that darn sly fox knew that we would find him, as we always do, with our red armbands and the corn symbol.
Now I go out, weapon in hand and... Long live the Holy Confederation! And he's running, damn it!... Death to the wild Unitarians! I run. He's fast but I'm gonna catch him up and slash his throat, and afterwards, I'll place his head on a pike for letting everybody know that you don't mess with the Mazorca.
And I start up the engine. It is Sunday in Buenos Aires, Nueve de Julio Avenue seems a suburban neighborhood, peaceful and monastic as though a latency blanket muffled the noises, the lies, the corridors. I put it in first, and in second, I accelerate as I let out the clutch ... and this tightness in the throat, this promise of breathlessness. The rearview mirror returns my stare broken up by grooves with no moisturizing. Keeping up a double life is exhausting; keeping up a double excuse, overwhelming.
The buildings, lacking the soul of work days, are following one another like a carousel divorced from time. In the rooms, the beggars are still sleeping, a bit exhausted from Saturday's all-nighter. The doves are floating in the Sunday air, distrustful of this quiet Buenos Aires. Perhaps cockroaches also sleep —if cockroaches may sleep— in some bar kitchen, in some pizzeria's drainpipe, in some office corner expecting to be stepped on by Monday's shoes. And I am sure she's waiting, down South on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, like Penelope, weaving and keeping quiet. Like Penelope, obelisk and foreboding. I approach Avenida de Mayo, and a mystery throbs me on the shift lever.
And someone, sometime, will say that, beyond Rivadavia St., you come into a much older world. It is the South (or am I just imagining that someone would say that?) In this southern mansion, beyond the south, with the spring breeze coming through my window along with scent of wisteria that anoints my skin, the weight of a dying evening seems to me even more unsustainable.
She, Fernanda, takes off her sandals, her light foot barely touches the wooden stair steps. She descends slowly, soundlessly. She carries wisteria in her hands to offer her God of the Skin the renewals of the flesh. She descends and wants to believe that I do not believe. I figure out her curls swaying in the air, I almost smell her milky neck, her lichened breasts.
A shadow, a look, some eyes seen behind the door glass, a voice —my voice— that shouts, in the muddy streets of Buenos Aires, in behalf of Juan Manuel de Rosas, the true name of the Restorer of the Laws. Wild dogs run behind me, an enthusiastic pack unaware of the force of the Law. Fireflies twinkle like tiny stars suspended in the God-given earth, though the moon stays on high, still waiting. And the damn traitor who runs South. And I fire one shot. And surreptitiously, almost respectfully we shout. And him, who keeps running, while the pack runs away with a moan since dogs are always realizing when games are over.
You have to be brave to be male, and progress on the side of justice. And I, stopping near the wastelands to reload. People do not look out their windows but they know the powerful arm of the Restorer is doing justice, although this was ordered by her. And what she orders, Doña Encarnación, no questions asked, nor backing down. That would be a dead man as I am named Uriarte. And I fire again. And I think I wounded him in the arm, damn it. I should have hit him in the leg. I could have immobilized him...
You have to be brave to be male, and progress on the side of justice. And I, stopping near the wastelands to reload the gun. The people, who do not lean out their windows but who knows that the powerful arm of the Restorer is doing justice, though she was the one who actually ordered this raid. And whatever she —Doña Encarnación— demands, no question is expected, no argues needed, nor delayings tolerated. This is a dead man, as I am named Uriarte. And I fire again. And I think I wounded him in the arm. Damn it!, if I only had hit him in the leg to immobilize him ...
I can't move since this paralysis confined me to this armchair, nearly to this desk where I am now writing. And I am writing before the vision evaporates because other images assault my mind demanding my attention.
I can no longer walk. But I manage to mash a mosquito on my forehead which falls on the edge of the paper. A spot of blood slips and opens through the fibres of the sheet. I can no longer walk but I fly with my eyes full of visions
I move with a huge need of the image-crafter, as Fernanda walks with his weightless feet that touch, nearly blow the sand half damp, half dry — I can see it, I can see her. And that beautiful, earthy-coloured shadow goes behind, with its humus, its blood, its ants' tunnels. And they smile at each other and enter the remnant of that leafy jungle by the river.
But before entering the grove with her lover, she turns her face, casting her eyes to this mansion — I can see her, I can see it; to this mansion, both near as well as distant, where I confined in front of my papers, compelled, immobile, concealed, imagining I see her doing exactly what she does, and thinking exactly what she thinks. I know that a bittersweet shadow moistens her gaze. She closes her eyes and drinks her lover's perspiration, barely with resigned passion as though she could do nothing else.
And I, not knowing what to do with this wisteria perfume now released from my skin; with my eyes leaking so I am forced to blink, though unavoidably the images are following one to the other on the translucent screen of my eyelids. And a heart that beats wisterias, that splatters the veins with blood by pushing, pushing, pushing on to the rhythm of the earth and of my dreams; with the time of tapestries in the twilight of a river; with the breeze entering the window of this mansion, which keeps me motionless to smell her sacrilege or the oil scent of these wood paintings, of this library which conceals what it contains, of these candlesticks dripping wax from the candles, from the many candles which Fernanda would have to light on returning from the remnant of her coastal jungle, smelling of air carnation and earth dampness; those very candles which Fernanda would have to light soon, since I am slipping into the shades of dusk, though my eyelids insist on be
ing lit by my blood and my phantoms, and my spring-banks seeming like the crag of my name or hers.
And she, who will be awaiting me, trusting this repentant and ungrateful man, knowing that I return, I always return. What is in the South? And I accelerate. I light a cigarette on this Sunday morning carousel as I accelerate and my thoughts run fast over the foreign streets of this city of Buenos Aires.
Buenos Aires is pretending to sleep tonight for allowing the Restorative Popular Society to cleanse the country of those who conspire behind the Governor's backs, of those others who come with strange ideas of liberty and reforms. More gallows! That's what we're gonna give all dose guys! More gallows!
Another shot and this time I hit him. Other Mazorca fellows come for hunting. This traitor's ideas will end pretty soon, he'll see when we torture him, when we put him on the turnstiles, when we twist his tendons until he spits out names and enclaves. Long live the Holy Confederation! ... and long live Holy Encarnación, with her scent of wax from thousand of candles; her scent of the sealing wax — dark red sealing wax — from hundred of letters and ordinances; her scent of a woman who knows to wait, who patiently waits. I'm gonna take this traitor to her, the only one, the great woman, the actual Restorer, Holy Encarnación! —Oh, my...! Encarnación, how your name pains me, My Lady, now that I know I may not touch you! ...
I'm about to capture this traitor injured, I'm gonna do it soon. He lies in the street dust. Moonlight makes the blood intensely brighter, it is always red in here. Death to the savage Unitarian! I'm approaching, almost there.
And I see him, I brake suddenly. The cigarette I had lit falls from my lips and burns a small hole in my bluejeans, around the groin. The braking is fiercer than the memory I have of that kind of apparition. I see him and the surprise is mixed up with admiration.
The Unravelled Frames Page 5
