I’ve always wondered what they’ll really be like. We’ve talked about it several times. I think they’re the same as the ones in the city, only a little coarser, wilder. Pol, though, is sure they’ll be different, and although he’s as excited as I am and there’s not a single night when the cold and exhaustion convince him to leave the search for another day, when we’re out among the bushes, he moves with a certain wariness, as if from one moment to the next something wild could attack him.
Now I’m alone, looking out at the road from the kitchen window. This morning we slept in and then had lunch. Then Pol went to town with the shopping list and his magazine articles. But it’s late, he should have been back a while ago and there’s still no sign of him. Finally, I see the pickup. As he’s pulling up to the house he waves his hand out the window. I go out and help him with the groceries, and he greets me by saying:
“You’re not going to believe this.”
“What?”
Pol smiles. We carry the bags to the porch and sit in the chairs there.
“So,” says Pol, rubbling his hands together. “I met a couple, and they’re great.”
“Where?”
I ask only to keep him talking, and then he says something wonderful, something I never would have thought of and that nevertheless I realize will change everything.
“They came here for the same reason,” he says. His eyes are shining and he knows I’m desperate for him to go on. “And they have one. They’ve had him a month now.”
“They have one? They have one! I can’t believe it . . .”
Pol can’t stop nodding and rubbing his hands together.
“They invited us over for dinner. Tonight!”
I’m happy to see him happy, and I’m so happy, too—it’s as though we’d finally managed it ourselves. We hug and kiss, and right away we start to get ready.
I bake a dessert, and Pol chooses a bottle of wine and his best cigars. While we shower and get dressed, he tells me everything he knows. Arnol and Nabel live some ten miles from here, in a house very much like ours. Pol saw it because they drove back together, in a caravan, until Arnol honked his horn to tell him they were turning and he saw Nabel pointing to the house. “They’re great,” says Pol again and again, and I feel a little jealous that he already knows so much about them.
“And? What’s he like? Did you see him?”
“They leave him at home.”
“What do you mean, they leave him at home? Alone?”
Pol shrugs his shoulders. I’m surprised he doesn’t think it’s odd, but I just ask him for more details while I go on with the preparations.
We close up the house as if we’re going away for a long time, then bundle up and go outside. During the drive I carry the apple pie on my lap, taking care it doesn’t tilt, and I think about the things I’m going to say, about everything I want to ask Nabel. Maybe when Pol invites Arnol for a cigar they’ll leave the two of us alone together. Then maybe I can talk to her about more private things. Maybe Nabel used candles, too; maybe she dreamed often of fertile things, and now that they’ve gotten one she can tell us exactly what to do.
We honk the horn when we arrive and they come right out to greet us. Arnol is a big guy wearing jeans and a red plaid shirt; he greets Pol with a warm hug, like an old friend he hasn’t seen in a long time. Nabel comes out after Arnol and smiles at me. I think we’re going to get along. She’s also tall, as tall as Arnol but thin, and her clothes are almost the same as his; I regret having dressed up. Inside, the house reminds me of an old mountain lodge. Wooden walls and ceiling, a big fireplace in the living room, and furs on the floor and sofas. It’s well lit and heated. It’s really not the way I would decorate my house, but I think it’s all fine and I return Nabel’s smile. There’s a delicious smell of sauce and roast meat. It seems Arnol is the chef; he moves around the kitchen shifting dirty dishes around, and he tells Nabel to show us into the living room. We sit on the sofa. She pours wine and brings in a tray of appetizers, and soon Arnol joins us. I want to ask questions right away: How did they catch him, what’s he like, what’s his name, does he eat well, have they taken him to the doctor yet, is he as cute as the ones from the city? But the conversation lingers on stupid subjects. Arnol asks Pol about insecticides, Pol takes an interest in Arnol’s business, then they talk about trucks, the places they buy things; they discover they both argued with the same man, a guy who works in the service station, and they agree he’s terrible. Then Arnol excuses himself to go check on the food, Pol offers to help him, and they both leave. I settle into the sofa across from Nabel. I know I should say something friendly before asking her what I want to ask. I compliment her on the house, and then right away I ask:
“Is he cute?”
She blushes and smiles. She looks at me like she’s embarrassed, and I feel a knot in my stomach and I’m dying of happiness and I think, They’ve got him and They’ve got him and he’s beautiful.
“I’d love to see him,” I say. I want to see him right now, I think, and I stand up. I look toward the hallway and wait for Nabel to say, This way. I’m finally going to see him, hold him.
Then Arnol comes back with the food and calls us to the table.
“Does he sleep all day, then?” I ask, and I laugh as if it were a joke.
“Ana is anxious to meet him,” says Pol, and he caresses my hair.
Arnol laughs, but instead of answering he places the serving dish on the table and asks who likes rare meat and who likes it well done, and then we’re eating again. Nabel is more talkative during the meal. While the men hold forth on their own subjects, we discover our lives are similar. Nabel asks me for advice about plants and then I get up the nerve to mention the fertility recipes. I bring it up as just a joke, offhand, but Nabel shows interest and I find out she used them, too.
“And the walks? The nighttime hunts?” I say, laughing. “The gloves, the backpacks?”
Nabel is quiet for a second, surprised, and then she starts laughing along with me.
“And the flashlights!” she says, holding her belly. “With those damned batteries that don’t last five minutes!”
And me, almost crying:
“And the nets! Pol’s net!”
“And Arnol’s!” she says. “I just can’t tell you!”
Then the men stop talking. Arnol looks at Nabel and he seems surprised. She hasn’t noticed yet: she doubles over in an attack of laughter, pounding the table twice with the palm of her hand, and it seems like she’s trying to say something else but she can barely breathe. I look at her, amused, and then I look at Pol to make sure he’s having a good time, too. Nabel takes a breath, and crying with laughter, says:
“And the shotgun.” She pounds the table again. “For God’s sake, Arnol! If you’d only stopped shooting! We would have found him much faster . . .”
Arnol looks at Nabel like he wants to kill her, and finally he lets loose with an exaggerated peal of laughter. I look at Pol again, and he’s not laughing anymore. Arnol shrugs his shoulders resignedly, seeking a complicit look from Pol. Then he mimes taking aim with a shotgun and shoots. Nabel imitates him. They do it one more time aiming at each other, now a little calmer, until they stop laughing.
“Oh . . . goodness . . .” says Arnol, and he passes the dish around to offer more meat. “Finally, people we can share this whole thing with . . . Anyone want more?”
“So, where is he? We want to see him,” Pol finally says.
“You’ll see him soon,” says Arnol.
“He sleeps a lot,” says Nabel.
“All day long.”
“So we’ll just look at him while he’s asleep!” says Pol.
“Oh, no, no,” says Arnol. “First, the dessert Ana baked, then a good coffee, and my Nabel here has prepared some games. Do you like strategy games, Pol?”
“But we’d love to see hi
m asleep.”
“No,” says Arnol. “I mean, it doesn’t make sense to see him like that. You can do that any day.”
Pol looks at me for a second, then says:
“All right, dessert then.”
I help Nabel carry the dishes to the kitchen. I take out the pie that Arnol put in the fridge, I carry it to the table and prepare to serve it. Meanwhile, Nabel is busy in the kitchen with the coffee.
“Where’s the bathroom?” asks Pol.
“Oh, the bathroom . . .” says Arnol as he looks toward the kitchen, maybe looking for Nabel. “It’s just that it’s not working so well, and . . .”
Pol makes a gesture to indicate it doesn’t matter.
“Where is it?”
Maybe without meaning to, Arnol looks toward the hallway. Then Pol gets up and starts to walk and Arnol gets up, too.
“I’ll go with you.”
“That’s okay, it’s not necessary,” says Pol, already in the hallway.
Arnol follows him a few steps.
“To your right,” he says. “The bathroom is the one on the right.”
My eyes follow Pol until he finally enters the bathroom. Arnol stands a few seconds with his back to me, looking toward the hallway.
“Arnol,” I say, and it’s the first time I’ve called him by his name. “Pie?”
“Sure,” he says. He looks at me and then turns back to the hallway.
“Ready,” I say, and I push the first plate toward his chair. “Don’t worry, he’ll be a while.”
I smile at him, but he doesn’t respond. He comes back to the table and sits in his chair with his back to the hall. He seems uncomfortable, but in the end he picks up his fork and cuts off an enormous portion of pie that he puts in his mouth. I look at him, a little surprised, and go on serving. From the kitchen, Nabel asks how we like our coffee. I’m about to answer when I see Pol come silently out of the bathroom and cross the hall into another room. Arnol looks at me, waiting for an answer. I tell Nabel that we love coffee, we like it any which way. The light in the other room goes on and I hear a muffled sound, like something heavy falling on a carpet. Arnol is going to turn toward the hallway, so I say his name:
“Arnol.” He looks at me, but starts to stand up.
I hear another sound, then Pol screams and something falls to the floor—a chair, maybe—then a heavy piece of furniture is moved, things break. Arnol runs toward the hallway and takes down the rifle that’s hanging on the wall. I get up to run after him; Pol comes backing out of the room, keeping his eyes on what’s inside. Arnol goes right for him but Pol reacts, hits the rifle out of his hands, then pushes him aside and runs to me.
I can’t figure out what’s happening, but I let him take me by the arm and we run out. I hear the door slowly closing behind us as we run, and then a crash as it’s slammed back open. Nabel is screaming. Pol gets into the pickup and starts it, and I get in on the passenger side. We back out of the driveway, and for a few seconds the headlights shine onto Arnol as he runs toward us.
Once we’re on the road we drive awhile in silence, trying to calm down. Pol’s shirt is torn—he almost lost the whole right sleeve—and he has some deep scratches on his arm that are oozing blood. Soon we approach our house at top speed, and at top speed we pass it and leave it behind. I touch his arm, about to stop him, but he’s breathing hard, with his tense hands clutching the steering wheel. He scans the black expanse to either side, and behind us in the rearview mirror. We should slow down. We could die if an animal crossed in front of us. Then I think that one of them could also cross—and it could be ours. But Pol speeds up even more, as if, in the terror his frenzied eyes belie, he were counting on precisely that.
A GREAT EFFORT
He and his father were a yellow animal, a single animal looking at itself in the mirror. It was a recurring dream. He woke up anxious, and every time he had it, it was harder to fall back asleep. During the day he felt stiffer than usual, more hunched over. His wife even asked him once if he was all right, though when he tried to explain, she seemed not to want to know too much. Then someone gave him Mrs. Linn’s name. He could go to her or some other woman; there was one in every neighborhood. The important thing, his friend told him while writing the phone number on a piece of paper, was not to let it go on.
He went to see her, and after that he returned once a week. The relief after each session helped him define his distress: his nervousness disappeared, and so did the anxiety that pulled his throat toward his stomach. The effect lasted all that day—a fullness that, according to him, was comparable to walking on air—and there was a residual peace that lasted for a few days after that. But in the end, the stiffness always came back.
In the fifth session he described the dream, and Mrs. Linn applied lavender essential oils and opened the window all the way. He sunk his head into the massage table’s generous opening and let Mrs. Linn work. Her hands, elbows, and knees were that woman’s true strength, and he let himself be influenced by them.
In the sixth session he talked about his father, about that first time his father had left home, and about the police officer, a woman, who called to let them know. He’d been found walking alone on the highway median; a driver had called 911 right away. He remembers his mother on the phone and the officer’s voice scolding her: “Do you realize he was putting everyone in danger, wandering alone along the highway like that?” Someone had to go pick him up from the station.
His mother put on her jacket over her pajamas, and he and his sister sat on the living room sofa and waited. “If you move your butts from that sofa,” their mother told them, “no more Dad for anyone.”
When the session ended, Mrs. Linn would say, “Open your eyes slowly.” It was pleasant to find the light a little more tenuous, and he wasn’t disturbed at not knowing when exactly she’d closed the curtains. In the eighth session he told about the next time his father had tried to leave them: his mother was making the shopping list, and his father was looking attentively at the tiles in the kitchen, the yellow ones.
“I know it’s strange,” he clarified for Mrs. Linn, “but I’m sure he was only looking at the yellow ones. Yellow like in my dream.”
He was afraid that among so many patients Mrs. Linn would forget the smallest details, and maybe it was there, in the yellow, where the important point lay. But Mrs. Linn’s fingers moved quickly up his back, and he understood how familiar she was with this kind of story, and he trusted that he had to go ahead with his own, without so many explanations.
“My father got up and left the kitchen,” he went on, “and it was the way he did it, a little stiffer than usual, that put me on alert. ‘Where are you going?’ my mother asked him. ‘You’re leaving without the shopping list.’ It was fairly violent, the way she stuffed the paper into his fist, like cramming an oversize letter into the mouth of a too-soft mailbox. But my mother knew what she was doing: with an order in his hands, my father would have to return.”
“Inhale and exhale deeply,” Mrs. Linn reminded him. “If you like, you can close your eyes.”
Sometimes he raised his head from the opening in the massage table to add a detail or size up Mrs. Linn’s eyes. But she dug her elbow into some strategic point of his body and put him right back in his place. Her elbows, her fists and knees approached, always shining and moist, avid. She shook the tubes of lotion before opening and squeezing them. She said it was good for the lotion to feel cold on first contact with the body, because it stimulated the epidermis and activated the muscles.
“I’m afraid,” he said in the ninth session, “afraid of a lot of things.”
He was immediately ashamed. He’d spoken without thinking; maybe the contact with the massage table put him too much at ease.
“Relax your arms,” said Mrs. Linn.
Maybe something had softened more than it should, and now there were things he could no longer
control.
“Open your fists.”
Mrs. Linn poured more oil on her hands and extended her fingers several times, as if doing some sort of stretching exercise.
He felt more docile than usual; he was on the verge of tears, and it was a very embarrassing thing. But he took a deep breath and steeled himself to go on.
His father came back at midnight, almost twelve hours later and in the pouring rain, carrying the purchases in two large, drenched bags. In his last years of grade school, the father’s looming disappearances tormented him more and more, and not only because of the pain of feeling abandoned. It was resentment. Resentment that inflated in his chest and was caused by his father, so clumsy and weak and unable to leave for good. It was a painful ball of air that he carried with him, always with his mouth closed. Because if the father ever did manage to leave, that ball of air would be all that remained of him, and he wasn’t willing to let go of it so easily.
In the tenth session, Mrs. Linn asked about the dream again. He still had it, although the treatment was relieving the symptoms. He and his father were still a yellow animal, a single animal looking at itself in the mirror.
In the twelfth session he again felt the need to make some clarifications. His parents didn’t get along badly, that didn’t seem to be the problem, and neither were there financial problems. Sometimes these explanations were for himself, but he still made them out loud in order to include Mrs. Linn. Whatever it was that happened there on the massage table, it was a joint task. He said what he had to say, and, in exchange, Mrs. Linn’s elbows sank in on either side of his shoulder blades, they stabbed inward and outward, they acknowledged and permeated. There were only one or two occasions when, out of pure exhaustion, he didn’t say anything about his father in the whole session. And Mrs. Linn kneaded him more gently, pinching him in the lumbar zones a few times, emotionless.
Mouthful of Birds Page 13
