by Romina Paula
I didn’t say anything, I can’t believe it. Such a coward. But it’s fine that way too, I guess, in a way that’s fine. What would I have told him? I wouldn’t have even known what to say. Over the phone? And besides, what? I can’t, it wouldn’t be right to share my doubts with him. And over the phone. What would I say? That I mean I’m really sorry but I’m just kind of crazy right now because the other day I ran into Julián, that yeah, that I hadn’t seen him in years, and that as a matter of fact I hadn’t even really thought about him when I decided to come here, that I had barely even remembered him, that he wasn’t part of my life anymore, because he wasn’t, because he’d ceased to be? Say that and then add on that now he was again, that now he’d come back up, that he’d come back into my life, just like that, and that I was letting him, that I was fully letting him come back. Say that and then say that that was why (that was the only reason) I didn’t really know, I just couldn’t really know right now what Juli’s deal was, what he was thinking. So. That was that. That was it. Say, you know, Manuel, I adore you, and I really do care about you a ton, and maybe even that warm and fuzzy thing you make me feel, you give me, maybe love, it could be, I can’t really know that, how could I? But whatever, there’s also this other thing I wanted to talk to you about, this other thing I’ve been hiding from you, that I’ve been keeping, one that’s practically under lock and key, or in a burlap sack—a bloody one, like a lump that’s moving, writhing, that’s having convulsions in rooms, in one-room apartments that are super saturated, and by greasy colors, dark red, dark green, maroon, like that, just like that, dark and mysterious, dull, dense, I have things inside of me that are moving. And when I pay attention to them a little bit they convulse and wake up and demand justice, demand I remember them. That bloodstained burlap sack, foulmouthed and stumpy, that doesn’t want to be quiet and that struggles and groans and grumbles when it feels that I’m shedding any light on it, when it comes to hear that someone’s done something with that lock and key, that someone’s there. And meanwhile, I could get out of there, lock it back up, step back, and let things settle back down, or: pick the bag up, untie its cord, release the beast, and let whatever happens happen. Freeing the monster wouldn’t offer me more than two possible fates: either it would devour me or it would request my hand in marriage. So, and since I don’t know what I want, since I find myself with my hand on the key in the lock, and my eyes go from the bag to the well-lit room behind me, which emanates warmth over my shoulders, and from there to the burlap sack yet again, so I’d say if you want to wait for me, like if you really feel like it, wait and see what I end up doing with myself, what I do with this, what I can do, what I’m able to do, what I let win this time, or if I don’t let anything win at all and actually make a decision this time, to go for it, even if that going for it will lead to destruction, even if it is destruction itself, but, in any case, it would have been my decision. And if it did go that way, if I stuck with the bag, the bloody burlap, don’t take it as a failure, don’t take what we had, or rather, the end of what we had, as the failure of something else, something bigger, something grander, but rather as the success of itself: that long vacation we took together when you loved me and I loved you and nothing too terrible happened to us, and nothing got too tarnished or anything, take it as that, as what we had, which we liked and which was it while it lasted/which was everything, while it lasted.
I should have said all that to him, given I pretended to be fully sincere, and yet, no, it wouldn’t have done any good, it probably would have only generated, first, a silence, finishing up with something along the lines of, oh, sweetie, I don’t know, you’re mixing me up now, why don’t we talk when you get here? And he would have been right. So whatever, my problem, and I’m left alone with my images and to see how I’m feeling and what I can do about it. Which isn’t much. For now I should, at least, be able to decide when to return.
20.
Before I leave I spend some time with Ali. We have a little love session. I pick her up and hold her in my arms like she’s a baby, and she lets me, slippery though she may be, and hard though it may be for her to relax. I pet her stomach, put my head up to hers, rub up against her. She smells like roasted sweet potatoes, I don’t know why, I don’t know where she would have picked that up. But in any case, she smells good, I like the smell of roasted sweet potatoes, weird as it is that it’s on Alicia, Alison. I can feel her purring, your cat doesn’t make much noise, she doesn’t purr externally, it’s internal. But you put your hand on her stomach and you can tell.
It’s strange, since I’ve been here I almost haven’t thought about the past at all, it’s super weird. I mean the distant past, my distant past. Ours, here, before. It probably has to do with the fact that absolutely everything here is so before that it would just be redundant. Or not, actually maybe not, since most people aren’t actually here anymore, and those who are aren’t recognizable, can’t be identified with themselves, I mean, with what I remember of them. Maybe I didn’t want to think about before because I wouldn’t have been able to handle it: going to scatter your ashes from a bridge just into nothingness, into a landscape, thinking that was you, what you were. I guess a certain distance was necessary in order to go through with that and not completely fall apart, fall in with you. I don’t know, I guess because of your parents too, to make things easier on them. And for me, for me too, of course, for me, too. Oddly enough now (and it must have to do with my impending return), after my talk with Manuel, with everything I didn’t tell him about Julián and his family and his paternity and everything I also didn’t tell him about your house with how the light hits it in the middle of the day and that nobody is ever here then, just your cat who smells like sweet potato and me, all this silence brings you back, materializes your presence, or your absence, or the fact that you’re not here, your never being here again, so clear, so definitive. Then I think about the afternoons at the Percy or here in your room or in the living/dining and I kind of waver, I get weak. I realize, I think I realize that I want to leave, but I also know I want to take you with me, and it’s impossible because you’re here, very here, I just now fully understood that. From there, from Buenos Aires, I can miss you very contemplatively, look at you, at us, as though through a glass in a shopwindow, our common/shared past, behind glass, get into a funk about it but at a safe remove, removed by that window pane. There, on the shelf, there’s a weak light that calms things down even further, and it gives it a halo of unreality, of something that happened far away and a long time ago, something one can step back from to observe, observe from afar, something one attends, as though it were something else, far away, removed from the body. But here it isn’t like that, I get here and you’re everywhere. In the cold, in the morning, in the pillow, in your jacket, in your mom. And you’re outside, in the incline, the rubble, the asphalt, and right where the asphalt starts to be dirt almost imperceptibly, and you can’t quite tell which one is eating up the other. There and in barking. In little dogs’ barks, puppies of puppies of puppies. At the market, in the river, at the bus station. In weekend outings. In the teenagers. In the teenagers on the corners. On the curbs of the sidewalks. On the steps leading up to people’s doors. In young couples making out. In that saliva, you’re there, too. In the night and in the frost. In that chill and in the drop, precipitous, in the temperature when—right when—the sunlight stops. In the cars headed for the river, in naps when the sun’s intense. In the rubber on the car window that gets overheated. In the arm that rests against that rubber and gets burned and tanned and has yellow hairs and sun splotches. In the legs over the imitation-leather seat, sweaty. In those drops of sweat that slide across the imitation leather and make those adolescent legs in a skirt or a pair of shorts stick to it. In the song that happens to be playing on the radio right then and sets the soundtrack for that moment. In the poplars that cast a little bit of shade along that river and on that car when it’s parked in that one spot, right by the river and its little b
ed, its timid summer riverbed. In those adolescent legs, one, two, several, that stretch out over that river’s rocks and let the water bump up against them but not cover them, the legs, the adolescents, but it does cool them off under that high noon southern sun that burns and overheats. In that wind that provides a little relief on the shore of that river, especially in the shade of those poplars, and it moves those leaves of those poplars and it makes them sound like rain. In the ears of those adolescents in the river, in the little trickle of the river, talking in half whispers, murmurs, because they are confessions, and the water transmits/transports the sound and they don’t want to be heard by the other adolescents lying down in the shade of those trees. In the music that’s still coming from the radio of the car and in those cigarettes of those adolescents who now rest in the shade of those trees listening to that music, even if it’s not exactly listening, even if it’s just the backdrop. In the adolescents who glance over at those adolescents in the current, adolescents with few clothes on, T-shirts, shorts, who laugh and tell each other secrets to the streaming of the water. In the scarceness of the clothing on that adolescent skin, tanned and exposed by the river, in the river, watched intermittently by those other adolescents in the shade of those poplars. In that and in the progression of desire. In its realization or suspension, in its coming to fruition or its utter frustration. In the back seat of some car, of that one or any other that looks like that one, in the shade of those trees or of others, in the afternoon or at night. In those kisses. In that languid sweat. In that ripping apart. Those tears, one or another of those tears atop one or another of those rocks or on the steps leading up to all of those houses, one of them, never one’s own, never the same. In that ripping apart or in that pleasure, in the pleasure also taken from its being weird, new, different. In those tastes, in those smells, in those fluids. In those new fluids, different, foreign and one’s own; parts of someone else’s body in one’s own, parts of one’s body in someone else’s. In that exchange, in the pleasure of that exchange or in that ripping apart. In closed eyes, in doing and in letting things be done. In wanting and refusing. In negation and advance. In disobedience and plundering. In plundering and in the pleasure of plundering, and disobedience. In those afternoons, those rivers, music. At the time of day when the skin starts to itch from the sun and from other things. The time of day when the sun was too much, and there’s no going back, no undoing it, arms and legs in the water, brown, exposed to the sun. At the start of a chilly summer night, a cold that never goes away because it wouldn’t dream of leaving, because it’s from here, from this start of a night. In the attention paid to the start of a night that does not then occur, in that suspension they call sunset, although it isn’t, let’s not call it setting because it never really sets; in a beginning, at the start of something, let it not be night and let it not fall and let it not elapse and let it never go away, this, too, in this, as well; on that chilly summer night that won’t ever end because it will not begin, because it’s always just going to seem like it’s beginning and not do it, and that way it will stay, as the start of a night that isn’t and that won’t be, no/ever, a night.
21.
People work, not me. I look out the window, look out the window, out the window. Outside it’s winter, and it’s sunny. The doors don’t shut properly, they don’t shut, they’re old. A phone rings through the wall. How come it takes such daunting effort to do what one likes? It’s daunting, daunting to begin. I find it daunting to get started, and that seems not to be a fixable thing. The road to success, the road to success. Who knows? I get tired of myself, I still keep getting tired of myself. As pleasant as I find it here, as pleasant as I find it. Did anyone pick up? In any case, the phone stopped ringing. What works better in fiction? Past or present tense? Weekends make me cranky, I don’t like them, that imperative to have a good time, do things, do something special, the notion of free time. I prefer to seek out those things while other people work. People relaxing tend to look ridiculous, like out of place, grotesque. I’m unmotivated, a little, I realize, bored, overly calm, almost comfortable. I don’t like where I live anymore, I’m fed up, I’m fed up with where I live. I want, somehow, to live differently. I’d take care of it, I’d take care of that baby if he gave it to me, if he wanted to give it to me, if he wanted. I think I could be a good mother, I think so, I think I’d like to be a good mother, I think so. I don’t know where my mind is, I don’t know what I’m thinking about, I couldn’t put it into words, couldn’t specify, couldn’t. I don’t know what I’m up to, if I were asked what I was up to, I’d have no idea what to say, how to respond, what I’m up to. I know I get tired, every so often I get tired, I get exhausted and I no longer want what I had and want something else, something, something else. Waiting until the moment bursts, waiting until the moment bursts, what is that? Anxiety is never too good. At some point someone said it was the other side of despair, and I thought that sounded right. The backwaters abduct you, sometimes it’s like a kind of barge that carries you away. Now my place in Buenos Aires depresses me a little. I haven’t cleaned in months. I don’t want to sleep in my room, I haven’t wiped or dusted in months. Months. I want to get rid of all my books, all my CDs, most of all all the books I already read, why would I want them? I don’t want them, I’d give them all away. I want to talk to people, I feel like expressing myself. With someone, with someone new, someone else, someone different, someone who might cast some new light on the situation. There are certain people I just stopped seeing and never ran into again and that’s fine. I’m bored. Outside, in the city, there’s the clamor that cities have, on Friday afternoons, the chaos of cities on Friday afternoons. Not here, here in some sense it’s always the same time of day, the same day. There people come and go at full speed, in action. At full speed. While I, here, am quiet and tired, I get tired because I’m bored, I get tired when I’m bored and it makes me want to sleep, which is the only thing I want to do, is sleep. The same blocks, the same neighborhoods, always: the same thing that suddenly one day gives me a feeling of empowerment another day overwhelms me. I am me, that’s my impossibility. There, once again, the only thing that can save you is fiction. I mean, whenever you can, when it gives you access. What isn’t fiction consumes you. I don’t want either breaks or obligations, although, obviously, I prefer obligations. I wouldn’t know what to do without them. Live from event to event, as though it’s nothing. Have kids to while away the time, even if that’s all it is, to spend some time. Which is no small thing, spending time. I’m bored. I don’t even know at this point what would be my idea of an adventure. I want to not want, not need anything. I already don’t need anything, I already almost hate where I live, exclusively because I can’t leave, that’s already a good reason, I want to get out of there, I mean I’m almost never there anyway as it is, it’s already mostly just a storage unit and a dust collector. I have to get it together enough to get to a different place, to be, to stay at, let it not be here, or yes, I don’t know, try to understand where I want to be. Getting out of there is an imperative at this point, right? And my books and my CDs I would give to someone, the new tenant, let them come with the house, let them stay, let them lose their history, lose me, let them stray away from me, let them forget me, with no hard feelings, just do without me. I can’t be there any longer, I can’t. Unconformity and comfort, everything all together at once.
22.
What a day, my god. It’s done now, I’m going tomorrow. I’ll leave you. I went to get my ticket, but I didn’t; something happened on the way.
I walk up Alvear perfectly calm, and just when I’m about to cross, right in front of the station, someone honks. I need to just stipulate, before you jump to any judgments, that I had—I really had—made a decision. I thought more seriously or took a colder look, without so much stupidity, about my relationship with Manuel, and about what we had, about what we have, and I decided, I made a decision. That I don’t want to lose him, that that, this, is my life no
w, and that I can’t just leave everything, everything I have, everything that I’ve built in whatever ways, for nothing. Because that’s what it is, because there’s nothing, in reality, nothing else for me, nothing awaiting me. Here, I mean, that’s what I mean, here. There is there, in Buenos Aires, I think at the very least I made myself a space where I belong that—as much as it tears me up to leave Esquel—I shouldn’t take for granted. Because it tears me up and will always tear me up, and it’s not because of you, you know. Not at all, before you died it was just as awful or maybe not just as, I mean, it was different, but still terrible. Besides, your death isn’t specific to a place, not at all, you’re dead everywhere. So that, basically, I realize that it isn’t wanting to escape, not at all, it’s combating wanting to stay, because I would stay, I always would have liked to stay, I’ll always want to come back, that’s very clear to me, but it’s also clear, I think, that’s what I’m deciding, that it’s precisely that distance, that tension, that sustains me. That desire towards that other thing. If I have it, I succumb. If I stay here, I succumb. I know that. Maybe, then, my doubts these past days have been nothing other than to succumb or not to succumb. Like with Julián, as though he were a mise en abyme of Esquel, or the reverse, as though Esquel were a mise en abyme of Julián, I don’t know what order it would be in, but they’re the same, in me, they’re the same. If I stay, I die, it would tear me up inside, I know that, I’m aware of that much. It’s a very strong drive, now I understand, I remember why I come so rarely, I get why it’s so hard for me to come back, it’s like vertigo, it has the logic of vertigo. And I would throw myself off, like you would throw me off, pull me down, like the girl in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. That’s what it is, the death drive, the drive to be ripped apart.
