Empty Set

by Verónica Gerber Bicecci

  Astronomers don’t know much either, that’s why they build telescopes.

  It’s said every answer to a question is a new question. That too is something uniting us: neither astronomers, nor those searching for the disappeared, nor my Brother(B), nor I know anything. We’re all trying to find traces, or asking ourselves questions.

  We’re all waiting for what we can’t see to finally appear.

  Here’s where this story ends.

  Typed cone into the library catalog the next week, and chose one book, Shadow Cone, and two articles: “Calculation of the Thickness of a Worm Gear Derived from the Cone” and “A Historical Reconstruction of the Quaternary Period in the Vegetation of the Southern Cone of America: An Interdisciplinary Approach.” The poems in the first were an immediate disappointment. Closed my eyes, picked out a page at random, and ran my finger down to:

  Place this line on the precise dot

  and we’ll make love in Morse code.

  Laughed aloud and the book fell to the floor; a couple of people turned their heads, but no one seemed annoyed. The second text had diagrams and a lot of formulas; spent quite a while studying them, hoping to understand all those numbers, letters, brackets, and signs, but couldn’t. I did manage to deduce that the “worm” of a gear refers to the serpentine engravings on the screw. In other words, it’s what makes it different from a nail and—not so sure about this—the cone is the head of the screw. In any case, there was no point in attempting to understand it all. The third text was from a journal of biology. There, for the first time, was a mention of my secret vocation: the keyword, dendrochronology. I smiled. No, that’s not true. Went to look up dendrochronology in a dictionary, and that’s when I smiled.

  Based on that finding, it seemed a good idea to work in the Biology Institute Library. Guess Violeta and her boyfriend didn’t quite understand how I ended up there, since my major had been visual arts, but they went along with it, because, from their very personal point of view, the important thing was “supporting me.” I didn’t completely understand why I was there. What I wanted to research was the idea of time on the pine plywood boards, to find a way of understanding how it is transformed in the grain and conical sections. Dendrochronology was a means of studying time and space without going up in a rocket or solving quantum physics equations. Curiously enough, it was an astronomer who discovered the language of trees. Like me, Andrew Ellicott Douglass had strayed off the path. He’d been working on sunspots but ended up studying tree rings to see if they could tell him anything about the sun. It’s not only a matter of knowing the age of trees: the history of the forests where they lived is recorded in the designs in the wood. The trees retain scars from fires and every sort of natural disaster: earthquakes, hurricanes, diseases. Insects also leave their mark. You can even check the age of a violin or a piece of furniture by counting the number of rings in the wood. A trunk is the logbook of the ecosystem. And cutting down a forest isn’t just an ecological tragedy; it is, quite literally, the destruction of an archive of historical data. But trees write in a language that can’t be seen. Wonder what my life would look like inside a tree trunk, what all those lines, knots, and circumferences would mean.

  Wonder how a set of truncated outsets, an abrupt ending, or a disappearance would be written in that language.

  September 12, 1976

  Marisa,

  Every twenty minutes I ask myself if something will come from you in the post. Aren’t you going to write me letters anymore? It’s fifty thousand years since your last one. No matter. I’ve already told you: if you don’t want to write to me, don’t. But I have a right to tell you about certain things I do, like keeping time in reverse, not for the days that have passed, but for the ones left (until I see you, of course).

  Shall I go on waiting for some sign of life, or turn up at your house uninvited?

  S.

  On the other side of the park—the one the bunker overlooks—there was going to be a party. Ana had invited me and I only went along because there was no good excuse for not crossing that green space. Ana was a schoolmate of my Brother(B), but she was also my friend, and had invited me to the party because of my recently acquired single status and, of course, hers. In any case, we really only entered the building together, and after that she went off the radar. It was a kind of international hostel that had notices with instructions in English all over the place: above the kitchen sink, in the bathroom, on the refrigerator, on the living room table. There was an enormous calendar showing the days for cleaning, the roster for taking out the trash and using the washing machine, payment dates . . . things I’d only ever seen in TV series, and that made my routine feel far too basic. One last notice—decidedly temporary—was hanging in the yard:

  ¡BIENVENIDOS! / WELCOME! / WILLKOMMEN! ANDREAS AND JÜRGEN

  Two new German guys staying in the house, doing internships at the architecture firm where Ana worked. I liked his name: Jürgen(J). He was tall, taller than me, unlike Tordo(T). We just stood there next to each other the entire evening: Ana had kidnapped Andreas, his only friend, and neither of us knew anyone else; he couldn’t speak Spanish and I didn’t feel like talking to him in English. Each time I finished my wine, Jürgen(J) went to find the bottle and refilled my glass. I smiled at him, he smiled at me. The only thing I said to him all night was: Where’s your room? We went up the main staircase, then a smaller spiral one, and along a very narrow corridor with several doors. His was the last. On the way, my head began to spin. His luggage still hadn’t been unpacked. While he took off his shirt and shoes, I examined the oddments other residents had left on the shelves. He came up behind me and kissed my neck. I reached back, undid his zipper, and put one hand inside his boxers. He murmured something in German in my ear. Then he turned me around so we were facing each other, lifted me high up in the air—as I descended, my skirt billowed out; that instant was chiseled in my mind for days—and backed me against the wall. And that was it. He didn’t know my name and I couldn’t speak his language. Afterwards, we lay down on the bed. He fell asleep, I stared at the ceiling for a long time.

  From a Lonely Planet Mexico thrown on the floor beside the pillow, a piece of a face peeked out. In the part hidden inside the guidebook, he was kissing that face. Written on the reverse of the photograph was a pretty recent date and something else; didn’t know what. I could make out the signature—Nadia(N)—but didn’t feel anything. No, that’s not quite right—in fact I did feel something, something strange. Not jealousy, just a sensation of disappearing; my body was becoming transparent. I didn’t exist there, because in that place, I definitively did not exist. And in fact that wasn’t a problem, because I didn’t want to exist there, what bothered me was not being able to exist anywhere. Thought about Jürgen(J)’s luggage. His two enormous suitcases full of things he had nowhere to put. Also thought about the “luggage” I’d carried into his life that night. We were two strangers helping each other cross the street.

  Woke feeling guilty—most likely due to the wine—and spent the whole morning finding ways to stop myself from phoning Tordo(T). Decided to unpack suitcases and boxes, only to end up dialing his cell phone number from memory. He answered without preamble:

  What’s wrong?

  Hi . . . How are you?

  Fine. What’s wrong?

  Just beginning to realize I forgot some things and . . .

  Why didn’t you take all your stuff? No one was hassling you.

  Not sure, Tordo. I packed up two years in an hour and . . .

  You can’t come here. Tell me what you’re missing, and I’ll take it somewhere for you to pick up.

  Think I insulted him. Then hung up without saying good-bye.

  Looked toward Mom(M)’s room at the end of the passage. The door was shut. How could Tordo(T) refuse to allow me into my own home?! Maybe it wasn’t my home any longer . . . Opened the door. Maybe he wasn’t my home any longer. Looking for the remote on her night table, saw a sheet of notepaper with a
message, written in fountain pen, in her handwriting:

  Love confirms the circularity of the universe

  There was no period at the end, and there were some roundish doodles in the bottom corner, as if she’d been trying out the pen or had become lost in thought. Her story, like that phrase, had been left in suspense. The sheet of paper was weighted down with a limestone pebble I’d brought back from camp for her. It was the finest piece in a collection of finds I’d been amassing since childhood: gray, just like any other, but with a white line of silica that formed a perfect circle. Lay there studying the document for the rest of the day, with the noise of the television in the background. Couldn’t understand what she wanted to say.

  Hardly anything was visible:

  The telescope was in Marisa(MX)’s bathroom, and the only thing you could point it at was the opposite wall. Would have preferred to view stars and planets but got used to the fissures and cracks in the wall; sometimes looked for possible constellations there, black holes and life forms:

  There are one hundred thirteen grain lines on the first pine plywood board: I counted them. After filling in seventy-three (in no particular order), a sort of map starts to become visible: lines, islands, and knots. Sometimes the enormous panels lying on the floor also make me think of the ocean: maybe because the grays, whites, and blacks suddenly turned slightly blue. That happens to some paints—the black releases an almost imperceptible bluish hue. Mom(M) said she first saw the sea at the age of nineteen, when she went on a trip to Mar del Plata with some girlfriends. If it was possible, right now Mom(M) would be living in a shack on the seashore in some remote place. When she was annoyed or fed up with us, she used to threaten one of two things: “I’m going to give you away to the Gypsies” or “One fine day I’ll go to the end of the world where no one can find me.” Perhaps she’d kept her promise.

  If I’d been able to choose the city of my birth, it would have been Garabato, a commune of the province of Santa Fe, Argentina. Never been there, but would love to be able to say I was a Doodler: an inhabitant of, as its name in Spanish suggests, a badly drawn, illegible town.

  My Brother(B) comes to visit the bunker. He’s cradling a black kitten, only a few weeks old. Later, the doorman tells me there are six more of the little creatures in the middle of the park, and that a neighbor is trying to find them homes; but this kitten, the seventh, has set out to find her own. She had crossed the park and the street and curled up in a flowerpot by the door of my building to enjoy the sun. When he put her down on the floor, she immediately went prowling around the paint pots and accidentally let her tail fall in the white. The stain didn’t come out for days. My Brother(B) stood for quite a while, inspecting the boards. The second one was, by then, in progress.

  Still haven’t found a job, right?

  What to say? Immersed in my research, I hadn’t even looked for one. There was no point in telling him about time and cones, much less showing him how one of the walls of the bunker had gone soft and explaining how I was going to solve the problem. Didn’t tell him about the note in Mom(M)’s bedroom either.

  We should go to Argentina, he says out of the blue (still looking at the boards).

  Where’d that idea come from? I eventually reply (apparently they produce a sort of trance-like effect).

  Don’t know, it just occurred to me . . .

  When? (like a mandala).

  In December?

  I’m in (but without colors).

  And how are you going to pay for the flight when you haven’t got anything coming in?

  Didn’t answer. I’d get the money somehow.

  Tordo(T) wasn’t going to call. He hadn’t called after we kissed for the first time either. Damnit. Promised myself not to think about the beginning. But, in fact, that wasn’t the only beginning. Our story began several times and only ended once, that’s why it’s impossible to understand which of the beginnings was the one that ended. I waited a few weeks, but zilch. Then wrote a note and carried it with me until we both turned up at the same exhibition opening and it was possible to hand it to him in person. Would rather not try to remember what it said; I was nineteen, the year 2000 was about to come to an end, and I was madly in love after one kiss (he was drunk), that seems a sufficient explanation. He didn’t reach out after the note either. When I asked him why, he said it was complicated. It always seemed to me Tordo(T) was afraid. I was. But the complication was that he was in the middle of divorce proceedings.

  The next time we met was at a party thrown by his students early the following semester; he told me he was going to New York for a while. A lump formed in my throat. Offered to give him a ride home, and when we were saying good-night, he said he’d really liked my note, and, once again, put his lips to mine; he slipped his hand under my blouse, and then his tongue between my teeth. Tordo(T) lived in a small studio apartment; you had to wind your way around packing cases to get anywhere. The bed was completely covered in notebooks; we cleared a space by throwing them on the floor. It was true, he was leaving, he was very nearly ready to go. It seemed the story, yet again, was not going to begin.

  Slept without pajamas for the first time in my life that night. In the morning, I put a pan of water on the electric stove, made tea, and then went back to the bed with a cup in each hand. Tordo(T) had been watching me. I felt embarrassed, spilled the better part of the tea on the pillow then hid myself under the sheets. Tordo(T) uncovered my head and ran his fingers through my hair.

  Why don’t you come with me?

  My body started trembling inside.

  Impossible to answer that question, and not long afterwards, I left.

  But that evening I sought him out again, said yes, and drove him to the airport. It was at that precise moment, in the departures area, when he flaunted his new tattoo. He left, and then nada. In his letters, Tordo(T) said he was waiting for me. I flew out that summer.

  During the entire cab ride from JFK to Brooklyn, I lay on his lap, only able to see bits of bridges, the sky, and the odd traffic signal. Tordo(T) told me he wanted to introduce me to some friends and that he’d arranged to meet them later in a bar. Imagined for a moment the scene in which they wouldn’t let me in because I was under twenty-one. Words failed me; it was obvious I wasn’t old enough to live the life I was living.

  We went up the stairs to the second floor; Tordo(T) carried my suitcase in one hand and somehow managed to get the other between my legs. As soon as we’d gotten through the door, we went straight to bed. For me, this was the third beginning with Tordo(T). When (I) felt him inside me, the tears began to flow uncontrollably, like a child’s. Had never before been so terrified, but still didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world but there with him. We came at the same time (IT) and hugged each other very tightly. Those were the only kinds of signs (I) could see around that time:

  My Brother(B)’s girlfriend offered me a job she didn’t have time for, but would have loved to take on. Something about organizing an archive and the personal effects of a writer. The name? Marisa(MX) Chubut. Never heard of her. She’d set up an appointment for me, so I could begin as soon as possible. It was my Brother(B)’s idea; she didn’t say so, but the plan had his stamp. With my pay, it would be possible, for example, to buy a ticket to Argentina. There was nothing for me to do but agree. The problem was finding the courage to leave the bunker. Venturing out on a new route implied encountering Her(H) again and again. Her(H), as may be clear by now, was Tordo(T)’s new girlfriend. And Her(H*)—this has yet to be explained—face was on hundreds of billboards of every variety. Even worse, Her(H*) voice could be heard on the radio and at all the pirated CD stands, not to mention the appearances in movie commercials and on television. It was a nightmare for me, although everyone else in the world thought Her(H*) brilliant. In fact, it was not Her(H) that was famous, the face on the billboards was an identical twin: (H*) was an actress in the new-wave telenovelas with “social criticism” who went on to have a career as a singer. Her(H*) fame
was so vast that a reggaeton version of one of Her(H*) songs was made for a Bubu Lubu commercial.

  Going to the movies, watching TV, listening to the radio, or driving along major avenues were all high-risk activities, as they could involve coming across Them(H, H*). Perhaps this synthesis was unfair: for a long time I thought of Them(H, H*) as the same person because their duplicated image added an unbearable weight to the void facing me. The downside, among other dumb things, was that I had to stop eating Bubu Lubus.

  Her(H*) face was impossible to escape, but even so, Tordo and Her(H) had managed to stay under the radar. Had everyone known but me? That was the problem with going out: my brain unleashed a torrent of venomous associations. Told my Brother(B)’s girlfriend I’d take the job, then called Violeta later to give her the news: she was pleased, but not so happy when she realized I wouldn’t be going to the university with her anymore. Without thinking about it any further, I got into my mother’s ’90 Tsuru. It was difficult to find a route in which Their(H, H*) smile didn’t suddenly appear around a corner. The upper level of the Periférico beltway would be a lousy idea, because from there the billboards were unmissable, so I opted to travel below with the radio off, the windows up, and a vista limited to dozens of columns and a stretch of concrete.

  If the planets continue to move in their orbits, maybe Alonso(A) and I will manage to coincide at some point.

  Set up the telescope on the balcony of the bunker, facing the park, and stayed there with Nuar to watch the people walking their dogs or running the perimeter. It was pretty monotonous. There were whole days when nothing happened. It’s hard for anything important to occur when you don’t know what you expect. There are things that can be seen with the naked eye, of course, but with a telescope I can make out details that would otherwise pass unnoticed. My favorite thing about the observations is that there’s no sound. Everything that happens out there is silence from in here. Except, perhaps, the birdsong, which I can’t understand. It drives Nuar crazy.