Empty Set
Page 6
My only hope was to reconstruct them. As Alonso(A) wasn’t around, there was no risk of him finding me out. I was, and knew it, returning the letters to a place where they no longer belonged; Marisa(MX) must have had a purpose in hiding away that story in illegible disorder. And as the letters were gradually reassembled, my conscience became increasingly uneasy. I’d taken on the task of returning to a moment that no longer existed, to the moment when the things those letters said were still true.
Looked through all the photographs again in search of S., did the same with the clippings, but couldn’t find him.
Things move around in the bunker. Or at least that’s how it seems. Hadn’t I left that book on the table, not on the desk? Or my shoes in the living room, not under my bed? Could have sworn I’d bought a yogurt, but there is none in the refrigerator. Perhaps my Brother(B) had come by and was responsible for the yogurt, but taking my shoes to the bedroom, never. My Grandma(G) says the same when I call to tell her we’re coming to visit:
How are you, Grandma?
Someone keeps moving everything around, sweetie! I put something in one place, and it appears in another.
Are you sure?
Maybe it’s absentmindedness or failing eyesight, but it’s beginning to happen to me too. I’m not really surprised; there’s not a single physical law that’s respected in the bunker, apart from the law of chaos.
Two telegrams: the last messages from S. to Marisa(MX).
One dated late ’76 and the other January ’77. Tono(TN) arrived in Mexico sometime in January or February ’77.
It was an ending in two parts.
Both very brief.
Like everything that finishes.
This was the first:
12/31/76
Happy New Year STOP
S STOP
And the second was spine chilling:
01/31/77
I know I’ll see you again STOP
Love confirms the circularity of the universe STOP
S STOP
The telescope manual also contained a small section on punctuation marks and letters used to describe weather conditions:
(.) Precipitation reaching ground level.
, Intermittent drizzle.
,, Continuous drizzle.
. Light intermittent rain.
: Moderate intermittent rain.
; Intermittent rain and drizzle.
s Dust suspended in the atmosphere.
Could that climatic symbology be used to read the piece made up of commas and letters we saw at the exhibition? It would indicate a sort of continuous and intermittent drizzle between the letters of the alphabet. That would be a deeply sad text.
I want to cook something special, says my Grandma(G). But it’s getting late, so maybe better to have a fried egg. Mom(M) used to solve every problem with an egg too. The crockery we’re eating from is the same set we used when your Mom(M) was a girl, she adds proudly. Grandma(G) likes to reuse the yerba mate tea bags. She can’t start the day without a cup of mate; it’s three in the afternoon, but I don’t say so. She forgets that the used bags are kept in the refrigerator and takes out a new one each time. Your Mom only ever ate her eggs hard boiled, she says. The refrigerator is a cemetery of mate bags. She says I don’t tell her anything nowadays. Says that before, I used to tell her everything (Before, when?), that I’m very reticent. My throat is sore, but I don’t say that either. Speaking is difficult. Attempt to stop hearing my thoughts, to reduce them to the point that they seem incomprehensible.
We always realize things afterwards. Loneliness, for example. It’s not when we think we’re alone, or when we feel abandoned. That’s something different. Loneliness is invisible, we go through it unconsciously, without knowing. At least that’s true of the sort I’m talking about. It’s a kind of empty set that installs itself in the body, in language, and makes us unintelligible. It appears unexpectedly when we look back, there in a moment we hadn’t noticed before. I’ve probably never been so alone as when Mom(M) disappeared. There was no time to stop and think about it. I see myself sitting with my Brother(B) in the dining room, each of us with a sandwich of cheese and a smear of mustard on Bimbo bread, plastic cups of Coca-Cola, and it makes me sad. The two of us are acting as if those cups were made of glass. What else could we do? (I) realize how alone we were, both of us. How defenseless my Brother(B) and (I) were.
Then came the moment I had feared: there was no longer any pretext for continuing to go to Marisa(MX)’s room. All that was left was to put everything into cardboard boxes, then label and close them. And there was no pretext for sending another e-mail to Alonso(A). He didn’t write to me either. Don’t know why, but spent my days waiting for him to return. Then wrote anyway.
September 5
Solona,
S’woh ruoy sisthe inggo? S’tahw ti bouta?
Tenlis, I nishedfi zingnigaor ruoy ther’smo chivear.
Tub won ev’I tog a blempro:
I kniht I ekil uoy. Stol.
V.
September 8
Dear Verónica,
Got to hand in a progress report on the thesis tomorrow.
The topic: essays “disguised” as novels. It’s all the same whether or not they accept it; just a formality. The problem is I don’t have much to say yet.
A.
If he liked me too, then the Universes(U, UII) had finally overlapped. And in the near future (I)’d be back in another triangular map, but finally in the place (I) wanted to be, at whatever cost.
In my Grandma(G)’s head, today is thirty years ago.
And it’s also today.
All at the same time.
November 12, 1976
Marisa,
Putting dates on letters is a completely idiotic mania. What difference does it make at what moment in life everything overflows? And it’s not as if I’m planning to publish them, the epistolary genre is too realistic. I’d prefer to find you lying in the sun beside the swimming pool in Cuautla.
I’ll come to visit you soon. I love you.
S.
His letters were dazzling, exciting. It was as if he’d written them to me. But they were essentially impersonal, for effect only. Pure seduction. S. was writing to the future: he says that he won’t publish his correspondence, so he probably will publish other things. Although the words might be addressed to Marisa(MX), the message is a mirage. I can no longer remember what the letters I’ve written say. Is S. still alive? Seems like everything we write ends by being erased. That’s as it should be. Nothing Marisa(MX) and S. wrote to each other is true now. Were they in fact ready to change their lives to be together? What damn use are the vestiges of something that no longer exists?
Nuar has been sleeping on Mom(M)’s bed every night since I left the door open. Look in and whisper a request for her to come in with me, because the noises inside the bunker in the early hours are scary, but she takes no notice. Who knows why she prefers to sleep there? But every morning she puts her paw on my face to wake me, and I have to hide under the pillow if I want to go on sleeping.
September 24
Solona!
Eryev ningmor ni ym roombed uoy nac raeh: bang, bang, bang, bang (eht borsneigh era ingdo pairsre stairsup). Taht edam em kniht bouta “sesguidis.” Bang si a drow thoutwi a guisedis, t’nis ti?
Dna neht I soal thguoht pu a tsil fo sdrow htiw sesguidis: aplomb, happenstance, disgruntled, quintessence, halcyon, unquiet, jape, earthfall . . . ereht era erom, tub I deppots ereht.
V.
September 24
Dear Verónica,
Ha-ha. I use those words all the time!
You mean onomatopoeia, I think.
Are you serious about the disguise thing?
Crazy, but it has potential.
A.
Called Dad. Wanted to ask him if he has any idea what happened to Mom(M)—after all, he lived with her for twenty years—but didn’t know how.
OBSERVATION SHEET V
L
OCATION: Parque de las Américas, Colonia Narvarte.
DATE: October 13, 2003.
LIGHT POLLUTION (1–10): 10.
OBJECT: Tree(top)s.
SIZE: Circumference from 2 to 6 feet.
LOCAL TIME: 09:00.
EQUIPMENT: None.
OBSERVATION:
NOTES:
Have been looking for a tree I carved my name on sometime in my childhood. Not sure which has disappeared, the carving or the tree. Or both?
Trees don’t move around, but it’s very difficult to find them.
Argentina. Sometimes see myself ringing Grandma(G)’s bell, and Mom(M) opens the door, as if she’s been there all the time. The two women playing hide-and-seek in a small house in the Iponá neighborhood of Córdoba.
October 6
Ym raed Solona,
Si siht eht nninggibe fo thingsome?
V.
October 7
Dear Verónica,
If
we
don’t
think
about
the
beginning,
there
will
never
be
an
end.
A.
Decided to call her Nuar. I hadn’t had a cat since childhood and had forgotten how much you can enjoy their company. Nuar is mute. It took a while for me to realize that. One day, she came to where I was painting and tried to meow; she opened her jaws wide, but all that came out was a kind of muffled sound, a sort of barely audible purr she spat out from her stomach. Followed her into the kitchen, and she indicated that her saucer of water had tipped over. Nuar would spend hours sitting at the window looking out over the park where she was born; she also liked walking on the cornices and lying in the sun on the balcony. Some nights tomcats came to visit, and they’d talk to her from the sidewalk or the park. Nuar would answer, but then immediately look to me, because they couldn’t hear her. Some adventurous spirit once climbed a tree and got very close. Nuar stood stock-still, then made that muffled sound. The cat backed away and disappeared. It was as if she were talking in another tongue, not the one cats speak.
Was lucky enough to get a seat for Alonso(A) on the same flight.
Gave him his booking confirmation. He smiled.
He promised to return to D.F. in time for the trip. Before leaving, he asked:
Which do you prefer, the window seat or the aisle?
Aisle.
Great. I prefer the window.
He winked, stroked my neck, kissed me on the cheek, and left. Called him several times to say good-bye before he boarded the plane, but his phone was already switched off.
OBSERVATION SHEET IV
LOCATION: Parque de las Américas, Colonia Narvarte.
DATE: October 1, 2003.
LIGHT POLLUTION (1–10): 10.
OBJECT: Truck.
SIZE: 40 feet.
MAGNITUDE: Enormous.
CONSTELLATION: Blockage.
LOCAL TIME: 10:00.
EQUIPMENT: None.
OBSERVATION:
NOTES:
It’s outside the park, blocking the view. A man sleeps in the driver’s cab; he goes away in the mornings. Told myself I’d take the telescope up to the roof at night, but it’s always too cloudy. Tried, but couldn’t see anything. Should maybe find something else to do.
A Brief History of Time was by far the best thing I read during those days, not just because my research into time in tree rings had been a complete failure, but also because the book was fundamental to a better understanding of the bunker (said my Brother(B)). One day, when he dropped by to visit, I informed him that if a star dies, its last glimmer could take eight thousand million years to reach us.
Everyone knows that, Vero.
So didn’t tell him the mind-blowing thing is that, apparently, the past doesn’t disappear, it’s still floating out there somewhere, and is constantly reconfiguring itself. It isn’t necessarily what’s in our memories. And so neither is time that linear concept we all think about; everything is topsyturvy. What’s strange is that scientists can investigate a past as remote as the origin of the Universe(U), but things here on planet Earth don’t go backwards. For going back in time, all we have are telescopes and books, and maybe also trees. There’s no other way of returning, even if it might sometimes seem we regress to the beginning, that life spits us out in front of the terrifying third-grade teacher.
October 7, 1976
Marisa,
I’d like to put the sky or the sea or the night into this letter. I’m writing just a few lines to propose we meet on October 29. Would that be all right? You set the time and place. If you’re in Cuautla, it’s no problem; I can go there. We could meet, even for a moment, in some park, at a church, or wherever you want. I promise not to distract you for too long. Don’t worry, no one has noticed yet. Answer soon, time is short.
XX.
S.
This is the first letter from S. I reassembled. It was written on blue paper, so it was easy to identify the pieces and fit them together.
In his spare time, my Brother(B) has been working on another documentary. He says he’s just playing, experimenting. He’s become obsessed with high contrast, the way an image loses definition and becomes abstract when converted into just two tones. He does trial runs with reframed clips from documentaries he’s already worked on. The close-up makes the images unrecognizable. Just blobs. He hasn’t shown any of this to anyone. Not even me. There’s no hurry, he says. Sometimes he tells me these things. He also says he’s writing the script; it’s going to have a voice-over offering reflections on geography. He wants to describe those high contrasts as if they were found maps, cities of pixels, islands of bits hiding in the memories of computers.
October 22
Dear Verónica,
I’m feeling this enormous urge to eat green pozole.
In the United States there’s no green pozole; and in Mexico there’s no General Tso’s chicken, which I love.
A.
Finally!
When (I) got to his house
Alonso(A) was stretched out on the sofa
watching a movie
swore not to remember which
because it was crap
it was such an anticlimax that my memory retained a
perfect image of the two of us sitting side by side
deadpan
we turned
he kissed my neck
moved closer
felt his breath
got goose bumpsgiggled
bit his neck
he giggled too
tangled up together
fell off the sofa
the floor was very cold
brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
(I) screamed
sprang up
ran to the bedroom
his eyes above mine
his weight resting on me
his eyes above mine
his weight
transfixes me
both
close our eyes
just for a second
time stops existing
Tordo(T) thought pool was a minor game, so he taught me billiards, which to him seemed a refined, almost artistic act. The shot that sends the balls careering randomly toward pockets is too elemental, he says derisively. I can almost hear his voice. In billiards you have to make the ball trace out a triangular figure inside a rectangle (the table). If the figure is perfect, it manages to hit other balls. One ball hits two others during the same trajectory. A game of three cushions. Pure mathematical coincidence. This is the infrathin, he concludes. Billiards was the second sign something was wrong . . . and I didn’t see that one either.
He wasn’t there. Not in the departure lounge, not at the boarding gate, not next to the window.
Alonso(A) wasn’t there.
Didn’t cry. Wanted to, but couldn’t.
Just felt the u
rge to throw up.
His was the only empty seat on the plane.
Terribly cold because the cabin crew never brought me a blanket.
DAY ONE: Arrival in El Calafate. Those of us on the tour are the only guests in a gigantic hotel. The guide said the Perito Moreno glacier, which we are on, forms part of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field and extends for over ten thousand miles. Couldn’t help but wonder if there were also disappeared persons under those enormous sheets of ice, and if one day global warming would finally bring them to light.
DAY TWO: Upsala & Onelli. More glaciers. The guide was inspired, she talked about the “ice witnesses.” Cylindrical core samples several kilometers long (obtained by drilling into the glacier), in which the different layers of snow that have accumulated during each season are visible. It’s a way of doing archaeology with ice. Wanted to ask her if it was like what happens with tree rings, but my tonsils were badly swollen.