Savage Tongues

by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi

  We both drew in deep breaths.

  The seagull returned. It was the same bird. It landed with the same power and grace, looked at us through the window, then turned around and leapt into the sky, cutting the air with its wide wings. It flew in oblong circles, then vanished into the white horizon. Into the future. In that bird’s labyrinthine flight, Lorca’s lines came back to me: In Spain the dead are more alive than the dead in any other country in the world.

  8

  THE NEXT MORNING I AWOKE to an agonizing cry. I sat bolt upright in bed, my heart beating with fright. The apartment was abusing me again. It was unleashing its darkness; its twisted grief was seeping through the walls. I heard trotting noises. I heard the muffled sounds of a struggle, the hollow echo of an animal pawing gravel. I heard the clip-clop of the wild boar’s hooves falling against the floors followed by tiny whimpering cries. A thin yolky light was coming through the window. It fell like a spotlight on the opposite wall, a yellow ring resolved to track the animal. The wild boar’s shadow slid against the wall. I traced her long ears, her muscular body, the tips of her coarse hairs, all standing upright. She was agitated, fearful. A deep ache spread across my heart as if I’d been punched in the chest. The surface of the wall turned liquid, as though it were a silk curtain or a rumbling waterfall. The room turned into a whirlpool, its vortex drawing me into its cruel embrace. The eerie susurrus of the waves returned. I could hear them crashing breathlessly against the apartment walls, a tsunami of water longing to crush me under its pressure. The wild boar’s face emerged, her round snout and deep-set eyes turned toward me. I was seized by a terrible anguish. She was so large. She, too, had grown in this apartment.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, my lips trembling. “I’m so sorry for what I did to you.”

  The wild boar’s eyes were as black as tar. They shone with an unbearable light; her eyes were ablaze with rage from the injustices she had endured. I thought she was going to charge at me; she was staring at me the way that Omar had in our parting moment, as he crouched like a tiger on his Ducati, glaring at me through the rear windshield of my father’s rusted Mercedes, his eyes aflame, murderous. He’d looked like a man with an unquenchable appetite for carnage, destruction, hatred, evil. I heard the booming sound of his motorcycle. In my mind’s eye, I saw him speeding toward a sunlit horizon beneath a blue sky, the surrounding landscape shamelessly beautiful, a spine of rugged earth covered in aloe and palms, their fronds splayed open toward the sky with earnest expectation. Omar tore through them, severed the terrain, sliced it this way and that with no thought of who would mend the wounds.

  Now the wild boar simpered. Her stiff legs struck the ground. Her face retreated into the rippled waters that seemed to be falling from the heavens like a great flood. She looked down. She sniffed. Her image dissolved. The wall closed over her again. And those waves, too, retreated.

  All was silence: a cold, stunned quiet that left me raw. I thought to myself that we had both been so young, yet what we knew of this world was despair, confusion, fear, an unimaginable loneliness that had struck us dumb.

  I sat in bed and let out a long repressed cry. I cried quietly, silently. I held the blanket against my mouth. I was afraid of belting out my pain, afraid that woven into the fabric of my grief was the violence and cruelty of my relationship with Omar, what had happened between us, and all of the people—family, strangers, animals—who had cleared the path for us to meet. The last thing I wanted to do was unleash that cruelty back out into the world. I’d taught myself to regard my pain as my greatest asset, productive, instructive, generative; but only if I could figure out how to hold it kindly, gently. There was something transcendent in that pain. And for that reason, I’d wanted to avoid unleashing its unfiltered storms and dark shadows on another. I’d thought that if I held on to my suffering long enough I’d be able to metabolize it; it would dissolve and never again be recycled back into the currents of the world. But no. I’d been eclipsed by Omar. The injustices he’d assailed against me—against that wild boar and the birds he kept in cages, and who knows what other beings—could not be contained in a single temporal dimension. That’s violence’s greatest asset, I thought; the ability to make time itself servile to the deviousness of its will. We are left to manage the discrepancy between the scale of the event, its limited temporal duration, and its boundless posthumous influence over our hearts and minds.

  I heard Ellie call out to me. I wiped my face on the sheets. I tied my hair up. I drew in a few deep breaths.

  “Are you up?” she asked through the door.

  I told her I was, that I would be out in a moment. I steadied my voice before I answered. I didn’t want her to know that I’d been crying; admitting it would only make me powerless to the impulse to sob still more, an impulse that had taken hold of me so intensely the day before.

  “I’m cleaning,” Ellie said.

  So, I thought, calming myself, I’d heard the sounds of Ellie cleaning the house. I got up and walked down the hall. She’d thrown open all the windows, was carrying a bucket of steaming hot water from the kitchen to the living room. She dipped a frothed sponge into the water, knelt down, and scrubbed the tiles clean.

  “The mop won’t do. Vulgar, scummy apartment,” she said. “How’d you sleep?”

  A warm vinegary light was coming through the window in broad shafts. Another hot day, I thought. It was, in fact, the perfect morning for lying on the beach, tanning in the scorching sun, drinking without restraint. I needed desperately to change the channel.

  I shrugged my shoulders in response. I didn’t want to speak. I was afraid that if I opened my mouth I’d start sobbing again, so I just stood there as mute as a rock.

  “Shocked?” she replied, cocking her head to one side and smiling somewhat whimsically. I must have had an afflicted look on my face still.

  “Don’t be silly,” I managed to say.

  I had never seen her clean without being begged to do so, though once she got going, her efforts were always earnest, always thorough. Perhaps, I thought, the apartment’s filthy, vile nature had claimed her, too; it had shifted her disposition, drawn her toward itself. The gashes, cuts, wounds, the ravaged flesh hidden beneath the blistering paint, the sour smell of rot, the cracked walls with their globs of brown stains were demanding her care, laying claim to her attention, bending her will to their darkness. I wondered if she’d fallen victim to the apartment’s vindictive, spiteful nature. She was, quite literally, on her knees at its service. The thought disoriented me. I’d expected to wake up to her painting her toes, chatting with her girlfriend on WhatsApp.

  “Is there coffee?” I asked.

  She gave a regal bow and pointed at the kitchen with the wet sponge. I had no idea what had gotten into her. I wondered how long she’d been up, cleaning. I wondered if she’d heard Omar’s motorcycle rip through the apartment walls, the wild boar stab the ground with her hooves. But she couldn’t have. She looked happy, carefree. Her cheeks were flushed, rosy. She seemed steady, calm, as she kneeled back down to scrub the floors. We’d been out drinking the night before. Perhaps she was still drunk, I thought, inebriated and happy. We’d eaten octopus salad and liver pâté and drank rioja. We’d dipped our bread in salted olive oil and peeled grilled langoustines until our fingers were raw from the shells and the lemon juice that had been brushed onto them. We’d stumbled home, laughing and drunk, dragging the cleaning products we’d purchased up and down the steep cobblestone streets: a mop and bucket, bleach, sponges, trash bags, baking soda for the greased surfaces, vinegar to disinfect the floors. I remembered I’d promised her I would clean, but now I wanted to be as far away from the rancid surfaces of the apartment as possible.

  “I had to force some of the windows open.” Ellie beamed from the living room as I poured my coffee.

  It tasted bitter; it was undrinkable, as black as tar. I added some sugar and milk to cut the acid and searched for my cigarettes. She’d put them in a small straw basket
along with my lighter and a note that read, Stop smoking!

  “Funny!” I said. Then I walked over to the sink, turned the tap on, and washed my face in its weak stream. It was lukewarm and smelled like sewage, so I held my breath. I turned the tap off and caught my reflection in the water that had pooled in the sink. I lifted the end of my shirt to my face and rubbed it dry, then looked into the sink again, that pit of dirt, and watched my image dissolve. I drew a cigarette out of the box and lit it. I stood there smoking it, inhaling its warmth as I took in the narrow rectangular kitchen. Despite having been cleaned, it was still dull, no light or shine. The air smelled of mold and dampness. The atmosphere of the apartment was permanently heavy, its surfaces forever soiled from disuse, the energy cluttered.

  I took a sip of my coffee and grabbed a second cup to use as an ashtray.

  I was not in the mood to clean. The thought of touching the apartment, of caring for it, filled me with disgust. I told Ellie not to bother, that I’d changed my mind, that it wasn’t worth restoring the apartment or making it habitable again, that no matter what we did we’d be unable to rip it back from death’s grip; we’d never be able to expel the ghosts trapped in its floorboards and walls. No matter what we do, the apartment will revert back to its hermetic life, greedily drawing dust to itself, shutting out fresh oxygen and light. I told her that I planned to abandon the apartment to the elements, to the dust of the universe. That the longer we stayed, the likelier it was that it would pull us into its entrails and turn us into ghosts for its own entertainment.

  She stared at me in disbelief. “You’ll change your mind,” she said. I felt furious with her but I said nothing. “Did you try on the underwear we bought?” she asked, gently guiding the conversation away from the walls and windows.

  “What underwear?” I asked. Then I remembered that we’d stopped at a Calzedonia store the night before and that I’d drunkenly complained that I never had enough underwear and that I’d never bought myself a swimsuit, not since the purple two-piece Speedo she’d discovered in the closet. Ellie had encouraged me to take care of myself, to shop, to buy underwear, lacy underwear that I could show off to Xavi, that I would adore every time I looked between my legs, and also a swimsuit, a bright-green bikini that she swore would complement my skin once I’d spent a day on the beach. That’s all it takes for my body to completely transform, I thought, regaining my equilibrium; six or seven hours in the sun and I turn a deep olive, the color of my grandfather’s skin.

  I put out my cigarette, waving the smoke out of my face, and went to help her. I’d promised I would clean. I’d given her my word, I repeated to myself in a punitive tone. I started on the bathroom. I got on the floor and leaned over the edge of the tub. There they were: the short black hairs—pubes—scattered along the sides. Whose pubic hairs were they? I remembered again how cold and stiff Omar had become when I’d asked him to pet my smooth legs, how I’d learned not to express agency, to let him direct me as if I were a doll. It took all of my strength not to chastise myself for having been stupid, so irremediably foolish. But I couldn’t stop myself for long.

  “An idiot; a desperate, lonely teenager,” I said to myself sotto voce as I poured baking soda into the tub, opened the tap, and let the hot water run. The water had an orange hue to it. The pipes had rusted. I scrubbed the grease, the scum, the pubes, and watched it all run down the tub into the drain. Then I put the stopper in and let the tub fill with water. I added vinegar and let it sit, eroding the filth. I scrubbed the walls, the sink, the toilet. I was sweating profusely.

  A house is meant to be cleaned, adored, decorated. This was not a home; it was a catacomb. A lifeless, repulsive enclosure marked with danger, betrayal, and annihilation. Had I sought the danger out? Had the house manipulated me into craving what had then seemed to me unparalleled bliss but which I now recognized had come with staggering losses that would be paid out like dividends for the rest of my life? I would never be done grieving what had happened between Omar and me. I would never be able to fully account for it, to make sense of it, order it into a digestible sequence of events with consequences that had clear boundaries. No. The consequences seemed to multiply and acquire fresh dimensions with each new phase of my life. The damage he’d caused was alive. It had a mercurial disposition that never failed to surprise me.

  I felt dizzy, nauseated from the pungent smell of the vinegar. I could hear Ellie’s heavy footfalls in the living room. She, too, was working against the grime with a fierce and diligent hand, a concentrated attitude. The bathroom walls and floor were wet. Black puddles pooled at my feet. The dirt had layers. I caught my reflection in the mirror. It was divided in half by tracks of water. I observed myself dispassionately. I could see in one half of my face the desire to run away, to shut this place out of my memory, and in the other half, I perceived a mature resistance to that same impulse. It was time to confront the ghosts of my past. I was sick of their covert operations. I felt an intense strength blossom in my gut. I was resolute. I stood there and stared at myself until that other face came forward again, the lineaments of my battered future self, her wounded eyes, her gaunt cheeks, her brittle hair crusted with blood. I saw her mouth move in the mirror. Let me out, she seemed to be saying. Take me away from here. Her lips moved continuously as she repeated the phrase. I winced with shame, with disgust, but I refused to look away. The image flickered, then I saw her sitting inside the trunk of a tree, that same tree I’d seen in my dream. The sequence reversed with delirious speed. I saw the bark seal up again, and her figure disappeared from view. I felt my lungs release, my stomach relax, my shoulders drop. I felt relief, momentary but powerful, as transcendent as that warm light that poured into this hellish pit each morning. All that was left was my own face staring back at me in astonishment. I sprayed the mirror with the bottle of Windex and watched my reflection turn diffuse and pixelated. I was covered in sweat. I worked harder. I wiped the mirror clean; it seemed to shatter every time I looked at it. I threw a few towels on the floor to absorb the muddy water, carried them quickly into the kitchen, and deposited them into a trash bag. Ellie was buffing the tiles in the living room. She smiled at me. She was in a terribly cheerful mood.

  “You’re going to wear that swimsuit and we’re going to the beach!” she announced.

  I agreed. I told her that I was coming undone. That I was losing my mind. That I needed to leave the apartment. That we needed to reward ourselves by spending the whole day at the beach, tanning, giving in to our base desires, hiring the women, who were often from different parts of Asia, China mostly, and who hustled up and down the coast selling massages in the heat. A laborious job, dangerous not only because of the extreme temperatures but also because of the police who monitored their every move. I told her we’d hire them to cover us in oil and make us as slippery as fish. That we’d pay them twice what they’d ask for so we could be sure they were pocketing some of the money in case they had to hand their cash over to a ringleader, more than likely a man, at the end of the working day. “I’m going to order us a huge platter of grilled seafood,” I said, “and those ridiculous pineapples filled to the brim with cocktails. I don’t care how much they cost.”

  She laughed with ease. “I can’t wait,” she said.

  I felt slightly better, slightly freer. I hurried up and finished the bathroom. I drained the tub. Then I opened the tap and let the water run for a long time before I undressed and got under it. The water was tepid. I was overheated from cleaning and it felt cool against my skin. I soaped myself. I reached for Ellie’s razor, which she’d set on the edge of the tub, and shaved my legs. I marveled at the ease with which the hairs came away, at the clean tracks on my calf and shin as I worked in sections around one leg, then the other. I worked my way carefully over my knees, behind them, around my ankles. I was gentle, careful not to cut my skin. It wasn’t easy. Halfway through, I felt the pressure in my hand increase as if another, larger hand had lain over it, its fingers longer, thicker, more masc
uline, its grip stronger. It was Omar’s hand. “Like this,” he kept saying, guiding my hand up my legs toward my inner thigh. “Good,” he kept saying. “Right there.” He pressed the razor against my loins, between my legs, and removed strip after strip of hair until my vagina was exposed and raw, its purplish lips like the squashed petals of an orchid. He had curated a clean surface for his pleasure.

  The room was thick with steam. The water had turned hot. In that heat, I felt his breath against my neck and heard the words, “I want you naked as the day you were born. You,” he said, “will be mine. Don’t you see that I’ll have you forever?” A shiver traveled down my spine. I looked at my legs.

  “My legs,” I said, “are mine.” I played my voice over his. I said the words again, firmly: “My legs.”

  It was a proclamation, the articulation of a deep and boundless truth. It felt incredible to regard my legs, to know that they belonged to me. They were mine to enjoy, to touch and kneel and walk with and spread. I remembered that Omar had once pushed me in front of him on an evening stroll along the beach so he could watch other men turn their heads to take me in. He’d pawed at me like an animal. I could still feel the force of his hand on my back. I stumbled in front of him, then regained my footing. It was as if his hand had gone through me, cut through my spine.

  “Don’t you know how attractive you are?” he’d said. “Your long legs, your hair.” He was always whimpering with pleasure, on the cusp of an orgasm, all of his fluids spilling forth. I heard him laughing behind me. It was as if he experienced each man’s gaze as an applause intended for him, a reward that enhanced his self-esteem and robbed me of mine. Once he was satisfied, he caught up with me and ran his hands through my hair.