Nest in the Bones

by Antonio Di Benedetto

  The debts, from his wife’s long, incurable illness, and the rent, which is exorbitant, given his new financial situation, compel him to take a room in the pension. But deep down, he’s glad, because his home is broken, and his sister-in-law’s presence won’t make it better. It’s not getting better; it’s turning ugly. And he feels he should give her the chance to annul a pact and responsibility that no longer have the favor of affection.

  He’s alone now, with his little boy. Maybe forever, he says to himself. He sends off the suitcases full of clothes in a pickup, along with the boy’s little bed, and the chair, which his body has grown used to.

  He shuts the tailgate and crosses the street to catch the trolley. While he waits, he stares at the drawn windows, without curtains. He remembers those curtains his wife hung up. Who could have taken them?

  The trolley comes down the other block. It’s time to say goodbye. To say goodbye to the house. In the foregoing days, when he imagined this moment, he thought it would be solemn. And yet…he sighs. He feels the boy’s little hand in the shelter in his own. He digs through his jacket pocket, takes out a couple of coins, and stretches out his arm to wave to the conductor.

  He turns in the key to the owner of the house, catches a different trolley, and gets off two blocks from the pension.

  He walks, the solitary man, with a little mute figure grasping his hand, and like the boy, he doesn’t say a word. Who would you talk to, who would you explain this nothing to?

  When they arrive, before going in, he decides he needs to tell him:

  “Bertito, this is where we’re going to live.”

  The boy looks at him. He looks at the building. He looks back at his father. This last look is a question.

  The father can’t answer it. He wants to bring the situation to an end. “Let’s go in,” he says, takes the child in his arms, steps up, and rings the buzzer.

  He’s taken Saturday afternoon to finish the move. He can put the clothing away and arrange it without rushing, he even has time to spare, and he ends up ruminating on how little he has left. The boy watches him work. He’s sitting on the bed, where his father put him down an hour before.

  “Papa, I’m tired.”

  His father is surprised:

  “What do you mean, boy? It’s six in the afternoon…”

  He looks at him, trying to see shades of the weariness the child claims to feel. They aren’t visible. But he’s taken aback when he finds a glimmer of turmoil in his eyes. They’re looking away off somewhere, those little eyes. As though wishing something wasn’t where it was. He observes him closely. A voice filters in, a woman’s voice. A woman is singing. He reckons she’s pacing outside the bathroom door, waiting her turn for the water.

  He tries to understand the boy. He assumes the voice intimidates him, so free, such a jarring contrast to the silence of his recently abandoned home. The boy senses a strange presence in that place where they have to live, and he doesn’t care for it, but he knows he has no right to complain.

  “It’s OK, Bertito. You can sleep. I’ll get your bed ready right now.”

  The boy makes a face to show he agrees. With just his face, nothing else, he says: That’s fine. That’s what I need.

  The night was calm. His father greets the day with the confusion that arises from change of bed and surroundings. Once awake, he feels invigorated and composed.

  He rouses the boy:

  “Bertito, get up. They’re going to clean the room.”

  He takes him to the bathroom. He gives him coffee and milk to drink. The boy obeys, leery and passive. But he doesn’t speak, he doesn’t show joy, satisfaction, or even curiosity.

  His father thinks: It’s the change. He’ll get over it soon.

  He thinks it will be good for the boy, and for him as well, to go to the movies, to the matinee. But they can’t, not so soon, not after what’s happened.

  He opts for the park. The child lets himself be taken along.

  They return after nightfall. The cool air enticed them to slow down, but then it was hard to find a bus. The father is in a hurry. He doesn’t know what time dinner is served on Sundays.

  It seems like a different building. From the sidewalk, through the open storm door, they see the courtyard blighted with dancers and music.

  The father feels something in his throat. Something hard to swallow. Not for him – why should he care? – but for the boy. Down there, by his side, he feels a trembling, from bewilderment, perhaps from fright. He doesn’t dare look at the boy. Before facing him, he looks for a solution. He suspects he was wrong to stop. He should have gone in without hesitation. He looks at the boy. The boy is peering inward, as if shriveled, as if his soul has withdrawn. His father wants to believe it will all be fine. Luckily, his room is the first one on the left, and has a door that opens into the foyer. There won’t be any need to cross the courtyard.

  Then he decides. First he tries to cheer the boy up:

  “Look, Bertito. A party. That’s nice, right?”

  The boy shakes his head.

  “What, you don’t like the party?

  The boy swings his head back and forth obstinately.

  His father decides its time to act with fortitude.

  “All right, let’s go.”

  He hadn’t counted on the boy’s determination. He tugs at the little hand, and the tiny body resists. If he tries, he can drag him off. But…

  He picks him up. The boy flails with his arms and legs, in open rebellion.

  “Let’s go for a hot chocolate.”

  The boy tries to break free, to hurl himself to the ground.

  “Churros and chocolate, and cookies. Whatever you want.”

  He clarifies:

  “Not here, somewhere else.”

  The boy calms down and gives in.

  They have their chocolate in a bar with pool tables, a place only men go. Awe-struck, the boy watches the nearby game. When he finishes his cup, he rests his head on the table, and his father knows he’ll put up no more resistance.

  The dance isn’t over. It’s eleven.

  He puts Roberto to bed.

  He’d like to go down the hallway, to the bathroom, but he holds back; he’d have to mingle with the dancers or sidestep them, without knowing how. They are so unfamiliar to him…

  He reads headlines, looks at photographs in the evening paper he bought at the bar. He yawns. He undresses. Before he turns off the light, he goes over to see how the boy is sleeping. He lifts up the sheet. The boy’s eyes are open in desperation.

  His father wants to tell him, Sleep, boy, go to sleep. He wants to say it in the most tender and protective voice, but nothing emerges from his throat.

  Labor Union, retirees’ section. An office worker rushing through his work, though he won’t be able to escape his desk until twelve o’ clock sharp.

  And yet, by twelve fifteen he’s made it to the pension. He’s delivering a complaint on his child’s behalf. As he walks down the hall, he sees the door to his room remains closed. He is surprised, but it doesn’t stop him.

  “First of all, Miss, good day to you. Now: I thought this was a family home.”

  “Mr. Ortega, you know perfectly well this is a boarding house. There’s a sign out on the street.”

  “Yes, I know. A family pension is what I meant to say.”

  “And so it is. Does anyone say otherwise?”

  “The facts do, Miss. The facts.”

  “What facts?”

  “The dance last night.”

  “What’s the harm in that? You think this is a nightclub? You think people are dancing here every night?”

  At first the owner wasn’t willing to give ground to a guest as new and as frazzled as he. But she sees she can reach a compromise: the motive of his irritation is circumstantial and insignificant.

  “Look, Mr. Ortega, let me explain.”

  She explains: this happens only rarely. The dance was for boarders only. No outsiders. The truck drivers show
ed up from Córdoba, and since there are tourist girls staying in the pension…

  Ortega listens and makes his assumptions: Tourists and truck drivers. Thrifty tourists. Truckers flush with cash…He sees he’s let his anger be assuaged. The owner’s defense is unobjectionable. So much so that she feels in her rights to bring up a much more delicate matter that has displeased her.

  “Now then, Mr. Ortega, can you tell me what’s going on with your boy? Will he be this way every day?”

  The boy. The closed door. Just then, the father feels that the slightest touch could make him lose it.

  He wants to run. He needs to see. But first, he needs information to back him up.

  He left the boy there. When the girl tried to go in to do the cleaning, the boy started shouting. The girl was stunned and refused to go in if the boss didn’t come and mediate. When the boy saw the owner, he got even more upset. And it was clear there was nothing wrong with him, he wasn’t shouting because he was sick, he just didn’t want anyone in there, that was all. So the women shut the door and there was no more noise. The room was a mess, and the father would have to deal with it.

  “Is that all?”

  “Is that not enough?”

  The repetition of this episode the following day obliges him to come up with a system. The maid comes in at seven. Before sweeping the sidewalk, after dragging out the trashcans, she does Ortega’s room, while he can keep a handle on the boy, in other words. Ten minutes are set aside for the trip to the bathroom.

  But what about the rest of the day?

  “Bertito, I can’t stay here. If you wanted, you could leave the room while I’m not here…In the courtyard in the back, there are chicklets.”

  A flicker of interest lights up the boy’s eyes. It dies out. The father struggles to reignite it:

  “Little yellow chicks. Teeny tiny. Like this. They fit in your hands. Like this, make a little hollow with your hand.”

  The boy allows his father to bend his hand.

  “You want to see them? I’ll take you.”

  The boy closes his hand. His father sees it has become a fist, and it hurts him that already, the boy’s hand foresees the hardships life will bring.

  Quarter past eight at night. The father arrives. He doesn’t waste a minute on friends, on window shopping, on bulletin boards. He can’t deprive his child of respite from a confinement that has already lasted nearly a week until he hits on a solution or the boy stops stubbornly shutting himself up. The father trusts the way out of this will come on its own, through the dictates of nature alone.

  The father arrives. The room is dark. He can tell from looking at the transom window outside. He enters, stretching his hand toward the light switch and uttering his wounded reproach:

  “Always the same, son, and in the darkness, no less. Why? Why?”

  The light appears, obedient to the flick of the switch, revealing the room in its completeness, but for him, all it discloses is the presence of the boy, sitting still, holding a certain part of his body in his hand.

  “Papa, pee.”

  The boy doesn’t answer his father’s reproaches. He offers no reply to his questioning. He demands:

  “Papa, pee.”

  “I’ll take you right now. Let me put this away and…”

  But the boy interrupts him, prodding:

  “Papa, pee.”

  It’s a plea.

  The father understands. He throws the folders on the table, tugs the boy by the hand, and takes him down the hall.

  When they get there, the child has wet his pants.

  Afterward, while they wait for dinner, the father sits on the edge of the bed, observing this face, which seems to reflect neither guilt nor shame, but betrays the expectation of a punishment that cannot yet be written off.

  The father is beyond confused:

  “Can it really be, boy…? Not even when you’re dying to go…?”

  Ortega asks for permission. Half an hour to go to the store.

  He returns to the office. The paper wrapping doesn’t hide its contents. Someone figures it out. A suggestive smile. Ortega can tell. He hadn’t thought of this. Nor had it occurred to him to leave the package in the coatroom. He can’t put it on his desk now. He stashes it in the wastebasket. A coworker laughs heartily. All his colleagues giggle for a moment. But no one makes a wisecrack to keep it going. Ortega relaxes.

  At twelve, he removes the package from the wire basket.

  The boss, who hadn’t participated in the merriment, says:

  “Taking it with you? I thought you were going to use it here.”

  The others latch onto the joke.

  Ortega isn’t offended. He smiles. He bears it. All of a sudden, he suspects there is a secret culprit at play, and leaves, thinking he should look for a solution with the least possible delay.

  He unwraps the package. The object is familiar to the boy. It’s not so long since he stopped using it.

  He unbuttons his pants.

  His father cups the boy’s face in his right hand. To keep from smacking him, he thinks, once he knows that his hand is occupied.

  He interrupts him:

  “But son, if I’m here, I can take you to the bathroom.”

  It’s too late. In light of the reproach, the boy has tried to contain himself, but things are already running their course, and in consequence, the floor gets wet.

  The father smiles in resignation.

  “Well, we had to try it out sometime. Might as well be now.”

  His return to the room, after eight at night, shows that the device has served its purpose perfectly. They will have to eat right away, then and there. He’ll have to take the thing off. He’ll have to take the boy, too. He’s dirty, he’s soiled his clothes. But the thing comes first.

  He picks it up. He goes to leave. The door opens. The door that reveals that woman.

  He turns back. He leaves it inside. He covers it with a newspaper.

  He takes the boy off to the bathroom, with clean underwear to change him.

  When the girl comes to set the table, he asks her to take out the chamber pot. She hesitates, unsure whether, at that hour, such a chore falls within the scope of her obligations. Hereditary resignation leads her to answer:

  “Sure. Right away.”

  The girl sets out the bread baskets from the kitchen, one for each room. Ortega’s is the last one in the building, since she works from inside out, and when she gives him his, her hands are free. She picks up the implement and goes to the courtyard.

  The father hears loud complaining. It’s a man. He’s yelling. The girl says something to him.

  The father jolts. He doesn’t understand the words’ meaning, but he suspects they have something to do with him.

  The girl comes back with the bowls of soup. She’s upset. Ortega asks her what’s happened.

  “The gentleman from Room 9. He says he won’t stand for me touching those things when I’m serving dinner. I said you told me to do it, I’m not doing it because I want to. The Señora got mad at me, too. I had to wash my hands before I could go back to serving.”

  The father can’t defend himself, he can’t discuss the matter with anyone. He looks at the child bitterly. The boy is aware of his glance. He had picked up his spoon. He leaves it there now, next to the plate, and lowers his forehead.

  It’s decided, they will change pensions. Roberto refuses to live in this one, he rejects it, maybe because it is their first lodgings in foreign territory. Roberto feels surrounded by enemies, and his declared hostility to his father no longer adopts merely illusory forms.

  It takes a few days to find what he’s looking for, not because he’s choosy, but because he needs a room close to the bathroom. Experience demands it, and it’s not a hard thing to find. Besides that, he needs – or wants – it to be at street level, with its own exit, or at least with a door that opens into the foyer, like the other. This came to him all of a sudden, as a consequence of a certain idea, one he didn’t wan
t to admit and that presumably has already faded away, though not without obliging him to find a room with that location instead of a different one.

  For the boy, the move means nothing. He heeds to his calling as a shut-in, and at most, assents to going to the bathroom without the company of his father.

  “Hang-ups! Hang-ups!” the father wails the day he concedes failure.

  “What if he’s ill…?” the new owner suggests, less discreet but also less selfish than the former one, trying to include herself in the problem that is dividing father from child.

  “He eats, doesn’t he?” the father replies violently.

  “Yes, that he does.”

  “He does everything he has to do, right?”

  “Yeah…Everything, you could say that…He does some things. But he doesn’t do what other boys do.”

  “Not what other people do, little or big. It’s his character, Miss. His character. That’s not something a doctor can fix.”

  The woman has no more answers. She falls silent, focused. Then she hazards an opinion:

  “Character…it could be. Or maybe it’s grief.”

  Grief.

  The word grabs hold of the father’s heart. Grief.

  He remembers that he has forgotten grief. He has.

  When the conversation with the owner has reached its end, he tries to justify himself inwardly. He makes a list: one, two moves, predicaments with the boy, debts, the cruelty of creditors.

  And yet, regardless of anything that might absolve him, there it is…grief, so distant, so muffled in so few weeks.

  But not in the boy, in the boy it can’t have gone away. And he never talks to him about his mother…to keep from making him suffer, or so he thought up to now. Because his own heart, like the house they left behind, has expelled her.

  In the morning, he buys a picture frame, the size of a postcard. He waits for night, a time more suited to airing sentiments. More fitting, as well, for a father to utter those few words an older man can say to his little son and hear his heartbeat.

  “Papa is going to show you something that you and I love very much. But don’t cry, my boy.”

  The boy is surprised at this declaration and the accompanying demand.