Nest in the Bones

by Antonio Di Benedetto

  Lumila, at the extreme of weariness, no longer knows heaven from earth, and begs for another miracle: for the use of her disabled leg to return – not the other, she no longer asks for that, she’s already given that one up for lost, but the one that gave out on her first day as a widow.

  She decides an old man will come to see her, that the old man will grant her what she has wished for.

  She imagines his face, radiant like rays of sun, with the pure beauty of light blue eyes.

  She opens her own, to see him.

  At that moment, from one side of the roof, a dark creature with broad wings breaks away.

  A current of fear runs through the woman’s chest, formed of all she’s heard about the bird with the fish’s body. But as her mind is not wayward and she regains her lucidity, she hurries to apprehend this first moment in her life when she will meet the legendary monster.

  The spell breaks. She thinks: If it was him, he’s shrunken terribly. And her gut tells her that one, at least, was nothing more than a bat.

  The winging of the dark dog of the air upsets the dog on the ground, while Lumila picks up the thread of her appeal for miracles, and confused now, unsure whether she has received the benediction or not, she tries to use her left leg.

  It obeys her.

  Her eyelids fall half closed, and behind them a wave of benevolent peace descends.

  She proceeds as cautiously as she can, employs all the forethought left to her, to try to move again, and this second attempt bears fruit.

  Then she’s possessed by the impulse to run, to make it however possible to a place where liquid can sate her. With the half of her body that functions, she works to free herself from the high bed, hoping to walk, or roll, or drag herself to the well, for when she gets there, she’ll know how to lower the bucket to the water.

  But from the sudden effort, or from her dreadful physical condition, she staggers, falls, and cuts herself on a piece of the broken mirror.

  She sees the opportunity escape her, and she faints, lying supine on the ground.

  Emptiness intertwines with half-thoughts, among them, that someone is kissing her wounds, and the feeling of the kiss horrifies her, regardless of who it comes from.

  Her weakened senses stir and she finds her dog passing its hot tongue over her wound. Then her impressions change, she feels secure, and she smiles. She’s sapped and remains on her back. She’s resting now, and she says to him, with affection and gratitude:

  “You’re my dog, and your name is Trusty. It’s a good name, I always knew that.”

  But the avidity with which he licks her bleeding flesh, opened by a sliver of mirror, alarms her. She finds herself opposite a maw, a pair of eyes, that force her to grovel and shout:

  “Trusty, you’re the one I rely on…don’t fail me.”

  But the redoubtable canine’s glare grows savage.

  “Don’t hurt me, Trusty!”

  She says it in terror. Meek, as though kneeling.

  Obstinate Observer

  Rubén, aged seven, returns from school at lunchtime. He eats and disappears. He ignores the order to take a nap and the summons to play with the boys from the neighborhood.

  He plants himself a block from home, alone. Sitting on the sidewalk, on the edge of the ditch, he stares, long and intently, at the building before him, on the other side of the street.

  It’s a one-story home, squat and decrepit. No one enters or leaves through its doors, no ladies peek through the windows, there are no cages with darting canaries. It’s sat vacant a long time.

  It offers nothing especially distinct, squeezed between the grocer and the tailor’s shop. The façade is unfaded, of a light, celestial blue, and Rubén likes the color, though it is not the cause of his coming here.

  In mid-afternoon, he leaves his watch for a mug of milk and homemade pancakes. Not too clear on the duration of his absence, his mother complains: “Where were you?” But what absorbs her are the vicissitudes of her demigods on the radio play.

  Rubén repeats his escapade, his abstract contemplation, day after day.

  “Where’d you go off to, lazybones? What time are you going to do your homework?”

  Later, the boy senses that the situation could get worse: his mother shoves the problem off on his father; his father talks about conduct and issues vague threats.

  It’s not rebellion that makes Rubén stretch out the hours: he’s held there as though captive before the mute wall on the other block, until the crepuscule clears away the powder blue of day. He suffers, in succession, censure, shouts, and slaps; then he gets them all at once, or in a jumble.

  One morning, he senses he can’t take his route to school, but must instead turn toward his observation post. He takes up his place on the sidewalk pavers and sets down his unused notebooks beside him, along with his school supplies, his spinning top. He watches, unguarded, but expectant; he knows he has to wait.

  A neighbor lady notices him and shakes her head on her way to the grocer.

  A schoolmate, one from the afternoon class, stops on his way to buy bread and asks him:

  “Did you go to school?”

  Rubén lies brashly, to run him off, because he prefers to tend to this matter on his own.

  “Yeah, I went, but they kicked me out.”

  He leaves the meddler stupefied and abashed before a delinquent of the kind that could merit such a punishment.

  Rubén ignores him.

  Around eleven in the morning, while the people wander past indifferently, he discovers, on the front wall of the house that draws him there, a crack opening noiselessly, like a black bolt of lightning hurtling downward. A rumbling begins, and behind the wall, raining down amid the scudding dust, the beams tear loose then disappear, along with the panels of corrugated zinc: the roof has caved in.

  While the pedestrians shout and flee, Rubén takes a step back, in dread, but without averting his eyes.

  Then the sky-blue wall collapses and the catastrophe comes to an end.

  Rubén, now nine, can’t follow his history lesson.

  In other subjects, his grades are satisfactory. Not in this one. Not that he dislikes it: to the contrary, the heroes and their exploits excite him, but, being passive and ill-inclined to any strenuous activity, he never dreams of being like them.

  He doesn’t get distracted on purpose; but there’s something forceful in that teacher’s allure. Not what she teaches, not what she says, but her, simply her. It doesn’t happen with the other ladies who instruct him. Just with this one, who lacks any special charms beyond her head of hair, and isn’t even nice to him. Her severity and sternness don’t bother him since he’s given up being a good student.

  As soon as she enters the classroom, Rubén is filled with doubts. Something demands he remain anxious, vigilant, throughout the forty-five minutes. Why? Is he afraid of her? No. Something outside her upsets him. What?

  Every day, he yearns for class to end, for the year to come soon to a close, for the cold to lift, at least.

  When he returns from recess, if she doesn’t show immediately, he clings to the hope that she won’t: that she’s sick, that they’ve hired another teacher in her place…Her appearance portends another forty-five minutes of agony. Even if nothing happens.

  Lately, he feels the tension rise when she moves to a certain corner of the room, explaining the day’s chapter or quizzing one of his classmates.

  He asks himself why she ends up there. Why? For what?

  What is there in that place…? It must be that it’s the intimate corner, with no doors to let the chill filter in, whether badly shut or flung open at odd moments, or for any other reason; because there is the stove radiating its heat, warming them all up, more or less. Rubén understands. Nonetheless…

  Today the teacher has unfolded maps over the blackboard. She shows them the routes of the armies in the mountains. On the far right, the point closest to the cozy corner of the room, she shows something on one of the posters. She s
tands there in her white smock, holding a long pointer that glides over the brown, blotchy illustrations; she stands there, making reference to something, something Rubén can’t grasp because his mind is beset, he doesn’t know by what; but whatever it is, he feels it’s about to explode.

  Then a long flame shoots up behind the instructor. It’s her white smock, which has brushed the stove and caught fire. There are tears and cries of fear, and the terrified teacher flees to the schoolyard while the flames grow, fed by the air, spreading to her clothes and now to the long mane of hair falling over her back.

  Rubén, aged seventeen, questions himself.

  Friends his age, his fellow students, boast of their flair for courtship, or else fall seriously and demurely in love. He hasn’t, not yet.

  There’s a girl he finds charming, the daughter of a soldier, who has come to live in the neighborhood; his attitude toward her is contemplative, not heated. Indecisive, his attraction shifts between her and one from the teacher’s college who has danced with him on the occasional Saturday at the high school parties.

  He doesn’t believe he’s in love: neither inspires that rapture or tenderness he imagines is borne of of true infatuation.

  This doesn’t particularly sadden him, because of his placid nature, unenterprising, unenergetic, or his habit of waiting, in thrall to vague intuitions, for things, finally, to happen.

  But with a certain woman, his behavior dismays him – and consequently, he upbraids himself. She’s barely more than a girl, beaming, simple, with a pleasant face, even a pretty one, it could be said. She’s tired, she’s pregnant. She’s the wife of an electrician, not much older than she, and they live nearby, so he runs into her often.

  Rubén doesn’t recognize in himself any feeling that he could call love. He respects her, and his principles, which he examines with thorough anxiousness, would forestall the least attempt to get something from her, to expect something.

  But why is it, lately, when she goes to the square, to sit in the sun and knits things for her baby in the offing, that he chooses to take a walk along that very path?

  Inevitably, he blushes when they exchange a timid greeting, from afar, though the girl shows no sign of discomfort or suspicion.

  Rubén wonders whether he shouldn’t fear – as happened before, especially when he was a boy – that what he senses, indistinctly, is the presentment of disaster.

  He doesn’t give in to his incomprehension, nor does he manage to perceive any message he could pass along to the woman or her husband to keep them safe, if danger is looming. They would think him ridiculous.

  Today he has left home without remembering her, without a single thought that alludes to her. But then he sees her on the corner and feels he shouldn’t go on downtown, as he had planned. He stops.

  She’s waiting for a bus, she is in the right place. He will follow suit. He greets her with a smile, barely nodding. She responds with the same delicacy, and Rubén can see she favors him. He finds the moment touching.

  A bus pulls forward. He doubts she will step forward rashly. She doesn’t.

  Once she’s in the bus, a man politely offers her his seat, deferent before her evident pregnancy. Rubén stands up, grasps the rail while the passengers press in on him, and curses himself for obeying his destiny.

  Suddenly, the young lady bursts into worrisome cries, saying something like Oh my God, help me! and he understands, now the dread has passed, the baby will be born in the bus. This is neither exceptionally untoward or strange, you see it in lots of cities…The passengers can help (they already are), and he will call for an ambulance and medical assistance and alert her husband and tell him to run, to run…and that everything will be all right.

  That is why – he discovers, pleased that this time, it’s been to do good – he had to be there.

  Against custom, Rubén leaves his office just past 6:30 in the evening: he is distracted by the burning city streets, and glad that the sun still shines golden above it, it’s summer and the shop doesn’t close till eight.

  Nonetheless, he recalls, he has not gone out for recreation. For what, then? There’s no mystery, inside him or out. All he wants is to return home. Why, if his home will be empty? At that hour, the maid has left; his daughter will be out shopping, his son-in-law still at the office…

  Well, that is why he’s returning at this instant: to be alone, in his widower’s solitude, for an hour or two, until his daughter shows up to start dinner.

  The neighborhood seems changed, more animated, he notices. Ordinarily, he doesn’t pass through until close to nine, when the little shops and garages in that residential zone have lowered the rolling blinds and turned off their neon signs.

  Where he turns onto the block, the Fiat and Volkswagen workshops are humming. He sees, tied to a tree in the courtyard, visible from the street through the gate, the source of the persistent barking he’s heard through his bedroom window for days now. It’s the first chance he’s had to lay eyes on the guard dog, he must be new at the job.

  He’s a yellow dog, of medium height, and when he sees Rubén making his way slowly up the sidewalk, he stops his barking and commotion and stares at him raptly, at him alone, with mournful eyes.

  Rubén watches calmly, lamenting the situation of that sensitive animal bound by a chain.

  He can’t shake the impression. He knows it’s only natural, given his condition, that the dog has a certain mournfulness in his eyes. Yet he feels that stare has been prepared for him.

  Back at home, he looks toward the roof to see if there is a flag there. A flag…? he wonders. Why am I looking up there for a flag or some fluttering fabric? He is perplexed, and he goes on questioning himself. What color then…? Should it be dark? After a slight hesitation: Why am I asking myself about the color of a flag that isn’t there, that doesn’t exist…?

  He puts the matter aside, choosing to leave it in the street no sooner than he enters his home.

  He can have his solitude as he wished, free from the voices of others, free from upsets, without any thought in particular.

  They eat dinner, the three of them.

  His daughter leaves afterward to clean up the kitchen, and the men move to the living room, where the television is.

  “Papa, do you want a coffee? Want me to make it…?”

  “No, honey, thanks. It keeps me up, and I want to sleep tonight.”

  But when he retires, though the night is calm, rest refuses him its sanctuary.

  He recalls the yellow dog, perhaps because he doesn’t hear it. He, at least, must have gotten some sleep.

  Around one – the cuckoo in the dining room has just announced the hour – Rubén turns in the sheets, cross at his sleeplessness.

  Just then, he comprehends, without impatience, without bother, that he has to wait until five. To wait…for what?

  He resigns himself to ignoring the question, to waiting. He spends the remaining time shuffling through his memories, ploughing the night in stretches marked off by the chirp of the cuckoo: three, three-thirty, four, four-thirty…In a few minutes, it will be five.

  When he senses there’s almost no time left, he gets up, without turning on a light: the light coming through the window suffices to dilute the shadows. He settles in the most comfortable chair, the one reserved for reading, turns to face the bed.

  This comfort gratifies him, he stretches out his body: his wait is as lucid and serene as his gaze.

  Then, when the cuckoo calls out five, he observes, from the chair he has sat in, himself, dying in his bed.

  Italo in Italy

  Monday, 5:00 p.m. in Rome.

  “I’m foreign…” I tell the fresh-faced woman in the thin, open blouse, who has seen me enter and greets me while I choke on the hot air from the streets.

  “Oh, I know,” she says with a complacent smile.

  “…but my family’s Italian,” I say, trying to justify my modest ability with her language.

  “I understand.”


  “I’m from a very different country,” I continue to explain, not yet mentioning Argentina or describing my present demanding life in Scandinavia, hence without exciting any curiosity in her with regards to my person.

  “Sure, you’re looking for sun. It’s still a long time till you’ll be able to take your vacation to America.”

  “Correct,” I say, displeased she has seen through me.

  “Well, we’ve got plenty here, we’re boiling in it.”

  “But I’m not looking for sun in the city.”

  “You want sun and sea…”

  “…and hills,” I say, using my hands, making shapes, the way they do. “One village on the rocks, another for the fisherman, not too many tourists…”

  “…fish on your plate, red wine in your glass, am I right?”

  “Right.”

  She says, now animated, clearly eager to drag me into her project:

  “I’ve got it. You like sardines? You can go to the capital. I’m not talking about a big city, I mean a little fishing port next to the sardines’ favorite waters. A village in the provinces, in Sardinia. Hills…You can’t even imagine…! And seven temples.” And then, like an overture: “You know those temples, like the ancients had, the Greeks…”

  She unfolds maps. Her scrupulous office worker’s finger traces out on the colored sheet a route that starts precisely there, in Stazione Termini.

  Another day, a Thursday.

  But it’s morning, and the sea is there.

  The sun is there, ruling over space.

  It seems immobile; and yet, if I take the dare and look straight into it, it spins or shimmers, and that trembling strikes me as a presage. Dazzled, my eyes hurt, and I let them rest on the blue of the waters, and it seems as though the star’s quivering had descended to their surface. It clashes and raises violent spume, but in other places it undulates, describing harmonies in gold.

  I don’t see a flag warning of hazards, or even a flagpole. Maybe I’ll take a dip.

  From the rows of canvas tents – medieval and martial in appearance, fringed in green and red – a sunburnt man motions to me, curt and vigorous; stripped bare to the waist, in rolled up pants, barefoot on the sand.