Talking to Ourselves: A Novel

by Andres Neuman

  Before turning off the light, I put the magic cap on again. For God’s sake take that thing off, Dad says from his bed, don’t be stupid. I need to know if it’s true, I say. That guy, he complains, was crazy. We’ll see, I answer, turning off the light.

  We wake up late. The first thing I do as soon as I get up is look in the mirror. Very closely. I don’t notice anything. I put the cap in my backpack. Dad gives me a kiss. We get dressed quickly. We wash our faces in the hallway. We go down to breakfast. The magician is sitting at one of the tables. He nods at us. He has bags under his eyes. Maybe he never sleeps. I go over to him and say: I’m the same, you see? The magician looks me up and down and answers: No. You’re not the same. You’ll soon see.

  We drive the first few miles in silence. Dad, I say suddenly, do I look different to you? Of course! he answers, you’ve changed into a raccoon golfer.

  Elena

  It’s morning again. Nothing begins.

  Impossible to sleep. Perhaps because Mario and Lito are finally home. Or from mixing pills. Or because yesterday I told Ezequiel that I’m not going to see him any more.

  As I write, Mario is snoring louder than ever. As though, by breathing in, he’s trying to find all the strength he has lost. This racket doesn’t bother me today. It tells me he is alive.

  He has shadows under his eyes, drawn features, no belly. There is a paleness about him that doesn’t seem to come from a lack of sunshine, but from somewhere deeper. A sort of white glow beneath the skin. There, between his ribs.

  When Mario opened the door, I was shocked. I’m not sure whether he had really come back so diminished, or whether I had been expecting the robust figure who only exists in my memory now. He seemed in good spirits. He smiled as before. He had the look of a mission accomplished. As soon as I kissed him I felt like crying, running away. I had to switch quickly to Lito, hug him very tight, focus on his soft cheeks, his supple hands, and his agile body, in order to regain some composure.

  Because they were late and I was becoming increasingly anxious, I had been unable to stifle the urge to call Ezequiel. It was then, almost at the end of the conversation, that I told him it was impossible to go on. That being alone these past weeks had deranged me. And that now I had to go back to my normal routine and my family duties. He agreed with everything I said. He told me he expected no less of me. That my decision was the right one. That he understood, really he did. And then, without altering the tone of his voice, he started describing what he would do to me when I next went to his house. I became incensed. He laughed and went on talking filth to me, and I started insulting him, and the rage of my insults turned into a desire to hit him, humiliate him, mount him. He started groaning into the mouthpiece, and I began to touch myself. Then I heard the sounds of the lock.

  While I was heating up the dinner, I studied the inside of the oven and thought of Sylvia Plath. I uncorked the wine. I lit some candles. During the meal, I started to feel better. Lito kept telling me stories about their trip, he was so excited. Mario nodded, with a gleam in his eyes. If the evening had ended at that precise moment, if, let’s say, the ceiling had suddenly caved in on me, I would have closed my eyes believing I was happy.

  Before dessert the three of us made a toast, laughing like any normal family, and Mario poured half a glass of wine for Lito. I couldn’t help wondering if he had done the same during the trip. I didn’t dare ask. We drank. We joked. We enjoyed our dessert. We put Lito to bed. The two of us sat down together. We held hands. And we stayed up talking until a glimmer began filtering through the curtains. Then all of a sudden Mario seemed to shut down.

  Now he is snoring. I am watching him.

  I fan him, feed him, bathe him, listen to him, try to guess what he is feeling. And I don’t know, I don’t know what else to do.

  These blasts of pain throughout his body. They have no precise location, they meander. I go mad trying to discover where it hurts. As though his affliction were another skin.

  He no longer leaves the house. Lito asks what’s the matter with him. I explain that Dad is exhausted after the trip and has a bad case of the flu. I’m not sure he believes me. He looks thoughtful. Occasionally he talks to me about a cap.

  The pills aren’t enough. For him or for me.

  My brothers-in-law arrive tomorrow. They give their opinions a lot, especially over the phone. But they are less keen on coming here and looking Mario in the eye. They barely touch their brother when they visit him. As if his body were radioactive.

  Lito will be thrilled. He loves his uncles. He and Juanjo talk about cars and watch action movies. Those Stallone horrors. Juanjo’s taste in movies is rather peculiar. Stallone’s only noteworthy performance was in a porn movie, I seem to recall. Lito and his youngest uncle shut themselves in his room and listen to music online. My son is twenty years his junior, yet they have the same mental age. He sees much less of his other uncle, who has hundreds of children and dresses them all identically.

  Of course Mario is happy about their visit, too. But happiness in him has become muddied. You need to dig down to see it. All of a sudden it appears, from beneath his hostile looks.

  Juanjo is going to stay for a few days. And nights.

  I make beds, make infusions, make food, make assumptions. Whenever I am on my own, I turn my phone off.

  Mario’s brothers are coming in a few hours. And so is all the rest. What’s coming is That. Everything is descending on me. From time to time I leave the bedroom to take a cold shower.

  I’ve just turned my phone on.

  I couldn’t. Resist.

  Full stop. Pointless to justify myself.

  He was understanding. He let me hit him. Then we talked about movies.

  He penetrated me only at the very end, all at once. It was like being healed.

  I got hold of a colleague who asked no questions. She agreed to ring me at home at a prearranged time and, following my instructions, asked to speak to me. Pretending I was busy with something else, I let my brothers-in-law pick up the phone. The moment they passed me the receiver, my colleague hung up as agreed. I carried on talking to myself and concocted a meeting at her place to prepare the school exams. I was surprised by her willingness. I thought she was more prudish. She has three children.

  That’s what we talked about, movies. Ezequiel doesn’t like classic movies at all. He makes fun of my taste, thinks they are pedantic. He says I consider any old nonsense in black and white a gem or the predecessor of something. He says today’s movies can’t hide behind these excuses. They are either good or bad. Full stop. I have started using that stupid expression of his, full stop. That’s his approach to life. And to movies. If the characters suffer, he’s interested. If they have fun, he’s bored.

  Ezequiel told me he had just seen a film starring Kate Winslet. He’s crazy about Kate Winslet. He says she’s as beautiful as a plain woman can be, or as thin as a fat woman can be. Winslet’s lover is a premature ejaculator (in other words, he’s a man) and after a fuck, she reproaches him: It’s not about you! Ezequiel explained that at the beginning he thought this was a good expression. But that later he had realized it was a lie. A piece of pseudofeminist demagoguery, he said. I was immediately on my guard, tried to gainsay him, but he continued undaunted. He said the premature ejaculator’s problem is the exact opposite. The poor guy is incapable of feeling any pleasure. He has no idea how to get any. He has to begin by enhancing his own pleasure. Making it more complex. Only in this way can men pleasure women as well. “We have to be good in bed out of pure selfishness. A useful selfishness.” That is what he told me. “And then the others thank you. The same as in medicine.”

  He rarely gets out of bed, he feels sick, and when he does get out of bed he feels worse. It’s as if he is walking along the top of a wall. His voice quavers. It doesn’t matter how much he eats, he continues losing weight. His muscles, his bones, his veins ache. We can’t keep up the deception that this is the flu. He still goes on pretending. Every tim
e Lito goes near him he grins like a dummy, takes out the thermometer, cracks jokes that make me want to weep. I sometimes think that deceiving his son brings him a measure of relief. Within these fictions, he is still not critically ill.

  I change sheets, cook, keep quiet. I come and go like a sleepwalker. I think things I don’t want to think.

  I have just left Lito at my parents’ house. He is going to stay with them until school starts. I prefer to spare him this memory. If they take him to the beach house, even better. Childhood always seemed easy there. My sister says she is looking for flights.

  Juanjo came to look after Mario. Each time I explained some detail about his brother’s care, he gave me a look as if to say he already knew. Juanjo likes to have the last word. Not by winning the argument, but by being emphatic. He needs to impose his personality rather than his opinion. This is precisely why he is an easy man to please. He seems very obliging of late. I have the impression that, all of a sudden, he has recognized himself in his older brother. As if he could sense the danger to himself.

  When it was time to leave, Mario appeared, impeccably dressed. He had even polished his shoes. He looked serious and had difficulty moving, concentrating on every step. He went down to the garage with us. I ran to the car so Lito wouldn’t see my face. Through the rearview mirror, I watched Mario bend over to embrace him and rest his head on his shoulder. It looked like he was playing an instrument.

  My parents say Lito is fine. My parents say they are fine. My parents have always believed that things are less frightening when they are fine. Not me. When things are going fine, I think they are about to get worse and I feel even more scared.

  When I spoke to Dad, he said almost exactly what Mum had said to me. It is astounding that they still understand each other after a lifetime of marriage. They both offered, independently, to come and stay at the house. I told each of them no, that I prefer them to look after Lito, to shield him from this. Mum insisted I shouldn’t try to carry the whole burden on my own. Dad advised me not to try to appear stronger than I am, because it will only harm me more. Sometimes I can’t stand having such understanding parents. Not being able to criticize them frustrates me. They raised me in an atmosphere of tolerance, respect, and communication. In other words, they left me alone with my traumas. As though, each time I look for someone to point the finger at, they responded from inside my head: We aren’t to blame.

  Lito told me his granddad still plays football. He sounded surprised. He doesn’t run very much, he gets tired, but he has a good aim and he can kick the ball with both feet. Granddad isn’t that old, he said.

  There was no other choice.

  I debated. I debated for weeks. Day and night.

  There is no other choice, no other anything. He needs help. I need help.

  But not the sort that came. Because he did come.

  He turned up quite naturally. I had implored him to advise me over the phone. But he insisted on seeing Mario in person. He said it was his duty and this was his patient. And he announced a time. And he hung up. And, right on time, the bell rang.

  When I opened the door to him, I felt a sort of whirling sensation. We hadn’t seen each other since my brothers-in-law had visited. I looked him up and down. In his tailor-made suit. His hair was slightly damp. Ezequiel greeted me as though we scarcely knew one another. He pronounced my name in a neutral voice. He proffered his hand. His hand. And he went up to the bedroom. The bedroom.

  He sat down beside Mario. He asked him a few questions. He helped him unbutton his pyjama top. He examined him carefully. He ran a stethoscope over his chest. He took his pulse, his blood pressure, his temperature. Mario seemed to trust him blindly. The tact with which he treated him, the concern with which he spoke to him, the sensitivity with which he touched him was admirable. Despicable. Ezequiel whispered, Mario nodded. I watched them from the bedroom doorway. Neither of them said a word to me.

  And something else. Something that places me on a level with rats. Self-aware rats, at least. While I watched Ezequiel touching my husband in our bed, sliding his hands over Mario’s shoulders, his shoulder bones, his stomach, I suddenly felt jealous. Of the two of them.

  When the examination was over, Ezequiel spoke to me alone. He described Mario’s condition to me soberly, in the voice of Dr. Escalante. He increased the dosage of one drug. He took him off another. He made a couple of practical suggestions. And he expressed his opinion about admitting him to a hospital. And he was right. And I told him he was right. And he walked down the stairs. And he proffered his hand once more. And he left my house.

  Me. The rodent.

  So this was how it was. This was it. Being there.

  I’m surprised how quickly, in a place destined to break all our habits, we establish new routines. We aren’t creatures of habit: the creature is habit itself. It sinks its teeth into its quarry and won’t let go.

  I spend all my nights there. I try to see that Mario gets some rest. I give him water. I tuck him in. I ensure his chest goes up and down. I listen to him breathe. When he falls asleep, I read with a torch. I am afraid to switch it off. It feels like something will end.

  After lunch I go home, and return to the hospital at dinner-time. Mario prefers to be left alone in the afternoons. He was insistent about this. He brooks no dissent. He finds arguing increasingly unbearable. Sometimes he lets his gaze wander, float. He looks at something that is apparently in his lap. A sort of miniature world we others can’t see.

  When I go into the room, dressed in the clothes he likes, my hair styled for him, I can sense resentment in his eyes. As though my liveliness offended him. How are you, my love? I said to him this morning. Here I am, dying, and you? he grumbled. Yesterday he had replied: Eating shit, thank you very much. He refuses to let them increase the morphine. He says he prefers to be awake, he wants to be aware.

  Try as I might, I can’t look at Mario with the same eyes, either. Suddenly his every act, every trivial gesture like yawning, smiling, or biting into a piece of toast, seems to belong to a remote language. His silences make me anxious, now. I listen to them intently, I try to interpret them. And I am never sure what they are saying. I think of what they will say to me when this is all I have, a background silence.

  Pity has its own way of destroying. It’s a noise that disturbs everything Mario says or doesn’t say to me. At night, by his bedside, the noise prevents me from sleeping. When the light goes out, a sort of glow surrounds, or perhaps encroaches on everything Mario has done. The past is already being manipulated by the future. It is a dizzying capsize. An intimate science fiction.

  Last night I took with me to the hospital an essay Virginia Woolf wrote about her own illness. I was curious to know whether this text would guide me or drag me down further. Yet I sensed I was going to find something there. Something in the language Mario now speaks. I fell asleep almost at the end. When I woke up I wasn’t sure I had actually read it. Until I saw what I’d underlined. With nothing to lean on and my unsteady hand, they looked like crossings-out.

  “We cease to be soldiers in the army of the upright; we become deserters,” that is the ambivalence of the sick, which explains why I sometimes feel angry with him. He has been shot down, yes, he has been shot in the back. But because of this he has left us. As though he had abandoned us to join a war no one else knows about.

  “To hinder the description of illness in literature, there is the poverty of the language. English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear,” or Alonso Quijano, De Pablos, Funes, “has no words for the shiver and the headache. It has all grown one way. The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her,” or Garcilaso, Bécquer, Neruda, “but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry,” hence this desperate need of words?

  “What ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness,” and these great trunks topple for both the sick and
their carers, both endure a second operation that amputates something akin to their roots. “When we think of this, as we are so frequently forced to think of it, it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature,” or perhaps it isn’t so strange: Who wants to make a fire from the wood of their own tree?

  Since Mario has been sleeping at the hospital, I have to be on standby during the night. My nerves are electrified from not taking tranquillizers. One day my head will shut down all of a sudden, like when a fuse blows. Delayed sleep is degenerating into a habit. Into a sort of insomniac workout. My normal state is this mixture of lack of rest and inability to rest. And so I write.

  Sometimes I find myself watching the other patients and their relatives, and I have trouble telling them apart. Not because they look alike (health is so painfully obvious that it makes you ashamed in front of the sick), but because, deep down, we are all doing the same thing: trying to salvage what we have left.

  By caring for our sick person, we are protecting their present. A present in the name of a past. What am I protecting of myself? This is where the future comes in (or hurls itself out of the window). For Mario it is inconceivable. He can’t even speculate about it. The future: not its prediction but the simple possibility of it. In other words, its true liberty. That is what the illness kills off before killing off the sick.

  This unknown time, this section of me, is what I am perhaps trying to salvage. So that everything that has been done wrong, not done, half done, won’t crush me tomorrow. For us carers, the future widens like an all-engulfing crater. In the centre there is already someone missing. Illness as a meteorite.