Talking to Ourselves: A Novel

by Andres Neuman

  Since she landed, she has been trying to show a degree of protectiveness toward me. Perhaps she still feels guilty for not having come when you died. There is no reason she should: I myself insisted she wasn’t going to arrive in time for the wake. I sense she wants to broach the subject, but I don’t give her a chance. I know what each of us would say. I have listened to that conversation, over and over, talking to myself. Arguing with my sister is like shouting at a concave mirror. I don’t recognize the person before me, yet she seems disturbingly similar.

  “I was a married woman,” recalls the character in a novel by César Aira. “We always hesitate,” I underline, “before erasing the evidence of something that happened,” what happened is the only thing we have now, and it is destined to be lost. “Almost everything that happens scarcely leaves traces in our memory,” memory is a delicate skin, skin has a short memory, “and memory isn’t trustworthy, isn’t even credible.” I deleted all your e-mails, your text messages, your work files. I noticed no relief.

  “It was my hands versus my head,” to do in order not to think, not to think about what to do. “The voluptuousness I felt when penetrating my mental labyrinths made me realize it was dangerous ground,” every labyrinth is dangerously intimate, “but this feeling only increased my pleasure, and my guilt, which were one and the same thing,” to the point where this voluptuousness no longer depended on what I did with Ezequiel. It was in me, like a medical after-effect.

  I needed someone to hear it. I have just told my sister what you already know, what you never knew. Or did you?

  We were both in the bedroom. Braiding each other’s hair the way we did as kids. The way we did during our summers at the beach house. One leaning her head against the other’s stomach, letting her hair be caressed. And then we would change places. We spoke in those hushed tones that enable you to say the first thing that comes into your head. This is how I confided to her about Ezequiel. My sister was braiding my hair. I noticed her stomach tense. She scarcely drew breath while I spoke. She exhaled slowly, like when you do prenatal exercises. Predictably, she responded with shock. Something which, in her own way, she also needed to do. My sister has no problem understanding immoral acts, so long as it remains clear from the outset that she would never commit them herself.

  I must admit she didn’t try to judge me before I finished telling the whole story. Next, she declared herself “physically incapable” (her exact words, my darling) of having a lover. And least of all, she continued, modulating her voice with exemplariness, in a situation like the one you and I had been through. “A situation,” she said. I wanted to tear her hair out. I replied that it was quite the opposite. That, physically speaking, the most natural thing was to have a lover. And most of all, I spelt it out, straightening up, in desperate situations.

  This was as far as my arguments went. After that, what came out was my own unmistakeable rubbish. We argued for a while. Until it occurred to me to tell her: You have enough trouble with your own husband, who unfortunately is alive and kicking.

  My sister left the bedroom without uttering a word. I heard her moving stuff around. And the door go at the end of the hallway. A few minutes later I received a text message (typical of her: polite, dignified, insufferable) informing me she was going to visit our parents.

  Wretchedly I replied:

  I’m sure you’ll be on your best behaviour with them.

  “Suffering that is too apparent doesn’t inspire pity,” I verify in an essay by Philippe Ariès, “but rather revulsion.” We tolerate, are even pleased, that others suffer, but not when it splashes us, this is already “a sign of mental disorder or rudeness.” “Within the family circle we are still wary, for fear of upsetting the children,” although if we knew how to raise kids properly, on the contrary, they would be upset by the lack of obvious suffering at the loss of a loved one. “We only have the right to cry,” we only grant ourselves this right, “if no one either sees or hears us,” confined in our room, doubly confined, “solitary shameful grieving is the only option, like masturbation,” besides shame, is there some pleasure, there? “The comparison is made by Gorer,” I don’t know who he is, but I want a date with him.

  I search for Gorer, I find him, he wanted to be a writer, he failed (welcome to the club, Geoffrey), he became an anthropologist, he researched de Sade (a sadist, then) and ended up studying sex in marriage (precisely, a sadist). I find the quote “At present, death and mourning are treated with much the same prudery as sexual impulses were a century ago,” is prudishness therefore suffering in secret, masturbating with mourning? “So that it need be given no public expression,” so that it doesn’t soil the clothes of others, “and indulged, if at all, in private … furtively,” I’ve never been introduced to a Geoffrey.

  My love, your crazy widow here.

  Shall we get to the point?

  Sometimes, at night, alone in our bedroom, I am tempted to contact Ezequiel. I take pleasure in imagining that I have. And I know I would do again all the things I did.

  If I don’t call him it is more out of pride than remorse. After all, I myself forbade him to see me again. How could he have obeyed me so instantly?

  Men’s obsession with being consistent horrifies me.

  A message from my sister:

  Mum and Dad have sold the beach house. I assume you knew. Wish you’d told me. Love from all 3.

  No, I didn’t know.

  They always seemed to be fine there.

  And wouldn’t it have been better to think about it a little longer? I insisted, we had so many good summers at that house. The way things stood, my love, there wasn’t much time for thought, my mother explained, the bills were very high, it needed work, we could no longer even afford the maintenance. Really? I said, why didn’t you tell me? Because you never asked, my mother replied calmly.

  Lito just came home from school with a split lip. He is happy. He says he is learning to command respect.

  I was horrified to see him with blood on his mouth. But I assumed if I showed my dismay, he would shut me out. I know there are macho issues that only macho men can understand, and all that bullshit philosophy. So I forced myself to behave naturally. I swear to you I smiled, I smiled when confronted by our wounded son!, provided he told me what had happened.

  When he saw I was on his side, Lito gave me a blow-by-blow account of how the fight came about. The precise insults exchanged. Whereabouts in the playground the fight had taken place. Exactly how he had hit the other boy. His story sounded like a sports commentary. I breathed deeply in order not to feel sick. While treating his lip, as if in passing, I asked who he had defended himself against so successfully.

  When he pronounced the boy’s name I had to stop myself from bursting into tears. I knew the kid. He is timid. A squirt. One of the smallest boys in his class. I once spoke to his mother, who lives in constant fear of him getting hurt. The poor kid has trouble scraping through physical education. This was the boy Lito had hit until it made him feel better.

  So explain to me. You. The father. The man. How the hell does one deal with this sort of thing? What stories did your son bring home to you from school? How did you respond? Did you preach to him about pacifism? Did you lie to him? Did you teach him how to throw a punch? Did you tell him how much you liked fighting when you were a kid? How come you just stay there, dead?

  I have started two books by Christian Bobin. I alternate, like headphones playing different music for each ear. I read in stereo.

  I am depressed as I underline in the first book:

  “The event is what is alive, and what is alive does not protect itself from loss.” So, the true event is loss?

  I laugh as I underline in the second book:

  “Young mothers have affairs with the invisible. And, because they have affairs with the invisible, young mothers end up becoming invisible. Men are unaware that such things happen. This may even be man’s function: not to see the invisible.” So, the invisible man is the true
man?

  Let’s be honest. All honesty is a little posthumous. To you, your son’s day-to-day life was like a favourite TV series. You followed it with interest, but because you always missed half the episodes, you couldn’t understand the whole plot. But you had the father you had. And that was excuse enough for you to emerge unscathed.

  I remember once, I was with your mother in the kitchen. We were chopping vegetables to make soup. Your mother was incredible with a knife: I’ve never seen transparent slices like those since. You were smoking in the living room with your father and brothers. All of a sudden the lights went out. Your mother lit a candle, and we went out into the hallway. That narrow hallway in your parents’ house. She opened the fuse box, held the candle up, and pointed to the fuse that had just blown. She quickly closed it, without touching anything. And we went back into the kitchen. From there, we heard your father’s booming voice, his footsteps with yours, the sound of the fuse box opening. Sometimes, your mother whispered to me in the candlelight, you have to let them believe they are the ones with the solution.

  I had the phone in my hand, lying on the bed, sending my messages, I saw his name in my contact list and, suddenly, without thinking, I pressed Ezequiel’s number.

  His voicemail came on. I hung up.

  He didn’t even return the call.

  When I see a couple kissing, believing they love one another, believing they will endure, whispering into each other’s ear in the name of an instinct to which they give lofty names, when I see them caressing one another with that embarrassing avidness, that expectation of discovering something crucial in the other’s skin, when I see their mouths becoming entangled, the exchange of tongues, their freshly showered hair, their unruly hands, fabric rubbing and lifting up like the most sordid of curtains, the anxious tic of knees bouncing like springs, cheap beds in one-night hotels they will later remember as palaces, when I see two fools expressing their desire with impunity in broad daylight, as though I weren’t watching them, it’s not merely envy I feel. I also pity them. I pity their rotten future. And I get up and ask for the bill and I smile at them askance, as though I had returned from a war which the two of them have no idea is about to commence.

  I confess to you that I have sometimes felt jealous. Not of other women you perhaps knew. Jealous of our son. I know it is ugly. I am ugly.

  When Lito talks about you, when he half-remembers, half-invents you, I realize he is an orphan with two fathers. The father he had, made of flesh and doubts. And this other phantom father who watches over his adventures, and, however foolish they are, applauds them. Apparently, this second version of you understands our son better than anyone. The less he knows you, the more he admires you.

  Occasionally, a touch of fear underlying his curiosity, Lito asks me about the accident, because we always refer to it as The Accident, like the name of a movie by someone we don’t know, and when our son says The Accident, I am seduced into believing this is what dying is, a misfortune that befell you and will never affect us, that can never affect him, he is my son, he is immortal.

  We are brought up being told that sons maintain an umbilical tie with their mothers. I want to earn my son’s admiration, not to take it for granted because I gave birth to him. That’s the difference between a mother and a mammal. Love of the father is only attained over time. It is won. That is what I envy about you. Just imagine how it is now that, on top of everything else, you are a Phantom Dad.

  You find it funny, my love? Go to hell.

  Do you need money? my sister asked in that responsible tone my Dad admires so much. No, I pretended, why do you ask? No reason, she replied, how much do you need? When I said the amount I felt odd, grateful, younger.

  In his autobiography, Richard Gwyn describes how a liver transplant saved his life. The liver Roberto Bolaño was waiting for, the one his specialist was unable to find for Bolaño while he dedicated his final lecture to him, the liver Gwyn restores to Bolaño.

  “The thought occurs to me that I spent ten years studying and writing about the subjectivity of the patient, that I have a PhD in the narrative construction of illness experience, have published in learned journals and even written a couple of books on the subject,” I know the feeling: being sick from sickness. “None of this can help me now. I am in a post-discursive zone. I have reached The End of Theory,” an end which, of course, doesn’t cure us of anything either, except perhaps of the hope of ever finding The Remedy, The Idea, The Understanding of the Phenomenon, culturally contagious diseases.

  Gwyn speaks of two kingdoms which believe they are opposed, that of sickness and that of health. He has lived in both, like you, and he is no longer sure which is his. “It is as if I hold two passports from countries that are mutually suspicious of each other.” We subjects of the kingdom of the healthy mistrust our future kingdom. We take careful note of it. We pretend to accept it by objectifying it. We examine it in search of some diplomatic passport that will spare us the sordid formalities.

  Dear, daily Mario. Today, without knowing why, I enjoyed myself quite a lot. Perhaps because nothing out of the ordinary happened.

  The next step, and this is also going to hurt, will be to let joy in. If it comes. If I recognize it. I can already sense the next blow: not of loss, but of guilt because of fresh gains. Like today, for instance. Like this shameless sunlight pouring through our bedroom window, akin to a child smashing vases.

  It scares me sometimes when occasionally, for a moment, I forget you. Then I hasten to write. You can’t complain. Even forgetting you reminds me of you.

  I thought (beloved platitude) that the worst thing about losing you would be not having you. But it isn’t; you are still there, I think of you while I talk to myself. I don’t want to get too esoteric, so let’s just say you have become part of my organism. Now that I am growing accustomed to being alone (or at most, on a Saturday, being with I don’t know who), the worst thing is accepting that I am not in you. I am no longer part of you. Looked at in this way, I have also died.

  But will you look at that sun, what a rascal.

  I remember our conversations at the hospital. Not so much because of what we said to each other (there were no revelations, at least no spoken revelations), but because of the absurd miracle of being able to talk to someone who was dying, who was already leaving and who went on talking. I remember one conversation in particular. You were lying down with your eyes open. I was sitting by your bed. From time to time we stroked one another. Chastely, as once before. It was a mild afternoon. You seemed calm. You were gazing out of the window. Are you ready? I asked. And I squeezed your hand. Are you? you asked me. I don’t remember what my reply was.

  I have just been to Ezequiel’s office. I didn’t call. I didn’t make an appointment. I simply turned up, sat in the waiting room, and stared at that door we know so well.

  I exchanged a few words with the patients sitting next to me. They all assumed I was there for the same reasons as them. Every so often, they stood up, gave me a token smile, and went into the examination room. Someone else would immediately arrive to take their place.

  I saw people our age, adolescents, old people, children. I saw fathers, grandfathers, friends, aunts. I saw men and women, some better dressed than others. They all looked ugly to me. They were all beautiful.

  Have you been waiting long? a lady on her own enquired sympathetically. Quite a while, I replied, and you? All afternoon, she said, I prefer to get here early, it puts my mind at ease.

  Suddenly Ezequiel’s voice filtered through the door, Dr. Escalante’s tone. It grew louder. It vibrated. It reached the doorway. It mingled with two other fainter voices. Then Ezequiel’s groomed head appeared, his whole body emerged, dressed in white. He was with an elderly couple, the man very serious, the woman trying to smile. Ezequiel stood between the two of them. He had a hand on each of their shoulders. As they stepped through the doorway, the three instantly dropped their voices. Their six feet stopped on the threshold of the wait
ing room. I focused on Ezequiel’s face. On his rippling eyebrows. On his way of speaking, almost without opening his lips. He said goodbye to the couple. I quickly lowered my head. I don’t think he saw me.

  When the door closed once more, I stood up and left behind the elderly couple. They were taking small steps. I copied their rhythm. I walked with them. I followed them for a while, gazing at their backs.

  A Note on Translations

  There follows a list of the works cited by Elena in this novel. The translation of passages originally published in languages other than English was done by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia. If writing allows us to talk to ourselves, reading and translating are very much like having a conversation.

  A.N.

  Aira, César. Yo era una mujer casada. Santiago de Chile: Cuneta, 2010.

  Ariès, Philippe. “La mort interdite.” In Essais sur l’histoire de la mort en Occident du Moyen ge à nos jours. Paris: Seuil, 1975.

  Atwood, Margaret. “Let Us Now Praise Stupid Women.” In Good Bones. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1992.