I came out of the bathroom, looking at the floor, and smiled at him.
“What were you doing?” he asked.
“I was in the bathroom,” I replied.
Lick away the blood and hold him naked and clean under the pillow.
“Hey, listen, I’ve brought you a surprise…!” he said enthusiastically.
Touch his soft limbs and plunge a finger into his chest. Rip out his heart and lift it to the sky.
I know it took two of us, but I put up no resistance…
Attach him to my nipple for a few minutes, long enough to weep.
Then I felt a hairy head stroking my calves and for a moment I thought my son had returned in the form of a velvety ghost.
I looked straight ahead and asked Thomas, “What is it?”
He stared at me and then he said, “It’s a dog…”
I lowered my head, eyes full of tears.
And then I burst out crying.
The darkness had already entered the room, and the red curtain floated slightly in the breeze, while the noise from our neighbors’ TV filled the still silence.
“What shall we do?” he asked me, stroking my feet.
“He’s already done what had to be done. Everything’s just as it was,” I replied crisply.
He got to his feet, lit a cigarette, and went to look out the window. I heard him breathing.
The cowering dog took refuge in a corner and followed all my tired movements with the corner of its eye. “Everything’s just as it was,” I repeated.
The smoke from his cigarette rose in circles and dissolved in the air.
“Why did you throw it away?” he asked me in a tone of voice that I had never heard him use before.
“It came out all by itself, I…”
“No, no,” he broke in, “why did you flush the toilet?”
I stopped and thought for a moment, because I didn’t really know either.
The dog went on staring at me, and that phrase echoed around in my head:
“Perhaps out of fear,” I replied.
“Fear of what?” he asked me.
I shrugged, but he couldn’t see me.
“You should have shown it to me,” he said.
“What difference would that have made…,” I replied, tears beginning to sting my eyes again.
Then he turned around and said, “I’m sorry.”
Everything’s as it was.
Is everything as it was?
Twenty-two
You’re almost black and I’m white as a Q-tip; you’re cheerful and I’m melancholy.
I remember your yellow car very clearly: a yellow Fiat 127, an old model you never see around anymore. It was funny, it looked like a cartoon, and we were the main characters. You had a raincoat the same shade, canary yellow. For me you were “the lady in yellow.” You had two earrings that looked like sweets, yellow and soft with a slight dip in the middle. I watched them as you drove. I looked at the mole behind your ear, the mole that identified you as
After lunch we stayed on our own and played like two sisters only a few years apart. You spoke to me and I listened to you. You spoke to me because while I was listening to you I was serious and moved my head as though to say, “I understand, don’t worry, go on.”
You told me so many things, Mum, and none of them are in my head now, but perhaps they’ve taken root in my soul.
Afterward, when you were tired of talking, I asked you, “Mum, where are we going today?”
You shrugged, giving me a trusting smile, and said, “Who cares? Let’s just get in the car and see where it takes us!”
That yellow 127 was enchanted, it always took us to different places, and to me those places were enchanted, too. Anonymous places, deserted, gray squares, the houses of chattering and theatrical relations, the beauty parlor run by your best friend, the one you exchanged important confidences with, thoughts about marriage and husbands. Sitting on a stool, I studied your body, covered with creams and oils. I can still smell their perfume — I only have to think about it.
Your words and your friend’s words have remained fundamental for me: I think it was in that room in the beauty parlor that my sexual journey began. I think it was there that I first heard talk about men and first began to form any sort of an idea about them. I was all ears, I was always discovering something new, some new curiosity was always being satisfied. Every day, when I asked, “Mum, where are we going?” I hoped you would say, “To the beauty parlor!”
The 127 was our nest, our refuge. From what? Time, perhaps. You were twenty-five or maybe even younger, and I was nearly five, but we both sensed that time would steal something very precious from us: our levity.
When you swapped the yellow 127 for a red car, our relationship changed, and I was forced to go alone to the enchanted places, the places of illusions.
“Tomorrow your daughter will be able to walk the roads of life alone, the roads woven of tears and dreams, and perhaps her wound will be in her heart.”
Do you remember those words? I remember them. Every day.
Twenty-three
“I’m going to buy some cigarettes,” Thomas said as he left, slamming the door behind him.
I was smoking the last one, lying on the sofa, transfixed by the pictures and the voices on the television. I nodded, looking straight ahead.
When I heard the elevator door opening and closing again, it was as though a flash of lightning had suddenly passed through me and filled me with superhuman energy. I ran to the window and grabbed his mobile phone from the sill.
Frantically fingering the keypad, I dash through the messages in his in-box. There’s nothing there to give me any concern, although for a moment I have a sense of foreboding that he might have put another girl’s number under my name or his mother’s. Then I run through all the texts of the messages and that hint of foreboding fades away.
Suddenly a loud cough right behind me makes me start, and I feel the air stirring my hair.
I turn to see a woman behind me and say, “What the fuck do you want? I’m busy. This isn’t the time.”
The woman smiles at me and whispers in a croak, “I like what you’re doing. You’ve got to know everything. Go on, go on checking his every move, follow his every footstep and listen carefully to his every word: he could be lying to you at any moment. I’m here to help you, to make you realize that reality isn’t as you imagined it; it’s actually very different.”
“Really?” I say contemptuously, “and what would you know about that?”
