Patricia?”
“Patricia left. She said she’d be back tomorrow to get you.”
“Then you’re the one who’ll have to give me permission.”
This little game didn’t bother me at all. It was a matter of putting my ear to the door and licking in the sound of her breathing on the other side, her body pulsating, itself drawn up to the wood. After so many years in which my eyes had been the only king of my body, there was a strange calmness in allowing them to rest. “I’ve never given something without getting something in return,” I said.
“What do you want me to do?”
“You could start by telling me your real name.”
“My real name?”
“Don’t go and tell me that you’re called Oriana. I don’t know anybody called Oriana.”
“And if I can’t tell you my real name, you won’t give me permission?”
“Did Patricia forbid it?”
“No. It isn’t that. It’s that … but you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Tell me and I’ll give you permission.”
“Promise that you’ll believe me.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“If I told you, for example, if I told you that I didn’t know, what would you say?”
“That you didn’t know your own name?”
“If I don’t know it, you won’t give me permission?”
“Let’s compromise. I’d settle for your nickname. They must have called you something when you were a kid, right?”
“I’m not going to speak one more word to you till you open this door.”
All of a sudden I realized that this was the permission that, in Patricia’s absence, she was expecting from me: permission to come out of the bathroom! Some laceration in the echo of her voice indicated to me—and I was not seeing her—that for her our playful interchange had never been a game.
“You open it,” I said. “I’m not the one who’s got you shut up inside.”
“You’ll give me permission to open it?”
“Yes.”
“Even if I don’t tell you my name.”
“I’ll give you all the permissions in the universe.”
“No. You open it.”
I opened the door.
Where did that air of innocence come from? I don’t believe it was the smile, ripe, full as her lips. Or that cascade of savage hair, which somehow contained the mouths that had passed through it, tasting it. Not even those eyes, in which, in spite of the lack of one lonesome tear, there shone a moist forlornness, as if something in her, very far away, had been crying.
She stretched her arms upward, as children do when they want to be carried or comforted.
I didn’t want to think about it, I didn’t want to, but it was inevitable—corrupting the moment, soiling it from the past.
That’s right, Doctor. It was that damn doll of Enriqueta’s that intercepted my memory at that very moment. As abandoned as Oriana was now, I demanded in that silence some sort of proof that it was really me those arms were begging for to save her, now that she was in distress—not Patricia, not some other man, not a doctor to the rescue, but me. I demanded proof that her eyes would not pass through me as though I did not exist.
I awaited a signal that I was the one she needed.
It came.
For the second time in one hour, perhaps in my life, I saw myself reduced to what my ears could apprehend in order to decipher the maps of the universe. From somewhere—but it had to be from inside her, from the darkness in her stomach, which had just had breakfast, which had recently oozed some element into my toilet as a sign of trust while I did not spy upon her—the slightest of laments slit the air to remind me of all that we already shared, a wail from her innerside which sounded, clearly, as a song for me. An invitation to invade the place where no eye could ever go and no camera roam—someplace warm and turbulent and digesting and murmuring inside her—a place which was, which had to be, for me.
I gathered her into my arms.
“It’s just that”—and her breath tickled my neck, made my hair stand up as if it had been charged with
“Patricia left. She said she’d be back tomorrow to get you.”
“Then you’re the one who’ll have to give me permission.”
This little game didn’t bother me at all. It was a matter of putting my ear to the door and licking in the sound of her breathing on the other side, her body pulsating, itself drawn up to the wood. After so many years in which my eyes had been the only king of my body, there was a strange calmness in allowing them to rest. “I’ve never given something without getting something in return,” I said.
“What do you want me to do?”
“You could start by telling me your real name.”
“My real name?”
“Don’t go and tell me that you’re called Oriana. I don’t know anybody called Oriana.”
“And if I can’t tell you my real name, you won’t give me permission?”
“Did Patricia forbid it?”
“No. It isn’t that. It’s that … but you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Tell me and I’ll give you permission.”
“Promise that you’ll believe me.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“If I told you, for example, if I told you that I didn’t know, what would you say?”
“That you didn’t know your own name?”
“If I don’t know it, you won’t give me permission?”
“Let’s compromise. I’d settle for your nickname. They must have called you something when you were a kid, right?”
“I’m not going to speak one more word to you till you open this door.”
All of a sudden I realized that this was the permission that, in Patricia’s absence, she was expecting from me: permission to come out of the bathroom! Some laceration in the echo of her voice indicated to me—and I was not seeing her—that for her our playful interchange had never been a game.
“You open it,” I said. “I’m not the one who’s got you shut up inside.”
“You’ll give me permission to open it?”
“Yes.”
“Even if I don’t tell you my name.”
“I’ll give you all the permissions in the universe.”
“No. You open it.”
I opened the door.
Where did that air of innocence come from? I don’t believe it was the smile, ripe, full as her lips. Or that cascade of savage hair, which somehow contained the mouths that had passed through it, tasting it. Not even those eyes, in which, in spite of the lack of one lonesome tear, there shone a moist forlornness, as if something in her, very far away, had been crying.
She stretched her arms upward, as children do when they want to be carried or comforted.
I didn’t want to think about it, I didn’t want to, but it was inevitable—corrupting the moment, soiling it from the past.
That’s right, Doctor. It was that damn doll of Enriqueta’s that intercepted my memory at that very moment. As abandoned as Oriana was now, I demanded in that silence some sort of proof that it was really me those arms were begging for to save her, now that she was in distress—not Patricia, not some other man, not a doctor to the rescue, but me. I demanded proof that her eyes would not pass through me as though I did not exist.
I awaited a signal that I was the one she needed.
It came.
For the second time in one hour, perhaps in my life, I saw myself reduced to what my ears could apprehend in order to decipher the maps of the universe. From somewhere—but it had to be from inside her, from the darkness in her stomach, which had just had breakfast, which had recently oozed some element into my toilet as a sign of trust while I did not spy upon her—the slightest of laments slit the air to remind me of all that we already shared, a wail from her innerside which sounded, clearly, as a song for me. An invitation to invade the place where no eye could ever go and no camera roam—someplace warm and turbulent and digesting and murmuring inside her—a place which was, which had to be, for me.
I gathered her into my arms.
“It’s just that”—and her breath tickled my neck, made my hair stand up as if it had been charged with
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