for whom everything was going fine, and a secret Perla under the surface where sins and shame and questions lay buried alive, like land mines.
4
The Chorus in the Depths
T he morning flares open, slowly, filling the air, piercing his mind. They are quiet together. He watches her smoke cigarettes, flip through magazines, flip through television channels. She doesn’t laugh when recorded laughter issues from the screen. He listens to the sound of her in the kitchen, clattering around, cooking nothing. The turtle crawls up to him on squat, scaly legs. It cranes its neck out of its shell. Its jaw smacks open, then closed, with a low clack. There were jaws in the water, many jaws of differing shapes and hardness, the toothy eel-jaw, the sluggish trout-jaw, the whole-body opening of jellyfish. Water has so many mouths. They ate his body while the rest of him drifted on, penetrated, porous, unperturbed. Now there is no water for him to drift through and he doesn’t want to be eaten, he doesn’t want to go away. He bares his teeth at the turtle. The turtle opens his jaws and lets his narrow tongue hang out. Neither of them blinks. The turtle is the first to close his mouth.
He sits up on the floor. His spine creaks. There is sensation in him, power of touch, he can feel his body beneath his fingers. The flesh is real, though soggy. He can feel pain. He feels the pain of sunlight in his head.
There is a world beyond this house. He hears the groan of a car outside, the lilt of voices. They are close to the city, his city, but they are not inside it; the quiet is too great; the streets do not roil and purr as they did where he once lived. There, he had felt the city under every sound like the sharp drone of a bee in flight. He was never alonein the city, a place where solitude was always tinged with strangers’ voices, the low blare of a radio, the smell of someone else’s steak on the grill, the brush of a rough shoulder on the street. He recalls these now in a tumble of sensations. The city: how it accompanied him unceasingly, the way the devout claim to be accompanied by God. On visits to the country—rolling pampas, breezy beaches, the vast ice of Patagonia—he enjoyed the beauty of each place but always felt relieved to return home, to be folded once again in the great fabric of a living place imbued by the breath and noise of millions. He remembers this with a sting of longing for his city, for Buenos Aires. For a moment, he is tempted to stretch his mind wide the way it stretched inside the sea, so he can go and feel it, the incessant pulse and sprawl, legions of feet. But no, he will not. This is not the sea and it is painful and difficult to stretch here. In any case, there is no need: this room is a world within a world. He turns his attention to his surroundings, seeking the inner soul of the place. On the bookshelf, books stand shut, their secrets tightly pressed inward. These are not books that open often, nor do they want to. On the contrary, they seem to say to their own words, you are captives, we won’t let you out, you cannot fight us. The spines are tidy and betray no signs of the battle within. In front of the books sits a porcelain swan, its head bent in defeat or from carrying a terrible burden for too long. It throbs with unsaid thoughts. One shelf above the swan, there are two photographs, a bride and groom in one, a little girl in the other. He notices them for the first time. The little girl wears her hair in pigtails, she is sitting on a sofa, the sofa in this room. Her smile is too big for her face, her face is perfect, beaming and spilling what her features cannot hold. The wedding couple are young and handsome, both smiling with their mouths closed, the woman’s chin in a high slant of pride or defiance, the man’s eyes searching the camera for clues to an unsolved puzzle. Now the camera is gone but the man’s eyes keep searching, roving the living room for signs of what he sought. On the
4
The Chorus in the Depths
T he morning flares open, slowly, filling the air, piercing his mind. They are quiet together. He watches her smoke cigarettes, flip through magazines, flip through television channels. She doesn’t laugh when recorded laughter issues from the screen. He listens to the sound of her in the kitchen, clattering around, cooking nothing. The turtle crawls up to him on squat, scaly legs. It cranes its neck out of its shell. Its jaw smacks open, then closed, with a low clack. There were jaws in the water, many jaws of differing shapes and hardness, the toothy eel-jaw, the sluggish trout-jaw, the whole-body opening of jellyfish. Water has so many mouths. They ate his body while the rest of him drifted on, penetrated, porous, unperturbed. Now there is no water for him to drift through and he doesn’t want to be eaten, he doesn’t want to go away. He bares his teeth at the turtle. The turtle opens his jaws and lets his narrow tongue hang out. Neither of them blinks. The turtle is the first to close his mouth.
He sits up on the floor. His spine creaks. There is sensation in him, power of touch, he can feel his body beneath his fingers. The flesh is real, though soggy. He can feel pain. He feels the pain of sunlight in his head.
There is a world beyond this house. He hears the groan of a car outside, the lilt of voices. They are close to the city, his city, but they are not inside it; the quiet is too great; the streets do not roil and purr as they did where he once lived. There, he had felt the city under every sound like the sharp drone of a bee in flight. He was never alonein the city, a place where solitude was always tinged with strangers’ voices, the low blare of a radio, the smell of someone else’s steak on the grill, the brush of a rough shoulder on the street. He recalls these now in a tumble of sensations. The city: how it accompanied him unceasingly, the way the devout claim to be accompanied by God. On visits to the country—rolling pampas, breezy beaches, the vast ice of Patagonia—he enjoyed the beauty of each place but always felt relieved to return home, to be folded once again in the great fabric of a living place imbued by the breath and noise of millions. He remembers this with a sting of longing for his city, for Buenos Aires. For a moment, he is tempted to stretch his mind wide the way it stretched inside the sea, so he can go and feel it, the incessant pulse and sprawl, legions of feet. But no, he will not. This is not the sea and it is painful and difficult to stretch here. In any case, there is no need: this room is a world within a world. He turns his attention to his surroundings, seeking the inner soul of the place. On the bookshelf, books stand shut, their secrets tightly pressed inward. These are not books that open often, nor do they want to. On the contrary, they seem to say to their own words, you are captives, we won’t let you out, you cannot fight us. The spines are tidy and betray no signs of the battle within. In front of the books sits a porcelain swan, its head bent in defeat or from carrying a terrible burden for too long. It throbs with unsaid thoughts. One shelf above the swan, there are two photographs, a bride and groom in one, a little girl in the other. He notices them for the first time. The little girl wears her hair in pigtails, she is sitting on a sofa, the sofa in this room. Her smile is too big for her face, her face is perfect, beaming and spilling what her features cannot hold. The wedding couple are young and handsome, both smiling with their mouths closed, the woman’s chin in a high slant of pride or defiance, the man’s eyes searching the camera for clues to an unsolved puzzle. Now the camera is gone but the man’s eyes keep searching, roving the living room for signs of what he sought. On the
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