Blue Flowers

by Carola Saavedra

  Maybe that’s the reason for the shock, as we imagine ourselves hollow, but no, we imagine ourselves clean, but no. Inside us there’s this whole heap of cells and tissues and organs. I remember my biology class where we learned that fat inside our bodies is yellow, and we grimaced in disgust, pounds and pounds of a kind of tissue, a yellow sponge. Some people considered this receptacle of stored-up energy sacred, did you know that? But that wasn’t something I learned in biology class; I only learned that much later.

  In biology class we learned that blood is blue. Blood inside our bodies is blue, did you know that? And it only acquires that red tinge when in contact with oxygen in the atmosphere. We only see blue blood when we take a close look at our veins, hidden behind a veil of skin and arteries, the blue blood that gets away from us, that we can only imagine. There’s something mysterious inside our bodies, don’t you think? And violence, violence is nothing more than an approach toward this mystery, this unimaginable thing contained inside of us. Perhaps a criminal, a murderer, an assassin, is simply somebody who’s fascinated, someone who doubts, someone who does not conform, someone who like a child, with no thought for the consequences, opens up the belly of a frog to see that mystery inside the frog, pulsating, that something that draws your gaze if it moves and suffers and feels hunger and fear. Like a surgeon with his gloves and his sterilized instruments, a surgeon who draws a long cut down the body, just to see that thing pulsing inside, and is like the criminal and the assassin. The body opened up and the pain that goes with it. Will the mystery inside appear along with the pain? The physical pain we inflict on another, from the subtlest to the most unbearable, might physical pain be a kind of revelation? A kind of being alive, a kind of pleasure? Might physical pain be a kind of religiosity? A very profound kind of love? The love of someone who surrenders their body to the greatest acts of violence, the greatest atrocities, someone who leaves themselves open, soft, submissive on any surface, on the surgeon’s table, on a bed, on an altar.

  And could there be any greater violence than entering another person’s body—a dagger, a bullet, any tool that penetrates someone else’s body, any arrow, any organ. How is it possible to enter someone else’s body, just like that, with impunity? To introduce any organ into another person’s body, isn’t that a kind of extinction? And then, having been in someone else’s body, wrapped in the most hidden tissues, the most secret tissues in another person’s body, and to reemerge covered in smells and mucus and wetness, covered in the most absolute intimacy, how is it possible to come out so completely unharmed, free, and then just roll over and close your eyes and fall asleep, as though nothing had happened, this extreme violence, how is it possible to wake up the following day, get dressed and leave, I ask you. How is it possible to leave while the other person is still lying there, on the surgeon’s table, on the bed, on the altar, the other person lying there, unmoving, exposed, defenseless. The other person with their marks and their bruises and their pains, with violence and love and the pleasure of violence and love engraved there forever, the other person with their body opened up, and the window, and the sun and the morning light, while out in the world, people are buying their newspapers and children are wearing their school uniforms and the day is unfolding.

  Because you know, you know what I’m talking about. Even if I don’t say it, you always know what I’m talking about. Because we do know, because there’s an invisible link uniting us. Like a piece of music, the piece of music that was playing that day, remember? When you looked at me and laughed and ran your fingers down my face. At that exact moment, that piece of music was playing and our laughter, our movements, the music was infused in our memory with that love, remember? Because afterward, afterward, even if time has passed and I have passed and you have passed, even if, afterward, anytime that piece of music happens to be playing anywhere, a party, a movie, a train station, we’ll remember that music and everything that it meant. Remember?

  I remember everything, ever since the first day, the first look. Someone once told me that everything’s contained in that first look: the love, meeting, meeting again, separation, pleasure, pain, life and hatred. Everything that is yet to come exists already in that first look. Everything that comes after is not like in a movie, or like some mystical knowledge, not like an oracle, but just a logical succession of facts and certainties, each linking onto the next. And so in that first look I knew everything that would follow, everything that would happen when love rose up and stretched out and ended. How did I know? Perhaps because it was all mine, because I had carried that moment with me, always, that possibility.

  Like all of us, our lives unfold with the tedium of the everyday and of the obvious things of the everyday: waking, sleeping, working, eating, loving, hearing, forgiving, shopping, always safe, everything always so gentle and slow and sad, the life we construct with such fragility, ordinary life, the life it’s tolerable to live, but along with that there’s always this shadow, this imbalance, this possibility. Chaos is always lying in wait for us, at any moment, because we are the ones who bear it, always waiting, the secret hope that something is finally going to happen, that something is going to happen and propel us toward what we longed for, what we feared, what we never had the courage to name. The first look is merely the confirmation, a reflection in the bathroom in the morning, the first look is a mirror in which we see ourselves for the first time, unrecognizable, and in wonder we notice something that’s incredibly beautiful in ourselves. Do you understand? I’m finding it hard, too, but I’m trying to explain it to you. But what for, you’ll say? So that you will love me? Perhaps.

  Do you remember the first time we met? I came over and said something to you, what was it I said again? Odd, I don’t remember. What could it have been, that first line, what was that first question of mine? And what did you answer, I don’t remember, odd, isn’t it? That I should remember the look and everything within it, and have forgotten the rest: my question, your answer, what you were wearing, were you smoking, were you smiling, were you drinking or was the glass in your hand empty? I don’t know. Why should it be that we always forget what’s most important? But I do know that we talked and that at a certain point you asked whether I might want you to walk me home. Was that it? Or were those my words? I no longer know, but I remember you coming up with me in the elevator, I remember opening the front door and looking at the living room and the furniture in the living room and thinking I was entering for the first time, as though all of it, the house, the furniture, me myself, as though all of it were strange and new to me. I offered you a drink, right? You were smiling, I remember you were smiling and I wondered what that smile of yours meant, what you were thinking, and I would have given anything to know what you were thinking. And I still felt strange, as though I were the guest. As though I were in my house for the first time.

  What followed was more or less as might be expected, do you remember? To begin with, at least. I remember that your body began moving delicately onto mine, your hand in my hair, on my back, very delicately on my back, your kisses, gentle, your words of affection, of kindness. You moved closer, carefully. To begin with. An encounter like any other. Then, from one moment to the next, there was a transformation in your movements, a shock, a return to something more ancient, something that was always there between us, and that we were now recognizing in each other, and your rhythm was different now and your touch was different now. Your hand, incisive now, your hand, palm flat, your hand closing on mine, your mouth, my mouth losing itself in yours, and in the words from your mouth, the words that were beautiful, obscene and frightening from your mouth. You were all strength and will, you were a bestial stranger, something much more ancient, and wrapped around me in a greedy embrace, all strength and will, and my body reciprocated, to each movement, submissive as it had never been before.

  And that first time already carried within it the kernel of what we would be all those other days, all those other nigh
ts. Your rage and your gentleness would alternate, but rage at what? I would ask myself, rage toward me? How could you be angry at me if you were there with me, and slept beside me, and embraced me. And how could I, right from the start, catch sight of that rage, feel it? But I did.

  There were so many signs. The following day I woke up with my body in pain, bruises from my neck running in long shapes down my back, my legs, bruised, black and blue, purple, and I stood looking at myself in the mirror for some time, unable to remember, imagining that somehow, without noticing, I must have knocked into the side of the armchair, the corner of the bed, some accident. But may I make a confession? I confess that the following day, when you left, I would look at myself in the mirror and think I was beautiful, think I’d never been so beautiful, my face unrecognizable. My body so fragile and so lovely like that, an extreme loveliness, a unique loveliness. There was perfection in that fragility, the marks that accentuated it. And I confess that even the marks, even the pain was something I kept, the way one might keep a photo, a gift, a telephone number on a napkin. It was confirmation that you really had been there, you really had been there with me all night. Even if you left, even if you never wanted me again, never came back. I’d look at myself in the mirror and caress myself, and I saw in those patterns, in those marks, a symbol, a sign, something of yours that was so very intimate, and which I was the one to carry now.

  A.

  IV

  Fabiane arrived at the restaurant half an hour late in a summer dress, light and low-cut. Her lateness was deliberate, of course. She came in apologizing, the traffic, she smiled, always the traffic. He tried not to show his annoyance, he smiled, lied that he’d also been late, yes, right, the traffic had been awful. They went on talking about the traffic for a few minutes, the waiter approached, they ordered something to drink. A glass of champagne for her, a beer for him.

  Fabiane was the kind of woman who drank champagne in restaurants, and wherever she went, just like his ex-wife. He watched her for a few moments, noticing for the first time that, yes, the two women were very much alike, the champagne, their way of dressing, even the way they were constantly arranging a lock of hair behind an ear. Even their demands, since nothing was enough, not ever. Octopus women, vampire women, wrapping around him, draining him of everything he had and then calling him selfish. That’s how it always was. From the very look in their eyes, eyes that were carefully made up so as to look natural, ready to complain about everything, because nothing would do, the attention, the love, the affection, and the more he gave, the more dissatisfied they showed themselves to be, that constant air of reproach. He felt guilty, even if he didn’t want to; perhaps he was sure that he could and should do much more. As though there were much more to do. Sometimes he felt insecure with them, other times, irritated like now. He wanted a woman who, rather than demanding, was inclined to give something in return. Not a princess looking down at him from her throne, but a real woman, a woman in love, attainable, capable of getting close and staying there, without fear, without expectations and without that protective distance. Just things the way they were. A woman ready even to lose and be lost for him. A woman ready to forgive. But perhaps this was no more than romanticism, he thought, self-centered romanticism, perhaps the product of some crisis he’d managed to glimpse but couldn’t yet make out completely, a dejection, a discouragement, a discomfort that had begun with the birth of his daughter, had gained in strength in recent years and now seemed ready to settle in for good. Pure romanticism, but why not, he thought, didn’t he also have the right to want, to demand?

  Fabiane sipped at her glass of champagne like his ex-wife, and he went on with his comparisons. Like his ex-wife, she was always careful, her movements finely calculated, impeccable; why not just drink, fearlessly, like a woman who drank vodka, tequila, who downed her drink in one gulp with a smile? But no, Fabiane was completely planned; she was like a mannequin in a shop window, as though at any moment someone might appear and surprise her and she would have to be ready. But the truth was, nobody would ever surprise her. Fabiane would never surprise anyone. He was furious.

  Perhaps noticing his irritation, she said:

  “Marcos?”

  “What?”

  “So, it looks like you’re not that interested in what I’m telling you.”

  “Of course I am, I was just thinking about something else.”

  “In other words, you weren’t paying attention.”

  “Of course I was, Fabiane, I got distracted for a second and thought about something else, that was all, it happens to everyone.”

  “What did you think about?”

  “Whatever, I’ve forgotten, nothing important.”

  Fabiane didn’t believe his explanation. She sipped a little more of her champagne. To change the subject, he suggested:

  “So how about we order?”

  “Why, are you in a hurry to leave?”

  “No, Fabiane, I’m hungry, I’d like to order, that’s all.”

  She glared at him, angry. Something between them wasn’t working that night. But perhaps it had never worked, and it was only at that moment that he’d noticed. Since they’d first met (at the time he was still married), Fabiane had expected something more. After the separation, the demands started; since there was no longer anything to stop him, he had to make up his mind. Make up his mind about what, he’d asked, to be with her, she’d answered, to be with her properly. He’d argued with her: So up till now it’s all been a lie then, I suppose, she’d laughed. After the separation there was Fabiane, it’s true, but there was also solitude and other possibilities. A few girls he was friendly with, not very close, but pleasant, or perhaps pleasant for that reason. Girls who popped up from time to time and whose main function was ensuring that nobody should be allowed to take up too much space, especially not Fabiane. Even though time passes, we keep making the same mistakes, he thought. But he was not born for those girls, pleasant and distant, nor was he born for Fabiane.

  “If I’d known how cranky you were going to be I’d have stayed home.”

  He pretended not to have heard the comment, finished drinking his beer and said:

  “I watched a really interesting movie yesterday.”

  “Don’t change the subject, Marcos, you always do that when you’re not interested, you just change the subject, I think it’s cowardly of you.”

  “Cowardly?”

  “That’s right, cowardly.”

  He paused slightly, trying to control himself, but eventually said:

  “I do think, Fabiane, that you should think twice before just saying the first idiotic thing that comes into your head.”

  She didn’t reply, she stood up, took her handbag. He thought she was going to leave, but no, she headed for the restroom. He stayed, toying with the empty glass, the cutlery, the napkin. He wasn’t usually so harsh, actually, he’d never spoken to her like that, not even when they’d argued. He had lost control and he didn’t know why, he just felt such irritation, as though everything she said were an insult. But nothing about her had changed. He was the one who wasn’t doing well. He shouldn’t have bothered, he should have invented another excuse. Maybe something had changed, he dared to imagine, just like that, after reading the latest letter this morning.

  But it was no use now, he would apologize, try to salvage something from the night. It troubled him that he was so bothered by those letters, which weren’t even for him; he’d spent the whole day thinking about them, about the real addressee, the previous tenant. He’d talk to the doorman as soon as he got home, he’d ask for his forwarding address, telephone number, he’d even go to this guy’s new place, deliver the letters, be rid of them at once. He didn’t want to think any more about it now, even though he was thinking about it all the time, barely realizing it. He felt as though there were something subtly worming its way into him. But perhaps there was no subtlety about it at
all.

  Maybe ten minutes went by, then twenty, Fabiane hadn’t returned, he noticed with surprise, so immersed was he in his thoughts. Perhaps she’d left, gone out the back door. He thought about going after her. But she ended up coming back from the bathroom with her eyes red, hair tucked behind her ear. She was a very beautiful woman, he thought rather sadly, not sad for her, but for himself, for his impossibilities, his inability to accept the way she was, accept her company, simply to like her. She sat down without looking at him. He put his hand on hers. He attempted a conciliatory tone.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “No, fine, forget it.” She was avoiding his gaze.

  “I’m not doing great today.”

  “Has something happened?”

  “No, nothing in particular, work stress, the usual.”

  She gave a little smile now. With the same speed at which she became enraged, Fabiane was also quickly appeased, he thought almost affectionately. Immediately the waiter appeared with their meals. They ate their dinner. Both of them pretending nothing had happened. They talked about the things they usually talked about. He talked about work, about the weekend, about his daughter, she complained about her mother, her sister, her family, she also complained about being alone and about work. He ate a lasagna, she had shellfish au gratin. He asked for another beer, she asked for white wine. He was trying to prevent his feelings of irritation from returning, from becoming so obvious again. She pretended not to notice.

  When the dinner and conversation were approaching their final moments, the check paid, one last sip before leaving, the question came that he had been expecting, not quite so suddenly, but he had been expecting it.