What is it? asks Suano.
Lerena says something out of character: I want music. A sort of ether is putting tactical thinking and rancour to sleep. Leaving physical exhaustion and glandular appetite. How limitless human melancholy is.
On top of all this, the musitracer is refusing to work. An increasingly urban landscape hacks at the variety of the world. Not even the warming unit is operating properly. Silence must be prevented from spreading: it’s urgent. So they talk.
Lerena says: We’re losing technology.
It’s a regression to helplessness, says Suano.
That’s good.
I’m not so sure, Lerena.
Ogh, Suano, you said my name. I feel like frozen meat, but, but, say what you like; my heart skips a beat.
Now Suano does something out of character: he smiles. Then promptly grimaces – a clinical technique for wiping the expression from his face – and says:
Sympathy used to do it for me, not sure why.
Why are you like that?
Why are you?
Pushing down on the seat with her hands, she straightens her back and tries to crack her neck. The air smells of sebum and slightly of palm soap. She can’t do the crack or hold herself straight.
I feel awful; maybe not a total wreck, but seriously bad, damaged. I have to get a move on or…I’m going to buy those titanium kneecaps for my nephew, and an apartment for my mother: a hundred and twenty square rods.
He looks at her, and she thinks he’s wondering if she’ll be able to do it.
I’m rich, Suano.
Of course you are.
And what you’re saying is: that’s not the issue.
He looks at her again, and sees that she has blushed, in two colours: pink and red.
My guts are schrepped. You don’t think after what’s happened…? After everything I did?
I don’t know. We don’t know.
You’re crying.
Of course I am.
Shunqui, we don’t know. I mean it, really. But I don’t want that money, not like that, Suano; I think I have something to learn from you.
He doesn’t dare say that turning up her nose at three million panoramics would be like misunderstanding a bad joke. He’s too much of a professional, too morally responsible, and he knows that the quality of many things depends on how they are used. Meanwhile, she is fed up with trying to guess what’s going through his mind.
I want to give you something more than a toy, Suano.
As a reward for being your chaperone? Or bodyguard? Or male escort?
Lerena holds up a little mirror. She puffs the words out, as if her throat were full of holes:
Look at what this trip has done to you; it’s terrible. And that swodge of money just sitting there.
I’ve got work to do; people might be waiting for me.
It’s not incompatible, is it?
Incompatible with what?
Her voice is recovering its integrity: You didn’t have to ask that question.
No, no; you already gave…
What I had to give? That’s what you did, in spite of yourself. I don’t know what it was: love, I guess, not responsibility or a gift. Tell me how to make use of things, Suano.
That’s not up to me.
Ohhh.
You poisoned yourself.
It’s not that, Suano, it’s…
What?
On the right-hand side of the highway, an enormous mechanical claw takes aim and crashes into a column of the Hotel Kezare, which a decade ago was the showpiece of animist architecture. The claw rises, falls again, and half a wing of the building collapses into rubble. Each blow stirs the phosphor of the mind. Like a mutilated animal still capable of dreaming, the part of the hotel left intact goes on projecting old music clips into the suburban sky.
Maybe I’ll never feel better, but I don’t know if I care. Listen to the wind, Suano.
I’ll take you to the hotel, all right?
No way; you’re going back to that courtyard; there are people waiting for you. And you’re keeping this vehicle, Okay? Suano?
He grips the steering wheel firmly. No way: the old Lerena wouldn’t have used a straightforward expression like that; it wasn’t in her vocabulary. Munava has really affected her. He doesn’t think there’s anything that he could say to make her happy. And he wonders if the best therapy might not be to work with her unhappiness, or with the poisoning. They are united by her illness. The illness could be their undoing.
Shopping malls. A cemetery. Swimming-pool showrooms. Posters of poppy fields. The fierce eyes of a quinx sniffing at a ditch. Sirens. A weave of aircab trails against a background of metalmachinium towers. Squadrons of swifts circling the rollers that display the Delta’s breaking news.
But no…he says, you should take it.
She lowers her voice: No way.
And go back the way you came, on foot?
No idea; hadn’t even thought about it.
This touches Suano more deeply than anything else she has said in the course of the morning. She has given no grounds for her decision; there are no arguments for this resolve. It is pure abnegation.
You know what I’d really like? For you to be satisfied with the trip.
That would be the best thing for you, Suano is thinking, but he doesn’t say it, dismayed as he is to realise that satisfaction, precisely, is the salve easing his pain.
She adds: satisfied as a doctor, I mean. That would be the best thing for both of us.
You hope, mutters Suano.
What was that?
Nothing, he says, getting agitated. He’s finding it hard to drive at the same time as pondering the nature of true abnegation: what if it meant accepting that everything is up in the air?
Lerena is rummaging in her backpack. He suspects that she is looking for the packet of Quellax.
Don’t do that.
Suano.
Don’t do it. I’m begging you, please. I’m satisfied, I am.
Tell me it’s because I’m better; that’s why you won’t let me take pills.
He doesn’t reply. Silence is enough for both of them, it seems.
A stall displays exquisite pyramids of mandarins and amber pears. A syntram swallows a press of workers from a stop. Behind the window of a bar, herbal tea cups marked with lipstick. Doves on the summit of a rusty surveillance robot. An old people’s home. A lottery ticket outlet. Shop windows, cocktail dresses, the floating bubbles of the Guard, sausage vending machines, the makeshift bubbles of the homeless, groceries, liquor, an ophthalmology clinic; couples and their tender contact, shoppers and their hesitations. Vila Asun: the city. With its appetite and contagion. Its pull and roar.
They turn into the street: a sign for the Deluxin guesthouse appears, and then, as per the rules of appetency management, the building itself and, a few metres further on, a parking spot for the mincar. The engine grumbles to a halt. They get out and walk along beside the wall to where it opens onto the courtyard. Our breathing quickens, little cries are held back, and the spread of silence is interrupted.
What day is it? asks Suano, as if addressing himself.
Tuesday, or Thursday, I don’t know.
Why not Wednesday?
No, not Wednesday, I know that much.
Doesn’t feel like a Sunday, that’s for sure, or a Monday. She takes hold of his elbow for a moment, until she is steady on her feet again. Then, with a theatrical but weary smile, she slows down to let the doctor enter first.
We are in the courtyard that adjoins the guesthouse. Actually, we have just arrived; we came as soon as the sun went down, as we do every evening, to help each other pass the time until the leftovers are handed out, and, recently, to wait for Doctor Botilecue to come back and affably occupy, if not shorten, these hours of material need by attending to needs of another kind. When he has stepped in, and we are rising to our feet, as if woken by the rattling of a puttyless window pane, and milling around him, wondering what treasu
res of new knowledge he brings, what new arms for the war against self-deception, or at least for our battles with penury, she steps in behind him and, like bubbles popping on the surface of a soda, we settle down and mind our manners; it’s not as if we don’t know that getting too close to the therapist can compromise the cure. Some of us shake his hand.
Then she sees us, as if for the very first time. And as soon as she has seen us properly, she understands what goes on in this courtyard: apart from coping with our own little problems, we are giving meaning to the doctor’s life, or to the doctor’s and hers together; and perhaps she even understands how a life might have a meaning. As I see it, she does understand, and although she’s clearly ill, her gaze, at once ecstatic and embarrassed, promises that she will never come between us and the solace of therapy.
Dusk complements the setting with lurid shades of magenta. Seven o’clock sings the neighbourhood chronodeon. Lerena is not one for drawn-out goodbyes; and this Lerena in particular has made up her mind to be brisk, as if to let others discover how far beyond this evening the story will continue.
The doctor has changed: he’s less alert; more informal. With what little expressive capacity we have left, living rough and subject to all the inner conflicts that have flared up again in his absence, we deros try to show the doctor just how glad we are to see him. And I put it into words, perhaps because he and his friend are giving me some indication that I was not wrong in my…not exactly suppositions, but I’m at a loss for the word to define what it was that occurred in my mind. Suano himself doesn’t seem to have a clear idea of what has happened. I’d really like to slap him on the shoulder but I’m worried that I might have put my foot in it or overlooked some possibility. He takes me aside, walking me towards his cubicle, but stops half way. He says:
I think it would be good for you and me to have a little chat. I don’t know what you think you’ve been doing.
How can I explain that all I did was help them overcome a few difficulties.
You’re not the only notable mind to have ended up in this courtyard, doctor.
Don’t be arrogant, he says to me.
He hesitates for a moment. He opens his mouth again. But says nothing. Finally, he leaves me and goes back to Lerena.
She’s watching him with a strained equanimity. She turns away, staggers and bumps into the little girl we all look after here, who offers her a crate to sit on. When Lerena distractedly shakes her head, the girl produces a hair elastic. Which Lerena accepts distractedly, giving a twenty-bit nickel in return. And she contrives to plait her dirty but still luxuriant chestnut hair while the kid plays with the coin, tossing it in the air and catching it. The plait and the nickel and the girl all seem to be saying in unison that everything is as it was when we began, but also slightly different; the kid is two centimetres taller. I think Lerena is cottoning on. While the doctor is chatting with the others, she comes over and asks, straight up:
Excuse me, but who are you?
No, nobody.
You look like a nobody.
Her feebleness makes the energy of her compassion all the more affecting. I hadn’t fully realised how different she is. Those business eyes have become prodigal.
Whatever you say, I murmur. Seriously, whatever you say.
There’s a faint, miles-away smile on her face. And it stays there as I go and sit down on one of the blocks, where most nights of the week I wait for what will give me strength to face the adversities of life: leftovers from the guesthouse and my turn with the doctor.
They say goodbye; she gives him a kiss, on the left corner of the mouth. Then she goes to the gap in the wall that serves as an entrance, the chestnut plait bouncing on her back, the fullness of her buttocks set off by her slender silhouette. Rather than watch her, Suano takes out and strokes the victorious horseman, gripping the figurine tightly as if to press a meaning from it; but then he changes his mind and rushes to catch up with her. They still have a way to go together. They cover those metres like a sparking fuse. And since everything in their path catches fire, they seem to be losing everything; but they still have the path, the night coming on, and the darkness behind them that does not extinguish but kindles the flame. At the edge of the pavement, she squeezes his arm. Just for a moment. Then she steps onto the road, hesitates, turns right, and we lose sight of her.
Not every return from a journey is an end. But neither is it true that the only end is death. Who can tell how this will finish.
Bff, tpafft, bff, ptafft.
There’s a rhythmical pattern to those soft and weary steps, which fades as they recede along that fairly quiet street. Discreet, those agapythium slippers.
Even more discreet, tuttoff, tuttoff is the jostling in the backpack slung over her shoulder. It’s as if Lerena were whistling. Exhaustedly.
Doctor Botilecue is intrigued by how even the simplest music organises emotions in time.
He’s thinking that Lerena’s slippers are too flimsy for the end of autumn.
He can’t remember if she is wearing anything warm between her tartan shirt and her jacket.
He doesn’t stop thinking about her.
CHRIS ANDREWS has translated books of fiction by Latin American authors, including Roberto Bolaño, César Aira and Rodrigo Rey Rosa. He teaches at Western Sydney University, where he is a member of the Writing and Society Research Centre. He has published two critical studies, Poetry and Cosmogony: Science in the Writing of Queneau and Ponge, and Roberto Bolaño’s Fiction, and two collections of poems, Cut Lunch and Lime Green Chair.
The Giramondo Publishing Company acknowledges the support of Western Sydney University in the implementation of its book publishing program.
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