A Beautiful Young Woman

by Julián López

  I got up in the dark and took off the damp sheets. Then I had to plunge myself deep into the worst of the burning volcanoes; I had to open the closet to fetch clean sheets. I’m not sure what I was afraid of most, opening the portal of terror or being inside there in complete solitude, undertaking the task almost in slow motion to avoid making noises that might wake my mother.

  I bundled the dirty sheets and hid them under my bed, unfolded the fresh ones, and stretched them out as best I could. I had to do it as quickly as possible to escape the darkness and sink back into sleep, begging the gods not to let me glaze myself again in that sweet syrup, releasing the moorings of my bladder in the middle of the high sea of the night.

  —

  I don’t remember the date, but that day the morning routine was special. My mother did everything as if in a rush, and she seemed happy. She had made me a costume for the school concert; we were going to sing “Que se vengan los chicos,” a song that says “some who were from Venus, they say, brought the Three Marias as a gift.” I was chosen to be in a group of aliens that arrived on a rocket made from cardboard and glazed metallic paper. That glazed paper was so wonderful—when you cut it with scissors you could hear the crackling of the aluminum particles. Then you’d cover it with glue and stick it to your drawing in art class. It made me feel like a goldsmith, a man with a unique task.

  The costume that my mother had managed to put together—Ms. Zulema had pasted a little notice into our notebooks with instructions about how we should dress—consisted of a black headband that she used to keep her hair from her face, two knitting needles wrapped in gold paper, and two pompoms made from cotton balls, glued together, to make the antennae. The rest of the costume was just my sky-blue suit. I’m not sure if my mother didn’t have time to find the plain white T-shirt and blue shorts from the instructions or if she just wanted me to look elegant, presentable.

  The problem with the headband was that the knitting needles, my mother’s substitute for a lighter metal, were too heavy and wouldn’t stay up on their own. They each slipped down to one side, so I looked like a little bug in a blue suit with dark socks and laced shoes, a sort of insect from the movies that my mother found adorable.

  Back then I couldn’t understand why my mother wanted me to be special, standing out from the others, visibly different. I just wanted to be an alien, someone who could look to the sky when referring to his family, completely naturally.

  Her idea of the alien, however, was much more earthbound, like those ladybugs that could make her happy by their mere presence, no matter what was going on around her.

  It would have given me so much pleasure to stick black and white spots on my back and flit my wings nearby to surprise her in the middle of her somber expressions, cleansing her face with a smile that reinforced the possibility of her ideals.

  —

  To remedy the effect of the drooping antennae, my mother told me to hold them with my hands to keep them upright throughout the performance.

  I loved the song we were going to sing. It was full of intergalactic friendship, and it named without euphemism creatures from Venus, from Mars, people who could turn themselves into a promise. Who knows, amid so much diversity there could be quiet and obedient little boys who dreamed about Astro Boy, full of fear, just like in that episode where they give him a human heart.

  I was delighted to take part in the concert, but the song was clearly written by an adult. The entire image of an alien humanity was annihilated by the impact of the corrective meteorite of the lyric that said, “Everybody’s welcome to my birthday party, and don’t worry about bringing gifts.” What child could be so perverse that they could feign the hypocrisy of worldly indifference and happily sing that nobody should worry about the only important thing?

  Behind the scenes, the wait was a delightful jitteriness. Those of us awaiting our entrance were calm, and those who were about to step off the precipice into performance were in a tightly controlled race against time, ready to begin the concert.

  The performance space was enormous, with a giant stage where, from time to time, theater companies put on shows with ancient actors and actresses that our parents recognized as radio stars of the past. It was enormous.

  The alien song was a fairly important part of the concert, and what we had to do seemed easy from the crowd. But to actually perform the song was horrendously complicated. Our lively number was a proposition worthy of a UNICEF plenary session: the final message we sought to impart as educators was that there was room for all and a horn of plenty on our planet.

  Carrying the cardboard rocket, we five aliens had to enter via the side of the stage, like those ballerinas who dance along on their toes, everyone’s head looking one way, then the other, their hands linked, leaping in that ridiculous but perfect Swan Lake way. We had to make our way to the middle, the proscenium, and sing out loud while the earthlings, the living trees, and all the crepe paper fauna in creation gathered around us with looks of fascination as they hung wreaths of flowers around our necks, as if instead of aliens we were swingers who had just arrived in Hawaii.

  In one fateful moment during the wait, the realization of an imminent disaster dawned upon me, and I was left aghast. I went more silent—silent even for me. If I had to hold up the nose of the cardboard rocket, I wouldn’t be able to hold my antennae upright.

  The spaceship, on its side and held at waist height, was completely weightless, but even though one hand was enough to stop it from dropping, I still needed two hands to stop my Martian from becoming a bug with floppy antennae.

  The sensation of imminence overwhelmed me; there was nothing I could do to prevent something that hadn’t even happened yet, and in any case, knowing it was about to happen made me feel worse than the event itself. Not only would I not pull off the role of an alien, I would surely end up as a clumsy insect who would crash the spaceship.

  —

  Ms. Zulema looked like a little girl. Her cheeks were rosier than usual, and she was standing next to us, her eyes darting back and forth, rooted to the spot and repressing in vain her exaggerated nerves. In her heeled moccasins she couldn’t help shuffling toward the entrance to the stage in little steps that made us shuffle forward too. At one point she noticed me and said, “Hold those antennae straight, would you?” Luckily she turned away just then and didn’t see that by straightening my antennae I dropped the nose of the spaceship. Luckily she turned around again and looked at me with an expression that I knew would save me. Without a single word and without disturbing me, with the clear logic of a calculated chess move, she took me from the first position and put me in third, right in the middle of the rocket. She looked at me sweetly and said, “Hold up your antennae.” My lip began to quiver, and I wanted to go to the bathroom.

  Suddenly something changed in the atmosphere, as if all the air had been drawn away in a single breath that left us dry and then just as quickly returned to blast in our faces. First we could hear a murmur run through the audience, then the sound of motors stopping, and then shouting. Onstage the music continued playing, but we all stood still, and for a few moments everyone looked around wide-eyed. From the depths of the hall the murmurings began to crackle, like a fledgling flame that begins to grow because everything it touches is flammable. In just a few seconds the whole room was a wildfire of voices struggling to escape closed mouths, like a mumbling that couldn’t quite be understood but seemed capable of burning down the entire concrete structure of the school.

  When the noise reached the stage, everything began to change and without knowing exactly how the murmurings became audible words, a sentence: “Bomb threat.”

  The school principal went up onstage and began to speak into the microphone, but the noise of footsteps and chairs scraping was so loud, she didn’t even realize it wasn’t switched on and nobody was listening to her because everyone was trying to move toward the exit in a kind of silent panic, in case their fiery voices lit the fuse to the promised dynamite. My
eyes scanned the crowd for my mother’s head or the blue lapels and gold buttons of her coat. Maybe she hadn’t arrived at the concert on time, or the tide of bodies had dragged her to the exit like so many of the other parents who wanted to head back toward the stage to scoop their children up into the safety of their arms. I was dizzied by the silence, by the power of my eyes in the search for that blue jacket, those golden buttons in a sea of corduroy, duffel coats, wide belts, sandals and wigs, of turquoise bell-bottoms, cream-colored jackets, ties with knots as big as a pigeon, of miniskirts and tightly fitting boots with zippers on the side that went all the way up the calf to the knees.

  The color drained from her cheeks, Ms. Zulema aged instantly, and I have no idea how but she kept us in line, moving us toward the side exit, firm and patient but effective enough to march us to the sidewalk without dispersing us. I remember the image of her acting perfectly, and I am still deafened by the silence with which she took charge of us, a silence that stood out among the general silence, like a deep and warm river that flows into the cold ocean and resists as long as it can before melding into the indifference of the greater body of water.

  —

  We were gathered on the sidewalk, along with the police cars and the fire engines. We were like the inhabitants of a province that waits in a public space to hear of the immediate future of its territory, threatened by a litany of forces of nature. I never felt that way again. In that moment there was no hierarchy: kids, teachers, mothers, fathers, secretaries: all of us could be blown away in an instant.

  From amid the crowd of overcoats I caught sight of a gold flash approaching. And then another. The blue wool moved toward me like a child moves toward their last chance to ring the bell for a free ride on the merry-go-round. A very beautiful young woman ran and fixed her brown eyes on mine, eyes full of anguish that had been devoured by a conflict that I wouldn’t understand until many years later. I could explode, become a cluster of particles in the air around me, a brunette was running toward me even if she was taking a long time, even if she never arrived, even if she never existed.

  When every last one of us from the school was gathered on the sidewalk, a small group of firemen and police gathered near the entrance, and one of them used a megaphone to inform us it was a false alarm. It was all he said, a kind of password that lowered the tension immediately and caused the mass of bodies to disengage, as if we’d been contained in an inflatable swimming pool that punctures and begins to leak water until it is empty. Everyone went home. I’ve always wondered what happened to the cardboard rocket.

  —

  On the way home, my mother stopped at a kiosk and bought me some candy: a Holanda chocolate bar, a Jack, and three Topolino lollipops that came with a little toy. For herself she chose mandarin-flavored heart-shaped candies that she opened right there as we were walking, taking one after the after as if they were Seconal pills. So much candy—and above all the promise of the little toys that came with the Topolinos, that looked like tiny fetuses that I adored for some reason—confirmed that something very serious had happened.

  My mother always tried to keep me away from candy; she said sweet things contained parasites and that parasites were the worst of the worst and that’s why she drank her yerba mate bitter, not like her cousins who added sweetener and were a pair of morons.

  The question of the parasites was complicated because beyond the threat of becoming a moron myself, I knew very well what my mother was talking about. At that age I already hated the ñandú, and every now and again I thought about how it was a blessing to live in a city that distanced me from a possible meeting with one of those monstrous ostrichlike birds, which, according to my mother, were the type of sissies that bury their heads in the sand at the first sign of danger. One time, in the countryside in the south of Buenos Aires province where we were spending a few days on vacation, Uncle Rodolfo took me to inspect the grounds with two of his farmhands. We were traveling in an old pickup truck, on a voyage that could have been lifted from a safari film if not for the monotony of the countryside. But to tell the truth, the pickup truck made a lot of noise, and the sun was exhausting, and the bumps from the vehicle’s nonexistent suspension meant there was no way to relax. At one point one of the farmhands yelled—in the distance he had spotted a flock of choikes, as he called them, and my uncle almost stopped the pickup before swinging it around and driving slowly in the direction of the huge birds. At a certain point we stopped, my uncle turned off the motor, motioned for me to be completely silent, and then we got out noiselessly and posted up on the port side of our armored battleship. The ñandú birds stopped grazing, extended their necks, and looked over expectantly in our direction without moving, and then I suppose because they saw us so far away, they went right back to grazing in the same greedy, indolent manner of cows.

  I thought the plan was to approach on foot, calm and silent so they wouldn’t be scared away, but the farmhand who had spied them pulled out a revolver with a wooden handle and a thin barrel, steadied his aim by resting the gun on his left forearm, and opened fire. It was so quick that I didn’t even have time to take fright, because in the same instant one of the sissy birds fell straight to the ground, and the rest of them, in a reckless and foolish stampede, ran off hysterically in all directions, as if fleeing in such a flat terrain without any shelter could be anything other than a futile task.

  My uncle and the farmhands whooped victoriously and began to walk in the direction of the dead bird. I straggled a few paces behind, but then I began to walk in time with Uncle Rodolfo’s whistling. When we arrived at the animal, the killer crouched down, grabbed it by the head, looked at it, and smiled. “I got it in the head,” he said. “The bullet must have gone in through the eye.”

  My uncle leaned down—that slight gesture made the farmhand stand up straightaway and cede his place—then began to go over the bird with a serious expression and began to move it to show me each part of the animal and to tell me about the birds and how they lived, how they fit into the landscape of the Argentine gaucho and the native Indians.

  “A man must prepare himself, study hard, and get to know the land and the condition his fellow countrymen live in,” he said very seriously while the farmhands stood behind me, waiting for God knows what.

  When he had finished talking, he motioned to the other farmhand, who drew a knife hanging from his belt and moved decisively toward the animal. My uncle got up and stood behind me, taking me by the shoulders and pushing me a few steps closer to the gray bird, which was smaller than I expected and was covered in dirty feathers that seemed to have nothing at all to do with the ostriches that I had seen in my book, Questions and Answers for Curious Boys. Everything in the countryside seemed washed over with a gray poverty; it all seemed much smaller than in the stories my uncle told, much more lost in an exaggeratedly extensive terrain, much less colorful.

  A man should know his land, my uncle’s serious advice echoed in my head, but this wasn’t my land—my land was the worn-out parquetry of my bedroom. In this land a farmhand was slicing open the stomach of a stupid bird with clean strokes.

  I had no time to react and I found it difficult to believe that the bird would let itself be treated so, without screaming, without any resistance, completely at the mercy of the bullet of the man who discovered it.

  I looked around to see if one of its relatives was watching us or rounding up a feathered and vengeful posse, which of course would come and take me away, or if the other birds remained to keep vigil over their fallen companion. But there was nothing, the sissy bird was all alone, or else I couldn’t see the hidden flock on a pampa so linear that there were no hiding places at all.

  A shout from the man with the knife and the laughter of the other farmhand and my uncle brought me urgently back to the scene. The dead bird displayed its insides without any modesty and from within came a ball of writhing white worms, almost as big as the stomach itself of the animal, which twisted and squirmed like the fleeing bir
ds, and if it had vocal cords would have deafened us with its screams of terror. Disgust and horror can be the same thing: I learned that right there, in the Argentine countryside, beneath a pale sky in a puddle of pampa blood.

  That’s where I learned about the parasites that my mother hated, one of the images I would have preferred to erase from my mind, an image I would have preferred never to have seen.

  The writhing ball steadily lost its vitality, and the knife once again took center stage, the farmhand shredding the belly of the gutted bird and scraping the chunks of meat to remove the nest of eggs that filthy medusa of worms had undoubtedly sown.

  His companion, in the meantime, unfolded a cloth he’d fetched from the pickup truck. They put the chunks of meat on it, and the butcher said to my uncle, “It’s not worth taking the wings, they’re as tough as leather. We might as well leave them to the vultures.”

  “Do ñandú birds eat a lot of candy?” I asked as we walked along. The three men laughed, and my uncle intoned to me again his knowledge about country cooking and the responsibility of killing.

  “You only kill to eat, now we’ll ask Miss Sara to make us milanesas out of the picana, the sirloin cap on the animal’s rump.” And that’s how I came to know about parasites and how I first heard that terrible word picana.

  The first thing I saw when we got home was our little Christmas tree, as tiny as an old pony. My mother had put it up while I was at school at the final rehearsal, but she hadn’t said anything to me, so it would be a surprise. Our little tree looked like it was growing in the middle of the lonely pampa; there was no manger, and my mother got nervous when I pointed out that our nativity scene had no baby Jesus, no cows or donkeys, no bright star, or even a virginal young maiden or an older carpenter. The tension that came over my mother when I asked for a more traditional celebration—just like the Eucharist that I closed my mouth over, the host that seals the lips of the faithful Christian on his knees—was what made me stay silent.