Fever Dream

by Samanta Schweblin

  “Yes, why?”

  “You’re pale.”

  “Did Omar know about the ducks? About Mr. Geser’s dog?”

  “He knew something. I’d decided not to tell him anything, but he saw the mounds of earth from the buried ducks, and he asked. When all that happened with the woman in the green house and the days of fever, he never asked questions. I think Omar suspected something and preferred not to know. Who knows, maybe he just wasn’t interested. He was more concerned about the loss of his precious borrowed stallion. But you’re pale, Amanda, your lips are white.”

  “I’m fine. Maybe something’s not sitting right with me. I’ve been a little nervous,” I say, thinking about yesterday’s argument, and Carla looks at me out of the corner of her eye but doesn’t say anything.

  We sit in silence a moment. I want to ask about the horses, but Carla is watching Nina now and I tell myself it’s better to wait. Nina is going back from the trees to the well. She’s holding up the apron of her dress and using it as a basket, and when she gets to the well she kneels down with her dramatic affectations of a princess, and she starts lining up pinecones on the ground.

  “I really like her,” says Carla. “Nina.”

  I smile, but I can sense there is something more behind her words.

  “If I’d been able to choose, I would have wanted a girl. A girl like Nina.”

  Nearby, the breeze moving through the soy makes a soft, effervescent sound, as if caressing it, and the now bright sun comes and goes between the clouds.

  “Sometimes I fantasize about leaving,” says Carla. “About starting another life where I could have a Nina of my own, someone I could take care of and who’d let me.”

  I want to talk to Carla, there are certain things I want to tell her, but my body is still and numb. And I’m like that for some seconds more, knowing that this is the moment to talk but immobile in the languid silence.

  “Carla,” I say.

  The soy leans toward us now. I imagine how in just a few minutes I will leave the rented house behind, and Carla’s house, I’ll leave this town and year after year I will choose another kind of vacation, holidays at the beach and far from this memory. And she would come with me, that’s what I believe: Carla would come if I suggested it, with nothing but her folders and the clothes on her back. Near my house we’d buy another gold bikini; I wonder if that would be the thing she’d miss the most.

  Do you see me? Can you see me now?

  Yes. But I’m on the floor, and it’s hard to follow the story.

  Don’t get up, better to stay on the floor a little longer.

  I think I lie down in the field, too.

  Carla helps you lie down.

  Yes, I see the treetops now.

  Because she asks you over and over if you’re okay, but you don’t answer. She puts her bag under your head, and she asks you what you had for breakfast, if you have low blood pressure, if you can hear her.

  How do you know that’s what happens? Do you see it, were you hiding there?

  That’s not the important thing now.

  Or is it because of what you said before, that we’ve already talked about the poisoning, that I already told you other times how I got here?

  Amanda.

  And Nina?

  Nina looks at the two of you from the well. She’s left the pinecones scattered around her, and now there’s nothing left of her royal airs.

  It’s true, there’s nothing left of her royal airs.

  Carla waits, but you don’t say anything.

  But I’m awake.

  Yes, but you’re not well.

  My hands are shaking, I told you.

  Nina runs toward you. Carla jumps up and heads her off. She distracts her a moment. She tells her you fell asleep and it’s better to let you rest. She asks Nina to show her the well.

  Nina doesn’t trust her.

  No, she doesn’t trust her.

  I feel the rescue distance shorten, and it’s because Nina doesn’t trust Carla.

  But you can’t do anything.

  I can’t, no.

  If Carla goes to get help she’ll have to leave you alone, or with Nina. I’m sure that’s what Carla is thinking about now, and she doesn’t know what to do.

  I’m so tired, David.

  This is a good moment for us.

  I fall asleep. Carla realizes it, and she leaves me alone for a bit while she plays with Nina.

  That’s why it’s a good moment. Do you see them?

  What?

  The names, on the waiting room wall.

  Are they the children who come to this room?

  Some of them aren’t children anymore.

  But they all have the same handwriting.

  It’s the writing of one of the nurses. The people whose names these are, they can’t write, almost none of them can.

  They don’t know how?

  Some of them do, they learned how to write, but they can’t control their arms anymore, or they can’t control their own heads, or they have such thin skin that if they squeeze the markers too much their fingers end up bleeding.

  I’m tired, David.

  What are you doing? It’s not a good idea for you to get up now. Not yet. Where are you going? Amanda. That door doesn’t open from inside, none of our doors can be opened from inside.

  I need you to stop. I’m exhausted.

  If you focus, things happen faster.

  Then they’ll also end faster.

  Dying isn’t so bad.

  And Nina?

  That’s what we want to know now, isn’t it? Sit down. Please, Amanda, sit down.

  My body hurts a lot, on the inside.

  That’s the fever.

  It’s not the fever, we both know it’s not the fever. Help me, David. What’s happening now at the stables?

  Carla and Nina play for a while around the well.

  Sometimes I open my eyes and see them. Carla hugs her constantly, and the rescue distance keeps tightening in my stomach, it wakes me up again and again. What’s happening, David? Tell me what’s happening in my body, please tell me.

  I tell you over and over, Amanda, but it’s hard if you always ask again.

  It’s as if I were dreaming.

  Some time goes by, and at a certain point you gather your strength and sit up. They both look at you, surprised.

  Yes.

  They come over to you, and Carla caresses your forehead.

  She has a very sweet perfume.

  Nina looks at you without coming too close, maybe she’s starting to realize you aren’t well. Carla says she’ll go get the car, she laughs to alleviate the situation, she tells herself out loud that this is all so she will finally have the courage to drive alone, and so you will finally come over to her house for a cool drink. She’s going to give you a cold iced tea with lemon and ginger, and that will cure everything.

  That won’t cure anything.

  No, it won’t cure anything. But you’re feeling a little better, the discomfort comes and goes, that’s how it always is at first. Carla tells Nina that she’s leaving her in charge while she goes to get the car. She explains to Nina that she’ll come back from the other direction, on the dirt road.

  Nina comes over to me, sits down, and hugs me.

  It takes Carla a while to come back.

  But Nina is so close that I don’t care, and we stay like that for a long time. She’s lying down, close against my body. She makes her hands into circles and brings them to her eyes, like binoculars.

  “We like the treetops very much,” she says.

  But you are thinking of the night.

  Our first night in the house, yes. Because hugging Nina reminds me of my first fears. I wonder if there could have been a warning in them. I walked, and the
flashlight drew an oval in front of my feet. If I shone it forward to see what lay a little ahead of me, it was hard to see where I was stepping. The sound of the trees, the cars on the road every once in a while, and the barking of a dog confirmed that the country spread out immensely to either side, and that everything was miles away. And even so, blinded by the oval of light, as I walked I had the feeling I was moving deeper into a cave. I hunched over, and I moved forward taking short steps.

  And Nina?

  This is all about Nina.

  Where is Nina, during that first walk?

  She’s sleeping in the house, soundly. But I can’t sleep, not the first night. Before all else, I have to know what is around the house. Whether there are dogs, and if they’re friendly, whether there are ditches, and how deep they are. Whether there are poisonous insects, snakes. I need to get out in front of anything that could happen, but everything is very dark and my eyes never get used to the darkness. I think I once had a very different idea of the night.

  Why do mothers do that?

  What?

  Try to get out in front of anything that could happen—the rescue distance.

  It’s because sooner or later something terrible will happen. My grandmother used to tell my mother that, all through her childhood, and my mother would tell me, throughout mine. And now I have to take care of Nina.

  But you always miss the important thing.

  And what is the important thing, David?

  Nina sits up, she searches the horizon with her finger binoculars. Your own car drives up from the other side of the stables.

  For a moment I think it’s my husband, I think he’ll get out and give us each a hug, and I’ll be able to sleep peacefully the whole drive home, until I get to my bed in the city.

  But it’s Carla. She gets out and walks toward you and Nina.

  She’s barefoot and in her gold bikini. She skirts the pool and walks over the grass a little apprehensively, as if she weren’t used to it or she remembered its texture with a little distrust. She forgets her sandals on the pool steps.

  No, Amanda, that was before. Now Carla skirts the stables.

  Because I’m on the ground, in the field.

  Exactly.

  But I always remember Carla with bare feet.

  She gets out of the car and leaves the door open. She approaches quickly, waiting for Nina to give her some sign about how things are going, but now Nina is sitting at your feet with her back to Carla, and she doesn’t take her eyes off you. Carla helps you stand up, says you’re already looking better. She loads everything into the car and takes Nina by the hand. She turns around to be sure you’re following her, she tells you jokes.

  Carla.

  Yes, Carla.

  It’s true, I do feel better. And the three of us are in the car again, like in the beginning, with your mother in the driver’s seat. The car’s engine stalls a few times, but your mother finally manages to put it in reverse. My mother said that the country is the best place to learn to drive. I learned in the country, when I was younger.

  That’s not important.

  Yes, I figured.

  Carla doesn’t feel very comfortable driving.

  But she does it well. Although we don’t go in the direction I had expected.

  “Where are we going, Carla?”

  Nina is sitting in the backseat. She’s pale, I realize now, and sweating. I ask her if she feels all right. Her legs are crossed Indian style, same as always, and as always she has her seat belt on, even though I haven’t told her to buckle it. She makes an effort to lean toward us. She nods strangely, very slowly, and the rescue distance is so short that her body seems to pull on mine when she falls back into her seat. Carla straightens up again and again, but she can’t relax. She looks at me from the corner of her eye.

  “Carla.”

  “We’re going to the clinic, Amanda. Let’s see if we get lucky and someone can take a look at you.”

  At the clinic they tell you everything is fine, and half an hour later you are all on the way home again.

  But why skip over it like that? We were following this story step by step. You’re jumping ahead.

  None of this is important, and we’re almost out of time.

  I need to see it all again.

  The important thing already happened. What follows are only consequences.

  Why does the story keep going, then?

  Because you still haven’t realized. You still need to understand.

  I want to see what happens at the clinic.

  Don’t drop your head like that, it makes it harder to breathe.

  I want to see what’s happening now.

  I’m going to bring you a chair.

  No, we have to go back. We’re still in the car on the way to the emergency room. It’s very hot and the sounds gradually grow more muffled. I almost can’t hear the motor, and I’m surprised at how smoothly and silently the car moves over the gravel. A wave of nausea forces me to lean forward a moment, but it passes. My clothes are stuck to my body with sweat, and the sun’s sharp reflection on the hood of the car makes me squint my eyes. Carla isn’t in the driver’s seat anymore. When I don’t see her I feel disconcerted, frightened. She opens my door and her hands take hold of me, pull me out. The car doors close without making a sound, as if it weren’t really happening, and still I see everything up close. I wonder if Nina is following us, but I can’t turn to check or ask the question out loud. I see my feet walking and I wonder if I am the one moving them. We walk down this very hallway, the one behind me, outside the classroom.

  Lean your head here.

  Nina says something about the drawings, and hearing her voice calms me. She’s still with us. The nape of Carla’s neck moves a few steps ahead of me. I can stand up on my own, I tell myself, and the image of my hands against the wall, on the drawings, brings the intense burning back to my skin. Carla’s hair is pulled back in a bun and the edge of the neck of her white shirt is stained a light green. It’s from the grass, right? Another woman’s voice tells us to come in and there she is, I feel Nina’s hand in mine. I hold on tight and now she is the one who leads me. It’s such a small hand, but I trust her. I tell myself that she will instinctively know what to do. I enter a small room and sit down on the cot. Nina asks what we’re doing here, and I realize she has been asking what’s going on the whole way here. What I need is to hug her again, but I can’t even answer her. It’s hard for me to say what I need to say. The woman, who is a nurse, checks my blood pressure, takes my temperature, looks at my throat and my pupils. She asks if my head hurts and I think yes, a lot, but Carla is the one who says it aloud.

  “I have a terrible headache,” I confirm, and the three of them sit there looking at me.

  It’s a shooting, intense pain that goes from the nape of my neck to my temples. I feel it now that it’s been said out loud, and I can’t feel anything else.

  How many hours have passed?

  Since when?

  Since what happened in front of Sotomayor’s office.

  It’s been about two hours since we left the office. Where were you, David?

  I was here, waiting for you.

  You were in the doctor’s office?

  How do you feel now?

  Better, I feel better. It’s such a relief to be somewhere without so much light.

  But we still have a few hours to go, we need to move forward. Is there something important about this moment?

  When I say I have a headache, Nina says she does too. And when I say I’m dizzy, Nina says she is too. The nurse leaves us alone for a moment, and your mother says to herself that she did the right thing in bringing us here. If your mother were five years older, she could be both of our mothers. Nina and I could have the same mother. A beautiful but tired mother who sits down now, and sighs.

 
; “Carla, where is David?” I ask her.

  But she isn’t startled, she doesn’t even look at me, and it’s difficult to know if I’m really saying what I think I am, or if the questions are only in my head, mute.

  Your mother takes her hair down from the bun and uses her hands like two big brushes, her slender fingers open and spread.

  “Why aren’t you with him, Carla?”

  She shakes out her hair in a distracted movement. I’m sitting on the cot and Nina is sitting next to me. I don’t know when she climbed up but she seems to have been here for a while. My hands are at either side of my legs, holding on to the edge of the cot because at times I think I might fall off. Nina is in the same position, but she’s resting one of her hands on mine. She looks silently at the floor. I wonder if she is disoriented too. The nurse comes back humming a song, and still humming intermittently she opens some drawers and talks with Carla, who is putting her hair back up in its bun. The nurse wants to know where we are from, and when Carla tells her we’re not from the town, that we’re here on vacation, the nurse stops humming and stares at us, as if with this information she had to start the examination all over again. She’s wearing a necklace with three gold figures: two girls and a boy, the three of them close together, almost on top of each other, squeezed between her enormous breasts.

  One of that woman’s children comes to this waiting room every day.

  “No need to worry,” she says. She opens up the same drawers again and takes out a blister pack of pills. “You’ve just had a little too much sun. The important thing is to rest: go home, take it easy, and don’t be scared.”