Empty Words

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Empty Words Page 7

by MARIO LEVRERO


  December 17

  I think I’ve worked out why these exercises, which were meant to be about handwriting, are always so quick to deteriorate into other things. According to my theory, it’s because I have no direct communication with Alicia. When I started these exercises, I used to leave the pages on the nightstand so she could monitor my progress, or lack thereof, and as a result they naturally became a way of telling her things—hence the anxiety that makes me write too fast when I have something important to say. It’s a strange existence, to say the least, always living, and thinking, in relation to somebody else. Most of the time that person isn’t even there, and you don’t know when they’ll be back. So you go on writing, page after page, at first genuinely trying to focus on the handwriting, but all too often turning into a kind of shipwrecked sailor stuffing messages into bottles and sending them out to sea. In this case there’s no doubt about whether the messages will arrive, but the bottle image seems fitting nevertheless—as does the image of the exile, which is what I’ve been feeling like for a while now, even more so in Colonia than in Buenos Aires. Anyway, the point is to fill these pages with lines of script, trying to be patient and forming the letters with care.

  December 24

  Now, after a run of difficult days, I’m making another attempt to connect with myself through these exercises. It’s hopeless, of course, because “tonight is Christmas Eve and tomorrow is Christmas Day,” as the tango goes (and I can almost hear Gardel’s voice as I write). This means an onslaught of social engagements, intrusions, intolerable noise, and unhealthy food that’s completely unsuited to the time of year. Until now I’ve always successfully avoided the whole thing; most of the time I arrange to be by myself, reading a detective novel or doing some writing, occasionally seeing a friend (often someone Jewish) so we can get through the dark days together, eating reasonably and having reasonable conversations. But I’m not currently the “artist of my own destiny,” as the old self-help manuals used to say we should be, and instead I’m bound by the omnipotent will of a woman who is in turn completely bound by social conventions, an activist fighting for the cause of wakefulness, a solar woman (and I’m a lunar man). I wonder how much longer I’ll put up with this way of “life,” in which the essential, profound, true, authentic questions—for which we were created—are consistently displaced, indefinitely postponed, forgotten and sometimes even abused. I wonder how much longer I’ll keep up this cycle of hoping and losing hope. At my age I don’t have the luxury of waiting very long, and already too much time has passed since I was last in touch with myself. Happy Holidays.

  December 27

  I need to look into the idea of independence more deeply. It could, depending on how things go, either support a separation from Alicia or strengthen the relationship. If nothing else, it will be a break in the current status quo, which is the source of all my pathologies. On the subject of independence, this morning (or indeed around noon) the Unconscious presented me with quite a slipup. I was in my usual confused state upon getting out of bed, so I won’t be able to dredge up the full chain of my thoughts, but I remember one of its links relating to someone I knew. At that moment, to my immense surprise, I thought something like: “But Alicia doesn’t know that person,” even though she knows them perfectly well. I realized then that my image of Alicia, or rather my internal perception of Alicia, has been replaced with that of my mother. This pernicious identification of Alicia with my mother has been going on for some time (in dreams, for example), and I’ve never paid it enough attentionespecially considering how much it surely bothers me. But what happened this morning made me confront it, and I was able to do so willingly. I was also able to acknowledge that this idea has been trying to attract my attention for a while now, but that I’ve been ignoring it, refusing to think about it, brushing it to one side of my consciousness. It must be the main disrupting factor in my relationship with Alicia. I need to stay alert and consider the matter more carefully.

  The Discourse

  December 30

  A lot of things have happened over the past two weeks. Too many for someone who’d rather turn inward for a while, detached from pressing obligations; someone who wants to let the inner discourse become clearer, and allow themselves to pay it sufficient attention. But today I’ve had a tune stuck in my head instead of the discourse, and for me that’s a clear sign I haven’t slept well. Not only last night, but for many nights now. And for various reasons.

  The story of the dog at one point took a tragic turn. He already had a habit, during what I call his time in heat—when, as I’ve said, he becomes manic and aggressive—of disappearing from home for long stretches of time, sometimes even overnight. There was a period of a few days in which he passed only fleetingly through the house each afternoon to wolf down a few pieces of meat. And then one morning, around midday on Wednesday the seventeenth, if I remember correctly, the maid gave me the bad news as soon as I was awake: the dog had turned up injured, looking like he had “something in his eye,” and now he was out in the courtyard. It was a moving sight. The dog was hunched in a corner in the shadows, his head bowed, and every fiber of his being seemed to say he was depressed—and in pain too, no doubt. I had to knock hard on the window before he eventually, laboriously, lifted his head and met my gaze. It wasn’t a face I wanted to see again in a hurry. His right eye socket looked completely empty.

  I was convinced he’d lost an eye, and the vet later confirmed this diagnosis. By then I was feeling very uncomfortable indeed. I immediately remembered all this written testimony about the dog and his freedom. I remembered how I’d been largely responsible for said freedom and how when the dog eventually decided to widen the gap between the metal post and the wall, it was because I’d tempted him into it. This freedom, I thought, had cost him dearly. And however much I told myself it was better this way, that a life without freedom is worthless, etc., there was no ignoring the guilt eating away at my insides. Maybe that’s why—though there were practical reasons as well—I stopped writing this. I’d already noticed, a few years before, that this kind of writing has uncontrollable magical effects, and I can’t escape a powerful, superstitious feeling of awe and trepidation whenever I do it, as if I were stealing fire from the gods.

  There are other kinds of writing, let’s call them literary, which have never had this “magical” power for me. What I refer to as my inspired writing, for example, was something I did compulsively; it came ready-made from the inner depths. But when I try to address what people call reality, when my writing becomes current and biographical, I can’t help unconsciously bringing these mysterious hidden mechanisms into motion. Then they begin to interact secretly, or so it seems, with various visible effects.

  *

  Now, believe it or not, the dog is cured. If you look at him a certain way you still sometimes notice his right eye drifting a little, but despite a small white mark like a scar on its surface, we know he can see through it. For a few days he kept it more and more tightly shut, then he began to open it, though all you could see of the eye itself was bloodshot and crooked. For several days after that, the dog was the spitting image of Sartre: his whole right eye was visible and no longer bloodshot, but it had a tendency to roll in unexpected directions. Now the dog is almost entirely himself again, fit and full of self-confidence.

  I, on the other hand, have been tossing and turning the past few nights with some highly erotic dreams that leave me exhausted. My almost constant eczema and liver trouble aren’t helping, either. I’ve come to believe—and it’s frustrating to be stuck in such a superstitious line of thinking—that these dreams reveal a kind of curse. Erotic dreams themselves don’t bother me (in fact, I love them), but what definitely does bother me is some of the women chosen to feature in them with me. I don’t want to go into detail, but I was struck by how in the first dream, with a contemptible and unpleasant woman, I orgasmed fully—although in my physical reality this wasn’t matched by an actual release of semen—and
the following night another similar woman took part in what wasn’t exactly an erotic dream, but a recurring erotic fantasy. I was in a semiconscious state, a kind of hypnotic trance. The scene was repeated a few times, and I kept drifting in and out of consciousness, but it was as if I was awake the whole time and yet unable to escape from the fantasy. And when I woke up the next day, I felt exhausted and lethargic again. Last night, which was the third night, I don’t remember dreaming about anything in particular, but I still didn’t sleep well. Today I have the same old tune in my head, and it’s pushed out the discourse in all its forms.

  Meanwhile, in my waking hours, the countdown to moving day is picking up speed. The workers are finishing off the last urgent, essential jobs in the new house (after which there’ll be more jobs, and more still, for a very long time), and the thought of putting things in boxes, emptying out the furniture, and then distributing our furniture and things throughout the new house in a completely different arrangement is quite overwhelming. And in the middle of all this, we have the “holidays.”

  *

  The agency didn’t refuse my request to be paid more for my crosswords. Instead, they said they no longer required my services. According to their fax, they looked at the numbers and realized it wasn’t working out for them, even at the normal rate. So I am unemployed. I don’t know what worries me more, the fact of not having a job or the way people around here have started looking at me. Somehow or other, through a comment here, a gesture there, they make me feel like I’ve done something wrong. Like I’ve become suspicious.

  December 31

  I have a sneaking suspicion that the cat was to blame for the dog nearly losing an eye. After that initial sighting in the empty lot next door, I spotted the cat again a few days later, when by some strange twist of fate I’d woken up very early. I first noticed him from the bedroom window: he was at the far end of the garden, a little white smudge among the plants by the hedge. I looked more closely and saw it was him, and was surprised that he’d ventured onto the dog’s turf. When I let the dog out, the cat, instead of running away, left at a leisurely pace through a small gap between some sheets of metal and the ground. With time, the cat grew bolder, and his appearances became more regular. One day Alicia came across him, and being a cat lover she wasted no time in offering him some milk in a little cup with no handle. The cat came over and lapped it up.

  As he became more sure of himself, he started making demands: a cup of milk was no longer enough, and he used to sit under the kitchen window or by the wooden door with the mosquito panels, meowing and meowing. The dog put up with the cat’s presence for the most part, even showing him a certain cautious respect, but the trouble began when the dog realized the cat was also being fed meat. At mealtimes, the dog would find the courage to charge at the cat, chasing him away and stealing his food. I soon learned to feed them separately, the cat in the back garden and the dog in the courtyard, where his kennel is and where he spends the night. But later, when he was back outside, the dog would sniff his way frenziedly, obsessively around the places where the cat had been eating, bustling along like a jealous detective and seeming almost enraged by the whole business.

  The dog then took to picking his food up in his mouth and carrying it to the empty lot next door, ostensibly so he could eat in peace. This had me fooled until I realized that sometimes he’d then abandon his food and go and hide in the long grass, keeping watch through the wire fence to see whether I was feeding the cat. If I was, he’d come crashing through the hole in the fence like an omen and tear toward the cat at a furious gallop.

  Around the same time, the dog took to greeting me effusively whenever I went into the back garden. Over he’d come, wagging his tail, looking at me adoringly and resting his paws on my legs so I could stroke his head. As soon as I’d given him a rub between the ears and a few pats on the back, the dog would turn his head, narrow his eyes, and glare straight at the cat in arrogant disdain. He hadn’t really wanted affection: the whole thing was a performance put on for the benefit of the cat, to show him that he, the dog, was the favorite.

  At that point in the cat’s life with us, he was, in our eyes, a she. And not only was he a she, but he was also expecting kittens. During the cat’s first days in the back garden, Alicia—a doctor, and apparently also a cat expert—went out and examined the animal carefully, returning with a decisive verdict: this is a female cat, and she’s pregnant. I thought anxiously about how many cats we’d end up with after a year or two and tried to work out what we’d spend on pet food; by then, feeding both the cat and the dog involved quite an expense. And I wasn’t keen on the idea of a whole troupe of kittens meowing under the kitchen window, either, making their demands in the particularly insistent way cats do. Admittedly, when the cat awoke from one of her innumerable siestas in the sun, stretched, and strolled airily off, her tail waving high, I did see two small, perfectly round shapes poking out quite clearly between her hind legs, under the rectum. Since I steer clear of all medical and feline matters in this house, however, for a long time I respected Alicia’s verdict and went on treating the pregnant cat with all the respect owing to her in her condition as a female and an expectant mother. I let her come and rub herself voluptuously against my legs, and I even started applying a curative lotion to her head and eyes for a rash I’d seen she had. Then Alicia also noticed the existence of the balls, and the cat’s gender was no longer in doubt.

  So things went on, the only difference being the dog’s worsening moods and increasingly erratic behavior, which could reasonably be attributed to his being in heat. He spent more time than ever methodically escaping from the back garden in order to sneak into the house through the front door. He also learned to open the wooden door with the mosquito panels on it, when it was so swollen with damp it couldn’t be bolted shut, and used that as another way in. All the dog wanted was to get inside the house and thereby show his dominance over the cat. Since we wouldn’t let him, he instead waited by the front door and greeted anyone who arrived with a practical demonstration of the overpowering joy their visit brought him. For me, these few months were a period of intensive work, what with feeding the two animals, separating them at mealtimes, rubbing lotion onto the cat, making a fuss of the dog to build up his self-esteem, moving the dog from the courtyard to the back garden, and sending him back to the courtyard in disgrace when he snuck in through the front door. All in all, this took up a large part of my day, and my energies.

  It’s not that I didn’t have more important things to do—such as my work, which now included writing articles for the newspaper—but I was held captive by an ecosystem.

  Then various things happened that, after they’d taken place a few times, changed my opinion of the cat and made me treat him differently. I began to notice the dog looking scared to push open the door to the back garden, which he used to do vigorously whenever he pleased, or whenever we sent him outside. Now he’d make a timid attempt, barely nudging the door, as if too weak to do anything else, and then stop and look up at me plaintively. I realized the cat was often on the other side, apparently waiting for his chance to attack.

  One afternoon when I was petting the cat, he rolled onto his back for the first time and started playing the way cats like to, trapping my hand between his front paws. But then he got up, rubbed himself against my legs a few times, walked around behind me, and gave me a scratch and a sharp nip on the calf. I didn’t like this one bit, and what I liked even less was the way he walked off in supercilious triumph, waving his tail from side to side. Exactly the same thing happened a few days later, and this time his claws went deeper and drew a few drops of blood. I had to put iodine on the wound. And so I resolved to stop playing with that treacherous cat, and these days I eye him with suspicion.

  Another time, I saw him waiting patiently by the gap in the fence the dog uses to come back from the empty lot, as if guarding the entrance to a mousehole. When I happened to glance over later, he was in the same place, and the do
g was making his way through the gap. I saw with my own eyes how the cat swiped at him with his claws, and I heard the dog’s howl of pain. That was it for the cat, as far as I was concerned. I stopped feeding him, and when he became particularly tiresome, meowing endlessly under the kitchen window, I chased him away with jugfuls of water, or even the hose. I focused on restoring the dog’s confidence in himself and in my affection for him. I tried to make him see that things were different now; I started feeding him in the back garden, for example, and leaving the cat to meow outside the window or the door in vain.

  Before all this, the cat had carried out a cautious, systematic, and highly meticulous investigation of the inside of our house. One day I came across him standing at the kitchen door, not asking for any food, and I left the door ajar as if to invite him in. He took a few steps over the threshold but then raced straight back out again as if he’d seen a ghost. The same thing happened a few days later, but this time it was clear he had a plan: as soon as he was inside, he made a beeline for the bedroom. He explored it systematically, inch by inch, including the dark corners behind the wardrobe; he peered around the back of the bedside tables and inspected the space under the bed. He examined everything with a computer-like intelligence, compiling and storing the data. After that, he slowly progressed into the back garden. His research continued over the next few days. First he retraced his steps through the bedroom, only more briskly this time, as if to confirm certain details he already knew, and then he began venturing a little farther into the house every day: the kitchen, the dining room, the front hall …

 

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