The magenta sportscar flew down the road like a swallow, like a low-flying aircraft. It raced through the streets as if swimming. In the passenger’s seat, your golden hair streamed behind us like a scarf, and as you stroked it in an attempt to bring it under control, you began to speak. You asked which I preferred, swimming or flying. “Swimming,” I answered, but you didn’t wait for my answer, you just kept talking. “Flying and swimming, they’re just alike,” you said.
“Fish and birds look alike, too. Just turn their scales into feathers, their fins into wings, and fish become birds. I think birds as they fly through the sky feel a lot like fish do as they swim through the water. Birds swim through the sky, fish fly through the water.”
“I want to fly through the water.”
“I want to swim through the sky.”
“You want to play bird and fish when we get to the river?” “We really are alike,” you said with a smile like ripe fruit, and then you sang in the high voice of a violin: the swallows live for only a summer, they fly to us from skies afar, pulled by the heat of desire. I pressed the accelerator hard beneath my foot and joined in with my low bandoneón tones. Our voices intertwined in a duet like the cries of ecstasy that sound as a brother and sister consummate an incestuous union. You rose up from the passenger seat to stand with your left hand gripping the windshield’s frame and your right arm extending outward, flapping lightly, mimicking a wing. I glanced quickly up at you from the driver’s seat and saw sunlight silhouette your slender body, transform it into the black body of a swallow sliding through the air. You sang like a bird. You sang.
“Just as birds and fish look alike, a famous writer once said that dueling had much in common with dancing.”
I looked at you as you squinted ahead down the road. “That makes sense. Dance’s origins are in duels. Like the ‘dance of knives,’ right?”
You took a pair of black sunglasses from the glove compartment and put them on, then looked at me.
“My intuition tells me that someone good at dancing would be good at fighting. But I wouldn’t say that every good fighter was necessarily a good dancer.”
“And you?”
“I’m a skillful dancer, so I’m also a skillful fighter. You’re a professional dancer yourself, so I’d wager you’d be good in a fight too.”
“Do you fight?”
My right hand tapped the leather sheath hanging heavily from my hip.
“I’m not the one who fights. He’s the one.”
I didn’t want to look at the knife in its leather sheath so I looked up into the sun instead, but that only made me dizzy and I fell back into my seat. A pattern of lines like a tangle of passion vine appeared before my eyes. It was the same kind of vine that was tooled into the leather of your sheath. I had no way to relax; it seemed I could do nothing to escape those vines.
“Whenever I think about knives, everything around me seems to darken.”
“Me too. It’s because a knife shines too brightly. Do you know how a knife is forged? Light from all over the world is gathered and then the smith pounds it into shape, concentrating it, binding it together. It doesn’t have a constant form, it’s something human eyes can never really see.”
“Knives are used to hypnotize, aren’t they?”
“A condition for becoming a knifefighter is the ability to resist their spell.”
“So you’re a professional knifefighter,” I said, but even as I did, I failed to sense the ill-starred foreboding one associates with a man who’s killed countless times before.
“That’s all in the past now. I had to wield my knife for myself instead of for a client once. As soon as you do that, you’re no longer a professional.”
“So you failed at your job?’
“No, I gave it up.”
Why—, I started to ask, but when I opened my mouth no sound emerged. There was something in my throat that wasn’t words. A mass that tasted of metal. That smelled of it. Clanged like iron in my throat. I remembered the many lovers in my past who’d been killed in duels. Knives had pierced their bodies and they’d given off a knife’s metal smell, bled its metal color as they fell. The knives they’d clutched in their hands, these empty things unable to fulfill any human desire were always handed to me and then I’d bury them beneath the floorboards of my café. Whenever I’m near a knife I feel as though it’s going to swallow not just the light but me as well. Of course, not all my former lovers have been knifefighters. It’s just that those are the only ones I remember.
When we arrived at the riverside docks, you got out of the car and walked toward the marina. But before you’d even reached the ticket booth, you stopped in your tracks and stroked the handrail where a mermaid had been carved into it, your face darkening with displeasure, and then you turned on your heel and came back. “It’s no good?” I asked, and you nodded.
“It’s just as I suspected. Our pursuer has already caught up with us. That mermaid wasn’t there before. It’s a sign. A warning.” I squinted at the mermaid as the light reflecting off the river silhouetted the handrail, turning it black. It was difficult to make out. I suspected that the little mermaid had actually always been there, but I kept silent.
“He’s playing some kind of game with us. It looks like he intends to chase us down.”
“So we have to watch our backs.”
“Indeed. But in times like these the best defense may be to just avoid a flawed offense. It’s out of our way, but I think the best course may be to follow the shore north to the city where the river narrows, then cross over on a bridge.”
“Should we switch clothes to confuse the enemy?” As soon as the word enemy crossed my lips I suddenly felt like we were desperate fugitives, wrongdoings amassing in our wake.
You agreed, and so I shed my clothes, even my underwear, and handed them to you. Your delicate frame and narrow shoulders slipped easily into my tomato-red summer dress that fluttered so in the breeze; it looked good on you. It had always been a little big on me, gapping away from my body in various places, but you filled it out perfectly.
You seemed repulsed by my sweaty shirt and jeans, so we went to the marketplace and shoplifted a white cotton shirt and some pants of flaxen hemp. As you buttoned up the shirt with nothing on beneath it, your body as I glimpsed it wriggling beneath the cloth made me think of internal organs pulsing and twitching beneath the translucent shell of a shrimp or pupa. You gathered your hair into a bun and tucked it under a tweed cap, then took the sunglasses off my face to wear yourself; merrily, you spread light brown foundation across my jaw to hide my beard, painted my lips, and stuck a straw hat on my head. The last step was handing you my knife in its sheath. You seemed suddenly nervous as you took it.
You placed the carefully sheathed knife in my hand and it immediately felt so heavy I was afraid it would sink me right to the ground. The sheath’s leather, still warm with the heat of your body, exuded an animal smell as if it were a living, breathing thing, making my heart race. Complex tangles of passion vine decorated not only the sheath but the knife’s handle as well. One of the vine’s flowers had a clock’s face set into it. I figured the hands must move a tick for every man it killed. An ominous feeling filled me as I traced the vines with my finger; I suddenly knew that the next person to move the hands would be me. I’d stab you and advance the clock. I felt like I’d been given a mission.
“I’ve never used a knife before,” I said, but my words sounded like lies to my ears.
“What do you mean? It’s easy. A knife longs to be held. Once you do, it begins to move on its own. It has stabbed countless men this way. The more men’s lives a knife has claimed, the more efficient its movements become.”
“Have you stabbed so many men?”
You laughed softly in response.
“You’ll find out when you use it. As soon as you grip that handle, the faces of all the men who’ve killed while gripping it will appear before you.”
You started to withdraw the blade
from the sheath, but then hesitated.
“Grip the handle while it’s still in the sheath. As long as it’s sheathed it’ll remain docile. Like a blindfolded bull.”
I covered your right hand with my palm and guided your fingers with mine into the correct position on the knife’s handle. Your grip strengthened as the tip of your index finger stroked the detailing on the handle again and again. The white of your hand flushed the color of roses.
“If an assassin ends up stabbing me, use this knife to avenge me.”
My spirits rose higher and higher as I hung the knife in its sheath from my hip and turned to face you. As we gazed at each other’s bodies, now neither fully male nor female, something materialized between us, a certain feeling of privilege, of transcendence, like permission granted to commit whatever acts may be necessary to continue on our path. As people who’d just transformed into men and women who never were, we had the right to do whatever we wished. However heinous, no act of ours could ever be evil; however profane, we could desecrate nothing.
As the two of us raced north along the riverside, we threw lit fireworks into rings of dancing children. We doused soccer fans in paint, white and pale blue. We’d bite lit cigarettes between our teeth, puffing smoke like locomotives without inhaling until the fire nearly reached our lips, then spit the fiery butts at passersby. We’d spin our tires against the gravel and announce to people, “Tonight the moon has fallen onto Avenida Callao, go run and see!” and then we’d race away. In our last act, we performed a ritual we’d imagined as little children, making limes into bombs and throwing them into used bookstores. In celebration we made a shoeshine boy shine our car, then toasted sparkling wine as the sun transformed its polished crimson body into a sizzling griddle. I having become you and you having become me, we cursed each other, slithered against each other, threw each other to the ground, sang a dual aria of our own devising, I in the role of the macho man, you in the role of the willful woman. Our cries resounded loud enough to crack the hard blue sky, a chorus declaiming, “I’m loco! I’m loca! You’re loco! You’re loca!” Then we’d fall to the earth and tangle our limbs into a dance; I would bite your shoulder, you would stomp my foot. We would compete to see who could spit the farthest up into the sky. My spit would fall on you, yours on me. Our saliva dried up and so we stopped. I wanted us to break each other’s bones with resounding cracks, but something told me that that would be a pleasure signaling the beginning of the end, and so I kept this desire to myself.
The two of us stretched our bodies across the hood of the car like drying laundry and our breathing was the only sound we heard. From time to time there came a skylark’s cry. We’d had so much fun we nearly passed out. But as much fun as we’d had, there still seemed to be something missing; suddenly, a sense of emptiness arose that refused to heal. My eyes were filled with so much light that I began to lose track of who I was. But I wanted even more light, wanted to get even dizzier. I wanted to be near you, near the dazzle of you so bright it almost made my eyes explode. I worried that if my body didn’t give off light I’d disappear. Sadly, no matter how hard we played we never sweated, so when we lay beneath the sun our bodies were never wet, they never shone. I licked your skin where I could find it, but it quickly dried. Near your wit’s end, you bought some golden beer for us to shower on each other, but in the time it took to gulp down what remained it had all evaporated. The cooling breeze dried everything: the hair running down the nape of your neck, your chocolate eyebrows, your coffee bean mouth, so full from top to bottom and narrow from side to side. I dreamed so many times as I dozed atop that sportscar’s hood of kissing those pink-tinged, brownish lips with my unremarkable ones, but as dry as they were I was afraid it would be like rubbing paper against a stone, that nothing would pass between us, and so I never did. My throat became so dry that the back of it began to hurt, and the pain solidified into a mass like the pit of a peach, like the metallic mass from before. Lying there next to you, I felt two emotions at once: the light, airy feeling that arises between two freshly minted lovers and the desperate ardor of a couple who’ve reached the final stages of their love, who have just one option left. I felt bereft, about to weep.
Soon all the two of us could do was sigh. Your throat began to glisten and blush, and so I nuzzled it, licked it. It tasted sweet yet sour, and I felt the power start to leave my body. The reason why we’d had so much fun, too much in fact, was that we were having a seven-year relationship in the span of a day; if things had occurred normally we would have simply met today, then built our love slowly, feeling as if we were living within a miracle year after year until eventually we grew apart, and then, when you could no longer stand it, you’d betray me with another and we’d split up—but instead, it all was happening at once. You were in pain and wanted to cry but couldn’t. It was too dry, there were no tears left. But I knew if I peeled away your pure white skin I’d see what flowed within you, the fluid that shone so, reflecting even the faintest light, and so I didn’t worry.
Even though I knew I’d fallen in love like this so many times before, it seemed to me that I’d never previously felt so filled with emotion; I tried to recall the faces of my former lovers but all their faces turned into yours, my only memory was of meeting you by the fountain. But as I thought of you and tried to recall all that came before, what came to mind were emotionless memories of the knives my former lovers had held as they’d been killed, or the hands of the ones who’d simply disappeared. I’d touched those hands and they’d touched me, but my skin no longer remembered the feeling. I’d consumed your flesh, you’d become a part of me, I was more connected to you than I’d ever been with anyone else, and yet it still didn’t seem quite real; was it because I had no specific memories of you to recall, or was it because our skin was too dry, preventing us from really sharing anything between us? As I tried my hardest to remember, my memories kept splitting: did you resemble most the lover before my last or the one I’d repressed within my memory, the one who’d tried to commit love suicide with me but ended up dying alone? Were you my father, who died when I was eleven, or were you my older brother, or a younger one by a different father whom my mother had hidden from me? Confusion begat confusion. Perhaps you were my everything.
“Maybe it would be better if our pursuer hurried up and killed us right away.”
The taste of oranges filled my throat, and I couldn’t decide if it was the taste of loneliness or simply sorrow; it was congealing into yet another hardened mass, narrowing my breath.
“There’s no need to hurry things.”
I ran my hand through your hair and it fell away smoothly, like sand made of light.
“But the way things are going, I’ll just do the same thing I always do.”
“What is it you do?”
“I don’t know, that’s why I’m frustrated. I don’t understand our relationship.”
“I’ve been watching you on your roof as you practiced your sunset dance since you were twelve. I watched as you eventually grew conscious of your body’s weight and became an adult; you began to dance at the café at the end of the row, under the rose-hued lights.”
“You came to my café?” Your pupils widened, turning your irises cobalt.
“While I was in your city, I went nearly every night.” “So that’s why I remember you. That makes sense.” I felt expansive.
“No, that’s not it. I always visited the bar disguised as an old man.”
“A precautionary measure?”
“Precisely. The day before yesterday, I transformed myself into an old man a mere 130 centimeters tall.”
“The day before yesterday? You didn’t visit the bar yesterday?”
“Yesterday I watched the soccer game,” I said, stroking the soft space between your eyebrows where your skin furrowed. “But I could also say I was watching you and still be telling the truth.”
“I wish you’d stop talking in riddles.”
“You really don’t remember?”
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I closed my eyes. I took a deep breath. I hadn’t watched the soccer game. I had no memory of being with you. I shook my head.
“When you are so uncertain, I become uneasy too. Is this you really the same you I watched before?”
I felt like I was being carried away by I knew not what. “Take me somewhere I can swim,” I asked in a voice that was not my own. “All my memories are in the river. I want to submerge myself in them.”
“I understand. Let’s go. Let’s swim in the river like birds.”
Your chest flexing in stages as if part of a mechanical body, you pulled me to my feet. I imagined that if I touched you there, that place where your strength hardened your body, and if you touched my body in turn where it could harden, where it grew strong, then we could both be strong, together; but instead you simply climbed back in the car.
They say the only thing in this city able to keep a consistent form is this river that wets the hands dipped into it, that turns them transparent, silvery. All along the riverside live the people born in this city, people who dance and sing and play instruments, who make music impossible to separate from the sound of the river itself, this river too wide to see across to its other shore, this river that rumbles through its rocky bed with a sound like a hollow tree trunk being pounded. The music and the sound of the river whip the people into a frenzy, a frenzy that draws blood. Blood that flows a shining white. Where does the blood flow? What sound does it make? Wanting to know, even tourists come. The musicians warn them not to go into the river. The water is dirty, they say, and the dirt never washes off. To those who come from outside the city so warned, this mirror-skinned river that shines like silver looks dull as lead instead, so polluted its riverbed cannot be seen. But as soon as anyone drinks the water here or breathes the city’s air, they become infused with silver from the inside out. This is how outsiders become townspeople. The wet walls of our very organs glitter with the river’s silver.
We, the Children of Cats (Found in Translation) Page 21