Hypothermia

by Enrigue, Alvaro

  It’s not really unusual to step outside at night and see one of those animals—he wrote his father—but at the same time it’s not so common as to be unworthy of celebration. During the warm seasons of the year, opossums live near some creek or gully; during the cold months, they occupy the blind spaces of the neighborhoods. They’re the cats of the cold, the digestive system of suburbia when it’s freezing out. Big and clumsy, they do their duty with the furtive dignity of the very ugly: they’re the phantoms of an ecosystem sustained by trash cans, the filth in an impeccable white world which is played out in little houses, each with its own garden, that go on and on, perfect and identical, into infinity.

  He didn’t want to miss the privilege of having a smoke while contemplating such a strange animal, so he went ahead and lit his cigarette as cautiously as he could. He stood motionless, at a distance, smoking, his gaze fixed on the creature, which never took its eyes off him. When he had only a couple of drags left he decided to move closer: that it might get startled and run away was no longer so important: the cold rain was going to force him back inside the house soon anyway. Cautious as ever, he took a few steps; the opossum remained motionless. It was so young that perhaps it had not yet learned that fear is the basis of experience. He exhaled a final puff of smoke, tucked the cigarette between his thumb and index finger then flicked it away, far from the animal, which barely took its eyes off him long enough to see the burning tip of the butt fly through the air.

  Until getting closer, he hadn’t realized that the opossum was barely larger than a rat. He extended his hand, with the palm outstretched, as if it were a puppy. The animal uncurled, shook itself off, and waddled along to the other end of the fence, where it settled down again without once looking away. By now he was trembling from the cold, so he went back into the house.

  Inside he found all the nervous preparations for dinner underway. His wife told him to set the table, his regular chore at family celebrations: Latin Creole and Catholic, he had, in the family’s Lutheran landscape, an undisputed touch for livening up the whole presentation; there’s nobody like him when it comes to arranging the instruments of our prosperity, his father-in-law liked to say, with the slightly worried look of those patriarchs whose daughters have moved beyond their reach. The first time he’d set the table, his father-in-law’s wife had stared suspiciously at the splendors of her own board, but over time she’d learned to enjoy the fleeting excess. Shortly after a spring vacation they’d spent in Raleigh, it was her turn to host a meeting of her book club. After setting the table in her own gringo fashion it seemed like a paltry offering, so she redid it, imitating his Creole arrangement: no concealed weapons, everything in sight: the oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and sauces, the dishes overflowing, the sliced bread laid in its basket, the bottles like gun barrels—one for every three guests—aimed straight up at the ceiling and heaven beyond, and the menacing sugary desserts laid out on the sideboard. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but this dinner turned out to be the most successful one so far. How exciting, said a neighbor, feeling caught between the abundance and her own embarrassment.

  When he wrote to his father, he was aware that what he’d be looking for in his son’s messages were stories about the girls—he adored them because they were gringas but also never stopped worrying that they were too gringo. He knew that his father printed out his messages and took them home to read to his mother, and that she fantasized for days over the paragraphs about how her granddaughters were growing. For this reason he took special care to mention how the older girl, who was about to turn five years old that New Year’s, helped him as best she could with the unbreakable table utensils. The younger girl was still just a baby, and really didn’t do much of anything, so at the end he added a paragraph about an imaginary cough that she’d just gotten over.

  Their New Year’s Eve celebration went on as usual, as he related in the e-mail: they ate dinner, and after putting the little girls to bed, turned on the television and sat down together to watch the countdown to midnight. As the year’send special didn’t look very promising, they made a strong pot of coffee to help them stay awake and keep the party going for three more hours. He took the last of his coffee outside with him when he went to have another smoke. The opossum was still there, trembling from cold and fear.

  When he went back inside he mentioned his discovery. The first time he hadn’t said anything, but this second encounter now struck him as odd. With his in-laws he didn’t take the same perverse pleasure in reflecting on recycling and the filth in the suburban ecosystems as he did several months later in his e-mail to his father: in English, in the provinces, musing without specific meaning sounded like intellectualizing, suspiciously lacking in sincerity and simplicity. He said that there was an opossum crawling on the fence, that it was very young, that it had probably come down from a tree and couldn’t get back up to safety in the branches. Hardly looking away from the screen, his in-laws mentioned that there was plenty of wildlife in the neighborhood thanks to the creek nearby. The presence of opossums was a good sign because they ate snakes. His wife appeared a bit more interested: she was moved by the idea that it was a young animal. Are we going to help it get down? she asked him, but he had already surrendered to the spell of the TV and didn’t feel like getting wet again. It’s just got to get up the nerve to jump down to the grass, that’s all, he said. His father-in-law observed that, no matter what, it would be neither safe nor hygienic to try to trap it, not just like that, without any preparations. If it was still there in the morning, they would go outside with the necessary equipment to help it.

  That exchange, on the other hand, he chose not to share with his father because it wasn’t his habit to complain. He kept writing, explaining how, with just twenty minutes remaining until midnight, he got up for the third time. He knew that he wasn’t going to have another smoke until just before going to bed because of what was coming up—they would wait for the clock on TV to strike midnight, followed by a very awkward round of embraces, then share a bottle of champagne so slowly that the glasses got warm while watching the stars on this or that TV special.

  As he came back into the room, his wife asked him if the opossum was still stuck on the fence. He said yes. Partly out of genuine curiosity—all recurrent history is always noteworthy—partly because the slow, pleasant moments of letting their meal settle had passed, and partly because the mounting series of commercials at midnight, one after another, made the programming unbearable, the problem now received the whole family’s attention. His wife thought that all the fireworks at midnight were going to give the poor animal a fatal heart attack, and that was reason enough to spur them into action. His father-in-law accompanied him back outside and confirmed that the opossum was still trapped by the height of the fence. He disappeared a moment in the direction of the toolshed and returned carrying a board. He’d put a cap on his head and had some yellow, wool-lined, waterproof overalls covering his clothes. It’s my winter gear, he said, leaning the board up against the wall so he could zip himself up to the neck and put on his gloves. He had another pair in the back pocket of his overalls. He held them out to his son-in-law in case he needed help. Between the two of them they carried the board and propped it up to make a ramp from the top of the fence down to the grass. That’s it, said his father-in-law with satisfaction, it can get down by itself, nobody needs to touch it. They got back in the house with more than enough time to drink their toast and share that hug.

  He smoked his last cigarette a little before one o’clock in the morning. The opossum had disappeared, so he removed the board and put it back in the toolshed. Once in bed, his wife looked up for a moment from the pages of the enormous biography of John Adams she was reading and asked him about the animal. He was touched that she thought to ask about the little drama in which he’d played the starring role. It crossed the bridge we set up for it, he responded, and it’s free. She smiled and kissed him. See, you were a hero. She turned back to her book. He’d start
ed to concentrate on the case study about Ecuadoran fishing disputes that he’d brought to read when his wife looked up again. Poor animal, she said, it must be thinking that it made such a great escape.

  THERAPY: THERAPY

  Meanness and selfishness are the only values that count in a society that prides itself on being composed of immigrants. That’s why, sooner or later, all of us gringos end up going to therapy. In a world like this one, the only way to get someone to listen to you is by paying them to do it.

  WHITE

  Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight.

  Ears without hands or eyes.

  Hamlet: Act III; Scene 4

  During Major League postseason playoffs, time all across the country comes to a halt when a game starts. The one that evening wound up in a tie at the top of the ninth inning, and ended up going on until well after midnight. The twelfth inning was so tense that he didn’t even take a sip of the gin and tonic he’d mixed himself to drink while he watched. When the game ended, he added some fresh ice and stayed up a little while longer, enjoying the singular freedom that comes from being awake in a house where everyone else is asleep. There was nothing else worth watching on TV, so he switched off the set and reached for the bookshelf to pick up the video camera he’d bought last winter.

  He turned it on, rewound the tape a little, and pressed the play button. On the plasma screen a pure white color appeared, then a blue strip in the upper part of the frame. The vibration of the strip made it clear that the camera was moving, although the big white patch remained static. After a few seconds some vertical bars that he was slow to recognize as trees moved in and out of the frame. At last his own face appeared, talking about the snow and the cold. It was part of a documentary that the girls had filmed on a visit downtown during the record snowfall, which was the very reason for their buying the camera.

  Those were unusual, noteworthy days: his wife was out of town, gone to be with her mother in Philadelphia where the latter was recovering from an operation. He was left to contend with their two young daughters and the heavy weather alone.

  The snow began falling around noon on a Tuesday already filled with anticipation. He was seated at his desk editing a report, blinds drawn to block the light reflecting off the computer screen, when his boss appeared: It’s already started snowing, he told him, and it’s heavy. I’m gonna stay late because I’ve got a conference call with the consultants in San Francisco, but I can walk home if they close the Metro. You should head home now. You can send me the report by e-mail.

  When he found himself alone in his office he opened the blinds wide. What he liked about the beginning of a snowstorm was the fact that the enormous agitation produced by people getting their errands done before all the businesses closed kept the streets completely full. The panorama offered a fleeting illusion: the sky above dissolving into a ferocious whiteness that threatened all the colors of life down below. Getting up, he made sure that his boss had gone back into his office then discreetly closed the door to his own. He called her number on his cell phone; she was just leaving a benefit luncheon nearby. He looked at his watch: it was a few minutes after one o’clock. They arranged to see each other, even though it was just for a short while before he headed back to the suburbs. Then he called his house and told the Argentine woman who looked after the children that he had to attend a business meeting, but that he would be home early.

  It snowed heavily without stopping all through the night—all of Wednesday, and half of Thursday. The snowflakes were the size of walnuts, at times. The temperature stayed well below freezing, so that the snow piled up steadily without slowing down.

  What was at first celebrated as a blessing—in Washington, D.C., schools, banks, and the federal government all shut down at the slightest threat of inclement weather—became, after the first twelve hours, a cause for concern: the first morning he had to climb out of the house through the windows to shovel away the snow that didn’t stop falling, and then keep clearing it away every little while to keep open their only exit. He dug an exhausting system of tunnels out from the front door so that they could reach the trash cans—the kitchen door remained blocked—and to get to the toolshed, where he kept the sleds and other snow toys. The car, which they never parked in the garage, was completely buried, and the whole street was a snowdrift that reached up to his chest and was well over his older daughter’s head.

  On Wednesday, starting early in the morning, they had a fantastic time, sledding down the hills in the park. The forced break brought on by the snow put the whole neighborhood into a mood unlike any he’d seen before. All his neighbors gathered on the slopes, in such a way that the upper part of the hill looked like a beach: dozens of adults and their dogs watching children sliding down deep into a white sea. In the afternoon, back at the house, they raised an igloo and built a giant snowman, then glutted themselves on hot chocolate. After putting the girls to bed he spoke on the phone with his wife: he was getting worried that the county workers had not yet begun plowing the streets.

  On Thursday they took things easier: they watched cartoons all morning before going out to play. Then they opened up the igloo, whose doorway had become buried during the night. They tracked, without much luck, the paw prints of some hungry raccoon that had been foraging in the yard for food. After lunch they noticed that it had stopped snowing and the sun was just peeking through, so they went to go sledding again. Lacking the energy of the day before, they soon returned to the house, where they watched cartoons the rest of the afternoon. The girls were delighted to have sausages for dinner a second time, but he wasn’t so thrilled: he was getting fed up with his own lousy cooking. They didn’t hear the roar of a snowplow that day either.

  On Friday he spent the morning digging out the car, possessed by the hope that they would soon be clearing the street. In the afternoon they dragged the sleds to the hill, but after sliding down the first time they noticed how difficult it was to climb back up because the snow had turned to a sheet of ice. They made snow angels on the park’s basketball court, then almost got hypothermia pretending to be Eskimos living in the igloo. They watched all the cartoons on TV. For dinner, he thawed out some hamburgers.

  They were out of juice, but still had enough things for breakfast, lunch, and dinner through Sunday. If the snowplow didn’t come by then to clear their street, on Monday he and the two girls were going to have to make a big supermarket run on the bus. The very thought of such a trip seemed nightmarish: the emergency route used by public transit was four blocks away, a distance he would not normally have minded walking, but the idea of hauling the shopping bags through such deep snow struck him as actually frightening.

  Sunday morning was, frankly, abysmal. After lunch—he was washing the dishes from their lunch of tuna and saltines—his older daughter realized that they had not taken any pictures of the igloo to show their mother, so they got out the camera only to discover that it had no film. Let’s go buy some, he told them, with the joy of one surprised to find himself set free. He dressed them as if they were going on an expedition to the North Pole and they walked to the Metro station; even though it was a little bit farther than the bus stop, it took them right to the shopping mall.

  Life there seemed to be following its normal routine. They spent the afternoon buying snacks, thankful for the novelty of the scene. At some point they sat down to have an ice cream and he realized that he had not seen a black person since Tuesday, nor any Arabs, Hindus, Asians, or Mexicans: only his own neighbors, whiter than ever for the wintertime lack of sunshine. The folksy look of the gangbangers at the next table sporting their NFL jerseys and clownish sneakers was comforting to him. As the afternoon wore on, the girls proposed getting a video camera to tape a report. So they went to buy it. Tomorrow, he told them as he was paying, we’re going skating at the rink, if school’s still out, and we’ll do our shooting then.

  He didn’t like watching himself on the screen—his face looked wider and flatter than it did i
n the mirror and he couldn’t even recognize his profile—so he rewound the tape until he found a part that he had shot himself. He located it right away and then kept rewinding. He saw the girls walking backward into the door of the skating rink at the sculpture garden, the confusion of the people skating backward and the girls among them, holding hands, cracking up laughing and picking themselves up from the ice every now and then. He saw them taking off their skates and putting on their sneakers in reverse order, leaving backward through the entry and saying hello to the camera. Then followed random sequences of the white capital.

  The shots stopped their dizzying advance at an unusual moment that he had completely forgotten: in the middle of one frame there was a pickup truck perched whimsically on a snowdrift about three feet tall, high enough so that the truck wouldn’t have had enough traction to drive over it. He took his finger off the rewind button and listened to his own voice discussing with the girls the impossibility of what they were seeing. He heard himself say that it was so strange it seemed as if the truck had been lowered from a helicopter.

  By that time he had spent several days meditating on the spectacle of the snow and the purification ritual it performs in a society that believes itself born to rule by virtue of race. With the snow just starting to fall, he had glimpsed in the distance, from a room on the fifth floor of the Washington Hotel, the snowy landscape of Pennsylvania Avenue, ostentatiously white by nature: the White House and the Treasury building in the foreground, the narrow, foreshortened canyon between the museums along the Mall, Congress at the far end—all marble. Seen from above, it had occurred to him, the city had the quality of a poisoned dessert. What? she asked—they were leaning on the inside sill of the closed window, their hips, shoulders, arms touching, nothing in between. He said that for the rest of the East Coast it was just a big blizzard, but in the capital it was Mother Nature’s affirmation of Manifest Destiny. She laughed and asked him when he’d stopped being pro-Yankee. Since you started working at the World Bank? Since I became a gringo, he replied. She added that he was imagining things. Why had he bothered to become a citizen if he was just going to complain about it? The only thing wrong with you, she concluded, is that you work too much. Just like my husband. Then she sent him home: You’ve got to go; the girls will start to worry.