Little Eyes

by Samanta Schweblin

  When her mother called her to dinner, she shouted down that she wasn’t feeling good and wanted to go to bed without eating. She picked up the big wooden trunk where she stored her notes and textbooks and put it on top of the bucket, fully immobilizing it. Someone had told her that if you couldn’t break the thing, the only way to turn it off was to wait for its battery to run out. So she hugged her pillow and sat on her bed to wait. Trapped under the bucket, the bear went on squealing for hours, banging against the plastic like an overgrown hornet, until, near dawn, the room was left in complete silence.

  Lima

  A TEXT BOX APPEARED on the screen. It demanded a serial number, and Emilia sighed and shifted in her wicker chair. Those kinds of requirements were what most drove her to desperation. At least her son wasn’t there, silently timing her as she searched for her glasses so she could reread the instructions. Sitting at the desk in the hallway, she straightened up in the chair to relieve her back pain. She breathed in deeply, exhaled, and, double-checking each number, entered the code on the card. She knew her son didn’t have time for any non-sense, and even so she imagined him spying on her from some camera hidden in the corner, suffering in his Hong Kong office at the sight of her inefficiency, just as her husband would have suffered if he were still alive.

  After selling the last gift her son had sent her, Emilia had paid the apartment’s overdue bills. She didn’t understand much about watches or designer handbags or sneakers, but she’d lived long enough to know that anything wrapped in more than two types of cellophane, packaged in felt boxes, and requiring a signature and ID on delivery was worth enough to pay a retiree’s debts; it also made it very clear how little a son knew about his mother.

  They’d taken her prodigy son from her as soon as the boy turned nineteen, seducing him with obscene salaries and whisking him off to far-flung cities. Now he was never coming back to her, and Emilia still hadn’t decided whom to blame.

  The screen started blinking again: Serial number accepted. Her computer wasn’t the latest model, but it was good enough for her. The second message said Kentuki connection established, and right away a new program opened. Emilia frowned—what good were these kinds of messages, indecipherable to her? They exasperated her, and they were almost always related to the contraptions her son sent her. Why waste time trying to understand gadgets she would never use again? She wondered this every time. She looked at the clock. It was already almost six. Her boy would surely call to ask what she thought of the gift, so she made one last effort to focus. On the screen the program was now showing a keyboard with controls, like the one on a naval-battle game she used to play on her son’s phone, before those people from Hong Kong took him away. Above the keyboard, the program was proposing the action Wake up. She selected it. A video took up most of the screen and the control keyboard was summarized at the sides, simplified in little icons. In the video, Emilia saw the kitchen of a house. She wondered if this could be her son’s apartment, though it wasn’t his style, and the boy would never let the place get so messy or cram it so full of stuff. There were magazines on the table under some beer bottles, mugs, and dirty plates. Farther back, the kitchen opened onto a small living room that was in more or less the same condition.

  There was a soft murmuring sound, like a humming, and Emilia leaned closer to the screen to try to understand. Her speakers were old and fuzzy. The sound repeated and she discovered that it was actually a feminine voice: Someone was talking to her in another language and she didn’t understand a word. Emilia could follow English—if it was spoken slowly—but this didn’t sound anything like English. Then someone appeared on-screen, a girl whose blond hair was wet. The girl spoke again, and the program asked in another text box if it should activate the translator. Emilia accepted, selected Spanish for her language, and now when the girl spoke there were subtitles on the screen.

  ¿Me escuchas? ¿Me ves?

  Can you hear me? Can you see me?

  Emilia smiled. On her screen she saw the girl come closer. She had blue eyes, a nose ring that didn’t suit her at all, and a concentrated expression, as if she, too, had doubts about what was happening.

  “Yes,” said Emilia, in English.

  It was all she had the nerve to say. It’s like talking over Skype, she thought. She wondered if her son knew the girl; she prayed this wasn’t his girlfriend, because in general, she didn’t tend to get along with messy women in low-cut clothes. It wasn’t prejudice, just sixty-four years of experience.

  “Hola,” she said, just to be sure the girl couldn’t hear her.

  The girl opened a manual the size of her hands, brought it very close to her face, and sat reading for a moment. Maybe she wore glasses, but was embarrassed to put them on in front of the camera. Emilia still didn’t understand what this was all about, but she had to admit she was starting to feel a bit curious. The girl read and nodded, stealing an occasional glance at Emilia over the manual. Finally she seemed to make a decision, and she lowered the manual and spoke in her unintelligible language. The translator wrote on the screen:

  Close your eyes.

  The order surprised Emilia, and she sat up straighter in her chair. She closed her eyes and counted to ten. When she opened them the girl was still looking at her, as though waiting for some kind of reaction. Then she saw on the screen of her controller a new window prompt that helpfully offered the option Sleep. Could the program have some way of hearing instructions? Emilia selected the Sleep option and the screen went dark. She heard the girl cheer and clap, then speak to her again. The translator wrote:

  Open them! Open them!

  The controller offered her a new option: Wake up. When Emilia selected it, the video came on again. The girl was smiling at the camera. This is dumb, thought Emilia, though she had to admit it was kind of fun. There was something exciting about the interaction, though she still didn’t understand exactly what. She selected Forward and the camera moved a few centimeters toward the girl, who smiled, amused. Emilia saw her slowly bring her index finger closer, very slowly, until she was almost touching the screen, and then she heard her speak again.

  I’m touching your nose.

  The subtitle letters were large and yellow, and Emilia could read them comfortably. She activated Back up and the girl imitated her, visibly intrigued. It was quite clear that this was her first time as well, and that she was in no way judging Emilia for her lack of knowledge. They were sharing the surprise of a new experience, and Emilia liked that. She backed up again, the camera moved farther away, and the girl clapped her hands.

  Wait.

  Emilia waited. The girl walked away and Emilia took the opportunity to activate Left. The camera turned and she got a better view of how small the apartment was: a sofa and a door to the hallway. The girl spoke again; she wasn’t in the frame anymore but the translator still transcribed her words.

  This is you.

  Emilia turned back to her original position and there was the girl again. She was holding a box at the level of the camera, a few centimeters away. The lid was open and the label on the box said kentuki. It took Emilia a few moments to understand what she was seeing. The front of the box was almost all clear cellophane; she could see that it was empty, and on the sides were photos—in profile, head on, and from the back—of a pink-and-white stuffed animal, a pink-and-white rabbit that looked more like a watermelon than a rabbit. It had bulging eyes and two long ears attached to the top. A clip shaped like a bone held them together, keeping them upright for a few centimeters, after which they fell languidly to either side.

  “You’re a cute little bunny,” said the girl. “Do you like bunnies?”

  Oaxaca

  SHE COULD SEE FORESTS and hills just outside the large room they’d been given, and the intense white sunlight didn’t remind her at all of the ocher colors of Mendoza. That was good. That was what she had been wanting for a few years now: a new place, or body, or world, whatever it would take for her to change course. Alina looked at the
kentuki—that’s what it was called on the box and in the user manual. She had placed it on the floor next to the bed, on its charger. The battery’s display light was still red and the instructions said that, when first turned on, it had to charge for at least three hours. So, she was waiting. She took a tangerine from the big bowl and wandered around the room while she peeled it, peeking every once in a while through the little window in the kitchen to see if anyone was going in or out of the studios. Sven’s was the fifth roof down; she still hadn’t gone to see it. She had never gone along with him to one of his artist residencies, so she was measuring her movements, taking care not to bother him or intrude into his space. She had resolved to do whatever was necessary to keep him from regretting the invitation.

  He was the one who got the grants, the one who went from here to there with his big monochromatic block prints, “opening art up for the people,” “bringing ink to the soul,” “an artist with roots.” She didn’t have a plan for herself, nothing that would sustain or protect her. She didn’t have the certainty that came from knowing herself or why she had been put in this world. She was his girlfriend. La mujer del maestro—the maestro’s lady—as they called her around the Vista Hermosa neighborhood. So if something truly new was happening in her life, even if it sounded like nonsense, the way this weird kentuki did, she had to keep it to herself, at least until she really understood what she was doing. Or until she understood the reason why, ever since she’d arrived in Vista Hermosa, she couldn’t stop looking at everything with so much dread, wondering what she could do with her life so the boredom and jealousy wouldn’t end up driving her crazy.

  She had bought the kentuki in downtown Oaxaca, an hour away from Vista Hermosa, after wandering interminably among market stalls and designer-goods shops full of things she couldn’t buy. Yes, she could—she corrected herself every time she caught herself thinking that way: the agreement was that she would keep Sven company on his residencies, and in exchange he would pay for expenses. Still, this was only the first residency, and she had already seen him check the bank account one too many times, combining silences with the occasional sigh.

  At the market, she’d walked among stalls selling fruit, spices, and traditional masks, trying not to look at the geese and chickens that were hung by their feet still alive, shaking in silence, exhausted by their own agony. Past the market she’d found a store with glass windows, strangely white and sleek among so many modest street vendors. The automatic doors opened, she went in, and when they closed behind her the noise outside became slightly muffled. Alina was grateful for the air conditioner’s gentle purr, and for the fact that all the employees seemed to be too busy attending to other customers or restocking shelves to pay her any mind: she was safe. She took off her scarf, smoothed her hair, and moved along the shelves of shiny household appliances, relieved to be walking among so many things she didn’t need. She passed the electric razor section and stopped a few meters farther on. That was when she saw them for the first time, some fifteen or twenty in stacked boxes. They weren’t mere toys, that was clear. Several models were out of their boxes so that people could get a better look, though they were high enough that no one could actually reach them. Alina picked up one of the boxes, white and impeccably designed, like the ones Sven’s iPhone and iPad had come in, but bigger. They cost $ 279—a lot of money. They weren’t pretty, but even so there was something sophisticated about them that she still couldn’t put her finger on. What were they, exactly? She set her bag on the floor and crouched down to get a closer look. The images on the boxes showed different kinds of animals. There were moles, rabbits, crows, pandas, dragons, and owls. But no two were the same, their colors and textures varied, and some of them wore costumes. She looked over more of the boxes, carefully, until she mentally separated five from the bunch. Then she reviewed those five and took two. Now she had to decide, and she wondered what kind of decision she was making. One box said crow / KRÄHE / 乌鸦 / CUERVO, the other said DRAGON / DRACHE / 龙 / DRAGÓN. The camera on the crow wasn’t waterproof. The dragon was waterproof and could produce fire, but she didn’t smoke and neither did Sven. She liked the dragon because it looked more sophisticated than the crow, but she thought the crow was more her style. She wasn’t sure, though, whether those were the kinds of things she should be taking into consideration for this purchase. She reminded herself that they cost $279, and she took a few steps back. And yet, she thought, I’m still holding the box. She would buy it anyway, just because, and she’d use Sven’s card to do it; she could almost hear him sighing already as he went over the account. She brought the crow to the counter, attentive to the impact of this decision on her mood, and she concluded that the purchase could change some things. She wasn’t sure exactly what, or even whether she was buying the right model. The employee who waited on her, barely a teenager, greeted her enthusiastically when he saw her approaching with a kentuki.

  “My brother has one of these,” he said. “And I’m saving up for one of my own, they’re awesome.”

  Awesome. At that word she started to doubt, not the purchase itself, but having chosen the crow. But then the boy, with a huge grin, took the box from her hands, and the bar code scanner rang out, loud and irreversible. He gave her a coupon for her next purchase and wished her a very nice day.

  Once she was back from town and in her room, Alina lay down for a while on the bed, putting her feet on Sven’s pillow. The kentuki’s box was nearby, still sealed; she wondered if she could return it once it was opened. Then she sat up and placed it on her lap. She pulled off the security seal and opened the packaging. It was a new and expensive object that smelled of technology, plastic, and cotton. And there was something exciting about that, the miraculous distraction of unfurling new cords from their neat coils, pulling the cellophane from two different kinds of adapters, smelling the charger’s plastic.

  She set everything to one side and took out the kentuki. It was a pretty ugly animal, a big stiff egg covered in gray and black felt. A yellow plastic piece that served as the crow’s beak curved down over its stomach, like a necktie in high relief. She had thought the eyes were black, but looking more closely now, she saw that they were simply closed. The creature had three wheels of smooth rubber hidden under its body—one in front and two in back—and the wings, small and close to the body, seemed to have some independence. Maybe they moved or flapped. She fit the animal onto the charger and waited for the contact light to turn on. It flickered every once in a while as if looking for a signal, then went out again. She wondered if she needed to connect it to Wi-Fi, but she checked the manual and confirmed what she thought she’d read on the box: the 4G/ LTE was activated automatically, and the only thing for the user to do was place the kentuki on its charger. The purchase included a free year of mobile data, and it wasn’t necessary to install or configure anything. Sitting on the bed, she went on reading through the manual for a while.

  Finally she found what she was looking for: the first time a kentuki’s “keeper” charged the device, they had to have “extreme patience.” You had to wait until the kentuki connected to the central server and for the server to link with another user, someone in another part of the world who wanted to be a kentuki “dweller.” Depending on the connection speed, the estimated wait for the software to install in both ports was anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes. It was important not to disconnect the kentuki during that process.

  Disappointed, Alina looked over the contents of the box again. She found it odd that, beyond the charger and the manual, there was no other device for controlling the kentuki. She understood that it functioned autonomously, commanded by another user who “dwelled” in the kentuki, but couldn’t she even turn it on or off? She scanned the manual’s index. She wondered if there were selection parameters for that other user who would inhabit her kentuki, any characteristics that she could personalize or request, and although she looked several times and checked the index, she couldn’t find any clues. She closed the
manual with an anxious feeling and went to get a tangerine.

  She thought about sending a message to Sven, or gathering the courage to visit the studio. She needed to find out how things were going since, a few days before, an assistant had been sent to help with the printing process. The pieces were large and the wet paper was too heavy for just one person. “You can see how it affects the definition of the line,” complained Sven, until the gallery owner had the grand idea to get him an assistant. Sooner or later she would have to visit the studio and see just what was being hatched there.

  From the bed she looked at the charger’s display: the light was green and it had stopped blinking. She sat next to the device with the manual in her hands, reading the rest of the instructions. Every once in a while she looked at the animal, taking in or memorizing details. She had been expecting some kind of latest-generation Japanese technology, one step closer to that household robot she’d been reading about in the magazines of the Sunday paper since she was a kid, but she concluded that there was nothing new: the kentuki was nothing more than a cross between a mobile stuffed animal and a cell phone. It had a camera, a small speaker, and a battery that would last between one and two days, depending on usage. It was an old concept with technology that also sounded old. And yet, the hybrid was ingenious. Alina thought that soon there would be a kind of boom of little animals like this one and that, for once, she would get to be one of those early adopters who listen condescendingly to the enthusiasm of new fans. She would learn a basic trick for it to perform and give Sven a scare as soon as he got back; surely some kind of joke would occur to her.