Little Eyes

by Samanta Schweblin

  The “evaluation of damages” took three sessions in one week and a visit to the police station, all four of them: a father, two crazy ladies, and a boy. Or three adults and a boy; or a boy who never should have had to go to a police station and who deserved someone better than any one of those three adults. Luca bore it all in silence. The lawsuit against the kentuki that the women demanded. The legal impossibility of such a suit that the official in charge tried to explain to them numerous times. Enzo had to sign a mutual-agreement contract in which he pledged to disconnect the kentuki, agreed to move immediately into a new house with a new phone number, and accepted that from then on the boy’s mother would have the right to drop in on them unannounced to make sure there was nothing strange and that Luca was all right.

  Now that everything was done and signed, Enzo was allowed to see Luca again. When he honked the horn and the front door of his ex-wife’s house opened, when he saw Luca come running toward him, seeing the boy felt like a kind of miracle.

  “How are you, champ?” Luca didn’t answer. He closed the car door and tossed his backpack onto the back seat. “Glad to hear it,” said Enzo, “and you’re going to love the new place.”

  He’d painted the boy’s room black, just as Luca had begged him to do a few years before.

  “You can write on the walls with chalk,” he explained, and Luca muttered that he wasn’t five years old anymore.

  Though the house was small and there was no yard, they were seven blocks from downtown and Luca could walk to school. He liked that; Enzo even caught a brief smile.

  That first week the new apartment smelled strange and it was hard to find things, but they were together, and that was all he’d been fighting for.

  The neighborhood real estate company had found some tenants for his house. The new occupants would move in on the first of next month, so if Enzo wanted to salvage any of the containers he’d left in the greenhouse, he had to do it before then.

  “You’ll also have to leave us your key,” said the man from the realty company. “I always forget that part.”

  Enzo woke up from a long nap, alone in the new apartment, since Luca would still stay at his mother’s on weekends. He got up, made some coffee, and decided he would make that final trip to the other house.

  It was twilight by the time he arrived. He opened the blinds and turned on the lights. Empty and newly painted it looked bigger and sadder than ever; still, he wondered how long he would last in the new apartment before he desperately needed to come back. He went out to the patio and opened the door to the greenhouse, where, before he’d left some weeks before, he’d set the kentuki in a corner on its charger. And there it still was, motionless, the contact light with the charger still on. He’d thought about the mole many times, regretting that he hadn’t thrown it definitively into the trash. Why keep it alive, even after he’d promised to disconnect it? Maybe he just wanted to know. He flipped the light switch and stood awhile looking at the greenhouse’s deplorable condition. Some dark, dry tangles drooped from the flower beds toward the floor; a peperoncino had rolled to the middle of the room and was rotting there, moldy and alone. Then he heard the phone. It was ringing inside the house. He dropped his bag to the floor and left the greenhouse, crossed the yard, and went in through the kitchen. He stood for a moment looking at the old wall phone; it was the only thing that had been in the house the day he and Luca moved in, and the only thing that remained the day they left. It was old and outdated, and still it kept on ringing. He picked up the receiver. A rough, dark breathing made his skin prickle.

  “Where’s the boy?” asked the voice, in English.

  Where was his son? For a moment he wondered if something hadn’t happened at his ex-wife’s house. He made an effort to keep the receiver pressed to his ear. It was the other man’s breathing, coiling into his body, that helped him understand.

  “I want to see Luca again.”

  Enzo squeezed the receiver so hard against his ear that it hurt.

  “I want . . .” said the voice. Enzo hung up.

  He hung up with both hands and then he couldn’t let go of the phone. He stayed like that, hanging on to the device as it hung from the wall. Then he looked around the empty living room and forced himself to breathe, thinking about the possibility of sitting down but unable to actually make any movement, reminding himself that no one was watching him, that the kentuki was still on its charger, locked in the greenhouse.

  When the phone rang again, he leapt back and stood looking at it from the middle of the kitchen, frozen, until he made a decision. He left the house and entered the greenhouse. The kentuki was waiting for him on its charger. Enzo opened the closet where the tools were stored and took out the shovel. He climbed into a flower bed, pushed aside the dry plants on the surface, and started to dig. Making an effort not to turn his head, he sensed the kentuki get down from the charger and roll away. It couldn’t escape; before he’d gotten the shovel, he’d made sure to lock the door. He dug until he thought the hole was big enough, then threw the shovel aside and approached the kentuki. The mole tried to get away, but Enzo had no trouble catching it and picking it up. Its wheels spun desperately, turning to one side and then the other. He laid it down in the little grave, faceup. The mole turned its head back and forth, now unable to move its body. Enzo dragged the mounds of dirt from around the pit to cover the sides of the body, the belly, and most of the head. He threw the rest of the dirt over the eyes, which never closed. He pummeled the earth with his fists, with all his strength, until he heard something crunch, crunch and yet tremble, move imperceptibly. He picked up the shovel again, raised it in the air and pounded it against the earth. He brought it down again and again, compacting the dirt until he was sure that even if a living being still throbbed beneath it, no crack would open up again.

  Oaxaca

  THEY DRANK ONE FINAL COFFEE at the kiosk.

  “When are you leaving?” asked Carmen.

  “Sunday,” she said, and she realized Carmen was the only person she’d told that she was leaving early, though she hadn’t mentioned exactly when. Nor had she found the right moment to tell Sven.

  “You’re leaving me alone in this hell, manita,” said Carmen, and she finished her coffee in one gulp.

  They hugged. Alina thought how much she would miss her—in the end something good had come from this time in Vista Hermosa. They crossed the zócalo together and said goodbye in front of the church. Alina went back, arming herself with patience. It seemed like the perfect afternoon for a lot of things, but the artiste’s great opening awaited her at the Olimpo.

  Sven had been holed up in the main gallery for a week, working with his assistant. His Catalan gallery reps had hired a photographer to document the whole installation process, and since then Sven and the kentuki had practically disappeared. These past few days Colonel Sanders hadn’t even come up to the room to see her. He’d stayed in the studios until after dinner, socializing in the common areas, maybe even with other kentukis. Sven had definitely abandoned his monoprints, and expectations for the installation were growing, but Alina didn’t have the slightest idea what it was the artiste was plotting.

  She found the parking lot full of cars, and two taxis pulled up one behind the other to drop off another handful of visitors. Although it wasn’t dark yet, the lights of the residency grounds were already on. Moving through the flood of strangers, she wondered what time it was. Near the gallery she stopped in front of her reflection in a window and smoothed her hair. She also straightened her sundress, adjusting the straps that came up from the waist and tied behind her neck. As she did she noticed that those nearly two months of daily runs had worked wonders on her body.

  On reaching the top steps she heard a wave of applause—she was late. She imagined Sven standing next to his assistant, trying to contain his satisfaction. No one ever clapped like that for the artiste’s gray monoprints. She dodged a few people and entered the central hall of the gallery, where several waiters were
serving champagne. The show began farther in. She went into the first room, where the audience was dispersing. On one of the walls, a large photo of Sven crowned his biography. Sometimes she forgot how handsome he was; she was thinking about that when she realized something strange: there was nothing hanging on any one of the four large white walls. Not a single artwork. There were kentukis everywhere—in fact, there was an owl at her feet, studying her. The floor was covered in violet plastic circles, and each circle contained words: touch me, follow me, love me, like me. And also donate, photo, enough, yes, no, never, again, share. She realized she was standing on a come closer and the kentuki that was looking at her was on a call me. It had a phone number written on its forehead; in fact almost all the kentukis had something written on them: numbers, e-mails, names. They also had papers stuck to their backs: I’m Norma and I’m looking for a job; We’re a nonprofit organization, and by giving just €1 . . . Some of them bore photos, dollars, business cards, tasks. The kentuki at her feet squeaked and spun around on its call me circle, and Alina looked around for a nearby no, but the two she found were occupied. There seemed to be as many people as there were kentukis, and together they were composing an interminable sequence of squeals, phone conversations, and erratic jumps from circle to circle. It was too much. One man raised a give me into the air and turned from one side to the other, like the girls who show the numbers in a boxing ring.

  “Have you seen a never?” one woman asked her.

  She was holding against her chest a dozen nevers that she must have been collecting. Alina shook her head, gave a jump when she realized she was standing on an I love you, and moved again to get away from a touch me and an I want. But there wasn’t enough space to say nothing, she was always stepping on something. She fled to the next room.

  “It’s so cool, right?” said a feminine voice as she passed.

  Alina turned. It was the assistant, who winked at her before walking off toward the hall. Did the girl know who she was, then? Would she know where Sven was? By the time she started to ask, the assistant was gone.

  The second room was smaller and had fewer people in it. In the center, a wooden pedestal held a single kentuki, as if it were a totem. It was a rabbit. Alina went closer to the two screens that were on the wall. Right away she understood that they were the two past faces of that poor rabbit kentuki, rigid and extinguished on its pedestal. On the first screen, a camera moved between the legs of the chairs in a dining room, close to the floor. The screen next to it seemed to be the reverse angle: a man was looking into the camera and working on a keyboard. Had Sven communicated with that user in advance, asked him to place a camera in front of him? Or had the user recorded himself of his own accord, and the material had reached Sven some other way? The man’s eyes were moving from one point on the image to another, sometimes glancing down at the keyboard as he murmured something softly. The camera was now crossing a hallway. There was something dirty, lascivious, in the man’s manner. He pushed open a door and hid under the bed. A woman was closing the closet door as she finished undressing. The man whistled and put the phone in front of the screen to record it all. Alina imagined herself with Sven in bed, seen from the Colonel’s eyes. But she knew none of this could happen to her, she’d been very careful, she’d protected herself from that kind of user since the very first day.

  She heard laughter; three more women came in with their glasses of champagne, and Alina moved on to the next room. She was disappointed to find more or less the same thing. Another kentuki in the middle of the room with its screens of keeper and dweller on one of the walls. She didn’t stop, but went straight to the next room.

  In the doorway she bumped into a man who, after adjusting his glasses, stood looking at her for a moment, clearly flustered. Alina watched him hurry away, bumping into people as he headed back toward the main room. An intuition, vague and dark, made her take a deep breath. She looked into the room. The kentuki had its back to her, but she recognized it immediately. Maybe she’d known even before she went in. Like the other two kentukis, Colonel Sanders was impaled on his pedestal. She recognized the burn on his back, the swastika on his forehead, the beak stuck on his left eye, and his chopped-off wings. His eyes were closed. Then Alina saw herself on the right screen. She watched herself approach the camera in jean shorts and the shirt her mother had given her before she’d left Mendoza. She looked chubbier, but not bad. On the other screen, a man of around fifty years old was looking confusedly at the keyboard. He was robust, with a mustache and sideburns. When a boy of around seven climbed up onto his lap and took the controller from him, the man let him do it and then watched him for a good while, his expression somewhere between tender and surprised at how well the boy maneuvered the kentuki. In the right image Alina moved off toward the bathroom. The boy followed her, dodging the little rugs on the floor and the dresser at the back, but Alina slammed the door on him and the man who held the boy laughed, tickling his stomach. Then the image changed. Now the camera was motionless in front of the closed door of the residency room, and the boy was waiting attentively, stock-still. Behind him, a woman who could have been his mother was putting away a pile of clothes on a shabby shelf. Alina thought about Sven. She couldn’t believe it—he’d been watching her the whole time, and all that time he hadn’t said a word. On the kentuki screen the door opened, and Alina recognized her own legs and sneakers entering the residency room. On the other screen the boy clapped happily and called to his mother. The images changed again. The man didn’t appear for a time, although the boy was always there, crying out in joy every time Alina came on-screen. Sometimes he sat looking at her entranced, a finger up his nose, and once he even fell asleep in front of the screen. Every day he waited anxiously for her to get back from her run, from the library, from sunbathing, from the kiosk, or to simply see her wake up. Alina felt her body tense. Something very strong was pulling her backward, urging her to get out of that room right away, while the images went on changing. She saw herself yelling at the boy through the camera. Showing him her tits. Tying him up so he couldn’t reach the charger. Sometimes the boy went running out and the room was empty for a good while. Sometimes the boy was as red as a tomato, his face wet from so much crying even before Alina appeared. Once, the father came into the room and made him turn everything off and come with him. But the boy always came back. He was there watching the decapitations, paralyzed with terror; he was there the afternoon when she hung him from the fan, cut off his wings, and, in front of the camera, set fire to them with the kitchen lighter. He was there the night before, when, bored in bed and not knowing what to do, she had picked him up from the floor and used her lunch knife to stab at his eyes until the screen showed scratches.

  Alina took a couple steps back and stumbled against some people who were staring at the images in bewilderment. She had to push them to get by. She went back to the previous room, and the one before that, until she reached the main hall. In the middle, surrounded by admirers, Sven was pointing to a circle on the floor in front of the directors of the residency. Alina stood immobile, breathing roughly. She looked at Sven, saw him smile, accept congratulations, and all she could think about was how much pain she wanted to cause him. But she stayed where she was; she felt so stiff among these people, the circles on the floor, and the whirling kentukis that she felt her body was another piece in the show. Sven had displayed her on her own pedestal; he’d separated all her parts so very delicately that now she didn’t know how to move. A tingling prickled over her whole body, even inside, in her chest, and she wondered if she wasn’t having an attack: Of nerves, of panic, of rage. Of inertia. She had the urge to scream, but she couldn’t. She could only move inside herself, like a woodworm crawling through its own tunnels, digging into an absolutely rigid body. What was her kentuki doing stuck on that pedestal? And how had it been turned off? Had the parents disconnected it? Had Sven asked them to do it, as the finishing touch for his show? Or had it been the boy’s decision? She imagined him in h
is room, staring at his own reflection on the black screen.

  She couldn’t move, but she could think. If she closed her eyes she saw her Colonel. The burnt metal, the fabric edges singed by fire. She wondered where exactly on the creature’s back his shoulder blades would be, and she imagined herself caressing him softly on the hollow between the bones, the way her father used to do with her when she was little. She imagined herself knocking at the door of the boy’s house, the boy giving her his hand and letting her lead him to a park down the street. It was a small hand that sometimes squirmed, soft and sweaty, in hers. “We’d better sit down,” she was saying, “we have to talk.” The boy nodded, and their hands separated as they sat down. The concrete bench was hot from the sun; it warmed their calves tenderly, it gave them time. The boy was attentive, he looked at her, needed whatever it was she had to say. She just had to open her mouth and utter almost anything. But the worm could only drag itself through her inner tunnels, and she was too tired, she couldn’t move.

  She opened her eyes. The man she’d bumped into earlier as she entered the final room was now walking toward her. She could think. She would take a taxi. She’d run up to the car, get in and slam the door, and let the car carry her down the hillsides toward Oaxaca. In the hall, someone pointed to her. One woman looked at her and covered her mouth, as though frightened. Alina told herself that she would hold on tight to the seat of the taxi, that she wouldn’t let herself look back. The lights of Vista Hermosa would be lost little by little, until she could see, on the most golden point of the hilltop, only the luminous gallery of the Olimpo. She would forget about all those gods, and putting up no resistance, she’d let herself fall to Earth. She would give in. She told herself this, but she couldn’t close her eyes again. She breathed atop the circles, above hundreds of verbs, orders, and desires, and the people and the kentukis surrounded her and started to recognize her. She was so rigid she felt her body creak, and for the first time she wondered, with a fear that threatened to break her, whether she was standing on a world that it was ever possible to escape.