Marisa(MX) began a single story many times, and that seems to me an admirable undertaking. Many different outsets can only be synonymous with many failures, with deformed narratives. That’s what (I) have, a list of scattered fragments:
–A tangle of sets.
–Interchangeable subsets.
–Invisible intersections.
–Temporal inclusions.
–Sudden disjunctions.
Beginning the same text many times is, at the very least, an insistence on telling and understanding the same story.
In any other way, you fail time and again, beginning different stories that always end the same.
In any other way, you fail over and over, attempting to disorder time.
It’s at the boundaries—on the edges—where things tend to blur.
My Brother(B) often used to tell Mom(M) his secrets. They’d chat for hours about things I wasn’t supposed to know. For me, there was never a secret interesting enough to be confided to her. Don’t think I have any real secrets. Well, just one. Would prefer not to have to keep it, but when I try to tell it, it can’t be heard; it’s infuriating, no one understands. I didn’t choose that secret, we didn’t choose it, it’s here despite me, despite us. As a child, I used to wonder why my Brother(B) had so many secrets to tell, when none ever occurred to me. Or maybe it’s a matter of being able to recognize them. How many would I need to have to be a normal person? That single secret came on the scene right when we stopped seeing Mom(M). It’s a secret (I) share with my Brother(B), without even understanding it. A secret is like an invisible subset.
We run from the parking lot to the museum, but even so arrive drenched.
My sneakers are like paddling pools, says Alonso(A).
Yeah, it sounds funny when you’re walking.
I’m still not used to these unpredictable D.F. rainstorms. I’ll get a cold, or pneumonia or something . . . I look ridiculous, I’m not sure I should go in like this.
(Went through the door into the exhibition as if I hadn’t heard those last words. We were already there.)
Don’t you read the introductory wall text? he asks.
No, it’s always incomprehensible. They should put it at the end.
And this is comprehensible?
Hey. And so how do I look? Like a wet dog, I guess.
(He laughs out loud at everything I say, just for a change.)
You should hear your laugh. It’s unsettling.
(He laughs again.)
Or better yet, indecipherable . . .
You look fine. You look . . . pretty.
(Swallowed, the saliva went down the wrong way, and I had a coughing fit—a disaster.)
Hey, the other day. That call, was it your . . . ?
Ah, he’s German with a footballer’s name . . .
And are you . . . ?
No, it’s over.
. . . ’Cause?
His girlfriend’s visiting.
Well . . .
Yeah, I know, it’s not good . . .
Hmm? I didn’t say anything . . . Do you speak German?
No.
Does he speak Spanish?
Don’t think so. To be honest, we didn’t speak much.
So?
Well, what do you think? (Looking at the floor.)
Is this decipherable? (Trying to change the subject.)
Why do you want to know?
Well, because there could be a secret in it.
But if it’s a secret, there’s no sense in deciphering it.
You’re a skeptic.
Maybe . . .
Do you have secrets?
Guess so.
Don’t think I do. It’d be good to know what they’re like.
(He laughs.)
Guess you think I’m crazy.
No, not at all . . . I don’t even want to imagine what you think of me!
That you’re a skeptic, like I said, and that your laugh is a bit hostile but very attractive.
(Managed to leave him speechless.)
Would you tell anyone your secrets?
That’s a really weird question.
Proposed we keep a secret neither of us understood (so it would never stop being a secret). He said he’d need to give it some thought.
Took that as a yes.
(I) couldn’t wait a second longer, so thought one up, disordered the syllables, and whispered it in Alonso(A)’s ear: (he gave a nervous little laugh).
When two people share a secret, they look more or less like this:
Who the hell is Nuar purring at?
With a little reconstruction here and a little there, I ended by understanding more about Marisa(MX)’s exile than my own parents’. When she landed in Benito Juárez airport in March 1976, she was thirty-eight and had a three-year-old son. Her husband, Tono(TN), didn’t join them until almost a year later because it was much more difficult for him to get out. Marisa(MX) had lived in Buenos Aires for just over half her life. She did several acting workshops (she met Tono(TN) in one of them), and worked in a variety of government cultural offices to pay the rent.
At the beginning of 1976, Tono(TN) directed a play (“original and experimental” according to the independent press of the day) called Autopsy on an Outline in which Marisa(MX) played the female lead. It ran for only one night. When a number of the actors were disappeared the day after the premiere, Marisa(MX) panicked, tried to change her and Alonso(A)’s names but couldn’t. Then she used all her savings to buy two airline tickets to Mexico, and she and Tono(TN) agreed they would meet up there. A friend had offered them her house in Cuautla.
In Exile, Marisa(MX) gives a few details of the period before her involuntary expatriation but concentrates on a return trip she made to Argentina in 1984. It was just her and Alonso(A)—she’d gotten divorced by then. During that visit she decides to go back to the house in which she was born but discovers a larger building has taken its place. She also rings the doorbell of the big old house she once shared with Tono(TN)—where she got pregnant, where they rehearsed from morning to night for months—but no one answers. She tries again the next day, and comments in her book: “The curtain of our bedroom window twitched, there was someone inside.” But no one opens the door. Right there, at the entrance to what was once her home, she has a nervous breakdown and ends up in hospital. Those spaces she now needs to return to no longer exist, and that is the root of her tragedy: nothing belongs to her. Apparently, the consequences of dictatorship are felt afterwards, long afterwards. Exile is simply a way of delaying them. Sooner or later—SLURPPP—a strange force sucks you in, and there’s no escape route. While narrating this episode, she scarcely mentions Alonso(A). Wonder just what he did at that moment; he was barely eleven.
After a couple of weeks, Marisa(MX) leaves the hospital and buys the return tickets. She never again sets foot in Argentina. Upon her return to Mexico, she has herself voluntarily admitted to a psychiatric clinic. Wonder if Alonso(A) spent that time with Tono(TN), if anyone explained to him what was going on. It’s in the clinic, it seems, that she begins writing her memoir. Guess that’s the cause of the obsessive repetitions and the tremulous hand of her manuscripts. It’s not clear how long she stayed there, or the time that elapsed between one copy and the next. Wonder if exile converted her into a secondary character, or if she had always been one. Put the manuscripts into hypothetical (pretty pessimistic) chronological order: first those with the clearest writing, and then the ones in which the letters gradually become incomprehensible symbols. They didn’t fall into the categories of either the pink or green folders, so I simply fastened them together with a binder clip.
I’m fond of the Main Library, a book building that seems to taper toward its summit, with an elevator that gets slower the more floors it ascends. It still feels like the same place I went to with Mom(M) as a kid: the crotchety unionized librarians, the eighties furnishings, and that very particular UNAM bustling hubbub of hundreds of people entering and leaving. There c
an’t be a noisier library in the entire world. At elementary school, summer vacation started very early, and as Mom(M) had nowhere to leave me, she’d take me with her to her classes, a pack of felt-tip pens and an abstract art coloring book in my hand. We always made an obligatory stop in the library: I’d help her find a book, or we’d return ones she’d taken out. I liked reading the things she would later write on the board, although I naturally didn’t understand a thing. Her classes were on psychoanalysis. I remember—because it was the only term that formed part of my childhood vocabulary—the word Phantom frequently appeared (like that, with a capital letter). When asked in school what my Mom(M) taught, I used to say phantoms. Everyone stared, open mouthed.
With the aim of extending my stay, I classified all the recipes Marisa(MX) had cut from magazines and newspapers: breakfasts, starters, main courses, desserts, etc. Then put them in separate files.
I told Alonso(A) a lot of things about myself. Not about the bunker, or any of that stuff. Other sorts of things. It felt weird to hear my voice outside my head. Words frighten me. The idea of not knowing what others understand when you speak scares me. Alonso(A) told me things too. Not about Marisa(MX)’s death or her crisis. But we did talk about Argentina: neither of us understands why a can of apricots in syrup with Chantilly cream (or worse still, caramelized milk) is the dessert of choice in that country.
Are you a painter or do you do weird stuff? he asks out of the blue.
Well . . . weird stuff, I guess.
Right. So are you one of those artists who doesn’t know how to draw?
(It was probably a joke, but for me, not a particularly funny one.) Yeah, that’s it. One of them . . .
I told him, for example, about my life drawing class at La Esmeralda. It was a simple exercise: copying the hand of the model. Up to that time, my drawings had been awful, and the teacher had no patience with me. But that day I really focused, wanting to do well. The more realistic the drawing, the better the grade. At the end of the class, the whole group gathered around each of the tables in turn to discuss the work. I’d made an effort, so felt calm, and though still among the worst in the class, this was by far my most proficient attempt of that semester. When we got to my table, the prof stood looking at my drawing for a long time, not saying a word. I thought he was finally going to leave me in peace, had nothing to say, or couldn’t accept my improvement (because he hated me).
Better, Verónica. But why have you drawn a hand with six fingers?
Alonso(A) let out a laugh, identical to the one that had exploded through the whole of my class, and then he tried to make amends:
I can’t draw either.
But there’s no reason for you to be able to . . .
To compensate, he told me a story: in his preschool English class, he was asked to make a Halloween drawing. He painted a piece of white card completely black and took it to his teacher, who made a wry face and asked him what he’d drawn. He said it was night. Miss Ramírez rose from her chair, called for attention, and addressed the whole group: “Listen, children. None of you are going to give me anything like this, right?” I tried to stifle a giggle, but as Alonso(A) always laughed at everything, there was really no need.
Have you still got the painting?
I threw it in the trash, outside the classroom.
Ugh, I’d love to have it.
He smiled. After that, it would never have even entered my mind to become an artist, he said, and then stood staring at my mouth . . .
Something was about to happen (the uncontrollable pangs in my pelvis were telling me so). I liked the way Alonso(A) understood night. We pretended the tension didn’t exist.
But the phantoms are in the past. Or come from the past.
There are no phantoms here.
To find the secret word, the one we need, X has to be solved.
The bunker (or Mom(M)) is the unknown, X.
There are—I’m certain of this—things that can’t be told in words.
I’ll never know who S. is.
Try to organize Grandma(G)’s medicine chest. Most of the pills are past their expiration date. Everything has different names here. Sometimes it feels like, for her, taking medicines is just a routine, and she allows herself the pleasure of choosing them by their colors. The chest is so disorganized, it’s a mystery to me how she ever manages to find anything. There’s absolutely nothing for a sore throat, and swallowing is still painful. Decide to use Grandma(G)’s method and pick out two tablets at random—one pink, the other white—and put them into my mouth.
Sat down in front of the chest at the foot of the bed and opened it with a key I’d found in one of the desk drawers. There were a great many letters inside. Divided them up simply: “letters from Marisa(MX) to” and “letters to Marisa(MX) from.” There were some—definitely love letters—Tono(TN) had written her during a period he spent in Cuba at the beginning of the eighties, before their separation. There were also letters from the time of the dictatorship, which were succinct and few in number. They said very simple, sometimes absurd things. But there was more to it, something only those two understood, a personal language. Suppose that’s love. Possibly shouldn’t have read them, it wasn’t part of my task, but Alonso(A) never asked for details. Don’t know if he can even imagine just how many things are in the various pieces of furniture in his mother’s room. At least now someone knows Marisa(MX)’s story. Is there anyone who knows Mom(M)’s? If that person exists, I’d like to ask him or her a couple of questions.
It’s your job to call Grandma and tell her we’re coming.
But it was your idea to go . . . Why don’t you . . . ?
Because I got in first, so you lose.
My Brother(B) is the first-born son; he’s a historian but earns a living making documentary films. Sometimes he writes the scripts for them, sometimes he edits or directs them, and sometimes he does all three. He says he’s become an expert on the microhistory of Mexico City and its surrounding areas. He’s an expert on, for example, the abandoned railway station in Pantaco, the history of the Hotel Isabel, the construction of footbridges, the gutter press in D.F., and the Iztapalapa Passion Play.
OBSERVATION SHEET I
LOCATION: Parque de las Américas, Colonia Narvarte.
DATE: September 20, 2003.
LIGHT POLLUTION (1–10): 10.
OBJECT: Woman and son.
SIZE: Approximately thirty-seven and seven years of age.
CONSTELLATION: Family.
LOCAL TIME: 11:30.
OBSERVATION:
NOTES:
Mother and son doing yoga on damp grass. Manage to make out that the boy is wearing a T-shirt with the yellow-on-black Batman logo. He squints when he’s in the balancing poses. His “downward-facing dog” is a perfect triangle. They both have wet butts. Their bodies form letters, but the message is indecipherable.
Hungry? Yes. We were leaving the museum, and I suggested dinner. He said he couldn’t, that he had to work on his thesis and get changed because he felt wrong in damp clothes. Then, in the car, I persuaded him to change his mind. Not sure how. There were crosswords printed on the restaurant tablecloths. While waiting for our food, we guessed at solutions. I found “to solidify or gel”: set. Alonso(A) got “a word preceding ‘headed’; silly or ignorant”: empty.
Among the letters was, surprisingly, the manual for the telescope. It’s the type of manual that’s more complex and confusing than the thing you want to learn to use, but it has interesting diagrams, a sample OBSERVATION SHEET, and lots of symbols to help you make notes. For example, this is an orbit:
This signifies “planetary dark spots”:
This, obviously, is infinity:
And this signifies uncertainty (of course, it had to be a triangle):
Didn’t say anything. Maybe just “aha.” Nothing more. Alonso(A) knows that I know his girlfriend is in San Francisco. What I didn’t know was if he knew I was going to miss him.
Wrote him an e-mail,
but regretted it the moment I clicked Send:
August 13
Solona,
Tahw era uoy pu ot?
M’i ssingmi uoy llyfuaw . . .
V.
Luckily, his name appeared in my inbox five days later:
August 18
Dear Verónica,
I have decided to change my thesis topic. I’ll miss the old one. Wrote a paper on acrostics yesterday.
You can take the telescope if you want. There are too many things in the house anyway.
A.
His mail initially seemed evasive, disappointing. Then I looked up the word acrostic in hopes of finding a clue. The dictionary says: “A verse or arrangement of words in which the initial letters or words in each line form a word or message.” Reread his message vertically, like a detective who has finally discovered who the murderer is; my heart could have been heard beating on the other side of the city. Took his offer of the telescope literally.
Is there anything so simple and so devastating as a stupid coffee mug?
Ordering the correspondence chronologically was a way of taking up time, but could only be bothered to read a few of the letters from her sister Malena and other family members. At the bottom of the chest was a black bag with dozens of others that had been cut into small pieces. It felt like a treasure trove. They weren’t written by Marisa(MX). In fact, on comparing the handwriting with all the other letters, there was no match. Tipping the contents of the bag onto a rug reminded me of the Christmases when my Brother(B) and I—bored after so many days of vacation—would do jig-saw puzzles in the kitchen. There was undoubtedly some mystery behind those vestiges. Some of the fragments contained dates coinciding with Marisa(MX)’s arrival in Mexico, although the handwriting was not, by any stretch of the imagination, Tono(TN)’s. Then I separated out the scraps signed “S.” That didn’t tell me much either.
Empty Set Page 5