Rage

by Sergio Bizzio

  And Rosa said:

  `Jose Maria. That was the name I'd thought of..."

  Senora Blinder straightened her spine, arched her eyebrows, and let the hand which hitherto she had held extended towards Rosa's face -just as if she were about to intercept her - fall back to her knee again. Then, at last, she froze. It was but for an instant, but it was enough for Maria to choke with emotion.

  "Jose Maria? Are you really thinking of that?" exclaimed Senora Blinder. "Doesn't it sound a bit... forgive me for putting it like this, but... a bit vulgar?"

  "No, Senora."

  "There are so many names far prettier than this one..."

  "But it's the one I like..."

  "Jose Maria..."

  "That's what I was thinking of, yes..."

  "What do I know about it?..."

  "Don't you like it?"

  "To tell the truth, not much."

  "It's great!"

  "Listen Rosa, you're the mother here. If that's the name you want, give it to him, but don't ask me to lie to you about it. It seems to me there are a million and a half other names more suitable than that one. I don't know... Think it over."

  A boy! A boy!

  And Rosa wanted to give him his own name! Good God, what joy, whatever Senora Blinder had to say about it!... Rosa was thinking of calling him Jose Maria! She had said so, and he had heard her. Her very words were: "I like the name Jose Maria!" All the rest of that list, the other million and a half names that remained outstanding for consideration... which one of those could possibly now usurp his own, what possible chance could they have?

  `Jose Maria, Rosa, yes, Jose Maria, he has to be called Jose Maria, don't let them change your liking for it," he was telling himself a minute later, as the initial euphoria abated.

  He had only just seen him the other day, in the most daring act he had ever committed since the day he himself was born. He had entered Rosa's room.

  It was six o'clock in the morning. Last midnight, after breastfeeding him, and under the attentive gaze of Senora Blinder, Rosa had succeeded in taking the baby with her (against the musical backdrop of a tempestuous football match). Possibly she had gone to feed him still one more time. In any case, they were both now asleep in the same bed together. The crib (which Senora Blinder had rescued from some storeroom pile at the back of the house some days earlier, and which no doubt had been where Alvaro had vomited his earliest months away) was placed close at hand. Rosa hadn't even bothered to attempt to set him down there. She had taken him directly into bed with her.

  He was magic, in every possible sense: he had a face, he had fingers, and he breathed. Up until that point, Maria had seen no more than a bundle, a little ball of pale-blue blanket fringes. Now, as he approached him, becoming slowly used to the darkness inside the bedroom, the profile of a head was revealed, the closed flower bud composed of cheeks, nose, chin and mouth, all bunched together in the middle of his face, as if his features were still being sucked back into the nothing from whence he came.

  He came a little closer.

  Rosa was lying on her side, her back glued to the wall, giving the baby practically all the space on the bed. She covered his feet with one of her hands... Maria leaned very slowly over him until his lips brushed his son's forehead at last.

  Some days later, he would still be savouring the details of this momentous event (the emotion, the surrounding silence, the tenderness) to the visual accompaniment of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the ashen floor of the moon. He straightened up, turned around and left the room at such a speed his shadow remained behind him.

  Rosa opened her eyes, suddenly uneasy. She cast her eyes about the room as if she felt it still contained another presence, and, at the end of the half-second's review, returned to her baby, who too had now opened his eyes.

  She calmed down.

  The baby didn't yet know how to smile, but he smiled and said I am me with his eyes.

  30

  "Rosa?"

  "Maria, how lucky you rang..."

  "What's up?"

  "I had a horrible dream! I woke up thinking, `I do hope he'll ring me and I can tell him all about it,' and here you are. I dreamed I'd taken Jose Maria out for his walk, around that square where the Lago de Palermo is, and..."

  "Did you really call him Jose Maria after me?"

  "And you told me never to ask again where you are? Every time we talk you ask me the same thing! Of course I called him after you. Why don't you believe me?"

  "I don't know if I believe you. I just don't fall for it, and that's another matter..."

  "Speaking of falling... Do you know where the planetarium is?"

  "Yes."

  "I dreamed I'd taken him down there to get a bit of sun, and all at once I saw you coming out of the planetarium. I was frozen to the spot, it was years since I'd last seen you... As I've told you before, you appear lots in my dreams, but in this dream I knew I hadn't seen you for ages and it froze me to the marrow to see you suddenly like that. You'd been to see some showing about the moon... And you had a beard!"

  "Are you serious?"

  "I swear it. And you had long hair too."

  "OK, so then you grabbed Jose Maria and threw him up into the sky and then you caught him and... well it was OK up until that point... But then you started throwing him up higher and higher each time, and I got frantic, and in the end you threw him so high that it took the baby something like half an hour to come back down again! We were staring up at the sky, but he was nowhere at all to be seen..."

  "A nightmare..."

  "Horrible."

  "Did he come down again?"

  "Yes, he came back down and you caught him. But from when he went up to when he came down I nearly died. I was in such anguish, you can't believe it! I was all covered in sweat..."

  "You know I'd never do anything like that."

  "Yes, I do know..."

  "Does he eat well?"

  "He never stops!"

  "And you? Are you looking after yourself properly, eating well?..."

  "Yes, normally. Do you dream?"

  "What?"

  "Tell me whether you dream. I've realized that you tell me nothing, nothing about what you do... or what you dream... or..."

  "I never dream."

  "Never?"

  "I sleep very lightly. That probably has something to do with it."

  "They say it does you good to dream..."

  "The dream about the planetarium ought really to have been my dream, since I don't get the bit about the name."

  "How terrified it made me..."

  "Was he scared when he came down again?"

  "Not a bit. He was killing himself laughing!"

  "You see?"

  "Oh, Maria..."

  "Yes, I know..."

  "Could things ever work out differently... one day perhaps?"

  "You look after the baby. That's your occupation. And it's the best way to ensure that things will work out differently one day..."

  "I mean it seriously."

  "The Senora buys him all the new products on the market for newborn babies..."

  "What, to eat?"

  "Yes."

  "But don't give up on the breastfeeding, Rosa. A mother's milk is a basic necessity for a baby's good health. What products is she buying him?"

  "Some little glass jars of pureed stuff. The paediatrician told me that he can now start taking a few solids, and the Senora..."

  "Still keep up the breastfeeding, just the same. And don't stint on how much you give him..."

  "Right."

  "Talk to him while you're feeding, or switch on the radio..."

  "You've no idea what a lovely character he has! Everything makes him laugh and then he makes me laugh too... Anything at all makes him laugh. Pull a little face at him and he laughs... The Senora gives him a kiss on the nose and he laughs..."

  "Your saying that reminds me of something in Your Erroneous Zones, when they say: `It is always worthwhile surrounding yourself w
ith amusing people'..."

  "Now he's sleeping like a dream..."

  "You always keep him in sight, don't you?"

  "I've got him here next to me... Shhh... wait a moment..."

  "Yes, it's the Senora just arriving... We'll have to hang up...

  "Tell the baby about me, Rosa. Tell him about me."

  "Yes, yes, I'll tell him, I'll talk to him... Call me later. A kiss."

  "A kiss."

  31

  When Jose Maria celebrated his first birthday, Maria made his first outside call. He wanted to give something to his son.

  He rang the house of his uncle in Capilla del Senor. It was a sunny Sunday and Senor and Senora Blinder had gone out together. He hadn't the faintest idea where they might have gone, those two recently hadn't so much as exchanged two words with each other. Rosa had gone out with Jose Maria at the crack of dawn, to have a roast-beef lunch, in the company of her friend Claudia. Claudia's boyfriend was the waiter in a rotisserie overlooking the River Plate, in the neighbourhood of Vicente Lopez. It would make a good outing for the baby. So Maria made the most of having the house to himself to raise his voice precisely as much as required.

  "Who is it?" asked the uncle.

  "Me, Jose Maria. Listen carefully, as I don't have too much time... Is everything OK with you?"

  "Do you know the bedside table in my room? Do me a favour: go and take a look, and see whether underneath it...

  "Hang on a second," said the uncle. "Which Jose Maria are you referring to?"

  "Me, it's me, I'm Jose Maria! Maria! What other Jose Maria would I be referring to?"

  "Where on earth have you been?"

  "It's a long story..."

  "Well, tell me something about it! Are you in the country?"

  "No."

  "That's what I thought. What happened? The cops turned up here three or four times, to see if they could find you. So how come you're managing to give me a call right now?"

  "Is your phone tapped?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "The telephone. Has it been tapped?"

  "How the hell do I know? Why on earth would my phone be tapped - because of you? No... what I'm talking about happened years ago, at least two or three years... Anyway, what do I know about it? They never returned since then. You know what a state this country's in now."

  "Listen to me..."

  "Are you all right?"

  "Yes. Listen here, Uncle. Do you know the bedside table in my bedroom, the one on the right? If you're standing at the foot of the bed, on the right-hand side? Are you with me?"

  "What were they looking for, drugs? They wouldn't tell me a sausage. Were you mixed up in that whole drugs thing?"

  "No, Uncle, drugs had nothing at all to do with it."

  "Well in any case, to me taking drugs is hardly a crime, eh! You can talk openly to me. Especially as now there's so much of it about everywhere." He lowered his voice, making it sound reedy, without meaning to. "Does what you were going to tell me about the bedside table have anything to do with dope?"

  "Listen to me, you idiot," Jose Maria interrupted in exasperation. He spoke in a monotone, a low note that was pure resonance from his vocal cords. His uncle pulled himself up mid-flow. "Under the bedside table on the right-hand side you'll see there's a drawer. It's as thin as an eyelash. In it you'll find there's $250. In the drawer of the opposite bedside table, there's a little bell, half chewed-up and in the shape of a star. It's an oldfashioned baby's rattle. You are going to bring both those things and deliver them to a girl who works over here. Her name is Rosa. You'll find her here, you'll hand over those gifts on my behalf, and you'll tell her I sent them. Is that clear now?"

  "Why are you talking to me in that strange tone of voice?" asked his uncle, after a pause.

  "Because I know you," answered Maria. "And I want you to remember something: I'm watching you, both you and the girl. The police are out looking for me because I killed a guy, and believe me, that guy mattered more to me than you do. So if you don't hand over the rattle and the dollars to the girl tomorrow morning, I'll come after you, and when I find you, you'll finish up seeing only darkness for the rest of your days."

  Then he gave him the address.

  The next day, Maria's uncle rang on the doorbell at the villa. He had dressed in his best clothes (a checked shirt, an old-fashioned anorak, without a designer label and so dark it seemed almost worn out - in fact it was a mass of every sort of loose synthetic thread, and that was it - and a pair of cream Oxford trousers, which gave him away as gay). Maria could see him from one of the windows at the front of the house: the shameless old devil rang the bell at the front door.

  Senora Blinder went to answer it. On seeing him, her first reaction was one of surprise. She would never under normal circumstances have exchanged so much as a monosyllable with someone like him, but under present circumstances, she found herself talking to him for a while.

  Then she went back inside again. Rosa, seated on the living room sofa, was just finishing giving Jose Maria his feed.

  Senora Blinder stood facing her, looked down at where she sat and, with a serious expression on her face, said to her:

  "It's so strange. This has to be the first time in my life I've answered the door to someone who calls, and I learn the last thing I ever wanted to know."

  And she held out a brown paper envelope to Rosa. Someone had written her name and address on its mauve surface in careful black calligraphy.

  Rosa opened it. She took out the dollars and the rattle and sat there staring at them, open-mouthed. Senora Blinder told her that someone had delivered them on behalf of Jose Maria.

  The slowness with which Rosa raised her eyes to look at Senora Blinder laid bare her deception and her guilt. But Senor Blinder was too absorbed in her own cause for astonishment to take note of Rosa's.

  "I stopped and chatted a minute with this... `senor' on the doorstep, and he told me his nephew is Jose Maria, that local builder you knew, the one who was said to have murdered the foreman... No doubt you'll remember the story better than I. He told me that he had sent this to you via him..."

  "Yes, you're right, I do remember him now..."

  Today was Jose Maria's first birthday, but he was still taking breast milk and hadn't yet started to walk. While his mother and Senora Blinder were talking, Jose Maria turned himself around and crawled across the livingroom floor at top speed.

  "Isn't it as if the earth had opened and swallowed him up?" Senora Blinder was asking.

  "It's exactly like that..." replied Rosa.

  "So how, then, did that fellow just turn up on the doorstep to hand over these things, supposedly on his sayso?"

  "I don't know, Senora..."

  They were both so immersed in their own questions and anxieties that neither took any notice when Jose Maria set out to clamber up the staircase.

  "Are you hiding something from me, Rosa?"

  "No!„

  "Are you in touch with this man?"

  "No, Senora. I swear, I'd had no idea about any of this... It came out of the blue as far as I was concerned, too... It must be years since I've seen that guy!"

  Senora Blinder stared at her for a second in silence.

  "So, then, how come you gave the baby Jose Maria's name?"

  "Because I like it... by chance. My father was also called Jose Maria. Jose Maria Verga. Don't make me repeat it - you know I don't like the surname..." went on Rosa, feigning embarrassment.

  "And what was that workman's surname?"

  "Negro."

  "Negro?"

  "Yes..."

  "Do you realize," Senora Blinder added, having thought it over for a moment, "that if you'd gone on going out with him, you could have ended up being called Rosa Verga de Negro, Rosa Negro's dick."

  There was another moment's silence. Rosa and Senora Blinder looked one another in the eye seriously, and then both simultaneously burst into loud guffaws. They laughed until their eyes ran with tears. The pair of t
hem knew that it was about nothing, but on some level they accepted this way of releasing tension. As soon as it was over, they felt much better.

  Senora Blinder came back round and seated herself down next to Rosa again.

  "Why do you think that builder fellow would have sent you those things after such a long time?"

  "I don't know, Senora... Who brought them here?"

  "An uncle of his, apparently."

  "And the uncle didn't say why?"

  "He didn't know. Or else he didn't want to tell me. He said he'd heard nothing at all of or from his nephew for years now..."

  "So then it's true!" said Rosa.

  "What's true?" Senora Blinder looked at her enquiringly.

  "That the earth opened and swallowed him up," said Rosa. "Nobody knows anything about him... I certainly don't..."

  Senora Blinder believed her. There was no reason whatever not to.

  "But it worries me that he should have sent you this..."

  "Perhaps it means he's thinking of leaving the country..."

  "I will have to keep the police informed..."

  "They won't remember a thing about him."

  "But that man could be dangerous..."

  "Don't fall for that, Senora. He was purer than the Communion Host..."

  Senora Blinder stared at her in silence. Rosa seemed to her either sad or exhausted, maybe both at the same time. She put an arm around her shoulders and said:

  "You must promise me something... The very least clue you find regarding that workman, you have to tell me immediately."

  Rosa nodded her agreement and, holding the dollars in one hand and the rattle in the other, kissed her fingers in the form of the crucifix.

  32

  That afternoon Jose Maria junior climbed twelve steps. Maria, poised at the top of the flight, counted them one by one in a mixture of panic and pride (pride in his proficiency and panic lest he fall). He gesticulated wildly at him, trying to scare him off, but the child only seemed to feel spurred on by this. At least until Rosa finally registered his absence. She shot up off the sofa at the speed of a rocket, spotted him, grabbed a toy car to tempt him and grabbed him from the top of the staircase, carting him back down under her arm.