Loop

by Brenda Lozano

  At this moment, the cat’s engaged in an epic battle with the label from the bread. Adapting Kafka for cats, it seems that in the struggle between the cat and the label, we have to take the side of the label.

  I wrote the last few entries lying in bed. I wonder if this position leads to different sentences than those written in a chair or standing up or in a taxi or on a bus or walking along. Either way, I still need to try writing in my sleep.

  Proust used to write lying down. The black cat is rarely in any other position. Maybe the little planets he travels to in his sleep are in the Proust Galaxy.

  Something happened in the street today. It was around noon and I was walking along the pavement. At the traffic lights, a taxi driver was shouting abuse at a woman who’d stopped him turning where it wasn’t allowed. ‘Motherfucking bitch,’ the taxi driver yelled. The woman turned off the engine of her SUV, looked at the taxi driver and got out in a rage. ‘For your information,’ she said, ‘my mother died recently, and it was very sad for my siblings and me, so show some respect. Besides, that’s no way to talk to a woman. Maybe you never had a mother to teach you manners at home. And why did you swear at me? Just because you wanted to turn where it’s not allowed? Don’t you have a wife? Or daughters? You obviously never talk to women, if that’s how you treat them.’ When she’d finished, two or three people gave her a smattering of applause. By then, several curious bystanders had gathered, among them a plump policeman from a pharmacy, who was the first person to clap. The woman went back to her car. A man asked if she’d like him to punch the taxi driver who’d offended her. She closed the door, as if bidding farewell to the crowd. A driver honked his horn, as if giving the woman an ovation.

  We may not all be parents, but we are all children. Perhaps this obvious fact was what prompted the general empathy with the woman. Perhaps it was also her courage and eloquence. And what would happen if every time someone offended a woman, she responded along those lines?

  I wonder if our position in relation to our parents marks our character. If that woman, if that taxi driver, if Jonás or I are what we are because of where we are in relation to our parents. As if the members of a family formed a figure, a simple shape, like a rectangle, a cross or a circle. And we form that shape simply because we exist in relation to other people. I also wonder if the taxi driver’s insults, and his attempt to turn in the wrong place, are a sign of something bigger in this country. As if there’s an enormous whale swimming in the depths of the ocean and all we see is the odd bubble bursting on the surface, like that scene in the street.

  The problem with this place. What is the problem with this place? There’s no one verb that can sum it up. There are so many. Several of those verbs are all over the press every day. Even though Spanish syntax shouldn’t let them, they insist, the verbs, in jostling to the front of the headlines. They even contort, the verbs, as if in a circus, on a tightrope, to be the most important words in the newspaper headlines.

  Isn’t the role of verbs interesting? The verbs that denote action, what’s happening here and now. They’re like the little hands on a clock, they tell you the exact time in sentences. Whereas waiting, like the clock in the dentist’s surgery, could have the minute hand stopped or the second hand skipping. Waiting renders verbs useless. Sentences without verbs, like cutting a puppet’s strings. Nothing moves. On the contrary. In the waiting something is paused: the verbs are like ornaments. And the verb ‘wait’ looks very similar to a sofa. Oh, those big fluffy cushions.

  I bought a floor cleaner called Poet. Today I cleaned the kitchen with Poet. The apartment smells nice, if a bit sweet. Which is what you’d expect if you use poetry to do your housework, though the moment poets have the same task as disinfectant, something’s gone wrong. My mother, for example, would never buy a cleaning fluid called Poet; a product called Action would be more up her street. She’d see the word Poet as a nuisance, like some inherited furniture she’d have declared useless and thrown out long ago given half a chance. My mother would have got rid of poetry just like every summer she got rid of things she considered unusable from the cupboard my brother and I shared. Our choice of cleaning products shows how we’re different. I bought Poet, with the scent of wild flowers, because it seemed like the epitome of everything I hate most about poetry.

  A long conversation about Poet floor cleaner with Luis Felipe. He read me some verses that, in his opinion, are classics of the floor-cleaner genre. ‘This guy is like a Jehovah’s Witness of rhyme,’ he said. We reached the point where his laughter was making me laugh. Before hanging up, I told him how much I loved him.

  I think I end phone calls to my friends with a whiff of Poet.

  Insomnia. To slow my brain down I went to get the notebook. It wasn’t easy to find. I don’t know how it moved from the table where I thought I left it. Could the cat have done it from one of the little planets he visits in his sleep? Or has it acquired the same powers as the doughnut that slid across the plate? It was down the side of the armchair, under the cushion, where I also found one of Jonás’ socks. And maybe it had the effect of the skull on Hamlet: with the sock on my hand I thought that Jonás, even if he comes back from his trip, will never really come back. Sometimes I get tired of waiting. What am I waiting for? Am I waiting for Jonás to come home or am I waiting for him to share what’s going on? His journey to Spain has taken me on another journey. Twenty thousand leagues under the notebook, this journey I’m making from my chair while Jonás is away.

  I’m not sure I like you tonight, Jonás. It’s a good thing you’re not here. If you were here, I’d sleep on the sofa. I’m arguing with you even though you’re not here. What’s more, I’m still on the sofa.

  Have I said that my notebook is ideal, among other things, because I can use it as a coaster? To write this, I’ve had to put my morning coffee mug on the table. Since the table’s made of wood, the mug leaves white rings on it. There are various rings, like the ghosts of other times, other mugs.

  If I close the notebook and rest my mug of hot coffee on it, it will be doing one of its many jobs. The notebook is a bit like a freelancer. So I’ll stop writing. Ideally the notebook could show off all its functions at once.

  This afternoon, after a family lunch, I went for a walk. Between Calle Londres and Calle Lisboa – that mysterious intersection where I felt like I’d encountered my granddad and my brother – is the Wax Museum. A disconcerting place, a museum with nothing museum-like about it; it’s more like a cult of celebrity. Among the famous wax figures, I found Snow White and the seven dwarves. The dwarves came up to my knee. I was disappointed, they seemed too dwarf-like. In the art section I took a photo with Lautrec. The same height as the dwarf on the block, but less elegant.

  Tania told me about Catalina, an Italian art collector who lives in the Condesa neighbourhood. She came to Mexico City in the seventies. Apparently she has a castle in Italy, an apartment in New York and various other properties elsewhere, but the big house in Condesa is her base. She married a Mexican artist who died in the eighties, and after that she decided to stay in Mexico. ‘Most of all,’ said Tania, ‘she has pots of money and an eclectic collection, with a line that supports young artists. Rumour has it she’s short, partly because she’s shrunk with age and partly because she’s the product of an incestuous relationship between two Italian aristocrats. But I think it gives her character. Plus she’s a force of nature, she’ll be sitting in her Louis XV armchair – her feet don’t even touch the floor – and then all of a sudden she’ll hop down mid-sentence, ring a little bell and a maid will come along to show you out. “I’m fed up with you,” she’ll say to your face, and the maid will escort you to the door. She has the spirit of Alexander the Great, you know what I mean?’ I’d like to meet Catalina.

  I’ve been left with a psychological tic. Suddenly I’m scared of death. Suddenly I’m scared that I’ll lie down, go to sleep and everything will be over. I’m scared of the end. Suddenly I’m scared of the dark. Of that be
ing it, with no Shakira songs to wake me. I like being here so much that I don’t want it to end. The time will come, but I like being here. I want to be here. More than that, I love it. I don’t want to know when the end will come and I don’t want to know what tomorrow will bring because I love being here now. It’s strange: when I see things this clearly I stop being scared, because it’s this, this being here, this moment which is happening now, and which begins to fade as soon as I write anything, and which is luckily followed by this one, and this one, and then this other moment that’s as full of life as the next.

  Sometimes I sing while I’m doing the washing up. Sometimes I dance while I’m cooking, or in the living room while I’m sweeping the floor. If I put music on, I normally end up singing in the living room. Time to turn this song up, it’s so good.

  I saw a boy in the street wearing a Pinocchio T-shirt. I remembered the time in the Japanese restaurant when we talked about the origins of our names. You told me you saw Pinocchio with Marina and your mother in a cinema that doesn’t exist any more – the one with the façade like a castle, where my brother and I used to be taken as well, and which was knocked down to make way for a shopping mall. And I remember you saying your mother liked the name’s biblical history. ‘But how awful,’ you said, ‘to be trapped inside a big fish.’

  Is mourning like being trapped inside a big fish?

  Let’s read the Bible like it’s a horoscope for names. Let’s see, let’s see. Yahweh speaks to Jonah, tells him to go to Nineveh, a big city, to announce its impending destruction. Jonah doesn’t want to go. He runs away. He wants to go to Tarshish instead, to escape Yahweh. He gets onto a boat to travel far away. Tarshish is far away, it’s at the end of the world. Jonah, in the boat, wants to escape as far away as he can, and Tarshish seems like a good place to escape to. But Yahweh unleashes a storm at sea, so violent it looks like the ship might sink. Jonah is sound asleep, the sailors are afraid. From the storm and the rocking of the ship, they deduce that Jonah is running away from Yahweh and they blame him for the storm. They wake him up. How can they calm the sea’s rage? Jonah tells the sailors to throw him overboard: they do it and the waters settle. Yahweh makes a big fish swallow Jonah up. Inside the belly of the fish, Jonah realises he can’t escape. Jonah spends three days and three nights in the fish’s stomach. From the heart of the sea, he speaks to Yahweh. The deep closed around me, weeds were wrapped around my head, the earth closed behind me forever, says Jonah from the stomach of the big fish. Jonah repents and Yahweh orders the fish to vomit Jonah out.

  Can you swim?

  15

  Last night I went to a party in a big house. The Most Important Artist in Mexico showed up in a tiny Coca-Cola-coloured car. Every so often, his driver came in with bottles, food and other bits and pieces, which he placed decorously on the table. While the artist was talking to a woman in a sequinned dress, the driver passed him a little packet of cigarettes and something that, from where we were, looked like a yellow bath sponge. Guillermo, mezcal in hand, made up a conversation in which the artist convinced the woman how useful and how thoroughly appropriate it was to have a sponge at a party.

  And what if the three nights Jonah spends inside the big fish are the equivalent of three years? I hope not. The apartment feels too big for me when you’re not here, just like the days do.

  After our phone call, I think you might be having a better time. Less guilty, less anxious, less afraid. I hope you’ve calmed down a bit, I want to listen to you better. Before I go and have a shower, I can tell you that I wish you’d been at that party with Guillermo and me last night, but I don’t know what else I can tell you. Sometimes you trap me in these alleyways, and I don’t know how to get out.

  This afternoon I bought some earrings. Two swallows. I’m wearing them now, one swallow on each side.

  I’m listening to the end of the national anthem, during the National Hour, which is my favourite time on a Sunday. Although I don’t normally listen to this programme and I don’t know these verses, I’m not going to change it. Like when people used to think the world was flat and boats would fall off the edge into the abyss, it’s as if nothing comes after the final verses of the national anthem on a Sunday evening. My brother has a catchphrase for when he forgets something: ‘The maps!’ It comes from a moment one Sunday evening when he remembered he had to buy maps, or cardboard, or something like that from the stationer’s.

  There’s a strange verb in the national anthem. Here, under the microscope: osare . To dare in the future subjunctive, a verbal tense that’s now extinct, like the dodo. Those verbal contortions that used to exist and can now only be found in glass cabinets, displayed in songs from other eras like museum exhibits. At the same time, there are so many kinds of music, and so many new songs born every hour, that perhaps nine words are born into the world every day.

  Don’t ask how I got here, I don’t know how I got here, but when the film Snow White won an award, it wasn’t given one statue but seven miniature versions: one for each dwarf. Oh, I just love this limbo time on a Sunday evening. The seven days setting off into the distance in single file, whistling the same tune.

  I love listening to the radio, especially on Sundays. Just like in the street, there’s less traffic, less noise. Today they played a Beatles song I didn’t know, and I listened to it with my mother in the living room at home. Now I remember that Ana also liked The Beatles. I wonder if my mother and Ana stood in the same queue at the university library, if their paths crossed, if they exchanged the odd phrase, greeting or glance in their student days.

  While I was recovering, one night we talked about the music she listened to when she was younger. With some four or five groups, and perhaps a few other hits, my mother would have everything she needs to describe her youth. I remember her singing in the kitchen, making coffee, smoking a menthol cigarette. I remember her slipping out of tune now and then, happily singing away.

  I asked if she liked the song they played on the radio. Pushing her a little more, even though The Beatles are one of the buttons that switch her past on right away: ‘Oh, but that’s one of the most mediocre Beatles songs, sweetheart. No, I don’t like it at all. As I’ve said before, we had a portable record player because my dad didn’t let us use his, the one in the living room. I was five or six and I remember that whenever my brothers and sisters put a Beatles record on I’d bounce up and down on the armchairs – I’m talking about 1964, sweetheart – and when my brother turned up the volume I’d take my shoes off, throw the cushions in the air and dance until my mum came in and told us to calm down. I remember my parents talking at the dinner table about those “shaggy-haired” guys who came along to wreak havoc with their “noise”. My father called them Las Beatles instead of Los Beatles, that’s right, with the feminine article, because they had long hair and back then it was very eccentric to have long hair. You can imagine. Anyway, while my dad went on criticising them in the kitchen at home, The Beatles were really taking off. They were played on the radio more and more. I grew up listening to that music. When I was at secondary school, they were in a real hippy phase – this is the start of the seventies I’m talking about, when they recorded that famous album, Bangladesh. It was a really expensive record. Listen, I’ll tell you all about it. One time when I was bunking off school with my friends, we went to a shop called Hip 70 where they sold imported records – oh, Mexico City was completely different in those days, you’d be amazed if you could see La Telaraña, the clothes shop, or boutique, as they were called then, or our official menu of molletes and coffee in the VIPS in Altavista, or the bowling alley we went to, which is a supermarket now, but anyway, that shop stocked the precious record and we hid it in the hippie satchel my friend Hugo brought me back from Oaxaca, the one my mother found so embarrassing. We strolled nonchalantly out of the shop with the record in the satchel. There were six of us, we were in hysterics about having left with the record without anyone realising and we carried on to Hugo’s house to liste
n to our new acquisition. Yes, sweetheart, we stole it. But “Michelle” and “With a Little Help from My Friends” are my favourite songs because when I started going to parties with my sisters when I was fourteen, fifteen, your only chance of getting anywhere near the boy you liked was if he asked you to dance one of those slow songs “cheek to cheek”. And I thought “Michelle” was such a lovely song at that age. But my teenage years, as you know, were coloured by a lot of fraught moments and confrontations with my parents. We were always at odds; they couldn’t stand so many of the things I liked, you see. It was a different time, sweetheart, all those Catholic exiles struggling to uphold the morals of their large families. They hit me a fair bit and we had plenty of arguments, my mother and I most of all, and on top of that their generation just didn’t understand anything. I remember one afternoon perfectly, how I felt so understood and so loved, singing “With a Little Help from My Friends” with those six friends of mine at the age of sixteen, in my friend Hugo’s living room. So, you see, they pulled that song out of the hat to make money with the name of the group that meant everything to my generation. But it’s nothing like the classics we sang when we were sixteen.’

  I remember Jonás describing one of his last afternoons with his mother. She asked him to work out a Beatles song on the piano. Jonás isn’t good at working out music by ear. He told me they were listening to the same song over and over again until he could figure out the beginning. ‘Night fell. There was a power cut, it was a really weird moment. As if the electricity going was a sign that she’d be gone soon too. Yeah. I couldn’t see her, but I could hear her. She was lighting candles in the kitchen, humming the part that came next, the part I couldn’t work out on the piano, kind of helping me.’