Proceed With Caution

by Patricia Ratto

  Chinese Boy arrives today with his cabbage and a nosegay of jasmine. No sooner does he sit down than he asks me: Lavender? Lavender rushes over, perhaps attracted by hearing her name. No, I explain, jasmine. He sniffs the bouquet. Jasmine, he repeats, not lavender. Jasmine. Then he unfastens his cabbage, urging it on: Run, Jasmine, run, run, and he hands me the nosegay.

  Last night the girls begged and begged me to go with them to the club. I like to dance, but I can’t take too much of the club: the line to get in, the crowds. I ended up going anyway. I refused to dance; I just stood at the bar drinking something, and then I thought I saw my Chinese Boy, so I tried to make my way across the dance floor to find him, but he slipped away from me among the throng.

  The ritual repeats itself, maybe because we tend to repeat those things we like, the ones that do us good. I’m sitting, Chinese Boy is sitting, he smiles, I smile, he says hi, I say hi, he unleashes the cabbage, I unleash Lavender. As they play (I say “they play” and I’m suddenly taken aback by that plural form), he shows me photos of a family that I understand lives very far away: two brothers and a sister, all younger, mother, father, four grandparents. They all look alike, maybe because they’re Chinese. I wonder if the same thing happens to the Chinese when they see a photo of Argentines, if we all look the same to them. I also wonder if Chinese Boy isn’t desperately alone.

  Gastón insists that we get together, go out, talk again. I have absolutely no interest, but he persists, persists, persists till I give in. He asks me what I want to eat; I say sushi, he suggests a place, we meet there. The waiter comes over, we order. Forks or chopsticks? he asks us. Forks for both of us, Gastón says. No, I hurriedly correct him, chopsticks for me. The waiter walks away. Gastón regards me, perplexed. I shrug and don’t tell him that one day at the park, Chinese Boy taught me how to use them, artfully manipulating the two little branches and explaining to me that in ancient times, at the Chinese imperial palace, they used silver chopsticks to determine if there was poison in the royal meals. As we eat, Gastón talks, talks, talks; I bring the Chinese chopsticks to my mouth and see Chinese Boy naked and stretched across my wide bed with violet-colored sheets that smell like violets. Every so often I reply, make a comment, and then Gastón takes up his monologue again and leaves me alone, while Chinese Boy performs a special shadow puppet show against the wall, with a fierce wolf that turns into a lamb, a rabbit that runs and stands on its hind legs to contemplate the moon, two lovers kissing.

  Today Lavender is wearing barrettes with lavender bows and she looks lovely. She’s jumped on and off the bench so many times that you can tell she’s anxious, as if she’s waiting for Chinese Boy to play with his pet again. I glance at my watch: just a while longer and I’ll go, I tell myself. Then I think I hear shouts, and a few feet away from here I see Chinese Boy with his cabbage-on-a-leash, surrounded by adolescents in private high school uniforms who shout at him: Chinese fag, they bellow, laughing. Does it have a pedigree? taunts a girl with long blonde hair. Careful, it bites! another guy warns an older woman who steps off the sidewalk to avoid the commotion. Does it know karate? inquires yet another, assuming a karate expert pose and attempting a Chinese accent. Go to your doghouse! shouts someone else, kicking the cabbage, which, still connected to the leash, leaps into the air and falls back down onto the sidewalk. Chinese Boy doesn’t do anything: he doesn’t answer back, he doesn’t get angry, he doesn’t move, as if he were impervious or immune or absent. Seeing his lack of reaction, the kids get bored and go away. Chinese Boy remains there motionless, frozen. Lavender climbs onto my legs, taking me by surprise. I pet her; she sits and grows calm. Then I turn my head and see that Chinese Boy, fixed to the same spot, is looking in my direction. He raises one hand in the air as if to say everything’s all right; he waves, which I interpret as a goodbye; he turns on his heels, picks up the cabbage, sticks it under his arm, and leaves.

  Tonight there’s a dinner at Franca’s place; she’s just returned from Germany. Irene comes to pick me up and insists I bring Lavender along. I say no, they always make her nervous, I’d rather leave her in my apartment. We get there, I greet everyone, there are just a few of us, some of whom I see often, and others I haven’t seen in a while. Around one of the little living room tables, four strangers are playing Chinese checkers. Following a round of drinks, they serve sausages with sauerkraut. I play dumb, eat German bread and drink beer. I can’t swallow a bite; I can’t help thinking of Lavender and Jasmine on the platters, prepared and delivered by a chain of Chinese takeouts. An hour later, I’m back home with incurable nausea and an unbearable headache.

  Sunday, family lunch at mom’s house with some aunts and uncles who are visiting from Córdoba. I walk there, some fifteen blocks; I have time, and it’s a beautiful day. Along the way I buy mascarpone ice cream, my favorite flavor, chocolate for my uncle, raspberry for mom and my aunt. First we eat eggplant à la Napolitana, then spaghetti Bolognese. A very Mediterranean menu, my aunt says. Well, I say, almost everything, because really, I don’t know if you’re aware that noodles originally came from China, and the first historical reference to noodle dishes that we have were written during the Han Dynasty. Gulp! They stare at me without daring to say a word, till mom asks me to pass the bread basket.

  I’m sitting here with Lavender again, like yesterday, like the day before. But today, just when I’ve brought along a nosegay of lavender so that he’ll finally understand what it’s like, it seems Chinese Boy isn’t coming. Lavender runs after a pit bull; I’m terrified, but she begs me and begs me till I think she’s going to scratch my legs through my stockings, so I set her loose, and there she goes, pursuing the fearsome dog, who looks at her patiently, or compassionately, or lewdly. With my gaze lost among the trees in the background, I imagine Chinese Boy living behind the chipboard panels of some supermarket, sleeping on a mattress on the floor together with Chinese aunts, uncles, and cousins. No understand, no understand, says the Chinese owner of the supermarket around the corner from my building, where I sometimes buy cleaning products because Ivana told me that they’re cheaper there. When someone complains to the Chinese supermarket owner about something—spoiled milk, out-of-date cold cuts, moldy cheese, he spits the refrain No understand, no understand in their face, while the cashier, young and also Chinese, smiles uncomfortably and fixes her slanted eyes on the merchandise, on the bills, on the floor.

  I buy two Foo dog statues, replicas of the guard dogs at Buddha’s temple; I place one at each side of the front door. The male—who has a ball beneath his left paw—to the left of the door; the female—who has the ball beneath her right paw—to the right, to protect me from bad energy and bad people. Lavender growls at them a couple of times but finally accepts them. Just today, after three days of downpour, it’s stopped raining. In a while I’m going to take Lavender to the park, and while I’m at it, I’ll break in the sneakers mom gave me for my birthday. They’re a German brand, but they’re made in China.

  Chinese Boy hasn’t returned to the park. I scour the Internet for news about the mafia. Sometimes I imagine they put him on a horrible boat and sent him back to his country. Or that they punished him for running off to the park during work hours. Every once in a while I stop by the greengrocer’s and buy a cabbage for Lavender to play with. There are days when I’m sure I’m going to run into him at any moment, in the most unexpected place. Yesterday, at a second-hand bookstore, I bought a book written entirely in Chinese.

  RARA AVIS

  NOW, SITTING IN an evangelical church that he found open by accident in the middle of the night, he speculates that his life changed forever, perhaps by divine design, perhaps by a whim of fate, that day when, on his way home from the university, he crossed the park, backpack slung over his shoulder, taking a shortcut to get there faster. Suddenly the facts congeal at a point in his memory, which today, when he tries to retrieve them, makes them appear as a single event: hearing the plop of something falling straight down before his eyes; stopping in his trac
ks; looking down to discover, where the rounded tips of his sneakers ended, a thing sparsely covered by fine, brownish-gray feathers; lifting his eyes instinctively to find the place it came from and spotting a low-flying chimango; hearing the screech of the chimango and at the same time watching it ascend and circle over his own head; understanding that the thing at his feet was the chimango’s victim, and not knowing what to do till it opens one eye, and then seeing, for the first time, as if he himself had opened his eyes at that moment, the pinkness of a wound; redirecting his gaze upward and gesturing theatrically with his arms to drive the chimango away; seeing the chimango give up and leave; and then standing there alone before that thing, wounded and with one eye open, making him feel all the loneliness in the world; looking around because he doesn’t know what else to do; squatting to witness how, from the mass of its upwardly-stretched body, a head and a beak emerge, and two eyes that seem to brim over with terror; extending a hand to touch; feeling the warmth and trembling, the horrific confirmation that this thing is, indeed, alive, and that he ought to do something about it. Looking all around once more, not a soul anywhere, and it’s growing dark; deciding, at last, to pick up the animal, which, on being grasped from the back, extends a pair of very long legs; accommodating the creature in his left hand; feeling it curl up till it assumes the perfect shape of an egg; and walking, walking with that warm, throbbing thing, all the way home.

  Putting it in a box and beginning to think about what to do, how. Not knowing where to seek help, nor what sort of creature the thing is, which, on closer examination, seems to be a pigeon chick, gangly and rustic. Surfing the Internet and coming across a couple of videos that explain everything, or nearly everything. Realizing that he urgently needs to go out again, to the pharmacy seven blocks away, to buy baby cereal, a syringe to feed it, and iodine solution to clean the wound. Once more braving the cold—more intense now because it’s almost nighttime, walking, wondering why this thing had to fall from the sky, walking, arriving at the pharmacy, asking for the baby cereal and seeing how the clerk smiles at him the way you smile at a father who’s good to his son and who goes shopping for his wife, but he has no son, no wife, no girlfriend, no family, nothing but that creature; wondering why he hadn’t just left it where it fell so that the chimango might carry it off again; then asking for the syringe, and the iodine solution after that; and explaining, as if making excuses for himself, that it’s to feed and heal God-knows-what kind of a chick that he found in the park; the clerk looking at him indulgently, the way you look at an idiot who’s trying to revive some dumb bird; noticing that the clerk is pretty cute, but at that moment unable to summon any feeling but hatred toward her; forcing a goodbye, paying with the last of his money for the month; walking; and wondering what he’ll find when he gets home; weighing the possibility that he might find it dead; inexplicably hoping he won’t; picking up his pace; opening the front door; reaching the kitchen in two steps; peeking into the box and seeing it there; still vibrating, like the tuning fork he uses to tune his guitar. He goes back on the Internet, turns on the video and follows the instructions: first the iodine solution and a speck of cotton that he dips in it and gently swabs on the wound, wondering if it burns, and if in any case that burning isn’t life itself. Finally he prepares the food, places it in the syringe, opens the bird’s beak, introduces the paste little by little so that it won’t choke, taking care not to cover its nostrils, the creature’s round eyes as wide open as can be. And then a sleepless night, sleeping just a little; rising at dawn, running to check on it, watching it stand and secretly, internally, celebrating; going to the University so as not to give up the vices of the chronic student; returning home, eating something, drinking water because there’s no more juice or wine; feeding the creature, and giving it water, too; having a mate, then a sandwich for dinner, sleeping, getting up, going to check on it, feed it, rejoicing at its hunger and how its wound is healing, going to the University, getting home, eating—both he and the creature—playing the guitar, the creature spying over the edge of the box, then sleeping, getting up, going to check, taking it out of the box, watching it suddenly move, eat, shit, drink water, growing unbelievably fast, and suddenly thinking that what fell out of the sky is something like a ñandú, and one day shooing it out to the little square of grass on his tiny patio, drinking, eating, sleeping, shitting—he and the ever-expanding creature that looks more and more like a ñandú; noticing one day (but he’s already losing sight of which day it is) that a strange, hard thing is growing on its head, and one afternoon seeing some black feathers pop out, silky and fine as hairs, and noting that the protuberance on its head is turning into something like a bony crest, and beginning to imagine that it’s not a ñandú, that it has to be something else; and consulting with a veterinary student who says no, no idea, but he’ll try to find out; and getting up in the middle of the night, after a murky nightmare, and going over to the counter for a glass of water, looking out at the little patio, determining that the creature’s face and part of its neck are completely covered with minuscule rainbow-colored feathers, and standing there, staring, the creature, in turn, with its now enormous feet, staring right back at him. Becoming aware that by now it must come up to his knees, and realizing, after surfing the Internet, that what he has in his house is a cassowary, an Australian bird, huge and solitary, flightless and potentially very aggressive, with its sharp talons and rigid crest, even to the point of causing human deaths. Wondering again and again where that Australian cassowary might have come from, thrown to his feet by a chimango, in any case a local species; wondering, incidentally, why him, and beginning to doubt everything, the chimango, the entire episode, his memory, his eyes, which now contemplate the oversize creature, strange and lovely, curled up in one corner of the patio. And unable to feel fear or fright, but only sorrow for it, a cold, blue sorrow; deciding then to find a more appropriate home for it, asking here and there, taking it to a neighbor’s farm, but it doesn’t last long there, having kicked against the wire fence with its talons and frightened the dogs, the chickens. Discovering, when they return it to him, that the creature recognizes him, producing very strange, but friendly, sounds—as if communicating with one of its own—and lies down at his feet. Receiving offers, then, from people who want to buy it, fearing the intentions of some of those people, finding out that there’s a vedette in Buenos Aires who wants to make herself an outfit from the exotic plumage of his cassowary, seeing it plucked alive, to prevent its plumes from losing their shine and to allow for the possibility of their growing back; becoming aware, also, of clandestine animal fights, fights to the death, on the outskirts of the city, and feeling nausea and disgust at the mere idea of having saved the creature just to hand it over to its death or to a hellish life in exchange for a few pesos; trying to get in touch with environmental associations to return the cassowary to its habitat, but finding it too expensive and impractical; allowing it to enter the apartment, so as not to confine it to the territorial meagerness of his patio; knowing that this decision is like resigning himself to chaos and the unforeseen; sharing spaces, being invaded, becoming even more disorganized than he was before; looking it in the eye one day and realizing that things can’t go on like this and once again not knowing what to do. Finding himself one afternoon in the midst of his turmoil, peeling an orange and hearing a gut-wrenching screech coming from the patio and going outside just like that: startled, with a half-peeled orange in one hand and a knife in the other; seeing it come toward him, and suddenly, without knowing how, understanding that the knife blade has disappeared and lodged itself in the dense black plumage beneath its maw; detecting a bit of blood spurting out; suddenly managing to kneel and receive the cassowary’s head, which falls, like an offering, against his chest, the serene eyes fixed on him, and all the turquoise of the head and neck feathers spilling over his hands.

  When he looks backward, that is what he can see: a living thing, which turned out to be a cassowary, falling on him from t
he sky, and he, no longer knowing where to go, now sitting in that church, hearing a talk about the end of the world, his hands tinted a blazing, iridescent turquoise that he hasn’t been able to remove, no matter how hard he’s tried.

  NEKO CAFÉ

  SUDDENLY I STOP, my bicycle between my legs, my feet resting on the sidewalk, in order to look through the window of the Neko Café. A blonde server waits on a couple sitting beside a cat on one of the long sofas in the place. The boy, his body tilted slightly forward, pronounces a phrase that I can’t quite hear because of the distance, the thick glass that stands between them and me, and also because of the incessant noise of cars in the street, but no doubt he’s ordering coffee for both of them and something for the cat. The girlfriend leans against the back of the sofa and caresses the enormous animal, fascinated: she runs her fingers through its soft fur, both of them with eyes half-closed; you can tell that both the animal and the woman are enjoying it. The cat is a Ragdoll, characterized by its extremely docile character. I’ve always been a big fan of cats, curious about the various breeds, which I’ve read about, and still do, all the time.

  When the server turns toward the counter to relay the orders, I can see her better, her long, long, slender white legs, the very short, naturally blonde hair with bangs swept to one side and one delicate lock tinted green. She’s not Japanese, nor is she some casual tourist, most likely a traveler who has decided to stick around here for a while. Following her, with its tail raised high and probably meowing, is what I take to be a Havana Brown, an exquisite cat, slender and dark, hard to find except in photos; actually I can’t get over my astonishment at having it just a few meters away from me. I’ve never been able to have a cat; to have a cat in Tokyo you practically need to be rich; there’s no space in this city, rental units are tiny and hard to keep up, which is why people come to places like this or else buy stuffed animals in the form of cats and become obsessed with recognizing cat breeds. There’s not much time, either: people spend most of the day rushing from one place to another, working, eating, bathing, sleeping; it’s costly to live here, and exhausting.