The Girl at the Door

by Veronica Raimo

  It might seem strange to say it, but I felt too fulfilled in Miden. As I walked around the room, I thought about everything that had seemed only a mirage inside the tent that long gone summer: learning another language, living together, leaving my country. I felt as if I’d stopped falling short. I was learning another language, living with my boyfriend. I’d left my country. I was even expecting a child. I could start fantasising about his future, and one day even that would fulfil me. It wasn’t important that I’d turned over the responsibility of packing the bags to my boyfriend; at some point they would be ready, I would hoist the backpack over my shoulder, head for the airport, take a plane, and return. My anxiety in the hairstylist’s chair, that loneliness of mine, would have worn thin. I would have felt lonely all the same, dissatisfied with myself, but in a different way. The house’s shadow reminded me of everything I would no longer be, the greyish darkness of indecision, night’s threshold, with the birds already awake.

  Him

  The loudspeakers started blasting the sound of barking dogs. My girlfriend and I had forgotten about the drill. She was underneath me, biting her hand like she was about to have an orgasm. She didn’t always do this, only if she was about to have a particularly intense orgasm and was trying to get the most pleasure out of the sense of anticipation. Or at least that’s what I thought. It’s not easy to gauge another person’s pleasure from the outside. Not easy, but gratifying. That night, however, I knew she was biting her hand because the tension was real, a turbulence that made us vulnerable, plundering each other’s bodies as if conquering territory. It was unexpected sex. She woke me up and held my arm tight (‘It’s the part of you I like best,’ she said to me in the beginning. ‘You’re objectifying me,’ I responded), and she looked at me with free and sincere abandon.

  When the barking dogs started, we both burst out laughing. The tension was transformed into a sweet release, a gentle mist of unexpressed pleasure.

  ‘Fuck, they’re right to throw you out of here,’ she told me, joking. ‘You can’t even remember the basic rules …’

  The basic rules called for remembering the earthquake drills, but in any case she had forgotten them too. The barking dogs went on for a few minutes, so we put on our underwear. She took my T-shirt and went to crouch under the table.

  ‘What about me?’ I asked.

  ‘Stay bare-chested, I want to look at you.’

  I obeyed. We stayed under the table simulating a fear we had to control, the way they taught us in training. My girlfriend started licking my neck.

  ‘You can’t do that,’ I said.

  ‘I’m doing it,’ she said, and kept licking me. I slipped my hand into her knickers. She was still wet.

  It was strangely exciting to think of the Miden inhabitants crouched under tables, waiting for the second alarm. It seemed impossible that they were all following the security instructions, but even my girlfriend and I hunkered down under the table, both of us simmering to some extent. I imagined a far-off orgy, lots of people who would copulate at X hour, expansive moans together with the recorded sounds of dogs. Actually, the best idea was that of an orgy that didn’t foresee copulation, only the increase of excitement in anticipation of an alarm that would never come. Endless moans under all of Miden’s tables. Forever. And no one to watch, no one to control, only the imaginary divinity who had choreographed that nocturnal earthquake drill so he could see his devoted herd panting with pleasure. I was elaborating my cosmic desire for crouching men and women when it suddenly occurred to me that there should also be children. The fantasy rapidly dissolved. To compensate, I felt my girlfriend’s pussy getting wet on my fingers, and my dick regaining its splendid erection. I moved her head closer to my dick, and she began sucking it. Then she sat up with a start.

  ‘Are you afraid, my love?’ she asked.

  ‘Be quiet and keep going.’ She went back down on my cock, and the second alarm sounded. She bit my arm and ran outside. I lost some seconds looking for another T-shirt while the alarm grew louder and louder. I was also looking for a pair of trousers to cover my erection, but someone knocked at the door, kindly reminding me that my life was in danger. Fortunately, the T-shirt was long enough.

  When I went outside, there were a bunch of people in the streets. Children were running around, having fun, as if they had all been looking forward to waking up in the middle of the night for an earthquake drill. They were used to that kind of exercise during the day, at school, but in the dark it was an adventure. They moved frenetically through the street, their suitcases ready, eager to show their parents how independent they could be – men and women in miniature who simulated our own simulated feelings: anxiety, fear, solidarity. There were helpers who handed out coffee in thermoses, and a coordinator who updated us on the next steps. But in reality we didn’t have to do much except wait for the alarm to die down, so all the coordinator did was calm us down with his mellow radio voice. My girlfriend and I were the only ones in our underwear. It was cold. She started shivering next to me, embarrassed by her semi-nudity. A little girl put her suitcase on the ground (we had even forgotten to take our emergency luggage – which everyone was required to have ready in case of emergency, but the fact was that our emergency luggage had been taken apart to pack bags for our departure) and took off her red windcheater. She hesitated for a few seconds, unsure whether to wait for a sign of approval from her mother, then decided it was time for an adult decision. She approached my girlfriend.

  ‘For the boy, or girl,’ she said, trying to position the red jacket over my girlfriend’s belly.

  Her

  The verdict came in the midst of a beautiful storm. My boyfriend and I had opened the envelope over breakfast. We weren’t surprised. He was the Perpetrator. I was his partner. He had two weeks to leave Miden, his expenses covered by the community. But the courtesy was wasted, we’d already bought our tickets. We’d be leaving in five days. I’d read the weather forecast. The storm would last till the following day, then the weather would be overcast but without any showers, and we would leave Miden under relatively clear skies. We took everything out of the fridge. My boyfriend cooked omelettes and served them on a tray with fluorescent strawberries. He went to make coffee. We opened the windows wide to let the rain in. The mug fell from my hands due to what I could only describe as a perfect unhappiness.

  Him

  Anguish can resemble calm, a terror so fatal that you appear serene to those beside you, a dead and peaceful man. I couldn’t feel my heartbeat when I opened the envelope with the verdict. I couldn’t feel my breath. Sure, I was expecting that outcome. Rationally, statistically. I was expecting it up until a second before, an instant before, an infinitesimal that slackens time into an era before the Word. Then came the words. When I read the words, I felt my heart beating again and my heavy morning breath. I abandoned my mineral state. I was able to ingest nutritive substances. I smiled at my girlfriend. ‘I’m a Perpetrator,’ I said.

  I looked for an object to hurl against the wall, but my urge was weak. I flipped the porcupine sculpture over; it fell to the floor and a few quills broke off. My girlfriend leaned over to gather them and pricked her finger.

  Other words came to me in those days. Telephone calls from those who had voted against my expulsion, people who vented with me and considered the verdict a glitch in the system. They expressed indignation and trust in me. You can have another trial, they told me. They elaborated strategies for the near future, a future that would reach me in absentia. I listened to everything. I nodded. My voice was calm. I was a calm man. The Miden sky began to clear after the storm.

  I thought of passing by the Academy to say goodbye to my students, but I didn’t want them to feel uncomfortable. I fantasised film scenarios, a heroic welcome, a revolt in the name of the professor who fell from another world. But I’d never been that way. I was a professor like many. I had only done my duty, then made a mistake. At that point
I hoped that they would quickly forget me, that I would stay with them like an autumn from their youth. The memory of a strange November, not much more. And only now that my status had passed from professor to Perpetrator did I realise that language created reality. I was inside that reality. I had raped a girl. I had loved a girl and raped her. Until that moment I didn’t even consider it a possibility. All the anger of the last few days slid away, all the rage that had kept me alive. I was a calm man. I was a man so calm I was finally dead.

  Her

  We left Miden on a day perfect for arriving. The sky’s luminescence glared like the overexposed background of a photo; my boyfriend’s profile stood out against it like a bird in flight – a clear-cut sign that marked the presence of life in that divine white. That’s how creation must have been: the light bracing itself with elements, a geometry taking shape. Then came the gigantic quartzes, the monoliths of a cult we had taken too lightly.

  The wind from the open car window tousled my hair and I thought of my grey strands, like fugitives discovered in their shelter behind my ears. If my boyfriend had turned to me, he would not have seen a girl with her hair in the wind, but a woman going grey at his side. I squeezed his thigh tight at that thought. He grabbed my wrist and hit the gas as if he wanted to shorten the distance that separated us from the future.

  Here we are.

  Those were the words unuttered inside that car. The words unuttered for days. I put on sunglasses to protect myself against Miden’s supernatural light.

  ‘Does the wind bother you?’ my boyfriend asked. ‘You want me to roll up the window?’

  I smiled at him. It was no bother at all. It was pure, limpid air. Pure, limpid pain. With sunglasses it was more bearable. Things melded together; the gigantic quartzes became suffused with a pinkish patina, a clumsy colour correction. I chose those glasses intentionally for their warm tones. They made the landscape look artificial, and I could bear the artificial. It was all I could still manage to bear. Soon I’d start dyeing my hair and the wind wouldn’t reveal the grey of my age. These things reassured me, imagining other versions of myself. Going back to buying tight-fitting dresses again, dabbling with eyeshadow, even foundation, me who never used makeup. I don’t know, I’d make something up.

  Here we are.

  At the airport this time, I had a proper backpack, an enviable backpack. How beautiful! Where did you get it? they’d ask me when I got back. Eh, in Miden! But eventually the envy would die down. I’ve never been an envied woman, I don’t have the right bearing. I didn’t have my wheelie suitcase, so no one plugged their ears. No wheels, nothing to pull, only the sound of steps. A dignified thing.

  Here we are.

  There was a group of kids at the check-in. My boyfriend froze. They were there for him. They had come to say goodbye. I gave him a pat on the back. ‘Isn’t that nice?’ I said. And there I was again, envying someone. He was so caught up in the emotion that he didn’t answer. He was happy in his embarrassment, a little boy who sees a pussy for the first time. ‘That was nice, wasn’t it?’ I insisted. My boyfriend seemed bothered by my maternal tone. ‘Yeah … yeah,’ he muttered. I felt that my presence was making him nervous. I could understand. He never let me participate in his relationships with his students, but the Miden community certainly did, in the most violent way possible. Maybe part of his discretion was the fruit of my apparent lack of interest. I never asked him questions about his lessons, I mixed up the kids’ names and faces, I tended to dismiss his anxieties about giving a lower grade than he would have liked. One time he wouldn’t touch any food because of that anxiety, and that night he couldn’t fall asleep. We wound up fighting, probably because I was too sleepy to indulge his torments. When I had the chance to take part in an event organised by the Academy, I stayed in a corner, bored, drinking glasses of bad wine and looking at the young girls’ muscular calves. Some of the male students were fun, a few of them I would have taken to bed with me. That was the most I’d confided to my boyfriend. Little quips about me, about him. Homespun orgy fantasies. I never took his role as professor too seriously. Or maybe I took it so seriously that I felt inhibited, excluded from everything that had to do with his academic life. I felt sorry in that moment. I thought back to the argument when I kicked him out of bed just so I could sleep. That was long before I became an insomniac. I could still apologise. I could still become a better girlfriend, a better wife. The idea of having to remedy something consoled me, moored me. I could return to my country with good intentions. What I could never fix were my failings with respect to Miden. The orange poncho abandoned on the floor of the house, the creatures buried underground with the wheelie suitcase, the missed appointment with the Organic Pesticides Commission. Feeling continually uprooted had absolved me on many occasions. I thought of the past solely to glorify my sense of exile. I didn’t know if I would feel like an exile back in my own country. I knew that the poncho, the moles, and the organic pesticides were only a pretext, because there was something much graver for which I couldn’t manage to forgive myself: my hatred for the girl. I could become a better girlfriend, but life would never give me any respite from that hatred. That feeling was still there, intact, till the end; the girl had turned me into a rapist’s girlfriend. We started walking towards the check-in where the students were, and I took my boyfriend by the hand, felt him recoil from my grip. He turned towards me. ‘You want to go ahead?’ he asked. ‘I’ll say goodbye to them, then join you …’

  Him

  The flight landed thirty-seven minutes late. I noticed because I was thirty-seven years old. I think that’s when my madness started; once the first coincidence was established, everything became a sign. The airport in our country had gained a considerable reputation for dysfunctionality; political battles were fought over the issue. How could the contemporary world accept us with such a shoddy visiting card. It was an area that lent itself well to rhetoric. It allowed for the conjugation of a social ideal with more seductive abstractions: imagining the future, migratory flows, the need to empower the proliferation of non-places. I think there were further cuts and layoffs after the Crash, but on the day of my arrival, the absence of personnel was offset by the absence of travellers. The half-deserted airport highlighted every gesture of those who were there. I sensed that I wasn’t the only one to seem busier than necessary, unscrewing water bottle caps, rolling cigarettes to smoke outside, tying shoelaces tighter, checking the conveyer belt display with the absorbed gaze of someone reading a newspaper who is aware of being observed. My flight’s luggage was on conveyor belt number nine. Another unequivocal sign. It was the same number as the row of my seat on the aeroplane. The bags were strangely on time. It was the first time that had happened to me at that airport. I couldn’t express my unspeakable surprise because my mind was engaged in a further thought: How should I interpret the brevity of that wait – or rather, the total absence of any wait – between the landing and the activation of the conveyor belt? Were they keeping me from thinking? Were they deliberately subtracting the time I would have to formulate hypotheses? The signs multiplied; the meanings became more obscure. Surely it could not have been chance – the fact that my bag was the first to come out while my girlfriend’s bag was the last. I felt sorry, and she would have felt sorry too, because when her backpack was finally spat out of the conveyor belt’s mouth, there was no one to admire it. Her beautiful, compact, essential backpack. The backpack I had prepared for her, carefully choosing the clothes I wanted to see her wearing, the books I wanted her to read, the cap with the pom-pom meant to embody our future melancholy. The backpack made its solitary and circular journey, then returned to the mouth, came back out, then in and out again. Who knows if she had pictured this scene. I suspected she’d planned it, and a part of me applauded her theatrical flair. Making the decision after checking in her luggage, leaving me there to watch the perpetual motion of her backpack on the conveyor belt. I was practically alone in front of an u
roboros. It was a sight even more powerful than her empty seat on the aeroplane. I yelled like a madman when the flight attendant with her practised gestures closed the plane’s hatch. ‘There’s a passenger missing!’ ‘Calm down, sir.’ ‘Open the fucking plane!’ ‘Sir, please sit down. We are about to take off.’ Two people escorted me back to my seat. Very softly, thoughtfully. ‘Sir, please sit down and fasten your seat belt.’

  The other passengers started to get agitated. They were tourists; my face didn’t mean anything to them. I was just some crazy person on their flight. They may have been worried about violence, but they couldn’t imagine what I had left behind.

  ‘Let me off!’ I shouted, grabbing one of the attendants. One young man unfastened his belt to intervene. The attendant gestured for him to go back to his seat. She never lost her smile. Not even when her lips came close to my ear, her breath fresh from a just-sucked mint. ‘I’m sorry, you can’t get off. You are no longer welcome in Miden.’