RELATIVES AND STRANGERS
DELIVERY
Midwives are complaining that men are infiltrating the Obstetrics ward. The Hospital management characterizes the situation as “an isolated incident”.
Midwives are complaining that men are infiltrating the Obstetrics ward. The Hospital management characterizes the situation as “an isolated incident”.
4 FEBRUARY 2003
AND IT WAS TRUE that the light came in fragmented and warm through the windows, or rather, let’s be frank and call them slits in the walls, and there was something more urgent than beauty, a new beauty, in the simple strength with which the light filled the room in the clinic, in the way it rewarded us, welcome, it announced, all this clarity is just because, and there was a violent sweetness about that other way of feeling myself a man, I was yelling, my wife gripped my wrists and steered me like a bicycle and I ran, I realized I could ask her for help, why shouldn’t we share this pain too, I thought, and those nurses with quivering breasts, Doctor Riquelme’s white, serious face, the sheets rough with time, the pillow with different layers of perfume and sweat-soaked, my wife whispering in my ear, all of them helping me to be strong, to ask for them to rally round me because a tunnel was rushing along inside me, a miraculous haste was robbing me of my breath and giving me another, two breaths, that’s it, my love, that’s it, breathe the air out slowly, my wife’s contracted lips called me, that’s it, that’s it, she shouted that night in the moist darkness of that hotel heaven-knows-where that suddenly saved us, we’ve rediscovered our innocence, she whispered to me afterwards, joined at the shoulders like Siamese twins, that’s it, invade me, she shouted, and I no longer knew who was inside whom, it’s hard for men to love, it’s a risk being the first to feel emotion, to leap into the void without knowing what the reply will be, or where the bicycle is headed, being loved is different, they contemplate us, all comfortable and frozen, in the third person, she loves me, and a third person was precisely what was going to gestate from that night on like a microscopic spider’s web, that’s it, go on, invade me, and at last I could say to her, for once in this fucking life, that I loved her beyond all bounds and the rest did not matter, including her reply, and it was so strange to give oneself, take me, I said to her, and she gave me the mirror of her belly and the anchor of her tongue and her raised thighs but no, I was the one who said take me, letting myself be stirred by the oar of the night, we’ve rediscovered our innocence, she told me, with her shoulder sunk in my shoulder, and it was true that the light came in timid, fragmented under the door like a faint, slightly orange intruder, possibly day was dawning, and then it turned out it was time, they dressed me slowly, observed me in silence, the nurses put on tight rubber gloves as though to preside over a sacrifice, the hour has come, sir, one of the nurses announced, and that word hour hung playfully from one of her nipples down the unexpected channel of her coat, and that nipple was an O, the aureole of the hour of life, we’ve rediscovered our innocence, she had said, and her gesture of consecrated pleasure was the gesture of a woman to come, as if she already knew, and she embraced me like no one had ever done before, I’m so happy, I said, and felt ashamed, then I felt happy at that sense of shame, of that shudder that reached to the tips of my toes, and she kissed me, she kissed my feet and I was very small and was learning to walk, like when she tried to teach me to dance and I was unwilling, you waddle like a duck, she said with a laugh, come on, come and dance, moving around like that is ridiculous, I replied, or I didn’t reply but said it to myself and left her to dance alone, that’s how men without a bike do drink, look at me, clinging to the bar with my exam face and my spilt heart, sir, the hour has come, and at that moment I thought that what I wanted most of all was to teach my son to walk, don’t be scared, I would tell him, this is our music and this is your body, you’ll have to explain to your mother that you’re dancing with me because she’s not going to believe you, come on, my love, move, make more of an effort, at first it was all so slow, the web was growing minutely and seemed to feed off me in exchange for the joy of all the promises, it was all so slow then, and now all of a sudden come on, push hard, my love, push, that was what she said that night of darkness we could touch in that hotel heavens-knows-where that saved us, and I found a canal that climbed her belly and we were filled with a white, thick light, she shouted my name, we both shouted, what are you going to call him? said Doctor Riquelme, trying to distract our attention when he saw how we were suffering or how afraid I was, we haven’t thought of one, replied my wife, we weren’t even sure if it was going to be a boy or a girl, she added, even though she had shown no hesitation over what name to say at the end of the tunnel that opened before us that night, she said my name, as though she was baptizing me, as though up until that moment I had used an assumed name, as though I had not deserved my name until that woman pronounced it differently, we have rediscovered our innocence, she said, lighting a cigarette which also lit the soft night and my heart in the darkness, but not for the pleasure, which is of course redeeming, not so much for the pleasure but for the truth, that canal, I realized, had touched bottom and had bent back on itself to return complete, brimming with two, filled with light, to my own belly, even as far as my astonished chest, someone had given me air, it wasn’t my usual, it was a shared air, one breath inside another, come on, my love, push, you’re nearly there, and the nurses holding my thighs were also breathing deeply, and Doctor Riquelme’s white-speckled nose was twitching, let’s be frank, an ugly nose, go on raise your head, sir, and it will be easier for you, he said, and my furrowed abdomen, germinating, and a tiny shaft of sunlight scratching at the very centre of my skin, the way her unpainted nails scratched me, all the way in, my love, she cried to me that night, and was crying to me now in the unpainted room, perfumed with that somewhat guilty furtiveness hospitals have, nearly there, sir, digging her nails into me, and our voices merged, and it was clear that life is more or less love in tandem, that doesn’t exist for its own sake, what is life if there aren’t two wills entwined and a shared pain, it was pulling me apart, the light was pulling me apart and also that night the sheets fell away and it was a different perfume, less furtive, proud, free of guilt, this is who we are and these are our smells, what will be my son’s smell? will he smell above all of the bemused, sticky cream with which this first life delivers us? will he slide happily or rather disconcerted down the toboggan of time? will he accept me? will I be worthy of his beginning? what to do with all the meanness and cruelty we drag with us when we give life to a child, when a child gives us light, how do we feel that in spite of everything we deserve another start? but we will have to offer him that too, all that cruelty and meanness, they are ours and so will be his, we’ve rediscovered innocence, she said, offering me the half-smoked cigarette so that I could also participate in that secret smoke which was taking shape in our bellies, at first in hers, filled by my entering, then in mine, opening up canals, this is how you will be, son, listen, as clean as this light, as dirty as these windows, let’s call them slits in the wall, and you’ll bring me health and we’ll learn together to speak in that tongue that is insufficient, more than ever insufficient now to say to you, come on, let’s dance, get to your feet and walk in me, let’s get on our bikes, here’s the world for you, son, clean and cruel, fragrant and rotten, sincere and deceiving, give it to me new, come on, run, come on, quickly, my wife groaned as if until that moment we had lived as mutes, repeating my name like a discovery, come on, quickly, my love, a little further, take a deep breath, open your legs nice and wide, don’t be afraid, just a little more, sir, the nurse insisted, and the effort of giving was starting to break me, to demand so much of me that I admit I doubted, I thought I couldn’t do it, that I was defeated, and all paths led to that instant, fragmented memories, unspoken words, coincidences, weapons seized, places, lies, a few moments of candour, every angle of time converged on the small axis of my taut belly, strangely round, and then descended to my reddened sex which vibrated pointing towards the ceiling of the room in the clinic just as it had pointed to the ancient ceiling fan in that hotel heavens-knows-where that we re-encountered one another in, me entering her, her coming into me, almost there, my love, don’t stop, and it was my entire body and a balloon of crushed light that were going to explode, a dual abyss I wanted to cross as quickly as possible and at the same time remain watching as I fell, contemplating the river churning white and thick below, beneath my body she ran looking for a way out, I can’t hold on, finish me, my love, let’s put an end to this, I’m collapsing, I can’t bear it anymore, I shouted, calling to her for help and so creating a new fortress, are you afraid? she suddenly asked me during a pause when we were getting our breath back, yes, I’m very scared, I’m so scared I’m even scared of losing the ability to speak along with everything else, do you understand, yes, my love, Doctor Riquelme said push, yes, I understand, that’s why we’re alive, because we’re afraid, and the fearful man I was could push once more against the pain that was pulling inwards, that hid its head, and Doctor Riquelme eased my wife aside and looked me in the eye and said we can’t hang on much longer, push harder, don’t give up, and with his gloved hand he took hold of my swollen sex and gripped it, spreading his fingers and squeezing all the way with unexpected ease, as if there was nothing in between except air, I shouted, I shouted the doctor’s name and my name, and my wife’s name and some other name, and then I understood that this would be my son’s name, that I had just called out to him, come on, son, come on, my father used to shout, trying to teach me to shoot on summer afternoons, take this shotgun, come on, I’m going to teach you properly so that nobody will ever hurt you, you see that tin can over there? yes, go on, fire at it, go on, my love, push a little more I can see him, and I closed my eyes, I didn’t want to see how that bullet shot out on its path to destiny, and pierced the tin we had placed among the branches, my father smiled, I’m very happy, I shouted with my wife’s voice which repeated I’m happy with my stolen voice, just a moment, the doctor instructed one of the nurses, just a moment, I said, looking at my father’s smiling face with his shotgun slung over his shoulder, just a moment, and then I saw it was smoking, that his big shotgun was smoking the same as mine and I saw the beer can with the impeccable hole right in its centre and I wasn’t sure, I could barely lift the gun but the bullet had sped straight towards the tin and my father was smiling mischievously and stroking my head, and the nurse stretched the opening on my glans, a perfect, warm hole in the centre of the tin can, almost like a navel, my sex stood up and then fell back beneath my navel and I understood that pain was another habit, that in pain a hint of pleasure is also beating as it is split into two halves so that a nameless love can flourish, there, it’s there, and the wound her unpainted nails made at my wrists was a blessing, and night enveloped my wife’s blurred mouth, crying out, come on, and the bed turned to water and we were sinking, I love you so much, so meanly, and as I was passing out I felt how one of the young nurse’s triangular breasts brushed against my leg leaving a furrow of white, nourishing light on my thigh, and my loins gave a start and were recast in another, redder flower, in a flower with the petals pulled off, and that was the last thing I saw because all of a sudden the torrent swept me away, it had been so beautiful, so cruel, to carry him inside me like someone hiding a secret that little by little has to be shared, he’s coming out, he’s coming out, to have him weaving strands along my inner walls, perhaps brush his fingers through the membrane, listen to his submarine complaints, his impatient diving, his kicks against the world, you see, that’s how they treat you, son, said my father on the day of my first fight, always with a few kicks, and my mother said be quiet, let him be, and my father replied what do you know, the boy must know what the world is like, that’s how they will always treat you, but perhaps those kicks in the stomach, I think, were the first steps of a future timid man who would like to learn to dance, to be strong in a different way like that urgent beauty pouring in through the windows, let’s call them slits in the walls of the clinic, move, sir, move, son, you’ll see what a great place this is to dance in, of course there are also shotguns and kicks, you’ll see that later on, but for now give yourself, offer your mouth to the air, feel your mother clasping our wrist to go with us to see fear, that sweet cliff, she has worked so hard, son, while you were spinning yourself, while you made me a man turning and turning between my heart and lungs, now it really is time, take a deep breath, and something also slid out of my sphincter, something like a smooth streamer, I had nothing else in me, I was emptying myself, and so for a while I was still, dead, enormous, with all my entrails and life hanging in the air until yes, my member exploded amid the knots of sheets, more so even than when we opened the canal that night, more than the morning exploding in at the window, or a shotgun claiming to defend itself by firing first, Doctor Riquelme took his hand away, dazzled by the flood of light and the festival of cries and the concert of blood which resounded like an organ throughout the room over to where my wife was telling us, we have abandoned innocence, and a sobbing that did not come from us stirred the sheets, the pain, the membranes, the walls, going through everything only to surge from the channel of my veins to brush against the expectant bulk of my testicles and spill into Doctor Riquelme’s hands, who looks at him and looks at me and understands that this child is the same one I will be, the one I have not yet been, the one I could not be, and that it is my face, identical and different and that I have just given birth to myself, and that is why the woman I loved and who loved me to the depths of a quickening night is crying with me, today or tomorrow, embracing the nurses.
A MOTHER AGO
I ENTERED THE HOSPITAL filled with hatred and wanting to give thanks. How fragile is anger. We could shout, hit or spit at a stranger. The same person whom, depending on their verdict, depending on whether they tell us what we are desperate to hear, we would suddenly admire, embrace, swear loyalty to. And that love would be a sincere one.
I went in not thinking anything, thinking about not thinking. I knew my mother’s present, my future, depended on the toss of a coin. And that that coin wasn’t in my hands, perhaps it was in nobody’s, not even those of the doctor. I have always thought that the absence of god relieves us of an intolerable burden. Yet more than once, when going in or out of a hospital, I have longed for divine mercy. Multitudinous, full of seats, corridors, hierarchies and rituals of hope, silent on their upper floors, hospitals are the closest thing to a cathedral we unbelievers can step into.
I went in trying to avoid this line of reasoning, because I feared I would end up praying like a hypocrite. I offered my arm to my mother, who had so often given me hers when the world was very big and my legs very short. Is it possible to shrink overnight? Can someone’s body turn into a sponge which, impregnated with fears, gains in density while losing volume? My mother seemed smaller, thinner, and yet more weighed down than before, as though prone on the floor. Her porous hand closed around mine. I imagined a little boy in a bathtub, naked, expectant, clutching a sponge. And I wanted to say something to my mother, and I didn’t know how to speak.
The proximity of death squeezes us in such a way that we might be capable of losing our convictions, of letting them ooze out like a liquid. Is that necessarily a weakness? Perhaps it is a final strength: to arrive somewhere we never expected to arrive. Death multiplies our attention. It wakes us twice. The first night I spent with my mother when they admitted her to hospital, or when she admitted herself to an area within herself, I confirmed a suspicion: some kinds of love cannot be requited. However much a child recompenses his parents, there will always remain a debt, shivering with cold. I have heard it said, I have said it myself, that no one asks to be born. But being born through another’s will is more of a commitment: someone has given us a gift. A gift which, as is customary, we didn’t ask for. The only coherent way of refusing it would be to kill oneself on the spot, without a word of complaint. And no one accompanying their stumbling mother, their shrunken mother to the hospital, would think of taking their own life. The life she gave them.
What was my mother’s illness? It doesn’t matter. It is the least important thing. It is out of focus. An illness that made her walk like a little girl, draw closer step by step to the ungainly creature she had been at the beginning of time. She confused the name and functions of her fingers as in an indecipherable game. She mixed up her words. She couldn’t walk straight. She bent over like a tree that mistrusts its branches.
We entered the hospital, we never finished going into it, the threshold was another country, a border within a border, and we were coming into the hospital, and someone tossed a coin, and the coin dropped. It is so basic that your reason loses the thread. An illness has its stages, its precedents, its causes. The drop of a coin, however, has no history or nuances. It is an event that burns itself out, that determines itself. Memory can suspend the coin, slow its ascent, recreate the tiny waverings during its trajectory. But those ruses are only possible after it has dropped. The original movement, the coin’s flight, belongs in an absolute present. And no one, I know that now, is capable of speculating while they watch a coin drop.
The sponge, she said, the sponge a bit higher, my mother said, sitting in the bathtub in her room. Higher, yes, the sponge, she urged me, and I was struck by the effort she had had to make to utter that simple phrase. And I rubbed her back with the sponge, drew circles on her shoulders, ran over her shoulder blades, slid down her spine, and before I finished I traced on her wet skin the words I hadn’t been able to say to her until now, when we crossed the border together.
A CHAIR FOR SOMEBODY
THIS IS YOUR CHAIR, you see? please, sit down.
I have unfolded the backrest, checked the wheels and wiped them with a damp cloth so that your hands remain white. White, not innocent: we aren’t much interested in innocence, you and I. Whiteness, yes, because it requires effort, it has to be safeguarded.
I’ve been preparing it, you know? for months, years, I don’t really remember. The same thing always happens to me with this chair, I become so focused on it that the days roll by and I forget how long I have been waiting for you. Come, I’m going to tidy your hair, I’ll comb it as patiently as on any great occasion, as though your hairs were the strings of one of those instruments you love so much. Because today, this morning or this afternoon, what is the time? today, for the first time, we are going to use this wheelchair which doesn’t upset you, the way the mild light can’t upset you, or the smell of coffee from the terraces or the breeze that will ruffle your hair. And that’s as it should be, don’t you think? We don’t tidy things so they will remain intact, we tidy them in order to invite time to do its work.
So, we are ready, well, almost. We are ready, except for the small matter of the bonnet. That green bonnet, shall we keep it on you or not? Granted it gives you a jaunty air, perhaps it makes you look younger. Although I know it restricts your view and makes a little balcony of shade. Best we take it off. You can always carry it in your lap, in case the sun decides to be fickle.
The sun is fickle, you reply, that’s its nature. I hold back the push I was about to give your chair. You’re right, Mama, quite right: that is its nature. The sun’s unpredictability is what gives it its miraculous quality. We can agree on that. What I am not clear about is whether that means you are going to wear the green bonnet or not.
Have we forgotten anything? Let’s go through it. Whenever we go out together I become easily distracted, you can take that as a compliment, how coquettish you look. Have we got everything? Your charm bracelet? Your light jacket? Your yellow shawl? I think we’ll be warm enough, the sun here is fickle but strong as well. I promise you radiant streets. I promise you more birds than cars. I promise you we’ll laugh. And then if we need to cry, we’ll cry.
What a lovely breeze, can you feel it? Imagine how it will caress us once we get going. I like saying it like that, in plural, we get going, because I think that’s what is good about using this chair, we engage with each other’s body, one push makes two walk. I like your feet more than ever today, I can see the longing in your heels, each toe as impatient as the next, are those sandals new?
Now, please release the brakes. That’s it, slowly. One, now the other. Perfect. Considering it’s your first time, you seem like an old hand. I’m moving, we’re moving. This is much better than I’d expected. Do you like it? Are you having fun? Let’s pretend we’re on a boat. You be the lookout and I’ll be the helmsman. Off I go, off we go. I can hear you singing now. I can see the sails swelling. We’re rolling so fast, we must do this again. Look at the wheels, let them spin, let them never come to a halt. Are you all right? Are you comfortable? This outing really was a great idea. Rapid chair, chair of time, empty chair through space. Chair filled with somebody who might have sat down.
BAREFOOT
WHEN I REALIZED I would be mortal like my father, like those black shoes in a plastic bag, like the pail of water where the mop wiping down the hospital corridor was dipping in and out, I was twenty. I was young, so old. For the first time I realized, as the trails of brightness slowly cleared from the floor, that health is a very thin layer, a thread that vanishes with each passing step. None of those steps was my father’s.
My father always had a strange walk. Swift and clumsy at the same time. When he began one of his walks, you never knew if he was going to trip over or break into a run. I liked his way of walking. His hard, flat feet were like the ground he stepped on, the ground he fled from.
My father now had four flat feet, in two different places: in the bed (joined at the heels, slightly open, evoking an ironical V for victory) and inside that plastic bag (imprinted on the leather, as a kind of reminder on his shoes). The nurse handed them to me the way you hand someone scraps. I looked at the tiled floor, its shifting squares.
I sat there, in front of the doors to the operating theatre, waiting for the news or dreading the news, until I took out my father’s shoes. I stood up and placed them in the middle of the corridor, like an obstacle or a border or a geographical accident. I positioned them carefully, so as not to disturb their original contours, the protrusion of bones, their absent forms.
Soon afterwards, the nurse appeared in the distance. She came down the corridor, skirted round the shoes and continued on her way. The floor was gleaming. Suddenly cleanness frightened me. It seemed to me like a disease, a perfect bacterium. I squatted and moved along on all fours, feeling the scraping, the hurt in my knees. I put the shoes back in the bag. I pulled the knot as tight as I could.
Occasionally, at home, I try on those shoes. They fit me better each time.
ROTATION OF LIGHT
THE ASHTRAY WAS FULL. Luis was holding his gin and tonic like a transparent sceptre. The ice cubes had melted in his glass. A ball of wax, the sun was pulsating high in the sky. Amid laughter, Luis ordered another round. That’s enough for me, thanks, I said. Luis insisted noisily. I shrugged. I lit a cigarette, we sat in silence, and then I heard someone calling us.
It was a sing-song voice that gradually became stronger, more defined as it drew closer. A familiar voice. We both turned at the same time: fresh from the sea, Anita was waving at us. She quickened her pace, or rather she slowed down first, raised her hands to her hair, tossed it back, and then ran towards us.
She kissed her father on his unshaven cheek. She said “Hello” to me with a smile. I hadn’t seen Anita since the previous summer. Her hair was longer than I remembered. She smelled of salt, waves, mint chewing gum. The sun had burnt her cheeks and the tip of her nose. She was wearing a red bikini with very thin straps. While Anita was hugging her father’s neck, I stared at the thick blonde down on her arms.
Daughter, Luis said to her, shouldn’t you be more careful in the sun? Oh, Papa, I’m still white, she answered, stretching out a leg. But you’re tanned enough already, Anita! protested Luis. Anita laughed, let go of his neck and said, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye: That means I need a bit more. Would you like a Coke? Luis offered. Thanks, Papa, but I can’t, she said, shrugging her shoulders, I’m going out soon and I have to go home first and change. What a shame, Luis sighed, downing his gin and tonic. Laughing a second time, Anita stood, arms akimbo and said: My dear papa, you wouldn’t be trying to blackmail me, would you? Luis looked at me in astonishment, recovered his light-hearted expression and said: Well then, give me another kiss. Anita leaned over to give him one.
The three of us engaged in light conversation for a few minutes. Luis took the lead, and seemed in a good mood. He was drawing out the situation, I guessed, in the hope that his daughter would relent and stay with us. Yet she remained standing next to our table, responding to us with perfect politeness but with a succinctness that suggested urgency, that set a limit.
Before saying goodbye, she asked Luis not to smoke so much. I lit another cigarette. She blew us a kiss with both hands, moved away from the parasol and emerged into the sunshine. I watched how she walked off, her unruly hair, the swaying of her medium-sized hips, the red triangle of her bathing suit as she grew smaller in the distance. Luis bit his lip. Silence came over us once more. The sunlight rotated on Anita’s skin, like someone pointing a mirror at her back.
JUAN, JOSÉ
1. JUAN
I AM WRITING THIS so as to put time in order. There is nothing more disorderly than failing to write down events. And, of late, things at home are utterly disordered.
My mother has just brought me breakfast. Her smile is so identical from one morning to the next that I am beginning to suspect she doesn’t notice the days go by. Perhaps she is living in a continuous past that has ousted the present? It would be a clever way of evading the future, which doesn’t offer her much hope. I love my mother dearly.
My father’s case is different. Not because I don’t love him, but because neither of us has managed to put ourself in the place of the other. It’s ironic: in order to be able to say this I have had to put myself in his place. That is precisely why I am writing this, I keep saying, I keep telling myself. If I don’t discuss the matter with myself, I can’t understand who occupies what place. My father is a different case because he works, and he has his world, so to speak, outside our world. He inhabits the house in a way that is healthier because he isn’t really here: he comes to visit us and disappears. Moments before he is due to leave, I notice how contented he becomes. He is in such excellent spirits that it is a pity, he would seem to be saying, that he has to go to his consulting room. But that’s what duty to one’s patients is about, and so on. How much of this does Mama notice? Mystery. She smiles and prepares my breakfast.
And me? I don’t speak much to my father, I am far too silent with my mother and I am ashamed to confess I continue to avoid household chores. I have just turned thirty-three and still live at home. Put baldly like that, it already sounds like a reproach.
What further introspective insights could I make about myself? Lots, but not now. I have to read over my latest reports, make notes and copy everything out before my session with José.
2. JOSÉ
Monday 30 April. The situation sometimes appears to be at an impasse. I don’t know whether to interpret this as a failure or a minor victory. I try to cheer myself up with the thought that, without me the patient would be worse off. This consolation doesn’t last long. The time it takes me to tell myself that others more experienced than I would perhaps have made better progress.
Juan continues to insist on behaving as if his parents were alive. As simple and terrifying as that. In his eyes they are still there; nothing at home has changed. Every so often, I carefully try to oppose that impression. In the main, I am content to listen, waiting for some kind of reaction from him. When he contradicts himself in this matter, I try to give him a knowing look. He interprets this as my agreeing with him.
There isn’t much advice you can offer someone who has been orphaned. But one thing is obvious, and occasionally I let it slip: Juan should have moved a long time ago. To leave that house and everything it represents, its unforgotten furniture. As Bachelard says, there are spaces that are a time. That is Juan’s problem: he doesn’t move out of that space and time doesn’t move on for him. Despite the development of his pathology, I realize that basically his conflict is no different from the usual model. That is to say, faced with normal pain, he has responded abnormally. Or perhaps not even that: he has responded in a classic manner, but has taken all the processes to such an extreme he has become ill.
My greatest regret is that Juan could have resolved two conflicts at a stroke. He is over thirty now. He lives in the house where his parents brought him up. And his salary would be enough for a single person. It is worth noting that if he did manage to take the step of moving out, he would overcome two of his biggest fears: emancipation and grief. By clinging to the family home, Juan clings not only to absent figures, but also to a regressive identity that functions as a space, a habitat. And he fears he will be out in the cold if he leaves.
3. JUAN
I have to confess there are moments when the clinical model defeats me. During my years of practice (which are few, but very intense), I have never been caught up in such a dynamic. The patient insists on asking again and again about my own parents, interrogating me about their age, habits, health, family relations, and so on. In the most recent sessions, José has begun to analyse (I let him think he is analysing) my parents’ weaknesses, obsessed as he is with the loss of his own. It is as though, transferentially, José needed to share the burden of his orphanhood with his interlocutor.
By means of this strange projection, the patient has succeeded in visualizing more clearly his own trauma and analysing it with a degree of objectivity. Thanks to the indirect information I provide him with about himself, he in turn responds to me with greater clarity. I am not sure to what extent this strategy is permissible. But, since I began this procedure, the results have improved.
By supposedly focusing the sessions on my situation rather than his, José has become more collaborative, relinquishing his defensive posture and even appearing more self-critical. Obviously this self-criticism is limited from the outset, based as it is on a misapprehension. Although during the communicative praxis the symptoms appear positive, I keep wondering whether the patient has found in this swap a cathartic outlet, or a clever excuse to shift responsibility. I am supposed to be the one who gauges these contradictions, but that is where I acknowledge my limitations. Methodologically speaking, it isn’t hard to play José’s game. I have learned how to do it: I make a mental note of the patient’s comments, while speaking in the first person about the problems afflicting him. I wonder at what point I will be able to turn the board around and show him the real state of the game. And most of all I wonder whether, just prior to that critical moment of anagnorisis, José will give me a sign.
I intercalate two brief digressions of a personal nature.
One: while it is my genuine belief that I maintain the appropriate distance throughout our sessions, I am still concerned about the autobiographical foreshortenings I have recently been forced to take. In particular, when the patient questions me about precise details that in his case are unknown to me, and that in order to keep up the pretence of credibility oblige me to respond with a truth (or a version of the truth) about myself. In the last session, for example, José showed an interest in my father’s treatment of my pet animals. Since I knew nothing about that aspect of his childhood, I had to reply by resorting to my own experience. It was a minor detail, but it put me on my guard.
Two: if I explained the case to my father, he might be able to guide me based on his lengthy experience. But I am afraid that if I let him intervene, his help would undermine my self-esteem. My father has always had a tendency to invade my professional space in the same way that he evades his marital space. I am well aware that I have consented to those intrusions and that, ultimately, I am to blame for them. Knowing this makes me refrain. On the other hand, if in spite of everything I decided to speak to my father about José, I would be guilty of an unforgivable contradiction: encouraging my patient to escape from the father figure, while I myself regress in that respect.
4. JOSÉ
Monday 14 May. The sessions continue to take place in the following way. Juan arrives at my consulting room, and, in order to be able to allude to, or possibly to elude his grief, he behaves as if he were the therapist. For my part, I try to devise as many questions and observations my role as make-believe patient permits. This dynamic has remained unchanged since the patient’s last acute crisis. If at that time I went along with this symbolic role reversal (naturally revealing nothing of a truly intimate nature, and always maintaining the distance my profession and common sense prescribe), it was because the patient soon began to talk about himself with an ease and frankness hitherto unimaginable. Although I still harbour a few misgivings about this strategy, going over my files I realize that, by comparison, the conclusions drawn from my sessions with Juan do not differ wildly from those of other patients receiving orthodox therapy. Depending on his progression over the next few weeks, I will consider whether to prolong the special treatment for a while, or return the sessions to their proper place and put the patient back on his previous medication (see prescriptions17.doc).
The monothematic nature of our exchanges presents no significant variations. When, in my role as an alleged patient showing the classic curiosity towards his or her therapist, I question him about his own personal life, Juan refers to his daily routine, taking for granted that his parents are still living. He even describes to me trivial everyday incidents in startling detail. Notwithstanding his pathology, Juan’s observations on marriage, relationships or the smugness of children are surprisingly deep and incisive. Despite my reservations, I can’t help secretly approving of many of his remarks.
To give an example, in today’s session he declared that people born in the ’70s are orphans through excess. That is to say, a generation that feels unprotected due to its parents’ overprotectiveness. Juan and I belong more or less to the same generation, and I, too, am an only child. This fact occasionally contributes to my being momentarily distracted from his case and referring back to my own experience, which further complicates the difficult balancing act our game of role reversal forces me to maintain. I mention these small interferences in my communication with my patient in order to be aware of them.
5. JUAN
At times, José shows signs of worsening, or at least I think I detect in him symptoms of an imminent relapse. During the last few sessions he has only been collaborating when our roles are acted out according to strict rules. Until recently I was able to steer our dialogue into a buffer zone, where, despite the premise of the game, I was able to move with relative ease and coax him into expressing himself, provided our implicit roles (he is eager to ask, I don’t mind responding) were not explicitly challenged.
Now, however, the routine is becoming complicated because José scarcely engages in digressions of a personal nature, and is inclined to resist when I pose any intimate questions. Consequently, I am limited to projecting his own anxieties in my increasingly lengthy monologues, and must be content to catch his brief remarks on the fly and swiftly analyse them. My replies are an attempt to inject the patient with a measure of reality, aware that my words produce a mirror effect in him. What is awkward from a subjective viewpoint, is that the intensification of this dynamic has led to the patient feeling he has the right to interrogate me in an increasingly impertinent way, and to address me in an exasperating tone.
Having reached this point, and when I read over my reports on our latest sessions, I begin to doubt whether playing along with José’s game was the correct thing to do. To confuse things still further, in spite of his increasing refusal to talk, the patient shows a self-possession he did not have before, and his expressions (voice, gestures, motor coordination) have become considerably calmer. I mentioned at the beginning, as the role play progressed, my suspicion that the patient might have deteriorated. However, from a strictly behavioural point of view, he seems to have improved. With regard to this apparent contradiction, I fear my limited professional experience is playing a dirty trick on me, even though I can see that this experiment is directly enhancing it. I am convinced that this audacious praxis will help me attain my father’s level more quickly, equalling if not surpassing his clinical achievements. In the meantime I still haven’t mentioned this case to him. I don’t think it is advisable. This is something I must resolve on my own.
6. JOSÉ
Monday 28 May. Encouragingly, Juan seems to have accepted my frequent questions as a given, and he dutifully submits to answering them. The fictitious confidences I have been forced to share with him have been reduced to a minimum, and for the most part I limit myself to listening and, rather ironically, to exercising my true role. That is to say, to pretending I am a patient who prefers to listen to the confidences of his garrulous therapist.
I am not unaware that Juan’s progress has a complexity and subtlety that never cease to surprise me. Not only does the patient pretend that it is he who in theory is treating me, he now makes as if he is grudgingly tolerating my questions. He regularly expresses in no uncertain terms his displeasure and unease during these interrogations. In other words, Juan appears to be on the way to overcoming part of his previous conflict, but only at the cost of starting a fresh one between us. I trust it will be provisional, a sort of pain-scaffolding. In the meantime, the patient speaks less about his parents’ objective presence in the house and evokes their image instead, focusing on the emotional meaning they had for him. As I say, these symptoms are positive.
The only shadow hanging over this well-founded optimism is that, after many months, I yielded to temptation and called my father to talk about Juan, who is without doubt the most intricate patient I have ever treated. Perhaps I wasn’t seeking his professional opinion so much as his parental approval. That is possible. The point is that when I left my practice this afternoon, I called my father to discuss the case with him. And (to my disappointment) he not only strongly advised me to discontinue the game of role reversal, but expressed the opinion that I should hand the case over to a colleague immediately.
Although it shouldn’t, this has renewed my doubts about my approach to Juan. I don’t know why I mentioned him to my father, when I am all too conscious of how our discussions end up. With him always trying to come out on top. When I got home I told Mama about it. As usual, she said nothing.
1. JUAN
I AM WRITING THIS so as to put time in order. There is nothing more disorderly than failing to write down events. And, of late, things at home are utterly disordered.
My mother has just brought me breakfast. Her smile is so identical from one morning to the next that I am beginning to suspect she doesn’t notice the days go by. Perhaps she is living in a continuous past that has ousted the present? It would be a clever way of evading the future, which doesn’t offer her much hope. I love my mother dearly.
My father’s case is different. Not because I don’t love him, but because neither of us has managed to put ourself in the place of the other. It’s ironic: in order to be able to say this I have had to put myself in his place. That is precisely why I am writing this, I keep saying, I keep telling myself. If I don’t discuss the matter with myself, I can’t understand who occupies what place. My father is a different case because he works, and he has his world, so to speak, outside our world. He inhabits the house in a way that is healthier because he isn’t really here: he comes to visit us and disappears. Moments before he is due to leave, I notice how contented he becomes. He is in such excellent spirits that it is a pity, he would seem to be saying, that he has to go to his consulting room. But that’s what duty to one’s patients is about, and so on. How much of this does Mama notice? Mystery. She smiles and prepares my breakfast.
And me? I don’t speak much to my father, I am far too silent with my mother and I am ashamed to confess I continue to avoid household chores. I have just turned thirty-three and still live at home. Put baldly like that, it already sounds like a reproach.
What further introspective insights could I make about myself? Lots, but not now. I have to read over my latest reports, make notes and copy everything out before my session with José.
2. JOSÉ
Monday 30 April. The situation sometimes appears to be at an impasse. I don’t know whether to interpret this as a failure or a minor victory. I try to cheer myself up with the thought that, without me the patient would be worse off. This consolation doesn’t last long. The time it takes me to tell myself that others more experienced than I would perhaps have made better progress.
Juan continues to insist on behaving as if his parents were alive. As simple and terrifying as that. In his eyes they are still there; nothing at home has changed. Every so often, I carefully try to oppose that impression. In the main, I am content to listen, waiting for some kind of reaction from him. When he contradicts himself in this matter, I try to give him a knowing look. He interprets this as my agreeing with him.
There isn’t much advice you can offer someone who has been orphaned. But one thing is obvious, and occasionally I let it slip: Juan should have moved a long time ago. To leave that house and everything it represents, its unforgotten furniture. As Bachelard says, there are spaces that are a time. That is Juan’s problem: he doesn’t move out of that space and time doesn’t move on for him. Despite the development of his pathology, I realize that basically his conflict is no different from the usual model. That is to say, faced with normal pain, he has responded abnormally. Or perhaps not even that: he has responded in a classic manner, but has taken all the processes to such an extreme he has become ill.
My greatest regret is that Juan could have resolved two conflicts at a stroke. He is over thirty now. He lives in the house where his parents brought him up. And his salary would be enough for a single person. It is worth noting that if he did manage to take the step of moving out, he would overcome two of his biggest fears: emancipation and grief. By clinging to the family home, Juan clings not only to absent figures, but also to a regressive identity that functions as a space, a habitat. And he fears he will be out in the cold if he leaves.
3. JUAN
I have to confess there are moments when the clinical model defeats me. During my years of practice (which are few, but very intense), I have never been caught up in such a dynamic. The patient insists on asking again and again about my own parents, interrogating me about their age, habits, health, family relations, and so on. In the most recent sessions, José has begun to analyse (I let him think he is analysing) my parents’ weaknesses, obsessed as he is with the loss of his own. It is as though, transferentially, José needed to share the burden of his orphanhood with his interlocutor.
By means of this strange projection, the patient has succeeded in visualizing more clearly his own trauma and analysing it with a degree of objectivity. Thanks to the indirect information I provide him with about himself, he in turn responds to me with greater clarity. I am not sure to what extent this strategy is permissible. But, since I began this procedure, the results have improved.
By supposedly focusing the sessions on my situation rather than his, José has become more collaborative, relinquishing his defensive posture and even appearing more self-critical. Obviously this self-criticism is limited from the outset, based as it is on a misapprehension. Although during the communicative praxis the symptoms appear positive, I keep wondering whether the patient has found in this swap a cathartic outlet, or a clever excuse to shift responsibility. I am supposed to be the one who gauges these contradictions, but that is where I acknowledge my limitations. Methodologically speaking, it isn’t hard to play José’s game. I have learned how to do it: I make a mental note of the patient’s comments, while speaking in the first person about the problems afflicting him. I wonder at what point I will be able to turn the board around and show him the real state of the game. And most of all I wonder whether, just prior to that critical moment of anagnorisis, José will give me a sign.
I intercalate two brief digressions of a personal nature.
One: while it is my genuine belief that I maintain the appropriate distance throughout our sessions, I am still concerned about the autobiographical foreshortenings I have recently been forced to take. In particular, when the patient questions me about precise details that in his case are unknown to me, and that in order to keep up the pretence of credibility oblige me to respond with a truth (or a version of the truth) about myself. In the last session, for example, José showed an interest in my father’s treatment of my pet animals. Since I knew nothing about that aspect of his childhood, I had to reply by resorting to my own experience. It was a minor detail, but it put me on my guard.
Two: if I explained the case to my father, he might be able to guide me based on his lengthy experience. But I am afraid that if I let him intervene, his help would undermine my self-esteem. My father has always had a tendency to invade my professional space in the same way that he evades his marital space. I am well aware that I have consented to those intrusions and that, ultimately, I am to blame for them. Knowing this makes me refrain. On the other hand, if in spite of everything I decided to speak to my father about José, I would be guilty of an unforgivable contradiction: encouraging my patient to escape from the father figure, while I myself regress in that respect.
4. JOSÉ
Monday 14 May. The sessions continue to take place in the following way. Juan arrives at my consulting room, and, in order to be able to allude to, or possibly to elude his grief, he behaves as if he were the therapist. For my part, I try to devise as many questions and observations my role as make-believe patient permits. This dynamic has remained unchanged since the patient’s last acute crisis. If at that time I went along with this symbolic role reversal (naturally revealing nothing of a truly intimate nature, and always maintaining the distance my profession and common sense prescribe), it was because the patient soon began to talk about himself with an ease and frankness hitherto unimaginable. Although I still harbour a few misgivings about this strategy, going over my files I realize that, by comparison, the conclusions drawn from my sessions with Juan do not differ wildly from those of other patients receiving orthodox therapy. Depending on his progression over the next few weeks, I will consider whether to prolong the special treatment for a while, or return the sessions to their proper place and put the patient back on his previous medication (see prescriptions17.doc).
The monothematic nature of our exchanges presents no significant variations. When, in my role as an alleged patient showing the classic curiosity towards his or her therapist, I question him about his own personal life, Juan refers to his daily routine, taking for granted that his parents are still living. He even describes to me trivial everyday incidents in startling detail. Notwithstanding his pathology, Juan’s observations on marriage, relationships or the smugness of children are surprisingly deep and incisive. Despite my reservations, I can’t help secretly approving of many of his remarks.
To give an example, in today’s session he declared that people born in the ’70s are orphans through excess. That is to say, a generation that feels unprotected due to its parents’ overprotectiveness. Juan and I belong more or less to the same generation, and I, too, am an only child. This fact occasionally contributes to my being momentarily distracted from his case and referring back to my own experience, which further complicates the difficult balancing act our game of role reversal forces me to maintain. I mention these small interferences in my communication with my patient in order to be aware of them.
5. JUAN
At times, José shows signs of worsening, or at least I think I detect in him symptoms of an imminent relapse. During the last few sessions he has only been collaborating when our roles are acted out according to strict rules. Until recently I was able to steer our dialogue into a buffer zone, where, despite the premise of the game, I was able to move with relative ease and coax him into expressing himself, provided our implicit roles (he is eager to ask, I don’t mind responding) were not explicitly challenged.
Now, however, the routine is becoming complicated because José scarcely engages in digressions of a personal nature, and is inclined to resist when I pose any intimate questions. Consequently, I am limited to projecting his own anxieties in my increasingly lengthy monologues, and must be content to catch his brief remarks on the fly and swiftly analyse them. My replies are an attempt to inject the patient with a measure of reality, aware that my words produce a mirror effect in him. What is awkward from a subjective viewpoint, is that the intensification of this dynamic has led to the patient feeling he has the right to interrogate me in an increasingly impertinent way, and to address me in an exasperating tone.
Having reached this point, and when I read over my reports on our latest sessions, I begin to doubt whether playing along with José’s game was the correct thing to do. To confuse things still further, in spite of his increasing refusal to talk, the patient shows a self-possession he did not have before, and his expressions (voice, gestures, motor coordination) have become considerably calmer. I mentioned at the beginning, as the role play progressed, my suspicion that the patient might have deteriorated. However, from a strictly behavioural point of view, he seems to have improved. With regard to this apparent contradiction, I fear my limited professional experience is playing a dirty trick on me, even though I can see that this experiment is directly enhancing it. I am convinced that this audacious praxis will help me attain my father’s level more quickly, equalling if not surpassing his clinical achievements. In the meantime I still haven’t mentioned this case to him. I don’t think it is advisable. This is something I must resolve on my own.
6. JOSÉ
Monday 28 May. Encouragingly, Juan seems to have accepted my frequent questions as a given, and he dutifully submits to answering them. The fictitious confidences I have been forced to share with him have been reduced to a minimum, and for the most part I limit myself to listening and, rather ironically, to exercising my true role. That is to say, to pretending I am a patient who prefers to listen to the confidences of his garrulous therapist.
I am not unaware that Juan’s progress has a complexity and subtlety that never cease to surprise me. Not only does the patient pretend that it is he who in theory is treating me, he now makes as if he is grudgingly tolerating my questions. He regularly expresses in no uncertain terms his displeasure and unease during these interrogations. In other words, Juan appears to be on the way to overcoming part of his previous conflict, but only at the cost of starting a fresh one between us. I trust it will be provisional, a sort of pain-scaffolding. In the meantime, the patient speaks less about his parents’ objective presence in the house and evokes their image instead, focusing on the emotional meaning they had for him. As I say, these symptoms are positive.
The only shadow hanging over this well-founded optimism is that, after many months, I yielded to temptation and called my father to talk about Juan, who is without doubt the most intricate patient I have ever treated. Perhaps I wasn’t seeking his professional opinion so much as his parental approval. That is possible. The point is that when I left my practice this afternoon, I called my father to discuss the case with him. And (to my disappointment) he not only strongly advised me to discontinue the game of role reversal, but expressed the opinion that I should hand the case over to a colleague immediately.
Although it shouldn’t, this has renewed my doubts about my approach to Juan. I don’t know why I mentioned him to my father, when I am all too conscious of how our discussions end up. With him always trying to come out on top. When I got home I told Mama about it. As usual, she said nothing.
MY FALSE NAME (An Argentinian Memoir)
1
WHY DO THEY HURT like this? Do they hurt when they return? Or perhaps they only heal when they return, and then we realize they had been hurting for so long, these memories? We travel inside them. We are their passengers.
2
There’s no way of knowing for certain if it was him, or possibly his father, or perhaps his grandfather. But Jacobo’s surname, my own surname, was born of a deception. It’s possible that, somewhere in the world, some distant relative still knows the exact details. I prefer to accept the version I heard as a child: the one that tells of a timely betrayal and an intelligent cowardice.
My paternal great-grandfather, or possibly his father, or perhaps his grandfather, lived in Tsarist Russia. It was common for boys from poor families, especially Jewish ones, to be forced to do military service in regions close to Siberia, under inhuman conditions. So great was the terror of being conscripted, and the chances of surviving two years of training seemed so slight, that many chose to maim themselves in order to be exempted. Jacobo, or perhaps his father, or possibly his grandfather, knew several youths who were missing an ear, a hand or an eye. Even in that state, they were pleased with their lot.
But my great-grandfather, or perhaps my great-great-grandfather, or possibly his father, felt too attached to all his limbs to be able to contemplate such a sacrifice. So Jacobo (let’s choose him — he deserves it) hit on a plan that would allow him to keep his body intact without having to join the army. Did he ask for help from some distant relative in order to falsify his real identity? Did he bribe some Russian customs official so that he could emigrate? Or did he turn, as I once heard and like to think, to a certain friend of a friend, who helped him steal the passport of a German soldier by the name of Neuman?
The only certainty is that, thanks to his admirable cowardice, and rebaptized in this timely way, zeide Jacobo found himself far from the town of Kamenetz, in today’s Ukraine, when the First World War broke out. Not just far: in another world. In my native Buenos Aires.
3
The bride that Jacobo found in Argentina, following a disturbing custom of the time, was his first cousin. Her name was Lidia, and she was born in Lithuania. The remainder of her true name is lost in speculation or in the whims of a port official in Buenos Aires. There, at a counter in the Hotel de Inmigrantes, somebody wrote what looks like “Jasatsca”. From what I can deduce, Lidia’s original name must have been quite close to Chazaka, which is the feminine form of Chazacky, or possibly Jasatsky, as her male nephews continued to call themselves. So, in part thanks to history, in part thanks to chance and in part thanks to invention, the trace of the names of those great-grandparents is quite similar to my own memory.
Baba Lidia was extremely thin and had unusual sapphire eyes. Several of her sisters had died in Lithuania during the pogroms. Before emigrating to Argentina, her childhood had been marked by hunger. Lidia had spent many winter mornings queuing for bread, which was in short supply, and ran out soon after dawn. On one occasion, she used to tell us, it had been such an effort to keep her place in the line, and the night air had numbed her muscles so much, that when at last the bakery opened, because of the sudden, sensual smell of freshly baked bread, Lidia passed out very close to its door. She quickly came round, but by that time the bread had flown out of the bakery, and her back was covered in muddy footprints.
4
In the early years, zeide Jacobo had only a hat business that he himself had set up in the flat where they both lived. They had two rooms: one for eating and sleeping, the other for making hats. But apparently the Argentina of those days would not easily permit anyone to go around with his skull uncovered. By avoiding all unnecessary expense and taking no holidays for years, Jacobo prospered until he became a wholesaler of imported textiles. This market was less demanding, because all it involved was the sale of lengths of fabric to be made into clothes. It was thanks to this second undertaking that he began to amass a small fortune.
From the 1930s on, my grandfather Mario grew up enjoying privileges far removed from the hardships his parents had suffered. The family drove around in an automobile, and there are those who maintain that they even had a chauffeur. Jacobo for his part acquired the reputation of being the slowest driver in Buenos Aires: he rarely exceeded twenty kilometres an hour. “Slowly does it, slowly,” he would mutter at the wheel, his eyes fixed on the road, always keeping his smile, to the desperation of passengers in general, and the nervous Lidia in particular.
5
Later on, the longed-for male grandchild came into the world. My father’s childhood coincided with the period when Lidia and Jacobo lived in Calle Peña, near the central corner of Las Heras and Pueyrredón. In those years, my father went to the secular Jewish school that Jonás, my other paternal great-grandfather, had helped found. My father frequently visited their house when he was coming home from school. The piano room and its big sliding doors (walls that moved!) were a source of constant amazement to him. The servants’ quarters gave on to an interior courtyard, which meant that part of the house seemed as secret and dark as the class struggle. This was the domain of Magda, an old Central European cook who spoke an approximate Spanish full of echoing stutters. And that was where my father ran to hide whenever he wanted to annoy Lidia. Although they say Magda was an excellent cook, in reality she very seldom did any cooking: exercising a paradoxical form of hierarchy, the baba wouldn’t allow anyone to do it in her place. So old Magda had to make do with helping her prepare the ingredients, cleaning the kitchen utensils and watching how her mistress concocted the menu every day. My father told me that my great-grandmother Lidia — with a mixture of caution and suspicion, as though still afraid the crowds might trample on her to steal something — always kept her things in little bags that went inside boxes that were put in more bags.
6
Compared to his wife, my great-grandfather Jacobo was a simple soul. It could be said that his true job was that of being a grandfather. His greatest pleasure came from watching his grandchildren eat, from sharing their delight and appetite. Going for a stroll with zeide was like going shopping with a silver-haired child. He would encourage his grandchildren to order giant desserts, and then watch, enthralled, as they devoured them. Such was his enthusiasm that even my father, who had a natural sweet tooth ended up begging his grandfather to rein himself in. Jacobo wanted it all, and wanted to give it all away. Perhaps his motto was that inheritances should be passed on in our lifetime.
On one occasion, my grandfather asked my father to keep an eye on Jacobo. Zeide was ill, and the doctor had forbidden him to smoke more than three cigarettes a day. My father’s job was to ration the packets that he carefully hid and checked every morning. It was only after meals, or in the heat of a discussion that zeide was allowed a cigarette. At these moments, my father would stand up ceremoniously, go in search of the secret hiding-place and return proudly, mission accomplished. It was only several years later that my father learned that Jacobo, in addition to the three cigarettes he took from him with a hangdog expression, would smoke an entire packet whenever he went out for a walk on the pretext of buying his grandson some sweet or other.
Baba Lidia was so thin it seemed like a conviction. However, as time went by, the skin began to hang down flabbily from her arms. Discreet as she was, and despite protesting Tsk! Tsk! my great-grandmother Lidia always seemed to accept my father’s pleas: she rolled up her sleeves so that he could tug on her drooping skin, like a final, refined act of cannibalism. This skin-pulling ceremony went on well past those days. Even after he was a married man, my father continued to beg her to roll her sleeves up, and she continued to resist, knowing full well that sooner or later she would let him pinch her soft flesh. There was only one thing forbidden (apart from refusing a plate of food) in baba Lidia’s house: to say anything against Argentina. Gratitude had turned my Lithuanian great-grandmother into a diehard patriot. If my father ever insinuated that any situation in the country was unacceptable, Lidia frowned, the old emerald flame rekindled behind her glasses, and she retorted: Tsk! Tsk! Hey you, don’t go attacking Argentina, do you hear me? This is a rich, generous country, so be careful eh, don’t go attacking Argentina.
7
The corporal looked askance at them, slowly puffing out the smoke from his cigarette. He kept his eye on them as if one of them could possibly escape from there, half-naked as they were, sitting, with their feet pressed together, on those uncomfortable wooden benches. The stocky corporal was smoking at his desk, glancing in a bored fashion at the candidates’ passports like someone waiting their turn at a hairdresser’s. He drew the number 1 under the collarbone of those yet to be examined by the barracks’ doctor, and sent them out. Those who had been examined, like my father, were rewarded with a number 2, and kept in the room with him in their vests and underpants. They had been ordered not to get dressed again, in case an examination had to be repeated. This was in 1969, and for the first time in his life my father began to suspect that his clumsy flat feet would not be sufficient to get him out of doing his military service. At least not now, in the midst of a dictatorship, with patriotic fervour maiming all the roads.
Almost all the young men there had heard stories about the humiliations suffered by those who, for whatever reason, were declared unfit for military service. Some were made to wait the whole day sitting, without permission either to get dressed or to have anything to eat. Others, especially the obese or effeminate, were made to see the doctor several times, and were subjected to medical examinations that went far beyond the strictly necessary. Even so, that morning my father had gone to the barracks with the hope that, at least this once, his problem feet would be an advantage. But the cold was growing more intense, the wooden slats were pressing into his legs and buttocks, and my father could see how a lot of his companions came out of the medical room with a terrified grimace on their faces. Every so often, the corporal reluctantly uttered a name, and somebody got up from the bench, walked head down to the counter and received his documents allowing him to go home. Someone asked if they could smoke. The corporal looked up, blew out a mouthful of black smoke and replied, pointing to the wall:
“Obviously not, recruit. Can’t you see the sign? Or can’t you read?”
A couple of hours later, and the future conscripts were feeling the pangs of hunger. Any movement was sporadic, and appeared to depend more on the whim of the doctor or the corporal than on any established order. Almost all the lads who had left had been the ones whose passports had been stamped with the feared slogan: “Fit for Service”. Then all of a sudden, the corporal stared intently at one of the passports. His eyes opened wide and he called out:
“Let’s see! Neuman, Víctor! Stand up and come over here.”
My father obeyed, more in fear than in hope. As he came closer to the desk, the corporal’s gaze seemed to him too intense for it to be good news. In his underpants, skinny, younger than I am now, my father started to tremble. He had no inkling what the corporal was going to ask him:
“You wouldn’t by any chance be related to Monkey Neuman, the midfielder who plays for Chacarita, would you?”
Confused, my father smiled silently trying to win a few seconds to think.
“Are you going to answer or not, dammit? Do you know him at all, Monkey Neuman?”
My father felt an icy Siberian wind run down his back, as if the air was rushing in from the past, and then felt the sudden push of a luminous idea which made the time stranded in that room break free of its moorings and begin to race along. With all the aplomb he could muster, my father said to the corporal:
“Well, as far as knowing him goes, I should think I do know my brother, yes.”
The corporal raised his eyebrows and half-opened his lips in a complicated smile that made the cigarette roll round.
“Come closer, for fuck’s sake, or aren’t you and I going to be able to hold a proper conversation man to man? That’s better. So he’s your brother, you say? Really and truly?”
“Oh, if you only knew, Corporal sir, how often people ask me that very same question!”
“Yes, of course, I can just imagine it. But che, that’s incredible! And do you know how often I’ve been to the ground to see him play? Because you must be a Chacarita fan too, aren’t you?”
“Of course, Corporal sir,” replied my father, who had never in his life been interested in football, and whose father had been a supporter of Racing Club de Avellaneda.
“That’s my boy! What a coincidence! I can’t believe it! Shit, what a goal your brother scored last Sunday, eh? So please let your brother know,” the corporal went on, in a more serious tone of voice, trying to regain his earlier composure, “that here in the barracks we all think highly of him, and consider him to be an example for the youth of Argentina. Be sure you pass on that message, Neuman.”
“You can be certain I will, Corporal sir.”
“As I was saying, here in the barracks three of us are Chacarita fans.”
“Forgive me for correcting you, Corporal sir. But right now, there are exactly four of us.”
“That’s my boy! That’s how we all should be! Upright men of Chacarita! So what’s your brother doing now, is he training?”
“Yes, Corporal sir, like every day.”
“But hang on, wasn’t he injured last Sunday?”
“No, yes, you’re right,” my father floundered, “the poor guy has a sprained ankle, he’s got an ice pack on it all day at home.”
“What shitty luck! So in the end he isn’t going to play against Boca? They didn’t mention anything on the radio.”
“Well, in fact, I, look, erm… Can you keep a secret for me, Corporal sir? Bah, not for me, for my brother.”
“Tell me, tell me,” replied the corporal, straightening up and then bringing his shaven head close to the edge of the desk.
“It’s like this, Corporal sir. They don’t say anything on the radio, nobody says anything, because in the club they don’t want the people at Boca to know, got it? So that if at the last minute my brother can play, then our enemies will have to change their plans at the last minute, right?”
“That’s my boy!” said the corporal admiringly, dropping back into his chair. “Don’t you worry, Neuman, a Chacarita fan knows how to keep a secret. Not a word to a soul, I swear!”
“My brother and the club are very grateful to you, Corporal sir.”
“Ah, and here’s your passport, Víctor. You can go without a worry.”
“Many thanks, Corporal sir.”
“And give my warmest greetings to your brother,” added the corporal, stamping his passport with “Unfit for Service”.
“It’ll be a pleasure, Corporal sir,” said my father, taking his document and turning to go and get dressed.
“Ah, one other little thing,” said the corporal.
My father came to a sudden halt and turned back slowly to face him.
“Yes?” he asked, terrified, in the faintest of voices.
“Nothing, my lad, except it’s a good thing your brother wasn’t born with flat feet, isn’t it?”
Guffawing, his head enveloped in smoke, the corporal lowered his gaze once more and carried on flicking through the other passports with a bored expression.
8
If we lend credence to the strange symmetries of History, it would appear that in my family, every second generation, someone saves themselves from some disaster thanks to a misunderstanding over the name Neuman. Some day I’d like to have a son, so that the surname I give him can protect him, if only by mistake. Yet I suspect I will never have a son. And this non-existence will be the most silent, perfect salvation.
1
WHY DO THEY HURT like this? Do they hurt when they return? Or perhaps they only heal when they return, and then we realize they had been hurting for so long, these memories? We travel inside them. We are their passengers.
2
There’s no way of knowing for certain if it was him, or possibly his father, or perhaps his grandfather. But Jacobo’s surname, my own surname, was born of a deception. It’s possible that, somewhere in the world, some distant relative still knows the exact details. I prefer to accept the version I heard as a child: the one that tells of a timely betrayal and an intelligent cowardice.
My paternal great-grandfather, or possibly his father, or perhaps his grandfather, lived in Tsarist Russia. It was common for boys from poor families, especially Jewish ones, to be forced to do military service in regions close to Siberia, under inhuman conditions. So great was the terror of being conscripted, and the chances of surviving two years of training seemed so slight, that many chose to maim themselves in order to be exempted. Jacobo, or perhaps his father, or possibly his grandfather, knew several youths who were missing an ear, a hand or an eye. Even in that state, they were pleased with their lot.
But my great-grandfather, or perhaps my great-great-grandfather, or possibly his father, felt too attached to all his limbs to be able to contemplate such a sacrifice. So Jacobo (let’s choose him — he deserves it) hit on a plan that would allow him to keep his body intact without having to join the army. Did he ask for help from some distant relative in order to falsify his real identity? Did he bribe some Russian customs official so that he could emigrate? Or did he turn, as I once heard and like to think, to a certain friend of a friend, who helped him steal the passport of a German soldier by the name of Neuman?
The only certainty is that, thanks to his admirable cowardice, and rebaptized in this timely way, zeide Jacobo found himself far from the town of Kamenetz, in today’s Ukraine, when the First World War broke out. Not just far: in another world. In my native Buenos Aires.
3
The bride that Jacobo found in Argentina, following a disturbing custom of the time, was his first cousin. Her name was Lidia, and she was born in Lithuania. The remainder of her true name is lost in speculation or in the whims of a port official in Buenos Aires. There, at a counter in the Hotel de Inmigrantes, somebody wrote what looks like “Jasatsca”. From what I can deduce, Lidia’s original name must have been quite close to Chazaka, which is the feminine form of Chazacky, or possibly Jasatsky, as her male nephews continued to call themselves. So, in part thanks to history, in part thanks to chance and in part thanks to invention, the trace of the names of those great-grandparents is quite similar to my own memory.
Baba Lidia was extremely thin and had unusual sapphire eyes. Several of her sisters had died in Lithuania during the pogroms. Before emigrating to Argentina, her childhood had been marked by hunger. Lidia had spent many winter mornings queuing for bread, which was in short supply, and ran out soon after dawn. On one occasion, she used to tell us, it had been such an effort to keep her place in the line, and the night air had numbed her muscles so much, that when at last the bakery opened, because of the sudden, sensual smell of freshly baked bread, Lidia passed out very close to its door. She quickly came round, but by that time the bread had flown out of the bakery, and her back was covered in muddy footprints.
4
In the early years, zeide Jacobo had only a hat business that he himself had set up in the flat where they both lived. They had two rooms: one for eating and sleeping, the other for making hats. But apparently the Argentina of those days would not easily permit anyone to go around with his skull uncovered. By avoiding all unnecessary expense and taking no holidays for years, Jacobo prospered until he became a wholesaler of imported textiles. This market was less demanding, because all it involved was the sale of lengths of fabric to be made into clothes. It was thanks to this second undertaking that he began to amass a small fortune.
From the 1930s on, my grandfather Mario grew up enjoying privileges far removed from the hardships his parents had suffered. The family drove around in an automobile, and there are those who maintain that they even had a chauffeur. Jacobo for his part acquired the reputation of being the slowest driver in Buenos Aires: he rarely exceeded twenty kilometres an hour. “Slowly does it, slowly,” he would mutter at the wheel, his eyes fixed on the road, always keeping his smile, to the desperation of passengers in general, and the nervous Lidia in particular.
5
Later on, the longed-for male grandchild came into the world. My father’s childhood coincided with the period when Lidia and Jacobo lived in Calle Peña, near the central corner of Las Heras and Pueyrredón. In those years, my father went to the secular Jewish school that Jonás, my other paternal great-grandfather, had helped found. My father frequently visited their house when he was coming home from school. The piano room and its big sliding doors (walls that moved!) were a source of constant amazement to him. The servants’ quarters gave on to an interior courtyard, which meant that part of the house seemed as secret and dark as the class struggle. This was the domain of Magda, an old Central European cook who spoke an approximate Spanish full of echoing stutters. And that was where my father ran to hide whenever he wanted to annoy Lidia. Although they say Magda was an excellent cook, in reality she very seldom did any cooking: exercising a paradoxical form of hierarchy, the baba wouldn’t allow anyone to do it in her place. So old Magda had to make do with helping her prepare the ingredients, cleaning the kitchen utensils and watching how her mistress concocted the menu every day. My father told me that my great-grandmother Lidia — with a mixture of caution and suspicion, as though still afraid the crowds might trample on her to steal something — always kept her things in little bags that went inside boxes that were put in more bags.
6
Compared to his wife, my great-grandfather Jacobo was a simple soul. It could be said that his true job was that of being a grandfather. His greatest pleasure came from watching his grandchildren eat, from sharing their delight and appetite. Going for a stroll with zeide was like going shopping with a silver-haired child. He would encourage his grandchildren to order giant desserts, and then watch, enthralled, as they devoured them. Such was his enthusiasm that even my father, who had a natural sweet tooth ended up begging his grandfather to rein himself in. Jacobo wanted it all, and wanted to give it all away. Perhaps his motto was that inheritances should be passed on in our lifetime.
On one occasion, my grandfather asked my father to keep an eye on Jacobo. Zeide was ill, and the doctor had forbidden him to smoke more than three cigarettes a day. My father’s job was to ration the packets that he carefully hid and checked every morning. It was only after meals, or in the heat of a discussion that zeide was allowed a cigarette. At these moments, my father would stand up ceremoniously, go in search of the secret hiding-place and return proudly, mission accomplished. It was only several years later that my father learned that Jacobo, in addition to the three cigarettes he took from him with a hangdog expression, would smoke an entire packet whenever he went out for a walk on the pretext of buying his grandson some sweet or other.
Baba Lidia was so thin it seemed like a conviction. However, as time went by, the skin began to hang down flabbily from her arms. Discreet as she was, and despite protesting Tsk! Tsk! my great-grandmother Lidia always seemed to accept my father’s pleas: she rolled up her sleeves so that he could tug on her drooping skin, like a final, refined act of cannibalism. This skin-pulling ceremony went on well past those days. Even after he was a married man, my father continued to beg her to roll her sleeves up, and she continued to resist, knowing full well that sooner or later she would let him pinch her soft flesh. There was only one thing forbidden (apart from refusing a plate of food) in baba Lidia’s house: to say anything against Argentina. Gratitude had turned my Lithuanian great-grandmother into a diehard patriot. If my father ever insinuated that any situation in the country was unacceptable, Lidia frowned, the old emerald flame rekindled behind her glasses, and she retorted: Tsk! Tsk! Hey you, don’t go attacking Argentina, do you hear me? This is a rich, generous country, so be careful eh, don’t go attacking Argentina.
7
The corporal looked askance at them, slowly puffing out the smoke from his cigarette. He kept his eye on them as if one of them could possibly escape from there, half-naked as they were, sitting, with their feet pressed together, on those uncomfortable wooden benches. The stocky corporal was smoking at his desk, glancing in a bored fashion at the candidates’ passports like someone waiting their turn at a hairdresser’s. He drew the number 1 under the collarbone of those yet to be examined by the barracks’ doctor, and sent them out. Those who had been examined, like my father, were rewarded with a number 2, and kept in the room with him in their vests and underpants. They had been ordered not to get dressed again, in case an examination had to be repeated. This was in 1969, and for the first time in his life my father began to suspect that his clumsy flat feet would not be sufficient to get him out of doing his military service. At least not now, in the midst of a dictatorship, with patriotic fervour maiming all the roads.
Almost all the young men there had heard stories about the humiliations suffered by those who, for whatever reason, were declared unfit for military service. Some were made to wait the whole day sitting, without permission either to get dressed or to have anything to eat. Others, especially the obese or effeminate, were made to see the doctor several times, and were subjected to medical examinations that went far beyond the strictly necessary. Even so, that morning my father had gone to the barracks with the hope that, at least this once, his problem feet would be an advantage. But the cold was growing more intense, the wooden slats were pressing into his legs and buttocks, and my father could see how a lot of his companions came out of the medical room with a terrified grimace on their faces. Every so often, the corporal reluctantly uttered a name, and somebody got up from the bench, walked head down to the counter and received his documents allowing him to go home. Someone asked if they could smoke. The corporal looked up, blew out a mouthful of black smoke and replied, pointing to the wall:
“Obviously not, recruit. Can’t you see the sign? Or can’t you read?”
A couple of hours later, and the future conscripts were feeling the pangs of hunger. Any movement was sporadic, and appeared to depend more on the whim of the doctor or the corporal than on any established order. Almost all the lads who had left had been the ones whose passports had been stamped with the feared slogan: “Fit for Service”. Then all of a sudden, the corporal stared intently at one of the passports. His eyes opened wide and he called out:
“Let’s see! Neuman, Víctor! Stand up and come over here.”
My father obeyed, more in fear than in hope. As he came closer to the desk, the corporal’s gaze seemed to him too intense for it to be good news. In his underpants, skinny, younger than I am now, my father started to tremble. He had no inkling what the corporal was going to ask him:
“You wouldn’t by any chance be related to Monkey Neuman, the midfielder who plays for Chacarita, would you?”
Confused, my father smiled silently trying to win a few seconds to think.
“Are you going to answer or not, dammit? Do you know him at all, Monkey Neuman?”
My father felt an icy Siberian wind run down his back, as if the air was rushing in from the past, and then felt the sudden push of a luminous idea which made the time stranded in that room break free of its moorings and begin to race along. With all the aplomb he could muster, my father said to the corporal:
“Well, as far as knowing him goes, I should think I do know my brother, yes.”
The corporal raised his eyebrows and half-opened his lips in a complicated smile that made the cigarette roll round.
“Come closer, for fuck’s sake, or aren’t you and I going to be able to hold a proper conversation man to man? That’s better. So he’s your brother, you say? Really and truly?”
“Oh, if you only knew, Corporal sir, how often people ask me that very same question!”
“Yes, of course, I can just imagine it. But che, that’s incredible! And do you know how often I’ve been to the ground to see him play? Because you must be a Chacarita fan too, aren’t you?”
“Of course, Corporal sir,” replied my father, who had never in his life been interested in football, and whose father had been a supporter of Racing Club de Avellaneda.
“That’s my boy! What a coincidence! I can’t believe it! Shit, what a goal your brother scored last Sunday, eh? So please let your brother know,” the corporal went on, in a more serious tone of voice, trying to regain his earlier composure, “that here in the barracks we all think highly of him, and consider him to be an example for the youth of Argentina. Be sure you pass on that message, Neuman.”
“You can be certain I will, Corporal sir.”
“As I was saying, here in the barracks three of us are Chacarita fans.”
“Forgive me for correcting you, Corporal sir. But right now, there are exactly four of us.”
“That’s my boy! That’s how we all should be! Upright men of Chacarita! So what’s your brother doing now, is he training?”
“Yes, Corporal sir, like every day.”
“But hang on, wasn’t he injured last Sunday?”
“No, yes, you’re right,” my father floundered, “the poor guy has a sprained ankle, he’s got an ice pack on it all day at home.”
“What shitty luck! So in the end he isn’t going to play against Boca? They didn’t mention anything on the radio.”
“Well, in fact, I, look, erm… Can you keep a secret for me, Corporal sir? Bah, not for me, for my brother.”
“Tell me, tell me,” replied the corporal, straightening up and then bringing his shaven head close to the edge of the desk.
“It’s like this, Corporal sir. They don’t say anything on the radio, nobody says anything, because in the club they don’t want the people at Boca to know, got it? So that if at the last minute my brother can play, then our enemies will have to change their plans at the last minute, right?”
“That’s my boy!” said the corporal admiringly, dropping back into his chair. “Don’t you worry, Neuman, a Chacarita fan knows how to keep a secret. Not a word to a soul, I swear!”
“My brother and the club are very grateful to you, Corporal sir.”
“Ah, and here’s your passport, Víctor. You can go without a worry.”
“Many thanks, Corporal sir.”
“And give my warmest greetings to your brother,” added the corporal, stamping his passport with “Unfit for Service”.
“It’ll be a pleasure, Corporal sir,” said my father, taking his document and turning to go and get dressed.
“Ah, one other little thing,” said the corporal.
My father came to a sudden halt and turned back slowly to face him.
“Yes?” he asked, terrified, in the faintest of voices.
“Nothing, my lad, except it’s a good thing your brother wasn’t born with flat feet, isn’t it?”
Guffawing, his head enveloped in smoke, the corporal lowered his gaze once more and carried on flicking through the other passports with a bored expression.
8
If we lend credence to the strange symmetries of History, it would appear that in my family, every second generation, someone saves themselves from some disaster thanks to a misunderstanding over the name Neuman. Some day I’d like to have a son, so that the surname I give him can protect him, if only by mistake. Yet I suspect I will never have a son. And this non-existence will be the most silent, perfect salvation.
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