Please Talk to Me: Selected Stories

NOW

Perhaps it would be best if I go away for a while, if I stay here I’ll end up getting agitated. Mama and Adelaida do nothing but cry in the room where Juan Luis sleeps (as if that’s going to help my brother in any way) and it’s terrible to see Papa: just now I looked into the living room and he’s still standing at the window, watching the entrance into our road. We’ll know from his face when the ambulance turns in.

It’s odd that I wrote ambulance because, even as I was writing it, I was imagining them arriving by car. A car would be worse, I don’t know why. Actually, I do know. I can’t stop thinking that Juan Luis is going to scream like Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire. And they came for Blanche in a car.

. . .

Just now I told Papa that I was thinking of going out for a stroll but he didn’t seem to like the idea. It’s not surprising: Juan Luis could wake up at any moment and if he’s anything like he was last night, Papa won’t be able to manage him alone (and it’s clear that we can’t count on Mama and Adelaida). I wonder how long this nightmare can go on. But we must not give in to despair. Now that they’re taking Juan Luis away, we have to try to forge a new life; we were on the verge of becoming demented ourselves. It seems like centuries since I last felt the sun on my skin.

The first thing we should do is move house. I mooted the idea to Adelaida just now, but she looked at me with a kind of horror. I do understand: our childhood was here. It’s not easy detaching yourself from a place. We used to play in this room, when it was the family room, while the adults took a siesta on Sundays. She would be Aleta and Queen Guinevere; I was the wizard Merlin; Juan Luis, Prince Valiant. That crack over there served for tempering the Singing Sword. And in the summer we used to run around in the sun until our heads hurt. But this is precisely what we need to avoid: sentimentality. It’s as if everything here is somehow tainted by Juan Luis. Full of his memory, I mean. If we stay in this house, we’ll never be able to make a fresh start. Every morning, when Mama waters the azaleas, she’ll say the same thing: ‘To think this is the flower bed Juan Luis made for me after he sold his first painting, my poor son.’ And if anyone points out the cobwebs in the birdbath in the courtyard, Adelaida will say: ‘This is where Sebastian tried to give Juan Luis a bath, when Juan Luis was three years old.’ And she’ll look at her mother and they’ll both cry. Only yesterday afternoon, Mama was searching for an X-ray or something and she found that photograph from when Juan Luis won the drawing competition. ‘Do you remember how handsome he was?’ she said. ‘When he came out on the stage everybody cheered. Do you remember how proud I was?’ She held the photograph against her heart. ‘How old was he?’ she asked. ‘Ten?’ ‘No, eleven,’ said Adelaida. ‘Don’t you remember that Sebastian wore long trousers for the first time that day?’ Mama sighed deeply and I realised that she was crying. ‘How happy we might have been,’ she said. Then, hearing a noise, she glanced up. When she saw me watching from the door she quickly dried her eyes with the back of her hand; she doesn’t like anyone to see her crying. I sat down beside her to comfort her, but she started stroking my head like a ninny and murmuring my darling boy. She’s very nervy, poor Mama, and she ended up making me nervous too. Or, I don’t know, perhaps it’s the result of living with this tension for so long. The touch of her hand must have acted as a catalyst, taking me back to another time — I can’t have been more than four years old because Juan Luis was still sleeping in a cot in Mama and Papa’s room — and I had been dreaming of dogs (or imagining them). That’s all it was. A terrifying number of black and hairy dogs, ugly dogs, in a pile, tearing at each other’s ears with their teeth. I didn’t want to shout for fear of waking my little brother in the room next door. That was the first night, I remember, that I ever heard my heart beating. I was about to cover my ears with my hands and then I felt her come in. Is something wrong, darling boy? I heard her say, above my head. She was stroking my forehead and then she sat down on the bed. And it was as if all the peace in the world settled on my bed, with her.

I suppose that this kind of experience stays fixed in the subconscious, waiting for the right stimulus to reactivate it. Anyway it was a big mistake to lose my nerve just at the moment when I most needed to keep calm. As soon as I opened my eyes and saw Mama’s face I regretted my weakness. It can’t be helped, these things find a way to burst out. I think we could all have ended up going mad if Papa hadn’t made a clean break.

Papa came in just now, as I was writing his name. Or rather, he peered around the door into the room, saw me writing and went out again without saying a word. It’s incredible, the degree to which people in an extreme situation can lose consciousness of their own acts; Papa must think that what he has done is the most normal thing in the world. But I don’t want to mock him; at the end of the day he has borne the brunt of this situation. It can’t have been easy to call the hospital. Speaking for myself, I don’t know if I could have done it. Especially not in the way he did: I confess that I was amazed by his sangfroid. Last night he tried to kill his brother—I heard him clearly. I don’t know, I suppose that was the most direct way to convey the gravity of the situation but it sounded very stark all the same. I was lying in bed, and the words sent a jolt through me.

No; the worst is still to come. I mean we’ll have to talk to the doctors. They’ll want to know when we noticed the first symptoms, what his relationship with me was like, what could have led him to do what he did. And why should I be the one tasked with explaining everything? For two reasons. First: because I have to spare Papa and Mama (and also Adelaida) the trauma of talking about this. Second: because I don’t think they would be able to contribute much given that they have pretended for so long that everything Juan Luis did was normal. It’s a natural function of their neurosis. Or a survival mechanism. (They did know, however. I remember one particularly significant incident. The five of us were having dinner. A music programme had just ended on the radio. The presenter was reading Guy de Maupassant’s The Horla. At the point in the story where it starts to become clear what illness the protagonist is suffering from, Adelaida stood up and switched off the radio. A silent gesture, but charged with meaning. I waited for Mama or Papa to do or say something fitting to the parent of a girl who — without asking us — had just interrupted the broadcast of a story to which we were all listening. Nothing happened. The silence that followed was so dense that for a few seconds I feared Juan Luis might pick up the radio and hurl it at someone’s head.)

Then again, even as a boy he wasn’t normal. Brilliant, yes, but not normal. That’s what worries me, I realise now. How to explain that to the doctors. They’ll ask me: And why did you never say anything about those strange looks? I’ll say, He didn’t always look at me that way, Doctor, and when he did I thought it was because he was angry with me. They’ll ask: Why did you never tell anyone that he shouted at night? I’ll tell them: We were children, Doctor, you know how these things are. I was scared that they would beat him (then Mama will jump in protesting that she has never lifted a hand against any of her children; on second thought, I’d better be careful not to say that and spare myself the complications). They are going to ask: And why did the others notice nothing? That will be the hardest part to explain. I could say: You know how parents generally treat the youngest child, especially someone like Juan Luis, an apparently perfect boy, Doctor, the kind who always carries off the end-of-year prize. Or alternatively: You’re the psychiatrist, Doctor; I don’t need to explain to you the lengths to which a bourgeois family will go to protect itself from abnormality. No, I can’t say that. I won’t have the courage to destroy Mama’s cherished image. It might be better not to mention our childhood; I don’t want to give them reasons to find me responsible for Juan Luis’ illness. We all know what psychiatrists are like — they attribute a significance to everything. I’ll say what everyone thinks: that the first sign was at Baldi’s house. Nobody can refute that because all five of us were there that time.

We were in the garden, I’m sure of that because I remember noticing the reddish reflections on the face of Señora Baldi (which made her look even fatter than she actually is) and thinking that dusk was a particularly irksome time of day. The talk was of some homeopathic doctor or other. Everyone knows that I find these inane conversations exasperating, so I did what I always do on such occasions: I didn’t listen. It’s easy: a simple question of perspective. What I mean is, if you consider that a radio has a much greater range from the twelfth floor than it does from sea level, you can understand that it’s possible to shrink the radio of one’s own perception to the body’s compass. Except that this time, when I returned from my isolation I had the impression (to start with it was only an impression, something you could feel in the air more than anything else) that other people in the garden were annoyed. I looked around me, but I realise now that even before looking, I knew what was happening. It was Juan Luis talking, in fact it was most likely his voice that broke my absorption. It wasn’t the mere fact of his talking, though, but the way he talked. Without a break, and with a strident tone that made the skin bristle. I noticed that some people were looking at me, as though begging me to intervene. Not Mama and Papa; not Adelaida, either: they still had their eyes on Juan Luis as though nothing strange was happening. It wasn’t the last time I observed this reaction or piously contributed to it myself (every time Juan Luis embarked on one of his weird episodes I would tell an anecdote or think up some gambit to divert attention towards me). That afternoon in the garden I attempted one such loving intervention though on this occasion (I must confess) it was totally ineffective, given its ultimate consequences. First, I knocked over a jug of sangria, prompting a commotion that forced Juan Luis to be quiet. Then I contrived to make myself the centre of attention, talking about mechanics, about spiritualism, all that nonsense that people find so fascinating. I’m sure that I succeeded in neutralising my brother on that occasion.

But I don’t want any more importance to be given to my behaviour than it had in reality. The illness was already apparent and, although we avoided talking about the subject, our behaviour changed. Every day, as the time approached for Juan Luis to come home, we would start shouting at one another, taking umbrage at the slightest trifle, lashing out for no reason. Perhaps not surprisingly, Mama was the most affected. She developed a kind of hysterical defence: finding herself in the company of any other human being, she would start to talk about Juan Luis, about his paintings, his girlfriend, how handsome he was, etc. I mean, I don’t want to come across as hyper-sensitive but I sometimes got the impression that she invited people round simply in order to talk to them about my brother. I don’t think she did this consciously (my mother hasn’t a Machiavellian bone in her body) but I realised how bizarre this must seem to our guests — and there was nothing I could do about it. In the beginning, yes, I did try to rein in her panegyrics but that seemed to make her more anxious, so that finally I opted for total silence when people came to visit. (Happily that mania for having visitors seems to have stopped.)

I couldn’t sit and do nothing, though. Not only on account of my family (who seemed more burdened every day) but for another, more pressing reason: María Laura. I don’t know — I’ve often asked myself about the strange workings of love. From a logical point of view, there is no reason why a girl like María Laura (the very embodiment of joie de vivre) would feel attracted to a sick man. And yet there she was, as happy as could be and apparently oblivious to any problem.

I tried dropping hints but realised very quickly that I would never convince her of the truth. So the best solution (at the time it seemed like the best) was to go and speak to María Laura’s father. I wish I had never done that. The man received me very well, listening to me attentively and promising to do everything I asked but afterwards — I don’t know — something came over him. María Laura, perhaps: that girl never liked me. Anyway, the fact is that the man not only allowed Juan Luis to keep going out with his daughter but then he did something even more hare-brained: he told Juan Luis about my visit. No, I’m not imagining it. I know it seems crazy that a serious person would put such a dangerous weapon in the hands of a lunatic but that’s how it was. That same night, as soon as Juan Luis came home, I knew what had happened. I could tell just from the way he looked at me. As if he wanted to overpower my very spirit. For a long time he stood watching me, then finally he shook his head. I don’t know what he intended by this gesture but it chilled me to the core. I felt that never in my life would I know a minute’s peace. You think I’m exaggerating? Not at all. From that day on he began to persecute me. Especially in the way he looked at me. I couldn’t take a single step without feeling his eyes fixed on some part of my body. And his words were almost as unbearable as his looks. Every time he alluded to me it was with the purpose of humiliating me. Nothing too obvious, nothing that would make the others think: Juan Luis is a bully. They were subtle attacks, straight to the point. It made me suspect that there was a plan: He was doing precisely the things that most vexed me. His plan then was to make me lose control, so that the household’s attention fell entirely on me. He wanted to deceive them, to my detriment.

The other evening my suspicion was confirmed.

For a long time Juan Luis had been pressing me to let him do a portrait of me; to start with I didn’t want to submit to his purposes, but in the end Adelaida persuaded me to go along with the idea; besides, I was interested to know what he was after with all this. When I saw the finished portrait I finally understood. No — it was nothing to do with the painting itself: it was a good portrait. Too much ochre, perhaps. But there was something that powerfully caught my eye: an unjustifiably yellow mark between the cheekbone and the right temple. What did that mean? To start with, I wasn’t entirely sure, but when I looked up my suspicions were confirmed: Juan Luis was laughing. I could hardly believe what was happening. ‘My brother,’ I thought, ‘my own brother capable of such cynicism.’ Blinded by rage, I wanted to hit him but instead I smashed the painting into a thousand pieces. I remember what I was thinking: what else might this maniac do if he is capable of working for two weeks with the sole aim of hurting his brother? What will he not stop at, now that his game has been discovered?

From that day onwards I tried to avoid his presence, but that simply exasperated him. He stalked me, monitoring all my movements. And although I did everything I could to stop him watching me (in these conditions even breathing becomes difficult) I suppose that he had found a way to control me without my realising it. The truth is that every time I tried to do some important work, I would hear Juan Luis’ voice coming from the most unexpected places, and I had to get away.

It wasn’t so much for myself that I minded, but for my family. For days now, Mama’s eyes have been swollen from crying so much, and Adelaida has developed a kind of rash that makes her look terrible. Perhaps it’s better for everyone that things ended as they have. I don’t know. I have a strange feeling, even though I shouldn’t be surprised. What he was going to do was foreseeable. It should have been enough just to see the way he smiled at supper time — the obsequious way he offered me the breast of the chicken — to know that he was embarking on another of his crises. And that this time it would continue to its ultimate conclusion.

But it wasn’t at the dinner table that I knew for sure, it was at midnight, when I was lying in bed, still thinking it over. How was I so certain? I don’t know. I suppose it was something like animal instinct: rats abandoning a sinking ship. All I know is that I was going over what had happened in the last few days, and what Juan Luis had said at dinner and suddenly I realised that he was planning to kill me that very night. Initially, I admit, I was paralysed with terror but some inner voice urged me to fight for my life. I got up and, barefoot, so as not to make any noise, I went to Juan Luis’ bedroom. He didn’t move, but I could tell that he wasn’t asleep. A fearful thought struck me: what do I do if he attacks me? (Juan Luis was always stronger than I was). Although the thought of using a weapon against my brother was repugnant, I knew that my very survival was at stake. I went to the storage room to get an axe. Then, feeling calmer, I returned to his bedroom. From the door I watched the white rectangle of his bed; there was no discernible movement, but he couldn’t deceive me any longer. Quietly I approached the bed, and confirming my suspicions, he sat up.

I don’t know how far things might have gone if he hadn’t seen the axe. Even having seen it, he launched himself at me. Remembering that a person in his state of mind never abandons the course to which he is committed, I defended myself as best I could until Papa and Adelaida arrived and managed to free me.

I must have lost consciousness after that. This morning, when I woke up, I could barely recall the incident. I was trying to work out why my wrist hurt so much when, through the door, I heard my father talking on the telephone. ‘As soon as possible,’ I heard, ‘last night he tried to kill his brother.’ Shivers ran down my spine when I heard that. But this is for the best. I can’t spend my life hiding away. It’s terrible not to feel the sun on my skin. I want to be happy.

. . .

My God, I think I must have fallen asleep. I can hear his voice outside. Perhaps they’ve come to get him. I think I’m afraid.

. . .

Papa isn’t standing at the window any more. I called him and he shouted that he was coming, that I should keep calm. I have to speak to him. I have to explain. I had a dream. No, it’s not that. It’s a feeling I have, that an injustice is about to be perpetrated — that’s it. That he grew up with us, or don’t they remember that any more? He liked sunny mornings and Prince Valiant. And perhaps, even though we think that everything suddenly changed for him, perhaps within his soul there is still a beautiful and hidden part that nobody yet knows. That nobody will ever know, now. I hear the voices outside. They’ve come to get him. They are going to encircle him with walls through which the sun shall never enter.