Selected Cronicas

MEMORY OF A SMALL BOY

But how should I feel about my little boy? Because I cannot summon any definite feeling about him. What should I feel? I can see his face bronzed by the sun, a face entirely unaware of its expression. Busy licking at his ice-cream, he looks like some pretty animal — delicate yet ferocious.

The ice-cream is chocolate-flavoured. My son likes it. Sometimes he finds licking takes far too long so he bites into it, and the face he makes is that of someone who is totally unaware of the awkward happiness produced by a lump of frozen ice-cream filling a warm mouth. And such a pretty mouth. I look at my little boy, inscrutable as ever, but he is used to this foolish expression of intense love. He ignores me, and does not mind being observed as he performs this private ritual, so vital and delicate, as he carries on licking his ice-cream with his crimson, watchful tongue. I feel nothing other than a sense of being complete, weighed down by primary matter and solid wood. As a mother, I have no finesse. I am coarse and silent. With rude silence and vacant eyes, I watch the severe expression on my son’s face. I can feel nothing because this must be crude, indivisible love. There I am, recoiling. Recoiling before so much. The enigmatic leaves me with a kind of cruel obstinacy: enigma is my name; there I am, enhanced by nature. The expression on my face must be one of obstinacy, the look in my eyes that of the foreigner who does not speak the language of the country. As if overcome by fatigue, I communicate with no one. My heart is heavy, stubborn, expressionless, and closed to any suggestions.

I am there, and I can see: my boy suddenly looks greedy — he must have found a lump of ice-cream with rather more chocolate and his practised tongue has prised it out. No one could describe me as thin: I am plump, heavy and big, with rough hands I inherited from my ancestors. I am a suspicious woman taking a pause. My son is now eating the chocolate coating. I am an immigrant who has thrown down roots on virgin territory. My searching gaze is absorbed and sombre. And what do I see? A small boy absorbed in eating ice-cream.