My Tired Father (3 page)

Over there it rained through the ceiling

Up above in less tense regions

Her pale face leaned too far over the keys

Thanks to certain exceptional qualities she was the only one who produced no errors since if for any reason she turned invisible in one part she could easily be seen in another

Actually she knew nothing of contemplation but connected remote facts and gave them a forceful precision

She had a big perfected tripod She would take walks with it clumsily adjusting its position She used field glasses to discern in the bushes on the riverbank the scattered gray bodies of our giants

A disk impregnated with revitalizing substances applied to each breast morning or night made them grow or shrink as she wished with an extraordinary rapidity

She preferred to place her hair between two glass plates after carefully removing the adjacent earth She would never let it dry quickly

I lifted her off the sidewalk with just one hand I put a wooden lid 35 cm in diameter on her After turning her over I filled the intermediary space with water and thus I carried her in complete safety as if in a hatbox

Wake up I said and I'll be grateful

I used stearine candles that I let drip

I took her to the hut where she found herself four hours later

The room seemed inexplicably changed The walls trembled slightly and silently The still-intact door kept opening and closing rhythmically We were sad because we had no friends only brothers

The next day after breakfast we visited the rug maker's

At times we realized we were behaving like naive people but preferred to act according to our own estimation

After constructing a sort of access ladder to both ends

When we meditated on this subject a light would strike us blind

Almost one and a half years later one evening around ten o'clock while my father my sister and Catherine Mahoney were talking in the dining room they heard the piano playing in the living room Intrigued Catherine took a lamp and went into the living room where she clearly saw the keys moving by themselves

Eight days later a letter arrived from out of town telling us of the death of an old uncle and the piano started to play again

That same evening Catherine heard strange inexplicable noises in her room Urgently summoned I agreed to spend the night with her

In the middle of the night while I was reading my favorite paper The Cap Times she said to me If I die before you as seems likely I declare and affirm that I will warn you in time (at that moment we were on the balcony)

I live near the barracks I replied and I'll often see you go by on your business I'll call you Maloy

(An orphan I had lived somewhere in the country One hard winter the ditch in front of the house had frozen solid)

The excerpts showed that something very important was going on in the realm of the senses

She had blue eyes wore jewelry a gray lace blouse and an exaggeratedly long skirt She divided her time between her real family (when her son was left a widower she took the children) and an imaginary one

It seemed necessary to her to show others a tragic and racked mask forever hostile to pleasure Practicing the fall she preferred to keep silent

She sometimes deflowered the beautiful feeling called love (You know that there's pohetry and you know that it's not only beastly etc) and said It's better to show that life is not merely a series of pornographic catastrophes

At the limit of the feeling (this one) there was the life (that one) we detested

In the evenings she contemplated one of the paintings Her reality belonged uniquely to this alternative

She had learned that one of her paintings made outside working hours was going to be shown at the art gallery which had opened that very day

But the testimony was based rather on the assertion that she had heard a certain word spoken several times

She watched over the canvas while waiting her turn The masterpiece was taken into the judging hall

I saw the way she saw

She was certainly the most capable and the only one who managed an office of studies in direct contact with

She studied in a beehive form

She looked for someone and suddenly cried out Abend while a pale thin girl whose hair had not been combed for a long time approached her kissed her hand and took the box she had kept on her knees throughout the trip

I looked at an illustrated book and she at a piece of cardboard with a yellow tag

After verifying the effect I gained certainties and remained in place for a moment or two

The surface had the same consistency even though it seemed smoother and more convincing

The fury of the sounds returned too

Of course among her means there was a sort of prolongation (It's no longer necessary to underscore the importance of such a fact)

A malefic hygiene In iron for example

(Considering the impressive number of inhabitants it was not surprising that some of them got lost Recently someone had found two children he had fed them and had even made them a shelter for sleeping The children had become his friends but they remained distrustful in their interactions with others)

One time the wheel went by there I and she who held me in her arms

As we were speaking the young man who was courting her arrived He said he loved her for her sensitivity to light

Since he was very young and timid she formed his ideal image Otherwise he had had only brief affairs

When he visited us the first time we let him put his hands through the bars We plainly saw his mad ecstatic expression and the superior brilliance of his eyes

He was truly attentive He fattened up his intelligence

He had driven an automobile for the first time in 1916

He raised one of the open extremities and formed an equilateral triangle by folding the outside edge Then he did the same thing with the other edge by folding it back and up

He came out of individual sequestrations like men out of a tribe

Since the fourth couple was no longer able to receive he soon found himself in a desperate situation and felt compelled to intervene

Think about it he was completely alone on a island

The light it's true was unequal but its subdivision had taken place In any case it could show us the contours of his bird-shaped shadow

When the motor stopped in the middle of the water the adults' interest was also aroused

There was an immense night in them

They had gray skin and always moved in columns of three or four If I disturbed them they made an easily heard hissing noise A commander always marched at the head of the columns I had the impression that they orientated themselves in relation to a specific odor given off by the commander

One morning after washing I inadvertently tossed a basinful of water into the road down which they had to come When they appeared they seemed confused and for an hour they rushed this way and that until they once again found the road

They turned in place hissed and then circled the wet area at a great distance They seemed resolved but sometimes I saw them unexpectedly disperse seized by panic

If they met a group of women the commander charged and began sticking them with his sword The others quickly grabbed the victims and fled with them toward the barracks

I add that at the barracks entrance there were always heaps of bones

I greeted the cortege but no one responded Near the end Catherine Mahoney warned me with a finger to her lips but made dizzy by her rhythmical swing I didn't notice the gesture

Inserted into pipes and put under pressure we became something else and there was no place for nostalgia

We realized that it was an ocean The same thing also happened with

Each received an impetus and thrust himself into his undefined inactive rotation

Precision and perfection in execution We wanted to get the documentation in color

We had no edges even when we met

Remarkable facilities for a pleasant game

When the ship was putting out to sea a group of women dressed in black waved handkerchiefs

At night we would return with big fish

We said that stigmata rule destiny

While traversing those lands we found ourselves obliged to rob cemeteries and the gallows

Under each one there were many relations

Luckily the cold herbs were likewise brought from there

A flattened being strove especially to give the explanation of its functionality

She had fragile health She had been unbalanced for 24 years

Instead of being exhausted after so many years of extenuating existence (also at)

In the laboratory she meditated by means of some tubes curved several times and having the yellow color of straw or saffron

She asked whether the privilege granted the iron prisoner was not out of place

Around her neck she had a brown ring and under her lip an unintelligible floral motif below which were four points

Between the smallest stones and the big calcareous shell-like or sedimentary stones he had placed a chair attached to a scales

Two years later in order to escape the others' fate he had become a banknote engraver

One of the secretaries the one who had read the papers stared into space while leaning against the door jamb

The solar and lunar cycles took place with the most perfect regularity and the schemata of light polarization became easily predictable

I had built several huts around my father for this reason he considered me his most valuable possession and treated me well Over there the members of my family worked ate and chatted while sharing the news of the day

To escape the sun's torrid rays they dug in deep and buried themselves in the earth

In winter they buried themselves again but once more they had enemies who would not leave them in peace and who would dig into the earth in order to eat them

If they succeeded in getting out alive they would move back into the huts during the spring

Then they dug together among the crevasses and free spaces of the dead trunks and their bark to catch the spiders and cockroaches hidden there

They threw rocks at the pelican eggs they broke them and went down to consume their contents This constituted a classic and useful exercise

They swallowed the smoke and then filled their mouths with water and spat it out in thin streams mixed with smoke Afterward they babbled incoherent words as they bragged

Over there no river flowed even if the ditches and cavities in the ground collected stagnant water

The soil was friable and composed mainly of reddish sand Trees were generally scarce Only in places where cities used to be did silent and shadowy groves still thrive

Like the women the men had bodies covered with scars The old women often murdered the young ones Near the cataract I saw such an act with my own eyes

Space was empty and chaotic For this reason I preferred it on a technical level

On the contrary the purchase of shoes constituted a personal pleasure

The wounded volunteers fraternized during sleep

The horizon presented certain swellings The corridors or the windows (the panes also added certain indefinite obscurities) tried to cover themselves embarrassed by their ignorance of our intentions

We passed from a zone of white constructions to a completely black landscape

I had enough of so much Father

In the second half the frontiers of certain wild territories appeared

A few men repaired the road With my head thrown back I addressed one of them I knew he would not understand what I was telling him He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted Stay here

A referee went toward the arena while telling an athlete to hurry up A second small athlete wearing a hood was huddled on the ground

The motif of the running dog

That was better for weak characters because it seemed a rather dangerous thing

At the close of that period goals had been created

Abandonment was no longer a contrast phenomenon

The only meeting worth mentioning was with a woman a mother of three She threw herself on the porters in the middle of the line and forced them to drop their bags and run off but she received a mortal blow for her mad courage All the women encountered until then had had only one child This was the first to have had several

She could retain within a cavity in her head an appreciable amount of water which allowed her to bury herself in the mud without dying

She tried to keep standing rushed forward fell to her knees and sometimes leaned her forehead against not too large a tree and after trying to make sure no one was hidden behind it she began forcibly shaking it

I tore my handkerchief in two and bandaged her knees

On March 22 I rented three large comfortable furnished rooms located in a street on the edge of town However as evening came on I noticed that my apartment became colder and sadder

At the beginning of April fire destroyed the building and an unidentified tenant perished in the flames Her room was on the fourth floor and at the last minute those who came to put out the fire saw at the white-painted window a woman in a desperate pose with arms outstretched hair undone

A few days later Catherine Mahoney dreamed of a man seated at the table in her room and she described his face so precisely that everyone present identified me as the dreamed-of person

On May 25 I was in the neighborhood pharmacy and I asked the pharmacist whether he remembered who had lived in the burned-out building thirty- five years ago He replied I remember perfectly well

And he showed me a photo in which I was next to a big black dog called Raphael that was mine then

Infantile adapted and thus hostile I remained standing

The vocation's supremacy was constant and the pharmacist wore it over his trousers

The fear of premeditation made him believe that Abend and I were one and the same person despite Abend's marriage to a local girl

On his forehead he wore the dire sign of others' remorse

From here to the miracle there remained but one step