Without resistance (at least on my part, because by that point I had decided that it was pointless to resist), we were led here and there, chivvied along by Señora Daisy, who wanted to show us around the home personally so that we could appreciate with our eyes its delights, which were perfectly suited to a person as special as our mother. What rubbish, I wanted to say to Lucía, there’s nothing special about Mother any more, or about any of us, all we have is the perfect memory of that beautiful thing we once were or of that which we now think was once beautiful. Balderdash, I heard someone say and stopped in my tracks. It felt like a dream, but couldn’t have been because Lucía had clearly also heard it. She stopped and looked at me. Both of us knew there was only one person in the world we had ever heard use that word. Because Perla could lie like the best of them, but if she suspected the mere whiff of deceit in another person she would come out with those strange words the origin of which, even today, is still a mystery to me. Balderdash and poppycock. What’s wrong, dears, asked Señora Daisy. We didn’t get the chance to tell her: a small commotion nearby brought us all to a halt. Calm down Granny, we clearly heard a wheedling voice say. I’ll give you Granny, said the voice of the chanteuse.
Disregarding Señora Daisy, Lucía and I rushed to the place from where the voice had come. We found Perla on her feet, holding onto a chair for balance and clutching in her free hand an object I couldn’t identify but which she seemed prepared to hurl at the first Coverall who dared to touch her. Calm down, Granny, said the Coverall again. Perla raised her hand to her breast. Me, your grandmother? she said. And then a small miracle occurred: she laughed. And I swear she laughed with sarcirony.
Something must have come over Lucía and me because we pushed Señora Daisy — who was trying to hold us back — out of the way, then went one to each side of Perla. It’s all right, Mother, we’re going now, said Lucía. And Perla: It’s clear that you two need to be kept on a tighter rein. We admitted that she was right and in the teeth of Señora Daisy’s shrill explanations of how natural and even healthy our mother’s reaction had been and how this little incident merely confirmed how stimulated our beloved and very special mother was going to feel in this optimal environment, we took Perla by the arms and made our way towards the exit.
We could scarcely contain ourselves, Lucía and I, we had to cover our mouths and stifle the odd snort so that Señora Daisy and the Coveralls didn’t notice our predicament. As soon as we were outside with the door closed behind us, we exploded. We had to let go of Perla so as to double up and laugh properly, long and hard. They would have had her playing nursery games, said Lucía, weeping with laughter. And I said: That Daisy woman had no idea who she was up against. Clutching our stomachs we leaned on each other so as not to fall over, helpless with laughter beneath the recriminatory gaze of Perla who was gradually retreating into a world we didn’t know but about which I, there in the street had begun to have an inkling. I remembered the torrejas. That afternoon on which we had such an overwhelming desire to eat torrejas that we couldn’t wait another second before sinking our teeth into one. Then I, in the same way that I deduced every night the presence of the lion, worked out a formula that we worked on feverishly, perfecting it to a point where Lucía could have a go at making them. The end result looked more like dispirited doughnuts. It was wonderful, all the same. Pointing at the doughnuts we murmured torrejas, torrejas, and laughed so much that Perla, who was just coming home, heard us from the passage and when she came in and saw the doughnuts wanted to get angry but fell about laughing instead.
Now as then, I saw us from the perspective of Perla’s empty gaze, laughing until we couldn’t laugh any more in front of the green door of the Happiness Care Home. And there and then I was sure that I had never stopped knowing the lion. That, in the middle of the night I still conjured his menacing presence and, paralysed with fear and curiosity, I still waited for him to leap.
And I understood that the cruelty of life is precisely that: you never really lose yourself. Although the teeth may soften in your mouth and a mist of forgetfulness and tiredness cloud your understanding, you’re still prey to the same vanity, the same fear, and the same uncontrollable desire to laugh that illuminated the other ages. Even if you have forgotten what you were frightened of, and there is no longer any reason to be vain, and you aren’t sure what the hell it is that’s making you laugh.
The three of us got into the car and set off home. Lucía and I not knowing what we were going to do with Perla, Perla not knowing where she was being driven, all three of us terrified and full of a sense of triumph that was entirely baseless. Absurd, devastated, invincible. Until the end.
THE NIGHT OF THE COMET
For Sylvia Iparraguire
All we knew about the comet was that someone had plunged to his death to dodge its arrival, that its tail had luminously sliced across certain nights of the Centenary Year of the Argentine Independence, that, like the Paris Exhibition or the Great War, its path through the world had memorably illuminated the dawn of this century. The man on the wicker chair had spoken of a photograph he had seen, he couldn’t remember where, in which several gentlemen wearing boaters and ladies in plumed hats were staring as if bewitched at a dot in the sky, a dot that unfortunately (he said) did not appear in the photograph. I had recalled an illustration in my fifth-grade reader: a family paralysed by the vision of the comet passing through the skies. In the drawing the family members could be seen sitting at a table, stiffly erect, their eyes full of terror, not daring to turn their heads to the window for fear of seeing it again. (As soon as I said this, I had a feeling that the text referred to a Montgolfier hot-air balloon, but since I didn’t know what a Montgolfier hot-air balloon was — I wasn’t even sure that such a thing existed — and since I found it suggestive that I had attributed the family’s surprise, whatever the real phenomenon might have been, to the arrival of the comet as early as the fifth grade, I didn’t correct my conceivable mistake and everyone, myself included, was left with the impression that the comet was capable of sending people into shock, of leaving them frozen in their seats.)
We had a number of questions. How big did it seem when it was last seen? How big would it seem now? How long did it take to cross the sky? The man next to the table with the lamp suggested that, since it was as fast as a plane, unless one paid close attention the second it went by, snap, one would miss it. The man on the stool said no, that it rose over the river at nightfall and set over the western high-rises at dawn.