Five years, I mean, fuck, I can’t believe it’s been five years. I obviously of course have something to say about all this, or not even something but a ton of things, a ton of years without discussing it, or merely just in passing with the same couple of people, of course I have plenty to say.
I try to talk, seek a position I can take, knocking back my wine for courage, a big gulp of the Chablis to your pops and all his kindness, him looking out the window, saying he has all the time in the world, and he’s relaxed, and right then is when I start to feel it, hard, an irrepressible despair, and I don’t want to cry in front of your father, just when he’s got it together, I’d hate to go and cry on him. I don’t know if it’s the white wine that makes it happen or what, I mean my shaking, because I’ve been able to say your name for a while now without losing my composure, even been able to talk about what happened, about what happened to you, to say after the death of rather than after the thing with, which, as we know, tends to lead to confusion. Or which in any case does not name it, that, the utter vacuum. You know? Even now I can say, name, write it all down without getting too worked up about it, but just right then, I don’t know, your poor dad. Maybe it was the element of surprise of it too, because of course I was happy I was going to meet up with him, I wasn’t really prepared for anything sad, or excessively sad, so it kind of took me by surprise. And the wine, I never drink white wine. So he tells me the thing about cremation and asks me what I think, that he wants to know my thoughts on it, and, you know, I make an effort, I try and pull myself together, keep control of my mouth and my jaw. I say, I’m not sure how, that I agree, that whatever they decide is fine by me, because ultimately all these rituals that have to do with death are more for the people left behind than they are for the deceased. And that if that’s what they thought would be best, if cemeteries had no particular meaning for them, as a place to go and visit, as a point of reference, that they should do it, that it was fine by me and that it actually seemed like a good way to get closure, considering how it had been five years. I said something in that vein, adamantly, I think, I guess because of the wine, I spoke with conviction because I wanted so badly for my sadness not to show. I just hope I didn’t overdo it. We did a toast, and I was trying to go back over Six Feet Under in my head, back over the way they were able to naturalize it, death as an everyday thing, kind of to try and get myself to chill, calm down. But it was hard, for some reason I couldn’t quite make it to that ordinariness the Fishers were able to have. After that we talked about other stuff, and I did hold it together until it was time to go. When your dad gave me a hug my knees started shaking and almost gave out on me, like they did that day. I was overwhelmed, and he noticed; it was a lot for him, as well.
First, and I don’t know in what order, I’m watering a yard—this is in Esquel, it’s the yard from our house in Esquel, or a blend of my dad’s house with your place in the country. I water the trees around the edges of the property. I remember what order those went in, which came after which, and the sensation of traveling from one shadow to the next, and where there was grass growing and where there wasn’t. The eucalyptus, the oak, the pine, the pine tree with its fruit that comes in little flowers, pine flowers, brown, wooden, like wooden flowers; the space for the gate, with no trees, the vegetable patch, the succinct patch of raspberries, which doesn’t produce much, that tree with the symmetrical branches, parallel to the ground, easy to climb, and its sticky orange and yellow fruit—are those its flowers?—and then the fir tree, like the pine but blue, which couldn’t be climbed and therefore made less of an impression, had less personality, to those of us who sized up trees in terms of practicality. Everything is very dry, and it’s hard for me to control the hose, because it’s big, wide, and the water pressure is high. Was it yellow?
Then I’m in college, at school, and somebody taps the tip of one of my teeth, one of my front teeth, a little piece that seemed like it was loose, and that’s how they all fall apart, the whole front part of my mouth shatters into little pieces like my teeth are made of glass. The leftover shards remain in my mouth, spiky and sharp, like rodent teeth but broken. Surprise and pain.
I hear mouse sounds all the time. Which translates into: I would like to move, get out of here. Ramiro doesn’t feel that way. Ramiro thinks it’s stupid. He maintains that any city will be full of mice, let’s just thank our lucky stars it’s not a rat and that we can resolve it by not keeping things in the pantry anymore. Yet meanwhile, every time I come across another package of something that you can tell has been nibbled on by the tiny teeth of vermin, I feel like throwing up. And like leaving, moving. Ramiro says every time there’s a problem, no matter how small, instead of thinking how I might be able to fix it, I just want to run away. That may be. But I can’t think of any real solution here. And besides, it’s not the only one. The only problem, I mean. Besides, what he calls running away is probably just my instinct for self-preservation. So for me ultimately the mouse invasion confirms the state of total disrepair we have the house in now, how disconnected we are (me at least) from where we live in order for another thing to take up residence, another being. And if it’s not that, then how do you explain why it never happened before? I can hardly think it’s a coincidence. Or maybe it is—or maybe what it is is an accumulation of coincidences that in turn form a sort of mouse grid. I have a dream about rodent teeth, and then one night, standing at the corner where our place is, I look up and see a mouse running along the wires like they’re pathways, with that determination, that certainty. A few days later I come upon another one, another mouse in another neighborhood. Frozen. Tense. Close to a cable. I put two and two together, understand it got electrocuted and fell, splat, onto the sidewalk. And then, from the bus, I see rats—these are rats, these ones are enormous—and I see them circulate, emerge from an abandoned building, and head for a mound of trash bags, absconding with something, absconding with things, food, coming and going, real fast, lightning fast, one with a piece of bread. I can see them multiply before my very eyes, there are more of them each second, forcing me to think about the rodent, about our rodent. Is there just one of them or are there more of them? Maybe it’s a family. Making themselves at home, I mean turning our pantry into their home. I’m resigned, I want to leave the mouse the house, I don’t want to kill it, I don’t want to poison it; if it winds up dying in the kitchen I’ll still want to leave. It’s so revolting, it’s done now, the havoc has been wreaked: the mouse is there, we’ve seen each other now, we’ve looked each other in the eyes, now I can neither kill it nor have it killed, even less so live with it. So I surrender the kitchen. I’m thinking, now, about—was it in Bleu or Rouge where the girl comes across a mouse, or maybe even a mother mouse with baby mice in the pantry or the laundry room (I can’t remember exactly what it was), and it completely freaks her out? At the time, as I was watching it, I didn’t get why it was such a big deal, why she would make such a big deal out of a few little mice. Then I think she borrows a neighbor’s cat and goes and shuts it in the room with the mice for it to do its thing, and I remember that she really freaked out when she