I was talking about fear: nor was I afraid just after I discovered the attributes of Grandma’s wardrobe, nor when I saw her upset and threatening me. Oh! That wardrobe could have changed the animated life of any household and would have done so in Grandma’s, if she hadn’t chained it up as if she were chaining a wild dog on the strongest possible leash for a piece of furniture in its condition: used only as decoration, the wardrobe was an empty piece of furniture, full of absolutely nothing, clean, exasperatingly clean, like everything inhabiting the house on the Santa María estate.
I got to know the wardrobe’s “wiles” one boring afternoon when traipsing around Grandma’s house while she was engaged in an interminable conversation. Out of pure boredom I marked with a pen the pocket of the jacket I was wearing, not realizing my naughtiness, completely unaware, an unpremeditated act.
Before Grandma hung up I realized what I’d done. I took my jacket off and my nails scratched at the lines on the blazer material to try to remove the marks: small, inky blobs, bloated with ink from my ballpoint pen, running in lines, like rays from the sun, but dark. I looked at the little balls with legs and thought: “They look like spiders,” I folded my jacket and put it in the useless wardrobe. At home they might not scold me, perhaps Esther wouldn’t even notice, but Grandma would place great importance on the destruction of an imported jacket.
Grandma put the telephone down. “We must run.” I don’t know where, I don’t remember where she was going to take me. Before getting ready to go out, she washed my hands and face, combed my hair, and ordered me to put my jacket on. I went to take it out of the wardrobe neatly folded up, telling her I wasn’t at all cold, that I was very hot. “Put it on so you look nice.” I put it on in front of her while she praised it because it was made in Spain, “Nothing beats Spanish clothes.” I was expecting her to spot the stains any moment and to launch into a fierce scolding when her expression changed: gazing in astonishment at my body, she quickly took off her short-sleeved, done-up-at-the-front white smock that she wore to work in the laboratory in order to keep her clothes clean (although I never saw a mark on her impeccably-white coat), she held it like a rag and started hitting me with a corner of the smock, beating me, landing blows, and I couldn’t understand what was happening…She scared me, but I wasn’t afraid. I cried tears and shouted at the sight of my grandma not managing to articulate a word, red, but not in anger, beating her granddaughter with a rag, unflinching…I never imagined she was hitting me because she was angry with the marks, because nobody ever hit me as a form of coercion. Why then was she flourishing the overall-rag against my body and why so furiously, so venomously? She was beside herself, the room bathed by the curtain of tears before my eyes seemed beside itself, and my shocked heart was beside itself…
She stopped hitting me and showed me, not saying a word, shaking them with the cloth, what she attempted (fortunately) to extinguish or stifle: the lives of four black spiders, fat, as if they’d been injected with ink. By shaking off their corpses and wiping a damp cloth over them, my jacket became clean, no marks of spiders nor ink.
It didn’t make me scared of the wardrobe, nor did I ever think I’d see Grandma in that state again. I calmly took time to think it over: what wasn’t that piece of furniture capable of? How easy it was to get Grandma going!
Now, am I easily scared? Yes, in a thousand ways. For example? I’d not be able, not be brave enough to repeat what I experienced as a girl. My memories make me fearful, and undermine the serenity of memory…
I didn’t lie when I assured you it was a pleasure to have recourse in memories. It’s true even if it scares me. I wouldn’t dare live through what I experienced as a child because, once recollected, the facts turn into dangerous needles that could sew up my heart, sear my soul, and turn my soul into strips of dead flesh. As we live we hardly realize that we are alive…To relive what we’ve seen by the lucid light of memory would be unbearable and, as far as I’m concerned, I wouldn’t be brave enough.
Fine then, but am I afraid of fantasizing? Instead of remembering, I could fantasize, imagine memories, falsify images and events. I haven’t done so — everything I’ve told you was real, I haven’t invented a single word; I’ve written my descriptions trying as much as possible sticking to the facts. Of course, I could have used more appropriate wording than those in the narrative I’ve been spinning (I did try to correct some, others I left because I couldn’t find any better ones for my story), but I’ve kept to the truth, everything told here happened in my school, at home, in the city I inhabited and which may still exist, I don’t know, maybe the city has changed appearance, has abandoned its young, clean, and biblically virginal face.
But there’d be no point in imagining. Either I overcome the fear I feel (and enjoy the pleasure) remembering and shaping the words that describe my memories, or I keep quiet. What’s the point of fantasies, imaginings, lies…I can’t see the point, it wouldn’t give me any pleasure, and what if I were also frightened by what my imagination produced, if I had an imagination? If I had one, because there’s nothing left in me. I am only an ounce of flesh that memories keep from rotting, from being consumed by maggots and flies, from final extinction.
10
When describing the world of my dreams to you a short while ago, I said the savage disorder the world of my dreams inhabited. Why use the word savage? I might have said battered, violent, or sad but the definition of the disordered world of my dreams would have been vague, and the word savage in the two meanings I encountered as a girl seemed a perfect fit: savages were the inhabitants of distant lands who behaved so much differently than ourselves (like my dreams, populated by hunting parties, burials, naked people running through jungle or desert, houses that had nothing in common with ours, inhuman rites), and savage meant also violent, destructive, capable of putting an end to everything.
Of course not all my dreams were the same. Their savage disorder might stem from a variety of actions, from diverse situations. For example:
I was walking alone across a huge park, down wide dirt paths. Despite the trees, I could see the brilliant bright blue sky, an explosion of light. Nobody seemed worried by the vulnerability of a girl in a white dress walking alone. I wasn’t either. Confronted by a tray of cakes offered by a gentleman in a hat, I took a copper coin from my dress pocket and bought a sweet. As my mouth closed around the cake and I licked the first ball of fried dough, caramel-coated and hollow, night fell suddenly and with a vengeance; though it was illumined by high lamps like small suns switched on by an invisible hand, an all-embracing darkness threatened. The sweet was very hard, I couldn’t break a chunk off, taking a bite only hurt my teeth, but I kept biting deep. I walked on and came upon a fountain, its vertical jet of rebellious water surging white and high into the air from round volcanic stone. Rain started to pour down. The jet continued its usual trajectory, as the rainwater scattered, gray, turbid puddles darkening the park. The rain disintegrated the cake I was trying to hold onto, dissolved it first into a rubbery mass and then took it from me and handed it over to the earth. The man with the tray ran by: it no longer carried tidbits, but Nails: that girl (or boy) I’d painted with a wound and given Esther as a present.