Yes, my girl, I know you’ve hidden the fire in your mouth. I’m not afraid of your fire. If only you knew the fire I carry inside. .
Felicity of Expression
London, 10 January 1968
I CAN BE bad as well. Thing is you can’t pretend when it comes to clothes. You can’t lie about the weight of clothes. If they’re damp, that’s worse for me. More weight. They say with washing machines clothes don’t last so long. Who knows? I’d have thought hands are more delicate. Or both. Hands have to slap clothes against the washing stone. Twist them. Wring them out.
Clothes have eyes. Like worms. The eye doctor once told me worms can’t see, but they can feel light and shade. Olinda used to wash the clinic’s coats, sheets, towels, clothes. Pinche had a bad eye, not the evil eye, he saw badly out of one eye. How did we know it was only one eye? Because, when he looked through the keyhole, he saw fine. He told us this himself. He saw better when looking through a keyhole.
‘What keyholes are those?’ asked Olinda.
‘Who cares?’ replied Polka. ‘The important thing is. . the diagnosis.’
He was so happy to have found that word he smiled at me, repeating it like a gift, ‘That’s it, the diagnosis.’
Olinda mentioned it to the eye doctor and off I went with Pinche. It was very funny when he said Pinche had a lazy eye. The right sees less than the left. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Well, to start with, because it doesn’t want to. That’s why we call it a lazy eye.’ It was a pleasure talking to him. Most doctors never explain anything. They detect what’s wrong, hand you the armament, but you never know what it is you’re firing against in your own body. Dr Abril explained everything and I understood him straightaway. Must be because we both work with the light. That’s something machines don’t do, leave the clothes in the sun. Bring them in when it’s raining, stretch them out again when it clears. There are days the sun is lazy and then it clears, the sun peeps out of the clouds, a kind of grand absolution. Worms only have light and shade. The first way of seeing. Skin-sight. We’re a bit like that. I love the sun. Seems to forgive everything.
‘A lazy eye,’ said Dr Abril.
Pinche kept quiet. His manner was contrite. If he had a lazy eye, he must be partly to blame.