No, not the TV, I tell him, because then I’ll be bored. It’s not that I watch so often or pay too much attention to it, but I leave it on in the background for company. With the voices, of course, but also with that flickering blue glow that’s projected against the walls. He looks at me, not saying a word, but I know he understands me. He’s going to eat something else instead, that’s for sure. But I’m not complaining—what can I say? Life is a transaction, and we all know it.
I read less and less all the time. It gives me a headache; it’s hard for me to concentrate. Maybe I need to change my eyeglass prescription, but I’m exhausted by the mere prospect of having to go to the ophthalmologist, being examined, then getting the prescription, visiting the optician a couple of times, all of it depending on the availability of someone to go along with me both ways, considering how terribly slow and wobbly I am. I’ve always been a reader: reading was a refuge for me, but now I don’t know—I open a book, I start out eagerly, and soon I get bored, as if I can’t find anything interesting anymore. Maybe I’ll tell the cynocephalus to eat some books; if he leaves me just a couple, that should be more than enough.
Every time he leaves, I have to shake out the quilt a little. He’s developed the habit of curling up in a ball on the bed when I fall asleep, and I know for a fact that he sleeps there. I can’t catch him in the act, because he’s very clever and makes me believe, among other things, that he likes to lounge on the sofa. And yet sometimes, even though I’m half asleep, I turn around and feel his warmth nearby. On other occasions, I’ve stretched my legs and touched his loin or his back—I never know how to refer to him and his parts, like a person or like a dog. The thing is, when I wake up, he’s almost always gone. And there’s a hollow left in the bed. He’s really not all that clever after all. I smile as I shake the quilt to get rid of the hairs he’s left on top of it, before Amanda shows up to clean.
The first time he stood before me on two feet, I was so shocked that it left me speechless. In that posture he didn’t look so much like a dog, but rather like a person. On the inside, or what until that moment had been underneath, he was almost as hairless as a human being. I was used to my golden retriever, who was so hairy, inside and out, or on top and underneath, according to the angle from which you looked at him. Well, the thing is, the cynocephalus was not; he had no hair on his chest, or on his groin, or anywhere else… So he looked too naked. You can’t go through life like that, showing everything, I said to him. This time I realized he hadn’t understood me. Then I pointed out his parts to him. I must say, it had been many years since I saw such a large, youthful member. I explained that he had to get dressed, to wear clothes. Then, suddenly, it was clear that he had understood something, because he returned to his position on all fours. That way, with his hair (sparse as it was) covering his back and part of his limbs, he didn’t seem quite so bare. I walked over to the closet and took out a bathrobe. I pointed it out to him, showed him how to put it on, left it on the sofa. As soon as I turned my back on him to return to bed, he leaped over to the sofa and put it on; I don’t know if I’ve mentioned how tremendously agile he was. When I finished tucking myself in, he was standing upright again, but with the bathrobe on. And I must admit that it left quite an impression on me, because he looked very, very much like the figure on the Tarot card that I’d seen the girl in the garden holding that afternoon. I was also astonished by how beautiful he was.
Today I asked my granddaughter to bring me a set of boy’s clothes. A shirt like Gastón’s, I explained, with a checkered pattern… and preferably blue. I didn’t tell her that blue would look good on the cynocephalus, but I thought it would. And underwear. And a pair of jeans, the worn-out kind they wear nowadays. She gave me a strange look, so I invented the story that I had seen the gardener so poorly dressed that I felt sorry for him. She offered to bring me some of the clothing her boyfriend no longer used. I said yes, so that she wouldn’t suspect me, but asked her to please add that new set of clothing I had requested. I don’t like to give away only discards; that’s not real charity, I suddenly blurted out. You’re so sweet, Gran, she replied with a smile.
Early this morning, before he left and while I was sleeping, he devoured a chunk of wall opposite my bed, leaving a dark spot there that frightens me a little. As I don’t want to be paralyzed with fear like that, I decide to take a closer look. First I extend my cane, lest I fall forward into that hole. But the darkness produces no sound, even though I tap it a little with the tip of the cane. Then I approach, bend forward and downward, preparing to feel something unpleasant, and I rest my hand. But I don’t feel anything—pleasant or unpleasant, hot or cold, rough or smooth. And I imagine that the blackness before me must be the nothingness that he exposes with each bite. Today I’m going to tell him to help me move the sofa, so no one will see that threatening thing.
The other night he showed up with the clothes I had given him, a little stained, and when he came close to my bed I smelled beer. However, he behaved the same as always: he sat down beside me, put his hand on top of mine, and listened to the news of the day. I talk to him more than to anyone else. He listens to me, gestures, and, depending on what I tell him, he changes the expression in his eyes, which gives me the idea that, in his way, he understands me. Finally, he fell asleep while I was talking to him, and I didn’t have the nerve to throw him out of bed, so I covered him with the quilt, and that’s where I left him.
Not long ago he ate the shelf where my family portraits were: the photo of my wedding to Abelardo; the one of Arielito’s First Communion; his military service portrait; the one of Graciela as standard-bearer in high school; the last one of Ariel, which a comrade took of him in Río Gallegos before he left for the Malvinas; the one of Graciela receiving her diploma in Architecture; the one of Abelardo as godfather at Graciela’s wedding, in her white gown, and holding him by the arm; the one of Abelardo at my side with the newborn Larisa in my arms; Larisa’s graduation from high school… A black hole remains where the shelf used to be. That’s why some days I try hard to remember what their faces were like, their poses, their clothing, but the memories are fading, and I can’t retain the traces of all of them, not even in my head.
I suggest that he eat part of the wall remaining behind my bed, instead; that way I don’t always have to stare at what isn’t there anymore. Because it’s boring to lie there like that, especially before I fall asleep and after I turn off the TV, with my eyes always facing that hole, which grows bigger night after night. He doesn’t say anything, because he never says anything, but then he looks at me through half-closed lids, and then I understand that, once again, he’ll ignore me completely.
Since yesterday I’ve been putting the pillow at the foot of the bed, and I fall asleep looking at the wall behind the headboard, the one where the portrait of the Virgin hangs. I don’t believe in the Virgin or saints or angels, but over time I’ve learned that whenever I say I’m an atheist, people grow uncomfortable, as if I were stabbing them in the ribs with a knife, so not only do I not mention it, but with some people, like Amanda, I let them think I’m a believer, because I know that way they’ll feel most at ease. And now, well, I’m waiting for the cynocephalus to show up. I know that the change is going to surprise him and maybe even amuse him. And I’m anxious to see what the devil he’ll do—if he’s going to keep eating from the same wall, or if he’ll change perspective, too. I also wonder what he’ll think about a painting with that Virgin, draped in heavy, flowing robes, and that chubby little Botticelli Baby Jesus, and that angel with gray bird-feather wings.