killing a little
Ignacio ended up with the hair-raising mission of separating my trimmed eyelashes, his fingers like pincers, of attending to my glassy or lifeless gaze, the iris distended in a black hole, the cornea perforated with three badly-sewn stitches and swollen around each pupil. Each eye inflated to the point of bursting, the constant itching of scabs under the skin. It was there that Ignacio had to apply various eyedrops, a series of unguents, and then clean the grease that seeped out along the edges when the eye finally closed, beaten by the mortal weight of the eyelids, patches, and cramps that moved down from my neck to my back. I’m hungry, I announced, while Ignacio washed, disgusted and dizzy and faint, his fingers, hands, nails, elbows, teeth. And though he didn’t feel like eating, we ordered sandwiches of bloody meat from the Cuban restaurant on the corner. To get our strength back, I insisted, so we don’t go to bed on an empty stomach. But it was another ordeal to eat without raising my head. Lower it, ordered Ignacio, now become the doctor’s sassy ventriloquist’s doll. You’re going to get cataracts, he said, losing patience, furious, livid, exhausted: my nurse. Lower it, he said in a martyr’s voice, and the consolation of food started to turn sour. It was hard to chew and dangerous to swallow with my head sunk down. It was impossible to talk without raising my face, my face that regularly defied the order and instinctively straightened to meet a gaze. Eyes never give up, I said. They always seek out other eyes, realizing that was the impulse I was obeying, but Ignacio refused to accept explanations. Lower it. I should speak to him only with words, not eyes. I should control my neck. I should please stop rocking, forward and back, in my chair. Ignoring my will, my mechanical body went on swinging like a pendulum; my head struggled to lift and my eyelids to open, and I scared Ignacio with my moth eyes full of light. Close them, said my nurse, queasy to his core, forcing down a bit of bread and a little water.
Joder de dios, fucking christ, I can’t eat looking at you. Watching over me disturbed him, but neither could he rest at night, keeping vigil over my sleep: every movement of mine kept him from falling asleep. I crashed, defeated by every kind of discomfort and oblivious to the nocturnal position of my head, while Ignacio sat up and shook me to save me from myself. Turn over, you’re in a bad position, and he pushed me impatiently into the ideal pose for the bubbles. I didn’t remember anything of what happened at night, whether we argued or not, if we kissed or spat on each other, if we desired each other lying one curled around the other or me on his chest, if we killed each other a little more. Ignacio, a professional slave, got up at dawn and made himself a cup of black coffee. Coming and going in the morning fatigue, he said goodbye or got free of me with a slam of the door. It was impossible to keep Ignacio there, make him desist from his daily flight to the office, take him out of his classes, away from all those students who returned his gaze with ambitious insolence. Like a miser, he stashed away the spontaneous laughter and brainy conversations, his lips full of political science, debates, corruption, his lips forgetting me a little, while I rested too from his tantrums, and basked in the minuscule noises the house orchestrated in his absence. But Ignacio’s love was spiraling and elastic, it stretched without breaking and brought him back to my side. He called me to be sure I’d gotten out of bed, that I had found the lukewarm coffee on the table and the toast already spread with butter, the syringe at the ready. He wanted to know if I’d gone back down the hallway downcast, if I’d thrown myself face down on the mattress, and how I was keeping my mind entertained. I crawled around the house, giving vague lies as answers to everything or almost everything; yes, yes, I said, hauling around and supporting my punished head, yes standing in front of the refrigerator door, yes sticking a bored finger all the way to the bottom of the food containers, leaving a path of crumbs that later Ignacio — trailing the smell of the city, of open streets and old papers, a smell of happiness that soon dissolved — would have to sweep up. Mop. Gather or clean and scorn me and adore me, giving himself to my desires as if to a vice, without imposing deadlines, Ignacio, or conditions.