Some were the greenish-red of an apple, others the color of lemon. From the branches they would stretch out their rhythmic hands towards me, their weight pushed forwards by the air. During my walks I would visit a certain linden tree, observing it from afar and then from up close; it was my linden, the tree that resembled me in form, in character, in desire.
There were days when, to no matter what, I would answer no. My being would seal up and an indescribable weariness burdened my movements. Walking tired me. Spending time with friends. Hearing them. Seeing them. Eating. Following my parents’ orders. Going. Coming. I would remain in my room, lying in bed, watching the sun come in through the open door or, when a cloud covered it, the wall cast in shadow. I looked at the furniture, knots in the wood, splinters. Out in the corridor I could hear my mother talking to a woman who’d come to see her, or my father passing by.
At night, lights out, I could feel my soul possessed of a flexibility that could either fill space with its expansiveness or else concentrate itself into one small point; able, like some kind of spiritual entity, to go wherever it pleased or visit the person of whom it was thinking, without moving, without making a sound, simply out of desire.
Sometimes, drawn by my parents’ laughter, I would go to them with open arms, but an unexpected ill humor would greet me, and instead of a kind word an order to leave at once would be issued in a harsh voice … And I’d withdraw without understanding why this wrath was concealed within their apparent joy, as confused as someone who attends a celebration in a country whose language he barely understands, and thinks he hears the revelers using words that in reality they’re not using, and sees in their faces a contentment which is not really there, and when he thinks that the spectacle has ended, he goes up to congratulate one of the most enthusiastic-looking participants, only to discover that that beaming face isn’t laughing but is, instead, irate, and, banished with a shout and a shove, he realizes that what he thought was a party was in reality a brawl.
Alone in my room, I would put off turning on the light to follow on the wall the final moments of the day, which for me were like the first rays of night’s dawn.
I followed the falling of dusk on the floor, like the dampness on cardboard that has gotten wet and darkens as it grows wetter. The sun reverberated in some of the windowpanes, lending the air an orange tonality while gilding the roof of a house, and cast the shadow of a pigeon onto a wall.
Within the room, countless eyes were closing and the light’s brightness was becoming more ethereal, depending on the view from the window. White objects were clothed in a darkness that seemed to emanate from within, as they shrank in size like melting ice.
A visual silence dominated the horizon and, in the room, a geometric quietude. The falling dusk welded distances, blended differences, blurred the borders of objects, joined heaven and earth. Remoteness was abolished through the act of erasure.
Ill in bed, I listened to voices on the street, trying to recognize among them the voice of a friend, but in the din the shouts became indistinct and I couldn’t tell whether it was a woman or a child calling or speaking. They all seemed to come from the same place, questioning and answering among themselves, although perhaps the voices were in reality far from one another and did not seek each other out, and it was only due to the silence of my room that my ears united them and gave them a conversation in space; on the wall, meanwhile, the light darkened or brightened depending on the movement of the clouds outside, veiling and unveiling the sun.
And so I would remain, hearing and watching the hours pass by in all their heaviness and penumbra, feeling a loneliness not just in time but in space, and a certain inexistence … Until I’d finally rise from bed, weary of showing misfortune on my face and, crossing the corridor, I would go outside, in defiance of my despondency and unease.
There were days when the day itself was one incessant and varying prohibition, imparted in my mother’s voice that followed me everywhere, like someone maintaining control from afar with the help of a magic leash: “Don’t drink that water.” “Don’t eat from that plate.” “Don’t throw away that peel.” “Don’t cut those flowers.” “Don’t go outside.”
At the market with her, seeing fruits proffer their flavors to the eye — as if through their shapes and hues they could express their singularity in the universe — sensing the fleshy pulp beneath the texture of their peels and, having decided on a plum, my eyes would then wander towards a peach, or discover a tangerine, slipping from one fruit to the next as if on a scale of colors and flavors that attracted me through sight, smell, and touch at the same time, not knowing to which of the three impulses to surrender; no matter which fruit I ultimately chose, it would embody all fruits at once.
Like a child who goes about in the company of old folks, quickening his step at every moment, displaying his impatience through his hurried gait, I would go for walks with my grandmother: imagining monkeys suspended from branches by their tails and parrots that climb around hanging by their beaks, watching sparrows hopping along, pecking at crumbs or digging in the dust for insects.
We would pass beneath the shadow of a great oak, cross a dusty bridge that looked as if it had been abandoned no sooner than it was built. Our dog chased pigeons, who took flight as soon as they felt his breath. A mockingbird perched on a branch conveyed, through his very being, an entire region, climate, and time.
Before long my grandmother would grow tired and we’d sit down on a rock that commanded a view of the village. Immersing herself in its landscape, she would say, “Those houses didn’t used to be there; the highway used to run elsewhere; there didn’t used to be a train; there were only bandits and a few families; I can scarcely remember — I must have been eight or so — your father hadn’t yet arrived at our village; your mother still hadn’t been born; it was the year eighteen hundred and something; before the Revolution, before you were born; that bridge you see down there, those stores didn’t used to be there …”
As her voice dropped it confined her within herself, until the memories carried her so far back that she became inaudible.
To me she looked wrinkled, old, dried up, leaning on her cane, entangled in a thicket of faces and events from which she could not extricate herself. Then abruptly she would stop talking and rise from her spot, and we’d resume our walk while her lips continued to move as if telling herself something, or she’d start adding up a sum in which all the numbers got jumbled; growing paler and dustier, her legs more bent than before as if at any moment she might sit down on the air, but no, she didn’t sit down, she was only very slow.
I’d kick along a stone with my foot, listening to it bounce off the cobbles. But just when my feet found a pace, we’d stop again for another rest, and looking as if each wrinkle stood for a different memory, my grandmother seemed to bid me have patience.
All of a sudden I would catch her watching me, with thoughtful eyes that tried to take me in before aligning me with the image in the photo she held in her hand; but, hesitating, the sparkle in her gaze flitted elsewhere … before quickly returning to fix on my face, finding in my features the ancestral traces of my aunt Hermione in the photo.
I could feel her, my aunt Hermione, and my mother and father and my paternal grandparents, all harmonized within my very being; and I thought about her own parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, and of the endless line of the dead that lay behind her and me, and I accepted them all in my face and body, in my thoughts and words, without resistance and with love.