“What is it?” he said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“What a child you are!”
“You’re the child! I bet you have no idea where you are.”
“Remind me.”
“In Macondo.”
“Why Macondo?”
“Remember how everyone suddenly stopped sleeping and totally lost their memories? So they had to paste labels on things to know what to call them and directions to know how to use them. And remember how Arcadio Buendía invented a memory machine?”
Everything around us seemed to stand still. There were no more sharp edges. Everything was soft — sounds, voices, lights. Everything was quiet, lying low, holding its breath. We practically had to feel our way through the fog. Everything was unreal.
“No, I don’t remember.”
“Remember who saved them?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Melquiades the Gypsy, who came back from the dead and brought them sugar water in little bottles.”
“Coca-Cola?”
I saw a man with dark, glittering, slightly slanting eyes staring out of the fog at me. His large lips were moist and swollen, his body taut as a string. He seemed to be trembling.
A picture seeming to emerge from a forgotten past flashed through my mind. I saw myself unbuttoning Igor’s coat warm with moisture and letting my head fall on his chest, then standing on tiptoe and chewing his upper lip until it bled, lifting it with my tongue, gliding the top of my tongue along the smooth enamel of his teeth…
“Good night,” I panted, and slipped into the entrance.
PART 2
CHAPTER 1
“I’ll pick you up at the airport,” she said. “Don’t bother,” I said. “I’ll take a cab.” But when I stepped off the plane, I felt a twinge of disappointment: her face wasn’t there. A foreign country is a country where nobody meets you at the airport, I thought. I was surprised at my own sensitivity: it was so childish. I hadn’t had time to don my armor.
I had vowed to suppress all “émigré emotions.” I knew the standard list of complaints: Nobody asks how we are; they just go on about their own problems (Mario), “we” being the ones who had left the country, “they” being the ones who had stayed behind. “They” lived “there” we, “here.” They know best. They jump in the minute we open our mouths. They’ve got an opinion about everything. Why must they have an opinion about everything? (Darko). To hear them, they know Amsterdam better than we do, not that they’ve ever been here! (Ante). They’re always whining about how bad things are for them and trying to make me feel guilty for having left (Ana). Whenever I go back, I feel I’m attending my own funeral (Nevena). And I feel like a punching bag. I ache all over! (Boban). I used to play Santa Claus. I’d go loaded down with presents. It made me feel good. Things are different now (Johanneke). I don’t know what it’s like. I haven’t gone back and have no desire to (Selim). I haven’t been, either. I’m afraid of the face-to-face thing (Meliha).
The door to Mother’s flat was ajar. I was moved by her thoughtfulness: she was on pins and needles, afraid of missing the doorbell or of having misplaced the key, needing to look for it and then run to the door, which she might have trouble opening: you never knew when it would get stuck….
She flung herself into my arms like a child. (“Heavens! You’re a wraith! Where do you live? Bangladesh? No, you live in a country that supplies the world with tomatoes. Which taste awful, by the way.”) She sat me down at the kitchen table and started chattering about the dishes she had to offer (“No, no, I’ll put it on a plate for you, no need to get up”), whether I wanted salt or a little more of this or that….
She looked shorter and more frail than the last time I saw her. She had more wrinkles and was losing hair on top. Just seeing the top of her head through the now sparse gray hair aroused a painful tenderness in me. Heavens, how she’d aged!
Mother had an inborn gift of turning people into her “batmen.” She’d done it to everyone around her — me, her menfolk, her friends — and no one uttered a word of protest. I was forever a small, quiet page in her court, or at least that is how I perceived myself. She would shower me with a cooey confetti of pet names — I was her “bumblebee,” her “apple dumpling,” her “froggy-woggy,” her “missy fishy”—but she had never allotted me much time. She had kept an eye on me, that was alclass="underline" she didn’t care about me; she took care of me. Though she had often left me in the care of others — students, housewife neighbors, day-care “aunties.” I was always enrolled in “after-school activities” and would wait patiently for her to fetch me. Once she “forgot” to fetch me from a hospital where I had undergone a minor operation. I remember sitting on my bed the whole night, fully clothed, outwardly stalwart, yet inwardly terrified: I might never see her again. She showed up the next morning. She refused to let me “dramatize” such “twaddle,” and I eventually grew accustomed to it and to making do without her. I was “Mama’s independent little froggy-woggy.” She had worked hard. She was an economist and ended up heading a bank. She had also run back and forth between several steady lovers and two husbands. And through it all I was “Mama’s little gold-star pupil” and “Mama’s only treasure.”
Now she was carrying on with forced gaiety about the neighbors, to whom she’d never given a second thought, about relatives, of whom she’d never spoken before, and about people I’d never heard of. This long, detailed report was her way of filling the void and hiding the fact that she had fewer and fewer friends; it was her way of warding off the fear of death, of avoiding a genuine confrontation with me, of alleviating the pain of my arrival, which was after all the beginning of an imminent departure, of erasing the time that had elapsed since my last visit, in sum, a way of “setting things right.”
“Remember Mr. šari
on the second floor? He died recently.”
“What of?”
“A stroke.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
“And the Boževies on the eighth floor — they lost their son.”
“What happened?”
“Car accident. You won’t recognize Mrs. Boževi. She’s aged twenty years. Turned gray overnight. But listen to me. I’m only telling you the sad things. I’ve got some good news, too.”
She was testing me, measuring my compassion level. Would it be satisfactory or would she have to scold me? (“You take no interest in our neighbors,” as if she thought of them all the time.) This concern for feelings had come with old age: she used to make fun of people who paraded their emotions.
She stood, left the room for a moment, and returned with a notebook in her hand. With the eagerness of a child who has a new toy to show the world, she handed me her “diary.” It seemed to be mostly numbers.
“What is it?”
“My diary.”
“Your what?”
“My sugar diary. I’ve got diabetes. I have to monitor my sugar level daily.”
“Is it bad?”
“So-so. But I give myself insulin injections.”
“Why?”
“The doctor says it’s better to start early with small doses than to wait until you need large ones.”