Genesis

 

I learned the truth from my mother, who confessed it to me, her voice as if coming from another person, something of a ventriloquist in her that evening in the nursing home, years before her mind all but faded away. "Your brother Gabriel came into this world by accident. I tried to terminate the pregnancy but the doctor tricked me." I didn’t know what to say when I heard that confession, as if she were thinking aloud. I reacted in time to get her to continue, make her travel back in time.

She had gone to a doctor in Santiago, where she lived for a couple of years, for an abortion drug; and the doctor, after hearing her out about my Dad’s follies, his inability to be her dream husband, to be a reliable father, gave her some pills. Weeks passed and still menstruation. Finally she returned to the doctor and he, an odd combination of science and religious faith, talked her into having that child: the pills he had given her, on the contrary, were intended to "fix" the pregnancy.

No wonder always this absence in "Gabriel," this instability, in his jobs, in his marriages. "With him there is no life, nothing suits him," as his last wife had said. No wonder this insatiable longing for other cities, other countries, other views out the window, whether willowy trees or sand dunes, preferably mountains, not beaches, that tedious come and go of waves. 

 

No wonder he used to have this dream of being somewhere, apparently a foreign country, and walking by he recognized the house: That was it . . . Yes, he had finally found home; and opened the gate, knocked on the door and told the people to get out, “This is my home. This is my home . . . Get out . . . Out, out . . . I don’t care what language you speak. Get out of my home,” and not listening pushed himself in only to find it was like one of those propped-up Hollywood façades, only for camera effect. And then and there he always woke up. 

 

In any event, after that confession, at least "Gabriel," her only child, had the privilege of knowing what so many others don’t --the illusion that he belonged to this world.

 

 

That's Life

 

Emboldened by a sense of life very much his own, they said that he set out to be nothing, nothing at all (a strenuous task if you will). He lived beyond days, weeks and months, and years were not of his concern. Some folks, always ready for those sightings, began to see him in a different light; maybe he was truly not of this world. But others, the jugglers and  jesters in town, said things with a smile and even asked for something of his body, just for the living room they said, or perhaps bedroom. All that and more, the daily fun and games never missing.

Then one day he got up feeling he had arrived, or so he said, because he spoke on the sidelines of tenses. The truth is that he moved like no one on the streets, and people noticed. Free at last. He was now nothing, nothing at all of this world.

When careless, in his euphoria (or who knows), stepping off the sidewalk, he got on the wrong trip with a delivery truck, dragged for what seemed an eternity. A horrid death.

That’s life, now people say. The worst they could say in his memory. But, then,  by saying so they are confirming the validity of his escape –or quest.   

 

 

     

 

Party

  

The guy came out of nowhere, as if lacking a true face, or so it seemed, with a certain whiteness of hands and gestures. Tight-lipped, he looked like the type reluctant to speak the words, the expected words, like those children who refuse to smile at the photographer's lens. But something about him, I don’t know, he couldn’t fool me (there, underneath, deep down, the scream was there). In his eyes, you could tell the intention, someone who kept some secret, the secret of the other who looks at him (his eyes in the mirror like those eyes in a painting that follow you). I wanted, what’s more, I would . . . But then, at that moment I heard my name. Back outside the bathroom, the crowd, the music; someone had crack-opened the door, Janet was calling me.

He disappeared from the mirror.

 

The dream (or movie)

The dream about a film, or the film about a dream, I can’t hardly tell anymore (as always happens, like a child grabbing on to the rest arms, trying to prolong the movie’s last gleams, before being splashed with light in the Lyceum, snapped out of the Sunday matinee and back to the alcoholic father stumbling home later tonight).

What remains with me is the end, something of a young lady whose incongruent face I can’t tell anymore if smiling, but nothing ironic, appears at the end talking about the characters, in what seems like a French New Wave film from the early 60s. In that last coda of a scene, the camera cuts to her boyfriend (I don’t remember the other characters) now sitting next to her, and the actor says that when he turns 60 he’ll start worrying about his final act, but for now life is rolling. At that point the young lady turns and looks at me, to the camera, and her face freezes on the screen. With that freeze-frame the movie ends. But it turns out they were all dead, all the actors, even she (the movie being so old).

I don’t remember if they knew it, that the movie would eventually come to a freeze, and hence the incongruity of the young lady who looking into the film from an outside perspective, she too was playing her role; as if actors could not escape, talking, smiling, dancing, kissing, making love scenes, as if those in that movie would always be walking the Paris postcard streets. And yet there was something about her face, about her eyes when she looked straight at the camera, something that stays with me to this day, as if deep down she knew (about the freeze frame).

Indocumentada

 

Me preguntaban si conocía a aquella mujer no tan joven. Su mirada insistente, como si dependiera de mi reconocimiento para salvarse, para tener vida en este mundo.

Había en ella, en sus ojos, luces de recuerdos ya inexistentes; me miraba como si penetrara esta vestimenta de tiempo, como si penetrara mis luces más sombrías por dentro. Engatusamientos, supuse, embelecos de mujer que no parpadea.

No obstante, hubiera querido decir que sí. Pero me arriesgaba. Al fin he dicho que no, y fue el gran pesar: sus ojos se humedecieron, reflejaban la mayor tristeza, la más pura desesperanza. Y desapareció en el hueco oscuro de la noche. Quise pero no alcancé siquiera a consolarla.    

Luego he sabido era mi hermana, según Mamá me ha confesado (aquel aborto  tardío y bochornoso).

-------------------------------------

Undocumented  

 They asked if I knew the woman, not so young; something about her face, what exactly, I couldn’t tell. Her insistent eyes, as if she depended on my recognition to save herself, to have a life in this world.

Again, there was something in her, in her eyes, like glimmers of memories not unfamiliar; she looked at me as if piercing this new look of the times, these smart clothes, as if penetrating into my darker lights inside. Crafty lady, I told myself, deceits of a woman who doesn’t blink.

Even so, I wanted to say yes. But I was taking a risk, too much of a risk. I finally said no, and it was the greatest sorrow: her eyes filled with tears, reflecting the greatest sadness, pure hopelessness.  I wanted to comfort her, but it was too late. She disappeared into the dark hole of the night, as a reflection in a mirror.

Later I’ve known the truth. She was my sister, according to Mom’s confession (that late and shameful abortion).

 

 

 

                                        Poems - Poemas

Still Life

Behind glass

is all image cracks

empty sparks

of light

nest of being

Water pouring

stems piercing

petals falling

soon the putrid

smell

On the other side of glass

on camera lens

misty breath

look-in faces

smile

And the key on the dresser

porous iron, black 

now within reach

--------------------------------------

Naturaleza muerta  (traducción)

Tras el cristal

todo es reflejo

destellos de luz

nido vacío de

ser

Gorgotea el agua

los tallos atraviesan

los pétalos caen

pronto

el hedor

Del otro lado

imagen de cámara lúcida

aliento empañado

las palabras hablan 

sonríen

Y la llave sobre el mueble

hierro poroso, negro

ya al alcance

--------------------------------------

Adios

the last lines I wrote

you were not there

I never saw you again

happens to the best of us

this constant looking forward

and seeing life in reverse

the woman, the child, the earth

the bird call from beyond

the centuries

doors open, doors close

loved ones go

unexplained

shattered-glass images

darkened glitters

dusty feathers

in empty hands

that's all is left

--------------------------------------

Alien

Le tomaron las huellas digitales

Le registraron las encías

Sensibles las raíces de las muelas

El parpadeo a coma ocho por minuto

Sin reflejos la punta del ombligo

Sin muestra alguna de ambiciones

Sin sueños ni indicios de futuro

Cielo desolado en el fondo de los ojos 

No obstante parecía de este mundo

Pruebas había de un pasado

De un tiempo como musgo acumulado

Tufo a inquilino en la ropa de los pasos

Manchas de manos ya sin cuerpos

En una caja poemas disecados

Polvillo de besos en un estuche

Ya sin luces el brocado

                                                         Minirrelatos

Algo en ella 


Algo en ella me daba la impresión de no ser de este tiempo, y no sólo por aquel trenzado suyo y los labios acorazonados. En su mirada brillaba algo incierto. Mucho más joven que yo, no sabía cómo interpretar aquella sonrisa en el brillo de sus ojos, si insinuación de mujer a hombre demasiado tarde, o timidez del que sonríe en los velorios.

En fin, cuando me abrí algo a ella (hendija indiscreta) más que horror surgió la compasión de misionera. Hablaría con su mamá para que me tuviera en oración --alarma y compasión en el todo de su gesto--. Le quise preguntar ¿por qué no ella, por qué yo no en sus oraciones?


Sería lo obvio: guardaría aquel espacio, la joven solterona, para el sueño de su vida, algún hombre bestial e impaciente en la cama de mujer que nada siente, como pasa en estos casos de los tiempos.


Y ahora ya sé a quién me recuerda.


(A mi madre.)

     __________________________________________________________

Abuelo

Sus chasquidos de suelas en los peldaños de mármol, limados por tantos los años, anunciaban su llegada; su cabeza pura de canas salía del pozo de la escalera: “Tato . . .” Yo, en el descanso final, abrazaba con brazos de niño el cartucho de naranjas y limones. “Llévale a abuela . . .”  Eso era todos los mediodías, a la hora del almuerzo, antes de regresar al trabajo, pues nunca había podido retirarse.  

Despejado del vapor de ropas, zafado de cinto y ya sin los zapatos de brillo, con el vaso de limonada ya vacío a su lado, se sentaba en el balancín de la sala de estar, frente a la puerta-ventana. Desde allí, desde aquel segundo piso, por encima del clamor de la calle, observaba lo que nadie sabía, ni les importaba (y por eso, claro, no sabían).

Hasta que surgió el milagro de volar, con los brazos extendidos saltó del balcón, allá en Santos Suárez, y voló, sin mirar atrás voló, por encima de todos los tejados, voló.  Claro, la gente de los cuerpos, como siempre, dijeron lo contrario.

Me lo imagino aún sobrevolando los parajes de su predilección, al fin haciendo vida de aquellos fotos del National Geographic, sobrevolando el Tíbet, con su lana de viejo, a la vista del gran Himalaya.   

Y yo aún aquí, abuelo, todavía con esta carga de tiempo.