Rivka Galchen - Atmospheric Disturbances

So I had the sense that Rema was near me, but when I opened my eyes I realized that I was on the floor with only a sheet and I saw objects that were not mine, that were not part of my apartment: a painting of horses, their manes blowing in a wind that moved nothing else, a faded photo of glaciers under a pink sunset. And I saw Harvey, his head under the covers, just a grip of fingers on comforter showing. And I remembered then, more or less, where I was.

The ring again.

“Yes?” I said, taking the receiver to my ear. Harvey stirred but didn’t seem to wake.

“A woman is waiting for you,” an unidentifiable and accented male voice said to me.

“Tzvi,” I said, “is this you?”

“No. Here. Downstairs. She’s waiting,” the voice said and then hung up.

I didn’t immediately rush down. I washed my face and the back of my neck. And I brushed my teeth and then flossed and then brushed my teeth again. I washed my hands vigorously to remove any dirt from under my fingernails. As for my ears, I had no Q-tips, but I did my best. And the trousers that Magda had given to me, I noticed that they had a small hole developing at the seam of the pocket, but I located a sewing repair kit — this hotel had foreseen everything — and neatly stitched the hole closed, reinforcing the edges, with a sufficiently matching gray thread. Also the button was chipped, so I went ahead and replaced it with a golden other. I just wanted to be very clean and well put together, for whoever that woman was, for whatever woman was waiting all that time, so early in the morning, for me.

The woman waiting for me wasn’t Rema, and she wasn’t the doppelganger, and she wasn’t — somehow — Tzvi or Tzvi’s wife. She was Rema’s mother, Magda. Magda: whom we hadn’t even discussed the previous evening, whose role in the looming weather wars was unexplored, who might be inconsequential, but whose motherly/analyst presence nevertheless invoked in me a heightened and unwelcome self-consciousness.

“What a surprise,” I said in a failing attempt at warmth. I wanted to return to my ignorance of moments earlier when the woman waiting for me might have been Rema. “I apologize for disappearing on you,” I said, infected by the simulacrum’s silly word choice. “I should have paid you in advance for accommodating me. I really did plan to get back to you on that.” She was sitting, I was standing. Her gaze was level with the waist of my pants, with the golden replacement button. “I’m really—”

“No, no, I hadn’t known that you were my son-in-law.” Her laugh sounded strained, false. “There was so much knowledge hidden from me. I hadn’t known who you were, you see? It is funny. Odd. Peculiar. The situation we were in.”

I wanted to but didn’t suggest “ironic” as a more accurate and succinct representation of our varied levels of knowledge.

Then Magda added, “Those pants; they really fit you just perfectly. That also is peculiar. Even the cuffs are exactly the right length. And the pockets are not deformed.”

And it struck me that a more concise and precise description of my clothing would be to say that I was dressed like Tzvi Gal-Chen. Or, at least, like Tzvi once dressed, at the time of those photos.

“Listen,” she said to me, “I wanted to talk to you about some things,” and she looked around the lobby, where there was a tour group being beckoned by a white flag on a stick. “Somewhat secret things. Very secret things. Where can we go to talk?”

I should at least have left a note for Harvey, letting him know where I was. That would have been the proper way to behave. Even the simulacrum I had treated with such respect — the first time — but I just left, with plans to return as hastily as I (politely) could.

“Listen,” Magda said, reaching across the faux wood, faux knotted table of the nearest coffee shop we could find, a shop that claimed to be channeling the ancient Tehuelche spirit into its teas. She took my hand and whispered surreptitiously to me in her odd English, as if English were some obscure and therefore private Eastern European spy language — Hungarian, say, or Albanian — that nobody nearby would understand. “I have need to tell you that Rema has contacted me.”

“What,” I asked, “does that mean, that she ‘contacted’ you? Isn’t she still staying with you?” I asked, feeling the need to engage in the earlier charade of the simulacrum being the real Rema.

“No, no,” Magda said, choking a bit then, on saliva it seemed. “Not that woman, whom you saw in my house. The real Rema contacted me. I see now what you were trying to say, what you knew all along, that you were correct to suspect that other one.”

Did I like having her confirm my difficult-to-fathom conviction? I did not. “How do you know it was the real Rema you spoke to?” I asked.

“I just knew. When I saw her. That it was her.”

Judging by the visible pulsing of Magda’s carotid artery, I suspected her heart was pounding. Tzvi, Harvey, now Magda too: the excess of corroboration actually undermined, rather than strengthened, my developing convictions. “You saw the real Rema?”

“Yes.”

“Why isn’t she here with you?”

“Well. Because.” Magda reached out toward the clean and empty mug in front of her, brought it to her mouth, sipped, and then set it down. “Why haven’t they asked us what we want yet?” Scanning the room, she added, “Terrible service.” A pause, then she turned her eyes straight on my unshaved chin. But I was clean in every other way; how had I forgotten to shave? “There’s some. Well. I mean. Well, there are — there are complications.”

As if it were a surgery gone bad, or a post-myocardial-infarction report.

“Medialunas?” I said to the yawning waitress who had suddenly materialized.

“For me the wellness tea. And huevos fritos. And medialunas. And some strawberry jam please. And a side of potatoes. And please extra napkins.”

Her hunger struck me as suspicious.

“Let me just tell you exactly what Rema said to me,” Magda announced after the waitress had left. “That way there will be no game of telephone problems.” She removed from a vast purse one sheet of wrinkled graph paper — boxes outlined in pale blue — and she began to read. “Number one, she sends you her love. Number two, she says you are taking Harvey’s disappearance too hard. And she wants you to know that whatever strange suspicions you may have, she is sure she can explain them. That’s the main idea of number two, that she knows there are some things she needs to explain to you. I’m sorry I have no more details there. But then three. Three is everything important. She says she needs you to return to Buenos Aires. They have her working as a translator at the Earth Simulator, out in Tokyo, and something has gone terribly wrong. It is all just a miscommunication is what she is saying. But some of the scientists there are under the misimpression that she has powers for changing the weather — Rema said you would understand this — but of course she does not have those powers and she didn’t know what she was getting into, and hopefully this will all be straightened out soon. She also wanted me to explain that she’s sorry she didn’t tell you about this job of hers earlier, but it was a new development, and she wanted to get a job all on her own, without your help, and then surprise you, and treat you to a trip all on her own money—”

“But we’re married,” I interjected.

Magda shrugged and went on, now reading more off her paper, “She says for you to help her. There’s an office in Buenos Aires, the office of the desaparecidos. Her mother — that is me, yes — can take you there directly. And if you can get the paperwork started from the outside, and she’ll be working from the inside, and hopefully everything can be fixed. Quick, quick.”