Juan Vásquez - The Sound of Things Falling

‘No one,’ I said. ‘At least not what you’re imagining.’

‘You don’t know what I’m imagining. Who is she?’

‘She’s the daughter of Ricardo Laverde,’ I said. ‘The guy who was. .’

I heard a huff. ‘I know who he was,’ said Aura. ‘Don’t insult me any more, please.’

‘She wants me to tell her, and I want her to tell me too. That’s all.’

‘And is she pretty? I mean, is she hot?’

‘Aura, don’t do this.’

‘But, I just don’t understand,’ said Aura again. ‘I don’t see why you didn’t call yesterday. Would that have been so difficult? Couldn’t you have picked up that phone yesterday? You spent the night there, right?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Yes what? Yes you could have picked up that phone or yes you spent the night?’

‘Yes I spent the night here. Yes I could have used this phone.’

‘So then?’

‘So nothing,’ I said.

‘What did you do? What did the two of you do?’

‘Talked. All night. I woke up late, that’s why I didn’t call till now.’

‘Oh, that’s why.’

‘Yes.’

‘I see,’ said Aura. And then, ‘You’re a son of a bitch, Antonio.’

‘But there’s information here,’ I said, ‘I can find things out here.’

‘An inconsiderate son of a bitch,’ said Aura. ‘You can’t do this to your family. Awake all night, scared to death, thinking the worst things. What a son of a bitch. The worst things. All of Friday stuck in here, waiting for news, without going anywhere in case you called just at that moment. And lying awake all night, scared to death. Didn’t you think of that? Didn’t it matter to you? What if it had been the other way round? Then it would, right? Imagine if I went away for the whole day and night with Leticia and you didn’t know where we were. You who live in fear, who thinks I’m going to fool around on you all the time. You, who wants me to phone you when I get anywhere so you know I got there. You, who wants me to call you when I’m leaving, so you know what time I left. Why are you doing this, Antonio? What’s going on? What do you want?’

‘I don’t know,’ I told her then, ‘I don’t know what I want.’

In the seconds of silence that followed I managed to hear and recognize Leticia’s movements, that sonorous trace that resembles a little cat’s bell that parents learn to notice without realizing: Leticia walking or running on the carpeted floor, Leticia talking to her toys or getting her toys to talk to each other, Leticia rearranging things in the house (things she wasn’t allowed to touch, forbidden ashtrays, the forbidden broom she liked to bring out of the kitchen to sweep the carpet: all the subtle displacements of air her little body produced). I missed her; realized I’d never spent a night away from her before, so far away from her; and I felt, as I’d felt so many times, anxiety for her vulnerability and the intuition that accidents (lying in wait for her in every room, in every street) were more likely in my absence. ‘Is Leticia all right?’ I asked.

Aura hesitated a heartbeat before answering. ‘Yes, she’s fine. She ate a good breakfast.’

‘Put her on.’

‘What?’

‘Put her on the phone, please. Tell her I want to talk to her.’

Silence. ‘Antonio, it’s been more than three years. Why don’t you want to get over it? Why do you want to keep living in your accident? I don’t know why you’d want that. I don’t see what good it can do. What is going on?’

‘I want to speak to Leticia. Give her the telephone. Call her and hand her the phone.’

Aura huffed with something that sounded like annoyance or desperation, or maybe open irritation, the irritation of someone who feels powerless: they are emotions that are hard to distinguish over the phone, you need to see the person’s face to interpret them correctly. In my tenth-floor apartment, in my city stuck up there at 2,600 metres above sea level, my two girls were moving and talking and I was listening to them and loving them, yes, I loved them both and didn’t want to hurt them. That’s what I was thinking when Leticia spoke. ‘Hello?’ she said. It’s a word children learn that nobody has to teach them. ‘Hello, sweetheart,’ I said.

‘It’s Papá,’ she said.

Then I heard Aura’s distant voice. ‘Yes,’ she told her. ‘But listen, listen to hear what he says.’

‘Hello?’ Leticia said again.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Who am I?’

‘Papá,’ she said, pronouncing the second P forcefully, taking her time over it.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m the big bad wolf.’

‘The big bad wolf?’

‘I’m Peter Pan.’

‘Peter Pan?’

‘Who am I, Leticia?’

She thought for a moment. Then she said, ‘Papá.’

‘Exactly,’ I said. I heard her laugh: a short little laugh, the wing beat of a hummingbird. And then I said, ‘Are you looking after Mamá?’

‘Aha,’ said Leticia.

‘You have to take good care of Mamá. Are you looking after her?’

‘Aha,’ said Leticia. ‘Here she is.’

‘No, wait,’ I tried to say, but it was too late, she’d got rid of the phone and left me in Aura’s hands, my voice in Aura’s hands, and my nostalgia hanging in the warm air: the nostalgia for things that weren’t yet lost. ‘OK, go and play,’ I heard Aura say in her sweetest tone of voice, speaking to her almost in whispers, a lullaby in five syllables. Then she spoke to me and the contrast was violent: there was sadness in her voice, as close as she sounded to me; there was disenchantment and also a veiled reproach. ‘Hello,’ said Aura.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

‘What for?’

‘For putting Leticia on the phone.’

‘She’s scared of the hallway,’ said Aura.

‘Leticia?’

‘She says there are things in the hallway. Yesterday she didn’t want to go from the kitchen to her bedroom by herself. I had to go with her.’

‘It’s just a phase,’ I said. ‘All her fears will pass.’

‘She wanted to sleep with the light on.’

‘It’s a phase.’

‘Yes,’ said Aura.

‘The paediatrician told us.’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s just at the nightmare age.’

‘The thing I don’t want is. .’ said Aura. ‘I don’t want us to go on like this, Antonio.’ Before I could answer she added, ‘It’s not good for anyone. It’s not good for Leticia, it’s not good for anyone.’

So that was it. ‘I get it now,’ I said. ‘So it’s my fault.’

‘Nobody said anything about anyone’s fault.’

‘It’s my fault Leticia’s afraid of the hallway.’

‘Nobody said that.’

‘Oh please, what nonsense. As if fear was hereditary.’

‘Not hereditary,’ said Aura, ‘contagious.’ And then immediately, ‘I didn’t mean to say that.’ And then, ‘You know what I mean.’

My hands were sweating, especially the one holding the phone, and I had an absurd fear: I thought the receiver could slip out of my sweaty fist and fall to the floor, and the call would be cut off against my will. By accident: accidents do happen. Aura was talking to me about our past, about the plans we’d had before a bullet that didn’t have my name on it hit me by chance, and I was listening to her carefully, I swear I was, but no memory formed in my mind. In the mind’s eye , as is sometimes said. My mind’s eye tried to see Aura before the death of Ricardo Laverde; it tried to see myself; but it was in vain. ‘I have to hang up,’ I heard myself say, ‘I’m on a borrowed phone.’ Aura — this I remember well — was saying that she loved me, that we could get through this together, that we were going to work to achieve it. ‘I have to hang up,’ I said.