Andres Neuman - Talking to Ourselves

Since she landed, she has been trying to show a degree of protectiveness toward me. Perhaps she still feels guilty for not having come when you died. There is no reason she should: I myself insisted she wasn’t going to arrive in time for the wake. I sense she wants to broach the subject, but I don’t give her a chance. I know what each of us would say. I have listened to that conversation, over and over, talking to myself. Arguing with my sister is like shouting at a concave mirror. I don’t recognize the person before me, yet she seems disturbingly similar.

“I was a married woman,” recalls the character in a novel by César Aira. “We always hesitate,” I underline, “before erasing the evidence of something that happened,” what happened is the only thing we have now, and it is destined to be lost. “Almost everything that happens scarcely leaves traces in our memory,” memory is a delicate skin, skin has a short memory, “and memory isn’t trustworthy, isn’t even credible.” I deleted all your e-mails, your text messages, your work files. I noticed no relief.

“It was my hands versus my head,” to do in order not to think, not to think about what to do. “The voluptuousness I felt when penetrating my mental labyrinths made me realize it was dangerous ground,” every labyrinth is dangerously intimate, “but this feeling only increased my pleasure, and my guilt, which were one and the same thing,” to the point where this voluptuousness no longer depended on what I did with Ezequiel. It was in me, like a medical after-effect.

I needed someone to hear it. I have just told my sister what you already know, what you never knew. Or did you?

We were both in the bedroom. Braiding each other’s hair the way we did as kids. The way we did during our summers at the beach house. One leaning her head against the other’s stomach, letting her hair be caressed. And then we would change places. We spoke in those hushed tones that enable you to say the first thing that comes into your head. This is how I confided to her about Ezequiel. My sister was braiding my hair. I noticed her stomach tense. She scarcely drew breath while I spoke. She exhaled slowly, like when you do prenatal exercises. Predictably, she responded with shock. Something which, in her own way, she also needed to do. My sister has no problem understanding immoral acts, so long as it remains clear from the outset that she would never commit them herself.

I must admit she didn’t try to judge me before I finished telling the whole story. Next, she declared herself “physically incapable” (her exact words, my darling) of having a lover. And least of all, she continued, modulating her voice with exemplariness, in a situation like the one you and I had been through. “A situation,” she said. I wanted to tear her hair out. I replied that it was quite the opposite. That, physically speaking, the most natural thing was to have a lover. And most of all, I spelt it out, straightening up, in desperate situations.

This was as far as my arguments went. After that, what came out was my own unmistakeable rubbish. We argued for a while. Until it occurred to me to tell her: You have enough trouble with your own husband, who unfortunately is alive and kicking.

My sister left the bedroom without uttering a word. I heard her moving stuff around. And the door go at the end of the hallway. A few minutes later I received a text message (typical of her: polite, dignified, insufferable) informing me she was going to visit our parents.

Wretchedly I replied:

I’m sure you’ll be on your best behaviour with them.

“Suffering that is too apparent doesn’t inspire pity,” I verify in an essay by Philippe Ariès, “but rather revulsion.” We tolerate, are even pleased, that others suffer, but not when it splashes us, this is already “a sign of mental disorder or rudeness.” “Within the family circle we are still wary, for fear of upsetting the children,” although if we knew how to raise kids properly, on the contrary, they would be upset by the lack of obvious suffering at the loss of a loved one. “We only have the right to cry,” we only grant ourselves this right, “if no one either sees or hears us,” confined in our room, doubly confined, “solitary shameful grieving is the only option, like masturbation,” besides shame, is there some pleasure, there? “The comparison is made by Gorer,” I don’t know who he is, but I want a date with him.

I search for Gorer, I find him, he wanted to be a writer, he failed (welcome to the club, Geoffrey), he became an anthropologist, he researched de Sade (a sadist, then) and ended up studying sex in marriage (precisely, a sadist). I find the quote “At present, death and mourning are treated with much the same prudery as sexual impulses were a century ago,” is prudishness therefore suffering in secret, masturbating with mourning? “So that it need be given no public expression,” so that it doesn’t soil the clothes of others, “and indulged, if at all, in private … furtively,” I’ve never been introduced to a Geoffrey.

My love, your crazy widow here.

Shall we get to the point?

Sometimes, at night, alone in our bedroom, I am tempted to contact Ezequiel. I take pleasure in imagining that I have. And I know I would do again all the things I did.

If I don’t call him it is more out of pride than remorse. After all, I myself forbade him to see me again. How could he have obeyed me so instantly?

Men’s obsession with being consistent horrifies me.

A message from my sister:

Mum and Dad have sold the beach house. I assume you knew. Wish you’d told me. Love from all 3.

No, I didn’t know.

They always seemed to be fine there.

And wouldn’t it have been better to think about it a little longer? I insisted, we had so many good summers at that house. The way things stood, my love, there wasn’t much time for thought, my mother explained, the bills were very high, it needed work, we could no longer even afford the maintenance. Really? I said, why didn’t you tell me? Because you never asked, my mother replied calmly.

Lito just came home from school with a split lip. He is happy. He says he is learning to command respect.

I was horrified to see him with blood on his mouth. But I assumed if I showed my dismay, he would shut me out. I know there are macho issues that only macho men can understand, and all that bullshit philosophy. So I forced myself to behave naturally. I swear to you I smiled, I smiled when confronted by our wounded son! provided he told me what had happened.

When he saw I was on his side, Lito gave me a blow-by-blow account of how the fight came about. The precise insults exchanged. Whereabouts in the playground the fight had taken place. Exactly how he had hit the other boy. His story sounded like a sports commentary. I breathed deeply in order not to feel sick. While treating his lip, as if in passing, I asked who he had defended himself against so successfully.