Andres Neuman - Talking to Ourselves

I spent the entire day fretting because Mario didn’t answer the phone. Finally he got back to me. They stopped at Comala de la Vega and are now on their way to Región. Lito told me he knows how to guess the number of inhabitants. And that he misses me. And that he wants a Valentino something-or-other wristwatch. Mario says he feels fine, just a little tired. He spoke to me in that tone of forced calm he adopts when he doesn’t want me to interrogate him. I wanted to know if he had vomited and he feigned surprise. I’m not Lito, I reminded him, and I’m not stupid either. Then he admitted he had, twice. And changed the subject. It drives me crazy when Mario assumes that controlling attitude of his. As though illness depended on our level of composure. Mario is brave, his brothers keep repeating like parrots. If he were as brave as all that, he would weep with me each time we speak.

At one point during the call, Mario asked me how I was. And, he added and I quote, what I was getting up to. It was an innocent question. I think. I had a mental block. I felt a lump in my throat. And I had to pretend I was losing coverage.

“There’s a lot of horribleness she refuses to countenance,” I agree with what Helen Garner writes in one of her novels, “but it won’t just go away.” In fact the job of horror is to do the opposite: to resurface. “So somebody else has to sort of live it.” By avoiding the subject of his death, Mario delegates it to me, he kills me a little. “Death will not be denied. To try is grandiose.” And feeds it. “It drives madness into the soul.” Like one truck driving into another. “It leaches out virtue.” Leaves it barren. “And makes a mockery of love.” And there are no more clean embraces. Here all of us fall ill.

Lito sent me a wonderful e-mail from Salto Grande. With his comma-free sentences, his strange spelling. I miss him as never before, in a way that feels more like physical pain than affection. I feel ransacked inside. As though all the energy I normally spend on my adorable and unruly son had been extinguished due to the absence of any recipient. People who don’t have kids think they suck you dry (which they do, I swear), but they don’t realize that this energy, which our kids guzzle down like water from a canteen, is the exact same one we stole from them. It is like a two-way circuit. Without Lito here I work less but get more tired. The only thing that recharges my batteries is having sex with Ezequiel.

“Two-way circuit?” “Recharge my batteries?” All of a sudden I am talking like Mario. As though language were taking revenge on me.

Bringing up a child and caring for a sick person have this in common: both require an energy that is not really yours. You are instilled with it by them, by their eager love, their expectant fear. And they clamour for it as though scenting fresh meat. I sometimes feel that motherhood is a black hole. Whatever you put in is never enough, and you’ve no idea where it goes. At other times, though, I feel like a vampire feeding off her own child. Devouring his enthusiasm in order to carry on believing in life.

But a child is also a deposit box. However selfish that may sound, you invest in him your time, your sacrifices, your expectations, in the hope that in the future he will yield gratitude. I argued about this with my sister, who called me again yesterday. She asked about Mario and told me she was looking for a flight. I told her not to worry, and that I know how busy she is with work at this time of year. I’m actually dying for her to come. As always, we ended up talking about our respective families. We never talk about ourselves. I told her a child is literally an investment. She said that was a horrible idea. That motherhood couldn’t be understood in economic terms. And that whatever I do I should never say such a thing to Lito. It wouldn’t be so bad. Kids also speculate with their love, they spend their lives making mundane calculations: if I’m good today, I’ll get this; if I’m bad I’ll get that taken away; if I’m nice to Dad I’ll have a few days worth of credit; if I’m nice to Mum the two of us can negotiate with him. That’s how we are.

Day after day you put the best (and the worst) of yourself into your child. And in the meantime you wonder: Will he notice? Will he remember? Will it do him any good? And, because you are no saint, you also wonder: Will he acknowledge it? Will he reward me for it? Will he want to look after me?

I wonder whether, perhaps without realizing it, we seek out the books we need to read. Or whether books themselves, which are intelligent entities, detect their readers and catch their eye. In the end, every book is the I Ching . You pick it up, open it and there it is, there you are.

In a novel by Mario Levrero, I’m startled when I recognize a familiar idea. The fact that the author and my husband share the same name has an even greater impact on my memory. The main character is stretched out beside his lover. He senses she doesn’t want to make love with him. And so he simply lies there on his back and takes her hand in his. She sighs with relief. And lays her head on his chest. Then the two of them experience an instant of complete communion, beyond the sexual realm or perhaps coming after the sexual realm: “I could be more graphic by saying we had a child that night, born not of flesh but of the denial of the flesh. And I sometimes shudder to think it may still be alive in its own world, doing who knows what. And yet I sense it was an ephemeral being.”

I remember when Mario didn’t want to have kids, or wasn’t sure he wanted them. We were just starting out and we thought our solitude was enough to fill the house. We spent whole afternoons simply clutching one another or holding hands, gazing out of the window. Whenever we spoke about it, Mario would tell me that we were our own child. That we cared for one another, nurtured one another. We felt we had created something attached to the two of us. That kind of creature who was both of us when we were together.

In the end we were three. The house filled up. And something, I am not sure what exactly, was driven out from between us.

As we become more confident in bed, Ezequiel begins to reveal himself. My initial response was instinctive rejection. I almost forbade him ever to touch me again. With his first attempt we screamed at each other. Not true: I did all the screaming. He remained calm. He didn’t even get up as I was putting my clothes on. He went on talking to me slowly, in that anaesthetizing tone he has. Lying among the pillows. Smiling, naked. With a slightly lopsided erection.

Angry, I asked him if by any chance he took me for a sadomasochist. Ezequiel merely replied: If you were in my line of work, sadomasochism would seem the most natural thing in the world.

After recovering from my initial shock, I couldn’t help thinking about everything that lay in store for me. That in any event I hadn’t much to lose, or rather that I couldn’t lose much more than I already had. I felt again the way I did the first night we spent together, when Ezequiel admired my composure in dealing with the situation and said to me: I can’t take my eyes off your breasts or your dignity.