Patricia Ratto - Proceed with Caution - Stories and a Novella

Today I asked my granddaughter to bring me a set of boy’s clothes. A shirt like Gastón’s , I explained, with a checkered pattern … and preferably blue . I didn’t tell her that blue would look good on the cynocephalus, but I thought it would. And underwear. And a pair of jeans, the worn-out kind they wear nowadays . She gave me a strange look, so I invented the story that I had seen the gardener so poorly dressed that I felt sorry for him. She offered to bring me some of the clothing her boyfriend no longer used. I said yes, so that she wouldn’t suspect me, but asked her to please add that new set of clothing I had requested. I don’t like to give away only discards; that’s not real charity , I suddenly blurted out. You’re so sweet, Gran , she replied with a smile.

Early this morning, before he left and while I was sleeping, he devoured a chunk of wall opposite my bed, leaving a dark spot there that frightens me a little. As I don’t want to be paralyzed with fear like that, I decide to take a closer look. First I extend my cane, lest I fall forward into that hole. But the darkness produces no sound, even though I tap it a little with the tip of the cane. Then I approach, bend forward and downward, preparing to feel something unpleasant, and I rest my hand. But I don’t feel anything—pleasant or unpleasant, hot or cold, rough or smooth. And I imagine that the blackness before me must be the nothingness that he exposes with each bite. Today I’m going to tell him to help me move the sofa, so no one will see that threatening thing.

The other night he showed up with the clothes I had given him, a little stained, and when he came close to my bed I smelled beer. However, he behaved the same as always: he sat down beside me, put his hand on top of mine, and listened to the news of the day. I talk to him more than to anyone else. He listens to me, gestures, and, depending on what I tell him, he changes the expression in his eyes, which gives me the idea that, in his way, he understands me. Finally, he fell asleep while I was talking to him, and I didn’t have the nerve to throw him out of bed, so I covered him with the quilt, and that’s where I left him.

Not long ago he ate the shelf where my family portraits were: the photo of my wedding to Abelardo; the one of Arielito’s First Communion; his military service portrait; the one of Graciela as standard-bearer in high school; the last one of Ariel, which a comrade took of him in Río Gallegos before he left for the Malvinas; the one of Graciela receiving her diploma in Architecture; the one of Abelardo as godfather at Graciela’s wedding, in her white gown, and holding him by the arm; the one of Abelardo at my side with the newborn Larisa in my arms; Larisa’s graduation from high school… A black hole remains where the shelf used to be. That’s why some days I try hard to remember what their faces were like, their poses, their clothing, but the memories are fading, and I can’t retain the traces of all of them, not even in my head.

I suggest that he eat part of the wall remaining behind my bed, instead; that way I don’t always have to stare at what isn’t there anymore. Because it’s boring to lie there like that, especially before I fall asleep and after I turn off the TV, with my eyes always facing that hole, which grows bigger night after night. He doesn’t say anything, because he never says anything, but then he looks at me through half-closed lids, and then I understand that, once again, he’ll ignore me completely.

Since yesterday I’ve been putting the pillow at the foot of the bed, and I fall asleep looking at the wall behind the headboard, the one where the portrait of the Virgin hangs. I don’t believe in the Virgin or saints or angels, but over time I’ve learned that whenever I say I’m an atheist, people grow uncomfortable, as if I were stabbing them in the ribs with a knife, so not only do I not mention it, but with some people, like Amanda, I let them think I’m a believer, because I know that way they’ll feel most at ease. And now, well, I’m waiting for the cynocephalus to show up. I know that the change is going to surprise him and maybe even amuse him. And I’m anxious to see what the devil he’ll do—if he’s going to keep eating from the same wall, or if he’ll change perspective, too. I also wonder what he’ll think about a painting with that Virgin, draped in heavy, flowing robes, and that chubby little Botticelli Baby Jesus, and that angel with gray bird-feather wings.

The last time he was here, he ate up the sofa, so now he hunkers down on what little remains of the floor, at the edge of the blackness. When I get up at night to go to the bathroom, I have to be careful to put on my glasses and place my feet exactly where there’s still a little bit of floor left in the room. Sometimes I imagine I’m about to take a misstep, or come to the very edge and fall into that void, the void that now practically surrounds me.

There’s no more mirror or shower left in the bathroom. So today I asked Dora if she’d let me shower in her room. I told her I was having problems with the hot water and didn’t want to catch pneumonia. She said yes. Dora’s a very good person. And so I showered and changed, and now I’m back. With a lipstick in my hand, I walk over to the windowpane, where I see myself reflected, and I paint my lips pale pink.

Last night, while I was sleeping, I looked at what’s left of the painting, which is part of the angel, an angel with the body and skin of a young man, with a face that now strikes me as very similar to Botticelli’s own face, as lovely as a girl with those blonde corkscrew curls and those nearly-transparent eyes, and then those little wings with the gray feathers of a big, ugly bird emerging from his back. And I can’t help wondering why most people don’t find angels monstrous, though they would think of a cynocephalus as a monster. When I awoke, the angel and the section of wall where the remainder of the painting rested were no longer there. Then I took a sheet of paper and a pen from the nightstand and wrote the sign that I later stuck to the door with cellophane tape. I don’t want anyone to carelessly come into the room and fall into the darkness.

Now I see him, standing by the bed, how he carefully takes off his jeans, then his shirt, his underwear, the clothes I gave him some time ago. I don’t say anything to him; I just let him be. He folds them methodically, placing one garment on top of another, on the quilt at the foot of the bed. He approaches on all fours, along the edge of the gorge that surrounds me, next to the darkness. He does this completely naked, the same as the first time, as I first met him. He sits on his haunches, puts one paw on the bed. I caress it. He moves his head forward, places his snout next to my hand. And, for some reason I can’t quite comprehend, I know that he is saying goodbye. Everything around me is empty and dark now; the TV is silent. The bed looks phosphorescent, dressed in these white sheets and quilt in the midst of the blackness. The cynocephalus closes his eyes and prepares to fall asleep. I stick my hand under the pillow, take out the lipstick I’ve hidden there, and, before closing my eyes, I paint my lips so that when they find me, I will look beautiful.

AND THEN THAT noise wakes me with a start, a rough grinding that scrapes furiously against the hull of the boat. I must have fallen asleep on top of some tarps in the engine room, and the noise, which comes from outside but invades everything here on the inside, has awakened me. The noise multiplies, and now something at starboard scrapes, scratches, drags. I’m alone, there’s no one in sight, it seems like everyone is where the noise is, or maybe everyone is the noise, as if the noise has swallowed them, the others, but not me, because now I stand up and I’m fine, and I smooth my overalls with the palms of my slightly greasy hands, squat, grab the tarps, roll them up, and drag them out of the way. I’ve got to say that since that bout I had a few days ago, I’m feeling better, much better. The noise continues, but my ears are getting used to it and have started to distinguish other sounds, another reality beyond the noise: someone’s coming in, someone who is still nothing more than the tapping of boots climbing down the metal ladder and touching the floor. I move toward the engine room door and determine that the someone is now a body that turns and comes toward the stern, a face that becomes more defined and takes on Soria’s features: a nice guy, Soria, very good-natured. Then other boots: as the noise scrapes, scrapes, scrapes, now they’re going down the ladder; then Soria stops, turns toward the guy behind him. When did they start? I think he’s asking. A while ago, the other man replies with a voice that sounds like Albaredo’s, as they complete their descent. And how do you get them off? Soria persists, with an intensity that struggles to be heard over the roaring, writhing, breaking din. With metal sheets, the other man explains as both of them advance toward the engine room. Argentine style, he adds, skin divers with snorkels, a metal sheet and lots of elbow grease, all by hand. The noise scrapes, scratches, grazes. Those barnacles are tough fuckers; they dig in real deep and they don’t come off so easy, Albaredo explains. They haven’t spotted me yet, I think, because Soria keeps asking: So what’s the big hurry if they’ve been there for years? I dunno, the other one snaps back; there was an order and we gotta follow it. Now you can hear the clack of other boots, and still others, and other voices, and I go back to the engine room and stay there thinking about the barnacles clinging to the metal sheets as if they were the sheets themselves, adding excess weight to the boat and slowing it down, so slow, damaging the hull and making it unable to resist all the pressure it has to resist when it needs to dive deep, all because somebody had the bright idea of building that breakwater and didn’t foresee that when the current changed, the submarine’s hull would fill with those creatures. Neither did they plan ahead to bring it into dry dock for a proper cleaning, and who knows why it occurred to them just now to… The noise scrapes maddeningly, scrapes and scrapes and is deafening. The barnacles dig in like rabid dogs’ teeth into living flesh, like the noise in my ears; they bite, they bite, they crunch. And bite.