Patricia Ratto: Proceed with Caution: Stories and a Novella

The ritual repeats itself, maybe because we tend to repeat those things we like, the ones that do us good. I’m sitting, Chinese Boy is sitting, he smiles, I smile, he says hi , I say hi , he unleashes the cabbage, I unleash Lavender. As they play (I say “they play” and I’m suddenly taken aback by that plural form), he shows me photos of a family that I understand lives very far away: two brothers and a sister, all younger, mother, father, four grandparents. They all look alike, maybe because they’re Chinese. I wonder if the same thing happens to the Chinese when they see a photo of Argentines, if we all look the same to them. I also wonder if Chinese Boy isn’t desperately alone.

Gastón insists that we get together, go out, talk again. I have absolutely no interest, but he persists, persists, persists till I give in. He asks me what I want to eat; I say sushi, he suggests a place, we meet there. The waiter comes over, we order. Forks or chopsticks? he asks us. Forks for both of us , Gastón says. No , I hurriedly correct him, chopsticks for me . The waiter walks away. Gastón regards me, perplexed. I shrug and don’t tell him that one day at the park, Chinese Boy taught me how to use them, artfully manipulating the two little branches and explaining to me that in ancient times, at the Chinese imperial palace, they used silver chopsticks to determine if there was poison in the royal meals. As we eat, Gastón talks, talks, talks; I bring the Chinese chopsticks to my mouth and see Chinese Boy naked and stretched across my wide bed with violet-colored sheets that smell like violets. Every so often I reply, make a comment, and then Gastón takes up his monologue again and leaves me alone, while Chinese Boy performs a special shadow puppet show against the wall, with a fierce wolf that turns into a lamb, a rabbit that runs and stands on its hind legs to contemplate the moon, two lovers kissing.

Today Lavender is wearing barrettes with lavender bows and she looks lovely. She’s jumped on and off the bench so many times that you can tell she’s anxious, as if she’s waiting for Chinese Boy to play with his pet again. I glance at my watch: just a while longer and I’ll go, I tell myself. Then I think I hear shouts, and a few feet away from here I see Chinese Boy with his cabbage-on-a-leash, surrounded by adolescents in private high school uniforms who shout at him: Chinese fag , they bellow, laughing. Does it have a pedigree? taunts a girl with long blonde hair. Careful, it bites! another guy warns an older woman who steps off the sidewalk to avoid the commotion. Does it know karate? inquires yet another, assuming a karate expert pose and attempting a Chinese accent. Go to your doghouse! shouts someone else, kicking the cabbage, which, still connected to the leash, leaps into the air and falls back down onto the sidewalk. Chinese Boy doesn’t do anything: he doesn’t answer back, he doesn’t get angry, he doesn’t move, as if he were impervious or immune or absent. Seeing his lack of reaction, the kids get bored and go away. Chinese Boy remains there motionless, frozen. Lavender climbs onto my legs, taking me by surprise. I pet her; she sits and grows calm. Then I turn my head and see that Chinese Boy, fixed to the same spot, is looking in my direction. He raises one hand in the air as if to say everything’s all right; he waves, which I interpret as a goodbye; he turns on his heels, picks up the cabbage, sticks it under his arm, and leaves.

Tonight there’s a dinner at Franca’s place; she’s just returned from Germany. Irene comes to pick me up and insists I bring Lavender along. I say no, they always make her nervous, I’d rather leave her in my apartment. We get there, I greet everyone, there are just a few of us, some of whom I see often, and others I haven’t seen in a while. Around one of the little living room tables, four strangers are playing Chinese checkers. Following a round of drinks, they serve sausages with sauerkraut. I play dumb, eat German bread and drink beer. I can’t swallow a bite; I can’t help thinking of Lavender and Jasmine on the platters, prepared and delivered by a chain of Chinese takeouts. An hour later, I’m back home with incurable nausea and an unbearable headache.

Sunday, family lunch at mom’s house with some aunts and uncles who are visiting from Córdoba. I walk there, some fifteen blocks; I have time, and it’s a beautiful day. Along the way I buy mascarpone ice cream, my favorite flavor, chocolate for my uncle, raspberry for mom and my aunt. First we eat eggplant à la Napolitana, then spaghetti Bolognese. A very Mediterranean menu , my aunt says. Well, I say, almost everything, because really, I don’t know if you’re aware that noodles originally came from China, and the first historical reference to noodle dishes that we have were written during the Han Dynasty . Gulp! They stare at me without daring to say a word, till mom asks me to pass the bread basket.

I’m sitting here with Lavender again, like yesterday, like the day before. But today, just when I’ve brought along a nosegay of lavender so that he’ll finally understand what it’s like, it seems Chinese Boy isn’t coming. Lavender runs after a pit bull; I’m terrified, but she begs me and begs me till I think she’s going to scratch my legs through my stockings, so I set her loose, and there she goes, pursuing the fearsome dog, who looks at her patiently, or compassionately, or lewdly. With my gaze lost among the trees in the background, I imagine Chinese Boy living behind the chipboard panels of some supermarket, sleeping on a mattress on the floor together with Chinese aunts, uncles, and cousins. No understand, no understand , says the Chinese owner of the supermarket around the corner from my building, where I sometimes buy cleaning products because Ivana told me that they’re cheaper there. When someone complains to the Chinese supermarket owner about something—spoiled milk, out-of-date cold cuts, moldy cheese, he spits the refrain No understand, no understand in their face, while the cashier, young and also Chinese, smiles uncomfortably and fixes her slanted eyes on the merchandise, on the bills, on the floor.

I buy two Foo dog statues, replicas of the guard dogs at Buddha’s temple; I place one at each side of the front door. The male—who has a ball beneath his left paw—to the left of the door; the female—who has the ball beneath her right paw—to the right, to protect me from bad energy and bad people. Lavender growls at them a couple of times but finally accepts them. Just today, after three days of downpour, it’s stopped raining. In a while I’m going to take Lavender to the park, and while I’m at it, I’ll break in the sneakers mom gave me for my birthday. They’re a German brand, but they’re made in China.

Chinese Boy hasn’t returned to the park. I scour the Internet for news about the mafia. Sometimes I imagine they put him on a horrible boat and sent him back to his country. Or that they punished him for running off to the park during work hours. Every once in a while I stop by the greengrocer’s and buy a cabbage for Lavender to play with. There are days when I’m sure I’m going to run into him at any moment, in the most unexpected place. Yesterday, at a second-hand bookstore, I bought a book written entirely in Chinese.

NOW, SITTING IN an evangelical church that he found open by accident in the middle of the night, he speculates that his life changed forever, perhaps by divine design, perhaps by a whim of fate, that day when, on his way home from the university, he crossed the park, backpack slung over his shoulder, taking a shortcut to get there faster. Suddenly the facts congeal at a point in his memory, which today, when he tries to retrieve them, makes them appear as a single event: hearing the plop of something falling straight down before his eyes; stopping in his tracks; looking down to discover, where the rounded tips of his sneakers ended, a thing sparsely covered by fine, brownish-gray feathers; lifting his eyes instinctively to find the place it came from and spotting a low-flying chimango ; hearing the screech of the chimango and at the same time watching it ascend and circle over his own head; understanding that the thing at his feet was the chimango’s victim, and not knowing what to do till it opens one eye, and then seeing, for the first time, as if he himself had opened his eyes at that moment, the pinkness of a wound; redirecting his gaze upward and gesturing theatrically with his arms to drive the chimango away; seeing the chimango give up and leave; and then standing there alone before that thing, wounded and with one eye open, making him feel all the loneliness in the world; looking around because he doesn’t know what else to do; squatting to witness how, from the mass of its upwardly-stretched body, a head and a beak emerge, and two eyes that seem to brim over with terror; extending a hand to touch; feeling the warmth and trembling, the horrific confirmation that this thing is, indeed, alive, and that he ought to do something about it. Looking all around once more, not a soul anywhere, and it’s growing dark; deciding, at last, to pick up the animal, which, on being grasped from the back, extends a pair of very long legs; accommodating the creature in his left hand; feeling it curl up till it assumes the perfect shape of an egg; and walking, walking with that warm, throbbing thing, all the way home.