Perla

ALSO BY CAROLINA DE ROBERTIS

FICTION
The Invisible Mountain

TRANSLATION
Bonsai
by Alejandro Zambra

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2012 by Carolina De Robertis

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
De Robertis, Carolina.
Perla / by Carolina De Robertis.—1st ed.
p.   cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-95738-2

1. Young women—Fiction. 2. Family secrets—Fiction. 3. Argentina—History—Dirty War, 1976–1983—Fiction. I. Title. PS3618.O31535P47 2012    813′.6—dc23    2011041833

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Jacket photograph of woman by Julia Davila-Lampe/Getty Images
Jacket design by Emily Mahon

v3.1

Para ti, Rafael

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Part One

1: Arrival

2: A Secret Dimension

3: Waters and Sorrows

4: The Chorus in the Depths

5: Failed Geraniums

6: The Word
Where

Part Two

7: A Map of Her

8: Nectar and Venom

9: El Grito Sagrado

10: Open

Part Three

11: Cradle

12: Empty Hands, Clear Water

13: Homecoming

14: You

Acknowledgments

A Note About the Author

The aim of the Process is the profound transformation of consciousness.

—GENERAL JORGE RAFAEL VIDELA
General Commander of the Argentine Army, 1976–1981

Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps … He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad.

—HERMAN MELVILLE
,
Moby-Dick

ONE

1
Arrival

S
ome things are impossible for the mind to hold alone. So listen, if you can, with your whole being. The story pushes and demands to be told, here, now, with you so close and the past even closer, breathing at the napes of our necks.

He arrived on the second of March, 2001, a few minutes after midnight. I was alone. I heard a low sound from the living room, a kind of scrape, like fingernails on unyielding floor—then silence. At first I couldn’t move; I wondered whether I had left a window open, but no, I had not. I picked up the knife from the counter, still flecked with squash, and walked slowly down the hall toward the living room with the knife leading the way, thinking that if it came to fighting I’d be ready, I’d stab down to the hilt. I turned the corner and there he lay, curled up on his side, drenching the rug.

He was naked. Seaweed stuck to his wet skin, which was the color of ashes. He smelled like fish and copper and rotting apples. Nothing had moved: the sliding glass door to the backyard was closed and intact, the curtains were unruffled, and there was no damp trail where he might have walked or crawled. I could not feel my limbs, I was all wire and heat, the room crackled with danger.

“Get out,” I said.

He didn’t move.

“Get the hell out,” I said, louder this time.

He lifted his head with tremendous effort and opened his eyes. They were wide eyes that seemed to have no bottom. They stared at
me, the eyes of a baby, the eyes of a boa. In that moment something in my core came apart like a ship losing its mooring, anchor dismantled, the terror of dark waters on all sides, and I found that I could not turn away.

I raised the knife and pointed it at him.

The man shuddered and his head collapsed against the floor. My instinct was to rush to his side, help him up, offer him a hot drink or an ambulance. But was he pretending, hoping I’d come closer so he could overpower me?
Don’t do it. Don’t go near him
. I took a step backward and waited. The man had given up on lifting his head again, and was watching me from the corners of his eyes. A minute passed. He did not blink or lunge or look away.

Finally, I said, “What do you want?”

His jaws began to work, slowly, arduously. The mouth opened and water poured out, thick and brown like the water of the river, seeping into the rug. The murky smell in the room intensified. I took another step back and pressed against the wall. It felt cool and hard and I wished it would whisper
Sshhh, don’t worry, some things are solid still
, but it was only a wall and had nothing to say.

His lips worked around empty air. I waited and watched him strain to form a word. Finally he spoke, unintelligibly and too loudly, like a deaf person who has not learned to sculpt his sounds. “Co-iii-aahh.”

I shook my head.

He made the sound again, more slowly. “Coo. Iiiii. Aaaahh.”

I tried to piece it together. “Coya?” I asked, thinking, a name? a place I’ve never heard of?

“Coo. Miiiii. Aaah.”

I nodded blankly.

“Coo. Miiiii. Dah.”

And then I understood. “
Co-mi-da
. Food. Food?”

He nodded. Drops of water fell from his face, too copious to be sweat; they seeped from his pores, a human sponge just lifted from the river—though even sponges would stop dripping at some point, and this man’s wetness had not relented. Without turning my gaze
away from him, I pressed the knife against my arm, to see whether I was dreaming. The blade broke skin and drew blood and I felt the pain but did not wake out of this reality into another one. If my father had been here he surely would not have seen this ghoulish man, or if he had, he would have stabbed him already, without a word, then poured a glass of scotch and watched Mamá clean up the carpet. I met the stranger’s gaze and felt my heart pulse like a siren in my chest. I should attack him, I thought. I should chase him out. But I couldn’t bring myself to do either. Later, I would look back on this moment as the one when my real life began: the moment in which, without knowing why, to my own shock and against all reason, I lowered my weapon and went to forage for food.

The kitchen was just as I’d left it, only the pot had boiled over on the stove, water hissing as it leaped out onto the burner. I had been cooking squash for Lolo, the turtle, who stood by the refrigerator, neck craned from his shell, unperturbed. My cigarette had gone out on the counter. I was shocked to see it, as it did not feel like the same night on which, just a few minutes earlier, I had stood there smoking and chopping squash, thinking to myself, as though repetition would make me believe it, it’s good to be alone, the house to myself, and isn’t it wonderful, I can do anything I want, eat toast for dinner, whirl naked in the kitchen if I choose, leave dirty dishes on the sofa, sit with my legs spread wide, cry without explaining myself to anyone.

I turned off the fire under the pot of squash, and began to rummage through the refrigerator. Mamá had left the house well stocked. I gathered an array of foods on a tray: Gouda, bread, last night’s roast chicken and potatoes, white wine, a glass of water, a few bonbons in a gold box—and headed back down the hall. I still had the knife with me, nestled between the dishes. My parents protested, from nowhere, from the air at my back, and I had no answer for them. I felt the heavy cape of their disapproval, their dismay at my breach of common sense.
Perla, what are you doing?
I imagined them calling as I kept on down the hall and into the living room.

He had not strayed from his position, folded into himself like a
fetus. He did not shiver. The burgundy rug was almost black with water. He was motionless except for one bare foot that tapped silently against the floor. He stared at the wall and his eyes did not blink. In the morning I would wake up and he would be gone and the carpet would be dry, dry, because none of this ever happened.

I put the tray down on the floor beside him. He stared as if it held objects from a strange and sunken kingdom. He made no move to rise and eat, and, I realized, he probably couldn’t, since he’d barely had the strength to move his mouth. He was as vulnerable as a dazed infant, and might be waiting for me to feed him, bite by bite. The notion repulsed me—my hand at his mouth, his damp skin brushing against mine—and so I waited. He made a sound, unformed and plaintive, all vowel and longing. Another minute passed.

Finally, I asked, “Would you like some chicken?”