Perla (27 page)

I closed my eyes. I did not want to think of my birth but the images arose and there were chains, blood, a dim medieval dungeon of a room although I knew that part was just my imagination. So many holes in memory and knowledge for imagination to fill. I had never really heard the false story of my birth, growing up, nor even seen pictures of Mamá pregnant. Oh, she’d said, I didn’t want pictures taken of me, everything swelled up, you know, my calves, my face, forget about the waist. About the birth itself, she said only, The pain, you can’t imagine, with a vague wave of her hand. Another lie, of course. It seemed that I would have to scour every memory of my childhood, that every centimeter was tainted with lies, that the cleaning and sorting would take the rest of my life. Even then there would always be holes, things I could never know, unless I filled the empty space with my imaginings. Like the imagined picture of a man in Navy uniform arriving home from work one day with a squirming bundle in his arms.

Héctor, what’s this?

Our baby
.

How can that be?

I got a call in the office
.

From the adoption agency?

From above them, direct from the government
.

And the waiting list?

Don’t ask too many questions, Luisa. Don’t worry, she’s ours. She was an orphan, no one to come for her
.

A girl?

A girl. Her name is Perla
.

Perhaps it went that way, perhaps not. But this version seemed
plausible. Above all, it seemed right that he would have been the one to choose my name. When I was a child, he always said
I’m the one who named you, Perla
, with such emphasis that it now seemed like the only detail I could believe. I was his treasure, after all, wasn’t that still true? A girl like gold to him. Stolen gold, I couldn’t help but think. Which made me feel a bit like a spoil of war, an object claimed from battle, as warriors have done since ancient times. Gold, spears, slaves. Girls traded back and forth since the days of Troy. Girls raised to be loyal to their owners, so loyal you could remove the glimmering shackles and they’d stay, of course they’d stay, because after all the love circling their ankles was heavier than iron and in any case where could they go?

Stop it, I thought, these are ridiculous thoughts, you’re not a slave, you’re a grown woman, free to leave this house.

So will you?

The question curled open. It flared its enormous petals. I looked around at the bookshelf with its childhood photo and its bride and groom facing the future with closed mouths, the blue painting and still curtains and the patio beyond it that had once held too many flowerpots to count, the wet man resting in the pool whose humming lullabies had accompanied me all night, and I let all of it tear me open to see that I already knew the answer. I could not live here another day. I could not stay here in this haunted house where I would never form what the book called
a true identity
, and though I might never be
restored
—though I did not want to be
restored
if it meant erasure—though I still didn’t know exactly where I was going or who I wanted to become or what it would take to carve the road of becoming, I knew in that moment that I wanted nothing more than to rip apart the self I had worn like heavy clothing that suffocates you but that you cling to for fear of the cold. I needed to be cold. I needed to be stripped down, hungry, alive—and also close to what was not alive, this phantom, because that, too, I thought, is who I really am. I wanted to spend a thousand and one more nights with this wet man,
because he was linked to me and I to him. I wanted to be close to him and close to Perla, the stripped version of myself, I wanted to look in the mirror in the morning and know whom I was greeting, be capable of stroking her glass face no matter what she’d done.

The sun was ripe and heavy in the room. I had spent most of the morning perched here with the book as my sole companion. The guest was still asleep but I had catapulted to a space beyond sleep. All I could think of was the phone, sitting still and ready in the study. What would happen if I called my parents in Punta del Este, what would come out of my mouth. Do it now, I thought, before sense returns and fear sets in. I went to the study, sat in the plush leather chair, and dialed.

He wakes to the sound of her steps, walking away, down the hall. Last night rushes back to him and he thinks, Let tonight be the same, and the next night and the next, a long chain of incandescent hours, what a glorious future, the girl and him, sharing a room, sharing a sphere, his humming and her hair, his water and her thoughts, together and together and together.

The room is bright with day. The sofa’s aggression has been silenced forever. The melted clocks in their dry landscape do not tick. The swan still bends its head, but there is no sense of burden to the posture, only a bowing to the mysteries inside or around it. Now he loves them, clock and swan and sofa, the way a fish loves the coral reef and stone and current that make his water possible, without thought, without the slightest flicker of a fin,
yes, here we all are, intrinsic to the ocean
. He will stay in this communion as long as the fates allow, this room is everything and every thing is contained within this room, or will be when she comes and stays and he can drink the molten air of their shared presence, and this, he thinks, is the true curve of the world—now I glimpse it: all things are blended under the surface like the mass of us were blended in the water, it’s the separateness of skin and rock and mind that is the great illusion. We are not discrete; we
are not solid. People and things and even cities are meant to flow together, they are meant to connect, and this is why we’re always full of longing, the way I long for the girl, and the girl longs for truth, and the truth longs for volume, and volume longs for people to hear it, and people long for—what?—for everything, air, home, violence, chaos, beauty, hope, flight, sight, each other. Always, whether to stroke or maim, each other, above all.

He glows with his new knowledge, wants to share it with her, waits for her return. But then he hears her voice from a room down the hall. She has left the door open. Is she talking to herself? No, she is on the phone. Her voice sounds tight; he has never heard her sound this way. He strains to listen. He strains to understand.

My father answered the phone on the third ring. “Hello?”

“Hi, it’s me.”

“Ah, Perla. Hello.” His mood was amiable, relaxed. “We were about to leave for the beach.”

“I was just calling to see how you were doing.”

“We’re doing great, terrific. The only problem is that we have to pack up so soon.”

“Yes.”

“And you? How are you?”

“Fine.”

“Are you sure? You sound strange.”

“Do I?”

“I said it, didn’t I? What have you been up to?”

He sounded as though he was really asking, and before I could stop myself, before I could pull the veil back over my own voice, I said, “Thinking.”

“Hm! About what?”

“A lot of things.” I paused. My hands were shaking. “For example, what exactly you did. And whether you would do it again.”

“Do what again?”

“The war. What happened at ESMA.”

We were both shocked by my words and timbre. Silence.

“Why are you bringing that up now?”

“It’s been on my mind.”

He made no sound, and I thought the pause would never end; I was convinced that he had withdrawn from the topic, shut the window, drawn the drapes. But then he said, very softly, “Perla. For God’s sake.”

“For God’s sake what?”

“Don’t do this.”

But even if I’d wanted to I couldn’t have stopped the woman who had taken possession of my body and tongue. “Did you know their names?”

“Whose names?”

“The people under your charge. The”—disappeared, destroyed, disfigured—“subversives.”

“Do you have to bring this up on my vacation?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Why?”

“I’ve been wondering about my parents.”

“Well, look, we never—”

“What did you do to my parents?”

He was silent again; it was a cavernous silence in which the question echoed, echoed, echoed. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I think you know, Papá.”

“Look,” he said, and now his voice was calm, carefully calibrated, a closely gauged voltage, “you’ve been talking to the wrong people.”

“I want you to answer me.”

“Somebody has confused you.”

“I’m not confused.”

“You are. It’s better to talk about this in person. We’ll be home tomorrow night, we can talk then and clear the whole thing up. All right?”

He would not answer. He would never answer. It was no use continuing, and also no use pretending that the bomb had not been launched. I imagined the woman who was playing the part of my mother, across the room from him, sitting stiffly in her bathing suit as she followed one side of the conversation.
Perla
, I thought,
what have you done?
“Fine.”

“None of this is what you think it is.”

My turn to go silent.

“Don’t let anyone put ideas in your head. You can’t be too careful these days, there are a lot of people out there spreading lies.”

I laughed, then—I couldn’t help it, the sound escaped before I had a chance to bite it down.

“What the hell is so funny?”

“Nothing.”

“Perla.” He sounded nervous now. “We’ll chat when I get home, I promise. And then you can ask me anything you like.”

Anything? Anything at all?
Papá, this is our houseguest, don’t mind his dripping skin—have you met before?

“Okay?”

I was silent.

“Perla?”

I almost hung up or shouted at him, my hand burned to slam the receiver and my throat burned with unsaid words, but I did not do either because I suddenly saw my future clearly, one in which there would be no chat when he got home, a future in which I held this phone call in a locked drawer of my heart labeled
THE LAST TIME I HEARD HIS VOICE
. And this made me feel both free and numb, an arm on the brink of amputation, saying a dazed good-bye to the body. For this reason, and this reason only, I stayed on the phone.

I said, “Okay.”

“Be careful out there. Don’t think too much.” He paused, and I heard some shuffling. “Your mother sends a kiss.”

“Okay.”

“Well? Do you send one for us?”

He said it with a laugh, trying to ease the mood, but I could hear the strain in his tone, almost a begging. I thought of leaving him in that position, ending the call with his question suspended and unanswered—he had left my question in that same state, after all—and perhaps I should have, but I could not bring myself to do so. I was a coward. A coward, or just a daughter, after all. “Of course, Papá.”

“
Hasta pronto
. I love you.”

“Adiós.”
I thought of saying
I love you
back; the words hung silent in my mouth; but before my mouth could comply, I saw my hand reach for the telephone cradle and press down. I heard a click as the line went dead.

I put the receiver down. The wood-paneled walls seemed to respire around me.
Now you’ve done it
, they breathed,
you can’t turn back, the cutting has begun
. Even though my father was across the water in Uruguay, I was convinced that he would burst through the door at any moment and rush up to me, his hands landing on mine with warm authority,
Perla, what’s all this crap, you’re not going anywhere
. And then he would find a way to make me stay. But of course he didn’t break through the door, I remained alone, and I wish I could tell you that I was glad he didn’t come, that I sat there victorious and elated with no trace of longing for his presence. That’s the story I would like to tell, but it would be a lie. I stared at the door for a long time. The walls bristled and pulsed around me. I felt sick. I felt gutted. I wanted to put my head down on the man called Héctor’s desk and sleep for days, weeks, the rest of my life. But they were coming home the following night; I couldn’t sleep yet, I had to act.

I picked up the phone receiver and dialed another number.

“Hello?”

“Gabriel.”

“Perla.” He sounded relieved and wary at the same time.

“How are you?”

“Fine,” he said curtly.

“I miss you.”

He was silent.

“I mean it.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

“Look, I know I’ve been horrible to you, I don’t even deserve to ask this and if I were you I don’t think I’d say yes, but I need your help.”

He was quiet for a moment, in which I tried not to fidget.

“With what?”

“I need to leave this house.”

“You want to go out somewhere?”

“I mean leave for good.”

He was quiet again, and this time I sat utterly still. I felt a kind of preternatural ease now that the words were out.

“Are you okay?”

“I am. I think so. Maybe more than ever.” Perla, I thought to myself, make some sense. No, to hell with that, it’s much too late for sense. “You were right.”

“About what?”

“About my parents.”

“Oh.” His voice became infinitely gentle. “Perla.”

“What you said on the beach. You were right.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Try me.”

“I will. But I want to do it in person.” Better, I thought, to show him the ghost than to try to describe the last few days. How could any of it ever be put into words?

“You’re brave, you know.”

“Me?”

“What you’re going through. I can’t even imagine.”

I closed my eyes. “I’m not brave. I haven’t gone through a thing, haven’t lived a single instant that could be called authentic life.”

“If it wasn’t life, then what was it?”

“I don’t know. I feel like I’m disappearing.”

“Maybe it’s the opposite.”

“What do you mean?”