The Penguin's Song (11 page)

IN MY ROOM, LEANING OUT
over the window ledge, I can bring her bare shoulder so near to me that I can practically feel it with my eyes. Her real shoulder, I mean, and I can actually feel myself touching it. I'm imagining this, and it's being interrupted now and then by an abrupt, loud movement she makes. She has lost something that she doesn't want anyone else to find before she can locate it. She jumps up from the edge of the bed where she sits facing the wardrobe and staring at its closed double-panel doors, going over to it several times. Or she might stand there on the edge of the bed, stretching herself as high as she can to peer over the top of the wardrobe, to see if what she's missing is there. There below me, she is (I know) completely caught up in her frantic, solitary search. She won't think about the fact that her mother can hear the sound of drawers being slammed shut, one after another, after she has turned her carefully organized belongings upside down. She won't know about me, or she won't care if she does have any sense that I'm lingering here above her, concentrating my ears and dangling my head in her direction. Even if she were to catch sight of my shadow hunched in the little corner of light out there on the square of sand, she will not be quick to realize that a body sits crouched just above her. When she came into her room that first time, in haste and irritation, I got up from the pages I was reading, still carrying my pen in my hand. I was certain that she would not have come back into the room only to leave it again immediately. Or if she did go out, I thought, she would soon come back, as much in a hurry and just as exasperated.

I was certain of this from the moment she first came in. So hearing her pushing open the door with both hands wasn't enough to tear me away from the papers I was reading. I had just been thinking about what she would look like as an image imprinted on that mirror in her home, that pale mirror framed in gilt. What I had seen in that moment as I was leaving their apartment with my mother was simply my own image of her, in an empty home that she moved through naked. In the mirror, her hair was loose and she covered her chest with it, though the nipples showed through, small and dark red. All I needed was the mirror in order to see her standing naked in it. And while my mother was talking to the woman, who opened only one panel of the double doors for us, I stole little glances at the mirror as if trying to make out something I wasn't supposed to see, or as if they—the woman and my mother—would know what I was looking for and why, and so I had to be careful in case they caught me staring. I was sneaking every look at the mirror that I could get. While in their home, I had only been able to look at my immediate surroundings, and as I followed my mother out the door, I began to suspect that this had been part of her plan as well. She did not want me to see anything but the woman sitting opposite me. As she mounted the stairs, she was tense and angry, as if by getting up when she did, I had thwarted the plan she had sketched out. I will come back, she said to me as she got up from her seat. Wait for me, I'll come back, she said again, gambling with a sudden recourse to direct and even bossy speech after all her play with insinuations. But I rose to my feet, with the excuse that I had a lot of pages upstairs that I must finish reading right away.

In the room below me, she has even lifted the mattress from her bedstead to see if the thing she was looking for was there. When she let a corner of the heavy mattress drop I could hear it clearly, and right after that she kicked something with her foot and I heard a shriek of objection and pain. Several times she opened the wardrobe doors and yanked the drawers out, shoving them loudly back after rummaging through the jumbled belongings inside. When she didn't find what she was searching for this time either, she went out again, propelled by her anger, to snap at her mother, who had left her on her own to search for whatever it was she had lost.

She will not remain out there away from her room for more than a short spell, during which I can lower myself from the window ledge to look at the papers I left on the table or go into the kitchen to get some water. But I hurry to return to my post leaning on the window frame. Or at least I'll stand next to the window waiting to hear the sound of her arrival rising from below. Nothing must elude me; nothing can happen unless I know about it from the start. Just as if I am monitoring a discussion that will get away from me if I'm at all late getting there.

I have to remain there, supporting myself on the windowsill or standing very close to the window. That way I will hear her not only as she enters her room, but also in the hallway as she approaches it. Or I will hear loud but unintelligible sounds coming from in there where her mother sits. But that won't last long either, since she will quickly return to her room and slam the door once she's inside. Hearing that, I can see her. And it's as if she has suddenly matured even more; her anger and exasperation, I imagine, have grown beyond the fury of a child.

At the window, as I work to hoist my body up and across the sill, I'm struck by the certainty that I must work quickly, even if I'm not sure what hurrying would mean and what it is I must do. All I know is that I must hurry before any more time passes in which the force of her anger—springing from the same root that yielded her body's yearning, captured as she stood naked in front of the mirror—catapults her out of her childhood and into an abrupt adulthood. This hungry desire teaches her the hows and whys of her body. It instructs her, too, as to what she should do were I to rest my hand against her neck or catch hold of her foot on some sort of pretext, wrapping it in the palms of my hands. She will give me a look meant to scold and threaten. It is that very look of terrible vexation that I imagine on her face when she comes back from in there, bumping hard into the door panel as she comes in and then slamming the door behind her.

I must hurry: I must get there before she grows up. Balancing my body with my stomach pressed onto the windowsill, which lifts my feet up off the floor, I think about the fact that what is maturing her into adulthood are these emotional flare-ups, which are far more tempestuous than the childish outbursts to which she had been accustomed. I also think about how, if I could somehow be near to her from now on, I'll have to figure out in advance what course to take and what excuse to offer, before reaching my hand out to her. Her body is no longer ignorant of its desires. If I were to touch her in places, I would no longer be drawing out a first longing from a body that had not yet known desire. I will not be able to touch her or take hold of her foot, or tease her, all the while claiming that I am doing nothing. So I must hurry. I must truly hurry. On the stairs, my mother was tense and angry; she did not turn to look at me, or say anything. When we reached our door she turned her key in the lock and marched in without making way or waiting for me. She left me standing at the door as if, by pretending to ignore me, she was leaving to me the choice of whether to come in or to do the other thing. Once she was inside our apartment, her anger did not fade as she whipped from room to room. Her head held high and her bosom rigid, she seemed to be punishing me for spoiling her schemes. Or—and this is what I hoped would happen—she was using her irritation to get ready for the next round, when I must not disappoint her as I did the first time.

I have to hurry. I must, and I know I won't need to say anything to my mother, because she'll take it upon herself to make all the arrangements for another visit downstairs. Tomorrow perhaps, or the day after, she'll look at me as she is leaving. She'll give me that insinuating look that invites me to follow her. Or she will speak, confronting me with the question I must answer: Do you want to go down? That's exactly what she'll do, as if holding out the bait to me and then binding me to act according to whatever answer I give her.

Yes, she is in her room now, just below me. She stands in the middle of it, surrounded by wardrobe doors flung open and drawers pulled out to tip precariously from their slots. She is in the middle of the room, precisely at its center. She has not found that thing she lost, but the efforts she has expended in looking have tired her and dissipated her anger. From where I am, propped up on the sill and hanging over it, I can come even closer to her reddened face, her hairline dampened by sweat. She is in the center of the room now, turning her wilted gaze on what lies around her. In a few moments her weariness will overcome her, when submitting to the loss of that object adds to her fatigue, and instead of remaining standing as she is now, she'll retreat to her bed to sit on the edge of it, turning her eyes in the same directions over and over but with less interest now. I must hurry. As the two women prepare to have me come down, they will banish her from the house. But they will not be able to keep her away every time. I must be quick. Soon my mother will forget this disappointment of hers. She'll resort to her usual winks and hints as she heads down to their place. Or she will open the door to my room to say to me, winking also, that she is going
down
there
.
But I will go down without warning, without the two of them having prepared for it by removing her from the apartment.

She remains in her room, sitting on the edge of the bed, absorbed in examining a little spear of dried skin that has separated from the skin around a fingernail. Or she is looking just as closely at her palm, all of it, and turning it over to look at the back of her hand. This is the aftermath of her revolt, which no doubt has ripened something in her body by sending the blood running faster through her veins. It's as if, sitting there on the edge of the bed, she's resting after it has come to a close, or simply after its eruption. She is in the state of calmness that she needs. She'll go on like this, engrossed in something intimate and giving herself some rest by examining whatever it is that occupies her, until, when she does get to her feet, it will be as if her movements are guided by meek and submissive hands. For I can tell that she has gotten up now; I can hear it. Here she is, taking her first step away from the bed. She's yawning, stretching her body upward and raising her arms overhead, reviving herself and enjoying the fatigue in her body. Then she takes the next step, which puts an end to her body's yawns and shudders. That second step forward takes her toward the window and not to the wardrobe where the doors and drawers are still open. She is coming toward the window; she has moved beyond the middle of the room, which means her shadow is beginning to come forward too, into the square of light that sails out aslant from her room. She is coming forward to meet my shadow that sits in the corner of the lit-up patch, or at its very edge. She has reached the window and now here she is leaning against it on her arms, which I can see beneath me. I can also see her light, golden hair, hanging thickly from her shoulders, which I can also glimpse, close to me and exactly as I have imagined them. My shadow has not left its place, there at the corner of the light or at the line its edge makes. And it will stay there, where it has fallen, hunched and motionless. She'll see it or rather will see something in it, if she applies her mind to what her eyes are seeing. She will see and recognize it from seeing her own shadow first, how it covers a certain area in the square of light. It is her shadow, out there, and this will alert her to the other shadow that lies above it, hunched and absolutely still.

She has dangled her arms over the windowsill to give them some rest and to idly balance her body at the same time. That has lifted her higher, tugging her nightgown up from the middle. From my niche I can see her body from the back, swaddled and stretched taut. She has not seen my shadow yet. She goes on dangling like that as if she's amusing herself by getting as near as she can to the sand below. She pays no attention to my shadow, or doesn't recognize it for what it is, until she brings her arms upward and stretches her body as if she wants to lift it off the windowsill.

She saw it then, and she knew what it was. It surprised her into looking around suddenly, first at the area surrounding the building and then at its wall. In order to see me above, she would have to not only bend her head and shoulders back but twist her entire body around as well. I was still there, gazing at her below me, calm and relaxed, just as if I wanted to make her understand that if I am standing here right now, I have been standing here for a long time.

THE PAGES THAT SIT ON
the table facing a similar pile of papers are what I turn to once I have closed the door. Line for line they are identical: I read a line over here and then reread it over there, simply to verify whether I read exactly the same words on each. This is the sole harvest of my wanderings through the web of streets, the only thing to which I was led in the end: the place where I was given nothing more than two sets of identical pages. This is what my father calls work; moreover, to his way of thinking it is agreeable, restful work because I do not need to leave the house every morning, as other people do who work. I could almost say the same about it, since whenever I feel like going to my room I can say that I have work to do. I read a line from over here and then the same line over there on the page that is supposed to be identical. This is what it has come to, all my reading in these books which, every time I added another one to the lot, I thought was expanding something inside of me. These leather-bound books with their old paper with its distinctive smell: as I read them I imagined myself rising from them afterwards with a new aspect, an image I wanted for my own. But these books of mine have brought me to nothing more than staring at two identical pages that I turn over on the table together so I can begin staring at the pair that follows them, from the top of the page, from the first line.

Every time I get to my feet to go off to my room, I say I have something I must finish. Lifting himself slightly from his chair out of respect for what I will do in there, my father begins wishing me good health and vigor: that's what he says, just as if I am now at the pinnacle of success. As for my mother, she hardly calls this work. She echoes the number I mention, seeming to say that what I earn is too little to place me in the category of a man who works. She seems to mock me as I rise to go to my room when she thinks I'm going in to read and compare my pages. Sometimes she launches into questions about what they do with the pages after I've read them, suggesting that she thinks perhaps they throw them away because they're worth so little, or at best they ignore them. I have also come to believe that perhaps they don't need them for any real task or project. Or I've begun to think that I am not doing anything that would merit even the pittance I earn. I think this because each time I carry these piles of paper back to them I perceive that I've put in a lot of work but I have done very little.

Or, when she sees me coming out of my room, my mother asks me how much I have worked. What she means is: What could one buy with what I have earned from my long session of reading? Even without her questions I find myself doing the same thing, comparing my hours sitting in front of the pages with the amount of food they would buy and how much of our needs that would satisfy. And I find that my father, sitting alone time after time with his little money box, counts and carefully rearranges a mound of coins that continues to dwindle despite my work. Nevertheless, he gets up from his chair for me whenever I say I'm going to my room. Maybe he thinks this is only the first phase of my work, and I will advance beyond it.

He rises from his seat for me and then sits back and watches me going. When I'm getting ready to go out—having finished whatever pages are in my possession—he accompanies me, standing in wait at doors and in hallways as I move through the apartment. As I descend the stairs I know he is still standing there, as he was when he said goodbye to me; I know he won't shut the door until he calculates from the sound of my footsteps that I have reached the front entryway below. And still I haven't left his listening ears behind, even when I'm outside and beginning to walk along the sand track. Leaving the front entrance behind me, I set out with determination, with the fabric satchel—which my mother pulled from our belongings so I could drop the pages into them—hanging from my shoulder. This means
she
will not see what I am carrying if she stands at a window in one of their rooms looking out across the sand track. Her mother will not see what I carry either, though no doubt she is aware of my departure and may be standing at her window so that she can see me without my mother standing over her to egg her on. I make this journey every ten or fifteen days in order to return their papers to them and bring back new ones. The books I used to read have not brought me to anything greater than this. Those books I lived between, or among; those books that were my life, books that are never the same as they were when we saw them in a bookshop or in the workshops where they make them. Each time I arrive there and begin to mount the narrow steps that are hemmed in by walls so close together that one wall almost folds into the other, I decide that they must have hidden themselves away like this deliberately. They haven't hung out a sign to tell people that they are there, up above; and, since they don't know their neighbors and their neighbors don't know them, they've made it impossible for anyone to ask in these streets about their whereabouts. They're up there at the end of the narrowest and steepest stairway, which I think (every time I climb it) can't lead anywhere except to their entrance, with no threshold separating it from the stairs that are covered with the same tiles. When I get there I'll need to rest, not from the long route I followed but from the stairs, where I find myself pressing my hands to the walls as if to keep them back, or even to put more space between them so they won't come any nearer to me, imprisoning me when the space is no longer wide enough for my body to pass through. I will have to rest, there on the metal chair they've placed in the corner of the outer room, setting down the cloth bag whose strap must have made an obvious dent in my shoulder by now. This is one of those cheaply and quickly erected buildings where the upper floors are constructed of flimsy building material. My father preferred sitting at home to renting a shop in one of these buildings. They are putting their shops under the stairs or in the entryways of buildings, he would say to my mother, passing on to her—and to me—what he had seen in his wanderings through the streets. I am now on the uppermost floor of just such a building, waiting for someone to come out of the inner room so I can ask him whether I should go in. There, in front of a desk whose expanse doesn't suit this cramped and tiny room, I won't stay long. I won't stay any longer than the time the person sitting there needs to select a few pages from the pile and leaf through them to see whether I really did what I was supposed to do. I don't remain in that inner room for very long, only for the moments he takes to riffle through the pages, and in the end to give me another two sets of pages that I put into my “briefcase,” which is really nothing but a black canvas bag. As for my wages, I have to wait for them, sitting there on the same metal chair, waiting and waiting while I know they are engrossed in figuring out the sum and counting the money. I assume that what delays them is their regret at being forced to pay it.

It doesn't amount to more than a few tattered paper bills, which I fold in half and put carefully, before leaving, in my pocket. On the way back my hand keeps dipping into my pocket to finger them every time I cross a street or switch the bag to my other shoulder. This is the only route I know, since nothing remains in my head of the circuitous paths that eventually led me to their office on the top floor, a single route I follow without glancing at the streets that branch off. These excursions with the black bag hanging heavily on my shoulder don't increase my knowledge of what might be there in those side streets that I do not walk. It seems that every time I walk this street and this route I distance myself a little more from any need to know any others. Nothing is left in my head of the streets I turned into back then, streets I went into and then retraced after reaching the ends or sometimes just going halfway down, streets of different lengths, some split by intersections, streets scattered here and there along my route. There is only one street, one route, that I need, a single street that seems to me like the only one I can possibly walk, or as though behind the fa
ç
ades of buildings on both sides the ground slopes downward to nothing, dropping further than I can see. Nothing lies behind the shops and building fa
ç
ades to each side. There lies my way which—every time I am again walking it—feels as though I cut its path myself, and now I'm penetrating and laying it open again, so that every time I traverse it I'm like a train car moving along the one and only set of rails that it knows.

I slice through the same road on my return, my pocket harboring the thin wad of folded paper bills. Once at home, I will watch my mother wince at how meager that wad is. As she sees me give the bills, still folded, to my father, she'll wonder out loud about whether I might shift to another sort of work or find another employer. I will be tired from all of the walking I've done and also from carrying my burden, which I will have set down; so I won't answer her, to tell her that I do not know how to work at anything else. Just the thought of searching for another office from which to bring sets of identical papers to read multiplies my fatigue and irritation. Once again I would have to loop through unfamiliar streets until I might happen upon another route that I would find uniquely comfortable among the city's new streets. I'm tired and I want to hurry into my room and change my clothes, which have grown heavy on my body, soiled by my long journey. The food is on the table, my father says to me. His eyes are open as wide as can be, as if he is gawking at an accident that has stunned him and he does not know how to react. The food is on the table, he says to me, but he doesn't beckon me there; his hand remains still. Nor does he encourage me toward the table by starting toward it himself. The bills are still in his hand, still folded, and he'll wait until he is alone, in his room with his money box, to begin staring at them as if he's reading them. He will set them carefully in the chest, arranged according to their denomination, and then he'll brush his hands together after returning the precious box to its place in the wardrobe. The food is on the table, he says to me when he returns and finds me changed into clothes I'm comfortable in. Now he does lead me by walking there himself, and once at the table he tests the warmth of the small casserole gingerly with his hand, as if he's put himself back into a state of bewilderment that makes his eyes widen. It's cool enough for my mother to handle; she takes the pan by its rim, with one hand, and carries it into the kitchen.

When she returns with it, now hot—she holds it with two hands this time—I think she's disdainful of the simple task she's done. She plunks the dish down carelessly on the table. She waits for my father to do what she hasn't done. He takes the lid off the pan, and steam rises from the food. Shall I serve you? he asks me. Or he might simply bring the pan closer to me, with both of his hands. She has gone back to her room or to the kitchen to return something to its place. She will stay away like this, unconcerned about how tired I am from walking so many long stretches in town. She is still not here when I finish eating and get up to go to my room to rest. It might be that she's allowing me the time I need to forget—myself—how tired I've become and how I must take that into account. As if she's giving me the time I need—or giving herself the time she needs—before once again, as she readies herself to go downstairs, to where they live, she can feel that her little signal to me might work as well as it did before. She'll give me the same studied but offhand glance that she follows immediately with a little nod of her head, slight but quick, as if she's asking me whether I'm ready to go down there. What she's asking is whether I am truly ready, or will I forsake her as I did before. Her careless little glance has taken on a kind of desperate offhandedness. She is trying to tell me that something between us has not changed. How she treated me would not change just because I was engaged in my work, which meant I left the house. Perhaps the minuscule amount of money I earn doesn't even deserve so many hours spent outside the house. And neither does it qualify me as the man who works inside this house, where the only role she knows how to play is that of a heedless and indifferent inhabitant, a woman who knows only how to play.