The Case of Lisandra P. (4 page)

Eva Maria stops to catch her breath. One hundred and nine steps. Still just as many. Not a single step has packed up and moved to a more illustrious staircase. Places are indifferent. Quick now, no one must see her. Eva Maria follows Vittorio's instructions. She puts the smallest key into the lock, pulling the door toward her. The handle yields beneath her fingers. Eva Maria slips into the apartment. Quickly. She locks the door behind her. Fear makes her breathing short, irregular. She leans against the door. Her eyes adjust to the darkness. She stifles a cry. Someone is standing against the wall. Eva Maria swallows. It's a coatrack. It looks just like a man. Wearing a gray jacket. Eva Maria brushes against the jacket as she goes by. “You! You gave me a real fright.” She opens the door to the study. It's the first time she's touched it. As a rule, Vittorio was sole keeper of the door; it was his way of marking a parentheses, opening and closing the door as his patients came and went. She sits down on the sofa. To collect her wits. She knows it so well, this plush seat. Eva Maria looks at the huge peacock opposite her. She could never have imagined Vittorio sitting anywhere but in front of that huge painting. Eva Maria recalls the dirty beige walls in the prison. She closes her eyes. Opens them. She would have liked to see Vittorio sitting opposite her, wearing his reassuring smile. Instead, it is the smile of
a seventeen-day-old crescent moon that is reflected in the peacock's feathers. Eva Maria stands up. She follows Vittorio's instructions. The little cupboard next to the heater. Behind his desk. Eva Maria gets down on her knees. She opens the door. She moves back to allow the moonlight to enter. Eva Maria can no longer follow Vittorio's instructions. She can no longer hurry. She can't tear her gaze away from these two shelves of cassettes. Hypnotic. Lined up in a row next to each other. Vertically. A white label on each spine. With a first name on each one. Eva Maria reaches for one of them. “Bianca.” Another. “Carlos.” Twenty-three cassettes in all. In alphabetical order. She sees hers. It makes her uncomfortable. To listen to the most recent session, to listen to them again, alone, going back over each one with a clear mind, hunting through the cassettes for the sentence or the word he might have missed during a session and which would shed new light on the psyche of those people he had been trying to understand, week after week, month after month, trying to understand what made them tick, their neuroses. That was what Vittorio had explained to her when she visited him in prison. One cassette per patient. Only the most recent session, as each new session erased the previous one. He did not listen to them again systematically, but he wanted to be able to; if a thought or some words came back to him, he wanted to listen to them again in context. He called it his “delayed awakening,” because in all honesty, he didn't always pay attention; no human being can maintain that level of extreme awareness, of maximum receptiveness, for hours on end. There were moments when his mind wandered off, moments of distraction; it would be hypocritical to claim he was always attentive, bad faith on the part of the analyst. No man can claim to possess uninterrupted attention, so the tape recorder enabled him to remedy this weakness. Eva Maria gives a start. She hears voices. She turns to the door. It's the neighbors' television. Quick. She puts all
the cassettes in her backpack. “Eva Maria.” She looks at her own cassette. She can't really recall what they talked about during her last session, it was already so long ago. She could not bear to hear it, how awful! To hear herself commenting on her state of mind, gushing with feeling, circling around herself, and herself alone; for three-quarters of an hour never leaving herself behind—for a start the very principle had always embarrassed her, so fortunately she won't have to listen to this one. She hates the sound of her own voice. Eva Maria looks at her cassette. She makes a face. She has to hurry. She has to follow Vittorio's instructions. Get all the cassettes. Maybe they will yield a clue? A lead? Something that might have eluded him—he could no longer remember everything his patients had told him over recent weeks, thousands of words, meaningful silences, slips of the tongue, perhaps even innuendos, and what if one of them had warned him? Threatened him? Without him realizing—jealousy, revenge, after all, it was possible; in any case, it was what seemed the most probable among all the theories he was constantly rehashing in that fucking cell where soon there would be nothing left to do but count the bricks. Eva Maria closes the cupboard. She looks at her backpack. Vittorio's treasure. And most importantly, the cops must not get hold of these cassettes; those men are far too hostile. They are perfectly capable of destroying evidence. Visibly they would rather
have a shrink for a change
than lock up the true culprit. He was already paying the price for their shortcuts, their arguments for the prosecution, their way of coming to grotesque conclusions so they wouldn't have to fear them. Vittorio is surely right. Eva Maria frowns. She almost forgot. One more thing. She takes the box of tissues from the little table between the sofa and the leather armchair where Vittorio always sat and turns it upside down. The recorder is there, hidden in a recess where it just fits. There are no cassettes in the recorder. Eva Maria also takes the box of tissues, just to be on
the safe side, for her peace of mind. Vittorio insisted on this. If the cops found the box, they were bound to question him about the empty recess and, at the same time, it would mean they were investigating—none too soon, but Vittorio would have to explain all his recordings, and above all justify them, and he could already tell where that would lead: the trial of the husband who kills his wife would become the trial of the psychoanalyst who records his patients. It's true, it wasn't
ethical
, but he was sure it was a good thing, and useful professionally; he'd had ample opportunity to verify that the practice helped him, and that was the main thing. Like some ideal archivist, it kept something close to an inalterable memory of his patients' altered memory and of his own. It meant that he left nothing up to chance—since when has the principle of keeping things been seen as detrimental? But of course he didn't tell his patients; if they had known they were being recorded it would surely have hindered them, embarrassed and intimidated them, and anyway no psychoanalyst tells his patients what he writes in their file during the session, but no one finds fault with that secrecy, it's true, because that's the Method with a capital “M.” Well, his method with a lowercase “m” was to resort to these recordings; he had stopped taking notes during sessions long ago—it had been completely counterproductive, because the note taking immediately introduced a distance, and his patients withdrew when they saw him writing, or they lost the thread of what they were saying, wondering if what they had just said was so important that he had to make a note of it, and then the session no longer flowed, was not as useful, something that never happened with a tape recorder. A profession is defined by its purpose, not by its method, and the police have different ways of extracting information from their witnesses and their suspects. It was the same thing for analysts—he himself had paid the cost every day. No science should ever be enclosed in a methodology.
Besides, if in Freud's era there had been tape recorders, discreet ones, the great pioneer would surely not have failed to use such a valuable tool. But as Vittorio knew, all the justifications on the planet would serve no purpose. A psychoanalyst recording his patients, how disgraceful! What a scandal! A professional Watergate. He would infuriate everyone—he could already hear them, all of his colleagues, expressing their outrage and disowning him. He had already been removed from his role as a husband; a few depositions would suffice to dismiss him from his role as a psychoanalyst. He would be the scourge of the profession, and almost certainly, at the same time, through a sinister game of one thing leading to another, the scourge of his wife: her murderer.

“Morning, Mama. Did you sleep well?”

The unread newspaper is on the table. Eva Maria looks up at Estéban.

“Can you lend me your headphones, please?”

Estéban heads over to the fridge.

“Which headphones?”

“To listen to music.”

“But what are you going to use to listen to music?”

Eva Maria blows on her maté.
*
Her gaze wanders through the liquid.

“Oh, yes, you're right . . . Can you lend me your tape recorder as well?”

She puts down her maté cup. She gets up.

“Can I have them, then?”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“You're not going to work?”

“I'm working from home.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have things to do . . . some documents to go over. It will be quieter here.”

“Oh, okay . . . Is this new?”

“Yes, it's new.”

Estéban runs his fingers through his hair. Eva Maria is getting impatient. From the table to the door. From the door to the table.

“So can I have them?”

“I'll go get them for you.”

Eva Maria follows him out of the kitchen. A few minutes later, Estéban reappears. Alone. He sits down at the table. Pours himself a glass of orange juice. Opens the newspaper. He listens. He can't hear anything. Just the faint clacking of the typewriter keys. Estéban turns to the window. The shadow of the bus passes over the curtains. Estéban smiles. His expression is calm. His hands, too. He can imagine Eva Maria's face encircled by his headphones. He wonders what kind of music she might be listening to. She hasn't listened to music for such a long time.

VITTORIO

Good morning, Alicia.

ALICIA

Good morning.

VITTORIO

So, how are you feeling today?

ALICIA

I'm all right. It's just this boredom. It's always there. I'm sorry I have nothing new, I just can't get over this boredom.

VITTORIO

You needn't apologize.

ALICIA

You know that to get here I go past the Plaza de Mayo; it's on my way. And of course they were all there, like every Thursday afternoon; I slowed down and you know what I thought as I watched them walk past? There they were, so plain and unpretentious, wearing their horrible white head scarves—you have to admit that white head
scarf is horrible, it being for a good cause doesn't make it any better—and I began to feel sorry that I hadn't lost a child, too. To wish I were a mother who had lost a child—do you realize how far gone I must be? I feel like I'm going crazy.

VITTORIO

You're not going crazy, I assure you, but why did you have a thought like that? Can you be more precise?

ALICIA

Why? So that I could put all my remaining energy into loss, into mourning. I tell myself that if I could walk around the Plaza de Mayo every Thursday afternoon along with those women, and demand in the eyes of the entire world the return of the child the junta took from me, my mourning and my desire for justice would be so extreme that I would no longer be aware of all the rest.

VITTORIO

What do you mean by “all the rest”?

ALICIA

How alone I am. You see, those women, when they look in the mirror, they search their features for what reminds them of their lost child, but me, every morning I just look for yet another wrinkle, yet another sign that my flesh is sagging, another obvious and chilling sign of age, and I figure maybe I wouldn't be so bored if I were in mourning. In any case I wouldn't be looking at myself so much and maybe even—this is my dream—I wouldn't see myself at all. The loss of a child—like that, tragically—is greater than any other tragedy. You must find me vile to be thinking this way, don't you? And you must be telling yourself that it would teach me a lesson if it did happen to me.

VITTORIO

No, I'm not telling myself that at all. I wonder if you aren't simply experiencing the feeling of having “lost a child” since your son got married? He's your only son and it's very recent, so it's only normal for you to be upset. When a child leaves home, it changes a mother's life. Perhaps that's why you have made this unconscious connection with the mothers on the Plaza de Mayo. It's your way of dealing with the fact that your boy has left home. To me personally, this seems the most likely explanation. What do you think?

ALICIA

When a child leaves home, it doesn't “change a mother's life,” it destroys it. Ever since Juan left, everything has been ten times worse. Before, it still felt as if there was some life in the house; he wasn't always there, but it was enough to know he was coming and going. It hid the worst. Excuse me, may I use your telephone? I have to call him.

VITTORIO

Actually, my phone isn't working; the repairman has come three times and it's still out of order.

ALICIA

Don't you have another line? In the house? I'm sorry but I really have to call him.

VITTORIO

Wait here for a moment. [
Long silence.
] Go ahead, I asked my wife to let you use the living room so you can call. [
Long silence.
] Is your son all right? Do you feel better now?

ALICIA

I still can't understand how in one life he can have gone from a state of complete dependency, where as a baby he couldn't
live one second without me, to this independence where even speaking to me on the telephone for two minutes seems to involve a major effort.

VITTORIO

So, Juan is fine. You see, just because you project yourself into an upsetting event doesn't mean it necessarily happens, or that you create it. Rest assured, we all have thoughts from time to time that seem terrible. You mustn't take them literally, you must just try and understand what they mean deep down where you yourself are concerned.

ALICIA

How old are you?

VITTORIO

Fifty-one.

ALICIA

And your wife? I just saw her, she's so young—what do you know, I didn't think you were that type.

VITTORIO

Alicia . . . let's get back to our discussion, please.

ALICIA

Why don't we play a guessing game? Apparently games alleviate boredom—do you still want to know why I wear these gloves?

VITTORIO

I've often wondered, but I have to admit I don't know.

ALICIA

Go on, try and guess.

VITTORIO

Honestly, I don't know.

ALICIA

Well, hey, you're not very playful, yet when you have a wife as young as yours, you should know how to play a little. You really don't know? Watch out, today's the big day! Drumroll . . . Ta-da! See?

VITTORIO

See what?

ALICIA

My hands are perfectly normal, that's what you're thinking, right? Hands that are perfectly normal for my age, well, that's the whole problem:
for my age.
Look at them, all those wrinkles, all those spots, I watch them accumulating in real time. Hands are the part of the body you see the most, and that's why they're there, those wrinkles, those liver spots, so that you'll never forget that you're getting old. It's like with giraffes, the color of our spots helps guess our age.

VITTORIO

You're exaggerating, you have beautiful hands.

ALICIA

That's very kind of you. But they're not as beautiful as your wife's hands.

VITTORIO

Don't be silly . . .

ALICIA

I'm not being silly. I may be old, but not silly, so don't accuse me of all the evils. Do you know where the word “menopause” comes from?

VITTORIO

I don't know . . . surely from Latin.

ALICIA

From Greek. You lose. You had a fifty-fifty chance. To be born a woman, like me, that is. “Menopause”—it sounds like the name of a muse, don't you think? Except that this muse doesn't inspire anyone—there's not a single poet who will sing its praises—but then, the names of diseases have never inspired anyone.

VITTORIO

Come now, Alicia, it's not a disease.

ALICIA

You're right, it's not a disease, it's worse, it's an incurable condition.
Meno
: month,
pause
: cessation.
The cessation of months
, that's clear, isn't it? But not expeditious enough. You know what I think? Women shouldn't live past menopause.

VITTORIO

Aren't you being overly dramatic?

ALICIA

I'm not being dramatic at all, I am coming up with theories. When you can't make poetry, you make theories. Might as well do something; you have to talk about it, right? And it does me good to talk about it. But maybe it embarrasses you? Or disgusts you?

VITTORIO

Why should it disgust me? On the other hand, I have thought of something: the “Plaza de Mayo” and “menopause”—there's an obvious link, don't you see?

ALICIA

I don't see any link whatsoever. But I'm eager to hear what you have to say.

VITTORIO

You just said that “menopause” meant the “cessation of months,” right? “Plaza de Mayo.” In both cases, there's a reference to months: does this association of ideas suggest anything to you?

ALICIA

Only that you want to bring this conversation to an end, right? You want to impress me with your own secret interpretation, so that I won't go any further with my dreary assessment; but old age can't be psychoanalyzed—you can't do anything about it; you can describe old age and that's it. Aren't you disgusted?

VITTORIO

I'll say it again, no, it doesn't disgust me. Just stop with your questions and answers.

ALICIA

May I continue?

VITTORIO

Please go ahead.

ALICIA

Yesterday morning, I measured my height, and guess what? I have shrunk, already three-quarters of an inch. That's it, it's the beginning of the end. To start with, you get shorter—nature has gotten some things right after all, so now you start off by taking up a bit less space in other people's visual fields; it may be imperceptible to
the naked eye but it helps you convey to others that you are becoming less interesting and you are beginning to disappear. Everything starts shrinking now. I can see it with my breasts. People say that old women's breasts sag, but that's not right; they empty out, they become pockets of soft skin, hanging, dead. Death starts with the skin. Before, I had nice breasts, you know, full and perky, so full, even after Juan's birth, my breasts filled my hands. I loved to hold them, both at the same time, I loved that feeling, but now it's as if there's nothing beneath my fingers. I can pull on the skin and it stretches, like the deflated rubber of a child's balloon, which would have floated up into the sky when it was intact, but now it's stuck on the ground, for good. If a man touched me, he could wrap himself up in my skin. Not to mention the weight I put on even if I don't eat—it's as if menopause was eating away inside us, eating what used to be our shape to make us shapeless; it devours us from inside. It says, I'll take your breasts and put them on your hips, I'll take what used to be your pretty butt and spread it over your stomach and your back and your waist. Why do you keep looking at the clock? You can't wait for this session to be over, right? Men revel in the beauty of a woman's body, but they can't stand it if she's past it, any more in words than in pictures, and that's why you, too, have chosen a younger woman, to shield yourself from that vision of horror. You disappoint me. A person always wants their shrink to be different from everyone else, to be better, to be above the worst failings of humanity. But in fact, everybody is just the same. Does your wife shave, too? Apparently girls shave now; even at the age of twenty, they're already nostalgic for their youth. And it's not over, poor things, if they only knew. I hate them. Water still flows through their bodies, the running water of a stream, whereas only stagnant pond water fills our limbs, and distorts them.
But go ahead and laugh, young ladies, you cannot imagine what's in store, you'll have to go through it someday, too, so go right ahead, show them off, your little legs, show off your breasts and your firm arms, you'll have to hide them soon enough, you'll have to bury them beneath the long flowing garments that will fill your wardrobes one day, summer and winter alike, and the end will come for your pretty décolletés, your sexy negligees, your stockings, and your little skirts, and before you're buried in the ground your body will be buried under ever thicker layers of material, and soon your pouting lips will have no power over anyone. I hate them. I have to stop going out because just the sight of them all shiny and new drives me crazy. Yesterday I was walking behind this young girl who was swaying her hips and a bus was coming from the opposite direction at full speed, and all I felt like doing was pushing her under the wheels, and that's not the first time that has happened. What about your wife, does she do that, too? Does she shave, your wife?

VITTORIO

Stop talking about my wife, Alicia.

ALICIA

I shaved last night, too—I mean my privates, of course, that's what I'm talking about, well, what's left of it. I'd give anything to have a thick bush again, coarse and round, but there were only a few grayish hairs that fell into the tub. Even the evening light can no longer fool me, even a little candle doesn't give any erotic charge to my body anymore, or to my pussy—it, too, seems to be drooping, it just hangs there; my lips are all soft, they're like two earlobes flopping onto my pussy; and my clitoris, oh my God, you should have seen it . . . I took a photo . . . do you want to see?

[
Sound of someone rummaging in a handbag.
]

VITTORIO

Stop that, Alicia, no, I don't want to see a photograph.

ALICIA

I was just joking, I didn't take a photo . . . I scared you, didn't I? You should see your face—I finally disgusted you—but I had to speak to someone. Everything is shrinking, except my lucidity, which gets sharper by the day. It's so unfair. Does your wife like to tango? I didn't recognize the song in the living room—it was a nice piece; does she dance, too? I used to manage pretty well myself, but now when I dance I feel like I'm in disguise. I can hear my body begging me to stop: “Stop, I tell you, you can see I'm not graceful anymore, don't you get it, old girl? Your place—my place—is in this corner now, on this chair; from now on only chairs will want anything to do with our butts. Dancing, old girl, it's like with men—it's for young women.” Oh, I should have let myself be loved by every man who ever desired me; at least that way I would have a wealth of memories to comfort me, all that fucking, and then some—my mind would be full of fucking. And then so what if now my sex is full of nothing. Maybe memories would have been enough to fill the void.

VITTORIO

You are not old, Alicia, stop going on about it. You still have many beautiful years ahead.

ALICIA

That's the whole problem. To do what?

VITTORIO

There are plenty of things to do on earth.

ALICIA

“There are plenty of things to do on earth”— I'm used to better advice from you. No, there are not “plenty of things to do on earth.” Making children is all there is to do on earth. Longevity is the worst thing there is for women. We get a reprieve only to see that everything has been taken away from us, a reprieve that serves no purpose other than to reduce us to a pulp; scientific progress is the best instrument there is to torture women. At least in the old days we died before we had to go through all that: how many women made it to menopause? Who was the first one to have to pay the price? Women had to learn to live without procreating, which is absurd. Women as eunuchs. An emasculation of nature. And since the point of sexuality is procreation, the decline of sexual desire—because you can say all you like that sexuality has nothing to do with childbearing, it's not true, no more period no more sex, the door's been bricked up, it's all dry in there anyway, there's no room for anything. So you're supposed to put up with yourself for years on end as a member of the living dead? Is that it? Whereas men go through their whole life with their ability to procreate. How can you demand equality between men and women under such conditions, when we're fighting a losing battle? How can we reproach men for going after women who are still fertile, where their sperm will serve some purpose; it's atavistic, it's not even really their fault, it's their reproductive instinct. There is nothing to reproach them with; they are not to blame; it's just another example of nature leading us around by the nose, only God is nature. Life has it in for us; it can't be any other way and no feminist will ever be able to change that. The world belongs to men, and to young women.