The Penguin's Song (14 page)

DESPITE THE PASSAGE OF SO
many years—thirteen now—they have done nothing in the old city since removing its residents. They have not put up one single building in any of those old quarters; they have not even built a road that would actually go anywhere. What I mean by
road
is one of those straight and wide boulevards where, it's said, they have finished the work underground—pipes and sewers and so forth—and have begun to work on the parts that will remain visible. I am talking about the sort of street that tells you from the way its route is cut what the city as a whole will look like. A thoroughfare that can be taken as a sign; seeing it, one would say: Here is the city center; there is the highway
. But after all these years the only roads they have constructed are temporary ones, narrow and badly made, which will crack prematurely from rainwater and the weight of heavy trucks.

All my father needed to do to make himself comfortable, as he would say, was to hand over the little chest into my keeping. The money it held now was scant, and I saw as he held it out to me with both hands that perhaps he no longer liked to count it—were he even able to do so—since that would mean having to tell me something about what a bad state we were in. Or he would at least have to appear embarrassed as he gave it over to me, there in his room with the door closed because he was so extremely cautious. But instead, he almost sprang up from the edge of the bed after depositing it in my hands. He began dusting off his hands and clapping them together to signal that a heavy burden that had exhausted him was now lifted. Or—and it was this that the days to come would confirm for me—he meant to say that now he had completed his last remaining duty by handing over the chest to me, and now he would be like a guest here among us for all the days that remained to him. My mother had already gotten there: in the rare moments she still spent in the house she did not go out onto the balcony to see him, even though she'd be close by as she passed the doors of the kitchen and dining room that looked directly out on him where he sat. During the day she now spent all her time down there, coming up only to prepare some item she needed—she and the woman—for whatever it was they were doing. It got to the point where, coming in the front door that she left open, she wouldn't even glance over toward where my father sat, fully visible to her through the open doors to the balcony. As for him, most of the time he did not even know that she would have come in just now, or that she was in the apartment; when I sat with him he did not ask me whether she had come in or what she might be doing down there all day long, she and the woman. When she went out in the morning he never asked what she had cooked for us. He no longer took any interest in knowing what he was eating. At the table, as he sat staring at his empty plate, he did not know what dish would be set in front of him. In any case it wouldn't be anything much different from whatever we had eaten yesterday or on the days before that, for my mother had begun to cook every meal from the last one. She would add an eggplant to yesterday's leftovers or enhance them with a fried onion to alter the taste, along with the oil in which she had fried it. Once the food was on his plate my father hardly looked at it, only one brief inspection suggesting that he was more interested in testing the strength of his vision than in actually seeing the food. He wouldn't like it very much anyway, but he would not rise from it until he'd emptied his plate. It was a small portion my mother had cooked for us—for my father and me—adding something to what remained from yesterday's cooking. Despite that we would leave most of it in the pan, and we knew it would be part of tomorrow's meal. She cooks it for us, for my father and me, and shuts off the flame before hurrying downstairs, down there. My father does not ask me what she does all day long below, nor does he remark, in wonderment, that she is eating their food, which no doubt they cook together, she and the woman. He does not ask me anything about her or make any comment. When I begin to think he must be responding to her actions by feigning ignorance and staying silent, I watch him furtively to see whether he might be turning his head slightly toward where he thinks she is standing, or attempting a quick sly glance that might not tell him anything anyway. Or I keep a very close eye on him when I hear the sound of the door shutting behind her, to see whether her entrance jogs anything in him. When I see that the sound does not bring his head around, or that he gives no sign of the quick jerk of the head a person makes when they're surprised by something they were waiting for, I have the sense that he spends his time simply preparing himself to remain exactly as he is right now. I imagine that what gives him the ability to do that is his hatred of her, which no doubt consoles and entertains and stimulates him through all these daytime hours of sitting.

His hatred of her is what he needs most to give his body the strength to sit unmoving all day long every day. It's what he needs to focus his attention, which otherwise might be smothered by the periods of oblivion brought on by the breezes coming from below. It is what he needs to strengthen his eyes under the dense film that covers them. With the loathing that braces and protects his body, his eyes put up a resistance to the thick pale film, and their blackness shines from beneath it like the face of a drowned person that floats just beneath the water's surface. I almost want to say to him: It's her over there. Hate her. She is there at the door; she has put out her hand to open it. She is there even though she won't give you even a single glance, as if you are not even here. . . .

I am almost ready to tell him to hate her in order to rid him of his fatigue and the restless irritation of afternoon. Then, sitting across from him, I see that his eyes have already grown weaker and I know when he raises them toward me that he sees me as if through a layer of muddy water. It must tire him, I think. It would be better for him to close his eyes and summon the clean and sharply outlined images that no doubt his memory has preserved. It would be better for me, too, since I would no longer be suffocating under the weight of imagining things the way his eyes convey them to him. In that state of fatigue, in the weariness of afternoon, his eyes look as though they've brought him nearer to his end. His eyes are how I have measured the strength remaining in him. His eyes have become the distinguishing mark of his body, its barometer, now that he no longer walks or even moves. In the afternoon hours their blackness—which gave him whatever vision he had—has paled to a wan gray: the blackness and not the film over it. At those times I see him as very close to his end. Perhaps he knows that, I will think, and no longer cares whether I'm sitting across from him. He gives me no sign, no indication of interest, when I look as if I'm about to get up. He knows it, he sees it in himself, in these stretches of restlessness and fatigue when he asks me the question that I know he's pulling up from somewhere other than the place where his cache of everyday phrases resides. Where have they gotten to now, down there? he asks and cranes his head forward. When I respond by saying that they are still working to level the ground where I can see nothing rising, he inclines his head to me as if to say something that he realizes instantly there's no point in saying.

But I know what he is keeping himself from asking: Can I see anything clearly at that distance, where they are? When I add that they have collected their bulldozers and trucks in one central spot, I'm answering the question he didn't ask, while at the same time I'm leading him to hope that they are actually getting ready to erect something. But this doesn't excite his curiosity, nor does it bring him up out of the weariness to which he has reverted. That's because their lackadaisical pace in razing the old city will keep the bulldozers and trucks there where they are, waiting to begin, and nothing will begin. If it does, it will be for someone else and not for him; the film over his eyes will not slow down to give him time to see any of what they will have built in the end.

The film over his eyes will not allow him the time to see for himself what they will build: not only his shop, which he stopped mentioning some time ago, but not even any of the roads or buildings he knows there. Here is our shop, look, it's right over there, he would say in the days soon after our move, believing he would return to it after a bit more time had passed, and he would find that nothing had changed except that it looked newer now, after the work they had
promised
to do. In the years gone by since our move he has gone on believing that they would simply give new life to the city by razing it and rebuilding it as it was before; once again, he would be going from home to his shop, passing through streets and by shops he knew from before, except that they would all be newly rebuilt.

The bulldozers and dump trucks clustered there in a near-central spot will be waiting a long time before they are put in motion. He will not be able to see anything rising above the places and things that he would recognize if only he could see them. Their long delays, this protracted period that seems so deliberate, will not give him enough time, just as the film over his eyes will not wait for him. Now I know, in this time we spend together, that the film over his eyes will not let him see any building high enough that to see all of it one must get a certain distance away.

I HAD ALWAYS SUPPORTED MYSELF
by pressing my body against the wall just at the side of the window frame in order to best conceal myslf, but now I was able to stand leaning against the center of the window itself, gazing however I liked toward the window below me. I could even make a noise deliberately by flinging open the window panels so that they would knock against the wall before swinging out slightly again. That lets her know that I am here, so she'll come nearer, but also so she will feel at home with the stretch of lonely sand beneath her rather than being frightened by it. Sometimes when she knows I am directly overhead she stands for a long time just below and raises her head once or twice to see if I am still there. Or she twists and arches her body to look up as she's getting ready to head inside, away from her window. I am there when she looks; she sees me at the instant she twists, as if I have responded to her motions by stretching my head further toward her, looking at her as she does at me. But it's only a fleeting instant, a brief glance ended by her equally swift withdrawal as she heads inside. An instant; it is not enough for my face to change expression, to move from that first gaze that had not even yet formed. But I know she did curve toward me, or at least toward my window, and not only to see that I was there but also so that I would see her—I, who stand there just as she does.

In that fleeting glance all she sees of me is my face, which I imagine she already knows. She must know my body as well, which is hidden below the window now, because she must have seen me walking along the sand track with the canvas bag hanging from my shoulder. Or she might be present when they—the woman and my mother—talk about me. She knows about me, she must, but even so, she comes back to the window another time, knowing I am still there. And when she comes back she stands there for me, for my sake, as if she's giving me extra time to look at her or lengthening the opportunity for which I have waited. She stops there; she stands for me, pressed against the windowsill so I can see her grave expression as she looks out on the sand that I know doesn't fully occupy her attention. She is showing herself to me; and so the way she stands is the way she wants to be seen, her arm flung across the windowsill or her head lowered to tell me she is looking down.

Or she does that for her own sake, and so as she exposes herself to me she's responding to what it is that makes her stand naked before the wardrobe mirror or walk, naked as well, through the house whose rooms and passages have emptied out for her. She is bringing that to completion by standing here for me, by looking at me with that quick, passing glance she throws my way—this look that is to remain swift and glancing, this look that is all she needs to know that I am there waiting above her.

This look of hers won't change, and will only let her see that I am still there. Still, she must finish what she has begun. She will reveal something of her body, and then she will expand on that to reveal more. For her to begin and then to quicken her pace, I must get her out to the balcony once, and again and again, opening the shutters to their widest so that they bang against the wall to make the sound she hears, and toward which she will turn.

I lie in wait above for the time to come in which she begins to reveal to me what she already reveals to herself. She will not stay here standing like this, her arm along the windowsill as if giving observers plenty of time to satisfy their desire to look. Here in front of the window, she will certainly do some of what she does in front of the mirror. She won't be taking a chance that someone would see her from the other edge of the sand because the mounds of it do not end in anything. There at her open window she will be as hidden as if she's in her room behind her wardrobe doors. No one but me will see her, and I will be like one of her mirrors, among which she moves whenever the house has emptied itself for her. A mirror I will be, one of her mirrors, and she will not be afraid, appearing to me, because she thinks that anyone like me is bound to remain silent and still in front of what he sees. I will make no sound; I will not move. Nothing more than standing there at the window, returning once again to the side of it, to watch secretly, to steal this which is offered to me, as if to be sure that no one knows of me.

WHEN THE WINDOW PANELS OPENED
at that late hour of the night, causing a screech that didn't come to an end even when the window was entirely open, I did not know if by doing this she was summoning me to come near or to arise from my sleep if I happened to be in bed. She was standing there in the light that poured from her room as if the late hour made it brighter and stronger. Her sleeplessness had gotten her out of bed and here she was below me, the signs of her struggle with it intact. Her nightgown was crumpled and damp with her sweat, slipping slightly off her shoulder, which I could see as far as her upper arm. Her hair, which she had kept tied back, made an unusually wide puffy halo around her face, which was usually covered by it and which I had not yet seen plainly, always having to look from above. She had not been summoning me by opening the window and letting the screech of it reverberate, I thought. I even thought for a moment that in opening the window as she had, she showed that she was still immersed in her fury and oblivious of anything else. As if this—her ire—is the moment when she is serious, is the truth of her. As if standing there for me, earlier, had been just a game or a pastime, and this moment, now, was not the time for any of that.

But I do not have to withdraw, retreating into my room. This time of night is one she does not know; she doesn't know how to be at this late hour. Indeed, it won't be long before she realizes she's afraid of it. And then she'll look to where I stand overhead. I need not retreat inside and distance myself from this moment of her anger. I ought to stay standing here. For this is my hour, this hour in which she awoke, and so I must remain here where I stand, for at this hour I can do what I cannot do at other times. The emptiness and the silence that extend across the sand are at their strongest—now, in this hour of her sleeplessness. There is nothing but me here, close by, as close as any two people with a wall between them can be; and there is no one here but me.

This is my time, in which I know how to be. I will not withdraw, retreating inside, and I won't bring my head back or move to the side of the window. I will stay as I am, waiting for her to raise her head toward me, which will happen once her thoughts set her down where she is used to me standing, here above. I will remain where I am and as I am, looking at her howsoever I like, to let her know, when she turns to me, that I have been here looking at her like this the whole time. I won't flinch when it looks as though I'm stealing a furtive look at her bare shoulder where, even at this distance that lies between us, I can see the gossamer blonde hairs, as if the falling beams of light have magnified them. It won't be long before she raises her head toward me. There are not many things in front of or around her that would excite her gaze. I know that very very soon indeed this is what she will do and that she will not return to her room before she does it. This hour in which she has awoken is mine. That is, I know what will happen in it. This hour is my time. And as I wait for her to turn toward me I will be calm, fully and happily engrossed in staring at her bare shoulder and her feet, shoeless on the tile floor and bare, her big toes visible, held slightly apart from her other toes and from the two red patches that her slippers conceal but also create, where they press in on her feet.

She was leaning her elbows on the windowsill when she lifted her head to see if I was there. She did it with a sudden movement, just like that, as if in response to a sound escaping that would alert her to me. She saw me there, framed by the strong beam of light coming from her room, my head and body straining forward. I expect she even saw my eyes gleaming in the light as I looked at her or toward where her eyes moved once they had shifted from me. I was very quiet and calm, in possession of myself, of my standing here and looking, leaving to her to decide what to do in the circumstances. Perhaps she understood that this time she must do something different, and so she did not look away immediately. As she gazed at me she was thinking about what she'd do next. But that didn't last long: only moments, and then she stepped inside. But she withdrew slowly, deliberately, as if demanding time before responding to an urgent call coming from the other end of the room.

As she stepped back she went on looking at me, as if to tell me to wait here for her return. She did not do anything once she had gone in; she didn't go any farther than the door of her room. All she did by going inside was interrupt the moment we were in, ending it so we could begin a new moment. She did not even comb or pat her hair that fluffed around her face like a big circle. She didn't put on her slippers to cover her bare feet. And as soon as she came back to the window she had her head raised toward me to see me there, where I had brought my head and body even further forward outside the window, but without looking
uncomfortable
or distressed by this seemingly awkward position. This time she hadn't come to the window to look outside at the night sky and the sand, but rather to stare at some point in the window frame in front of her. Standing at an angle not facing directly outside, resting her arm along the length of the windowsill, she looked as though she was preparing for a long stay and positioning herself so she could look at me without having to twist around or to the side. This way I could see the front of her—chest and belly and all the way down to her feet. Likewise she could look at me merely by raising her eyes, but I was sure she wouldn't do more than that until I took the next step. And I must do it quickly, while she is standing there like that, preparing for me. She won't go any further or add anything new until I begin; it's as if she changed position in order to see what I would do in response. Now, while she's looking out at the vistas framed by the open window, tipping her head slightly upward so I can see it haloed by the circle of her hair, I must say something. I must say something she will hear. For the next step—the one I must take—cannot be anything else. I must say something she will hear. When I say it I will be performing the first obvious, unmistakable act, the kind it is difficult to extract oneself from—unlike a simple, brief glance—because its nature is deliberate. The words I must say as the first and undeniable step which—
after
I have said them—might reveal another truth about all of these glances and the repeated moments spent standing behind the window. The words, when I say them, will not allow subterfuges or evasion because the moment they are uttered they'll produce an immediate and unalterable effect. And afterwards, after I say them, she cannot go on standing there exactly as she does now. The voice she hears addressing her might surprise her into anger, and she might slam the windows shut with quick and furious hands. There is nothing certain about her glances, whether the quick looks or the slower gazes. Nothing sure in the way she stands and leans like that out of the window, which brings her body closer to me. If this happens it will be like a series of images in quick succession that one's fancies and suspicions string together, only to chase them away or to erase them altogether. That is something else I must put an end to, by speaking. By saying the words I have readied myself to say, not only waiting to say them but also to hear them myself, coming out hoarse, constricted, sounding peculiar as if they have emerged from a throat that belongs to someone other than me. But I must say them and I must do so quickly, for by now she may have reached the very end of this interlude when she stands here below me. I must say them, now, before some movement of hers indicates she is about to go. Now, before I let that moment go, before the moment comes when her patience is exhausted, now . . . I must . . . now. . . .

I've been waiting for you. I knew you would get up out of bed.

She did not lift her eyes to me until after the sounds—all of them—had floated down to settle around her below, hoarse and shaky, as if before arriving they had crossed a long patch of rough ground. My hesitation and clumsy bashfulness must have slowed their descent, for even I heard my voice only as it arrived, or as she heard it—I seemed to hear it long after I actually said it. But those words of mine did arrive, all of them, to settle over her like something heavy that kept her eyes—now turned this way—fixed on me, seeking an explanation and asking a more open question at the same time. When she jerked her head to signal that she did not understand, I knew she was doing it to keep the awkwardness of the situation on my shoulders alone. She would require another onslaught to move her another step forward. This, also, I must do.

I knew you would get out of bed, would leave your tossing and turning. I waited for you so you wouldn't be alone.