The Penguin's Song (17 page)

THEIR WORK PRODUCED NOTHING VISIBLE,
there on the land of the old city, until after my father died. Then two buildings appeared, or their skeletons did, like one dark, massed shadow. They rose suddenly, just like that, as if they had been built horizontally on the ground and then raised up with ropes or heavy machines to suddenly stand erect, two complete skeletons. In the days following his death I would stand in his place, where he used to sit, and stare at the vast empty space to see if they had begun anything there. I was doing it for his sake, as if—for his sake—to keep watch over the one thing that had most clearly occupied him as he wondered how it would all be after his death.

I was doing it for him, and in his way. He believed that what he had left behind him would become real and tangible and unmovable despite his death. I was doing this in the way he would have done. To know what that was, I needed only to re-create his prolonged patience: during that lingering period he had never stopped saying, Look, do you see anything?

Look, look—have they started anything?

In his hours on the balcony, when he was still capable of speaking, he would think of his shop, even if it sat empty, without him, as if he were carefully preserving a future for it that would be his even if it lacked his living presence. When I stand here on the balcony where he sat, looking at the whole sweeping aspect that would have lain to his left, I am doing it for his sake and in his way: I take the care he took, I continue it, to know where they have gotten to now, as if for the sake of making certain that someone remains alert to what is going on over there.

They are two buildings that rose suddenly, towering and so close together that from the distance between us I think they look slightly bowed, seeming to lean in toward each other. So—they did begin the work. I didn't know whether it was the slow pace of their work that had caused the delay. On the balcony from which I could see the two buildings, I said to myself that—now they had begun—I could ignore them. I would not need to follow what they were doing every day, as if, in checking to see whether indeed a building or two had gone up, I then needed to point them out to someone nearby, waving my hand in their direction just as my father used to do to guide us to his shop.

Leaving the balcony I stared at the floor as if I had to make certain that nothing had been left there. There was no need now for me to leave the door open. I would be careful not to come out here very often; I would only come out here to flash a quick glance over there to see whether they were getting on with what they had begun. That's all, nothing more, and then I would leave the balcony, looking around to check that nothing had been left on the floor. The chair on which my father sat seemed weighted down by all his years of occupying it. I carried it into his room the day after his burial and set it between the bed and the wardrobe, facing the door, as if it was awaiting someone who would come to sit there and had positioned itself to be ready, there, facing the door whenever it might be opened. It didn't look right there. Set down in there with its two large cushions that had supported my father's bottom and back, it gave the room a look of finality, as though it were about to be closed forever; or as if it were now ready to receive whatever other furnishings the house was ready to throw out.

Instead, I would go to those who bought old things, whom I had come to know. The sum I got from selling my books I spent on burying my father, since I had to pay people even to lift the bier onto their shoulders to hoist it into the car that—like the truck that had come to take away my books—turned its open rear end to face the building's entryway. On my way back, as I walked toward a home where I knew I would confront the emptiness alone, the thought came to me that he had killed himself slowly this way to give me the time I needed to arrange the affairs of death—and also to figure out how to manage my life without him.

It seemed to me he had appointed the time of his own death, setting a predetermined date so I could prepare for it before it happened. For they did take all the money I had collected from selling my books. They finished their work without needing anything further, even my presence among them. When they lowered him into his grave it seemed as though they were merely returning something to its own berth that had simply waited, empty, for him. They even brought me the flowers I must put over his grave. And before I left, before they had collected their tools and belongings, they showed me how to get to my father's grave, how I could guide myself to him among the many tombs arranged in squares separated by corridors and branching passageways. One of them accompanied me out to help me learn the route so that I could return by myself. My mother had stayed at a distance with the woman, as if they were waiting for the surroundings to empty out so that they could approach the grave. From there I walked toward the home I would enter alone. Now it was mine, since my mother had let go of most of her part. The only share she had had in it, in the time before my father's death, was sleeping and waking there, and then standing in the kitchen for a few moments to add something new to yesterday's cooking. From now on I would take a part of that remaining share. I would cook my own food with my own hands.

This is my home: I will not simply live here; I will live off this house. I will eat from it. I returned my father's chair to his room and shut the door on it and its two cushions because of how much they reminded me of him, keeping him near as though he were still alive. I put the chair in there to stay, in the narrow space between the wardrobe and the bed, facing the door and awaiting the traces of my father's soul. But I will not leave it, along with the room's other furnishings, to grow ancient behind the closed door, wearing out where they sit. Those who brought the truck to take my books will come again, bringing their truck again too, to lift everything from the tile flooring, which will look naked when they have gone. I will close the door on the tiles and turn away, and I will not open the door again. Thus I will have excluded one part of this house, leaving it closer to the empty space and air outside than it is to the interior I occupy.

This house of mine: I will live here and it will feed me, too. Its old worn furniture will not bring much money, but I won't eat much, only the amount of food equal to its value. As they are miserly about what they pay for what they take, so I will be miserly with what I eat. The furniture that my father was waiting to take back to the old city will now go, truckload after truckload, to where my father hated even to buy meat and vegetables for us. Like ants, he would snap, speaking of those who had gone on with their lives there. He would narrow the space between his two fingers until it was as slight as the body of an ant, and then he would let his fingers scurry from one side to the other, changing direction. Like ants, he would say as his ant scampered across to where he planted his two fingers. They had planted themselves there, to go on with the rest of their lives. Someone who had had a roomy shop in the old city consented over here to cram his merchandise into the entryway of a building or under its stairs. They had accepted it so that they could resume business, hoping it would be temporary. And here I am sending our home's furniture there, truckload after truckload. My mother has already gone, and the woman has gone with her; they delayed going there, but finally they did it. As for the one for whom I stand leaning on the windowsill, waiting for her to appear from the room beneath me, she will not be long to go either. She is getting ready for it. I know it from her face. Whenever she lifts it to me I can see it growing older, only to change, no longer that face I've grown accustomed to from the sight of her in her window and what I can see of her room just inside it. Every time her face is lifted to me I can see the other look that lurks behind the look she raises to me. That other look, the sly and expectant one, can overpower the first look whenever she decides she wants it to.

I know she will go, too. I know that no one will be left in the building but me. Waiting for that, I will go on standing here at the window, for her. I will not be content simply to expel the second look from her eyes, which makes them gleam with expectation. No, I will bring back that face of hers, small and young, its cheeks not yet full or shaped into hardness, and no tiny hairs over the lip giving that toughness an even stranger glint. I will go on seeing her as young, the way I love her, giving the lie to what I see now and ridding her of it by merely turning away from the window and moving my face further back from hers. It will be like sketching her face anew, bringing her back, but in contrast to what I see before I turn to face the interior of my room.

But I know all the while that I will not be able to keep the two faces battling each other forever, one eliminating the other and taking its place. It will not be long before the two faces depart, each to go their own way. And when this time arrives, either I will have to close my window at last or I will wait for her to leave for the new city, where I expect she has been preparing herself to live.

THE TRUCK THAT HAD LET
out that screech on the sand track carried off the contents of my father's room. The two men who had come with it last time to take my books took apart the wardrobe so that they could carry it. They added what they brought down to the heap they had already piled up in the truck. Over the bed that they carried down in three pieces they laid the thin old mattress, slept on for so many years, rolled up and bound with thin rope. Next to it were placed my father's clothes, rolled up in a sheet that the men took from among the belongings in his wardrobe. As for his chair, from which the two cushions had been detached, it was placed on the very top of the heap, perching there conspicuously even if its four legs sank into the belongings piled beneath it.

After the two men had gone I closed the door to the room on the thick sweepings of dust that the pieces of absent furniture had left behind. I saw no use in sweeping it, since no one would open the room. No one had any business there. The balcony door, too, I could leave shut, since I had familiarized myself with the rhythm of their work as they put up scattered buildings along the the curving edge of ringed-in city. In his final days my father was not only concluding his life slowly; he was at the end of the traces that would remain after him, sitting there at the balcony wall or in his room that he had abandoned except for sleep. And then, I thought, he had moved there, to lie in his grave, just as a man changes where he sits or sleeps. I must not forget the way to his grave. If that were to happen it would be as if I had left him without anyone who knows him, there among the graves that grow more and more numerous as more squares are laid out, creating new paths between them. I must not lose the way to him, even if it means going there very often, to make sure that the grave is still in its place—the place I know. I will go on doing that, for myself, because there is no one to say to me, when I lose the way, Come—the grave is over here! I do it for myself alone. I am behaving as my father did with his shop, believing I am taking some kind of action if I go on visiting a grave. I see it as calming the dead soul of my father, bringing it helpful messages that give it companionship and comfort.

I must be careful not to lose his grave—even if it does lie there, in the new city that I don't like, as he did not either . In any case it is a fixed point where something of him remains. In the house here—in this building that rises on the sand like a thick, short tower—I will go on reducing and compressing what is around me. Having closed up my father's room, I don't know what I will sell when the tiny sum I received last time runs out. I figure next time I'll sell sundry things that they'll pick out from the furnishings throughout the apartment. I will do it this way for the sake of leaving the sitting room as it is, though I don't need it as a sitting room, and likewise to preserve the dining room even though I can eat my food without this room remaining as a dining room.

I sell things that they carry off from among the furniture and the entire apartment begins to diminish. When my
mother
comes through the front doorway heading for her room, she will not look for very long at the empty place where the flower vase was, or that held the little bedside table with its woodcut patterns. If and when she passes through, all she's thinking about is whatever it is she came to pick up. Anyway, she will match the rhythm of this emptying house by visiting less often and staying for ever shorter periods.

Yes, this house will empty of its furnishings and of her at the same gradual rate. Moreover, she has already made sure of that. Her room—and the way to her room—are still completely furnished, while she has left them so far behind in her own departures. I have a lot to sell before I reach that race, when we will compete, when I will be matching her pace for pace. First I will sell the little things, those strewn among the tables and the sofas, items that can be lifted with one hand, or even both but without needing ropes to tie them up. In the next round, they will take things that require dislodging, and that require opening the fixed half of the outside door to get them out.

This is my house, and I will stay here, eating from its belongings as I sell them off. Of all its windows the only one I will open is the one in my room that looks down on her, there below. And I will open the door to the room that my family said was my room though I never slept in it. From there, from the window that looks down onto the sand track, I will see her when she begins to go out, her too, walking slowly and moving her buttocks, on her arm the bag in which she has put things women use to make themselves prettier. She has already begun to prepare for it, in the apartment where she spends her time alone. She still goes over to the window but she does it at times I cannot predict; and every time she twists her body outward to see me, the gaze she lifts to me is too strong to be meant for me. It's as if I am one object among many that happen to fall into the space she sees, or as if when she looks she does not give much of her mind or attention to what she's seeing. I am sure of this when she retreats from the window abruptly to head toward something inside that she has been thinking about.

I move between the two windows so that I can see her here and then see her leaving from over there. I know it will not be long before she begins to go out, leaving the home below me empty. Yet I will not stop moving between the two windows, so that I can see her coming when she returns. Then I'll head to the other window. I know I will go on doing it as long as she is still coming back from these departures of hers.

She will go out, moving her buttocks slowly as she walks, on her arm the little bag that will take her even further away from me. She will empty the entire building for me. I will no longer hear any sounds rising, except for the few I make as I pace among the rooms with their open doors, sounds that will echo ever louder and longer as the house empties of the remaining furniture that waits inside.