The Plimsoll Line (11 page)

One would have to be a tireless mole coming from the forest to be able to reach the notebook that’s waiting, buried in the garden, wrapped in a plastic bag, beneath the hydrangeas. At the beginning of its journey in search of the promised land, it had to go around a gas pipe running perpendicular to the house, the route of which indicated the direction its fledgling tunnel should take. It dug earth, left the forest behind, the familiar territory crisscrossed by thick oak roots, and bored through the darkness until it reached a no-man’s-land so dry and packed with garbage it seemed to promise nothing good. The crossing through that desolate subsoil led it to the discovery of a cemetery for old farming implements and fragments of Celtiberian pottery, a few coins, but its instinct told it this wasteland was nothing more than the test every adventure requires, since this was the place where others had perished before him, fumigated by insecticides, suffocated between successive layers of gravel and archaeological remains, or detected in the open by the cat watching from the lounge chair in the garden. And although the geological strata bore witness to endless disappearances, defeats, and wars, the adventurous mole did not fall into despair but carried on slowly, blindly and silently, leaving behind other fragments—this time some Roman jewelry, two Carlist bayonets, and a shell from the Civil War—until it reached the garden fence. It got past the final obstacle at the border by digging on a night with no moon, which protected it from the cat’s watchful gaze. In the early morning, the nutritious smell of humus indicated its efforts were about to be rewarded. The tunnel came out in the promised garden. In a state of excitement, it sniffed the fragrance of a paradise of black earth and wet grass, the olfactory signs of a habitat in which a commune of worms and slugs, carefree and peaceful, had proliferated freely, oblivious to the dangers that might come from outside, from the other side of the fence, their only occupation being to enjoy, generation after generation, the surpluses of an Eden from which rivers of organic nutrients and mineral salts would never cease to flow.

Blinded by hunger and predatory euphoria, the mole received its first reward. It devoured a translucent worm, thick as a pinkie finger. A few languid shakes were the entirety of that decadent invertebrate’s resistance. It supplemented this first banquet with half a dozen white larvae and a flaccid, medium-sized slug that it swallowed down unhurriedly, savoring its watery, slightly salty texture with just a hint of minerals and fertile clay. It was dozing next to the roots of some hydrangeas when it noticed a very different smell, of cellulose and plastic, coming from a shape buried next to the roots, arousing its exploratory instinct and an appetite that, worked up over a lifetime of penury and barbarity in the forest, had turned into gluttony.

One would have to be a mole to detect the hint of a teenager’s perfume still clinging to the sheets of paper and to start sniffing in search of a nursery of maggots nesting between the pages, or perhaps a colony of tiny crustaceans—a mole intent on the idea of rounding off its own private banquet with a dessert of tender little snails, throwing precaution to the wind, rummaging around in the paper of the notebook and suddenly feeling the need to come up to the surface because beneath the weight of the bag, the tunnel has given way, with a landslide that has blocked the passage of air. It digs in the direction of the surface in search of oxygen, but fate has decreed that it will emerge in the very place where, having observed some suspicious movements of earth from the porch, the cat is now waiting, and the mole doesn’t even have time to feel the early morning air, since the cat, trapping it between its claws, with little effort, almost disdainfully, sinks its canines into the mole, breaking its back. A slight crack between the jaws, and it’s all over. Polanski waves the dead mole around in an unnecessary display of skill, oblivious to the man shaking a box of Whiskas on the porch.

“Another mole, Polanski?” he asks, blowing out a bubble of steam.

The cat looks at him without letting go of its prey. The roots of the hydrangeas peep out from the disturbed earth. The man feels the cold of morning and tightens the belt on his bathrobe. He checks the dampness of the frost with the toe of his slipper and as if crossing over stones in a stream, in little jumps, approaches the scene of the hunt.

“What a mess,” he says. He attempts to bury the tips of the roots showing through the earth. He straightens the battered stem of the plant. In vain, he tries to fix it back in the earth. He pats the ground flat, but the plant, exhausted, doubles over again. “Fucking Polanski,” he mutters, and pulls the hydrangea out in one go, extracting a plastic bag that appears to be stuck to the roots like a spider nest. He gazes at the object in surprise, as if he had just caught a fish, especially since there is an incongruous sheet of paper poking out through the airtight seal.

Leaning over the kitchen table, he removes an oilskin notebook from the bag. Some of the pages crumble in his fingers. The majority form a sheaf of paper plastered together with organic matter. He manages to rescue a dozen sheets from the mass of cellulose paste and spreads them out on the table. He cleans the surfaces with the edge of a knife until the letters start to be visible. He remembers having seen a hair dryer, so he goes up to the second floor and searches in the bathroom cabinet. When he comes down, he is holding a red hair dryer that looks like a galactic weapon. He dries the pages and chooses those that still appear legible. The lines of writing cover the graph paper of the notebook with a healthy use of the margin, though the angled writing, with large dots like balloons on the
i
’s, descends to the right a little, falling off the dividing line. The line spacing is generous. The text appears to have been written in a hurry. He senses that the letters transmit cold and that, as he goes over them, this cold sticks to his fingertips as if they were frost. Each entry is headed with a day of the week. His fingers tremble a little on the paper, and in a mechanical gesture he isn’t entirely aware of, they drift until they locate a pack of cigarettes. He thinks the narrative recourse of a
found manuscript
is a joke in bad taste, a recourse that is clearly excessive, pushes him into a corner, places him under an obligation, but one he cannot ignore, since it is right there, on the kitchen table, like a forensic scientist’s evidence in the light of a lamp.

He smokes with an anxiety he seemed to have already forgotten, and half a cigarette turns into a compact ember under his nose. He spreads the sheets on the floor, like a folding map, and tries to discover a chronological order, a meaning, possibly mistaken, he thinks, to this text, since there is nothing that immediately indicates the order in which they were written. He looks at the clock and orders a pizza over the phone. A girl’s voice answers.

“Telepizza, how can I help you?”

“I’d like a four seasons pizza . . . and a Coke,” he adds.

“Small, medium, or family-sized?”

“Normal,” he replies,“a normal Coke.”

“The pizza, sir—small, medium, or family-sized?” the clerk insists.

“Family-sized,” he replies, feeling stunned.

“Thirty minutes,” answers the voice, after noting down his order.

Three hours later, the cat has managed to prize open the now-cold box and detach an anchovy covered in oregano from the mozzarella. But the man doesn’t seem to care, or hasn’t even noticed the act of larceny, absorbed as he is, crouching on the floor, the pages from the notebook between his legs, failing to notice he has just run out of cigarettes with which to get through the night.

Tuesday the 11
^th
.

I’ve never written about myself. I don’t know why I’ve decided to do it now. Maybe if I do, I’ll understand myself better—like seeing myself from the other side of the mirror. And seeing everybody else. It makes me blush just to think that somebody might read this, so when I’ve finished, I’ll hide it somewhere nobody will ever find it, except me. I’d like to see myself without makeup, without deodorant or lipstick. I might even start to like myself
.

Thursday the 26
^th
.

I got off the bus for no particular reason; it wasn’t laziness, it’s just that the park looked nice, just like the light, the air, and everything. To hell with my classes. I sat on the first bench I came across, facing the lake. There was a mime artist and people jogging in tracksuits. The water reflected everything. An old man came and sat down next to me. He smelled of cognac. I hate the smell of cognac. I hate the smell of cigar smoke. I hate the smell of sweat. The heels on his shoes were very worn down. His ankles, which were soft and fat, stuck out. He asked for a cigarette, I said no. His eyes were very red. I don’t smoke, I said, and he grunted. He marched off, saying all women were whores. I also left, in the opposite direction, toward the mime artist. I had time to kill, so I bought myself a cookie and shared it with the fish in the pond, but when I got home, Mom asked me about my classes. She seemed to have guessed. She’s like that. It’s enough for me to do something wrong, and she senses it. She sometimes dreams things that later happen. She sleepwalked as a child and used to open closets and pack a suitcase. Or so she says. The point is she asked me,“So how were your classes?” I didn’t know what to say, maybe the school had called to ask why I was absent. I think I was a little obvious about it. She got a bit annoyed, but not too much. I always get good grades at the end of the year. She reminded me I’m going to college next year and have to make more of an effort. Dad didn’t say a word, though. He lives enclosed in his bubble of air, just like the fish in the pond
.

Friday the 7
^th
.

I have a collection of postcards: New York, Shanghai, Prague, Lima, Rabat, South Africa, Tokyo, Moscow, Naples. I have a cat. I have almost blond hair. I have two girl friends. I have a photo album. I have a sense of fear
.

Wednesday the 14
^th
.

I liked going for walks with my grandpa. I miss the way he used to look at me, over the top of his glasses. Like the day we came across Polanski mewing in the rubble. We had left earlier than usual, which annoyed my mother because she thought Grandpa was turning me into a tomboy with all those walks in the hills and all those bugs. We were walking alongside the ravine when we heard a meow. Grandpa leaned over and pointed into the bottom. There was a ball of fur, on top of a tractor part. There were thistles and glistening pieces of glass and the rusty part the kitten was mewing on top of. “It’s looking for its mother, who won’t be long,” Grandpa said, pushing me gently so we could continue with our walk. But I knew he’d said this because he didn’t want to worry me. Besides, Grandpa was in the habit of not intervening. He said the hand of man wasn’t good for animals that lived in the countryside. “Touch a wild animal, and it will never be the same again,” he used to say. I couldn’t stop looking at the little cat. I tugged at his shirtsleeve. “It’s lost,” I said. It mewed in our direction. Its eyes were green. It walked back and forth across the rusty iron, checking the edges. I tugged at his sleeve again. “Help him,” I said, and Grandpa looked at me over the top of his glasses. “Help him, please.” He sighed. Tested the ground with his cane and went down into the rubble. “Your mother is going to kill me,” he said, and the cat mewed even louder. Grandpa picked him up by the scruff of his neck, and the cat stopped mewing, closed its eyes, and became very quiet, hanging in the air. It took him a while to bring him up, the broken glass crunched under his boots. I stretched out my arms and he gave him to me. He purred while digging his claws into my shoulder. I remember Grandpa’s labored breathing and his slightly bleary eyes. When we got home, my dad gave it the name Polanski. My mom nearly had a fit
.

Now, while I’m writing, Polanski is sitting next to me. He’s looking at me like he knew I was the one who rescued him from the ravine. Maybe Grandpa is somewhere around here, too, watching me without talking. Right at this very moment
.

Friday the 23
^rd
.

Yesterday I helped my mom tidy out the storage room. Lots of things turned up: stories, my first school notebook, and a drawing of the three of us, on the beach. Dad is under a beach umbrella, reading a book, Mom is holding a starfish. I’m in the foreground, with freckles and pigtails. I didn’t remember that drawing. I must have been nine or ten when I did it. I remember Mom’s swimsuit, which was blue and white, and the fact that I got my period for the first time that summer. I was a little frightened. I couldn’t go swimming. My mother bought me a box of crayons and some paper, so I did this drawing. I don’t know how I would draw us now, perhaps at home, like feverish little animals, each in his lair—Dad bent over his desk, Mom sunbathing in the garden, me driving a car
.

Monday the 1
^st
.

I watch Dad lift his head from his books, the way he enters and leaves the house, so serious. A mute man. If everybody knew how weak he is, maybe they wouldn’t respect him so much. The same thing happens when painters and artists come to our house and my mother serves canapés and glasses of iced champagne. They seem happy, but then each one goes back to his own private silence. They don’t realize there are knots and splinters on their faces. They sleep in separate beds. My girl friends’ parents don’t sleep in separate beds. At least, not as far as I know. This house is like a hospital
.

Sunday the 7
^th
.

Yesterday was Mom’s birthday. There is nothing more depressing than a family meal. I considered telling them I didn’t feel well, but my dad guessed my intentions. I asked him what we were going to give her this time. “It’s a surprise, from us both.” I hate Sundays—sitting at the table after the meal, the cigarette smoke and my mother’s forced laughter. How can they live like this? All adults are bored, you can tell by the way they walk, like they’re carrying an invisible weight, by the way they talk and look at things. The world turns opaque before their eyes, and then their faces fall. My father’s face fell some time ago. That will never happen to me, I will never become like that, I don’t want to be bored, or sad. I imagined us all sitting at a table in a restaurant, our faces falling on top of our plates
.