Fever Dream: A Novel(14)

“The spots appeared later. Because the first days, even though the woman in the green house said David would survive, his body was boiling and he was delirious with fever. It wasn’t until the fifth day that it started to subside.”

“What was it that poisoned him?”

Carla shrugged her shoulder again.

“It happens, Amanda. We’re in the country, there are sown fields all around us. People come down with things all the time, and even if they survive they end up strange. You see them on the street. Once you learn to recognize them you’ll be surprised how many there are.” Carla hands me the mate so she can take out her cigarettes. “The fever passed, but it took a long time for David to start speaking again. Then, little by little, he started to say a few words. But really, Amanda, the way he talked was so strange.”

“Strange in what way?”

“Strange can be quite normal. Strange can just be the phrase ‘That is not important’ as an answer for everything. But if your son never answered you that way before, then the fourth time you ask him why he’s not eating, or if he’s cold, or you send him to bed, and he answers, almost biting off the words as if he were still learning to talk, ‘That is not important,’ I swear to you, Amanda, your legs start to tremble.”

And isn’t this important, David? Aren’t you going to say anything about this?

“Maybe it’s something he heard the woman in the green house say,” I tell her. “Maybe it’s part of the shock from everything he went through when he had the fever.”

“I thought something like that, too. Then one day, I was lying on my bed and I saw him in the backyard. He was kneeling down with his back to me, I couldn’t really understand what he was doing, but it bothered me. I couldn’t tell you why, but something in his movements alarmed me.”

“I understand perfectly.”

“Yes, it’s an instinct that comes with being a mother. Anyway, I stopped what I was doing and went outside. I took a few steps toward him, but when I realized what was happening I stayed where I was, I couldn’t take another step. He was burying a duck, Amanda.”

“A duck?”

“He was four and a half years old, and he was burying a duck.”

“Why was he burying a duck? Do they come from the lake?”

“Yes. I called to him but he ignored me. I knelt down, because he was looking down and I wanted to see his face, I wanted to understand what was happening, not just with the duck, but with him. His face was red, his eyes swollen from so much crying. He was digging up dirt with his plastic shovel. Its broken handle was lying on the ground to one side, and now he was digging with only the spoon part of the shovel, which was only slightly bigger than his hand. The duck lay to one side. Its eyes were open, and stretched out like that on the ground, its neck seemed longer and more flexible than normal. I tried to figure out what had happened, but at no point did David look up.”

I want to show you something.

I’m the one who decides what to focus on in the story now, David. Doesn’t what your mother is telling me strike you as important?

No.

Your mother is smoking, and Nina takes a few spirited laps around the well. This will now be the important thing.

“Really,” says your mother, “if your son beats a duck to death, or strangles it, or kills it however he killed it—it doesn’t have to be so terrible. Here in the country those things happen, and worse things probably go on in the capital. But a few days later I found out what happened, I saw it with my own eyes.”

“Mommy,” says Nina. “Mommy.” But I don’t pay attention. I’m focused on Carla, and Nina moves away again.

“I was sunbathing in the backyard. About a hundred feet away we have wheat growing. It’s not ours, Omar rents the land out to the neighbors, and I like it because it makes our yard smaller, more intimate. David was sitting near my chair, playing on the ground with his things. Then he stood up, looking off toward the wheat field. I saw him with his back to me, small and strange with his arms hanging down by the sides of his body and his little fists clenched, as if he’d been startled by something threatening.”

I feel something strange in my hands, David.

In your hands? Now?

Yes, now.

“David was motionless, his back to me, for about two minutes. That’s a long time, Amanda. And that whole time I was thinking about calling out to him, but I was afraid to do it. Then something moved in among the wheat. And then a duck appeared. It was walking strangely. It took one or two steps toward us and it stopped.”

“Like it was afraid?”

I heard Nina running around the well. I heard her say, “We adore it, we adore it, we adore it,” her laughter and the echo of her laughter coming closer and moving away. Carla exhaled her cigarette smoke and kept thinking about my question.

“No. Like it was exhausted. They looked at each other, I swear they did. David and the duck looked at each other for a few seconds. And the duck took a few more steps, one foot crossing in front of the other like it was drunk, or had lost control of its body, and when it tried to take the next step it slumped to the ground, dead.”

My hands are shaking now, David.

They’re shaking?

I think so, yes. They’re shaking, I don’t know. Maybe it’s Carla’s story.