Fever Dream: A Novel(17)

We sit in silence a moment. I want to ask about the horses, but Carla is watching Nina now and I tell myself it’s better to wait. Nina is going back from the trees to the well. She’s holding up the apron of her dress and using it as a basket, and when she gets to the well she kneels down with her dramatic affectations of a princess, and she starts lining up pinecones on the ground.

“I really like her,” says Carla. “Nina.”

I smile, but I can sense there is something more behind her words.

“If I’d been able to choose, I would have wanted a girl. A girl like Nina.”

Nearby, the breeze moving through the soy makes a soft, effervescent sound, as if caressing it, and the now bright sun comes and goes between the clouds.

“Sometimes I fantasize about leaving,” says Carla. “About starting another life where I could have a Nina of my own, someone I could take care of and who’d let me.”

I want to talk to Carla, there are certain things I want to tell her, but my body is still and numb. And I’m like that for some seconds more, knowing that this is the moment to talk but immobile in the languid silence.

“Carla,” I say.

The soy leans toward us now. I imagine how in just a few minutes I will leave the rented house behind, and Carla’s house, I’ll leave this town and year after year I will choose another kind of vacation, holidays at the beach and far from this memory. And she would come with me, that’s what I believe: Carla would come if I suggested it, with nothing but her folders and the clothes on her back. Near my house we’d buy another gold bikini; I wonder if that would be the thing she’d miss the most.

Do you see me? Can you see me now?

Yes. But I’m on the floor, and it’s hard to follow the story.

Don’t get up, better to stay on the floor a little longer.

I think I lie down in the field, too.

Carla helps you lie down.

Yes, I see the treetops now.

Because she asks you over and over if you’re okay, but you don’t answer. She puts her bag under your head, and she asks you what you had for breakfast, if you have low blood pressure, if you can hear her.

How do you know that’s what happens? Do you see it, were you hiding there?

That’s not the important thing now.

Or is it because of what you said before, that we’ve already talked about the poisoning, that I already told you other times how I got here?

Amanda.

And Nina?

Nina looks at the two of you from the well. She’s left the pinecones scattered around her, and now there’s nothing left of her royal airs.

It’s true, there’s nothing left of her royal airs.

Carla waits, but you don’t say anything.

But I’m awake.

Yes, but you’re not well.

My hands are shaking, I told you.

Nina runs toward you. Carla jumps up and heads her off. She distracts her a moment. She tells her you fell asleep and it’s better to let you rest. She asks Nina to show her the well.

Nina doesn’t trust her.

No, she doesn’t trust her.

I feel the rescue distance shorten, and it’s because Nina doesn’t trust Carla.

But you can’t do anything.

I can’t, no.

If Carla goes to get help she’ll have to leave you alone, or with Nina. I’m sure that’s what Carla is thinking about now, and she doesn’t know what to do.

I’m so tired, David.

This is a good moment for us.

I fall asleep. Carla realizes it, and she leaves me alone for a bit while she plays with Nina.

That’s why it’s a good moment. Do you see them?

What?

The names, on the waiting room wall.

Are they the children who come to this room?

Some of them aren’t children anymore.

But they all have the same handwriting.

It’s the writing of one of the nurses. The people whose names these are, they can’t write, almost none of them can.

They don’t know how?

Some of them do, they learned how to write, but they can’t control their arms anymore, or they can’t control their own heads, or they have such thin skin that if they squeeze the markers too much their fingers end up bleeding.

I’m tired, David.

What are you doing? It’s not a good idea for you to get up now. Not yet. Where are you going? Amanda. That door doesn’t open from inside, none of our doors can be opened from inside.

I need you to stop. I’m exhausted.

If you focus, things happen faster.

Then they’ll also end faster.

Dying isn’t so bad.

And Nina?

That’s what we want to know now, isn’t it? Sit down. Please, Amanda, sit down.

My body hurts a lot, on the inside.

That’s the fever.

It’s not the fever, we both know it’s not the fever. Help me, David. What’s happening now at the stables?

Carla and Nina play for a while around the well.

Sometimes I open my eyes and see them. Carla hugs her constantly, and the rescue distance keeps tightening in my stomach, it wakes me up again and again. What’s happening, David? Tell me what’s happening in my body, please tell me.

I tell you over and over, Amanda, but it’s hard if you always ask again.