Mouthful of Birds(28)

“Please.”

He presses his hands together, begs me with a funny face, like an angel about to cry. Sometimes, when he talks to me, the fin at the tip of his silvered tail waves a little and brushes against my ankles. The scales are rough, but they don’t hurt, it’s a pleasant feeling. I don’t say anything, and the fin gets closer.

“Tell me . . .”

“It’s just that Mom . . . She’s not just sick: the truth is, the poor woman is totally crazy . . .”

I sigh and look up at the sky. The light-blue, absolute sky. Then we look at each other. For the first time I look at his lips. Are they cold, too? He takes my hands, kisses them, and says: “Do you think we could go out? You and me, one of these days . . . We could go to dinner, or the movies. I love movies.”

I kiss him, and I feel the cold of his mouth awaken every cell in my body, like a cool drink in the middle of summer. It’s not just a sensation, it’s a revelatory experience, because I feel like nothing can ever be the same again. But I can’t tell him I love him: not yet, more time has to pass, we have to take things step-by-step. First he comes to the movies, then I go to the bottom of the sea. But I already made a decision, irrevocable, and now nothing will separate me from him. Me, who my whole life believed one lives for a single love—I found mine on the pier, beside the sea. And now he takes me frankly by the hand, and he looks at me with his transparent eyes, and he tells me: “Stop suffering, baby, no one’s going to hurt you anymore.”

A car horn honks in the distance, from the street. I recognize it right away: it’s Daniel’s car. I look over my merman’s shoulder. Daniel gets out in a hurry and goes straight toward the bar. Apparently he hasn’t seen me.

“I’ll be right back,” I say.

He hugs me, kisses me again. “I’ll wait for you,” he says. He lets me use his arm as a rope to climb down more easily, and he hands me my purse.

I run to the bar. Daniel is talking to the Italian when he sees me.

“Where were you? We said we’d meet at your house, not at the bar.”

It’s not true, but I don’t say anything. It’s not important now.

“I need to talk to you,” I say.

“Let’s go to the car, we’ll talk in the car.”

He takes my arm, gently, but with that paternal attitude that irritates me so much, and we leave. The car is a few yards away, but I stop.

“Let go of me.”

He lets go but keeps walking to the car, and he opens the door.

“Let’s go, it’s late. The doctor’s going to kill us.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Daniel.”

Daniel stops.

“I’m going to stay here,” I say, “with the merman.”

He stands looking at me for a second. I turn back toward the ocean. He, beautiful and silver on the pier, raises an arm and waves at us. And even so, Daniel gets into the car and opens the door on my side. Then I don’t know what to do, and when I don’t know what to do, the world seems like a terrible place for someone like me, and I feel very sad. That’s why I think, He’s just a merman, he’s just a merman, as I get into the car and try to calm down. He could be there tomorrow, waiting for me.





RAGE OF PESTILENCE


Gismondi found it odd that the children and the dogs didn’t run out to greet him when he arrived. Disturbed, he looked out over the plain at the car, now tiny, that wouldn’t be back for him until the next day.

He had been visiting border places for years, poor communities that he added to the census and remunerated with food. But for the first time, facing that little town sunken in the valley, Gismondi perceived an absolute stillness. He saw only a few houses. Three or four motionless figures, and a few dogs stretched out on the ground. He advanced under the noonday sun. He was carrying two big bags on his shoulders, and as the bags slid down, they dug into his arms and forced him to stop. A dog lifted its head to watch him, but didn’t get up from the ground. The buildings, a strange mix of mud, stone, and tin, were arranged in no particular order, leaving an empty street in the middle of the town. The place seemed uninhabited, but he could sense the townspeople behind the windows and doors. They didn’t move; they weren’t watching him; they were just there, and Gismondi saw, next to a door, a man sitting down; the back of a little boy leaning against a post; a dog’s tail poking out from the doorway of a house.

Dizzy from the heat, he dropped the bags and wiped the sweat from his forehead with one hand. He contemplated the buildings. There was no one to talk to, so he chose a house without a door and asked permission to enter before peering in. Inside, an old man was looking at the sky through a hole in the tin roof.

“Excuse me,” said Gismondi.

At the other end of the room, two women were facing each other at a table and, behind them, on an old cot, two children and a dog were dozing, their heads and limbs resting on one another.

“Excuse me . . .” he repeated.

The man didn’t move. When Gismondi got used to the darkness, he found that one of the women, the younger one, was looking at him.

“Hello there,” he said, recovering his spirits. “I work for the government and . . . Whom should I be talking to?” Gismondi leaned slightly forward.

The woman didn’t answer, and her expression was indifferent. Gismondi leaned against the empty doorframe, feeling dizzy.