The voice of our elders - short story - Latin America: Private Eyes & Time Travelers

Literary Review, Fall, 1994 by Guillermo Farber, Daniel A. Contreras

AS SOON AS I WOKE UP, I KNEW I HAD BEEN DREAMING about the Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times." A bit later I understood I would never have the thick opportunity to be bored. As always, I opened my eyes and forgot the dream and its message. At that time the sounds of the house and garden were the minimal, confused murmurs we sometimes call silence by way of simplification: The outstanding foolishness of the crickets, the first fluttering of ravens over vegetable patches, the wind tiring itself over the marsh more nitrous each time, the echoes of wave spray that brake at the distance, and, on the other side of Pedro Owen's ranch, Severiano's steps and Nurse Lorenza's, rounding the hedge at the expectation of my first signs of life.

The final inhabitant of Poe's House of Usher heard the grass grow. Similarly, I hear the murmurs of recognition of the leaves (all the green leaves emit them), at receiving the first rays of sun after a night that, for them, was purgatory in installments, unexplained and almost certainly unjust. I also hear (and Nurse Lorenza has verified it, since I wasn't a perceptive child and she told me ghost stories in exchange for my omens, which more than once saved her tears) how oysters grow in their compact shells. I could hope to hear more and more secret stories now that, in my view, so little remained to be lost, but it hasn't been that way. On the contrary, voices I once distinguished by their own names I have stopped listening to, or have become diffuse to my ears. I remember, for example, one boring afternoon in my adolescence, when I heard from the lighthouse the song of the sirens. It was never repeated and I never ended up believing it, but I know I heard something. In any case, the music was without interest and without a message, a song not only sad but vulgar.

Other voices that have strayed away from me are the growls of the earth; in the beginnings of this garden, my supposed wisdom allowed me to hear the exact moment and the precise quantities of water running through a stream, a seed growing, fertilizer at work, and the noise of garden machinery. On the material plane, I don't lament this loss; it hardly granted me the marginal benefits of subtlety: A little more production with a little fewer means, a little better quality, a little more on time. It's only now clear to me that all the difference in the world are in the little differences. The sun will rise within a few minutes behind Jical hill, on whose crests, when I could see them, I learned to locate the equinoxes and the solstices. The difference of light will be slight for somebody like me living between stains, shadows, and resplendent blurs; but it will mark the beginning of life for other inhabitants of the garden.

I look for my slippers and go through the door of the bedroom in order to evade the nightmarish contact with the little rascals whose greetings never reconcile me with the day. Any contact with any other skin, animal or human, has always produced intolerable disgust in my soul. The hairless, lustrous backs, the shaven heads of vultures, the ancestral sadness of their recessive genes, slowly enter my room to complete their daily ritual in the melancholic manner, which only I know how to interpret as a form of happiness. Rulfo, Cioran, Bach, Malintzin, Sor Juana, Voyager, all are here. I don't fall asleep with them, although to do so prevents or cures arthritis, but I keep them close in all moments of my waking life. Silent and humble, they spread themselves on my feet, they lick my hands, and I deposit on their necks, on their snouts, on their paws, on their tails the scarce portion of caresses with which I was endowed and which I jealously guard for them. Convinced by their contact that even I am alive, I mentally note one more night in favor of my regressive count.

I began this solitary game 15 years ago, as the result of an idle afternoon. I filled out a quasi-medical questionnaire, reproduced and annotated by The New Yorker, which allowed one to calculate the effects of following one's personal life expectancy. Family history, illnesses suffered, dietary and exercise habits, vices--it stipulated everything with Protestant rigor. My outcome was relatively fortunate: I should live 74 years. I was then 46, which left me more than 10,000 days. I tallied the exact total considering leap years and supposing I would die precisely on my birthday. I noted the number of days in my diary and from then onward, I began my regressive count (it seemed to me a more dignified response than the tepid satire indifferently tossed out by The New Yorker columnist). Today is March 23rd, 1986--day 4,562.

Calmed by the beloved company of my dogs and by the number 4,562, which signified something far from imminent, I turned on the light in the room (a signal for Severiano and Nurse Lorenza to disappear) and headed for the bathroom. As I was turning the handles in the shower, the thunder happened. A volcanic explosion went off in the garden. My weak eyes caught in the mirror a certain brilliance that pierced the window from the mountains, a little to the left of Jical, in the direction where the sun should be rising but much stronger than the sun. In an instant I was surrounded by my dogs, who understood nothing. That they dared enter the bathroom, a place prohibited for them, is a testament to the degree of their fright. I think like lightning: They are frightened but OK, I'm OK, the house hasn't crumbled, hedge whispers normally ... Severiano, Nurse Lorenza, I should go get them.