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  OTHER WORKS BY

  SERGIO CHEJFEC

  My Two Worlds

  The Planets

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2000 by Sergio Chejfec

  Translation copyright © 2013 by Heather Cleary

  Originally published in Spanish as Boca de lobo by Alfaguara, 2000

  First edition, 2013

  First digital edition, 2013

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Available

  ISBN-13: 978-1-934824-88-7

  ISBN-10: 1-934824-88-7

  Design by N. J. Furl

  Open Letter is the University of Rochester’s nonprofit, literary translation press:

  Lattimore Hall 411, Box 270082, Rochester, NY 14627

  www.openletterbooks.org

  It has always unsettled me that geography does not change with time, with the changes that take place within it, within us. We retain something immaterial, similar to that something retained by geography, also immaterial. And yet, though it remains unaltered, geography is the measure of change. Just as happens with the temperature of a body, the trace it retains of its former heat allows it to continue being itself, yet this trace marks a difference. Bodies are and are not; they are at once more and less than. The same is true of geography, that is, it’s unruly. I’ve read many novels in which the protagonist returns to a forgotten place. It doesn’t matter whether the landscape is urban or rural. The slope of the hills won’t have changed, but the green will be different, or the mountains, if they’ve kept their color, will disappoint with domesticated angles, not nearly as steep as remembered. The same goes for the city: the old corner has been restored, destroyed, abandoned, and so on. The protagonist is left with a residue, a mixture of reality and oblivion, something elusive drawn from his surroundings, the contradictory signs of which, along with his disappointment and resolve, allow him to recognize places. And so some characters, in order to uncover what lies hidden, latch on to the superficial.

  This is exactly what is happening to me now. I go back to where I used to meet Delia and see that much has changed, while remaining in place. This warehouse used to be an empty lot half a block wide where wildflowers would grow unchecked, floating lazily on a sea of thistles. Delia would tell me how the lot, also known as the thistle barrens, used to give her nightmares, before we—she, with her childhood barely behind her, and I, eager for her to forget it all the more quickly—pressed ourselves against the brick wall that surrounded it. The streets around there were gently sloped, and the buildings, I remember, gave the impression of having been constructed at random. Large industrial compounds bordered houses just over fifteen feet high, arranged in rows but crammed together—here the lines grew irregular, congested—to make the most of the elevation. The opposite was also true: a steel shed, no more than a large room, housed a factory with day and night shifts while, further off, a solitary residence rose up in the middle of a sprawling lot and was swallowed by the expanse. And yet, differences in size seemed irrelevant to Delia and me, as did spatial relations. Even the idea of “place” was called into question by our daily routine. There were no places, no confines; space was neither empty, nor full. Immune to all influence, nothing could contain us. The work of ages that defines the city, even the newer parts, did not exist to us. Distinctions were blurred; on our walks we could sense unfinished business, something just constructed or about to be abandoned, like a campsite taken down in a rush, something peaceful, rural and undefined that nevertheless seemed more lasting than the land itself. The solitude of the streets would attract distant sounds. For example, we would continue to hear the bus that had just left the corner of Los Huérfanos after letting Delia off, though it was headed in the opposite direction and kept moving further from us. But a place could be absent or effaced and still be sensed by some part of ourselves, in our bodies, perhaps: as we neared the thistle barrens, Delia would begin to sweat, almost imperceptibly. The sheen transformed her face, now paler than before, and turned her hands and arms to ice. She would tremble, youthful fear and adult desire joined in her agitation. Although attraction and resistance were no longer in opposition, she retained the memory of both, and the struggle between these recollections pushed her toward the brink. And so she got confused, not as a result of ignorance, inconsistency, or insecurity, but because she instinctively sensed that things on a threshold tend to remain incomplete. And Delia lived on a threshold: on the psychological border of her youth, and the physical one of her family.

  It all began on the corner of Los Huérfanos, where I would watch her get off the bus. Delia would arrive as evening fell, place one foot on the pavement, and head straight for her house. Later on, I’ll say more about the way she took that first step. I remember that someone would eventually turn up to wait for her. A woman would appear ten minutes before the bus and look down the road, intent on its arrival. Sometimes her impatience would show; she would clench her fists until they were red and fleshy, her hands eager to be doing something else. She’d greet Delia brusquely, take her arm, and the two of them would leave the corner and head down a side street. I always watched her get off the bus—the same foot, the same movement, the same air—until one day, by chance, I found out where she got on, and this meant guessing her occupation. The truth is, I don’t remember the day or the circumstances, but I know that it happened like this: I was taking the bus in the opposite direction and saw someone standing just ahead with one arm raised. I recognized her back, her neck, her fingertips, the outline of her childish form carved out against the fading afternoon light. A few blocks to the east there was a school, a small, dilapidated structure that had been there for a hundred years. Surely Delia was a student there. All of the town’s battered pride converged on this school: there wasn’t an older or more distinguished building around, and none was better suited to facing, by virtue of its presence alone, the pervasive feeling of adversity. Today, for example, I walked past and saw that it hasn’t changed at all. At the appointed hours, students would spill from its doors and onto the streets, hungry and unaware of the deeper meaning, if there was one, of their routine. The girl who was Delia, at the time still nameless to me, presumably went into that building every day to, as they say, acquire knowledge. Then she would leave and begin the journey home, the culmination of which I knew well: the moment she stepped down onto the pavement on the corner of Los Huérfanos. The school radiated students, and Delia was one of its innumerable rays. Part of this routine was that the students would circulate aimlessly, carefree and unselfconscious, though everyone else was quite conscious of them. But unwanted knowledge often comes to us, anyway. I forgot in that first moment that just two blocks in the other direction, to the west, there was a factory. Unlike the school, the factory could go unnoticed by someone who didn’t want to see it, and yet the truth lay there, and I’m not just talking about Delia. I mean that power emanated from the factory, authority; something at once imposing and caustic.

  I disliked the fact that Delia worked, but it was an idea that had no clear shape. Contrary to what one might think, it was not a sentimental qualm or a matter of denouncing an injustice, at least, not in that sense. I disliked the fact that Delia worked for the most obvious of reasons; paradoxically, for the very circumstance that made her do so: because it turned her into something else, something outside herself, setting her feet on yet another border. Delia was probably no less innocent, if one can speak of innocence, than was normal for someone like her, but she did have different habits, a different routine. At any rate, she probably “knew” more, and different, things than other people her age. What she knew was what we don’t want to know, but is, just the same. Still, later on, when we would spend nights walking along deserted streets, I felt
a certain pride to know that the hands that sometimes touched me were the same ones that, hours earlier, had been operating machinery, handling tools, or moving future merchandise. These activities, designed primarily to make use of her physical strength—and, in the end, to sap it entirely—nonetheless granted her an immense vigor, in the form of an abundance or zeal that could overcome great adversity and moments of misfortune. Every so often I would think of the circle Delia represented: from the innocence I attributed to her at the beginning, to the strength of character one imagines the working class to have, then back to the simplicity of someone who considers her work to be essentially individual, so subjective it is invisible even to her. Delia was like that. This conviction could, in fact, have been grounded in profound wisdom, but it manifested itself in such a straightforward and constant way that it closed the circle perfectly, connecting the experiences and the sojourns of her spirit. The discovery that she worked in a factory, though it surprised me, was what made me fall in love with her. I can say, without exaggeration, that it was the mark that distinguished her from the rest of the human race, the condition that made her stand out from all other women. “Look at her… and a factory worker, at that…” I would think, assigning her a double density. As a thought it was empty, almost meaningless, but its shortcomings were compensated by the eloquence of the word and the circumstance: “worker.” A silvery ring seemed to surround her, announcing her condition and emphasizing it among other occupations and the titles these carry with them. And so each of her movements, even the mechanical one of stepping down with her right foot onto the corner of Los Huérfanos, took on another meaning. Although I didn’t know her—she and I had never actually exchanged words, nor had I ever had the chance to observe her carefully, up close—Delia already embodied the most desirable, the most complete ideal of a woman. In this fragmentary, accidental way, all my senses were focused on her, trying at first to get their bearings as they received the signs of her movements each afternoon. When they finally achieved this, evidently, it was forever.

  During our walks, Delia would ask how I really felt about her. Accustomed to the world of the factory, where truth is measured, counted, and classified, she was confused by the thought of becoming the object of something at once definite and intangible, as emotions tend to be. Because everything that can be counted is untrue. To confuse her further still, and to show her the absurdity of her misgivings, I told her that my words might be untrue but our experiences together were real; or, the other way around, that truthful words were driving us toward false actions. What I meant was that truth and falsity were terms that had no place in our world. How was Delia’s way of thinking, which relied on accumulation and modification to measure change, distinct from that of a merchant, whose work is defined by the notion of difference? As a worker, Delia was in direct contact with the results of her labor: something was altered, a commodity was produced, or a piece was moved one step closer to completion. The merchant’s way of thinking was different, being based on a change in category rather than a change in condition. In any event, Delia didn’t own the things that passed through her hands, so her idea of measurability and concreteness was less calculated. As a worker, her position relative to these objects was at once subaltern and essential. The commodity determined her identity, it defined her as a worker; that same commodity also took her over, setting her apart by immeasurable distances as though she were from another world. Like geography, this movement is static, though this may seem contradictory: its meaning does not lie in change or circulation, in the idea of progress or a final objective, but rather in a movement that itself confers identity, like hours passing or, more appropriately, like those industrial pistons that do nothing but move back and forth. Delia’s hands, then, were the surface upon which production attained the status of a commodity. I’ve read many novels in which the protagonist can’t tell the difference between what is true and what is false—there is truth and falsehood in all things: people have true and false sides; someone chooses one part of a room as false and the other as true, and so on. I’ve even read an untrue book, or rather, a book falsified by circumstance, which described events that could have been real but eventually proved not to be. These events were both black and white; that is, they were neither. They were either outrageously false, or outrageously true. But with Delia, I was able to prove that these confusions meant nothing. Though she was sometimes at a loss for words, her expression was always appropriate, and no hint of ambiguity clouded her behavior. Coming from her, silence was something living, eloquent—it seemed crafted with the patience of stones, able to reveal the obvious without naming it.

  One night, instead of walking around the Barrens, we crossed through them. Delia and I headed toward a house, a shack that bordered the street on the far side of the lot and in which reverberated the murmur of open spaces and unobstructed silence. We opened the door and the echo reached us before we set foot inside. It was the same as we walked in: the sound of each step bounced off the walls and returned to us before we had time to take the next one. Once more, without trying to, I was able to distinguish Delia’s scent, which came to me mixed with those of the vegetation that surrounded us beyond the makeshift walls. Just as we had heard our footsteps before taking them, Delia’s scent reached me as a premonition: I sensed it before my body was, as they say, joined to hers. In that moment, something was interrupted: time stood still, unable to contain what was happening. A jumble of scents, at times sharp and enigmatic, at times elusive, emanated from her. Later, I suppose, I’ll describe Delia’s scent, that invisible insignia, which in her case tended to fold in on itself and withdraw toward the greatest depths. Delia was timid, but never indecisive; her restraint was an indirect form of resoluteness, a deferral. The way she looked at me always unsettled me; her gaze was steady, true, and expressed itself only in terms of its depth, like wells do. What at first appeared to be caution was, in Delia, assurance, and what I interpreted as inhibition she experienced as desires that threatened and confused her in ways similar only in their urgency. What I mean is that Delia did not understand her desire—she was aware of it only as an assortment of vague ideas that she, nonetheless, was forced to obey as it pursued its own fulfillment.

  I remember how we crossed the terrain. From the thicket of the night we stepped into another realm, thicker still: the Barrens, through which we haltingly felt our way, using our feet like hands. I walked ahead of Delia. The scents and vapors followed their individual paths, approaching one another, meeting and intermingling, showing that nature was still at its continuous, indolent work. Every so often a leaf would brush against our skin, leaving a slight irritation that burned when it came into contact with the air. Had we paused in that moment to examine our own actions, we wouldn’t have known how to explain them: though it may be hard to believe, we were driven by instinct, not will, and certainly not conscience. It was as though I were being propelled by the same force that pressed the scents around us upward, something that gave the impression of being natural and abstract, but which nevertheless was directed toward a decisive end; at the same time, I could feel Delia pulling me along, even though she was behind me. Once inside the shack, we felt the walls recede. It was not my mouth that kissed her, not her hands that clutched at me. I looked at her without eyes and touched her without fingers. And that wasn’t all: just as the memory of my hands on her breasts is the memory of my hands holding up the world, so too were the lips that kissed her not my own, but those of someone to whom I was joined, someone who surpassed me in every possible way, and under whose control I was given access to an abundance I would never have had otherwise. Delia’s breasts were delicate and, obviously, small. I remember the sense of intoxication that came over me as I held them, those times they pointed downward, feeling the seed of her nipple in the center of my palm; I had only to lift them to be reminded of how absurdly light they were, like petals. Before stepping inside, Delia had begun to tremble. “It’s the cold, the night air,” she
lied. At first I was taken aback, but immediately told myself that if Delia lied, then so must the night, the dew, the stars, and the thistles. A unanimous lie turned into truth. I remember the afternoon I first approached her; before saying a word, Delia looked at me in a way that suggested her response, not in words, but through her disposition. It said something like, “I am completely attentive to whatever you might say, and am determined to respond sincerely.” Her eyes made this promise. She had barely stepped onto the corner of Los Huérfanos when I approached her and she met me in the way I just described, with her transparent gaze. I, who already knew her secret, thought to myself that only a worker could respond that way. The proof of Delia’s earnestness was precisely this: the fact that she was answering me before a question was ever asked.

  Earlier, I mentioned the way she would set her foot on the pavement as she got off the bus. Now I’ll describe it: it was like that of someone who spends their life crossing thresholds. The steps on buses, factory gates, the space between cobblestones, fences, doorways, the edge of a path. In her lightness, Delia never seemed able to access the memories she had so carefully gathered; she was there, but she gave the impression of having taken a long time to arrive. I said something above about a psychological border; it’s basically the same thing. Watching her at her workstation, her concentration was obvious, and yet she handled the pieces with a distant, withdrawn air. She situated herself either in a before or an after, but never in that exact moment. The part of the factory to which Delia was most drawn was, precisely, its edge: the perimeter where discarded materials were scattered across the sparse and neglected grass, and where the weary curve of the fence still served as a boundary. The workers would go out there during their breaks to enjoy the space, in search of some distraction. Delia didn’t need to be out there to appreciate it: long before the whistle sounded, she had already mentally taken her place on a large metal crate covered by a brown mat. On sunny days, four or five workers would climb up onto it. The holes in the mat, worn by time, allowed glimpses of the cold shine of metal that had once been meant for another purpose. Delia would start at the crate’s lowest point and work her way up to the highest, conquering the slope. She would picture this before the whistle blew; it was what she did when she drifted off. She’d roll down her sleeves and, thus prepared for the outdoors, head for the perimeter, from where she would look out over the thick, high walls of the workshops that reflected the light like mountains. The slat windows that looked so small from outside filled the interior, as she well knew, with a harsh light, like powerful little suns. As might be expected, the grass grew thicker alongside the crate; as she sat, Delia would dangle her feet among the weeds.