...And Dreams Are Dreams

Her gaze follows him as soon as they part. It annoys him to have her gaze follow him everywhere. But there’s nothing she can do. A liquid, like mercury in a thermometer, attaches her to him. As soon as he touches her, her temperature rises. As soon as he leaves her, it drops. Her needle moves, like a magnet, toward his north. He draws her to him; she can’t say what it is exactly that attracts her. She’s never known such a pull. This is the first time. She tells him so. That

“first time” makes him giddy. As he has never deflowered a girl before, “the first time” is like a balm for him. He keeps asking her: “Is it true?”

“I don’t know how to lie the way you do,” she answers.

He lies due to the excessive secretion of his imagination. She is more grounded. She functions differently. Everything comes to her from below, rising from the earth. She is a tree with deep roots into the soil of the centuries. With him, it’s as if his roots are in the sky. He comes downward. This is how they were paired, by intertwining their branches, they both believe.

He leads her. He teaches her words she doesn’t know, which, by repetition, become familiar, sweet. As far as she knows he doesn’t say them to other women.

Now she knows, she tells him, that he’s faithful to her.

That he hasn’t another. Because he doesn’t need to. He has found in her, he tells her, and she believes him (it would be terrible if she did not!), the woman who encompasses all women. She herself becomes, is, so different. She changes face, skin, hair. He tells her so and he believes it himself. And she too believes him. It intoxicates her. His tongue in her ear, his voice in the shell of her ear, envelops her in a cloud. She needs this cloud so she can take off. And with him she takes off.

She travels. She tells him: “With you I take my most beautiful journeys.”

The landing is always a success. Always

dangerous, like every landing, but never an accident.

They’re both proud of this. Touchdown is always good, both on land and on water. The passengers always applaud. He’s a good pilot during their journeys. He flies her well. Air turbulence, whenever there is any, obeys the laws of the atmosphere. Before, he loved trains. Now, he refuses to travel without his personal airplane. He leads her. Sometimes to a field of daisies. Sometimes to a stone terrace, bleached white in the midday sun. Sometimes to the glistening sea. Sometimes to the jasmine garden. Sometimes to the hill covered with pine needles. He takes her by the hand. And she gives herself to him. He asks that she give herself. As a condition of their relationship.

And the days go by. The weeks go by. And the Easter of the massacre is constantly postponed. She waits, like a good little sheep. But the confidence she gains each day helps her cement a foundation. It’s fundamental. She tells him so. Before, he used to tell her stories about other women. Now he’s cut down considerably. She feels as if she is him. The two have become one, a curious union. She is interested in Siamese twins who never separate. He asks her about her twin sister.

Her world is infinite. She experiences infinity.

And each day is a nail that fastens the blue of the sky to the frame of her horizon. Her knowledge is deeper than knowledge, because it encompasses the fall of man. They have said everything; all the harsh, near-cynical words he has said to her. They have explained everything. What she wants. What he’s after. At times, she’s called him every name in the book. Put all the world’s curses on him. They didn’t work. Nothing works in the realm of the word. The depth lies elsewhere. In this elsewhere, it’s something else that counts. What is it? Every popular song contains a truth about love. In every verse hides a life story. That’s why people love songs. Because they express their feelings. “There are thousands, millions of people like us,” she tells him. “Write.”

He is her poet. That is the only way she will accept him. She wants poetry. She wants expression.

Her own porno video is the “Song of the Songs.”

He leads her steadily along a road. Abyss Street.

Number 0. For Doña Rosita it’s a new life. She gathers twig after twig, wherever she finds them, and builds her nest. For Don Pacifico, these are weights hanging from his wings. Roaming all day around the wild edges of word, he hunts, like his grandfather before him, for rock partridges, will-o’-the-wisps. Days go by, time goes by. On television, the disasters continue. First in Colombia, where the dormant volcano erupts, causing twenty thousand deaths; then the earthquake in Mexico City, soon replaced by a concert to benefit the victims.

Just like for the children in Ethiopia or for all of Africa.

“It’s not necessarily bad,” she says.

“No, it’s not. They’re raising money for charity.

And that’s good.”

And yet there is, deep down, a certain deception.