I stayed in my seat when the car stalled, the seat belt digging into my belly. I looked in the rearview mirror. There were lots of cars coming behind, a huge flatbed truck carrying containers, and in the distance, a bicycle appeared carrying a man and a little girl. It looked as though the man was her father and was taking the little girl to school, though I don’t know if I saw this at first glance, probably not.
At first glance, I think all I saw behind the truck was the deserted road for the ribbon of asphalt that it is, the concrete scar that all roads are. I don’t think the father and girl appeared till much later. Either way, I stayed in the driver’s seat for as long as necessary, the seat belt digging into my belly, until the father and the little girl appeared in my rearview mirror, a barely visible speck, something so far away it was impossible to know exactly what it might be, but which, as it approached, resolved into a father and his daughter. They cycled past, she wearing a primary school uniform and a red bandana, her lunch bag dangling from the handlebars. They were not talking and yet they still seemed to have a perfect father-daughter relationship.
I remembered a particular day, a long time ago. This was during the “difficult years,” and I had not gone to work. I was suffering from a low-grade fever, a slight malaise. I was rocking in my chair in the sitting room and Mariana came over and sat on my lap, with that fusty smell of hers. Back then, everyone had a fusty smell. It was almost noon. Mariana had come in from the kitchen, her skin and her sweat soured by the smells of cooking and of lard. A thick oily sheen covered her arms and neck, strands of hair were plastered to her breasts.
She kissed me, looked at me for a moment, then went back to her chores. At the time, I could roam the house with my eyes closed and recognize everything by the sound it made, the internal workings of this machine that was home. The fridge door being opened. A stove burner being turned on, gas hissing. Mariana striking a match, then going out onto the rear balcony and rummaging in the vegetable box. Then she did nothing, waiting for the frying pan to heat up, probably staring at the burnt floating specks floating in cooking oil recycled for the umpteenth time. Then she put something into the pan, took a plate from the dish rack, opened a plastic lunch box, and then Mariana came and stood in the doorway between the dining room and the sitting room, holding the plastic container.
She looked at me again, said my name. I folded the newspaper I’d taken from my briefcase. I said: I’m doing what I can. Mariana said: Think about it. I said: I don’t need to think about it. I said: Please, let’s drop the subject. She said: I don’t think you’re being very fair. I said: Give me the lunch box, I’ll go.
Mariana did not respond. I took the plastic container from her hand, found a bag, and put it inside. I strode down the street and my fever gradually faded. I didn’t notice I had arrived at the school until the commotion roused me from my daydream. A little boy raced past, bumped into me, stumbled and almost fell. Three steps farther on, his playmate caught up with him. They were laughing and panting. Their untucked shirttails were as grubby as their pants. I called after them in my sternest voice. Tuck in your shirts, I said. One of the boys apologized. The other grumbled but eventually obeyed. He unbuckled his belt and pushed his shirt into his pants, although the shirt was short and would probably quickly come untucked again.
Eleven, my daughter was at the time. I walked through the entrance hall, crossed the playground, and came to her classroom. She was sitting at one of the desks at the back of the room. She was writing in a copybook, with books scattered all around her. I kissed her forehead. She was surprised to see me, which was unsurprising. I had never been the one to bring her lunch. I tried to straighten her hair, but she pushed my hand away, as though I was bothering her. She took out the lunch box and made a space for it among the books.
She stirred the egg into the rice. She pricked the yolk, and I saw the yellow ooze out. My daughter shoveling this mixture onto her spoon, deft and contented. She cut the banana into slices. I looked carefully at her lunch box, almost surprised. I knew exactly what her lunch would be, but I had not expected to see her eating rice and eggs and ripe banana, as though I harbored a secret hope that, on my way here, a conjuror might have magically transformed the ingredients in the container.
Having sliced the banana, she barely touched it, saving it for later. My daughter was learning to master the art of scarcity. A grain of rice clung to the corner of her lips as she swallowed in silence. She loaded the spoon and brought it to her mouth, happy. Then she lifted her head and I saw her face, an image that would never fade, one that I would remember as I was sitting in the Nissan ten years later, the spoon suspended halfway between the lunch box and her mouth, loading as much as she could onto the spoon and yet trying to leave some behind, wanting to sate her hunger and yet wanting to prolong this meal as much as possible. My daughter chewed, and seeing me looking at her, she laid a hand on my shoulder and waited until she had swallowed. Only then, with a pungent whiff of fried egg, did her delicate voice burst forth: Is something wrong, Papá?
I carried on with my recollections, an extensive, almost day-by-day review, thumbing through the book of my life, the jobs I had had, my children growing up, my convictions strengthening, the people I was forced to face down, the familiar progress, the collective resistance, the day I started work at the hotel, my driver’s betrayal, in short, everything. Until I reached this morning when the Nissan once again left me halfway down the road. I decided to go home and that is what I did. I crossed the road and from the opposite footpath I hitched a lift. I stopped at a shop in the neighborhood, took the liberty just this once of treating myself to a six-pack of beer, and carried on walking.
When I got home and opened the door, Mariana was lying under the dining room table, covered in blood. At first glance I couldn’t tell what she had broken. For a second, I stared at her—one of her legs was twitching. After a moment, I got her to her feet, cleaned her up as best I could, and carried her to bed. I called the hotel and said: I’m not coming in. I informed them of the location of the Nissan. I opened a beer and went out to drink it on the balcony. On the television, a chemistry professor was giving lessons. I thought about pipettes, densimeters, test tubes. The professor was speaking English. Average height, Caucasian, with reddish hair and mustache. He was wearing spectacles, beige polyester pants, and a shirt with yellow and green stripes, but in pale tones.
He was discussing chirality, which is no more, he explained, than the ability of an object to be superposed onto what scientists call its mirror image. Meaning its double. The left, the professor said, referring to a pair of hands, is equal to the right. Identical, but opposite. The professor was trying to explain to his students that organic compounds can behave like hands. The students seemed to understand the analogy; some were scribbling in their notebooks. Except that, although they look the same, the professor said, gesturing to the diagram of a compound on the blackboard, they do not always behave in the same way. He mentioned thalidomide, its right enantiomer, and how it was prescribed to pregnant women because it alleviated morning sickness.
I finished the first beer, opened a second and drained it. I could not bear to listen to much more of this. If, by mistake, he explained, the left enantiomer of thalidomide was given to a pregnant woman, her child would be born with terrible physical defects. And he added: Which is exactly what happened in the nineteen fifties. Children who were born with eyes in their foreheads and brains like shriveled raisins.
I filled a bucket with water, there was an aluminum beaker floating in it, and I set about watering the plant. After the fourth beer, flashes began to flicker like a defective X-ray machine, and in darkness between the flashes, I no longer saw the static image of my apartment, its walls and furniture, but glimpsed what was hidden within that image.
What did it take for this to happen? Not simply alcohol. There were probably many other extenuating and aggravating circumstances, but these extenuating and aggravating circumstances were now common to everyone and I did not dare use them in my defense. This was my day off and I was tending my garden.