Just Disappear — Web Exclusive
By Carmen Boullosa
Translated by Christy Rodgers
They're so filthy! . . . No one can tell me otherwise . . . Filthy, noisy, stupidly crazy.—Me?
I like to have my coffee alone in my room, at my leisure, looking out at the terrace and seeing nothing but sky (preferably just a tiny bit of sky, gray) not hearing the horrible racket that comes through, that's always, always there. Like a fly freeing itself from some obstruction in order to find the light.
I like to walk around the room as if it were so large I could never count the steps necessary to cross it, as if it were as large as the earth, and the earth could fit in the palm of my hand. I abhor them.
I've never seen them. Never. I don't know what they look like, but I know every little detail about them. I've learned to number them, to identify them by their footsteps. I know how they're feeling at any given moment, and I know—I know perfectly well, as if I could feel it in my very flesh—what disgusting hatred they have for me. As disgusting as they are.
No, they don't bathe. Oh, but if they did it wouldn't change them. Soap wouldn't dissolve on their tough skins, it would just slide off, the way sand never slides over water. How pig-headed they are! It's possible that, seen from a distance, they might be what people commonly call "good-looking," but being as close to them as I have to be makes me feel they're nothing like good-looking in any way. Their hair plastered to their clumsy heads, their socks stuck to their feet like potato skins . . .
They've been here ever since I arrived. It did take me some time to identify them; at first I didn't know what they were. If I stayed in my room it was because I wanted to, not to avoid seeing them, and if I came here it certainly wasn't to be near them, although I can't deny how much we have in common, and have had from the beginning. The door that the wedding ceremony opened for me slammed shut in their faces.
I must have been very much in love with that man when I married him. I really don't have time to think about whether it is that way now or was once—but actually, at the end of the day I couldn't care less.
He comes every day, at night. He feeds on me. Not like in those silly, unrealistic vampire-movie tales— he literally feeds upon me: voraciously, insatiably. At noon he shows up at the cafes and stuffs his mouth full of the laughable speech of a merchant pretending to be an educated man, and the nasty stews made by shift cooks.
I think very little about him. I hardly bother to think about the two of us in our past, which people thought was so happy, much less in this tedious present (or what appears to be the present) that surrounds us both. I only speak about him now because I think it's necessary in order to create a more or less adequate portrait, as I'm trying to do.
(I said that he feeds upon me, because when I get up after having slept next to him, my body hurts as if it were missing something. Pain is like that. What's been taken away from you hurts, not what remains.
On the other hand, I don't feel any pain with them. Could it be because I've no intention of going out there to force them to submit to me, even though they have me at my wit's end? Or have I never done so because I've never seen them? Or have I already done it?)
Crunch-crunch-crunch. I hear them going crunch-crunch-crunch. They're saying horrible things that way. They're cursing the leaves on the trees, all the perfectly innocent trees in the world. Well, what are they so angry about? For God's sake! I'm always astounded by their ability to hate everything.
Some of them think they've already left. They believe they're no longer here. Illusions! Come on now, I'm the only one who isn't where I belong, and I know I can't leave, so how could they run away? There's nowhere to go! And as horrible as they are!
Not one of them has gone, I'm sure of it. Because the noise they make, the noise of their breathing alone is so intense. As I'm eating breakfast, staring at the blank wall, I can sense them the way ants can sense sugar, and they are nowhere near me, there's a wall between us, separating us. I have the pleasure of that separation, at least.
What can they have done with those magnificent drapes I saw when I first came here? Huge, heavy, red curtains, so weighty they must eat up the dust. Some of them, or perhaps one of the girls, must have torn them down, and used them to dress up in for a promenade in the hallway. And they think I did it. Their feet stink of cheese!
I could poison them, but where does one buy poison? . . . I don't know how to prepare . . . I'm not suited for it . . . And in any case they're the ones who hate me, not the other way around. . . Yes, they hate me . . . So haven't they anything else to think about? In my situation it's understandable I would talk about them. They worry me. But as they're only children, purely and simply, surely they could concern themselves with something else.
They dream an infant's dreams that the night of their infancy has ended, and their little children's size has been burned away like a cloud by an enormous sun and because of this they're allowed to open the doors of their house and go out in the street.
Oh! They want so much to be the masters! They imagine they already are, and the places they live have changed into something else altogether!
Our dreams are diametrically opposed. I want no more than I already have; if only I could have a little peace and the chance not to hear them anymore. I only wish that they might live far away, or not at all. Since that's not to be, perhaps I should allow them to come in here and do my nails or my hair, or take away my empty coffee jug and bring me a full one . . .
The kids . . . they'd like to be far away, running through the fields, breathing fresh air and acting like "grown-ups," perfectly tedious adults . . . But if they were allowed to run through the fields, they'd just destroy the young shoots of tender grain with their shoes, and if they were allowed to breathe fresh air they'd breathe out the kind of sticky smoke that plastic makes when it burns, and if they were grown up they'd still need to have someone hold their hands in order to cross the street, no matter how huge their bodies were—they'll never be able to cross the street by themselves! Never.
Since I got here, there's been a trunk full of old papers and magazines in the room. Every morning I think I should clear it out. It's very heavy, and in order to get rid of it I know I'd have to empty it. But those papers must be filthy, covered with dust; they'd ruin my hands if I had to touch them. So they just keep looking at me, silently. They can't speak. They're mute, I know, like everything else in this house: the noises that aren't words, the poundings that can tell nothing.
The kids aren't the ones who come to look after me, to do the cleaning, to bring my lovely, hot coffee, sweet rolls and marvelously cut fruit, or take away the dirty dishes. They don't bring my drink and say "What else can I get for you, Madam?" They've never spoken of them. One of them even dared to suggest that I leave the room and walk about in the garden, mentioning that it would be "advisable for her health" (for my health, that is). I lied, so as not to disappoint her: I said that the sun was bad for my skin, that my pallor was my most jealously guarded feature and I always did whatever I could to preserve it.
Sometimes I forget about them, and that's when they move most drastically against me. "So you don't want to hear us anymore?" they seem to say to me. "Well, take this! Take this!" They throw their bodies against the walls of my room.
I'm a responsible person. I feel very badly about what they do. It's not that it pains me as if they were doing it to me, but it does seem terribly senseless to me.
You'll hurt your ears! You'll ruin your little noses!
But I don't speak to them; it's enough to have to hear them from morning till night. Could it be that they hate me so because I don't speak with them, because I don't shout at them through the walls?
Now I can hear them dragging something across the wooden floor. I know that it raises a fine dust from the floorboards. I know that they scratch disjointed phrases on the walls, in crazy lettering. They've turned this house into a notebook, in which they can write their unspeakable story.
They don't come into my room. I can't stop the noises; the noises come through like a mirror that reflects their eyes and their actions. I may have invited it in.
They don't come into my room, but it's surrounded by an impenetrable barrier built of their insane, uncontrollable madness.
Please calm yourselves, children! Calm down! Nothing can be accomplished in such a state. You're losing any chance of coming near the doors or windows, of finding passage down the rivers that empty into the sea, of exchanging words with one another that have a beginning and an end. All you're doing is losing more and more control. Calm yourselves!
How long can the walls keep back the torrent? Who can I ask to tell me? Engineers could calculate the physical resistance, but the ones who will end up knocking down the walls will not be weighed on a scale nor stand still to have their height measured. They go, they come, they leap . . . When they've thrown themselves on the floor, dreaming, their bodies contract or explode. They vanish when anyone tries to touch them. They change overnight, the way cocoons open and flowers die.
How many are they? How many? Do they call one another by name? I believe they shout out made-up words just to create confusion. They know that they have to confound, that like thick, leafy branches they have to come between the light and the natural night on the earth's surface, the unyielding, eternal night . . .
I've heard that light must touch the atmosphere in order to be light, that otherwise it would just continue its mad race through space, never daring to shine. They don't want this touching to happen; they want light's natural darkness to remain. Nothing should touch anything because if it did then the joy of light would be released, and the dark signal they protect would be changed into something pleasant, scintillating, alive.
They are the protectors of the shadows, but if the shadows decided to join them they'd become their enemies too. Why? Because they want no alliance of any kind.
Do they touch one another? I've listened to them for hours, trying to decide if they do or not. I start by asking: do they see one another? Does each one know that there are many others like him? That each one they jostle with is just like them inside?
I imagine that as they knock, bump or stumble into one another, they think knock, bump, or stumble but they never think knock into someone, bump into someone, stumble into someone . . .
I'm afraid I'm tiring you all with this pacing up and down in my room. I've no history to give you. Let's see: I'm a woman, I live shut up in this room (with no television) because I want to, by my own choice. I'm married. I don't work at anything particularly. I like to drink coffee. There are a number of kids living there, outside my room. Who knows where they all came from? Could one of them be a child of mine? It would make sense; I'm a married woman: why wouldn't I have children?
To complete this picture for you, I will say that I don't have such a bad time of it here. As for them, yes, they suffer. They suffer a great deal!
There they go again with their senseless attacks! Every single one of them is constantly making some kind of noise.
I look out the window. I try counting out loud to drown them out, but at the same time I want to hear them. I don't understand what they're doing this time. Before, I've heard them carrying things, eating, fighting, hating, being cruel, and dirtying themselves more, but I can't comprehend what it is they're doing today.
Where are they going? Why do they sound so full of energy? Oh! They're insatiable!
I have nightmares. I think: I know them so well I could have been one of them. I remind myself that I don't remember my mother or father. But to put an end to such disagreeable dreams, I also tell myself that it can't be so, because I (I pronounce this so that it will work like a charm and cure me) I, I, I am a married woman, and anyone who takes a look at me could see there's nothing disturbing about me at all.
You see, it isn't so difficult to stop dreaming what one can't allow oneself to dream (married woman, married woman, I keep repeating).
It's true. When he comes at night, and the house is wrapped in silence, everything is normal. They aren't making noise anymore, and things always appear to be as they should be when they're asleep.
I can't help but smile at this; it's such a farce. It's so funny to me. Of course my sense of humor is rather strange.
A few days ago, I wrote down "cruel." Understood to mean they are cruel. I hear it in their persistent laughter; I know they're laughing as they chase one another around. Could it be that I want to be in there with them? That I want to join their games, and because I can't, I say they're cruel?
No. Definitely not.
Now what are they throwing? Breaking? Destroying? And above all, why are they laughing and laughing and laughing so hard?
When the man of the house arrives, the silence has a waiting feel that he doesn't perceive because he never looks at what's around him. He comes to bed like a drowning man coming to an island although he knows he won't find rescue, only loneliness. Even though as he closes his eyes he presses himself against my body like a child, he hardly touches me. It's as if he's touching the fleeting image of some inexplicable fantasy.
Don't get bored! Don't drift off to sleep! I don't want to stupefy you with everything I feel. Don't stop listening to me! Really, now I'm going to tell you all something dreadful to keep you from giving up on this slow-moving story. Here's the thing: I'm terrified when the tree branches scrape against the window. Why? Because they sound as if something awful is going on, like footsteps walking through the house, carrying a body up and down the stairs. Are they dying? I'm not talking about the branches, you understand, I'm talking about the ones who make noise all day long. At night they keep silent only to fool the man of the house.
They remind me of an open tomb, a noisily rotting body. Are they dying? I don't know.
Perhaps they are dead and walking through the house. I don't know. What are they carrying? They never get tired of hating, hating, hating. And they have no idea what to do with their perfectly tedious hatred.
I'm afraid of them, but being afraid doesn't stop me from enjoying my coffee in the mornings.
When else do I laugh? I laugh when I'm able to stop my interminable dreaming and lift my head and hands out from under the sheets. I laugh then, and I say, "it's over!" I think of my dream, and see it moving towards me again, inevitable as the tide, and I think that no matter how much time I spend in bed, I'll never beat it back. And my dream rises and rises . . . It floods the bed and drags me by the feet, and again and again I go under, I fall back into sleep. When I manage to lift my head and hands out from under the sheets once more, I laugh: "it's over!" Every morning I laugh again and again, each time I think that I'm finally going to wake up.
I spoke of their hair plastered to their fat children's heads, of their dirty ears and their filthy socks sticking to their feet like potato skins. I'm saying it again so you'll believe me. I wasn't speaking rhetorically. It's the literal truth.
They say I should do something about it. They dream of me speaking sweetly to them as I kneel before them to bathe them and change their clothes, to patiently brush their hair. I will never do that.
"Ready: one. . . two. . . three!
They're counting off.
What will they do now? What were they counting off like that for?
When I opened the sugar bowl this morning, I thought they'd come boiling out just like a nest of ants if they were in there.
The children are not harmless, I'm sure of that. I'm afraid of them, and I'm afraid of saying that I am. Now, how in the world do I know they are children when I've never seen them? I always forget that.
How do they think of me? In slippers and a flannel robe? A fine outfit for a warrior! However they do, they'd better be afraid of me, very afraid, because if with their hatred and loathing they're like dark birds, and possibly dead things, I'm like the dust storms sweeping up earth and seeds from the fields, breaking windows and tearing off doors . . . Going where? I took off just like a dust storm does, and any day now I might come down right next to you.
There are days like today when I feel I am a devastating flame, devouring all before me. And I think: I'll finish him off, and I'll finish off the children, and destroy the house and everything in it, and I'll be done with their clinging hatred and all the ghosts it brings with it, myself included.
But I don't know whether to think that I too will vanish into the air, that I could turn and look in the mirror and no longer be there.
I think about it often, and when I need to calm myself I simply lift my defenseless face to that devastating wheel of fire. And that calms me. I feel absolutely serene, although inside I keep hearing a voice that tells me "just disappear. Just disappear."
Carmen Boullosa is a leading Mexican poet, novelist, and playwright. Her work is eclectic and difficult to categorize but generally focuses on the issues of feminism and gender roles within a Latin American context. Her work has been praised by a number of prominent writers, including Carlos Fuentes, Alma Guillermoprieto, and Elena Poniatowska, as well as publications such as Publishers Weekly. She has won a number of awards for her work and has taught at Georgetown University, Columbia University, and New York University, as well as at universities in nearly a dozen other countries. She is currently a distinguished lecturer at the City College of New York.
Christy Rodgers is an editor and writer impassioned by social struggle, humor, visionary ideals, and radical creativity. She is a multi-lingual (Spanish, French, Portuguese, and English) literary critic and translator. She has edited or coedited a number of publications, most recently editing and publishing the short-lived but widely respected WHAT IF? Journal of Radical Possibilities. In recent years, a number of her essays have been published in the webzine Dissident Voice.