Battles in the Desert by Jose Emilio Pacheco

Author:Jose Emilio Pacheco
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811230964
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2021-06-01T00:00:01+00:00

IX. Mandatory English

The psychiatrist asked me questions and wrote down everything I said on yellow lined paper. I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t know the vocabulary of his profession, so no communication was possible. I had never imagined the things he asked me about my mother and my sisters. Then they made me draw every member of my family and trees and houses. Afterward they gave me the Rorschach test (is there anyone who doesn’t see monsters in those ink blots?), and tests with numbers and geometric figures, and sentences I had to complete. They were as dumb as my answers:

My favorite thing is to climb trees and scale the walls of old houses, lemon sherbet, rainy days, adventure movies, Salgari novels. On second thought: to stay in bed awake, but my father makes me get up at six thirty to do exercises, even on Saturdays and Sundays. What I hate most is cruelty to people and animals, violence, loud voices, boasting, older brothers who are bullies, arithmetic, that some people have nothing to eat while others have everything, finding garlic cloves in rice or stew, that they prune trees or chop them down, seeing bread being thrown away.

The girl who administered the final tests and the man talked in front of me. They acted as if I were a piece of furniture. Doctor, it is clearly an Oedipal issue. The child’s intelligence is well below average. He’s been overprotected and is submissive. A castrating mother, perhaps a primal scene. He went to see that woman knowing that he might find her with her lover. I’m sorry, Elisita, but I am of the opposite opinion. The boy is highly intelligent and unusually precocious, so much so that by the time he turns fifteen, he may turn into a perfect idiot. His abnormal behavior stems from neglect, excessive demands from both parents, a strong inferiority complex. Don’t forget, he’s very short for his age, and he’s the youngest male child. Notice how he identifies with the victims, with animals and trees that can’t defend themselves. He is looking for the affection that he cannot find within the family constellation.

I felt like shouting at them: You idiots, at least come to an agreement before you blab on with your stupid nonsense in a language that you yourselves don’t even understand. Why do you have to label everything? Why can’t you admit that a person can simply fall in love? Haven’t you ever fallen in love? But the man came over to me and said: You can go now, son. We’ll send the test results to your father.

My father was sitting solemnly in the waiting room surrounded by beat-up issues of Life, Look, and Holiday, proud to be able to read them fluently. He had just passed, at the top of his class, an intensive adult night course in English, and every day he practiced with records and workbooks. How strange to see a person his age, an old man of forty-eight, studying.

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