Pacazo by Kesey Roy

Author:Kesey, Roy [Kesey, Roy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Literary, Fiction
ISBN: 9781936873203
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 2013-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

New Year’s Day, and Mariángel and I tend to one another lazily: I put new cream and bandages on her face, and she pokes at the bruise on my cheek, kisses the scrape on my nose. We are reasonably rested, as party-going was not out of the question but we never quite left the house. Instead we walked with excitement from room to room, and took the tops off of bottles and put them back on, and became frustrated for no clear reason, and banged our heads against the wall, and listened to fireworks and mosquitoes for hours, and at some point slept.

The mosquitoes are no longer what they once were in terms of number or kind. There is a species that can bite through clothing, and another that can be heard through closed windows. Screens and fans and netting and toxic green coils are no longer sufficient. For each room I have purchased a small electric apparatus into which blue tablets are fitted. These tablets cause the mosquitoes to become disoriented, send them spiraling, and the mosquitoes collapse onto desktops and floors and die.

When there is no electricity, I use the apparati as paperweights and light a green coil in each corner. On television, ditches are being dug and tarps laid to protect Chan Chan from the rain. I think of Jenny and her camisoles, Minchacaman and his riches, Jenny.

While Mariángel and I walked and listened and slept, elsewhere people were throwing scrap paper out of office windows, and walking around blocks carrying empty luggage, and eating twelve grapes or raisins under tables, and burning effigies made from old clothes, and wearing yellow underwear, and these are only the traditions of which I know. There was also a fire in downtown Lima, the result not of fireworks but of oil left on a stove. The weather kept it small, and there were no deaths.

Scratch paper: a phrase that makes no sense and yet that is what I called scrap paper as a child. Chan Chan will melt if not protected, and the news switches to Piura. Hard rain in the mountains, says the newscaster. Coming swells, and all four bridges will close, and Mariángel does not appear to believe him.

Socorro arrives as agreed at lunchtime, asks what happened to me, nods when I say that I fell. Everyone is falling, she says. You must be very careful, she says.

She has brought majado de yuca in tupperware, makes salad and rice and we eat. After lunch she tries to clean but Mariángel is bored with me and I do not blame her. They go together to the kitchen table, and Socorro arranges crayons.

I walk to the entryway, stand for a moment among the stacks of sodden texts and notes. I had not worked with any of it in so long, and thus my anger is a form of nostalgia but nonetheless real and yes my thesis is dead: it would take more work to reconstruct and organize what I have lost than to begin something new.

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