Perla by Carolina de Robertis

Author:Carolina de Robertis
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Coming of Age, History, General, Latin America, Fiction
ISBN: 9780307957382
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2012-03-26T18:30:00+00:00

8

Nectar and Venom

I meant to go to class. I really did. But in the end I couldn’t bring myself to leave the house. I couldn’t even bring myself to shower. I cooked Lolo’s squash and returned to the living room. Cigarettes for breakfast. I was low on smokes again. How had that happened?

The living room rug was ruined. It had soaked through with the strange waters of my guest, and smelled like a decomposing orchard. I saw myself attempting to explain this to my parents on their return: I’m sorry, your fine Persian is gone, it’s just that I had a phantom over, or rather, one of the disappeared who reappeared. Yes, I know, who could have imagined it—but then again, isn’t there some logic to the reappearance of what disappears? Isn’t that what keys and socks do? If you can’t explain how something went away, then why should its return obey the laws of reason? And what is reason anyway, hasn’t it been used to exploit the—yes, yes, I’m sorry, let’s not fight, we were talking about the rug. Your rug. I’m afraid it’s gone. You might say it’s disappeared.

That would be the easy version, the one that might conceivably occur if the guest were gone when, four days from now, my parents came home. But what if he was still here? He showed no signs of leaving. I had no idea how to explain his presence, or, more important, how to keep my father from trying to slaughter the ghost. I could see him now, the look on his face, the kitchen knife or what he could do with his bare, well-trained hands—though surely he would not succeed since ghosts cannot be slaughtered. Who knew what would come of such an attempt? It was a mystery. The whole future was a mystery. I had no plan for what to do on my parents’ return. I tried to picture the moment but I could not bring it into focus. Two blurred figures would hover at the edge of the living room, their faces inscrutable. Then a sharp cry from one of them, followed by a garbled stream of words in which I could make out only Perla and our house and the high rise of a question mark at the end. Then it would be my turn to speak, to answer the question I had not understood, but I could not imagine forming any coherent words, I saw myself opening my mouth to speak and spilling out water the way the ghost had when he first arrived.

These were, of course, ridiculous imaginings. They did nothing to move me closer to a real plan, which I needed, of course, but which I could not bring myself to make. The pragmatic part of my mind had come undone, its order dismantled by droves of thoughts that clamored to be noticed, to be touched, to be seen. I could not touch them all at once. I could not address the future when I had barely begun to address the crowded past.

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