Prosopagnosia by Sònia Hernández

Author:Sònia Hernández
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000, FIC045000
Publisher: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Published: 2021-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

Berta arrived home a few hours later. I had been so bewildered by the way the last interview had gone and the process of transporting the painting that I hadn’t even thought of my daughter’s possible reaction when she saw it in our home.

She came into the study where I was taking refuge, perhaps to remind myself that all these crazy happenings served a purpose: I intended to write an article and an essay about a Mexican artist whose work and ethics were a kind of beacon. I was trying to organise all the notes I had taken. Berta watched me and waited a few seconds before speaking. She was in a bad mood.

‘I can’t have a pet, but you’ve bought yourself a huge, horrible painting.’

‘I didn’t buy it. It’s a painting by Vicente Rojo, although you’d never understand what that means. And anyway, there’s no reason why you can’t have a pet.’

‘Oh really? I can have one now?’

‘Berta, I never said you couldn’t have a pet. You’ve just become obsessed with an impossible option because the ibis, in addition to being practically extinct, is a bird that cannot live inside an apartment. Do you want to argue about this again?’

She was having trouble breathing, and her eyes were wet and shiny. Any other mother would have understood that she should get to the bottom of what was making her daughter upset, but I was afraid and I lived under the constant threat that a tragedy might take place. And I was feeling unsettled myself.

‘Why did you bring that painting home?’

In the beginning, it seemed like she was going to continue talking, but instead she burst into tears and shut herself in her bedroom. Berta is a nervous crier. Ever since she was small, whenever she couldn’t contain her own sense of discomfort, ridiculousness, or rage, she has erupted into nervous weeping that tightens her throat and prevents her from talking. It had often frightened me, because she would then break out into a raspy coughing fit that was so loud and hoarse it was hard to believe it came from such a tiny, fragile body. It’s hair-raising to hear her cry like that. Pablo always blamed me for bringing on these fits. Sometimes they were so loud that they shook the walls, and that’s no exaggeration. As she grew up, the coughing grew even stronger. When she cries like that, I’m always afraid that something inside her will break. That night she cried for quite some time. It was obvious that I should have gone into her room to try to calm her down, but I reacted too late. When at last I went in, she didn’t reject my embrace, despite what I was expecting, but instead let me hold her in my arms. That’s how I experienced it: a slight relaxation in her muscles in which she let go of the strength and effort required to keep her body upright. She had given in and abandoned herself. She had capitulated in the face of something much greater than her, something I had no idea about.

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