She was driving Ben to a friend’s house, and this added journey was the cause of some irritation in her day; she had too much else to do. Though she did like the privacy of the car, the feeling of his voice coming over her shoulder as she checked the mirror and slowed to make a turn. He was up on the booster seat—Ben was small for eight—and he looked out the window at suburban streets and parked cars, while she used his mobile phone to map the route. She had it down by the gearshift, propped up on the gray plastic fascia. It was hard to read the little arrow through the disaster of Ben’s cracked screen—the thing was rarely out of his hand, unless he dropped it. Now he looked out on the real world as though mildly surprised it was there.“I don’t like Barry McIntyre,” he said.
“No? Why not?”
They had their best chats in the car. If they’d been at home, he would have said, “Dunno,” or “Just . . .” In the car, he said things like “I like boys, though. I do like boys.”
“Of course you do.”
She wondered why he couldn’t speak when they were face to face. What was it about her eyes on him that made him shrug and shift under his clothes?
“You are a boy.”
“I know that,” he said.
Of course, she was his mother, so when she looked at him she was always checking him over to adjust or admire. Though she tried not to. She really tried not to turn into the kind of woman who said, “Sit up straight,” or “Leave your hair alone.”
“Well, then.”
She glanced at the rearview mirror and saw only the side of his head. His coarse hair was darkening through the winter. In a year or two, it would be fully brown.
“I just hate basketball.”
“Do you?”
“I really do.”
Recently, he had used the word “gay” as an insult. “That’s so gay,” he’d said at dinner, and his little sister missed a beat.
“Of course you like basketball,” she said warmly. That lie.
He did not answer.
“Does Barry McIntyre play basketball?”
In the rearview mirror, she saw his hand move toward his hidden face.
“Leave your nose alone!” she said.
It was hard not to. They were so temporarily beautiful, her children. They were so perfect, and then they were not perfect. She loved them too much to let them be.
She drove on while he watched the Dublin suburbs: spring trees, semidetached houses, a bundled old citizen walking her dog. The phone app was taking her down a familiar street, though it was an unfamiliar route, one she would not have known to take herself. Ben’s friend was called Ava, and she was new. She lived in St. Clare Crescent, which was somewhere near the motorway, apparently. But they did not take the motorway; they took a network of small streets, some of which she had driven down before—this was the way to the garden center, that was the way to the dog groomer’s—without knowing that you could cross from one to the other if you turned at the right place.
“Would you rather?” Ben said, then he stopped.
If you did not let Ben know that you were listening, he would refuse to continue.
“What?” she said, finally.
And, now that he knew he had her full attention, he said, “Would you rather drink a cup of lava or be drowned in a lava lake?”
“Oh, Christ.”
“Would you rather?”
“Not this again.”
“Which?”
“You can’t drink lava.”
“Yes, you can.”
“In a cup?”
“A stone cup.”
“I’ll take the lake.”
“Would you rather fall off a roof or have a tree fall on your head?”
He was obsessed with choices, especially impossible ones.
“Neither. I would rather neither of those things happened to me.”
“Would you rather fall off a roof,” he insisted, “or have a tree fall on your head?”
Maybe he was obsessed with death itself. There was no getting out of it, one way or the other.
“Roof,” she said.
“O.K.”
“What about you?”
“Yeah, roof,” he admitted.
“Not your best,” she said.
He paused, took the challenge.
“Would you rather be stung to death by fire ants or strung up by your toes from a big crane until your head burst?”
“Lovely!”
He would keep going until she was completely stuck.
“Crane, please.”
“Would you rather drown in the dark or be strangled in the dark?”
He would keep going until she was actually dead.
“Seriously?”
“A huge dark lake full of eels.”
“Really not. Absolutely not. I would not rather.”
She was taken, as she drove, by the memory of a night swim, many years before Ben was born. It was in a lake, in the Irish countryside; a gang of them coming back from the pub, no moon, no sex, at a guess—not that morning, or the night before, when they were supposed to have their holiday-cottage sex—and she pulled her dress up over her head as she made her way, in the darkness, toward the lake. Of course there was a man in the group who was not, actually, the man she was seeing at the time; he was some other, forbidden man. And neither of these men would later become the father of the boy now sitting in the back seat. Getting naked in the deserted woodland in the middle of the night was a taunt to both of them—either one would do. It was all a long time ago.
The dress was a blue linen shift, loose and practical, her underwear possibly quite fancy and impractical in those days before booster seats and children with sleepovers and phones that told you which way to turn. Her body also a finer thing, back then, if only she had known it. And she was drunk, so the pathway down to the little boardwalk was patchily remembered, her experience at the time also patchy, though it slowed and cleared when she dropped her dress onto the still-warm wood and looked out over the water. There were turf grains in the silk of it that turned the lake brown, even in daylight. Now, at midnight, it was darker than you could imagine, so it was like a sixth sense, the feeling of open space in front of her. When she looked down, she saw the blackness gleam, like oil. She sat at the dock’s edge to unclip her fancy bra and shrugged it off. A man’s voice telling her to stop. Another man saying nothing. A woman’s voice, saying, “No, really, Michelle.” And she was in. She pushed out from the wooden lip as she dropped down into it, was swallowed in a bang of water that turned to a liquid silence, then she struggled back up to where the air began. Black water into black air.
As she rose and turned, she could feel the alcohol swell under the surface of her skin, and the water was not so much cold as numb. Or she was numb. The water slipped past her as she hauled her way through it, in a long, reaching overarm that took her away from everyone, even as she seemed to stay in the same place. She could tell by their voices that she was moving—the fragments of sound she caught as she plowed along the surface, out toward the center of the lake.
If it was the center. If it was even the surface she was swimming along. It was so dark and wet that it was hard to know if her eyes were closed or open. She was afraid that she was not quite level, as she swam, that she was tilting downward, afraid that when she turned her face up to inhale she would find only water. The shouts from the bank were more sporadic now; it was as though they had given up on her as she circled or tried to circle back toward them, because the scraps of sound gave her a sense of horizon and it was important not to lose this. She needed to know which way was up. She pulled the water along the sides of her body, and though she twisted into it as she went, she was not sure that she was making the turn. She should just stop a moment and get her bearings, but she could not stop; she did not want to. It was—this was the secret, sudden thing—so delicious. Not knowing which way was which, or where the edges were. She was dissolved by it. She could drown right now and it would be a pleasure.
She caught a flash of her white arm, a sinewy gleam that she followed—her body its own compass—until she heard, on the bank, the voice of the man she was supposed to sleep with, saw the intermittent cigarette glow of the man she was not supposed to sleep with (and never did, for some reason; perhaps she had him fully spooked). Her big statement was a little undercut, in the shallows, by the sharpness of the stones in the silt under her feet as she made her way up out of the lake, toward recrimination and cold-skinned sex.
She woke up the next morning with a start, the previous night’s slightly watery consummation already forgotten, wasted. It had happened without her. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled air into her lungs. She was alive. And she put this fact into her mind. Jammed it right in the center of her mind. She could never do that again. She was twenty-four years old, and she was giving up death. Drunk or sober, there would be no more lakes after dark.
“You know, Ben, you should never swim at night,” she said now, more than twenty years later, sitting in her Hyundai hybrid. Accelerator, brake, mirror, clutch.
“Would you rather?” Ben said.
“No, really, you have to promise me not to do that, ever. Not in a lake, because there is no salt in a lake to hold you up, and especially not in the sea. You must always respect the sea. It’s bigger than you. Do you hear me? And you must never, ever swim if you have taken alcohol, or even if your friends have. If a friend has had a couple of beers when you are a teen-ager and he says, ‘Come on, it’ll be fun!,’ what do you say?”
“Would you rather,” Ben said, patiently.
“No, I wouldn’t. I really would not rather. I would not rather die one way or the other way. What is your problem, Ben?”
They were in a street of newly built semidetached houses, depressingly small and endlessly the same. Tiny gardens: rowan tree, cherry tree, silver birch, ornamental willow—a horrible pompom on a stick. She did not know what she was doing in this place. It was coming to catch her, even here. It was coming to catch her children—her own foolishness; it had followed her out of the water. The night swim was not the end of it; she had been in thrall to death for some time afterward—months, a year. Because of course you could leave the lake but you could not leave desire itself, and all its impossibilities.
Though something was made possible. Something was made real. Something was resolved by the existence of the child in the back seat.
“Would you rather,” Ben said, “live in a turkey or have a turkey live inside you?”
“What?”
“Would you rather,” he repeated, in a forbearing way, “live in a turkey or have a turkey live inside you?”
“That is a very good question,” she said.
“Would you rather?”
“That is a truly great question. That is the best one yet.” She reached to the car radio and switched it on, hoping to distract him.
“Is that the place?” The app told her to take a right. “Is that where Ava lives?”
“I don’t know.”
“She’s your friend.”
“No, she’s not. She’s not my friend. She’s just really, really pushy.” His hand rested, in anticipation, on the overnight bag beside him as she took the turn through large, open gates into a new development.
“Is this it?”
St. Clare Close, St. Clare Court. The little maze was set around an open green space, and in the center of the green was a grand, three-story building.
St. Clare’s itself.
There it was. All this time. She had lived five miles away from here, for a decade, and had never realized it was down this road, one she passed every so often, on her way somewhere else.
She had been driven here in a taxi nearly twenty years ago, when all around were green fields. She was terrified that the driver would know from the address that she was mad, though she wasn’t properly mad; she was just quite badly broken. She was sure he would know that there was a broken human being in his cab, that he would turn to sneer at her as they went through the gates, or as they were going up the driveway past tended gardens, to this large house, this facility.
The Sisters of St. Clare and St. Agnes. Private Nursing Home.
“Scraggy Aggy’s,” as it used to be known. The bin. She had typed the address into her son’s phone and thought nothing of it.
“Would you rather?” Ben said.
So that was why she had remembered the lake.
It was very strange, looking at the building from the outside. She had spent her time there in a small room and had seen the exterior perhaps twice: first in a skewed way, as she walked up the steps, and possibly once again in a backward glance when her father came to collect her. She had never gone into the gardens, which were now filled with smart new houses; it was possible that she had not been allowed. Or, more likely, she had not been supplied with clothes. She had slept a lot, or lain unmoving in her hospital-style bed. She did remember standing at a window—perhaps it was even that window on the third floor, where the building bulged out into a fat, round turret. She knew that the turret contained a flight of stairs and that she had looked out from the top of it, as a woman in a fairy tale might—though she was not in a fairy tale, she was in a fog of Mogadon, not to mention all the other junk she swallowed obediently, twice a day, wondering if she would ever, ever shit again. Nobody seemed to care about that. They cared about your feelings instead. Though “cared” was perhaps the wrong word. They observed your feelings.
“Mother,” Ben said—a word he used only when truly annoyed. She had forgotten to say “What?”
“What?” she said.
“Would you rather live in a turkey?”
“Is this the place?” she said. “Is this where she lives?”
She had slowed to a stop in the middle of the deserted street. A pair of tiny children, one of them just a toddler, were playing on the flight of broad granite steps that led up to the front door of the building that used to be Scraggy Aggy’s. The place had been turned into apartments—they probably cost a bomb. Other things came back to her as she looked at the façade: A foyer of sorts, where she had signed in. A large living room for the nuns, where her father had stood up from a chintz armchair as she walked through the door, ready to go home. It was the high-ceilinged room on the left, where the children’s mother had pinned the curtain back, to see that they did not wander far.
There had been a godforsaken day room where people went to smoke—she wondered where that was. They were all on twenty cigarettes a day, the broken ladies of the suburbs, with their trembling hands and their pretty dressing gowns. They’d sat in this stinking room, with its vinyl-covered armchairs, and looked at their wrists. She wondered who lived in that space now. Someone busy and young. Someone who put orchids on the sill of a window that had once been nailed shut. This person did not smoke. This person walked out of a lovely private flat into the public corridor where the sad people used to pace, all those years ago. Weeping, not weeping, silent, eying the pay phone.
“It’s No. 74.” Her son’s tone was one of bottomless contempt, and she saw that she had not moved, was stalled.
The toddler and the young child were actually contained by the steps, she realized. They stayed at the top, and peddled their tricycle on the flat surface. They did not approach the edge.
She had spent the past eight years of her life checking on the safety of small children.
The car rolled gently forward as Ben read out the numbers on the houses that faced onto the green: 67, 69, 71.
“Where are the evens?” she said, as they circled slowly around the back of the building as though driving into a trap. This is how her life had felt, just before it broke—everything had been too connected. And now it was happening again: the unwitting journey, the unfunny choices, the idea that her son knew, of course he did, you could smell it on her still: the brackish water of the lake.
She spotted the window of the day room, up on the second floor, and she was still up there, checking her wrists. Smoking away. Staring for weeks at a patch on the wall. Ben unknown to her. Her daughter unknown. They had not happened inside her body; they had not been born.
“There it is! Seventy-four, seventy-four!”
She stopped the car, pulled the hand brake, and twisted in her seat to look at her son, who was undoing his seat belt in the back. Ben glanced up at her, and he was beautiful. His hair needed a comb, and there was a gleam of something under his nose, but he was so very much himself. He looked at her from under long lashes, as though he had known her for a long time, and she was not inside the building. She was here now, on the outside, with him.
“Be good,” she said, as he grabbed the overnight bag and was gone. For a boy who didn’t like girls, he was quick getting to Ava’s front door.
“I’ll pick you up at eleven tomorrow.”
He came doubling back then. She thought for a moment that he wanted to kiss her goodbye, but he was just looking for his phone. She handed it through the window, then stuck her face out after it, for mischief.
“Mnnnnmm,” she said, puckering up. And he did kiss her, abruptly, before running back to the house, where Ava was now standing on the porch to welcome him in. A little blond pixie, with a sequinned heart on her T-shirt, jigging up and down at the sight of him.
The kiss was a clumsy thing. Fleshy. Swift. There was a dot of cold on her cheek, from the tip of his nose.
“Ben!” she shouted. “Hang on. Ben!”
“What?”
“I would rather have the turkey live inside me.”
“O.K.!” He took her answer quite seriously.
“No contest.”
It was just a question, she thought. And she checked the rearview mirror before pulling out.
♦
Published in The New Yorker print edition of the March, 9 2020, issue.
Levaba a Ben á casa dunha amiga, e esta viaxe extra enfastioulle un pouco o día; tiña demasiadas cousas que facer. Mais si que lle gustaba a privacidade do coche, a sensación da voz de Ben aparecendo por encima do seu ombro mentres ela miraba polo espello, reducindo a velocidade para virar. Ía sentando nunha cadeira infantil –era baixo para un neno de oito anos –e observaba pola ventá as rúas residenciais mais os coches estacionados, mentres que ela empregaba o móbil de Ben para trazar a ruta. Levábao abaixo xunto ao cambio de marchas, apoiado na carcasa gris de plástico do cadro de mandos. Era difícil seguir a pequena frecha a través do desastre que era a pantalla esnaquizada de Ben –o chisme poucas veces estaba fóra das súas mans, agás cando lle caía. Agora ía mirando para o mundo real como se lle sorprendese lixeiramente que alí estivese.
-Non me gusta Barry McIntyre –dixo el.
-Non? Por que non?
As súas mellores conversas tíñanas no coche. Se estivesen na casa, el contestaría, “Eu que sei” ou “Pois porque non”. No coche, dicía cousas como “Gústanme os nenos, porén. Si que me gustan”
- Pois claro que si.
Preguntábase por que non era el capaz de falar cando estaban cara a cara. Que había nos seus ollos que o facía encollerse de ombros e retorcerse cando o miraba?
-Ti es un neno.
-Xa o sei –respondeu.
Era súa nai, polo que era de esperar que cando o miraba sempre o estaba examinando ben para endereitalo, ben para admiralo. Mais tentaba non facelo. Tentaba non volverse o tipo de muller que dicía “Ponte dereito”, ou “Deixa de tocarte o pelo”.
-Pois vale.
Mirou polo retrovisor e só viu o lateral da súa cabeza. O seu denso cabelo escurecía ao longo do inverno. Nun ou dous anos, sería totalmente castaño.
-É só que odio o baloncesto.
-Si?
-De veras que si.
Non facía moito empregara o termo “gay” como un insulto. Durante a cea dixera “Iso é tan gay”, deixando a súa irmá desconcertada un intre.
-Claro que che gusta o baloncesto –díxolle ela, con agarimo. Vaia mentira.
Ben non respondeu.
-Xoga Barry McIntyre ao baloncesto?
Polo retrovisor viu como a súa man se movía cara o seu rostro agochado.
-Deixa o nariz en paz! -díxolle ela.
Non era nada doado non facelo. Os seus nenos non serían así de fermosos máis que unha tempada. Eran tan perfectos, e logo xa non o eran. Queríaos demasiado para deixalos estar.
Seguiu conducindo mentres Ben observaba as aforas de Dublín: árbores primaverais, casas semi-acaroadas, unha anciá ben abrigada paseando o can. A aplicación do móbil levábaa por unha rúa que se lle facía familiar, pero non era un camiño que se lle fixese coñecido, non se lle ocorrería tomalo a ela soa. A amiga de Ben chamábase Ava, e era nova. Vivía nunha das rúas de Santa Clara, que estaba, ao parecer, nalgún lugar cerca da autopista. Pero non colleron a autopista, senón unha rede de pequenas rúas, algunha das cales xa recorrera antes – ese era o camiño para ir ao centro de xardinaría, aquel era o camiño para ir ao peiteador de cans –sen saber que podía cruzar dun a outro se viraba no sitio correcto.
-Que preferirías? -empezou a dicir Ben, logo detívose.
Se non lle facías saber a Ben que o estabas escoitando, negábase a seguir.
-O que? -contestou ela, ao fin.
Agora que sabía que lle estaba dedicando toda a súa atención, dixo: -Preferirías beber unha cunca de lava ou afogar nun lago de lava?
-Por Deus.
-Que preferirías?
-Outra vez non.
-Cal delas?
-Non é posible beber lava.
-Si que é.
-Nunha cunca?
-Unha cunca de pedra.
-Escollo o lago.
-Preferirías caer dun teito ou que unha árbore che caia na cabeza?
Obsesionábanlle as escollas, sobre todo aquelas que eran imposibles.
-Ningunha. Preferiría que non me pasara ningunha desas cousas.
-Preferirías caer dun teito –insistiu– ou que unha árbore che caia na cabeza?
Poida que estivese obsesionado coa morte mesma. Non tiña maneira algunha de saír desta.
-O teito -respondeu ela.
-Vale.
-E ti?
-O teito, si –admitiu.
-Esa non che foi das mellores –dixo ela.
Ben calou un intre, aceptando o desafío.
-Preferirías que unhas formigas vermellas te picasen ata matarte ou que te colguen pola punta dos pés desde unha enorme grúa ata que che estoupe a testa?
-Encantador!
Ben ía seguir ata que estivese totalmente atrancada.
-A grúa, por favor.
-Preferirías afogar ás escuras, ou que te esganen ás escuras?
Non o ía deixar ata que estivese morta de verdade.
-En serio?
-Nun enorme lago cheo de anguías.
-Para nada. En absoluto. Non o preferiría.
Absorbeuna, mentres conducía, o recordo dun mergullo de noite, moitos anos antes de que Ben nacera. Fora nun lago, no agro irlandés, un grupo deles volvía do pub, unha noite sen lúa, e sen sexo, ou iso supoñía –nin aquela mañá, nin a noite anterior, cando se supoñía que debían estar aproveitando a cabana de vacacións para manter relacións –e ela sacárase o vestido pola cabeza, camiñando, ás escuras, cara o lago. Por suposto que había un home naquel grupo que non era, de feito, o home co que estaba saíndo entón; era outro home, un que lle estaba prohibido. E ningún destes homes chegaría a ser máis tarde o pai do rapaz sentado no asento traseiro. Espirse no bosque ermo, no medio da noite, era unha provocación cara ambos –calquera dos dous valía. Todo isto acontecera había moito tempo.
Levaba un vestido camiseiro azul de liño, frouxo e funcional, e a súa roupa interior, polo contrario, poida que fora dabondo elegante e pouco práctica neses tempos previos a cadeiras infantís, e fillos con festas de pixamas, e móbiles que che dicían en que dirección tiñas que virar. O seu corpo era entón máis fino tamén, oxalá o soubera naquel momento. Ademais estaba bébeda, e lembraba en anacos o camiño abaixo cara o peirao, en anacos, como era a súa experiencia daquela, mais os seus recordos acougáronse e esclarecéronse cando deixou caer o vestido sobre a madeira aínda morna e ollou a auga. Había terróns de turba que tornaban a sedosa aparencia do lago de cor marrón, incluso na luz do día. Agora, á medianoite, estaba máis escuro do que un se podería imaxinar, polo que a sensación de espazo aberto en fronte dela semellaba máis ben un sexto sentido. Cando miraba cara abaixo, vía o brillo da escuridade, como o aceite. Sentouse no eixe do peirao para desabotoar o luxoso suxeitador e deixouno caer. A voz dun home dicíndolle que parase. Outro home que non dicía nada. A voz dunha muller, dicindo, “Non, Michelle, en serio”. Entón, estaba dentro. Empuxouse contra o borde de madeira para afondarse no lago, e foi engulida nun estalido de auga que se tornou nun silencio líquido, logo volveu, con moito esforzo, a onde o aire comezaba. Da auga negra ao aire negro.
Ao emerxer, puido sentir o alcohol subir baixo a superficie da súa pel, e a auga, máis que estar fría, entalaba. Ou era ela a que estaba entalada. A auga deslizábase polo seus costados mentres ela tentaba abrir camiño a través cunha boa brazada que a levou lonxe dos demais, mais parecía que seguía no mesmo sitio. Podía colixir polas voces dos demais que se estaba movendo -anacos de son que pillaba mentres sucaba ao longo da superficie, afastándose cara ao centro do lago.
Se iso era o centro. Se estaba sequera nadando ao longo da superficie. Estaba tan escuro e húmido que era difícil saber se os seus ollos estaban pechados ou abertos. Tiña medo de non estar a rentes mentres nadaba, de estarse somerxendo, tiña medo de levantar a cabeza para aspirar e só atopar auga. Os berros desde a beira eran agora máis esporádicos; come se se estivesen rendendo mentres ela tornaba, ou tentaba tornar xunto a eles, xa que eses fragmentos de son dábanlle unha noción do horizonte e era importante non perderlle a pista. Necesitaba atopar o camiño á superficie. Empurraba a auga ao longo dos laterais do seu corpo, e aínda que se retorcía conforme avanzaba, non estaba certa de estar virando. Debería deterse só un intre e centrarse, pero non podía deterse, non quería. Era –isto era o secreto e inesperado- delicioso. Descoñecía cal era o rumbo que debía coller, ou onde se atopaban as beiras. Sentíase desbordada. Podería afogar naquel mesmo momento e sería un pracer.
Albiscou o branco do seu brazo, unha sólida brillantez que perseguiu –o seu corpo era o seu propio compás- ata que oíu, desde a beira, a voz do home co que supoñía que tiña que deitarse, viu o brillo intermitente do cigarro do home co que se supoñía que non debía deitarse (e xamais o fixo, por algunha razón; pode que o espantara por completo). A súa gran declaración viuse minguada un chisco, no baixío, polas beiras afiadas das rochas no limo baixo os seus pés mentres saía do lago, rumbo a recriminacións e sexo xélido.
Espertou sobresaltada a mañá seguinte, a consumación lixeiramente augacenta da noite anterior xa esquecida, desperdiciada. Ocorrera sen ela. Sentouse no bordo da cama e encheu de aire os pulmóns. Estaba viva. E introduciu esta realidade na súa mente. Empurrouna dereitamente ao centro da súa mente. Non podería volver a facelo. Tiña vinte e catro anos, e renunciaba á morte. Bébeda ou sobria, non habería máis lagos logo do anoitecer.
-Sabes, Ben? Non deberías xamais nadar pola noite –dicíalle agora, logo de máis de vinte anos, sentada no seu Hyundai híbrido. Acelerador, freo, espello, embrague.
-Que preferirías? -dixo Ben.
-En serio, tesme que prometer que non o farás xamais. Non nun lago, porque a auga dun lago non ten sal para manterte á tona, e sobre todo, non no mar. Debes respectar sempre o mar. É mais grande ca ti. Estasme escoitando? E endexamais debes nadar se consumiches alcohol, ou se os teus amigos o fixeron. Se cando sexas adolescente un amigo se bebe un par de cervexas, e che di, “Veña, vai ser divertido”, que lle dis?
-Que preferirías? -dixo Ben, con paciencia.
-Non, non preferiría. Non preferiría ningunha. Non preferiría morrer dun xeito ou doutro. Pero a ti que che pasa, Ben?
Atopábanse nunha rúa de casas semi-acaroadas acabadas de construír, deprimentes do pequenas que eran, e infinitamente iguais. Xardíns minúsculos: un cancereixo, unha cerdeira, un bidueiro branco, unha mimosa ornamental –un pompón horrible posto nun pau. Non sabía que estaba facendo neste lugar. Viña a pillala, mesmo aquí. Viña a pillar aos seus fillos –a súa propia estupidez; perseguíraa desde a auga. Aquel mergullo nocturno non foi o fin. Estivera presa pola morte durante un tempo despois daquilo –meses, un ano. Pois podías abandonar o lago, por suposto, mais non o desexo en si, e todas as súas imposibilidades.
Porén, algo se fixo posible. Algo se fixo real. Algo se resolveu coa existencia do neno no asento traseiro.
-Que preferirías -dixo Ben-, vivir dentro dun pavo ou que un pavo viva dentro de ti?
-O que?
-Que preferirías -repetiu de xeito sosegado – vivir dentro dun pavo ou que un pavo viva dentro de ti?
-Esa é unha pregunta moi boa –contestou ela.
-Que preferirías?
-Esa é francamente unha gran pregunta. A mellor ata agora – estricou o brazo para prender a radio do coche, coa esperanza de distraelo.
-É ese o lugar? - a aplicación díxolle que virara á dereita –E aí onde vive Ava?
-Non o sei.
-É a túa amiga.
-Non o é. Non é amiga miña. É simplemente moi pesada.
A súa man estaba pousada, coa anticipación, no bolso de viaxe que tiña xunto a el, mentres que ela viraba para entrar polas amplas cancelas abertas cara a nova urbanización.
-É aquí?
Lugar de Santa Clara, rúa de Santa Clara. O pequeno labirinto de rúas cegas estaba disposto arredor dun espazo verde aberto, e no centro atopábase un gran edificio de tres pisos.
A mesma Santa Clara.
Alí estaba. Durante todo ese tempo. Vivira durante unha década a menos de dez quilómetros de aquí e xamais se decatara de que se atopaba continuando por esta estrada, que recorría tan a miúdo de camiño a calquera outro lugar.
Un taxi trouxéraa aquí facía vinte anos, e daquela, todo era campo ao redor. Aterrorizábaa que o condutor soubese por mor da dirección que estaba tola, mais non o estaba realmente, só estaba fondamente crebada. Estaba certa de que o condutor se decataría de que había un ser humano desfeito no seu taxi, que se viraría no seu asento para mirala con desdén ao atravesar a cancela ou mentres recorrían a entrada ao longo de xardíns ben coidados, ata esa gran casa, ese centro.
Irmás de Santa Clara e Santa Inés. Sanatorio privado.
“As Esmirradas”, así o coñecían. O vertedoiro. Introducira a dirección no teléfono do seu fillo sen darlle máis importancia.
-Que preferirías? -dixo Ben.
Por iso recordara o lago.
Era estraño, observar o edificio desde fóra. Pasara o seu tempo alí nunha pequena habitación e vira o exterior apenas dúas veces: a primeira, dun xeito terxiversado, mentres subía polos chanzos, e poida que outra vez máis, cunha ollada cara atrás, cando seu pai veu recollela. Xamais pisara os xardíns, que estaban agora cheos de modernas vivendas intelixentes; é posible que non llo permitiran. Ou, máis ben, que non lle proporcionaran a vestimenta. Pasara moito tempo durmindo ou deitada sen moverse na súa cama de hospital. Si que recordaba estar de pé xunto a unha ventá -pode que incluso fose esa mesma ventá da terceira planta, onde o edificio se avultaba formando unha garita grosa e redonda. Sabía que na garita se atopaban unhas escaleiras desde cuxo cumio observara o exterior, como faría unha muller nun conto de fadas -mais non estaba nun conto de fadas, senón nunha brétema de somníferos, por non falar de toda a porcallada que tragaba obedientemente dúas veces ao día, preguntándose se volvería a cagar algunha vez. A ninguén parecía preocuparlle aquilo. Só lles preocupaban os teus sentimentos. Aínda que “preocupar” era quizais a palabra errónea. O que facían era observar os teus sentimentos.
-Madre –dixo Ben–unha palabra que só usaba cando estaba molesto de verdade. Esquecérase de responderlle “O que?”
-O que? -dixo.
-Preferirías vivir dentro dun pavo?
-É este o lugar? -preguntou no canto de responder- É aquí onde vive ela?
Detivera o coche no medio dunha rúa deserta. Un par de nenos, un deles un meniño, xogaban nos amplos chanzos de granito que levaban á porta da entrada do edificio que adoitaba ser As Esmirradas. Convertérano en apartamentos –probablemente custaban un ollo da cara. Víñanlle outros recordos mirando a fachada: unha especie de entrada, onde asinara a súa admisión no centro. Unha gran sala de estar para as monxas na que seu pai agardara por ela, sentado nunha cadeira de brazos recuberta de chintz, ata que a viu entrar pola porta, lista para voltar a casa. Era a habitación de altos teitos da esquerda, na cal a nai dos nenos apartou a cortina para comprobar que non se afastaban de máis.
Daquela había unha miserenta sala de lecer onde a xente ía fumar -preguntábase onde estaría. As mulleres crebadas das aforas, con mans trementes e batas fermosas, ían todas a vinte cigarros ao día,. Sentábanse nesa habitación fedorenta, en cadeiras recubertas de vinilo, e miraban os seus pulsos. Tiña curiosidade por saber quen viviría agora naquel espazo. Unha persoa ocupada e nova. Alguén que colocaba orquídeas na soleira dunha ventá que algunha vez fora tapada con cravos. Esta persoa non fumaba. Esta persoa saía dun fermoso apartamento privado a un corredor público no que a xente triste adoitaba andar dun lado a outro todos eses anos atrás. Chorando, sen chorar, calados, mirando de esguello ao teléfono de pago.
-É o número 74 -o ton de voz do seu fillo era de fondo desaire, e deuse conta de que non se movera, de que estaba bloqueada.
Decatouse de que o meniño e mais o rapaz estaban en realidade confinados polos chanzos. Quedáronse no cumio, empregando a superficie chá para pedalear nos seus triciclos. Non se achegaban á beira.
Pasárase os oito últimos anos da súa vida mirando pola seguridade de nenos pequenos.
O coche avanzaba mainamente mentres Ben lía en voz alta os números das vivendas que daban ao xardín: 67, 69, 71.
-Onde están os pares? -dixo ela, rodeando a parte de atrás do edificio, tan amodo que parecía que ían caer nunha trampa. Así é como percibira que era a súa vida, xusto antes de crebarse -todo estaba demasiado conectado. E estaba a ocorrer de novo: a viaxe inconsciente, as escollas sen xeito, a idea de que o seu fillo o sabía, claro que si, aínda se podía ulir nela a auga salobre do lago.
Achou a ventá da sala de lecer no segundo piso, e ela aínda estaba alí arriba, examinando os seus pulsos. Fumando sen parar, observando unha mancha na parede durante semanas. Ben, un descoñecido para ela. A súa filla, descoñecida. Non sucederan dentro do seu corpo, non naceran aínda.
-E aí! Setenta e catro, setenta e catro!
Detivo o coche, puxo o freo de man, e virouse no asento para mirar ao seu fillo, que estaba desabrochando o cinto de seguridade na parte traseira do coche. Ben levantou a vista para mirala, e era fermoso. Necesitaba peitearse, e había un brillo de algo baixo o seu nariz, pero era tan el mesmo. Mirouna por debaixo das súas longas pestanas, como se a coñecese desde fai moito, e ela xa non estaba dentro do edificio. Ela estaba aquí agora, no exterior, con el.
-Pórtate ben -dixo ela mentres que el agarraba o bolso de viaxe e saíu. Para ser un rapaz ao que non lle gustaban as nenas, ben que buliu para chegar á porta da casa de Ava.
-Recóllote mañá ás once.
Entón, deu media volta. Por un intre, pensou que quería darlle un bico de despedida, pero só viñera buscar o seu móbil. Deullo pola ventá, logo sacou a testa tamén, de broma.
-Mnnnnmm- dixo ela, engurrando os beizos. E el deulle un bico, abruptamente, antes de correr de novo cara a casa, en cuxo soportal estaba agora Ava esperando para recibilo. Unha fada rubia baixiña, cun corazón de abelorios na camiseta, brincando de ledicia ao velo.
O bico fora unha cousa zoupona. Carnosa. Breve. Había unha pinga de frío na súa meixela, que viña da punta do seu nariz.
-Ben! -berrou ela -Espera. Ben!
-Que?
-Preferiría que un pavo vivira dentro de min.
-Vale! -tomouse a súa resposta con bastante seriedade.
-Non hai comparación.
Non era máis que unha pregunta, pensou. E comprobou o espello retrovisor antes de arrincar.
She was driving Ben to a friend’s house, and this added journey was the cause of some irritation in her day; she had too much else to do. Though she did like the privacy of the car, the feeling of his voice coming over her shoulder as she checked the mirror and slowed to make a turn. He was up on the booster seat—Ben was small for eight—and he looked out the window at suburban streets and parked cars, while she used his mobile phone to map the route. She had it down by the gearshift, propped up on the gray plastic fascia. It was hard to read the little arrow through the disaster of Ben’s cracked screen—the thing was rarely out of his hand, unless he dropped it. Now he looked out on the real world as though mildly surprised it was there.“I don’t like Barry McIntyre,” he said.
“No? Why not?”
They had their best chats in the car. If they’d been at home, he would have said, “Dunno,” or “Just . . .” In the car, he said things like “I like boys, though. I do like boys.”
“Of course you do.”
She wondered why he couldn’t speak when they were face to face. What was it about her eyes on him that made him shrug and shift under his clothes?
“You are a boy.”
“I know that,” he said.
Of course, she was his mother, so when she looked at him she was always checking him over to adjust or admire. Though she tried not to. She really tried not to turn into the kind of woman who said, “Sit up straight,” or “Leave your hair alone.”
“Well, then.”
She glanced at the rearview mirror and saw only the side of his head. His coarse hair was darkening through the winter. In a year or two, it would be fully brown.
“I just hate basketball.”
“Do you?”
“I really do.”
Recently, he had used the word “gay” as an insult. “That’s so gay,” he’d said at dinner, and his little sister missed a beat.
“Of course you like basketball,” she said warmly. That lie.
He did not answer.
“Does Barry McIntyre play basketball?”
In the rearview mirror, she saw his hand move toward his hidden face.
“Leave your nose alone!” she said.
It was hard not to. They were so temporarily beautiful, her children. They were so perfect, and then they were not perfect. She loved them too much to let them be.
She drove on while he watched the Dublin suburbs: spring trees, semidetached houses, a bundled old citizen walking her dog. The phone app was taking her down a familiar street, though it was an unfamiliar route, one she would not have known to take herself. Ben’s friend was called Ava, and she was new. She lived in St. Clare Crescent, which was somewhere near the motorway, apparently. But they did not take the motorway; they took a network of small streets, some of which she had driven down before—this was the way to the garden center, that was the way to the dog groomer’s—without knowing that you could cross from one to the other if you turned at the right place.
“Would you rather?” Ben said, then he stopped.
If you did not let Ben know that you were listening, he would refuse to continue.
“What?” she said, finally.
And, now that he knew he had her full attention, he said, “Would you rather drink a cup of lava or be drowned in a lava lake?”
“Oh, Christ.”
“Would you rather?”
“Not this again.”
“Which?”
“You can’t drink lava.”
“Yes, you can.”
“In a cup?”
“A stone cup.”
“I’ll take the lake.”
“Would you rather fall off a roof or have a tree fall on your head?”
He was obsessed with choices, especially impossible ones.
“Neither. I would rather neither of those things happened to me.”
“Would you rather fall off a roof,” he insisted, “or have a tree fall on your head?”
Maybe he was obsessed with death itself. There was no getting out of it, one way or the other.
“Roof,” she said.
“O.K.”
“What about you?”
“Yeah, roof,” he admitted.
“Not your best,” she said.
He paused, took the challenge.
“Would you rather be stung to death by fire ants or strung up by your toes from a big crane until your head burst?”
“Lovely!”
He would keep going until she was completely stuck.
“Crane, please.”
“Would you rather drown in the dark or be strangled in the dark?”
He would keep going until she was actually dead.
“Seriously?”
“A huge dark lake full of eels.”
“Really not. Absolutely not. I would not rather.”
She was taken, as she drove, by the memory of a night swim, many years before Ben was born. It was in a lake, in the Irish countryside; a gang of them coming back from the pub, no moon, no sex, at a guess—not that morning, or the night before, when they were supposed to have their holiday-cottage sex—and she pulled her dress up over her head as she made her way, in the darkness, toward the lake. Of course there was a man in the group who was not, actually, the man she was seeing at the time; he was some other, forbidden man. And neither of these men would later become the father of the boy now sitting in the back seat. Getting naked in the deserted woodland in the middle of the night was a taunt to both of them—either one would do. It was all a long time ago.
The dress was a blue linen shift, loose and practical, her underwear possibly quite fancy and impractical in those days before booster seats and children with sleepovers and phones that told you which way to turn. Her body also a finer thing, back then, if only she had known it. And she was drunk, so the pathway down to the little boardwalk was patchily remembered, her experience at the time also patchy, though it slowed and cleared when she dropped her dress onto the still-warm wood and looked out over the water. There were turf grains in the silk of it that turned the lake brown, even in daylight. Now, at midnight, it was darker than you could imagine, so it was like a sixth sense, the feeling of open space in front of her. When she looked down, she saw the blackness gleam, like oil. She sat at the dock’s edge to unclip her fancy bra and shrugged it off. A man’s voice telling her to stop. Another man saying nothing. A woman’s voice, saying, “No, really, Michelle.” And she was in. She pushed out from the wooden lip as she dropped down into it, was swallowed in a bang of water that turned to a liquid silence, then she struggled back up to where the air began. Black water into black air.
As she rose and turned, she could feel the alcohol swell under the surface of her skin, and the water was not so much cold as numb. Or she was numb. The water slipped past her as she hauled her way through it, in a long, reaching overarm that took her away from everyone, even as she seemed to stay in the same place. She could tell by their voices that she was moving—the fragments of sound she caught as she plowed along the surface, out toward the center of the lake.
If it was the center. If it was even the surface she was swimming along. It was so dark and wet that it was hard to know if her eyes were closed or open. She was afraid that she was not quite level, as she swam, that she was tilting downward, afraid that when she turned her face up to inhale she would find only water. The shouts from the bank were more sporadic now; it was as though they had given up on her as she circled or tried to circle back toward them, because the scraps of sound gave her a sense of horizon and it was important not to lose this. She needed to know which way was up. She pulled the water along the sides of her body, and though she twisted into it as she went, she was not sure that she was making the turn. She should just stop a moment and get her bearings, but she could not stop; she did not want to. It was—this was the secret, sudden thing—so delicious. Not knowing which way was which, or where the edges were. She was dissolved by it. She could drown right now and it would be a pleasure.
She caught a flash of her white arm, a sinewy gleam that she followed—her body its own compass—until she heard, on the bank, the voice of the man she was supposed to sleep with, saw the intermittent cigarette glow of the man she was not supposed to sleep with (and never did, for some reason; perhaps she had him fully spooked). Her big statement was a little undercut, in the shallows, by the sharpness of the stones in the silt under her feet as she made her way up out of the lake, toward recrimination and cold-skinned sex.
She woke up the next morning with a start, the previous night’s slightly watery consummation already forgotten, wasted. It had happened without her. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled air into her lungs. She was alive. And she put this fact into her mind. Jammed it right in the center of her mind. She could never do that again. She was twenty-four years old, and she was giving up death. Drunk or sober, there would be no more lakes after dark.
“You know, Ben, you should never swim at night,” she said now, more than twenty years later, sitting in her Hyundai hybrid. Accelerator, brake, mirror, clutch.
“Would you rather?” Ben said.
“No, really, you have to promise me not to do that, ever. Not in a lake, because there is no salt in a lake to hold you up, and especially not in the sea. You must always respect the sea. It’s bigger than you. Do you hear me? And you must never, ever swim if you have taken alcohol, or even if your friends have. If a friend has had a couple of beers when you are a teen-ager and he says, ‘Come on, it’ll be fun!,’ what do you say?”
“Would you rather,” Ben said, patiently.
“No, I wouldn’t. I really would not rather. I would not rather die one way or the other way. What is your problem, Ben?”
They were in a street of newly built semidetached houses, depressingly small and endlessly the same. Tiny gardens: rowan tree, cherry tree, silver birch, ornamental willow—a horrible pompom on a stick. She did not know what she was doing in this place. It was coming to catch her, even here. It was coming to catch her children—her own foolishness; it had followed her out of the water. The night swim was not the end of it; she had been in thrall to death for some time afterward—months, a year. Because of course you could leave the lake but you could not leave desire itself, and all its impossibilities.
Though something was made possible. Something was made real. Something was resolved by the existence of the child in the back seat.
“Would you rather,” Ben said, “live in a turkey or have a turkey live inside you?”
“What?”
“Would you rather,” he repeated, in a forbearing way, “live in a turkey or have a turkey live inside you?”
“That is a very good question,” she said.
“Would you rather?”
“That is a truly great question. That is the best one yet.” She reached to the car radio and switched it on, hoping to distract him.
“Is that the place?” The app told her to take a right. “Is that where Ava lives?”
“I don’t know.”
“She’s your friend.”
“No, she’s not. She’s not my friend. She’s just really, really pushy.” His hand rested, in anticipation, on the overnight bag beside him as she took the turn through large, open gates into a new development.
“Is this it?”
St. Clare Close, St. Clare Court. The little maze was set around an open green space, and in the center of the green was a grand, three-story building.
St. Clare’s itself.
There it was. All this time. She had lived five miles away from here, for a decade, and had never realized it was down this road, one she passed every so often, on her way somewhere else.
She had been driven here in a taxi nearly twenty years ago, when all around were green fields. She was terrified that the driver would know from the address that she was mad, though she wasn’t properly mad; she was just quite badly broken. She was sure he would know that there was a broken human being in his cab, that he would turn to sneer at her as they went through the gates, or as they were going up the driveway past tended gardens, to this large house, this facility.
The Sisters of St. Clare and St. Agnes. Private Nursing Home.
“Scraggy Aggy’s,” as it used to be known. The bin. She had typed the address into her son’s phone and thought nothing of it.
“Would you rather?” Ben said.
So that was why she had remembered the lake.
It was very strange, looking at the building from the outside. She had spent her time there in a small room and had seen the exterior perhaps twice: first in a skewed way, as she walked up the steps, and possibly once again in a backward glance when her father came to collect her. She had never gone into the gardens, which were now filled with smart new houses; it was possible that she had not been allowed. Or, more likely, she had not been supplied with clothes. She had slept a lot, or lain unmoving in her hospital-style bed. She did remember standing at a window—perhaps it was even that window on the third floor, where the building bulged out into a fat, round turret. She knew that the turret contained a flight of stairs and that she had looked out from the top of it, as a woman in a fairy tale might—though she was not in a fairy tale, she was in a fog of Mogadon, not to mention all the other junk she swallowed obediently, twice a day, wondering if she would ever, ever shit again. Nobody seemed to care about that. They cared about your feelings instead. Though “cared” was perhaps the wrong word. They observed your feelings.
“Mother,” Ben said—a word he used only when truly annoyed. She had forgotten to say “What?”
“What?” she said.
“Would you rather live in a turkey?”
“Is this the place?” she said. “Is this where she lives?”
She had slowed to a stop in the middle of the deserted street. A pair of tiny children, one of them just a toddler, were playing on the flight of broad granite steps that led up to the front door of the building that used to be Scraggy Aggy’s. The place had been turned into apartments—they probably cost a bomb. Other things came back to her as she looked at the façade: A foyer of sorts, where she had signed in. A large living room for the nuns, where her father had stood up from a chintz armchair as she walked through the door, ready to go home. It was the high-ceilinged room on the left, where the children’s mother had pinned the curtain back, to see that they did not wander far.
There had been a godforsaken day room where people went to smoke—she wondered where that was. They were all on twenty cigarettes a day, the broken ladies of the suburbs, with their trembling hands and their pretty dressing gowns. They’d sat in this stinking room, with its vinyl-covered armchairs, and looked at their wrists. She wondered who lived in that space now. Someone busy and young. Someone who put orchids on the sill of a window that had once been nailed shut. This person did not smoke. This person walked out of a lovely private flat into the public corridor where the sad people used to pace, all those years ago. Weeping, not weeping, silent, eying the pay phone.
“It’s No. 74.” Her son’s tone was one of bottomless contempt, and she saw that she had not moved, was stalled.
The toddler and the young child were actually contained by the steps, she realized. They stayed at the top, and peddled their tricycle on the flat surface. They did not approach the edge.
She had spent the past eight years of her life checking on the safety of small children.
The car rolled gently forward as Ben read out the numbers on the houses that faced onto the green: 67, 69, 71.
“Where are the evens?” she said, as they circled slowly around the back of the building as though driving into a trap. This is how her life had felt, just before it broke—everything had been too connected. And now it was happening again: the unwitting journey, the unfunny choices, the idea that her son knew, of course he did, you could smell it on her still: the brackish water of the lake.
She spotted the window of the day room, up on the second floor, and she was still up there, checking her wrists. Smoking away. Staring for weeks at a patch on the wall. Ben unknown to her. Her daughter unknown. They had not happened inside her body; they had not been born.
“There it is! Seventy-four, seventy-four!”
She stopped the car, pulled the hand brake, and twisted in her seat to look at her son, who was undoing his seat belt in the back. Ben glanced up at her, and he was beautiful. His hair needed a comb, and there was a gleam of something under his nose, but he was so very much himself. He looked at her from under long lashes, as though he had known her for a long time, and she was not inside the building. She was here now, on the outside, with him.
“Be good,” she said, as he grabbed the overnight bag and was gone. For a boy who didn’t like girls, he was quick getting to Ava’s front door.
“I’ll pick you up at eleven tomorrow.”
He came doubling back then. She thought for a moment that he wanted to kiss her goodbye, but he was just looking for his phone. She handed it through the window, then stuck her face out after it, for mischief.
“Mnnnnmm,” she said, puckering up. And he did kiss her, abruptly, before running back to the house, where Ava was now standing on the porch to welcome him in. A little blond pixie, with a sequinned heart on her T-shirt, jigging up and down at the sight of him.
The kiss was a clumsy thing. Fleshy. Swift. There was a dot of cold on her cheek, from the tip of his nose.
“Ben!” she shouted. “Hang on. Ben!”
“What?”
“I would rather have the turkey live inside me.”
“O.K.!” He took her answer quite seriously.
“No contest.”
It was just a question, she thought. And she checked the rearview mirror before pulling out.
♦
Published in The New Yorker print edition of the March, 9 2020, issue.
Levaba a Ben á casa dunha amiga, e esta viaxe extra enfastioulle un pouco o día; tiña demasiadas cousas que facer. Mais si que lle gustaba a privacidade do coche, a sensación da voz de Ben aparecendo por encima do seu ombro mentres ela miraba polo espello, reducindo a velocidade para virar. Ía sentando nunha cadeira infantil –era baixo para un neno de oito anos –e observaba pola ventá as rúas residenciais mais os coches estacionados, mentres que ela empregaba o móbil de Ben para trazar a ruta. Levábao abaixo xunto ao cambio de marchas, apoiado na carcasa gris de plástico do cadro de mandos. Era difícil seguir a pequena frecha a través do desastre que era a pantalla esnaquizada de Ben –o chisme poucas veces estaba fóra das súas mans, agás cando lle caía. Agora ía mirando para o mundo real como se lle sorprendese lixeiramente que alí estivese.
-Non me gusta Barry McIntyre –dixo el.
-Non? Por que non?
As súas mellores conversas tíñanas no coche. Se estivesen na casa, el contestaría, “Eu que sei” ou “Pois porque non”. No coche, dicía cousas como “Gústanme os nenos, porén. Si que me gustan”
- Pois claro que si.
Preguntábase por que non era el capaz de falar cando estaban cara a cara. Que había nos seus ollos que o facía encollerse de ombros e retorcerse cando o miraba?
-Ti es un neno.
-Xa o sei –respondeu.
Era súa nai, polo que era de esperar que cando o miraba sempre o estaba examinando ben para endereitalo, ben para admiralo. Mais tentaba non facelo. Tentaba non volverse o tipo de muller que dicía “Ponte dereito”, ou “Deixa de tocarte o pelo”.
-Pois vale.
Mirou polo retrovisor e só viu o lateral da súa cabeza. O seu denso cabelo escurecía ao longo do inverno. Nun ou dous anos, sería totalmente castaño.
-É só que odio o baloncesto.
-Si?
-De veras que si.
Non facía moito empregara o termo “gay” como un insulto. Durante a cea dixera “Iso é tan gay”, deixando a súa irmá desconcertada un intre.
-Claro que che gusta o baloncesto –díxolle ela, con agarimo. Vaia mentira.
Ben non respondeu.
-Xoga Barry McIntyre ao baloncesto?
Polo retrovisor viu como a súa man se movía cara o seu rostro agochado.
-Deixa o nariz en paz! -díxolle ela.
Non era nada doado non facelo. Os seus nenos non serían así de fermosos máis que unha tempada. Eran tan perfectos, e logo xa non o eran. Queríaos demasiado para deixalos estar.
Seguiu conducindo mentres Ben observaba as aforas de Dublín: árbores primaverais, casas semi-acaroadas, unha anciá ben abrigada paseando o can. A aplicación do móbil levábaa por unha rúa que se lle facía familiar, pero non era un camiño que se lle fixese coñecido, non se lle ocorrería tomalo a ela soa. A amiga de Ben chamábase Ava, e era nova. Vivía nunha das rúas de Santa Clara, que estaba, ao parecer, nalgún lugar cerca da autopista. Pero non colleron a autopista, senón unha rede de pequenas rúas, algunha das cales xa recorrera antes – ese era o camiño para ir ao centro de xardinaría, aquel era o camiño para ir ao peiteador de cans –sen saber que podía cruzar dun a outro se viraba no sitio correcto.
-Que preferirías? -empezou a dicir Ben, logo detívose.
Se non lle facías saber a Ben que o estabas escoitando, negábase a seguir.
-O que? -contestou ela, ao fin.
Agora que sabía que lle estaba dedicando toda a súa atención, dixo: -Preferirías beber unha cunca de lava ou afogar nun lago de lava?
-Por Deus.
-Que preferirías?
-Outra vez non.
-Cal delas?
-Non é posible beber lava.
-Si que é.
-Nunha cunca?
-Unha cunca de pedra.
-Escollo o lago.
-Preferirías caer dun teito ou que unha árbore che caia na cabeza?
Obsesionábanlle as escollas, sobre todo aquelas que eran imposibles.
-Ningunha. Preferiría que non me pasara ningunha desas cousas.
-Preferirías caer dun teito –insistiu– ou que unha árbore che caia na cabeza?
Poida que estivese obsesionado coa morte mesma. Non tiña maneira algunha de saír desta.
-O teito -respondeu ela.
-Vale.
-E ti?
-O teito, si –admitiu.
-Esa non che foi das mellores –dixo ela.
Ben calou un intre, aceptando o desafío.
-Preferirías que unhas formigas vermellas te picasen ata matarte ou que te colguen pola punta dos pés desde unha enorme grúa ata que che estoupe a testa?
-Encantador!
Ben ía seguir ata que estivese totalmente atrancada.
-A grúa, por favor.
-Preferirías afogar ás escuras, ou que te esganen ás escuras?
Non o ía deixar ata que estivese morta de verdade.
-En serio?
-Nun enorme lago cheo de anguías.
-Para nada. En absoluto. Non o preferiría.
Absorbeuna, mentres conducía, o recordo dun mergullo de noite, moitos anos antes de que Ben nacera. Fora nun lago, no agro irlandés, un grupo deles volvía do pub, unha noite sen lúa, e sen sexo, ou iso supoñía –nin aquela mañá, nin a noite anterior, cando se supoñía que debían estar aproveitando a cabana de vacacións para manter relacións –e ela sacárase o vestido pola cabeza, camiñando, ás escuras, cara o lago. Por suposto que había un home naquel grupo que non era, de feito, o home co que estaba saíndo entón; era outro home, un que lle estaba prohibido. E ningún destes homes chegaría a ser máis tarde o pai do rapaz sentado no asento traseiro. Espirse no bosque ermo, no medio da noite, era unha provocación cara ambos –calquera dos dous valía. Todo isto acontecera había moito tempo.
Levaba un vestido camiseiro azul de liño, frouxo e funcional, e a súa roupa interior, polo contrario, poida que fora dabondo elegante e pouco práctica neses tempos previos a cadeiras infantís, e fillos con festas de pixamas, e móbiles que che dicían en que dirección tiñas que virar. O seu corpo era entón máis fino tamén, oxalá o soubera naquel momento. Ademais estaba bébeda, e lembraba en anacos o camiño abaixo cara o peirao, en anacos, como era a súa experiencia daquela, mais os seus recordos acougáronse e esclarecéronse cando deixou caer o vestido sobre a madeira aínda morna e ollou a auga. Había terróns de turba que tornaban a sedosa aparencia do lago de cor marrón, incluso na luz do día. Agora, á medianoite, estaba máis escuro do que un se podería imaxinar, polo que a sensación de espazo aberto en fronte dela semellaba máis ben un sexto sentido. Cando miraba cara abaixo, vía o brillo da escuridade, como o aceite. Sentouse no eixe do peirao para desabotoar o luxoso suxeitador e deixouno caer. A voz dun home dicíndolle que parase. Outro home que non dicía nada. A voz dunha muller, dicindo, “Non, Michelle, en serio”. Entón, estaba dentro. Empuxouse contra o borde de madeira para afondarse no lago, e foi engulida nun estalido de auga que se tornou nun silencio líquido, logo volveu, con moito esforzo, a onde o aire comezaba. Da auga negra ao aire negro.
Ao emerxer, puido sentir o alcohol subir baixo a superficie da súa pel, e a auga, máis que estar fría, entalaba. Ou era ela a que estaba entalada. A auga deslizábase polo seus costados mentres ela tentaba abrir camiño a través cunha boa brazada que a levou lonxe dos demais, mais parecía que seguía no mesmo sitio. Podía colixir polas voces dos demais que se estaba movendo -anacos de son que pillaba mentres sucaba ao longo da superficie, afastándose cara ao centro do lago.
Se iso era o centro. Se estaba sequera nadando ao longo da superficie. Estaba tan escuro e húmido que era difícil saber se os seus ollos estaban pechados ou abertos. Tiña medo de non estar a rentes mentres nadaba, de estarse somerxendo, tiña medo de levantar a cabeza para aspirar e só atopar auga. Os berros desde a beira eran agora máis esporádicos; come se se estivesen rendendo mentres ela tornaba, ou tentaba tornar xunto a eles, xa que eses fragmentos de son dábanlle unha noción do horizonte e era importante non perderlle a pista. Necesitaba atopar o camiño á superficie. Empurraba a auga ao longo dos laterais do seu corpo, e aínda que se retorcía conforme avanzaba, non estaba certa de estar virando. Debería deterse só un intre e centrarse, pero non podía deterse, non quería. Era –isto era o secreto e inesperado- delicioso. Descoñecía cal era o rumbo que debía coller, ou onde se atopaban as beiras. Sentíase desbordada. Podería afogar naquel mesmo momento e sería un pracer.
Albiscou o branco do seu brazo, unha sólida brillantez que perseguiu –o seu corpo era o seu propio compás- ata que oíu, desde a beira, a voz do home co que supoñía que tiña que deitarse, viu o brillo intermitente do cigarro do home co que se supoñía que non debía deitarse (e xamais o fixo, por algunha razón; pode que o espantara por completo). A súa gran declaración viuse minguada un chisco, no baixío, polas beiras afiadas das rochas no limo baixo os seus pés mentres saía do lago, rumbo a recriminacións e sexo xélido.
Espertou sobresaltada a mañá seguinte, a consumación lixeiramente augacenta da noite anterior xa esquecida, desperdiciada. Ocorrera sen ela. Sentouse no bordo da cama e encheu de aire os pulmóns. Estaba viva. E introduciu esta realidade na súa mente. Empurrouna dereitamente ao centro da súa mente. Non podería volver a facelo. Tiña vinte e catro anos, e renunciaba á morte. Bébeda ou sobria, non habería máis lagos logo do anoitecer.
-Sabes, Ben? Non deberías xamais nadar pola noite –dicíalle agora, logo de máis de vinte anos, sentada no seu Hyundai híbrido. Acelerador, freo, espello, embrague.
-Que preferirías? -dixo Ben.
-En serio, tesme que prometer que non o farás xamais. Non nun lago, porque a auga dun lago non ten sal para manterte á tona, e sobre todo, non no mar. Debes respectar sempre o mar. É mais grande ca ti. Estasme escoitando? E endexamais debes nadar se consumiches alcohol, ou se os teus amigos o fixeron. Se cando sexas adolescente un amigo se bebe un par de cervexas, e che di, “Veña, vai ser divertido”, que lle dis?
-Que preferirías? -dixo Ben, con paciencia.
-Non, non preferiría. Non preferiría ningunha. Non preferiría morrer dun xeito ou doutro. Pero a ti que che pasa, Ben?
Atopábanse nunha rúa de casas semi-acaroadas acabadas de construír, deprimentes do pequenas que eran, e infinitamente iguais. Xardíns minúsculos: un cancereixo, unha cerdeira, un bidueiro branco, unha mimosa ornamental –un pompón horrible posto nun pau. Non sabía que estaba facendo neste lugar. Viña a pillala, mesmo aquí. Viña a pillar aos seus fillos –a súa propia estupidez; perseguíraa desde a auga. Aquel mergullo nocturno non foi o fin. Estivera presa pola morte durante un tempo despois daquilo –meses, un ano. Pois podías abandonar o lago, por suposto, mais non o desexo en si, e todas as súas imposibilidades.
Porén, algo se fixo posible. Algo se fixo real. Algo se resolveu coa existencia do neno no asento traseiro.
-Que preferirías -dixo Ben-, vivir dentro dun pavo ou que un pavo viva dentro de ti?
-O que?
-Que preferirías -repetiu de xeito sosegado – vivir dentro dun pavo ou que un pavo viva dentro de ti?
-Esa é unha pregunta moi boa –contestou ela.
-Que preferirías?
-Esa é francamente unha gran pregunta. A mellor ata agora – estricou o brazo para prender a radio do coche, coa esperanza de distraelo.
-É ese o lugar? - a aplicación díxolle que virara á dereita –E aí onde vive Ava?
-Non o sei.
-É a túa amiga.
-Non o é. Non é amiga miña. É simplemente moi pesada.
A súa man estaba pousada, coa anticipación, no bolso de viaxe que tiña xunto a el, mentres que ela viraba para entrar polas amplas cancelas abertas cara a nova urbanización.
-É aquí?
Lugar de Santa Clara, rúa de Santa Clara. O pequeno labirinto de rúas cegas estaba disposto arredor dun espazo verde aberto, e no centro atopábase un gran edificio de tres pisos.
A mesma Santa Clara.
Alí estaba. Durante todo ese tempo. Vivira durante unha década a menos de dez quilómetros de aquí e xamais se decatara de que se atopaba continuando por esta estrada, que recorría tan a miúdo de camiño a calquera outro lugar.
Un taxi trouxéraa aquí facía vinte anos, e daquela, todo era campo ao redor. Aterrorizábaa que o condutor soubese por mor da dirección que estaba tola, mais non o estaba realmente, só estaba fondamente crebada. Estaba certa de que o condutor se decataría de que había un ser humano desfeito no seu taxi, que se viraría no seu asento para mirala con desdén ao atravesar a cancela ou mentres recorrían a entrada ao longo de xardíns ben coidados, ata esa gran casa, ese centro.
Irmás de Santa Clara e Santa Inés. Sanatorio privado.
“As Esmirradas”, así o coñecían. O vertedoiro. Introducira a dirección no teléfono do seu fillo sen darlle máis importancia.
-Que preferirías? -dixo Ben.
Por iso recordara o lago.
Era estraño, observar o edificio desde fóra. Pasara o seu tempo alí nunha pequena habitación e vira o exterior apenas dúas veces: a primeira, dun xeito terxiversado, mentres subía polos chanzos, e poida que outra vez máis, cunha ollada cara atrás, cando seu pai veu recollela. Xamais pisara os xardíns, que estaban agora cheos de modernas vivendas intelixentes; é posible que non llo permitiran. Ou, máis ben, que non lle proporcionaran a vestimenta. Pasara moito tempo durmindo ou deitada sen moverse na súa cama de hospital. Si que recordaba estar de pé xunto a unha ventá -pode que incluso fose esa mesma ventá da terceira planta, onde o edificio se avultaba formando unha garita grosa e redonda. Sabía que na garita se atopaban unhas escaleiras desde cuxo cumio observara o exterior, como faría unha muller nun conto de fadas -mais non estaba nun conto de fadas, senón nunha brétema de somníferos, por non falar de toda a porcallada que tragaba obedientemente dúas veces ao día, preguntándose se volvería a cagar algunha vez. A ninguén parecía preocuparlle aquilo. Só lles preocupaban os teus sentimentos. Aínda que “preocupar” era quizais a palabra errónea. O que facían era observar os teus sentimentos.
-Madre –dixo Ben–unha palabra que só usaba cando estaba molesto de verdade. Esquecérase de responderlle “O que?”
-O que? -dixo.
-Preferirías vivir dentro dun pavo?
-É este o lugar? -preguntou no canto de responder- É aquí onde vive ela?
Detivera o coche no medio dunha rúa deserta. Un par de nenos, un deles un meniño, xogaban nos amplos chanzos de granito que levaban á porta da entrada do edificio que adoitaba ser As Esmirradas. Convertérano en apartamentos –probablemente custaban un ollo da cara. Víñanlle outros recordos mirando a fachada: unha especie de entrada, onde asinara a súa admisión no centro. Unha gran sala de estar para as monxas na que seu pai agardara por ela, sentado nunha cadeira de brazos recuberta de chintz, ata que a viu entrar pola porta, lista para voltar a casa. Era a habitación de altos teitos da esquerda, na cal a nai dos nenos apartou a cortina para comprobar que non se afastaban de máis.
Daquela había unha miserenta sala de lecer onde a xente ía fumar -preguntábase onde estaría. As mulleres crebadas das aforas, con mans trementes e batas fermosas, ían todas a vinte cigarros ao día,. Sentábanse nesa habitación fedorenta, en cadeiras recubertas de vinilo, e miraban os seus pulsos. Tiña curiosidade por saber quen viviría agora naquel espazo. Unha persoa ocupada e nova. Alguén que colocaba orquídeas na soleira dunha ventá que algunha vez fora tapada con cravos. Esta persoa non fumaba. Esta persoa saía dun fermoso apartamento privado a un corredor público no que a xente triste adoitaba andar dun lado a outro todos eses anos atrás. Chorando, sen chorar, calados, mirando de esguello ao teléfono de pago.
-É o número 74 -o ton de voz do seu fillo era de fondo desaire, e deuse conta de que non se movera, de que estaba bloqueada.
Decatouse de que o meniño e mais o rapaz estaban en realidade confinados polos chanzos. Quedáronse no cumio, empregando a superficie chá para pedalear nos seus triciclos. Non se achegaban á beira.
Pasárase os oito últimos anos da súa vida mirando pola seguridade de nenos pequenos.
O coche avanzaba mainamente mentres Ben lía en voz alta os números das vivendas que daban ao xardín: 67, 69, 71.
-Onde están os pares? -dixo ela, rodeando a parte de atrás do edificio, tan amodo que parecía que ían caer nunha trampa. Así é como percibira que era a súa vida, xusto antes de crebarse -todo estaba demasiado conectado. E estaba a ocorrer de novo: a viaxe inconsciente, as escollas sen xeito, a idea de que o seu fillo o sabía, claro que si, aínda se podía ulir nela a auga salobre do lago.
Achou a ventá da sala de lecer no segundo piso, e ela aínda estaba alí arriba, examinando os seus pulsos. Fumando sen parar, observando unha mancha na parede durante semanas. Ben, un descoñecido para ela. A súa filla, descoñecida. Non sucederan dentro do seu corpo, non naceran aínda.
-E aí! Setenta e catro, setenta e catro!
Detivo o coche, puxo o freo de man, e virouse no asento para mirar ao seu fillo, que estaba desabrochando o cinto de seguridade na parte traseira do coche. Ben levantou a vista para mirala, e era fermoso. Necesitaba peitearse, e había un brillo de algo baixo o seu nariz, pero era tan el mesmo. Mirouna por debaixo das súas longas pestanas, como se a coñecese desde fai moito, e ela xa non estaba dentro do edificio. Ela estaba aquí agora, no exterior, con el.
-Pórtate ben -dixo ela mentres que el agarraba o bolso de viaxe e saíu. Para ser un rapaz ao que non lle gustaban as nenas, ben que buliu para chegar á porta da casa de Ava.
-Recóllote mañá ás once.
Entón, deu media volta. Por un intre, pensou que quería darlle un bico de despedida, pero só viñera buscar o seu móbil. Deullo pola ventá, logo sacou a testa tamén, de broma.
-Mnnnnmm- dixo ela, engurrando os beizos. E el deulle un bico, abruptamente, antes de correr de novo cara a casa, en cuxo soportal estaba agora Ava esperando para recibilo. Unha fada rubia baixiña, cun corazón de abelorios na camiseta, brincando de ledicia ao velo.
O bico fora unha cousa zoupona. Carnosa. Breve. Había unha pinga de frío na súa meixela, que viña da punta do seu nariz.
-Ben! -berrou ela -Espera. Ben!
-Que?
-Preferiría que un pavo vivira dentro de min.
-Vale! -tomouse a súa resposta con bastante seriedade.
-Non hai comparación.
Non era máis que unha pregunta, pensou. E comprobou o espello retrovisor antes de arrincar.
Translation commentary
María Olalla Santos Barral
At a first glance, Enright’s “Night Swim” is about a woman and her son driving in a car and having a most innocuous conversation about school classmates and death preferences. Soon, an old memory from Michelle, the protagonist, is triggered and we become witnesses of a moment from her past, her previous life without children.
There are certain instances in which translation techniques (such as transposition, modulation or adaptation) were used to facilitate the reading of the story if a literal translation was not natural to the Galician language. For instance: “Ben was small for eight” was translated into “Ben era baixo para un neno de oito anos” (“Ben was small for an eight-year old boy”). In some cases, the meaning suffers minor changes, as in “cold-skinned sex” which, translated into “sexo xélido” (“cold sex”), is somewhat ambiguous in comparison with the original one.
One of the hardships was translating terms pertaining to the vocabulary of urbanism. For instance, for “St. Clare Close, St. Clare Court” it was not possible to find two words that could mean ‘street with no exit’, so a decision was made to translate it using generic terms for small nucleus of population, “lugar” and “rúa”, meaning “place” and “street”. To convey the meaning of ‘cul-de-sac’ streets, a short description was added to compensate in the sentence that followed, “The little maze was set around […]”. Therefore, the sentence was translated as “O pequeno labirinto de rúas cegas”, which would mean “The little maze of dead end streets”.
Another problem found was the translation of the word play “Scraggy Aggy’s”, and the inability to find an adequate word play in Galician with “Santa Inés” (“St. Agnes”). Therefore I translated the adjective “scraggy” and it was substantivized by adding the feminine plural article “as” (“as Esmirradas”) which could be translated as “the scraggy ones”.
There are a few cases in which the original reference had to be adapted so that it would make sense for a Galician reader. There was a conversion from the imperial system to the metric one, turning the miles into kilometres. “5 miles” (8.09 kilometres) was translated as “menos de dez quilómetros” (“less than 10 kilometres”), which emphasizes, as well, how short of a distance the nursing home was from the protagonist. Another modification made from the original text to the target language was in “fog of Mogadon”: I used the general term “sleeping pills” (“somníferos”), as “Mogadon” would be unintelligible for Galician readers, and I decided against using a brand of sleeping pills that could be more familiar for the reader for this very reason.
There is a particular instance in the translation of “Night Swim” which was a struggle, as it was difficult to find a proper equivalent in Galician that would sound natural to a Galician speaker; it is the case of “mother” in the sentence: “‘–Mother’, Ben said –a word he used only when truly annoyed […]”. The literal translation of “mother” in Galician would be “nai”, but the term could sound strange if used to refer to one’s mother directly. As a result, two options were considered: the first one was to translate “mother” as “mamá” which is the most common term used to call one’s mother, but it would be missing the “annoyed” tone intended. The second option, and the one chosen, was to translate it as “madre”, which is rarely used in Galicia, mostly as a sign of respect to elder mothers, and it entails a certain degree of formality. The term “madre” is not used regularly and especially not by younger generations to call one’s mom, and only used in a case similar to Ben’s. Both “mother” and “madre” sound odd when spoken by an 8-year-old boy. Furthermore, “madre” is in italics to emphasize the tone that the original sentence intends to convey.
In the case of “chintz”, there is no translation available in Galician. However, the Real Academia Galega1 (RAG) offers a few possible solutions; following the example of the Catalan language, the RAG, in the first place, suggests adapting the original term to “xintz”. The alternative is to use the original “chintz” in italics, which is the option chosen. Since “xintz” does not appear in any Galician dictionary, the reader might be more familiarised with the original writing of the word.
References
1Real Academia Galega (@academiagalega). “Non hai ningunha proposta formal da comisión de lexicografía da RAG para adaptar este estranxeirismo…” Twitter, April 2, 2020, 8:03. https://twitter.com/AcademiaGalega/status/1245607854003765249