Panic Signs

23. Desertion

For many years I lived inside a bottle. As soon as I forced the doors of my mother’s womb with some difficulty, she put me there to preserve me better . Every other day she would freshen the water in the jar so that I lived in perfectly hygienic conditions. I got used to seeing the world from the bottle, through glass. The appearance of things became inoffensive, presences became blurry, colours acquired more importance, but I was also indifferent to the heat and cold of objects. Even so, I was in danger of dying many times because of the cat. He used to appear unexpectedly on the left side or on the right, and through the jar’s thick glass, his legs, crouched down in ambush, looked like enormous marble columns. He sniffed me from behind the glass, and sometimes he scratched its surface, wanting to catch me. “Strange animal this one,” he would think, while looking at me. As soon as I saw him up close, I became agitated inside the bottle, full of anguish and fear. The cat’s bright eyes were stalking me, vigilant of all my movements. My mother almost always appeared at the right moment, frightening and shooing him away from me; then she would turn toward my water and comfort me sweetly. She used to take the glass between her hands (I was like a fish then) and she would walk me through the house, to make me forget the fear, moving me from the table to the credenza, from the living room to the bedroom, from the library to the armchair. I didn’t like to be by the flowers, because their perfume contaminated the water. The white lilies were especially overwhelming. And the jasmines. Sometimes she would let one tear drop inside the jar, disturbing the surface of the water in which I moved about, carried away by I don’t know what sadness. The tear slid, took different orbits, and finally mixed with the water in the jar. That moment was especially emotive for me, when, trembling, she would let one of her extremely pure tears fall from her sky-blue and —— 26 —— 16 slightly evasive eyes, and it would pass through the surface, the lake of glass water, and it would reach me, and I would take hours to drink it, full of unction and devotion. I don’t know why my mother would cry. Perhaps it was because of my father, explorer of far away planets, gone on cosmic voyages, leaving her in the greatest poverty, or because of my older dead brother (the cat devoured him while he was in the cradle), because of some sick neighbour, or because of the light, or because of the broken mirror that reflected only one side of her face. She would cry for this or for that, and while I swam I liked to pursue her scar, that small proof of her crying, the tear cutting through the bottle’s water. When I managed to catch it, I felt very proud and went around with it under my arm, through the bottled sea, happy, like a diver with his pearl; afterwards I would slowly drink from this gourd-like vessel of pleasure. I would drink it from the outermost part inwards, consuming it with delight. It was an intense and very heavy tear. After drinking it I was satiated and satisfied. Now that I have come out of the jar and my mother has gotten into it, nobody cries anymore. For years I haven’t had a tear from my mother. (Put an advertisement in the newspaper). —— 27 —— When I was mature enough to abandon the glass jar, my mother got into it. She had been tired of living for some time and envied me a little every time she saw me carefree, swimming around the glass. I was already grown up enough and she was old. “Son,” I read in her eyes many times, “I’m so tired. It’s time to retire from this world; I’d like something more tranquil, my eyes are tired of looking and looking, and my ears are tired of hearing of penury and punishment. If I could find a resting place...” and I know that she looked at my bottle with envy. You probably can’t believe that a mother could feel envy for her children. In your world, frightfully...