The Sound of Things Falling Read Online Free PDF Page B

learned by heart a long time ago, not complicity, it’s something way beyond that, Antonio. More than once it happened to me as a little girl, in Mexico or in Chile, more than once. At a meal, with guests they didn’t like much but invited anyway, or in the street when they met someone who said stupid things, suddenly I could fast forward five seconds and think: here comes the look , and sure enough, five seconds later their eyebrows moved, their eyes met, and I’d see on their faces that smile that no one else saw and that they used to make fun of people the way I’ve never seen anyone else make fun of other people. How do you smile without people seeing you smile? They could, Antonio, I swear I’m not exaggerating, I grew up with those smiles. Why did it bother me so much? It still bothers me. Why so much?’
    There wasn’t sadness in her words, but irritation or rather anger, the anger of someone who has suffered a deceit through inattention or neglect, yes, that was it, the anger of someone who’s been led up the garden path. ‘I’ve been remembering something,’ she said then. ‘I would have been about fourteen or fifteen, and we were just about to leave Mexico. It was a Friday, a school day, and I decided to go along with some friends who weren’t really in the mood for geography or mathematics. We were walking across a park, it was San Lorenzo Park, but that doesn’t matter. And then I saw a man who looked a lot like my dad, but in a car that wasn’t my dad’s. He stopped at the corner, looking down the avenue, and then a woman got into the car who looked a lot like my mother, but dressed in clothes that my mother wouldn’t wear and with red hair, which my mother didn’t have. That happened on the far side of the park, their only option was to turn the car around very slowly and drive right past us. I don’t know what I was thinking when I signalled for them to stop, but the resemblance was too striking. So they stopped, me on the pavement and the car on the street, and up close I realized immediately that it was them, it was my parents. And I smiled at them, asked them what was going on, and that’s when the fear started: they looked at me and spoke to me as if they didn’t know me, as if they’d never seen me before. As if I was one of my friends. I later understood they were playing. A husband who picks up a pricey hooker on the street. They were playing and they couldn’t let me ruin the game. And that night, everything was normal: we had dinner as a family, watched television, everything. They didn’t say anything. And I spent a few days wondering what had happened, wondering without understanding and feeling something I’d never felt, feeling afraid, but afraid of what, isn’t it absurd?’ She took a gulp of air (her lips pressed against her teeth) and whispered, ‘And now I’m going to have a child. And I don’t know if I’m ready, Antonio. I don’t know if I’m ready.’
    ‘I think you are,’ I told her.
    Mine was also a whisper, as far as I remember. And then came another: ‘Bring everything,’ I told her. ‘We’re ready.’ In reply, Aura began to weep with a silent but sustained crying that only ended when she fell asleep.
    The end of 1995 was typical of that time of year for Bogotá, with that intense blue sky of the Andean highlands, with those early mornings when the temperature goes down to zero and the dry air ruins the potato or cauliflower crops, and then the rest of the day is sunny and warm and the light is so clear that you end up with sunburn on your cheeks and the nape of your neck. I devoted that time to Aura with the constancy – no: the obsession – of a teenager. We spent the days walking at the doctor’s recommendation and taking naps (her), reading deplorable research projects (me) or watching pirated films several days before they premiered in the meagre Bogotá listings (both of us). At night Aura accompanied me to novenas at the homes of my