Recurring Dream Solange Rodríguez Pappe
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, Issue 87, Vol. 46, No. 2, 2013, 258–260 Recurring Dream Solange Rodríguez Pappe Translated by Margaret B. Carson Solange Rodríguez Pappe (Guayaquil, Ecuador, 1976) specializes in the genre of the fantastic and bizarre. She is also a reporter, cultural activist, and director of a creative writing workshop. She has published four short- story collections, as well as an anthology of Ecuadorian short short fiction: Tinta Sangre (2000), Dracofilia (2005), El lugar de las apariciones (2007), Balas perdidas (2010), and Ciudad mínima (2012). Margaret B. Carson translates fiction, poetry, and drama from Latin America. Her most recent translation is My Two Worlds by Sergio Chejfec. I have a recurring dream of Rubén, we run into each other every day at work but have so little down time that we can hardly wave at each other or hint at a smile as we scan innumerable reports or make calls to pitch services no one is interested in. When there’s too much work I bring it home to finish at night because the quiet lets me concentrate better, though sometimes to make the house feel less empty I turn on the TV in Downloaded by [New York University] at 11:33 26 November 2013 the living room and the radio in the kitchen; and I imagine that a mother or brother or husband will turn it off before going to bed, and with that idea soothing me I doze in front of the computer, typing with my eyes closed, my head to the side, dreaming of Rubén as a soundtrack of detergent commercials or the sobbing voice of someone who can’t find a missing relative plays in the background. And I have another recurring dream: I’m in a much bigger home than the one I live in, there are many rooms and a bunch of keys for all the doors, but only one is the key to exit reality. In my dreamlike search I do nothing but try every lock with every key, sometimes one or another goes into the hole, but it’s no use, it never turns. When I have that dream I wake up with an icy lump in my throat and barefoot I head to the door Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas ISSN 0890-5762 print/ISSN 1743-0666 online # 2013 Solange Rodríguez Pappe. Translation # 2013 Americas Society, Inc. http://www.tandfonline.com http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08905762.2013.840174 Recurring Dream 259 that leads to the garden and ponder it: it can’t be opened from the inside because one of the many tenants this place has had lost the key; I know what’s on the other side because I pass by its flowering plants and its compass rose every day. There’s no mystery, it’s an open question I try to solve creatively, and when I’m not dreaming about Rubén, the game of the doors is the movie my unconscious prefers. Everything was going along as usual, until one day Rubén arrived, pale as a sheet of photocopy paper, and instead of sitting down in his chair, as always, to get to work, he started looking at the big clock that radiates its mechanical time like a sun god. “I feel empty,” he said, and the supervisor suggested that he eat some breakfast. “With these crazy hours you don’t have time to even gulp down a coffee,” he added, concerned. He searched around and only I was paying attention; the others were already busy at work, pounding away at their keyboards. “Hey you, Felicia?” I looked right and left; he was talking to me. “Alicia,” I corrected him. “Alicia, take this kid for a bite to eat and bring him back when he feels better.” And so we escaped. I helped him into my car and we crossed the city like an arrow until we reached my place. While parking at the foot of the garden door, I turned around to look at it from the outside, as always. Next to the wall facing the street, two yellow birds pecked voraciously in the grass. Rubén hadn’t opened his mouth for the entire trip, he didn’t do anything. He made no polite remarks and said nothing about the mess in the living room, about the pile of shoes and clothes I take off as soon as I get home from work, the skirts and blouses I’d tossed on the furniture that needed to be cleared before we could sit down. I made some tea, but he turned it down. He was a silent mass with purplish-blue lips and only moved his eyes now and then. “What’s wrong, Rubén?” We couldn’t start by chatting about the weather or anything else; his health was such an obvious subject. “I have a recurring dream,” he said with a thread of a voice. “Well, two of them. In one, I’m always with you, and in the other I’m dead. I die all of a sudden, I spend the night dead and I wake up dead, I go to work dead, and then I go home, I drink a beer, I go to a bar, a woman seduces Downloaded by [New York University] at 11:33 26 November 2013 me, I fuck her, then it turns out I want her as my wife and we have kids, but for the whole time, I’m dead, completely dead and no one dares to say a single word about it to me. Their indifference makes me suffer. Well, as much as a dead person can suffer …” Suddenly we felt the atmosphere in the room change, a hardly perceptible buzz like when an appliance is turned on and you can feel it from the other side of the room. “Don’t worry, Rubén,” I said holding his icy palm in solidarity. “I realized it as soon as I saw you. You’re dead.” His eyes became shiny and brimmed with a liquid that might have been tears or some secret fluid corpses have to express themselves in case of emergency. 260 Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas “Thanks!” There was such happiness and peace in his voice. And to repay the favor, he turned his wrist, as if doing a magic trick, and made a small copper key appear. I recognized it immediately; it was the key to the garden door, from the inside. We both looked at each other and smiled: his mouth stiff, me blushing. After a sudden premonition I had just enough time to grab a scarf and stuff a change of clean underwear into a bag. “Let’s go,” I invited him. “Don’t you want to see what’s on the other side?” “I’m sorry, Alicia. My family would be very annoyed if I didn’t let them bury me.” The key entered the lock and turned with a rusty click, as if it were turning all the locks in the universe. Rubén lay back, crushing my clothes, his arms and legs now somewhat stiff, his skin turning blue and his eyes larger than I remembered; he had taken off his glasses to see me better after seeming to recall he was farsighted, not nearsighted. We smiled at each other one last time before parting. That hint of a smile we learned in the office once we realized we were so close and so different from the rest. And before he could decompose in an excess of emotion, I turned the lock and crossed over. Downloaded by [New York University] at 11:33 26 November 2013.