The Plimsoll Line Read Free Page A

a fragment of his last dream, of which all he can remember is a stranger’s smile and the pleasant impression of having flown over the valley. The crack in the wall regains its mute, insignificant appearance, as does the glass of water, the thirty pills of different sizes and colors, selected, one by one, from among barbiturates, sedatives, and sleeping pills, the alarm clock under the extinguished lamp on the bedside table . . . Suddenly, these objects seem to adapt to a closer world, within hand’s reach.

    He could repeat the same words, even parodying the severe, pedagogical tone his wife had used to tell him she was leaving him—“I’ve thought about it, I’ve considered it at great length, and now I know it without a shadow of a doubt. I want to end this. I want to go. We’re finished . . . we were finished a long time ago. You do realize, don’t you? It’s the best thing for both of us. And Laura would agree. Laura wouldn’t be happy seeing us like this.” While he doesn’t remember his answer, he does remember the first impression caused by these words uttered without drama in a restrained tone that could only be the result of practice and, therefore, of a well-planned strategy—a soft but heavy blow in the pit of his stomach that sometimes, when he awakes, like now, he recalls for no reason. That’s when the succubus of his bad dreams seems to prolong its habitual presence and remain seated on his chest, fully awake still, and watch him, leaning forward with the old smile of a Gothic creature, the expression of an elderly child that may just as easily dissolve into hysterical laughter as pull faces like a circus monkey or adopt poses indicating sadness, self-pity, or obscene grimaces of pleasure. The man twists his body, stretches out his pained arm, and the mattress springs creak again beneath the weight of his hip. With the heavy flight of an ugly bird, the succubus flaps over to the bedhead. It may stay there for the rest of the day, or only until the man leaves the room. It sometimes alights on his shoulder and accompanies him in his daily tasks, like a parrot, in order to murmur abject nonsense and interject confessions that acquire the tone of a short prayer or a litany of insults. Other times, it contents itself with offering fragments of memories, images, and words that appear to have been selected with the sole aim of adding anxiety to his rumination of pointless matters, the private clichés he will come back to later, repeatedly analyzing their limited meaning, like someone rolling a pebble around in their hand. The succubus may spend the day under the bed, dozing among the fluff and dust, or behind the wardrobe, or under the sofa, but the man knows that come evening, it will still be in the bedroom, breathing noiselessly, and he doesn’t worry about it anymore or get alarmed; he’s come to accept it as one accepts an inheritance, good or bad, or a family defect.

    The man links his wife’s words to the devastating feminine sincerity she would employ at critical moments, when he was incapable of making a decision. Ana would raise abrupt palisades against the inevitable—definitive gestures, rapid distraction techniques that, far from lessening the pain, brought it back with renewed vigor. That’s what happened on the night when, with an almost supernatural gaze, she confronted the young surgeon in the intensive care unit. He recalls the sequence of prior events as a succession of gestures whose final meaning he would never understand—him lifting the receiver, placing it against his ear, while on the other end of the line, a male voice trained in giving bad news—correct, prudent, gently imperative, well modulated—declared that his daughter had suffered a car accident. He held the receiver, pressing it very hard against his ear while listening to the voice, which explained, without going into detail, that Laura’s red car had gone under a truck, it had happened an hour earlier, on