La Luisa _ page 12

The worst of all consequences was having lost my childhood so quickly. Maybe if it had happened to me later, I wouldn't feel so tired today. It is there, in the past, where all certainties vanish; Although it seems strange, in addition to distressing me, the darkness comforts me. At least I know there is a dark side that will never be revealed to me. Some deny the past, because it no longer exists; but I know it's there, even if I don't see it, and being there saves my life. My lost past

I left home at eight to go to school, that's what my mother says. I walked the two blocks to the avenue, turned towards the plaza, and when I crossed the last street, a car ran over me. I hit my head on the pavement. I lost consciousness. I was in a coma in the intensive care ward. The doctors did not know if he would wake up. I did it: I woke up two months later. There was no one in the room; I only saw lights. Only when I moved my hands did I realize that I was more than a thought; it was also a body where that consciousness inhabited. There were no words in my mind, this is my first memory; and that emptiness, that nothingness of concepts, was so light, so happy. A nurse opened the door of the room; When I saw her, I felt a deep disappointment, I don't know why, but it was like that. The woman, an obese forty-something woman with yellow hair and the smell of laundry soap, entered the room pushing a metal table full of vials, tablets, cotton pads, and serum vials. He cleared the table by the bed, made some notes in a notebook, changed my IV bottle, and then left without once glancing at me. By closing the door I could not return to the peace of the previous nothingness. I still hadn't recovered my concepts, but I was left with, without recognizing it, a feeling that something was wrong, that there was an unpleasant, smelly existence beyond the door. I instinctively closed my eyes, searching in the dark for the recovery of my nothingness; however, I found that the flashes of the fluorescent tube were repeated on my retina, without defined contours; they were like long, rigid, whitish snakes blurred against a blue-black background with more stars than a sky on the seashore; and behind those snakes two twin faces were formed: the nurse. I opened my eyes scared. The room returned to my consciousness and my consciousness returned to the room tumbling, jumping from sector to sector, from side to side, over and over again without stopping anywhere. I searched desperately for a point to fix my attention, my eyes, my thoughts. I found it in the vase on the dresser. I put my life, that life that I had a presentiment of but had not yet idealized, in the shapes of the vase. It was a thin yellow vase, and it was empty. There was a fly perched on the edge. I could hear the ras ras ras of their paws rubbing together. He stopped rubbing them but the sound remained. It wasn't in my ears, nor was it a recreation of the sound my mind was making. It came from the vase and grew stronger and stronger, stronger, stronger, until it dazed me. I didn't scream, I couldn't, or I didn't know how to do it. I closed my eyes again, but this time, instead of seeing that sky of red stars, I saw the door of the room opening, the fly running away, then the nurse coming in again, and with her a doctor, I saw them look at me, the I saw them running towards me, I heard them speak, they called my name, I saw the images speed up until they were no more than a blur of white, and then they stopped dead: I saw them die. First to the doctor, then to the woman. I screamed, this time I did scream; I had heard them speak and I immediately recovered the words, the concepts, I definitely lost nothingness. I screamed, this time I did scream. The door opened, the fly fled, and then everything else, repeating the scenes in the room just as he had seen them. I was not a witness to the rest, but I know that it happened, is happening and will happen; I know when they will die since I looked into their eyes.

Since then, it is enough for me to look into the eyes of a person to know everything about the life that remains. It was enough for me to look in the mirror to know about mine.

I wish I could completely forget everything, like my past.

Everything, I know everything. I knew from then on that forty years later I would sit down and say these words to him. I knew from then on the day of my death. I knew all my future life, I knew what I would know and I knew what I will never know. Since then I write my life on phrases already written; I follow the outline of a letter that sometimes, only sometimes, I recognize as mine.

When the doctors let my parents in, I knew they were my parents not because I remembered them, but because I saw that in their future lives I would be their daughter. I also saw the day and circumstances of their deaths, but since my parents did not remember them, those deaths did not affect me more than those of the doctor, the fly, and the nurse. I don't think I ever felt the love of a daughter towards my parents. Maybe before, but I don't remember; I know, but I don't remember. They have died, I did not mourn them. They died every day since I saw them die. When the day came for them, I didn't cry, I didn't feel them, I don't miss them and I won't miss them. Every time a life related to mine is extinguished I feel a slight discharge, a relief in my soul. With them, although I did not love them, out of respect I repressed my joy. No, I didn't cry for them. And I know that no one will cry for me.

My recovery was quick; A week later I left the hospital. The doctors said that my loss of memory was a consequence of the blow and the long sleep, but that as the days went by I would recover it; That speculation was fueled by the fact that I showed recognition of aspects of family life; but they were not memories of the past, but of the future. I knew, for example, that we had a dog in my house because I saw my parents playing with it. I saw them there, in the hospital, but I saw them from my bedroom window, as happened a few days later.

When I woke up, everything for me was a discovery and at the same time an anachronism. Everything was new and worn, rain poured in. What I was experiencing scared me, but in the same way that babies must be scared when they appear in the world. I didn't think my condition was abnormal; I immediately assimilated it as something that simply happens and should happen. It would never have occurred to me to tell my parents that I could see the future, it would have been as foolish as telling them that I could breathe. They found out (and I knew they would) from the comments he made as if they were part of small talk.

Too bad, dad; today you are going to lose the documents, he said, in the middle of breakfast; my father laughed, then he lost the documents.

The first time, like the second time, they didn't tell me anything; my parents looked perplexed, wanting to believe in coincidences. But the third time I anticipated an event, they were alarmed. They inundated me with questions I didn't want to answer; I still hate interrogations today. I forced myself to shut up. And I kept silent for days, until in an oversight, when I saw my mother preparing dinner, I told her not to bother because Aunt Constanza would bring pizzas. They didn't expect Aunt Constanza, ten minutes later the phone rang. It was the aunt announcing that she was coming to visit us, and that she was bringing pizzas. My mother got upset, screaming and asked me how I knew that Aunt Constanza would come. Didn't you know? I asked puzzled.

-No, how do I know?- my mother said, even more perplexed.

They finally accepted that I had a gift. That's what they called it. The word sounded to me like an old gentleman with a mustache, I disliked it. But in them, although they were no longer alarmed, a restlessness persisted that one night bordered on pathetic. My father, for example, more than once insisted that I try to hit the number that would come out in the lottery. The first time he did it, he looked embarrassed, but when I told him that he would never win the lottery (that's what he saw in his future) and that it would be useless for him to give him any number (which on the other hand he didn't see) , got mad at me and sent me to bed without dessert. I wish I could have given him the number he asked for, but it was useless for him to insist and pressure me because I could only know the future in relation to people and not the future detached from them. If I had seen him win the lottery, it is clear that it would not have been my merit. I have never created the future.

Over time I learned to control myself. When I was fifteen years old, I was no longer invaded by the futures of the people who looked at me, except when I allowed it. The process was long and very painful. For years I avoided looking into the eyes. Everyone believed that my attitude was plain shyness. But it was more than that. It was terrifying. It was realizing that my gift was not something that everyone possessed; I felt at a disadvantage with the world. How to talk to a person from whom you could immediately see the good and the bad that his soul hid, the day that death would end his existence? I knew it, they didn't. The domain, however, only served me with the others; with me I only achieved a hypocritical denial, an oblivion without forgetting what was ever going to happen. He kept it like this, imprecise, doing the impossible to lose the details. He rarely managed to do it with the mediate, never with the immediate. Knowing everything was consuming my will; however, heaviness and listlessness were not the reason why, for example, he did not answer the phone when it rang: he did not answer it because he knew in advance that he would not answer it. I believe that even my feelings were part of a decision, a fatalistic abandonment, a slow and harsh waiting for death.

I fell in love with that boy because I had to. And I accepted it even knowing that he would deceive me a thousand times. And I gave myself to him knowing that later I would tell whoever wanted to hear. But it was written, I only traced the lines of that letter that is not mine. I didn't cry for him either. It was the only and last time that I felt anything for a man. Love will never come back to my life. I know it from day one. And yet I kept looking for it, because that's how it was written. So many men and so many names passed through my bed and through my legs. And from all of them I knew that they were not mine; and of all of them I learned of their deaths; and I learned about their lives from all of them. I laughed at all of them. Not out of malice, but by providential design.

When I turned eighteen, my father gave me a long lecture about life and its responsibilities, about what to do and what not to do (for me, who knew everything and life already bored me), and about independence . I would have wanted to cut him short and ask him not to continue, I already knew what he would say to me. But it was written that I shut up and so I did. I let him complete the lines on that page, his page. Anyway, what he told me (and I knew he would say) was that I should start thinking about my future (I wanted to laugh), that I should study or work, I should do something with my life. You are right, I replied. And since then I have made a living reading the future in people's eyes.

It hasn't gone badly for me (I knew it would); I've earned enough to be on my own shortly after that talk and live uneventfully for the next ten years.

My first client was a co-worker of my mother's, quite a bit younger than her. Her name was Alexandra, like that, with an x; she hated her name. I immediately liked her look; it was of an indefinite beauty, as if its features were yet to be completed. Almost childish even though he was around forty years old. In his gray eyes I saw desire. And I wanted her too. I gave myself to her in my room. I liked. And best of all, I knew I'd like it. Then we talk about his future. She left disappointed. I told him that his life would be exactly the same until the day he died. I never saw her again and never will again. He will die within five years.

It was the only and last time I had relations with a woman. I will not have them again.

My arrival in town, as you understand, was not accidental; nothing is random. Recounting past events exhausts me greatly, not only because I have to make an effort to remember them, but because I have experienced them twice and more times. I lived them in the moment, I lived them anticipating them. Some of them, especially this one that I am going to narrate, demanded days and days of struggle with myself, with my condition, with my destiny; why, I wondered, why does it have to be like this and not otherwise. Why can't I, knowing him, modify my future. The pretense of modifying it was so absurd. How to call future to the facts that will never happen? What is written is written. Do you know that Pilate said that when the Jews asked him to modify the poster that he ordered to hang on top of the Cross? The one that Jesus Christ King of the Jews said. No gentlemen, what is written is written. So, understand me correctly, it is more than justified for me to wash my hands of what has happened and will happen. Are you interested in knowing when he will die? Don't tell me, I know you don't; but he is interested in knowing if he will have found a good reason to die, although he prefers that I not tell him and it is written that I will not.

My first contact with the people was in Buenos Aires, in the person of a man named Belisario.

Belisario worked for the refrigerator; he was a kind of errand boy, although sometimes he also negotiated the sales with full decision-making powers. I saw him for the first time at the La Perla café, on Corrientes Avenue. I had my snack at a table next to his. He saw me take a cigarette out of my bag and automatically offered me a light; I usually reject these types of advances with indifference, but it was written that I would accept him, that I would look him in the eye, that we would go to his hotel room, that he would fall in love with me.

We made love; he awkwardly and somewhat afraid; I no surprises Then we sleep until midmorning and, when we wake up, we stay in bed until after noon. We do not talk; him because he was too disturbed with the immediacy and proportion of his feelings; I because nothing could interest me to know about him that I didn't already know. His past? So that. The pasts are a pure tautology of the future. It is enough to see what was ahead to know what will be behind. We had lunch at the hotel restaurant and after dinner he asked me if I would like to visit the town where he lived. He was determined that he would say yes.

We left in the middle of the afternoon, when the sun of that winter was still warm. We arrived late at night. It was raining. He stopped outside his house, turned off the car engine, and then the right thing happened: he had a heart attack. I watched him fade away, terrified not by death itself, but by the life that was draining from him. I don't know what future he had imagined with me; I am unable to read minds, I only see the future. He was going to die that night and I knew it.

I got out of the car; the rain fell hard. I took out of the trunk a handbag that I had brought with me and headed unhurriedly towards the pension where I would stay for a long time.

Have you ever felt like you were lost in a place you know like the back of your hand? That was what I felt when I arrived at the pension. It was the house that I knew, the night and the door that corresponded, however in the depths of my soul I was afraid; the fear of cowards of the unknown. If it was logical, you say? Of course it was, it was written that it would be so. Sometimes I think they are incentives that God allows me to not tire myself with indolence: the possibility of anxiety before sex, of mistrust in front of a plate of food, of that fear I told you about. Others, on the other hand, I suspect that they are mere reflex reactions of that past that I have forgotten; the future as an intuition of the past, and the past as a mold of emotions. He knew what would happen in and from that house; something so foreign to my daily life, hence the fear, hence it seemed unknown to me. But of the two possibilities I prefer the first, that of God. It's a way of ingratiating myself with the one who punished me with this gift. What could have been my sin, or that of my parents, or my karma? Don't know. Do I believe in reincarnation? I can't say it, my vision is limited until the day of death. I know when I will die, but I don't see anything beyond my death. It can be as you say; maybe there is nothing beyond; or just a faint reflection of here. In any case, and it is unnecessary for me to advise you because you will ignore me anyway, do not worry about these questions: you will never be given a reasonable answer, not even one with the forms of faith; you will never be able to boast of being a man of faith. How do I know what you're thinking if I can't read your mind? I am not reading your mind, but the pages that you will ever write. If you are sincere with what you write, then I am sorry to say that there are few secrets that you have kept from me.

I found out from a neighbor of the town that Luisa hanged herself a few months ago with the clothesline. There was a note in the room, leaning against the center of the table. In neat handwriting, almost drawn, it read: "It was written."