And Carla lets you?
It’s a mistake to talk about me right now. How is the walk, in your body?
I walk quickly; I like it when my breathing grows rhythmic and my thoughts shrink to the essential. I think about the walk and nothing else.
That’s good.
I remember the way Carla’s hand moved in the car. “The people who live here take that way out,” she’d said. Her arm reached to her right, and her hand held her cigarette at the height of my mouth, the cigarette sharpening the directions. Over there the houses have a lot more land. Some have sown fields that reach back half a hectare; a few have wheat or sunflowers, but really it’s almost all soy. Crossing a few more lots, behind a long line of poplar trees, a narrower lane opens off to the right and goes along a small but deep stream.
Yes.
A few more modest houses stand along the stream bank, squeezed in between the fine, dark thread of water and the wire of the next estate. The next-to-last one is painted green. The color is worn but it’s still bright, it stands out from the rest of the landscape. I stop for a second and a dog comes out of the field.
This is important.
Why? I need to understand which things are important and which aren’t.
What happens with the dog?
He pants and wags his tail, and he’s missing a back leg.
Yes, this is very important, this has a lot to do with what we’re looking for.
He crosses the street, looks at me for a moment, and continues on toward the houses. There’s no one in sight, and since strange things always seem like warnings to me, I turn around and head home.
Something is going to happen now.
Yes. When I reach the house I see Carla waiting in the doorway. She moves away from the house a few steps and looks up, maybe toward the bedroom windows. She’s wearing a red cotton dress now, and the straps of the bikini peek out on her shoulders. She never goes into the house, she waits for me outside. Outside we chat and sunbathe, but if I go in to get more iced tea or put on sunscreen, she always waits outside.
Yes.
She sees me, she wants to say something to me and she seems not to know whether to walk toward me or not. She can’t seem to decide what’s best. Then I feel it with frightening clarity as the rope pulls taut: the shifting rescue distance.
This clearly leads us right to the exact moment.
Carla gestures, raising her hands as if she doesn’t understand what is happening. And I have a terrifying feeling of doom.
“What? What’s wrong?” I ask her, shouting.
“He’s in your house. David is in your house.”
“What do you mean, he’s in my house?”
Carla points toward my daughter’s room, on the second floor. The palm of a hand is pressed against the glass, and then Nina appears, smiling: she must be on a stool or her desk. She sees me and waves through the glass. She looks cheerful and calm, and for a moment I am grateful that my sense of dread isn’t working right, that it was all a false alarm.
But it wasn’t.
No. Nina says something that I can’t hear, and she repeats it, using her hands as a megaphone, excited. Then I remember that when I left the house all the windows had been open because of the heat, upstairs and downstairs. Now they are all shut tight.
“Do you have a key?” asks Carla. “I couldn’t open either of the doors.”
I walk toward the house, almost running, and Carla runs behind me.
“We have to get in fast,” says Carla.
This is insane, I think. David is just a little boy. But I can’t help it now, I’m running. I dig in my pocket for the keys and I’m so nervous that even though I have them between my fingers, I can’t get them out.
“Hurry, hurry,” says Carla.
I have to get away from this woman, I tell myself as I finally manage to get the keys out. I open the door and let her in behind me; she follows me very closely. This is terror itself, entering a house I still barely know in search of my daughter, so afraid I can’t even utter her name. I race up the stairs, and Carla follows me. Whatever is happening must be truly terrible to finally get your mother to come inside the house.
“Hurry, hurry,” she says.
I have to get this woman out of my house right now. We go up the first flight of stairs in two or three steps, then the second. The hallway has two rooms to either side. There is no one in the first, the one Nina was waving from, and I stay there an instant longer than necessary because I have the idea they could be hiding. In the second room I don’t see them either; I look in corners and unlikely places, as if, secretly, my mind were preparing to face something immense.
The third room is mine. Like the previous ones, the door is closed, and I open it quickly, taking a few steps into the room. It’s David. So this is David, I say to myself. I see you, for the first time.
Yes.
You’re standing in the middle of the room, looking toward the door like you’re waiting for us. Maybe even wondering what all the fuss is about.
“Where is Nina?” I ask you.