Excerpt from That’s All I Know
BY ELISA LEVI (TRANS. BY CHRISTINA MACSWEENEY)
Ruminating Like Cows Do
I tell the man that the only thing he’ll find on this path is forest. That’s all I know. “But it’s in there,” he replies. No, no, no way, I insist. You’ll die if you go into the forest. If you want, I’ll point the way or take you to where your dog is. “You don’t need to do that,” he says. And I say, “Around here, dogs that haven’t eaten always go to the same place.” “But my dog’s in there,” he repeats. No, no, no way. I put a hand out to stop him ’cause I know that people who go into the forest never come out. They never reach anywhere and they die. They get tired and dehydrated. Or they get tired and die of cold. Or they get tired and life no longer offers them a way forward. I tug on his arm and explain. I explain that I belong here more than anyone else, that I might not be very old, but I know this place ’cause I have a backstory. I say that if he wants, I’ll tell him my story: I lost a dog when I was younger and it was with the hares.
You’re from goodness knows where, so you don’t know this, but around here lost dogs follow the scent of food and their frantic owners go rushing into the forest. I can’t count the number of people I’ve seen never return from the Landas, from the woodlands. You don’t know the first thing about it, but the fact is there’s no way out of that forest. And I notice that the man’s breathing sounds labored and the beads of sweat falling from his brow could fill every well for miles around. The expression on his face moves me, makes me think I could tell him all about it. I could tell him that I’m leaving, that I’ve decided to leave this small place. And I soon begin to think this lost, confused man is the only person in the world who might understand me. Yes, he, and he alone, might understand me.
You see, I say, sitting him down to rest on the bench I’m leaning against; this bench is always in the shade and if the man goes on sweating like that, he’ll die without ever finding his dog. You see, I say, my dog got lost one Sunday in summer and my sister—she’s empty-headed ’cause she didn’t breathe when she was being born—cried in a different way. Nora usually only cries when her body hurts her. If you pinch her, she cries, if her stomach rumbles, she cries. But love, loneliness, sorrow: none of those things makes her cry. And that summer morning she cried ’cause the dog didn’t come back and our father said, “It’s gone to the place where the dead hares are.” And, would you believe it, Nora cried less. Around here, there are piles of dead hares. Animals that die lie in a heap and make an awful stink. But then, sir, I don’t know anything about stinks ’cause I’ve never had a sense of smell, just like my mother, though she says she could smell a little as a teenager, but I’ve never been able to. And that’s a pity ’cause they say the scent of our tomatoes carries for miles. But that’s all I know about smells, and you don’t know anything about dogs that get lost here. We know about other things. Anyway, when we got there, the dog was dead. And my mother saw the blood dripping from its jaws and cried out, “It must have been a wolf.”
But I knew it had been Esteban—he lives across from where the hares are piled up—he’s sort of trigger-happy and we don’t get many wolves in these parts. Esteban went and killed my dog, and I wanted to kill him for making my sister cry. But don’t you worry, just sit here quietly, your dog is filling its stomach and we’ll see it sniffing around here again soon. Dogs aren’t like me, I can tell you. I’m more like a cat; they sniff and come to care for you. Just rest here with me, your shirt is all soaked in sweat. You’ll see, the dog will soon turn up.
The man and I sit, looking into the forest, and I note how he’s sweating. If you’re hot, you can take your shirt off, your dog might take its time coming back, I say. I just need to rest here awhile, he replies, then I’ll go in there to look for him. No, no, no way, I tell him, really, don’t insist, don’t be fooled by my baby face, I’m fully nineteen years old and I know that when people go into the woodlands, darkness falls on them. This forest is treacherous, like the river when it’s flowing fast. There are no paths in this part of the woodlands and the firebreak is a long way off. The old folk say that if you go right across it, you’ll reach the sea, though I don’t believe them. But then I don’t understand north, south, east, and west. I know about other things. Here, people look at the moss to figure out which way is which or they remember where the sun and the moon come up. As for me, the sun’s always catching me off guard, sometimes on my left, sometimes on my right. The forest is dangerous. Not even the civil guard go looking for people who get lost there ’cause they don’t want to go into the Landas, and we have no forest rangers here; we’re so remote nobody is interested. Mother Nature made the forest for us to be frightened of, so death, despair, and darkness would always be in our minds, ’cause when you go in there you can’t see the sun, there’s only dark shadows, and no matter how much moss, how many compasses, how good a memory or sense of direction you have, the forest gobbles you up like a hungry rabbit.
You’ll leave your dog an orphan if you don’t listen to me, sir. The man takes off his shirt and heat wafts from his skin. His body is wrinkly, but I figure he must be still in his sixties. He takes out his cell phone and makes a grumbling noise in his throat. There’s practically no coverage in town; there is in Pueblo Grande, but here the signal gets lost. Like I said, this is the world’s end.
I hope you don’t mind if I smoke, I say, but the man neither looks at me nor responds. I can let you have some if you like; it’s the tobacco mixed with a little weed that Marco left at my door last night. He does that from time to time, and I like to come here to smoke it ’cause when I smoke Marco’s weed and stare into the forest, I imagine that the woodlands don’t exist and so I can see everything on the other side. But the man says nothing and doesn’t even look at me.
It’s hot for January, isn’t it? I say. And he agrees that it’s hot for January.
In this green, leafy town, the sun doesn’t bring anyone out into the street, I tell him. Except for Juana, who’s still mourning her brother and, when I go to get bread, I take some for her ’cause she eats so little these days. And what I usually say to her is, “Juana, it’s always darkest before the dawn.” I can’t tell you how it hurts to see her out there, sitting alone, next to her brother’s empty chair. “Juana,” I shout merrily when I see her, “time cures everything except old age and madness.” And she laughs. And I leave the bread on her brother’s empty chair so she knows that death is just one day, not a whole life, and where her brother once sat there’s now bread, and that’s that.
The man turns to look at me and I say that I might be young, but I already know that’s how death is. When a person dies, they don’t take happiness with them, I say. The dead don’t take anything with them; death is just four tears and a pain in your breast, but life goes on for those of us left behind. And just as soon as the tears leave your eyes, they turn into water. And the man laughs, but I think that’s ’cause he doesn’t want to think of death that way. This man doesn’t have the first idea. You don’t know where you’ve ended up, I say, you know nothing about this town. Let me explain, we have plenty of time; if you stay here with me, your dog will return sooner or later. Dogs always come back. But you wouldn’t know that. And the man looks at me, but I look into the forest.
The man is sweating like a pig that’s about to be slaughtered.
I don’t have any water with me, sir, I say, but if you want, you can rest your head on my shoulder. Javier often does. Put his head on my shoulder, I mean. And sometimes I touch his face when he does that. But I won’t touch yours. In town they say I’m a chatterbox, and I talk even more when I smoke Marco’s weed. But maybe, now that you have plenty of time, you won’t mind listening to me.
Not many people come here. And the man’s breathing speeds up. Were you aware of that, or is it another thing you don’t know? And the man looks at me and says that he doesn’t really know how he ended up here, on the edge of this small town. You got lost with your dog and now your dog’s lost you. Don’t worry, that sort of thing happens to people who are new to the area.
And what are you doing here? the man asks. Waiting, I reply. I’m waiting with you for your lost dog. The man sighs and I’m sure he’s sighing ’cause it’s always better to wait with someone else. If you get lost again tomorrow, you won’t find me here. What am I doing here, waiting quietly in the shade? I’m waiting for your dog and ruminating, chewing the cud, like cows do, sir. I’m ruminating about everything I plan to do tomorrow. Listen, how about I wait here with you for your dog and you keep me company on this strange afternoon of the first day of the year? And I look at the man, but he’s looking into the forest.
I don’t know what kind of life you’ve had or how you felt when you woke this morning, but when I woke my gut was burning. It burned and burned the way the undergrowth burns in this weird January heat. But don’t go thinking this is the first time I’ve felt fire in my gut. And don’t even think of saying it’s the weed making my gut burn. My gut has been burning for a while, but this morning, when I woke, I understood why. I’m chewing the cud, sir, ruminating about what I’m going to do tomorrow.
If Javier was sitting here with us, sir, he’d call you an elf ’cause you don’t know anything about this place, and that’s Javier’s name for people who pass through this world’s end. And elves never hang around, they always leave or disappear. I like Javier ’cause I’m attracted to men who aren’t sad the whole time. As for you, I tell the man, looking at the bags under his eyes and his crow’s feet, you haven’t smiled even once, you have a lot of sadness about you. Javier, on the other hand, is always smiling. Whenever he comes into my mother’s general store, he brightens up my morning and I say to the customers, “Here comes the handsome guy I love and who loves me.” And they answer, “The swan envies the ugly duckling’s luck.” And I laugh and laugh, and sometimes I even sing, and when my mother comes to help me serve, she says, “You won’t always have something to sing about.” But I insist, “Dance, Mom, you never dance at home these days.” And my mother says, “If only I was as young as you, Little Lea”—here in town, we’re known as Big Lea and Little Lea. And I call out happily, “If only the little one has the big one’s luck.” But deep down, I’ve never wanted my mother’s luck. I mean, I want to see the world, find a job in the city. And earn money and spend it on the things everyone else does: plans, after-school classes for my future daughter, vacations abroad, technology. I want to live on an island, an island without forests, with hardly any plants, almost a desert island, but with opportunities. And one day I want to tell the daughter, “That’s enough. You spend all day glued to that screen.” The things I know can be useful in other places too, right?
When the heat gets suffocating, not a soul walks along the dusty streets of this town, and that’s why it’s smart of you to wait with me here. Do you have children? You don’t look like you do. The man turns to me and smiles. No, you don’t have any children. I figured. If I have a daughter one day, I won’t let her get to know rabbits. I’ll let her milk cows; when you milk you learn to be grateful. Grateful to animals, not to God and all those lies. But she’ll know nothing about rabbits ’cause there’s no need for her to experience how bitter life can be, at least not while I’m caring for her. And what’s more, my daughter will be born in the city and will have processed food, ’cause that’s what city kids eat, and I—a city mother—will complain and at PTA meetings, I’ll ask them to change the menu in the cafeteria, tell them that since I come from a small town, I know your lifespan is related to your diet. But believe it or not, all that would be role-playing, like an actor, ’cause I’m not interested in my daughter having a long life; at a certain age, life gets incomprehensible. You only have to look at the old folk in this town; they don’t understand the first thing. I’m ruminating, sir, ’cause my gut is burning. And the man looks at me, but I’m looking into the forest.
Forgive me if I sometimes talk too fast, but there’s a kind of pressure in my chest that makes the words speed up, and the heat makes my mouth dry too. My mother says the heat is due to all the stuff cars spew out; she says cars are iniquities, along with the forest and spiritual ailments. If I worked at city hall, I’d ban cars. Don’t be so naive, the townsfolk sometimes tell me, your hands are more valuable here. But I know that my most valuable asset is my head ’cause once, when a television crew turned up in town to make a documentary for the regional channel, I looked straight at the camera and spoke out, convinced of what I was saying. The kid told me that if it came out well, they’d send it to the national—I don’t know if it came out well ’cause when it was supposed to be broadcast, we had violent storms that left us cut off for a month. Anyway, when the TV people arrived, they asked me and Catalina some questions; she didn’t open her mouth, but I talked about the things we needed. My head is a real asset ’cause I’m a fast thinker and I know how to make use of the moment. So I said we needed money for a proper walk-in clinic ’cause there are so many old folk here and the doctor only comes once every two weeks. And I also said we needed better public transport, said there were only two buses a day. And I begged them to repair the regional highway and give us a direct bus route to the coast; though we’re so near the sea, you can take it from me that it’s the tourists that get all the benefits! The sea belongs to us more than anyone else! The kid from the video said the documentary was called Empty New Spain and, looking straight at the camera, the way actors do, I said no way was it empty, they only had to look to notice we’re alive and kicking. I said empty was the natural condition of the forest, but Spain was still very full here. But I forgave the kid when he said I looked like this actress, an actress from somewhere else. He told me where, but I don’t know anything about the names of other places. Then I made a last-minute addition to my list of requests, one that later made Javier laugh. This year, I said, at the summer festival, I want a group to come and sing that song that goes, “I’m nothing without you, a raindrop wetting my face.” Javier laughed and laughed some more and wondered what had come over me to say that. And I said it was a present for him ’cause the first time I told him I thought he was attractive, that song was playing in the background.
But that’s not what I want to tell you about. What I really want to tell you is why, if your dog were to get lost tomorrow, you wouldn’t find me here in the shade. Has your life ever gotten tangled? Well, mine has. It’s gotten into a knot that I don’t know how to untie. I’m ruminating about what to do tomorrow, sir. Life in this town is going to drag on and when your gut complains it’s ’cause there’s a decision to be made. When I ask the man if he believes in the end of the world, he closes his eyes to laugh. And his laughter rings out, booms in my ears, and I laugh too, but that’s ’cause I’m always ready to laugh. Yes, yes, I mean it, I say. And the man dries the tears from his eyes with his shirt. Have you seen the black ribbons in the windows of all the houses in town? They’re for the end of the world, sir.
Last year, when my mother opened the general store on January the first, all the locals swarmed in like flies around a horse’s muzzle. They were upset, sir, coming and going like crazy. And my mother overheard what they were taking about. “It seems the world is going to end this year,” she told me, and I laughed, just like you did, and said, “They’re running out of things to invent in town!” But my mother looked all doubtful, so I cheerfully added, “Mom, you don’t believe that, it’s the sort of thing they make up in other places. We’re so remote here even the end of the world would forget to include us.” But as I said that, my gut started to burn for the first time. And now, a year later, it’s burning just as hard, like some madman had set fire to his own land. But then, the next day Catalina came by and while I was cleaning the yard where the hens live, she asked if I’d heard the talk about the end of the world and I said I had, but told her that foolish words fall on deaf ears. And my gut was churning again. She stood there, thinking, and I said we should wait and see what they were saying in Pueblo Grande ’cause the internet isn’t much use here. We did find some stuff about the Mayan calendar, but I knew straight off there was no truth in it; just some ridiculous made-up story, but people were starting to feel scared and talked of nothing else.
In small places, sir, people need to believe in something just to fill their days. And there came the day when a neighbor said it was true, that in other countries, far, far away, they believed it so firmly that the inhabitants were losing their minds. And then one morning another man told us that his daughter—the one who lives in the capital—had said there were rumors there too. And a woman came in the next day and told us she’d read in the newspaper that, in fact, someone or other had predicted it in the past and people who knew about such things were saying that this year would see the end of everything. And yet another day, Juana turned up and said she hoped beyond hope it was true, that she wanted it all to end so she could choose to be dead, like her brother. And then another neighbor said his cows were beginning to act strange and another said his dogs were howling at the moon and that could only mean the world was reaching its end. And the local papers didn’t help; they had headlines saying yes, yes, it’s true, the world is ending. And then Esteban—the man who killed my dog—pointing his gun to the ground for the first time in his life, said it was too hot for January, and the rivers were running dry upstream and that could only be ’cause the end was coming. And the mayor—who’s always first in line to back any conspiracy theory—decreed 2012 to be an official year of mourning. And whether they asked me or not, I told everyone, “You don’t know the first thing! The mayor just wants our minds taken up with foolish stuff like the end of the world so we don’t bother him with complaints. The world isn’t coming to an end; the only thing that’s going to end is this town, unless we start to stand up for ourselves.”
I guess you’d have said the same. But, anyway, after that life started to tighten the noose and a fire settled in my gut. I don’t know, I really don’t know if it’s just my whole world that’s been killing itself this last year, or if the world only came to an end here, in this small town. But the truth is that, all things considered, today, on the first day of a new year, I can firmly state that the world did end yesterday. And I’ll tell you why.
The man puts on his shirt and gets to his feet. Don’t go, I say—I feel like crying, but I don’t tell him that. Stay a while longer, I know where your dog is and, truly, we just have to wait. I promise. I swear. You’re staring at me, staring at me, don’t stare at me that way, I say. If you stay here, the dog will turn up. You’re staring at me, staring at me, don’t stare at me that way—but I don’t say that. And he sits down again ’cause he knows nothing about this place, and right now, on this first afternoon of the new year, with ribbons hanging in the windows of the houses behind us, I’m the only person in the world the man has and he’s the only person in the world I have.