My Two Worlds (6 page)

On the opaque, corroded wall of one of these structures I saw a mark or legend that I couldn’t understand, in an unknown alphabet, neither sophisticated nor rudimentary. For a time I tried to decipher it, a single character at least, and as I did so I kept stepping backward and forward, or approaching the wall from different angles. Before giving up, I took a photo, which I’ve kept, that unintentionally included part of the window, which now, by a trick of photography, resembles an arrow pointing to the incomprehensible script. Someday, I thought, a future walker will be able to understand what the walker from the past left here; he or she will be able to know if it was a warning, an instruction or a private message. And the same applies to the photo I have before me, I think now. Though who can tell what the future holds for a photo that hides beneath its file name on the computer screen—minimized as they say—for the most part dormant. When I click on it, the image unfurls like an apparition, at once sudden and controlled, and seemingly always available, as is everything in my private archive. Nonetheless, its future is known, much as one might wish to ignore it: the photo will live briefly in somebody’s memory, and then become dormant once again—that is, in no one’s active memory—and after that it will hibernate in some electronic corner of the world for a long time before disappearing for good. In the other photo, which I took so as to capture the entire building from the ground up, you can make out, on the eave or cornice above the doorframe, several patches of peeling paint.

After taking the photo and resuming my walk, I soon came to a shady crossing where several paths converged. It seemed sunk in one of those silences that are supposedly constant yet are called deep, a silence that at first seems perpetual but in fact is made up of many noises. There, under the shade of several giant trees, you could forget the city, or if it came to mind, believe you were outside it, many kilometers away. I took a few tentative steps, fairly surprised by the peace and calm of the place, as if it had been especially designed to confuse, a possible trap, and discovered that the shadows were due not only to the stand of trees and the dense foliage, but also to enormous aviaries, that is, high-ceilinged cages with black-painted bars, which stood in groups of three or four on a wide stretch of the land. The section of the aviary was surrounded by a wire fence. You could see the cages through this fence, at any rate those of them that faced outward, and the birds in captivity were visible within, along with smaller birds who had entered to eat.

I followed the fence until I found the gate, also made of wire and closed with a padlock, where there was a sign saying that on Mondays—that day—it was closed. I looked inside the cages closest to me, which held birds of prey. The cages held two or three birds, each bird well-separated from the others, as if they belonged to different or feuding families, though none were easy to distinguish, perhaps because of the dim light, or their statue-like immobility, which concealed them in the gloom. My eyes picked them out in the shadows, and the first thing I saw were their immense beaks, often in vivid colors and outlandishly shaped, disproportionately large in relation to their heads, though fairly insignificant compared with their bodies, as is generally the case with birds.

These large birds appeared to be asleep or to keep a vigil composed of stoicism and waiting, while they tolerated the visits of individuals lower down the scale who stole in between the bars to eat the food. I was surprised to see a number of sparrows bobbing themselves eagerly over low mounds of ground meat, or meat that had been chopped mechanically into small pieces and spread on long trays. The large birds looked on, unperturbed, at least that was what I supposed, because it was impossible to verify that they were looking at anything in particular. And something else that surprised me was the fact that the sparrows, despite their small build, which would have allowed them to avoid obstacles and fly comfortably between the bars into the cages, crept in slowly, as if they wanted to remain unnoticed, and so make their giant relatives think they belonged to a different species.

The labels with the names of the birds were green with small white letters. The scientific names had a certain morphological resonance for me, but I found the popular names more picturesque, for these were indigenous, or half-adapted, names, which in my imagination recalled divinities or characters from the native mythology, lore that still resonated for the inhabitants of the deep jungles and the great savannas, or had once done so. The only vivid colors to be seen in the darkness were, as I said, the beaks of the raptors and the piles of meat, the former red as well, for the most part, so that one’s gaze fell involuntarily and every so often on those two points.

I was busy verifying these impressions when I saw an older, almost elderly woman who was approaching me from one side, presumably to tell me something. Her hair was graying and she wore loose-fitting clothes, as if she lived near the park and had only to put on a presentable bathrobe to visit. Nonetheless, she carried an elegant pocketbook and another object I can’t identify now, which at the time seemed like a flimsy parcel, made from used paper or plastic bags. When she reached me, she asked why the aviary was closed, she had made a special trip from home and now discovered that she couldn’t get in. I couldn’t think of an answer. My first reaction was to conceal the hand holding the map, because I was afraid she would realize I was a visitor and rule me out as a possible helper.

There was the sign in front of us showing the visiting hours and the day the aviary was closed, but since I was a stranger in town it occurred to me that the sign could be old or that there it was customary to ignore it, and that the neighborhood woman was asking me about something else, a more fundamental matter, or for some news that wasn’t immediately obvious. I was about to tell her I didn’t know, but instead pointed to the sign indicating the aviary was closed, or maybe told her at the same time that I didn’t know; in truth, I don’t remember all that well. Whatever the case, for a brief moment the two of us stood waiting for something to happen. Then, as it tends to occur, there was a screech of a bird from above, half-mixed with the revving of a distant motor. I began to think: the coincidence was too great for the sign to be incorrect; so despite its being my first time in the park and at this aviary, which I would be unable to visit any time soon, or maybe ever, since I planned to leave the city the following day, I once more relayed the first and probably last piece of information I’d acquired on this subject, and I told her that the place was closed on Mondays. By way of argument I pointed to the sign once more.

As has happened to me on other occasions, and continues happening to this day, the woman thought it reasonable to ignore me. Something about the way I speak must cause this; it’s probable that my lack of conviction in saying even the most obvious things, or the things I most believe in, works against me at times. Most likely, I thought, the parcel she’s carrying has food for the birds who spend their entire lives caged and eating nothing but the same old ground meat. She told me she knew it was closed on Mondays. To that I could only insist that today was a Monday. It was a fact I could be sure of despite being a stranger in town, because obviously it was Monday in all of Brazil and the rest of the continent. She stood there thinking, and I noticed how for a fraction of a second she was mentally transported to another place, or another time; she seemed to be taking inventory, and wiping the slate clean. She finally sighed, acknowledging her error, and told me she had made a mistake and would have to go home and come back the following day.

I was more or less convinced that she lived nearby, and from the way she described the operation (have to go home, come back the following day, etc.), it was clear that she treated these visits, which were no doubt frequent, or in any case regular, as events that required preparation and, above all, represented a high point in her daily routine: a duty, a regular habit. That suspicion, if that’s the right word, allowed me to glimpse the net weight of a normal life, of any life, to allude to it in a perhaps condescending manner. The skein of a person’s own acts, whether unnoticed, essential or absurd, which range from the unconfessable to the naïve, from the irrational to the repeated, each with its dose of fear and dignity. I imagined this lady walking through the fairly empty streets of the surrounding area; two blocks before arriving home, she would think about the best moment to take her keys from her pocketbook and clutch them in her fist until she reached the front door. Most likely, I thought, the spot is predetermined: when she passes a certain tree, or crosses at a corner, she looks for her keys, and when she’s found them she removes her hand from her pocketbook. The operation is unconscious, however, just like the “thought” she has before she decides to take out the keys. A thought that is definite and vague at the same time.

I don’t know if any of the birds could have noticed our brief conversation; in any case I’m certain no one saw us, because this area seemed separated from human time, as did nearly the entire park for that matter. On one afternoon quite some time ago, at the end of one of my long days of mechanical strolling, during a period of isolation in which I did nothing but read and walk, as two different and yet sadly related activities—I’d forgotten about work and about the world, which didn’t bother me a bit, though I’d suffer the consequences soon enough—one afternoon I collapsed in exhaustion at the end of one of my long walks, and for something to do I opened the first book that came to hand. Halfway down the page there was a description of a bird’s gaze; and I don’t know if it was due to exhaustion or surprise, to my situation in general or the particular eloquence of the story, but the fact is that I was immediately overwhelmed by suggestibility and fear. The impact was such that I had to stay in for several days, probably frightened I’d run across some bird, even at a distance. Since then I’ve been unable to look a bird in the eye without reliving, more than my fear, the terrifying memory of that moment. Because sometimes the memory of what one has read tempers the actual experience, and the experience itself becomes, more than something physical, the realization of the reading
. . .

The bird should remain at rest and the observer, whoever it is, perhaps myself, should stand in front of the creature, at some distance or closer-up, but facing it straight on. This exercise is impractical with fidgety birds, in general the smaller ones. It is the larger birds, much higher up the scale, and a few medium-sized birds, or those slightly removed from the aerial world, roosters for example, that make a greater impression. When you look at them you receive a terrible shock, because it’s hard to avert your eyes. It’s much more complicated than looking at fire, of course, because while the flames elicit an innocent fascination, which lets you have thoughts that are distant in time and space, the gaze of a bird induces the most anguished stupor in the observer, such that the bird’s violent origin can be seen; that is, both poverty and delirium at the same time. Afterward, in my experience, and in that of others who have mentioned theirs, it’s advisable and with effort, possible to turn your eyes from the creature’s transparent gaze, but it’s impossible not to turn them back to it again. You may think you’ve broken free, but unawares you are once more unavoidably drawn to the same icy, never-ending stare.

I remained observing the aviary a little while longer. A few of the large birds had changed their places, and now a pale beam of sun lit up their beaks from above. And the spatial counterpoint their beaks created with the meat almost on the floor had intensified, so much so that for a moment I imagined that my eyes were the vertex of a rather large angle: one line represented my downward gaze at the birds’ red meat, while the other shot upward, where the beaks could be seen.

The shady path I had come along continued toward the park’s interior. I caught sight of a bright point toward the end of the path—the afternoon light, as it turned out. I headed in that direction, since I intended to keep strolling through the park and the idea of a slight change in scenery appealed to me. Before I left the canopy of trees that surrounded the aviary, I looked back several times, a habit of mine, and was struck by the color of the ground in the aviary and its environs. It seemed like another surface, not dirty but dirtied, though no stains or traces of garbage were visible. It had a different shade of color, most likely owing to the birds and their constant production of feathers, dust, and droppings, scattered in great part by the breeze. I wanted to study that color more closely, but meanwhile told myself that if anyone saw me stopping repeatedly to look back, he or she might think I’d been seized by a kind of fear of or obsession with birds. No matter where I am or what I do, I cannot free myself from the thought that I’m being observed and judged by others, nor from my frustrating inability to imagine the nature of their evaluations.

As I approached the open section of the park, which from my perspective promised to be fairly large, I could more clearly make out splotches of color that represented people in various postures and situations: they were sitting on benches, walking, or lying in the sun and under isolated trees. A large fountain in the center sprayed jets of water all around, creating a mist that blurred the surrounding space like a vaporous, unmoving cloud. When I reached the tree-lined mall and got closer to the fountain, I saw bougainvilleas again, purple like those in the circular garden, spread out here and there over a much greater space. As perhaps might be imagined, I instantly felt a bond with the few people walking there, since they were sharing in that halfheartedness, even lethargy, of mine toward walking in parks, which I referred to earlier as well.

So I began to think about how long I’ve been taking walks. Years, decades. And if I live significantly longer I could keep on adding, because one thing I’m sure of is that I’ll never stop. But despite this great amount of walking, however, no walk has provided me with any genuine revelation. In my case it’s not as it was in the past, when walkers felt reunited with something that was revealed only during the course of the walk, or believed they had discovered aspects of the world or relationships within nature that had been hidden until then. I never discovered anything, only a vague idea of what was new and different, and rather fleeting at that. I now think I went on walks to experience a specific type of anxiety, one that I’ll call nostalgic anxiety, or empty nostalgia. Nostalgic anxiety would be a state of deprivation in which one has no chance for genuine nostalgia. There may be various reasons for the block. If I’m going to explain it, I have to tell the story of my borrowed ideas, which I’m full of—I say “borrowed,” but I’m not suggesting I don’t have full rights to them, on the contrary
. . .