Peri

Cristina Peri Rossi

The Art of Loss

While he was waiting his turn at the dentist’s office, the man read a two-page article in an illustrated magazine entitled “The Secret of ersonal Identity.”

He wasn’t an assiduous reader; he only read to kill time, in the waiting room at the train station or the dentist’s office. Every once in a while he would buy a sports newspaper or a news magazine, but in general he preferred television. Nevertheless, it seemed fitting to read in the doctors waiting room or the barber’s chair in order to avoid the temptation of staring at his neighbors’ faces as well as to reduce the anxiety of waiting. He read the article carefully. In it a psychologist from Anneversie Hospital in a small town in South Dakota asserted in a

clear and categorical way that all men have a secret: the secret of their personal identity.

This revelation dazzled the patient, who was awaiting his turn in the somewhat rickety cretonne-covered chair (it was a neighborhood orthodontist who was having to fight increasing competition) and created an excitement that was hard to control.

He went over the black shiny letters (the magazine used a coated paper) that were fleeing towards the edge of the page like ants; it was true, Mr. Irving Peele of Anneversie Hospital affirmed that all men (that meant him, too) had a secret, the secret of their identity, something that they could never reveal completely even if they wished to do so, and that they would take to their tombs without being able to convey even to their wives and children because it was something essentially inexpressible.

“I have a secret and nobody knows it,” murmured the little man, all caught up in the excitement. He closed the magazine and looked on the cover for the date of publication. He discovered that it was a very old issue, dated two years earlier. At that time he was forty-eight years old and had half fallen in love with a girl he’d met in a park one afternoon when he didn’t have much to do because unemployment had left his days free. If he had told her that he had a secret, that he possessed an intransmissible but true identity, maybe she would have shown more interest in him. At that time too his upper, second to right, molar was bothering him, but he wasn’t ready for extra expenses, and anyway, going to the dentist was no fun. He preferred to go to bars with videos, to watch a show byJulie Andrews or Frank Sinatra, who sang for all generations like a somewhat obscene but immortal angel. How long had the magazine been sitting here, on the glass table in the office, with its revelation inside?

Why didn’t this news, of interest to the general public, appear on television? He could see Dr. Irving Peele on the screen explaining in detail that each man possessed a secret (perhaps women too, even if they were not spoken of specifically) even if he didn’t know it; and maybe the girl would have wanted to get to know him, to search for his secret, the one he unknowingly possessed.

For the moment he closed the magazine and hid it under the others because he felt possessive about his discovery and thought that it was better that few people knew about it. To have a secret—even if he wasn’t exactly sure what it was (didn’t the psychologist say that it was something inexplicable?)—gave him a vague power even though he didn’t yet know how to use it. He thought about pulling out the two pages to read in the privacy of his home (he lived with his wife and two daughters, even if this didn’t in any way reduce his feelings of loneliness), but he felt a sacred respect for private property as well as for the integrity of a magazine in the waiting room of a dentists office. He stuck it even lower, among the magazines that talked about movie stars, the love affairs of princesses and dukes, the latest technical advances in stereos and computers. He had the impulse to hide it behind the chair so that no one would find it, but he would have had to make a movement that others would have noticed.

Everyone would dash to get the magazine, and on thumbing through the pages they would find the article byMr. Irving Peele, psychologist at Anneversie Hospital in South Dakota. He got rather nervous when one of the patients (the fellow who had entered last) stretched out his hand towards the glass table, removed the top two magazines that didn’t interest him, and looked at the ones underneath with a certain hesitation until he decided upon one about motors with large illustrations in color.

As a precaution, he let the other waiting patients go before him, an act of unheard of courtesy. When the waiting room was finally empty, he breathed more calmly, now convinced that the secret was his more than ever before.

He walked with determination into the dentist’s office and suddenly caught sight of the threatening drill still swinging from side to side like a furious bumble bee. He exchanged a few jokes with the dentist, who was happy to see him in such a good mood and less apprehensive than at other times. “The truth is, I have a secret,” he told him smiling, and the dentist asked what it was. “I can’t tell you,” replied the patient. The dentist inserted the metal plate that was to keep his mouth open and began work with the drill, but he didn’t go back to the topic of the secret. The man withstood the dentist’s work without complaint and, when he was saying good-bye, made a comment about the soccer game the next Sunday.

He went out onto the street a new man, as if fixing his molar had also mended some other part of his personality. The streets were crowded, but this time the people didn’t oppress him, didn’t minimize him as they always used to do. “They have a secret, but they don’t know it,” he thought, looking at them with feelings of compassion and satisfaction at the same time. Better that Mr. Irving Peele hadn’t appeared on television to publicize his discovery: this created a difference between himself and all the others.

He stopped in front of a store window featuring men’s clothing with its group of elegant and well-dressed mannequins. He studied the beige jackets and shoes made of real leather.

“I have something that you don’t have,” he murmured in a soft voice. Other times the suits and accessories had tempted him, making him feel inferior because he could never buy them. Now he looked at them without envy, as frivolous things of fleeting importance.

He strolled down the long avenue without haste, stopping here and there with great pleasure because now he was looking at things from another perspective. He lamented that the air was so polluted because otherwise he would have liked to have taken a deep breath. He saw the posters from an agency advertising trips, and he stopped in front of one with a reproduction of Hong Kong; that city seemed to him the most surprising and far-away place anyone could visit. He wasn’t willing for Hong Kong to exist independently of any traveler: it was the type of place that only exists when someone goes there. Moreover, he couldn’t be sure that the article by Mr. Irving Peele would apply in that far-off place.

He went into a bar and asked for a cognac. He did it naturally and freely, without the bad feeling that he used to have because he thought it was an excessive expense in a time of crisis. He was a man who had a secret, and the nature of the secret was such that it couldn’t be revealed; he had to make do keeping it to himself.

A woman came over to him, and instead of becoming intimidated as usual (unsure of himself, his looks, his future, his past), he invited her to drink with him and offered her a cigarette. The woman said he looked like an interesting man, and he answered that he had something that other men didn’t have or didn’t know they had. She laughed, thinking he was telling a somewhat obscene joke. He didn’t seem to notice. But surprisingly, he became frightened; that woman, with her rather loose ways, couldn’t she be trying to take away what he had, since he had been so imprudent as to reveal himself? To possess something—even ifit were a secret—had turned him into a vain man who bragged about himself. He paid and left, regretting his frankness.

To have an identity and to know about it made him a more powerful person than others, but he shouldn’t go around showing off his secret; it would cause suspicion and envy; someone might get the idea to steal it.

He thought of calling the girl from the park, the one he hadn’t seen for a while because he didn’t have anything to offer her. What could she expect from a mature man whom the crisis had left unemployed and who lacked the charm that could set him apart from other men? “Now I have something,” he thought about telling her, but when he got to the phone booth he stopped because if she were to ask what the secret was he might not have the words to name it. If he had only pulled out the two pages from the magazine and kept them in his pocket, he could consult Dr. Peele; surely there was some reasonable explanation in the text but he didn’t remember what it was.

He continued on his way, singing softly “I have a secret and nobody knows it.” Finally he had something that no one could take away. Time had taken charge of getting rid of his youth while he fulfilled all the duties expected of a man: military service, marriage, work, daughters. The crisis took care of the rest: it took away his job, car, weekends in the mountains. Slowly he had been stripped of everything. (“Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return,” he recalled the biblical phrase), and now suddenly he had something again, but it was something of a secret nature, something he couldn’t use to pay his debt at the bank or buy his daughters’ clothes or his wife’s false teeth, nor could it be exhibited like a hunting trophy but, nevertheless, it had a quality that nothing before had: according to Dr. Irving Peele it was something untransferable, something all his own that he could take with him even beyond the grave. He laughed. It was good to possess something, at last, even though it couldn’t be detected (and perhaps precisely for this reason), it couldn’t be lost.

On the way he met up with an ex-employee from work who had been dismissed at the same time as he. They weren’t friends, but when they met a certain solidarity in misfortune led them to have a drink together. The loss of his job had embittered the fellow; he was more aggressive than before and he never smiled.

They had two glasses of wine together, and he couldn’t resist the temptation to tell him while the other had his head down looking at the wooden floor:

“I have a treasure.”

The man lifted his head slowly, somewhat disbelievingly, and seemed to examine him carefully.

“Yes, it’s true,” he repeated with assurance. “I have a treasure.”

Could he have won the lottery? Or perhaps he had a very valuable stamp? Someone had told the man that there were little pieces ofpaper that were worth a fortune; the problem lay in recognizing them. How would he know, for instance, when a stamp was worth something? Just like coins, but how were guys like them going to inherit a coin from the Roman Empire?

“It’s not true,” the man answered cautiously. “No one who has a fortune loses his job. If you had a treasure, you’d still be working because only those who don’t have anything have things taken away from them.”

“It’s that my treasure is a secret,” he said, asking for another glass of wine to show off a bit.

  “A secret?” the fellow repeated, as if the words weighed on his lips. People with a lot of money had bank accounts in foreign countries. So nobody knew what they really had, not even members of their own families. This was a secret too. Could he have received some sort of inheritance? He threw out the idea immediately; only rich people received inheritances—poor people don’t have anyone to inherit from. This was the way it was.

“I can’t tell anyone,” he added, as if apologizing but with some satisfaction.

The other man looked at him attentively, as ifhe could find the secret in his face. Afterwards he moved back a little, rested on the back of his chair and said with absolute certainty:

“They’ll take it away from you.”

This phrase made him shiver.

“Impossible,” he answered.

“They’ll take it away from you,” insisted the other man.

Haven’t they already taken everything you had? The poor man only gets something so he can lose it,” he proclaimed. “Didn’t they take away your job? Didn’t they take away your car? If now you have a treasure, they’ll take that away too.”

“They won’t be able to,” he said with assurance. “Not if I don’t want them to. It’s the only thing I have left.”

He still had something to lose? The other man was amazed.

“Whatever it is, take good care of it,” he said in an act of spontaneous generosity.

“Yes, I’ll take care of it,” he answered and made a gesture to pay.

He found his wife watching television. It was an old set because they didn’t have the money to get a new one, but it was on all day long. And still you could see something. For all that there was to see: police shows, old movies brought back year after year and some musicals that broke your eardrums. She said that it kept her company. Through the loneliness that attacked amidst the dirty dishes and lay in wait behind the furniture and neighbor’s screams. Life had taken away everything: youth, job, weekends in the mountains, it had even taken away love. Could she too have a secret that she didn’t know anything about? The article didn’t say anything specific about women. Had Mr. Irving Peele forgotten all about them? Should one suppose that they were also included? Anyway, even if she were to possess a secret like his own, she didn’t know it and that was the difference. “We aren’t equal,” he thought, and this satisfied him.

“Where were you?” asked his wife resentfully.

“Taking a walk,” he responded briefly.

Life had also taken away the desire to make love along with all the other things.

“You seem to be happy,” the woman murmured without taking her eyes off the television.

“I have a secret and no one knows about it,” he thought secretly. Finally something that they couldn’t steal from him.

Something inalienable, the article had said, and he remembered the word because he didn’t know exactly what it meant. Something that didn’t fade away with time, something that they couldn’t snatch away from him because ofhis age, or use against him like a document firing him or unpaid bills. Something wholly his own that, moreover, his daughters couldn’t inherit. Only rich people leave inheritances, and his treasure was intransmissible.

“I have something nobody knows about and which is very valuable,” he announced to his wife, because it seemed to him that having a treasure and not talking about it was like not having it at all.

She looked him up and down, incredulous.

“It’s true,” he affirmed. “I’ve just discovered it.”

Her husband had never hit on the lottery, he hadn’t even won any ofthe small local raffles. What was he up to now?

“Well, you should buy a suit,” said the woman just in case.

“And the water heater needs to be fixed.”

He stopped short.

“It’s not for those kinds of things,” he responded after a bit.

She looked at him suspiciously.

“Just as I thought,” she said. “So what is it good for then?”

He thought. The article had said that identity was inexpressible.

“I can’t say,” he answered.

“He’s had too much to drink,” she thought and went back to watching television.

He lay down in bed, in front of the open window that let in noises from throughout the building, and he looked at the whitewashed ceiling. Suddenly it seemed the secret wasn’t that important. If he couldn’t tell anyone about it, if it couldn’t be used to buy a suit or have the water heater fixed, ifit couldn’t help him get back his desire to make love, what good was it? Surely only so they could take it away. And anybody could take it away, because he wasn’t going to defend something he knew nothing about, something he couldn’t even locate. He didn’t even have the pages from the magazine with the article by Mr. Peele. Maybe if he read it he could keep his secret, this treasure that now seemed to dissolve among the noise of dishes in the next apartment, the jumbled voices coming from the television set and the barking of a dog on the terrace above.

It must be a vaporous secret that could evaporate like cigarette smoke. Had he smoked his treasure without knowing it when he came in tonight? Was it so fragile? And what if Dr. Peele had made a mistake? What if identity was something that only a few men had, like fortunes in Switzerland, land holdings, investments and sports cars? Maybe his ex-co-worker was right and that they’d already taken his treasure away along the road. Inadvertently, like he had lost everything else, but unavoidably, just as unavoidably as the other losses. Maybe he had only possessed the treasure for a few minutes, just long enough to have a drink with an unknown woman in a bar, to sing softly in front of a store window and to withstand the dentist’s work.

He turned over in bed and tried to fall asleep. He heard water flowing from the tank and the monotonous cry of a child.

His identity had also slipped away, like the water, and the sleep that was coming towards him was an anonymous sleep, shapeless, the sleep of someone who has no secrets.