Free Perla by Carolina de Robertis

smoke, and when he’s done and wiping the last streaks from his chin, she says, What else do you remember?
    Why?
    I want to know.
    Why?
    I want to understand.
    Understand what?
    Why you’re here.
    The light, the light, small flecks of it are catching in her hair. It hurtles in through the window and lands everywhere, walls, shelves, picture frame, but there is something in the way light mingles with her hair that hurts him. He says, Why wouldn’t I be here?
    You’re dead …
    He nods, waits.
     … and we didn’t know each other. Didn’t you have anyone you loved?
    Of course I did.
    I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.
    I had many people. A wife.
    Sorry.
    They took her.
    Her cigarette has burned down, but she’s still holding it. They are silent for a while. The turtle has closed his eyes. The woman looks out of the window, at the deep blue sky. Buoyant voices rise from the street. She gets up and goes to the kitchen, and as he waits for her, he returns to the painting. He roams the painted waves, tastes their expansive salt, and takes comfort in the curves that dissolve barriers between sea and ship, path and voyager, object and world. As though brushstrokes could unify reality. She returns with a glass in one hand and a bottle of gold-brown liquor in the other. By the time she sits down, she has emptied one glass. She doesn’t look at him, and the distance is vast between them, she has shrunk away from him into some invisible shell and he can’t stand it, her distance, the hard line of her jaw, he wants to get close, he would curl against her naked ankle if he didn’t think she’d pull away in horror.
    He says, Are you happy?
    What?
    In your life.
    I don’t know. She finishes her second glass and pours another. You’re talked about, you know.
    Me?
    All of you. The disappeared.
    What do people say?
    Depends. Mostly, how bad things were.
    You weren’t born yet?
    I was born during.
    Ah.
    It is not her naked ankle that he wants to press against: it is the Who of her, the inside sound, the secret aural texture of her being. He wants to hear the chorus in the depths of her, where the past and all the unseen futures gather to sing.
    Tell me what you were like at fourteen.
    She pulls back in shock. Why that age?
    Why not that age?
    She stares at him in silence. He isn’t sure why he picked that number, fourteen. He could have started elsewhere, anywhere. Finally she says, I was studious. Great at Latin. I wanted to be a poet.
    What else were you like?
    I wore my hair long.
    In a ponytail?
    Sometimes. She swirled her drink.
    The boys must have liked you.
    Not the ones I wanted.
    What else?
    I don’t know. I was sad.
    Why?
    My parents were sad.
    Is that why?
    No. It was me. I don’t know why. I was afraid.
    Of what?
    Everything.
    Did you cry a lot?
    Never.
    Did you write poems?
    Rarely.
    Did you have friends?
    Yes. No. I lost a friend that year, the year I was fourteen. Then I made new friends.
    How did you lose her?
    We fought.
    Over what?
    Why should I tell you?
    She is becoming resistant, he can feel a shield rising around her, but his hunger to know will not let him stop. He leans forward, onto his elbows, into the moisture of the rug. What happened after that?
    Then I turned fifteen, sixteen.
    Were you still sad?
    Yes.
    Then what?
    I started at the university.
    How was it?
    Why do you want to know?
    I do. I just do.
    I don’t see why.
    I want to know all of you. Every instant since you were born.
    Now she looks him right in the eyes and the room goes bright, too bright, and something in her stare slices him open, the ease is gone and the disgust is back and there is something else, too, something new that fills him with confusion.
    That would take forever.
    I have time, he says.
    She gets up so quickly that the bottle falls to its side. Liquor spills onto the table. She stares at it, then goes to the stairs and rises out of view. He hears steps down a hall above him.
    I don’t have time, she shouts, and