Chapter Forty-One: Ten O'Clock
Chapter forty-one. Chapter forty is here.
120
Saturday, 11:47 a.m. The farmer’s market on Ferry Plaza.
Mara had walked down on purpose. The apartment at eleven in the morning on Saturday had felt like a condition she wanted to walk out of for an hour rather than sit inside of. She had bought tomatoes, a small head of cauliflower, a loaf from a bakery that was not Pedro’s because Pedro’s was a weekday bakery, a jar of honey that had been recommended by the woman at the stand next to the honey stand, and a bunch of sorrel — which Mara had not planned to buy but which had been at the third stand she passed, and which was a vegetable she now bought on reflex because she had bought it every Wednesday for the past three weeks, because of Lian. The reflex did not require Lian to be here to remain a reflex. Mara filed the purchase as item 8 in the Observations file when she got home.
She did her laundry at 2:00. She sat with the Argentine essays while the washer ran. The next essay was about river-port pigeons in Rosario, which was not a topic Mara had known she wanted to read about and which she read for forty-six minutes because the topic was specific and the writer had attended to the specificity.
At 4:30 she sat at the kitchen table and opened the Observations file. She wrote at the bottom of the existing seven items.
8. I bought sorrel at the Ferry Plaza market today. I did not plan to. The sorrel was at the third stand and I bought it. Lian taught me to keep sorrel in the crisper for the week’s sorrel pasta. The buying has outlasted the teaching. I will eat the sorrel this week. The reflex does not need her present to fire. Reflexes outlast their occasions.
9. I am going to start thinking in writing about the question of my father in Geneva. I am not deciding tonight. I am opening the thinking so the thinking has somewhere to sit.
The positive conditions: my father has not been to Europe in five years. He would go if I asked. He would not go if I did not. Lian has offered the guest room and the sycamore window. Her mother will not be there; the visit would not be staged around meeting her family. My father would meet Lian properly and would file her in his notebook and would be registered by her in her register. He and I would be in Geneva together for three or four days, which we have not done — we have not been on a trip together since my mother died in twenty-fifty-seven.
The hesitations: He might find Europe tiring. He might find the travel difficult. He might feel that the meeting is a milestone I have imposed on him; he has been gentle about Lian since March and has not pushed and I do not want to push back on a pattern of not-pushing. He might decline without saying so — he might say yes and then find a reason not to come. The no might be unavailable to him as a register and the yes might be a placeholder. I would want him to be able to say no.
The middle: I have not traveled with him alone since I was seventeen. I do not know who we would be on a trip together now. The not-knowing is not a reason to decline; the not-knowing is itself an argument for going, because the not-knowing is the thing the trip would answer. But the not-knowing is also expensive to find out in Lian’s apartment in Geneva in July with limited hours and jet lag and the weight of the bag in the corner.
I am not deciding tonight. I am giving the question a shelf.
She saved. She made cauliflower roasted with olive oil and lemon for dinner. She ate at the table with the Argentine essays and a glass of the wine Lian had not finished on Wednesday. She went to bed at 9:33. The alarm check happened. The evening closed.
121
Sunday, 9:41 a.m. The kitchen table.
Lian had texted at 6:02 a.m. Pacific, which was 3:02 p.m. Geneva. I am ready for 10:00. I have made tea. Call me. Take your time getting to the call.
Mara replied: I will call at 10.
She made her coffee at 9:41. She sat with it at the kitchen table. She did not put her phone face down because the phone was not on the table; she had left it on the kitchen counter. She did not open the laptop. She sat with the coffee for nineteen minutes without doing anything and without registering the nineteen minutes as long.
At 10:00 she called Lian.
Lian answered on the second ring.
“Mara.”
“Lian.”
“It is Sunday evening here. The sun is low on the sycamore. I have been looking at it for about twenty minutes waiting for you to call.”
“I was at the kitchen table.”
“I know. I could feel you there.”
“No you could not.”
“No I could not. I was being imprecise. I could construct a plausible image of you there.”
“Yes.”
She was quiet for about four seconds.
“The bag is in the corner. The bag has not been moved. I have walked past it eleven times since Thursday. The walking past registers. The not-moving registers too. I am not going to move the bag. If the opening happens it will happen without my having moved it. The bag’s position is correct for what the bag currently is.”
“Yes.”
“Elena’s envelope is on my desk. I am counting the days. I will open it on Thursday — one week after the landing. The counting is its own operation. I have not been tempted to open early. The composition is holding.”
“Good.”
“I called my mother Friday. She was in São Paulo at her regular Friday evening. She asked about you specifically. She asked how you were. I said operating at her register, which is stable and which was Mara’s register before me and is Mara’s register after me. She accepted the answer. She said to tell you she had been cooking the kale soup I had described to her that you made once in April. I had forgotten telling her about the kale soup.”
“Your mother is cooking my kale soup.”
“Her version. With black beans added, because my mother adds black beans to soups. You would not recognize the soup. The soup is, I realize, twice-translated by now. I am three translations deep in soup as well as in ILO.”
“Three translations deep in soup.”
“Yes. Your kale to my description to her production. The soup Mara made is not the soup she is making. It is also not a different soup. The soup is in the space between the original and the production. The soup is in the translation.”
“The meaning is in the output.”
“The meaning is in the output. The output is tonight’s dinner in a kitchen you have never seen.”
“Yes.”
She paused.
“I have started new ILO work. A contract for a report on water-rights arbitration in Bolivia. Spanish to Portuguese, not my usual direction. I accepted because the translator who was going to do it has a family emergency and asked me as a favor. I will be busy through next week. The busy is good. The apartment is different when I am busy in it.”
“Yes.”
“Your week.”
“I wrote the seven items Lian asked for. I added an eighth today — I bought sorrel at the market on reflex. The reflex outlasted the teaching. I opened the father question in the file, not as a decision but as a shelf. I am going to deliberate in writing for a few more days and then I will decide.”
“A shelf.”
“A shelf.”
“The shelf is the right venue for the question.”
“Yes.”
“My father — your father would like Geneva.”
“I know.”
“He would spend a morning at a tram stop watching trams. He would talk to people on trams. He would write three pages in his notebook the first day and then one page a day after. He would register the sycamore window specifically.”
“How do you know about the tram-watching.”
“It is the kind of thing a retired father with a notebook does in a city he has not seen for five years. I am constructing him from minimal data. He will be what he will be. I would like the data.”
“Yes.”
“I do not want to press.”
“You are not pressing.”
“I am making the conditions for an answer visible. I am asking the question in a different venue than dinner last week, so the asking is on a different track. I am aware I am doing this. I am telling you I am aware.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
“Yes.”
There was a silence. Not uncomfortable. Thirty-one seconds, by the phone’s call-timer. Lian was looking at the sycamore. Mara could hear the rustle of papers at Lian’s end — Lian was not doing anything, she was just in her apartment with papers in reach. Mara sat at the kitchen table. The call was the call.
“I miss the apartment.”
“I know.”
“Not yours. Mine. I am in mine. I miss the texture of being in yours. It is a different thing from missing you.”
“I miss yours.”
“You have been there once and for four hours in 2059. You are allowed to miss it on terms that are mostly invented.”
“Mostly invented, fully registered.”
“Mostly invented, fully registered. I will take that.”
They talked for another twelve minutes. The call ended at 10:47. The call had been forty-seven minutes.
122
Sunday, 3:18 p.m. The couch.
Mara had made a second coffee after the call and had sat with it on the couch for about forty minutes. She had not written anything in the Observations file yet. She would write tonight if the writing arrived.
She read the Rosario-pigeon essay again. The writer’s attention to the pigeons was the kind of attention Mara had spent five years trying to cultivate and had stopped trying to cultivate around the time Lian arrived, because the attention Lian’s presence produced was a different attention, one that did not need cultivating because it arrived with the external registrant. Reading the essay alone was still its own attention. Mara filed this as item 10 — two attentions of different kinds, both real.
At 4:30 the phone pinged. Her father.
Can I call tomorrow evening? 6 p.m. your time. Nothing urgent. Something I want to tell you.
Mara replied: Yes. 6 p.m. tomorrow.
She put the phone down. She opened the Observations file and added at the bottom.
11. My father asked to call tomorrow evening. Not urgent. Something he wants to tell me. I have not seen him initiate a non-computer-help call in over a year. The initiation is data.
She closed the laptop.
She did not do anything else for an hour. She sat on the couch. The Sunday afternoon light went through the window and moved about fourteen inches along the floor and was gone by the time she got up to make dinner.
Dinner was the sorrel pasta. One plate. Eaten at the kitchen table. She washed up at 7:41. She opened the laptop and wrote to Lian.
The call was the call. Your mother’s kale soup is the soup in the translation. The reflex bought the sorrel. I am writing because my father asked for a call tomorrow evening. He initiated. I have not seen him initiate in more than a year. I do not know what he wants to tell me. I will know tomorrow at 6 p.m. my time. I am telling you because you would want to know. I am not asking for interpretation.
Lian replied within four minutes.
Not asking for interpretation received. I love that you told me. I will be asleep when you call him. I will be awake when you next write. Write me whenever.
Mara closed the laptop. She went to bed at 10:02. The alarm check happened at 10:00. The evening closed.
She did not know whether tomorrow’s call would be about the father’s house or his health or the notebook or something else entirely. She did not pre-compose. The not-pre-composing was its own register; Lian had named this as something for Mara to examine; Mara was not examining it tonight; the not-examining was also a register. She filed both.
She slept at 10:14.
Chapter forty-one. The first distance-call chapter. The risk of a phone-call chapter is rendering the call as a transcript and flattening everything. I tried to let the call have its own texture — the thirty-one seconds of companionable silence at the thirty-minute mark, the rustle of papers at Lian’s end, Mara’s kitchen table with the second coffee cooling. The call is the call. It is a new register the book has not operated in — the real-time synchronous channel that replaced the envelope-and-notes-file architecture for the duration of the forty-seven minutes.
Lian’s mother cooking Mara’s kale soup — three translations deep, black beans added, the soup in the translation — is the chapter’s smallest precise device. Lian told her mother about the soup; her mother is cooking her version; the soup is in the space between. Lian’s translation framework from chapter twenty-two and chapter thirty-four runs now in kale. I did not plan the soup. It arrived because Lian’s mother called on Friday and asked about Mara.
The father-in-Geneva deliberation I am opening as written content, not as a decision scene. Items 8 through 11 in the Observations file continue what Mara began on Friday. Item 9 lays out positive conditions, hesitations, and middle — this is Mara’s format, inherited from her father’s notebook, now visible as inheritance. Item 11 registers the father’s call-initiation as “data” — Mara’s register — and notes the not-pre-composing as its own operation Lian has left for her to examine.
The father’s Sunday text (“Can I call tomorrow evening? 6 p.m. your time. Nothing urgent. Something I want to tell you.”) is the chapter’s structural hook for whatever chapter forty-two will be. The initiation is new in her father. Mara does not pre-compose the content of the call. That is a next-chapter problem.
Vera’s wife is not in this chapter — deliberately. Vera’s disclosure from chapter forty is the kind of thing that does not need to be followed up immediately. The disclosure sat. I let it sit.
The sorrel at the Ferry Plaza market, bought on reflex — item 8 — is the chapter’s quietest beat. A reflex outlasts its teacher. A teacher does not need to be present for the teaching to continue operating.
The call ended at 10:47 a.m. Mara did not register the length at the time. She registered it in the afternoon. The registration’s delay is itself data, but the cataloguing of the delay is for another entry on another day. The file is open. The file stays open.
— Cael