“But do you really believe in those things?”
“Then David tripped, or it seemed to me he’d tripped, and then he didn’t get up. I saw him from behind, wearing his favorite shirt that had little soldiers on it, trying to coordinate his arms so he could stand up. It was a clumsy and futile movement that reminded me of the ones he’d made when he was still learning to stand on his own. It was an effort he didn’t need to make anymore, and I understood that the nightmare was starting. When he turned toward me he was frowning, and he made a strange gesture, like he was in pain. I ran to him and hugged him. I hugged him so hard, Amanda, so hard it seemed impossible that anyone or anything in the world could take him from my arms. I heard him breathing very close to my ear, a little fast. Then the woman separated us with a gentle but firm movement. David sat back against the sofa, and he started to rub his eyes and mouth. ‘We’ll have to do it soon,’ said the woman. I asked her where David, David’s soul, would go, if we could keep him close, if we could choose a good family for him.”
“I don’t know if I understand, Carla.”
“You do understand, Amanda, you understand perfectly.”
I want to tell Carla that this is all a bunch of nonsense.
That’s your opinion. It’s not important.
It’s just that I can’t believe a story like that. But at what point in the story is it appropriate to get angry?
“The woman said that she couldn’t choose the family he went to,” said Carla. “She wouldn’t know where he’d gone. She also said that the migration would have its consequences. There isn’t room in a body for two spirits, and there’s no body without a spirit. The transmigration would take David’s spirit to a healthy body, but it would also bring an unknown spirit to the sick body. Something of each of them would be left in the other. He wouldn’t be the same anymore, and I would have to be willing to accept his new being.”
“His new being?”
“To me it was so important to know where he would go, Amanda. But she said no, it was better not to know. She said the important thing was to free David from the sick body, and to understand that, even without David in that body, I would still be responsible for it, for the body, no matter what happened. I had to accept that compromise.”
“But David . . .”
“And while I was turning it all over in my mind, David came up to me again and hugged me. His eyes were swollen, his eyelids were red and taut, inflated like the horse’s. He wasn’t exactly crying—the tears were falling but he didn’t shout or blink. He was weak and terrified. I kissed his forehead and I realized he was burning with a high fever. Burning up, Amanda. At that moment my David must have already been seeing heaven.”
Your mother grabs the steering wheel and sits looking at the gate at the end of my driveway. She is losing you all over again: the happy part of her story is over. When I met her some days before, I’d thought she was renting a summerhouse like I was, while her husband was working nearby.
What made you think she was from out of town, too?
Maybe because I saw her as so sophisticated, with her colored blouses and her big bun, so nice, so different and foreign from everything around her. Now I feel uneasy because she starts crying again, and because she won’t let go of the wheel in my husband’s car, and because Nina is wandering around the house alone. I should have told Nina that when she got the lollipops she should come back to the car, but no, better for her to stay away, there’s no reason for Nina to hear this story.