Elena Knows Read online

  They walked back home in single file, Rita in front and Elena several steps behind. Like when they’d had a fight. But they weren’t arguing or whipping each other with their words. They didn’t speak the entire way home. Rita walked slower than usual, but not slow enough for her mother to catch up. When they got home Rita locked herself in her room and Elena went to the kitchen to make dinner. She started heating water for some pasta, and waited. To pass the time while the water boiled she took the pamphlets from her handbag and called her daughter to come so they could look at them together, but Rita was in the shower and didn’t respond when she shouted, so she began to read them on her own. Elena skipped over everything she already knew. She didn’t bother to read the general description of the illness or its symptoms, except for the ones she’d never heard of. Fish face or mask, caused by lack of expressiveness of the facial muscles. She strained to get a look at her reflection in the window that was starting to steam up from the cooking. If she had a fish face she hadn’t realised it, and no one had told her. She pursed her lips like she was blowing a kiss and then opened and closed her mouth several times as if the fish that her face hid was breathing through its gills. Maybe she did have a fish face. Akathisia, inability to remain seated and still; that wasn’t one of her symptoms, she could sit still. For now. Hypokinesia, that wasn’t one of her symptoms either, she thought, but she kept reading and realised that while she’d never heard the word, she had experienced what it described: muscle rigidity. Constipation, sometimes, Dr Benegas’s lazy intestines, but nothing that couldn’t be solved with some stewed fruit or vegetables. She skipped the rest of the symptoms and moved on to the causes. She didn’t care if what damaged the substantia nigra was a toxin or free radicals. She hadn’t known fifteen percent of cases were genetic, but she couldn’t remember anyone in her family who’d had Parkinson’s. She moved on to some interesting facts, ‘The name of the illness comes from James Parkinson, the English doctor who first described the illness in 1817, at the time he called it agitating paralysis’. She stopped to think about those verbs. Describing an illness. Observing it, looking at it in order to tell others about it, with all the contradictions that implied, like the contradiction of saying a paralysed body is agitated. She imagined someone trying to tell her about this illness that she now knows better than anyone because it’s inside her. She could describe it better than Dr Parkinson, she thinks, and she’d call it Elena’s Affliction. Or simply Elena’s, without any add-ons, like Parkinson’s. She called for Rita again before moving on to the Advice on How to Deal with Symptoms, a pamphlet designed for sufferers of the illness and their caregivers. But the water was still running in the house’s only bathroom, and Rita didn’t answer. So once again she started reading on her own, the pamphlet talked about anxiety, depression, and distress, in the patient as well as the person who had to take care of them, called ‘the caregiver’. That would be Rita. It advised the caregiver to practice relaxation exercises and breathing techniques that included repeating the phrase ‘let the tension flow out through my feet’. Or breathing in and out for fifteen minutes repeating the word ‘calm’ as if it were a mantra. Calm. Calm. She thought a more accurate mantra would be shit, shit, shit. She stood up to put the pasta in the water. She couldn’t rip the bag open with her hands so she stabbed it with a knife, splitting the bag in half and spilling several pieces onto the floor. She dumped the rest into the pot. She returned to the table and picked up the last pamphlet, Advice for Better Living. There were three categories: Shared Activities, Activities Considered Achievements, Enjoyable Activities. The pamphlet suggested that each patient and caregiver make their own list and then attempt two activities per day. She obediently made a list in her head. She read the examples from the printed list that had been included as a model. Exercise with a friend, Go shopping, Go to the beach, Participate in a play, Sing in a choir. She discarded them all for her and Rita. There was no beach nearby, she’d never exercised in her life, she hated spending money on useless things, and would never get on a stage or sing in public. She continued on to the Activities Considered Achievements. Change a lightbulb, Write a poem, Build a snowman, Solve a crossword puzzle. She added solve a crossword to her mental list and wondered where this pamphlet had been printed, she’d never even seen snow, let alone touched it. She wondered if snow had a smell, like rain has a smell. Build a snowman. The shower stopped and Elena heard Rita’s bedroom door open and then slam shut. She went to check on the pasta, which had started bobbing to the surface so she lowered the flame to minimum. She stood beside the burner for a few minutes until, without trying them, just by the colour and appearance, she guessed that the pasta had boiled long enough. She drained the pasta in the sink, a few drops of scalding water splashing onto her foot and burning her. She added to her mental list of achievements, drain pasta without splashing. She put some chunks of butter into a bowl and dumped the pasta on top then covered it with a dish towel so it wouldn’t get cold. She went back to the table to continue reading. Enjoyable Activities: Go for a hike in the woods. No woods, no beach, no snow. Watch your favourite television show, she added that to her list. Read a book of jokes, Hug someone you love. Hug. She doesn’t remember the last time she hugged someone or was hugged by someone. She can’t remember.

  Rita appeared in the doorway and said, without shouting, You left the stove on, the house is going to burn to the ground, and she walked into the kitchen but didn’t turn it off, she just sat down in front of her empty plate at the table. In this position, Elena couldn’t see that her eyes were red. She held out the pamphlets in front of her daughter, Take a look at what Benegas gave us, child, there are some things that might... but she didn’t get to finish her sentence because Rita ripped the pamphlets from her hand. She held them for a moment, not reading them, just gripping them tightly and resting her vacant red-eyed gaze on the pamphlets she knew were useless. That’s enough, Mum, enough, she said and she stood up, walked over to the stove, turned the flame to maximum, and set the pamphlets on fire. When the flame was about to burn her hand she let them fall, the charred pages fluttered to the green tile floor, landing beside the uncooked pieces of pasta that her mother had spilled.

  Rita stood motionless watching the paper as it blazed, crackled, and danced until it changed colour, melted away, turned to ashes, and finally, went to the place that fire goes when it burns out.

  4

  Elena takes the pill she’s supposed to take and waits, sitting on the couch in the house she set out for that morning, with a cat she just met sitting at her feet and a woman she only met one afternoon twenty years ago waiting along with her. She can feel the pill making its way down her throat; it’s halfway there. She doesn’t dare to speak out of fear that if she opens her mouth, the pill will move back up her throat and she’ll have to start the whole process over again. Mute, she stares at the legs of the woman she set out in search of that morning and without saying a word she asks her for a few more minutes, enough time for the levodopa to dissolve and her body to be able to move, to retrace the route that brought her here. Isabel seems to understand her gesture or her gaze, saying, Take all the time you need, I already told you I’m in no rush. Elena closes her eyes and tries to remember the prayer she recites while she waits, but once again she’s confused, she mixes up the words, she wonders if she’d be able to list the streets if she were alone, to remember the order of the ones she has to pass to get to the train that will take her home, and also the other ones, that she’ll have to walk from the station to her house. Forwards and backwards and backwards and forwards, one, two, a hundred times, she wonders if she’ll be able to say her prayer for the dethroned king and the naked emperor, the messenger and the whore; the sternocleidomastoid, the substantia nigra, the whore, and the levodopa. But she doesn’t say her prayer because she’s not alone and everything is all mixed up, and she gets nervous when she gets them out of order, and then the medication takes longer to have effect. She breathes, she has almost sto
pped shaking. The woman serves her another cup of tea and fabricates a new short straw out of the rest of the straw still on the tray the way she saw Elena do. She bends it, cuts it with the knife, puts it in the cup, then kneels down in front of her and puts the cup without its saucer between her hands. Elena takes it and even though she doesn’t take a sip she nods her head as if saying thank you, and waits for the woman to move away, but Isabel doesn’t move, she stays there, sitting on the floor next to the cat, so that she can look Elena in the eye, see her face to face. The pill finally completes its journey and begins to dissolve, freeing up Elena’s mouth and throat to take a sip of tea and then say, I loved her and she loved me, you know? I don’t doubt it, says Isabel. In our own way, of course, Elena clarifies, but the other woman doesn’t need the clarification so she replies, It’s always in our own way. The cat sitting between the two women meows. Was I a good mother? Who can ever know? Isabel pets the cat, and the cat twists, curves, leans into the caress, stretches to make it last longer. Elena watches them and holds out her hand to do the same thing but she can’t reach, her hand hovers in the air, empty. She puts her arm back down beside her. It was raining, she says. Even so, the woman answers. My daughter went even though it was raining. Your daughter went because it was raining and because there was something that scared her more than the rain. Me, Elena says. Isabel looks at her, and says, Another person’s body, sometimes, can be terrifying. Elena holds out her hand again towards the cat, and this time the cat helps her by stretching its head towards her. The two women pet the same animal. Do you think that Rita thought she was going to inherit my illness?, she asks. No, I think she couldn’t stand that you had it. She never said that. Sometimes it’s easier to shout than to cry. I’d have liked Rita to be here today, for her to have known, Elena says. She had to have known, in the end, when she felt that she couldn’t go on living, after the shock and the disappointment, she must have known, Isabel answers. The cat moves from one woman to the other, they share him. I do want to live, you know? In spite of this body, in spite of my dead daughter, Elena says, crying, I still choose to live, is that arrogance? Not long ago I was told I was arrogant. Don’t keep the names other people give you, Elena. Isabel picks up the cat and puts it on her lap, Elena accepts it, she pets the cat and he curls up. Do you like cats? I don’t know, Elena answers. Well, we know the cat likes you, the woman says. Elena smiles and cries at the same time, He seems to like me, yes. What are you going to do now?, Isabel asks, and Elena would like to have an answer, would like to say she’s going to wait and then get up and leave, but so many words flood her head at the same time that they become tangled, overlapping, crashing into each other, and lose their way or disintegrate before Elena can pronounce them, so she doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t respond, because she doesn’t know. Or because now she knows, she doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t respond, she just pets that cat. That’s enough for today, petting a cat. Maybe tomorrow, when she opens her eyes and takes her first pill of the morning, she’ll know. Or when she takes the second one. Maybe.

  AFTERWORD

  Claudia Piñeiro (born in the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1960) is a key figure in contemporary Argentinian fiction, as well as a prominent and committed supporter of various high-profile campaigns including the successful legalisation of abortion in Argentina, and the #NiUnaMenos movement against femicide. She has also been active in trying to establish a writers’ union in Argentina to give financial stability to the profession.

  Her writing, which consists mainly of novels, but also a book of short stories, some fiction for young adults and collected plays, has won many significant awards: the Clarín Novel Prize for Las viudas de los jueves [Thursday Night Widows], the German LiBeraturpreis for Elena sabe [Elena Knows], the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize for Las grietas de Jara [A Crack in the Wall], the third National Literary Prize in Argentina for her most autobiographical work Un comunista en calzoncillos [A Communist in Underwear], the Rosalía de Castro Prize for her literary career, the Pepe Carvalho Crime Fiction Prize, and the Canadian Blue Metropolis prize for her work as a whole. In addition, four of her novels have been made into films: Las viudas de los jueves, Betibú [Betty Boo], Tuya [All Yours] and Las grietas de Jara, and she has written the script for an upcoming Netflix series El reino [The Kingdom] with Marcelo Piñeyro.

  Piñeiro has so far been presented to the English-speaking world as a crime fiction writer. To date, her novels in English translation have included Thursday Night Widows, A Crack in the Wall, Betty Boo and All Yours, all translated by Miranda France and published by Bitter Lemon Press. However, Piñeiro’s status as the ‘Queen of Crime Fiction’, consolidated by the prestigious Pepe Carvalho prize, has perhaps overshadowed a broader appreciation of the urgent social scrutiny of contemporary society that her novels undertake. Pigeonholing her work as crime fiction downplays her critical gaze, which in recent novels has become ever more focused on pressing social issues. For Piñeiro, the solving of an individual crime is only half the story; a single crime often metonymically presents corruption at the core of society. As she put it on accepting the Pepe Carvalho Prize, ‘crime fiction came into being to denounce injustice’, and she claims that nowadays it is impossible to write a crime novel without also writing about the society in which the crime takes place. In 2018, she opened the International Buenos Aires Book Fair with a speech entitled ‘What do people expect of a writer? Dissidence as a state of alert’, and this sense of writerly responsibility for taking critical distance and tackling problematic social issues head on is an important aspect of her work. By bringing Elena Knows to an anglophone readership, Charco Press intends to relaunch Piñeiro in English as a writer of ethical weight and commitment.