ASSIGNED to prof.Timetest
Karla Suarez
The Eye of the Night
For Ode and Alfredo, for the idea
Because everything has a beginning and we almost always want to know what it
is. It's an insistent need to define the cau ses that precede effects, and since the causes
aren't always clear or perhaps we don't want to see them clearly, then we go ahead and
invent them, add details, assign them one name or another, label them with dates and
wrap it all into a complete package, so we can say: that's how it all began.
It all began the day Jorge came home with a te lescope. I've always b een nocturnal. I like
wandering around the house in the dark, reachi ng out my fingers to touch the furniture
until I learn it all by heart. Jorge doesn't like th is, but I've always been this way. He likes
to fall asleep feeling my body next to his. I go along with this to please him, and I stretch
out alongside him after we make love, staring up at the ceiling and waiting until he's
fallen asleep before I get up. Night fascinat es me, I don't know why he doesn't understand
this.
That day he showed up at home with a tele scope, he said that a friend had given it
to him and that I could have fun counting star s. I liked that idea. From then on, before I
went to sleep, I'd sit out on the balcony to gaze at the stars, just as he'd said. Jorge would
come over, have a look through it, say something, and then a little later he'd invite me to
"come to bed." "Come to bed" meant "come ma ke love," and he'd start stripping off his
clothes and get into bed nake d, calling out that he was sorry he'd ever brought home that
instrument, since I was neither an astrologer nor was I going to discover a new comet and
if it was stars I wanted to see, he'd help me on that. That's the way Jorge is.
So my late nights changed a bit, I didn 't just wander around and peer down into
the street. With the telescope I could look at the conste llations, I could spy on my
neighborhood beyond my usual range of view. My balcony looks over an avenue that
rarely has any late night tra ffic. Beyond that, there are houses and buildings, a park full of
broken streetlights, little alleyways that get lost in the trees. I could see all of this. I
turned into the busybody of the neighborhood, the eye of the night, and it was odd to
think that at this very moment someone c ould be watching me thr ough another telescope.
We are never alone. Darkness is an accomplice with many faces.
One of those nights while I was running my eyes over those buildings, I saw him
leaning on his balcony rail. A young man, smoking slowly and gazing down at the
avenue as though he weren't seeing a thing, like someone who is just finishing his
cigarette before he goes to bed. I'd never seen him before, so I peered at him with interest.
Maybe he had the same crazy habit I did, or maybe he'd just had a bad day and couldn't
get to sleep, how do I know, the eye of the night has its limits. In this case, he tossed his
cigarette butt down and stayed th ere leaning on the railing. I ke pt watching him. He and I
might be the only witnesses of the night; it 's a good feeling to have company in an
enterprise even if that venture seems totally absurd. The man lit another cigarette. At the
back of his balcony there was a door, and a wi ndow with the curtains open, the room dark
behind it. I couldn't make out whether there was someone inside snoring like Jorge over on this side, and it really didn't make much difference. The man stayed there leaning on
the rail for a long time, he smoked three cigarett es and, as he was tossing the last butt, he
stood up, stretched his body and went into the room. Pretty boring, I thought, so I forgot
all about the neighbors and stayed there watchi ng the stars until dawn made it impossible.
The next night everything went as usua l. Jorge sweating on top of me and me
pumping faster and faster to hurry him al ong. Then the pause. A final sigh and Jorge
stretched out beside me face down murmur ing a faint "see you tomorrow." Then it was
my time, when I could get up, look at Jo rge breathing peacefully, and go out on the
balcony. The neighborhood as usual, all quiet. Me spying behind my glass eye, like
Corrieri in Memories of Underdevelopment . It's odd how you start staring at something
and your head fills with all kinds of images, if I could just tape record everything that
goes through my mind late at night, I'd write a novel, or a sociology book, or maybe, I
don't know, you start thinking about so many th ings... I thought about the insomniac I'd
seen the night before, his balcony was dark, he was probably sleepi ng like everyone else,
like Jorge, who is sleeping peacefully in my bed. And why in my bed? Because that's
how it is, it's been like that for a while now. First we went out occasionally, we'd see each
other, he'd stay over once in a while, then more and more often, he'd leave a pair of pants
here one day, a shirt another day, and someho w the house filled up with Jorge who sleeps
while I think about things as I gaze at the windows over there on the other side.
At some point, I saw a light switch on in one of the windows. That was an event
in these late night hours, and I had my eye focused on the apartment of the man I'd seen
the night before. The window curtains were still open. If you've got something to hide,
you take care to close your windows, but he didn't suspect that I was here. He came in
followed by a woman, a thin woman with long hair who smiled all the time. A man and a
woman in an intimate setting cl early visible to anyone who wanted to watch. If Jorge
woke up he was going to accuse me of being a pervert, or he might grab the telescope
away from me, you never know what crosses someone else's mind. The idea of keeping
my eye on them really appealed to me, and I watched as the skinny woman undressed
while he drank from a bottle he held in his hand. I've never seen a pornographic movie,
so I was really intrigued by this show. She got into bed and out of my sight; he took off
his shirt, lit a small lamp, and turned off the light. Off limits to snoops. The apartment
turned into a very dim glow where surely a man and a woman were making love just like
Jorge and I before Jorge went to sleep. Quite a while went by and I saw my neighbor get
up, take another drink from the bottle, put on his shorts and come out on the balcony to
smoke. Exactly like the night before, looking at the emptiness of the streets. The woman
must be sleeping and he was as wide awake as I was. He smoked for a while, tossed the
butt, and then lit up another ci garette, looking out over the streets just as I did in those
early hours. I always wonder wh at other people think about wh en they are sitting quietly,
smoking by themselves. Jorge never does things li ke that, we're together at night, only at
night. We talk a bit, he tells me stuff, he says he's tired and bored, I listen to him. You
couldn't exactly say we're in love, we're not r eally living together, th e clothes he leaves
over at my house don't at all mean that we live together. But we'r e here most nights,
making love until he turns his back on me and falls asleep —why do we always say
"making love"?-- there are other ways to sa y it, of course, but I don't much like them.
Would I be making love with the man across the street? How do I know. The man smoked a few cigarettes and went to bed, turn ed off the light and nothing else happened
all night.
A week later I was more than convinced that the man across the street suffered
from insomnia and that besides, he couldn't be making love, because you can't be in love
with a different woman every night. His rou tine was a closed circle, a woman, the little
bedroom light and a short while later out smoking on the balcony, like every other late
night. It never varied, cigarett e after cigarette that he tossed into the street while the
woman slept on, like Jorge. I thought it might be interesting to go over to his house in the
morning and invite him to spend the night w ith me. I could even show him my telescope
and maybe we'd discover something. A silly idea of course, because if you choose to be
out there late at night leaning on the balcony rail, it's because you want to be alone and
you don't want to be confronted with evid ence that someone has been spying on you. But
that man puzzled me. Why that insisten ce on smoking and smoking silently, looking
down over the street as if the street could applaud his conquests, his tired face and his
lack of sleep? I don't know, men just don't c ope well with being alone. He filled up his
nights with women, and then what? What's the cure for a fascination with the void? You
lean on the balcony rail and that's when suddenl y all the truths slip out from behind their
masks. Night is the great mirror. You can ma ke a big effort to patch together the big
picture with scraps, like parts of an infin ite mosaic, but something happens when those
subterfuges turn into buff oons making fun of us. What was Jorge doing in my bed?
Besides sleeping, turning his back on me, a nd falling asleep after we'd sweated without
loving each other, because Jorg e is asleep in my bed and s noring and before he goes off
to work we'll have breakfast together and then he'll come back and it's night again,
another night when there I'll be gazing through the crystal eye watching how the guy
across the street smokes, makes love and sm okes, leans on the balc ony rail and runs his
hand over his face, tosses the butt into the street or rests it on the balcony rail and peers
out to see if anything is goi ng on, like I do, hoping every night that something different
will happen, something different that won' t be Jorge sleeping on his stomach like the
women in the apartment across the way, and is n't it all the same th ing? The neighbor at
least changes his expression, and w ho knows if on one of these nights...
I began to feel obsessed. I'd slip away fr om Jorge's side a little sooner every night
to go out on the balcony. He began to get annoyed asking what on earth I was doing in
the middle of the night and complaining when I'd find some excuse to not make love. We
women have some terrific excuses. Finally he 'd fall asleep and I could settle myself
behind the eye of the night to wait for the lamp in the apartment across the way to light
up.
One night the miracle happened. My ne ighbor switched on the light, followed by
a new woman. She came in, tossed her purse down and walked around the room looking
at everything, making comments that didn't reach my ears. He went over to the bed,
turned on the little lamp, and went over to swit ch off the main light, just as —in the very
same moment— the woman turned toward the balcony. My neighbor followed her and
they both leaned on the balcony railing and chatted. It was strange, that woman kept
laughing and talking, he kept watching her and smiling. I assumed he must be tired of so
many words and wanting, like every other night, to get to bed to then leave her sleeping
and head for the balcony, but he didn't act impatient. He certainly didn't seem annoyed or
detached like I'd been a few hours before, when Jorge was trying to kiss me. The man didn't seem irritated, he kept smoking and lis tening to the woman, who kept smiling and
then once in a while would l ook serious, sigh, and then start talking again. What could
they be talking about? I don't know, my telesc ope is only a magic ey e, and seeing is not
like being there. All I co uld really conclude is that I fe lt really uncomfort able seeing them
there talking for hours and hours, while this here-every-ni ght man was sleeping in my
bed, and once in a while he'd cough and then I'd be aware of his presence. Yes, because if
Jorge didn't make a sound the entire night, then I could swear I was de finitely alone, but
Jorge always snored and coughed. Physically I was not alone. Physic ally there were two
bodies in my apartment, each one occupying its space, spaces that were connected only in
the interval between Jorge's "let's go to be d now" and when he fell asleep. What was he
doing there every night while I was peering into the apartments across the street in the
middle of the night? Peering into the apartment where the man and the woman kept on
talking. Every once in a while he'd say something and run his hand over her face,
smoothing her hair out of the way. He seemed like an entirely diffe rent neighbor, but it
was the same man, my telescope knew him pe rfectly well. They kept talking. I was the
spy. The telltale eye that keeps watch on pl otters who are confe rring in low voices,
checking each other out to make sure, just a conqueror, taking over territories rightfully
theirs. In the hundreds of minutes that make up the hours before the cocks crow -roosters
crow a lot before dawn breaks, Jorge wouldn't know about that because he isn't an
insomniac—. She straightened up, he said something and they walked toward the
apartment. They stayed inside for a few mi nutes, someone turned off the little bedside
lamp and he appeared in the doorway again, but looking different. He didn't come out and
lean on the rail and smoke and look out over th e street he must know by heart by now. He
leaned against the door frame, gazing into the apartment, toward where I know the bed
must be. I'd have liked to do the same thing. I' d have liked to give up my post, stretch my
back out and gaze inside, but it wouldn't make sense. Inside, 1 was only going to find
Jorge, lying on his stomach on one side of my bed, still hours away from waking up and
wanting his breakfast. So 1 preferred to just stay on there to see how he stopped gazing at
her and sat down on the balcony floor, across fr om me, leaning his head back against the
wall and smiling, without smoking, without doing a ny of the things he and I are so used
to. He stayed there like that for a bit until the woman appeared in the doorway, barefoot,
with her hair loose and a sweater wrapped around her. She walked toward the man,
crouched down by him and they looked at ea ch other for a long time, I know that. It
doesn't matter that her back blocked my view . Nor does it matter that I couldn't see their
faces when she sat down holding out her arms and the man's hands appeared on her hair.
It no longer mattered to me to see, my te lescopic eye didn't matter, nor my lack of
headphones that would let me overhear what pe rhaps they weren't going to say. He pulled
her close to him and I knew they were kissi ng without it mattering th at I was gazing at
them from over here. Who was I? What eff ect could I have? Noth ing, absolutely nothing,
conclusively nothing. I was the spectator who dries her tears timidly while the
projectionist rewinds the film. I wasn't anyt hing, that's why they were kissing. He held
her very close and they stayed that way, together and happy, and I felt so happy, I was
surprised at my happiness watching them. She leaning against him and I seeing their
faces, smiling, he kissing her ear while the wo man stretched up and turned her face to
kiss him and they stayed that way, so quietly, whispering things to each other, waiting for
the dawn, to greet the dawn together while Jorge slept on. Jorge's such an idiot; he's incapable of experiencing the birth of a day; he never understands anything. And I stayed
there for the birth, I was there when the sky began to flood with light and the sparrows
left their nests and they got up from the fl oor. He stretched his body and put his hands on
the balcony rail to shout out something to the day that was beginning while she watched
him tenderly, leaning against the wall. Then they embraced again, he put his arm around
her back and they went back inside, they we re lost in the shadows, they closed the
curtains, pulling away from me, from my cr ystal eye filled with the morning light,
without the dim bedside lamp. I stayed on the balcony surprised by the dawn, without
accomplice stars in my eagerness to profan e other's spaces, without the man and the
woman, who must be lying in bed, either making love or sleeping, how do I know,
sleeping probably, what does it matter, but he didn't get up again, he didn't come back to
the balcony to smoke the way he did at the end of each late night. He left me alone
waiting for him to appear. He left me alone the way I am. Alone. A few moments alone
and now I don't need the eye of the night in order to make out the cars that are beginning
to move along the street, the old men bringi ng their dogs out to pee, alarm clocks going
off, radios blaring the morning news and Jorge rolling over in bed.
When Jorge got up, I was still outside.
"Hey, you should look for a job as a night guard, it would be perfect for you,
you're so crazy... How about fixing breakfast now, come on..."
He went into the bathroom and 1 stayed on the balcony. A little later he came out
with his pants on and the towel hanging over his shoulder.
"What are you doing still here? Hey, girl, obv iously you don't have to get to work
early. Breakfast ready?"
I leaned on the doorframe and watched hi m while he put on his shoes. "Leave,
Jorge." He kept on tying his shoes.
"Of course, I'm going to work, come on, fix breakfast, hurry up now, then you can
lie down and get some sleep, you've got circles under your eyes..."
"No, Jorge, leave, I want you to leave."
He looked up unwillingly.
"What's wrong, girl?"
"I want you to leave... to pack up ever ything and not come back...to leave."
Jorge straightened up and looked at me with a slight smile.
"What's wrong? The stars going to your head, or what?"
I didn't say anything, he sighed, stood up a nd walked toward me with his arms
open.
"Hey now, what's wrong with my as trologer? Are you re ally tired?"
I stepped away from his body.
"I'm tired of you and, besides, I'm not an astrologer."
He stopped and stared at me, annoyed.
"What's going on, girl? Are you saying this seriously?"
"Yes, I want you to leave, to pack up all your stuff and leave me alone, Jorge,
leave."
"But why?"
He started to get impatient, but in contra st, I was as calm as the dawn. I sat down
on the bed while he stood there, half dressed. "Give me one reason, Jorge, give me one single reason why you and I are
together."
He raised his head to stare at the wa lls, his mouth twisted, and he took a few
quick steps over to pick up his shirt.
"Look, girl, it's seven in the morning and you're giving me this. I'm going to work,
let's talk later, okay?"
I shook my head no, and I saw his face harden as he raised his voice.
"You really want me to leave?"
"Give me one reason why you shouldn't."
Jorge stood there for a few seconds looki ng at me with hatred, then his face
slowly relaxed, without looking at me, lo st in who knows what inside his head.
"I don't know...A reason?...! don't know."
"Then leave."
I stood up and went back to the balcony doorway to watch the morning that was
beginning to fill with people. I could feel his cold eyes piercing my back.
"Then what the fuck," he started to move around quickly and opened the closet,
"I've been kicked out of better places, but when I l eave, I leave for good, you hear
that?..."
I didn't have to answer, there was no need to. I kept standing there with my back
to him, watching how the curtains of the apartment across the way were still pulled
closed while on this side, Jorge was muttering words and I didn't need to look at him. I
knew perfectly well that he was tossing his clothes into the suitcase, was looking for
something in the bathroom, and then came b ack and pulled the zipper closed, furiously.
"Did you hear me? That's why you're so messed up, no one can put up with a
woman who prowls around awake all night, ni ght was made for sleep ing and for fucking,
you hear that? Go on like this a nd you'll be even more messed up than you are, that's why
I'm getting the hell out of here..."
I turned my back on my neighbor's balc ony and looked at Jorge with the suitcase
in his hand.
"You left this," I pointed to the telescope, "It's yours."
"Keep it..., what would I want that shit for...I'm out of here..."
Jorge left the room, slamming the door lik e in The Dollhouse. He didn't want to
take the telescope, he thought he didn't need it, and maybe he was right, he certainly
didn't need it, but I didn't either. I didn't n eed it any longer. On the following nights, the
curtains of the apartment across the way were never again left open. I could see that the
light was being turned on and off, but I didn' t need my crystal eye to see that. I'd stand
out on the balcony awhile to gaze at the streets, the park full of trees , the avenue empty of
traffic, knowing that over on the other side a light would be turned on and then later
turned off, all through the night, even if I weren't keeping watch any longer, even if I
weren't on my balcony to notice everything. I kn ew that. I knew perfectly well that my
neighbor wouldn't be coming out to smoke and th en toss the butts into the street. I didn't
need him any longer, so I could close my eyes and, smile, and sleep, while out on the
balcony, the eye of the night remained alone, spying on the birth of the dawn.
[translated by Mary G. Berg]