I Closed My Eyes
A phosphorescent sound—the second hand—informed the room it was midnight.
Cerré los ojos
Un sonido fosforescente, de segundero, anunciaba en la habitación que era medianoche.
Una vez más cerrarías tus ojos, dejando al descubierto tus extraños párpados. Te dejarías caer en lo infinito de tus sueños e inmediatamente yo despertaría de un sueño fingido para iniciar un ritual casi oscuro: contemplarte dormido como quien vela a un muerto.
Cerré los ojos
Un sonido fosforescente, de segundero, anunciaba en la habitación que era medianoche.
Una vez más cerrarías tus ojos, dejando al descubierto tus extraños párpados. Te dejarías caer en lo infinito de tus sueños e inmediatamente yo despertaría de un sueño fingido para iniciar un ritual casi oscuro: contemplarte dormido como quien vela a un muerto.
Pasaron siete semanas. Mis ojos nunca se cerraron desde que dormía con él. Sus párpados extraños y casi transparentes me perturbaban. El insomnio me hundía más aún cuando los ruidos empezaban. Solo yo podía escucharlos. Conforme la oscuridad crecía, estos se hacían más intensos y la locura arañaba mi escasa razón.
Al principio pasaba noches enteras frotando mis oídos contra las paredes, tratando de descubrir el origen de aquellos ruidos similares al sonido que el agua produce al golpear una superficie desconocida. Un ruido líquido que además retumbaba. Fueron horas eternas recorriendo milímetro a milímetro las paredes; pero desistí cuando una mañana amanecí en medio de un charco de sangre que brotaba desde mi oído izquierdo. No me había dado cuenta de cuándo empecé a sangrar, el cansancio era tal que no me dejaba conciencia para percibir la realidad. Todo se convirtió en una costra oscura que me impidió moverme por un momento, hasta que se absorbió de pronto y sin dejar rastro.
Al día siguiente él me besó en la oreja como sabiendo qué era lo que pasaba. Esa noche, volvió a dormir profundamente en esa cama inmensa y comodísima, mientras yo me desvanecía torturada por esos ruidos en espiral que se hundían profundamente en mis tímpanos.
Tomaba sus manos y trataba de cerrar los ojos y dormir, pero el ruido líquido me cortaba. Se hacía más intenso cuando permanecía en quietud, cuando la oscuridad me tragaba. Una noche, la más oscura de todas, encendí las luces, corrí las cortinas y dejé a la luz de la luna entrar por la ventana. Se me ocurrió que a lo mejor este ruido no vivía con la luz.
La luz de luna y la de los focos se convirtieron en una masa luminosa casi metálica que inundó de golpe la habitación. El ruido—que para entonces podía escucharse hasta diez kilómetros a la redonda—comenzó a ahogarse, a morir de a pocos. Bastó que diese medio suspiro iniciando un alivio para que el ruido volviese con más fuerza como si hubiese sido engañado. Llegué a la conclusión de que la luz natural del día era la única capaz de lograr el silencio.…
I Closed My Eyes
A phosphorescent sound—the second hand—informed the room it was midnight.
Every night, you closed your eyes again, showing their strange lids, and returned to your endless dreams. I abandoned my pretend slumber to resume my obscure ritual of watching you sleep, as if keeping vigil over the dead.
I had first slept with him seven weeks earlier. I hadn’t closed my eyes since. His translucent eyelids were too unsettling. Insomnia invaded me. When the sounds began, it got worse. Only I could hear them. They intensified as the darkness deepened. Soon, my last remnants of sanity were scratched to bits.
Early on, I devoted whole nights to pressing my ears to the walls, hunting for the source of the noise. It seemed like water dripping onto some unknown surface—a liquid, echoing sound. I passed an unfathomable number of hours listening to every millimeter of the walls. I only stopped after the morning I woke to find blood pooling under my left ear. I’d been completely unconscious, too exhausted to feel myself bleeding. A dark crust of blood adhered to the pillow, then was suddenly absorbed without a trace.
He kissed me on the ear that morning, as if he knew what had happened. That night, he fell into a deep sleep, like he always did. I tossed in his enormous bed, the softest one I’d ever slept in, tortured by the sounds spiraling into my ears.
I held his hands and tried to shut my eyes and fall asleep, but the liquid sound cut through me. It was worst when the room was silent, when I was enfolded in darkness. One night, when the bedroom was totally black, I turned the lamps on, opened the curtains, and let the moon shine in, hoping the sound wouldn’t live through the onslaught of light.
At once, a luminous, metallic mass of moonglow and electric light swept through the room. In the dark, you could have heard the sound from ten kilometers away, but now it started fading. As it died, I permitted myself a small sigh of relief—which brought the sound back, even stronger, as if it had caught on to the trick. I realized silence would only come with daylight.
My days were short after that, my nights an eternal Calvary. My eyes dried and cracked till their color dimmed. I was condemned to spending my remaining nights on Earth lying awake, watching him dream. I resigned myself to life with insomnia and began examining him carefully, which I had never done before. His body was made of a warm, ethereal light that hurt the eyes I still couldn’t close. His silhouettes’ edges cut through the darkness like pale glass. Some of my dark hair was tangled in his light curls. His long white hands released viscous, sweet-smelling sweat.
Asleep, he was unfailingly peaceful. His transparent eyelids revealed a soft, gentle expression that was unimaginable on his hard waking self.
I discovered that his eyelids also revealed his dreams. I could watch them like a TV.
And I discovered that I never appeared.
I looked at him, forgetting the noise for a moment. I wanted to hug him. I squeezed him tightly, not worrying about waking him up. Holding onto him made me feel better. It released a strange, effervescent sensation inside me.
I rested my scarred ear on his chest, and it began bleeding violently. I could hear his steady, unemotional heartbeat. I heard the whisper of his dreams. I heard blood traveling through his kilometers of veins and arteries, crashing against their walls. After that, the sound couldn’t hurt me. I had found out what it was.
Fatigue gripped me, but, although I was exhausted, I didn’t want to fall asleep beside him. I washed my ear, packed my bags, and escaped. Gray fog filled the morning. The streets were empty. I hailed a taxi, feeling as warm inside as if I were in an incubator. It was like I had just been born. On the radio, somebody sang quietly, “Sleeping with you is being alone twice.”
My eyes dampened with sadness and darkened to their usual color. I closed them. As the taxi drove off, its radio and engine together sang me a lullaby.
I slept.
“Cerré los ojos” from El pez que aprendió a caminar. Lima: Estruendomudo, 2013.
Image by Antonio Carrau.
Claudia Ulloa Donoso has been recognized by critics and readers as one of the most original and surprising voices in Peruvian literature. In 2017, she was included in the Bogotá39, a list of the best Latin American fiction writers under forty that also includes Valeria Luiselli, Juan Cardenas, and Eduardo Rabasa. She currently lives north of the Arctic circle in Bødo, Norway, where she teaches Spanish and Norwegian.
Lily Meyer is a translator and critic, and the author of the novel Short War. A contributing writer at The Atlantic, her translations include Claudia Ulloa Donoso’s story collections Little Bird and Ice for Martians. Her novel The End of Romance is forthcoming from Viking.
