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Fiction

Axel, Itinerant Dog

By Ana Teresa Torres
Translated from Spanish by Lucy Greaves
Ana Teresa Torres ponders house and home.

For Milagros Mata Gil

The woman next door was pulling up weeds and planting roses that would flower when summer came. She was an old lady with careful hands and extraordinarily strong legs. She was breaking up the soil with the hoe and bending down repeatedly until she’d loosened the soil enough to pull the plants out by their roots. We said hello shyly, out of politeness, but we knew we had nothing in common so any conversation would be redundant. Meanwhile, I gazed toward the houses, waiting for them. The doors would open slowly according to the disparate rhythms of their inhabitants. At any moment, I thought, Axel and Lisa will open theirs. Lisa will sit on the steps and light a cigarette. Axel will pad out and find a nearby spot where he’ll lie down to enjoy the fine weather.

Lisa will try to talk to me based on the fact that, despite the years between us, we both write. She probably thinks my books are odd, or unnecessary, and of little interest to the world. I’ve flicked through hers in the bookshop in town but they don’t do much for me either. She writes about Celtic legends, Irish sagas and tales of emigrants. I understand, from the blurb on the back cover, that the author succeeds with great virtuosity in blending ancient language with contemporary American English, and the way she links together female narrative voices demonstrates remarkable talent. But I’ve read too many back covers. There will follow, then, a familiar dialogue in which Lisa will ask me if any of my books have been translated into English, and other such phony points of interest. Although I’ll answer her questions amicably, I’ll make a point of changing the subject as soon as possible. People shouldn’t talk about things that don’t concern them.

Axel is nearby, listening to us. He is silent, reserved, fearful. He doesn’t want to be hurt and curls in on himself.

I heard about Axel a long time ago. Milagros told me about him. Actually, she wrote a long series of letters from the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland. Her letters, sent by fax back then, were narratives in which she described the inhabitants of that town whose name is so awkwardly spelled I hardly dare reproduce it; Annamagarret, maybe, but I’m sure there’s an h missing. Milagros’s letters were beautiful, and it’s a pity they’re fading from the fax paper we used back in the nineties. They were beautiful because through them we established ourselves as writers. Milagros told me about Axel. She’d seen him in that town and felt sorry for him. He looked like a vulnerable outcast. Underfed, too: he had to make do with scraps.

Lisa and I have finished our cigarettes and our impossible literary exchanges, so we both discreetly withdraw to carry on with the job. Her parents live relatively nearby, and she, as a young woman building her future, is looking for somewhere independent and remote to innocently continue with her writing. One day she’ll be successful and will be able to use her royalties to buy “her place” somewhere.

The woman next door has finished planting the rose cuttings around a pergola that brightens up the entrance to Victorian Village, the paradoxically named residential complex, and has disappeared. As far as I know she came here a few years ago and gradually ended up staying. She’s in charge of landscaping. To speculate about her previous life and why she moved here would be an abuse on my part. I do wonder, however, what she does during the winter when gardening work is impossible.

In her letters, Milagros described Axel in detail: his appearance, his character, his frailty. He used to hang around the writers and artists who were staying at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, particularly at mealtimes. On occasion someone would invite him to join them and he would approach fearfully, suspecting hatred, but also with a last curiosity about whether human beings were capable of love. Milagros perfectly described that feeling of someone still attentive to hope without truly believing in it. I’d had no particular reason to keep all her letters; I never thought I’d reread them, at least not with the interest they stirred in me after I returned. I delved into my archives, anxiously thinking that the thing we seek is precisely what’s lost: an insignificant little thing is magnified in the stress of the search and suddenly we feel like not finding it would be devastating. That’s happened to me at times when I’ve been looking for a photo—very precisely, that photo—which would suggest that it was a particular image of my mother. But I came across the folder where I’d kept Milagros’s letters from Ireland and found the description of Axel which in my mind had become a crucial piece of information.

Milagros had won a UNESCO grant to spend a term at the aforementioned Centre and work on a project about something I no longer recall. It’s easy to imagine how the cold, the mist, the solitude of the language, the isolation of a small rural town and encounters with people entirely unlike those one usually meets are conditions that might incline one toward the literary; her project wasn’t enough, so she turned Axel into a character in her letters. That’s how I read them, and it seemed odd that Milagros was taking an interest in dogs. Anyway, she clearly talked about two of them: Axel and Greta, a bitch. It probably intrigued her that the two dogs were there for no reason, and fought—especially Axel—for survival. But that’s typical of dogs: they just happen to be somewhere, for no obvious reason, and no one knows where they’ve come from. Dogs appear suddenly, and they disappear without a trace.

Through my conversations with Lisa I learnt that she’d also stayed at Tyrone and then lived in Ireland for several years. She fell in love with someone, I assumed, but I didn’t want to pry so I simply expressed my surprise; it was stupid surprise, because living in Ireland for no particular reason might seem strange to me but not to others. I told her a friend of mine had stayed there too but I don’t think it struck her as a coincidence. I didn’t remember the letters then, either. I asked if she’d had Axel since he was a puppy and that was when she told me she didn’t know exactly how old he was. She’d come across him at the Centre under the same circumstances Milagros had already described to me. When the time came for Lisa to return to the United States she felt somehow responsible for Axel and took him with her. That’s why he was there, lying close to us and listening to us talk, staring at Lisa in fear of losing her.

His fear grew when Lisa started getting ready to move. She’d found an apartment in town and decided it would be her home for an indefinite period. She calmly started carrying her belongings outside: her computer, various cushions, a table, different sized suitcases, boxes of books, a quilt, a desk chair. She skilfully piled them up on the lawn in front of her door. She’d moved plenty of times in her life and she went about it with expert precision. Axel brought his sleeping blanket out and dragged it into a corner, just like that character from Peanuts or a Winnicottian child. From there he watched her at work, sulking, protecting himself, curled up. Lisa explained that moving made him really anxious—him, not her—because he was scared he’d be left behind. I said that the dog, surrounded by odds and ends, looked homeless. “In fact,” she told me, “he used to be homeless.” Then she said a friend was bringing a van to help her move and crammed more blankets, boxes of food, and suitcases into her already full car. She still had a room at her parents’ house, she assured me, as if I was doubting it; as if a sudden feeling of vulnerability had overcome her. A place she could retreat to if things didn’t go well. But I think they must have gone well. I’m sure I’ll see Lisa’s name in the New York Times Book Review one day.

When I returned to Caracas I remembered Milagros’s letters and her dog stories. I hunted for them eagerly, as I said, because I wanted to be sure it was the same dog. It couldn’t be chance or coincidence, it had to be the same one. So, Axel, an Irish dog, had followed the emigrant tradition of his forefathers whose story was, in turn, written down by Lisa, who I imagine is also of Irish stock. I never asked her, but I think it’s obvious both from the subject of her book and her red hair and freckles. Axel was now following his literary destiny, which began in that small Irish town with a long name—if indeed he was born there—and continued in some letters I’ve still got in Caracas, and which I now remember in another place that recalls the one where we met.

The woman next door is pushing a wheelbarrow across the lawn. It’s hard work for a person of her age but her movements are incredibly youthful. I had a toy wheelbarrow when I was a girl. I think it came from Juguetelandia, or if not, from Sears Roebuck de Venezuela. Instead of playing gardener I used it as part of a dialogue I maintained with a boy who lived in my room. A framed picture hung on the wall opposite my bed—I don’t remember if it was a photo, a watercolor, or perhaps a cutting from a magazine. The boy was sitting on the steps in front of his house; a clapboard house that could be any one of millions in the United States. It was surely autumn because yellow leaves lay on the ground next to the wheelbarrow. He was wearing dungarees, a striped shirt and a hat at a jaunty angle that gave him a roguish look. I was immensely curious about his house—his house or his home, whichever you want. The door was closed and there was no one else to be seen, but the whole thing conveyed the sense of peace, harmony, and intimacy I associate with the image of a 1950s North American family. The boy, however, was outside, and I was curious in part because I imagined he’d been shut out; I had a hunch that he was preparing to run away. A boy on the run from home who therefore contradicted the domestic bliss his image seemed to proclaim. I’m pretty sure I wanted to be that boy, or at least be in that house, and push the wheelbarrow containing apples I’d collect from my father’s orchard and sell to neighbours like Little Lulu.

Maybe that sense of estrangement gave rise to my voyeurism when it comes to other people’s houses. Or perhaps it was a foreshadowing of the fact that I would inhabit many houses, or rather, would live in many habitable spaces. My neighbor has opened her door again. Now she’s wearing thick gloves and is clearing the weeds that grow around her pergola. They’re trivial weeds; nothing much to worry about, I mean. Weeds I wouldn’t even notice. Today she seems determined to strike up a conversation, and we’ll obviously talk about plants, which are as foreign to me as dogs are to Milagros, but they’re among those grouped notions we start to notice when we find ourselves far from our “house” or “home.”

I’ve learnt that there are several precursors to her affinity with gardening (her father, who ran a business selling roses; her husband, golfer and golf course designer; her son, tree surgeon). She was living in a senior citizens’ residence and the institution lowered the costs for tenants who contributed with their work. So she started planting, and she’s still planting here. I suspect this is the first formal occupation she’s had, and probably before this she was a housewife, although I have no idea how she got a job at eighty-one. The mysteries of neoliberalism, or perhaps the essence of the work itself: the perennial renewal of nature. I confess my concern about what she does during the winter. She answers that then she shovels the snow that builds up in front of the door to her house; the garden is everyone’s but each house belongs to someone. She also tells me that she’s sold hers. So she doesn’t consider this cottage her “house” or her “home.”

North Americans have clearly differentiated concepts of home and house, which don’t exactly correspond to our hogar and casa. Hogar, which they often translate as “home,” can sound somewhat tacky, refer to statistics, or smack of political cynicism. When we want to say “home,” however, we say casa, which for us is synonymous with family. North Americans ask: “where’s home for you?” because they understand perfectly that the house one lives in isn’t necessarily home, and that one lives in multiple houses over time without all of them automatically acquiring the status of home. They’re experts in moving. In time, Axel will become an expert too.

“Axel, perro viajero,” originally published in Cuentos completos (1966-2001). Mérida (Venezuela), El otro el mismo, 2003 © Ana Teresa Torres. Translation © 2014 by Lucy Greaves. All rights reserved.

English Spanish (Original)

For Milagros Mata Gil

The woman next door was pulling up weeds and planting roses that would flower when summer came. She was an old lady with careful hands and extraordinarily strong legs. She was breaking up the soil with the hoe and bending down repeatedly until she’d loosened the soil enough to pull the plants out by their roots. We said hello shyly, out of politeness, but we knew we had nothing in common so any conversation would be redundant. Meanwhile, I gazed toward the houses, waiting for them. The doors would open slowly according to the disparate rhythms of their inhabitants. At any moment, I thought, Axel and Lisa will open theirs. Lisa will sit on the steps and light a cigarette. Axel will pad out and find a nearby spot where he’ll lie down to enjoy the fine weather.

Lisa will try to talk to me based on the fact that, despite the years between us, we both write. She probably thinks my books are odd, or unnecessary, and of little interest to the world. I’ve flicked through hers in the bookshop in town but they don’t do much for me either. She writes about Celtic legends, Irish sagas and tales of emigrants. I understand, from the blurb on the back cover, that the author succeeds with great virtuosity in blending ancient language with contemporary American English, and the way she links together female narrative voices demonstrates remarkable talent. But I’ve read too many back covers. There will follow, then, a familiar dialogue in which Lisa will ask me if any of my books have been translated into English, and other such phony points of interest. Although I’ll answer her questions amicably, I’ll make a point of changing the subject as soon as possible. People shouldn’t talk about things that don’t concern them.

Axel is nearby, listening to us. He is silent, reserved, fearful. He doesn’t want to be hurt and curls in on himself.

I heard about Axel a long time ago. Milagros told me about him. Actually, she wrote a long series of letters from the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland. Her letters, sent by fax back then, were narratives in which she described the inhabitants of that town whose name is so awkwardly spelled I hardly dare reproduce it; Annamagarret, maybe, but I’m sure there’s an h missing. Milagros’s letters were beautiful, and it’s a pity they’re fading from the fax paper we used back in the nineties. They were beautiful because through them we established ourselves as writers. Milagros told me about Axel. She’d seen him in that town and felt sorry for him. He looked like a vulnerable outcast. Underfed, too: he had to make do with scraps.

Lisa and I have finished our cigarettes and our impossible literary exchanges, so we both discreetly withdraw to carry on with the job. Her parents live relatively nearby, and she, as a young woman building her future, is looking for somewhere independent and remote to innocently continue with her writing. One day she’ll be successful and will be able to use her royalties to buy “her place” somewhere.

The woman next door has finished planting the rose cuttings around a pergola that brightens up the entrance to Victorian Village, the paradoxically named residential complex, and has disappeared. As far as I know she came here a few years ago and gradually ended up staying. She’s in charge of landscaping. To speculate about her previous life and why she moved here would be an abuse on my part. I do wonder, however, what she does during the winter when gardening work is impossible.

In her letters, Milagros described Axel in detail: his appearance, his character, his frailty. He used to hang around the writers and artists who were staying at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, particularly at mealtimes. On occasion someone would invite him to join them and he would approach fearfully, suspecting hatred, but also with a last curiosity about whether human beings were capable of love. Milagros perfectly described that feeling of someone still attentive to hope without truly believing in it. I’d had no particular reason to keep all her letters; I never thought I’d reread them, at least not with the interest they stirred in me after I returned. I delved into my archives, anxiously thinking that the thing we seek is precisely what’s lost: an insignificant little thing is magnified in the stress of the search and suddenly we feel like not finding it would be devastating. That’s happened to me at times when I’ve been looking for a photo—very precisely, that photo—which would suggest that it was a particular image of my mother. But I came across the folder where I’d kept Milagros’s letters from Ireland and found the description of Axel which in my mind had become a crucial piece of information.

Milagros had won a UNESCO grant to spend a term at the aforementioned Centre and work on a project about something I no longer recall. It’s easy to imagine how the cold, the mist, the solitude of the language, the isolation of a small rural town and encounters with people entirely unlike those one usually meets are conditions that might incline one toward the literary; her project wasn’t enough, so she turned Axel into a character in her letters. That’s how I read them, and it seemed odd that Milagros was taking an interest in dogs. Anyway, she clearly talked about two of them: Axel and Greta, a bitch. It probably intrigued her that the two dogs were there for no reason, and fought—especially Axel—for survival. But that’s typical of dogs: they just happen to be somewhere, for no obvious reason, and no one knows where they’ve come from. Dogs appear suddenly, and they disappear without a trace.

Through my conversations with Lisa I learnt that she’d also stayed at Tyrone and then lived in Ireland for several years. She fell in love with someone, I assumed, but I didn’t want to pry so I simply expressed my surprise; it was stupid surprise, because living in Ireland for no particular reason might seem strange to me but not to others. I told her a friend of mine had stayed there too but I don’t think it struck her as a coincidence. I didn’t remember the letters then, either. I asked if she’d had Axel since he was a puppy and that was when she told me she didn’t know exactly how old he was. She’d come across him at the Centre under the same circumstances Milagros had already described to me. When the time came for Lisa to return to the United States she felt somehow responsible for Axel and took him with her. That’s why he was there, lying close to us and listening to us talk, staring at Lisa in fear of losing her.

His fear grew when Lisa started getting ready to move. She’d found an apartment in town and decided it would be her home for an indefinite period. She calmly started carrying her belongings outside: her computer, various cushions, a table, different sized suitcases, boxes of books, a quilt, a desk chair. She skilfully piled them up on the lawn in front of her door. She’d moved plenty of times in her life and she went about it with expert precision. Axel brought his sleeping blanket out and dragged it into a corner, just like that character from Peanuts or a Winnicottian child. From there he watched her at work, sulking, protecting himself, curled up. Lisa explained that moving made him really anxious—him, not her—because he was scared he’d be left behind. I said that the dog, surrounded by odds and ends, looked homeless. “In fact,” she told me, “he used to be homeless.” Then she said a friend was bringing a van to help her move and crammed more blankets, boxes of food, and suitcases into her already full car. She still had a room at her parents’ house, she assured me, as if I was doubting it; as if a sudden feeling of vulnerability had overcome her. A place she could retreat to if things didn’t go well. But I think they must have gone well. I’m sure I’ll see Lisa’s name in the New York Times Book Review one day.

When I returned to Caracas I remembered Milagros’s letters and her dog stories. I hunted for them eagerly, as I said, because I wanted to be sure it was the same dog. It couldn’t be chance or coincidence, it had to be the same one. So, Axel, an Irish dog, had followed the emigrant tradition of his forefathers whose story was, in turn, written down by Lisa, who I imagine is also of Irish stock. I never asked her, but I think it’s obvious both from the subject of her book and her red hair and freckles. Axel was now following his literary destiny, which began in that small Irish town with a long name—if indeed he was born there—and continued in some letters I’ve still got in Caracas, and which I now remember in another place that recalls the one where we met.

The woman next door is pushing a wheelbarrow across the lawn. It’s hard work for a person of her age but her movements are incredibly youthful. I had a toy wheelbarrow when I was a girl. I think it came from Juguetelandia, or if not, from Sears Roebuck de Venezuela. Instead of playing gardener I used it as part of a dialogue I maintained with a boy who lived in my room. A framed picture hung on the wall opposite my bed—I don’t remember if it was a photo, a watercolor, or perhaps a cutting from a magazine. The boy was sitting on the steps in front of his house; a clapboard house that could be any one of millions in the United States. It was surely autumn because yellow leaves lay on the ground next to the wheelbarrow. He was wearing dungarees, a striped shirt and a hat at a jaunty angle that gave him a roguish look. I was immensely curious about his house—his house or his home, whichever you want. The door was closed and there was no one else to be seen, but the whole thing conveyed the sense of peace, harmony, and intimacy I associate with the image of a 1950s North American family. The boy, however, was outside, and I was curious in part because I imagined he’d been shut out; I had a hunch that he was preparing to run away. A boy on the run from home who therefore contradicted the domestic bliss his image seemed to proclaim. I’m pretty sure I wanted to be that boy, or at least be in that house, and push the wheelbarrow containing apples I’d collect from my father’s orchard and sell to neighbours like Little Lulu.

Maybe that sense of estrangement gave rise to my voyeurism when it comes to other people’s houses. Or perhaps it was a foreshadowing of the fact that I would inhabit many houses, or rather, would live in many habitable spaces. My neighbor has opened her door again. Now she’s wearing thick gloves and is clearing the weeds that grow around her pergola. They’re trivial weeds; nothing much to worry about, I mean. Weeds I wouldn’t even notice. Today she seems determined to strike up a conversation, and we’ll obviously talk about plants, which are as foreign to me as dogs are to Milagros, but they’re among those grouped notions we start to notice when we find ourselves far from our “house” or “home.”

I’ve learnt that there are several precursors to her affinity with gardening (her father, who ran a business selling roses; her husband, golfer and golf course designer; her son, tree surgeon). She was living in a senior citizens’ residence and the institution lowered the costs for tenants who contributed with their work. So she started planting, and she’s still planting here. I suspect this is the first formal occupation she’s had, and probably before this she was a housewife, although I have no idea how she got a job at eighty-one. The mysteries of neoliberalism, or perhaps the essence of the work itself: the perennial renewal of nature. I confess my concern about what she does during the winter. She answers that then she shovels the snow that builds up in front of the door to her house; the garden is everyone’s but each house belongs to someone. She also tells me that she’s sold hers. So she doesn’t consider this cottage her “house” or her “home.”

North Americans have clearly differentiated concepts of home and house, which don’t exactly correspond to our hogar and casa. Hogar, which they often translate as “home,” can sound somewhat tacky, refer to statistics, or smack of political cynicism. When we want to say “home,” however, we say casa, which for us is synonymous with family. North Americans ask: “where’s home for you?” because they understand perfectly that the house one lives in isn’t necessarily home, and that one lives in multiple houses over time without all of them automatically acquiring the status of home. They’re experts in moving. In time, Axel will become an expert too.

“Axel, perro viajero,” originally published in Cuentos completos (1966-2001). Mérida (Venezuela), El otro el mismo, 2003 © Ana Teresa Torres. Translation © 2014 by Lucy Greaves. All rights reserved.

Axel, perro viajero

La mujer de al lado quitaba las malezas y sembraba rosas que florecerían en el verano. Era una anciana con singular fuerza en las piernas y precisión en las manos. Empujaba el azadón con el pie izquierdo y se agachaba repetidamente hasta encontrar el nicho adecuado para hincar la raíz de las matas. Nos saludábamos tímidamente,  para asegurar nuestra civilidad, pero sabíamos  que no teníamos nada en común y que cualquier conversación sería superflua. Mientras tanto miraba hacia las casas esperándolos. Las puertas se abrirían lentamente siguiendo el ritmo disímil de sus habitantes. En algún momento, pensé, Axel y Lisa abrirán la suya. Lisa se sentará en los escalones de la entrada y encenderá un cigarrillo. Axel caminará algunos pasos y escogerá un lugar cercano para acostarse a disfrutar el buen tiempo.

Lisa intentará un diálogo conmigo en la convención de que, a pesar de los años que nos separan, tenemos en común la escritura. Probablemente pensará que mis libros serán extraños, o innecesarios, y de escaso interés para el mundo. Yo he ojeado los suyos en la librería del pueblo y tampoco me hago al respecto demasiadas conjeturas. Hablan de leyendas celtas, de sagas irlandesas y de historias de emigrantes. Entiendo, por los comentarios de la contraportada, que la autora logra con gran virtuosismo incorporar el lenguaje antiguo en su contemporáneo inglés americano y que demuestra un asombroso talento narrativo en la concatenación de las voces femeninas que despliegan la historia. Pero he leído demasiadas contraportadas. Sigue, pues, un conocido diálogo en el cual Lisa me preguntará si alguno de mis libros está traducido al inglés, y otras falsas curiosidades. Contestaré todas sus preguntas con amabilidad pero con la firme decisión de que el tema de nuestra conversación cambie lo más rápidamente posible. Las personas no deberían hablar de cosas que no les interesan.

Axel nos escucha desde cerca. Es silencioso, más que reservado, temeroso. No quiere ser herido y se comprende.

Supe de Axel mucho tiempo atrás.  Me había hablado de él, Milagros. Me había escrito, en verdad, una larga carta desde el Tyrone Gutrie Center de Irlanda. Sus cartas, en aquella época por fax, eran  narraciones en las que describía a los habitantes del pueblo cuyo nombre tiene una tan complicada ortografía que no me atrevo a reproducir; Annamagarret, quizá, pero seguramente faltará alguna h. Eran cartas muy hermosas las de Milagros, y lamento que se han ido borrando del papel de fax que usábamos en los noventa. Eran hermosas porque a través de ellas nos constituíamos como escritoras. Milagros me hablaba de Axel. Lo había conocido en aquel pueblo y sentía conmiseración por él. Al parecer era muy rechazado y vulnerable. Muy pobre, también, debía contentarse con las sobras.

Lisa y yo hemos terminado nuestros cigarrillos y nuestros imposibles intercambios literarios, de modo que discretamente nos retiramos a nuestros respectivos interiores para continuar con la tarea. Sus padres viven relativamente cerca, y ella, como joven que construye su destino, busca un sitio independiente y apartado para seguir inocentemente su escritura. Algún día tendrá éxito y podrá con sus derechos de autor comprar “su lugar” en alguna parte.

La mujer de al lado ha terminado de sembrar los retoños de los rosales en una pérgola que ilumina la entrada del conjunto paródicamente nombrado Victorian Village, y ha desaparecido. Tengo entendido que llego aquí hace varios años y se fue quedando. Se ocupa del landscaping. Cualquier hipótesis acerca de su vida anterior y de por qué hizo de este lugar su residencia, sería abusiva de mi parte. Me pregunto, sin embargo, qué hace durante los inviernos cuando el trabajo de jardinería sea imposible.

 En sus cartas Milagros daba muchos detalles acerca de Axel, su aspecto, su carácter, su debilidad. Se mezclaba con los escritores y artistas que compartían la residencia del Tyrone Gutrie, particularmente a las horas de las comidas. De vez en cuando alguien lo invitaba a participar y él se acercaba temerosamente, sospechando el odio, pero también con una última curiosidad acerca de la posibilidad de amor de los seres humanos. Milagros describía muy acertadamente ese sentimiento de quien esta todavía atento a la esperanza sin verdaderamente creerlo. Había guardado sus cartas sin ninguna intención ulterior, simplemente porque quería conservarlas, pero no había pensado que las releería. O en todo caso, no con el interés que me suscitaron después de mi regreso. Hurgué en mis archivos con la ansiedad que produce el pensamiento de que aquello que perseguimos sea precisamente lo perdido. En efecto, ese detalle insignificante crece en la tensión de la búsqueda y es de pronto como si el no encontrarlo fuese la mayor desolación. Así me ha ocurrido en ocasiones buscando alguna foto -muy precisamente, esa foto- que supondría una imagen particular de mi madre. Pero di con la carpeta en la que había guardado las cartas que desde Irlanda me había escrito Milagros y encontré la descripción de Axel que se había convertido para mí en un dato imprescindible.

Milagros había ganado una beca de la Unesco para pasar un semestre en la residencia del mencionado centro irlandés y  trabajar en un proyecto cuyo tema ahora no recuerdo. Es fácil suponer que el frío, la neblina, la soledad del idioma, el aislamiento de un pequeño pueblo rural, el encuentro con personas totalmente diferentes a las habituales, son condiciones que inclinan a lo literario y que no le bastaba con su proyecto, de modo que convirtió a Axel en el personaje de sus cartas. Así las leí y con cierta sorpresa porque me parecía curioso que Milagros se ocupara de perros. Sin embargo, muy clara y nítidamente hablaba de dos: Axel y Greta, una perra, en ese caso. Probablemente le llamó la atención que eran perros que estaban allí sin que hubiese ninguna razón, y que luchaban –particularmente Axel- por su supervivencia. Pero ésa es una condición muy frecuente en los perros, estar en lugares que no explican su presencia, o tener un origen totalmente desconocido. Los perros aparecen de pronto, y desaparecen sin huella.

En mis conversaciones con Lisa supe que también había sido residente del Tyrone y que después se había quedado viviendo varios años en Irlanda. Se enamoró de alguien, supuse, pero hubiera sido una intromisión preguntarlo, de modo que me limite a expresar mi sorpresa; tonta sorpresa, porque vivir en Irlanda sin demasiadas razones puede ser extraño para mí pero no para otros. Le comenté que una amiga mía había sido residente allí pero no creo que eso despertara en ella ninguna coincidencia. En ese momento tampoco yo recordaba las cartas. Le pregunté si tenía a Axel consigo desde cachorro y fue entonces cuando me contó que no sabía exactamente su edad. Lo conoció en la residencia en las mismas circunstancias que ya Milagros me había descrito. Cuando Lisa regresó a los Estados Unidos, sintió que era de alguna manera responsable por Axel y lo embarcó con ella. Por eso estaba allí, escuchando nuestra conversación acostado cerca de nosotras, mirando fijamente a Lisa con el temor de que pudiera perderla.

Su temor se acrecentó cuando Lisa inició los preparativos de la mudanza. Había conseguido un apartamento en el pueblo y decidido que ése sería su hogar por un tiempo indefinido. Comenzó a sacar sus enseres: la computadora, varios cojines, una mesa, maletas de varios tamaños, cajas de libros, un quilt, una silla de escritorio. Fue acumulándolos en el jardín frente a su puerta con tranquilidad y experticia. Se había mudado muchas veces en su vida y actuaba con la precisión de una conocedora. Axel sacó su cobija de dormir y la arrastró hacia un rincón, como si fuese el personaje de Snoopy, o un niño winnicottiano. Desde allí la miraba hacer, enfurruñado; más que enfurruñado, protegido en sí mismo, acurrucado. Lisa me explicó que las mudanzas le ocasionaban mucha ansiedad –a él, no a ella- porque temía quedarse sin casa. Le dije que el perro, rodeado de corotos, parecía un homeless. “Exactamente –me contestó-, él fue un homeless”. Comentó después que un amigo vendría con una camioneta para ayudarla a hacer el transporte y metió en su automóvil, ya atestado, más cobijas, algunas cajas de comida, otras maletas. En la casa de sus padres tenía una habitación que seguía siendo de ella, me aseguró como si yo lo dudase; como si de pronto un sentimiento de indefensión la hubiera invadido. Un lugar al cual regresar si las cosas no iban bien. Pero creo que habrán ido bien. Estoy segura de que un día el nombre de Lisa aparecerá en el New York Times Book Review.

Cuando regresé a Caracas me acordé de las cartas de Milagros y de sus relatos de perros. Las busqué ávidamente, como ya dije, porque quería estar segura de que era el mismo perro. No podía ser una casualidad o una coincidencia, se trataba del mismo. De ese modo, Axel, perro irlandés, había seguido la tradición emigrante de sus antepasados, que eran, a su vez, consignados por Lisa en su primera novela, ya que probablemente es también descendiente de irlandeses. No se lo pregunté, pero lo supongo obvio tanto por el tema del libro como por el color rojizo de su pelo y las pecas. Axel, ahora, seguía su destino literario que había comenzado en aquel pequeño lugar de largo nombre en Irlanda –si es que nació allá- y continuado en unas cartas que guardo en Caracas, y que ahora recuerdo en otro lugar que se asemeja a aquél donde nos conocimos.

La mujer de al lado atraviesa el terreno arrastrando una carretilla de jardinero. Es un trabajo pesado para una persona de su edad pero ella lo ejecuta con absoluta frescura en sus movimientos. Tuve una carretilla de juguete cuando era niña. Creo que fue adquirida en Juguetelandia, o si no, en Sears Roebuck de Venezuela. No la utilizaba para jugar de jardinera sino como parte de un diálogo que sostenía con un niño que vivía en mi habitación. Se trataba de una imagen enmarcada y colgada frente a mi cama –no recuerdo si era una foto, una acuarela, o quizás un recorte de alguna revista. El niño estaba sentado en los escalones de la puerta de su casa; la casa de tablones de madera que distingue a millones de hogares en los Estados Unidos. La estación debía ser otoño porque podían verse algunas hojas amarillas en el suelo, al lado de la carretilla. Estaba vestido con unos “overoles”, una franela de rayas, y una gorra ladeada como para darle un aspecto pícaro. Yo sentía una enorme curiosidad por su casa –su hogar o su casa, como quiera decirse. La puerta estaba cerrada y no aparecía ningún adulto ni otros miembros de la familia, pero el conjunto traducía la noción de paz, armonía e intimidad que formaban parte de la imagen de la familia norteamericana de los años cincuenta. El niño, sin embargo, estaba afuera, y parte de mi curiosidad tenía que ver con la intuición de una exclusión; con la premonición de que el niño preparaba una huida. Un niño prófugo del hogar que desmentía así la felicidad domestica que su imagen parecía anunciar. Creo estar bastante segura de que yo quería ser ese niño, o al menos estar allí en aquella casa, y arrastrar la carretilla con manzanas que yo recogería del huerto de mi padre y vendería después a los vecinos como La Pequeña Lulú.

Puede ser que de aquel extrañamiento venga mi voyerismo por las casas ajenas. O era quizás una prefiguración de que en mi vida habitaría muchas casas, mejor dicho, de que habría muchos espacios habitables en los cuales yo viviría. La mujer de al lado ha vuelto a abrir su puerta. Lleva ahora unos guantes gruesos y limpia la maleza que se forma alrededor de la pérgola. Es una maleza intranscendente; muy poca cosa, quiero decir. Una maleza a la que yo no le prestaría atención. La veo hoy decidida a entablar conversación, y evidentemente hablaremos de plantas; que me son tan ajenas como a Milagros los perros, pero forman parte de esos conjuntos en los que reparamos cuando nos encontramos lejos de la “casa” o del “hogar”.

He sabido que su relación con el cuidado de los jardines tiene muchas sobredeterminaciones (su padre, comerciante de rosas; su marido, golfista y diseñador de canchas de golf; su hijo, cirujano de árboles). Estuvo viviendo en una senior citizen residence y la institución rebajaba los costos de los residentes que contribuyeran con su trabajo. Empezó, pues, a plantar, y lo sigue haciendo aquí. Sospecho que ésta es su primera ocupación formal, y que probablemente antes era ama de casa, aunque ignoro cómo logró conseguir un empleo a los 81 años. Misterios del neoliberalismo, o quizá de la esencia de su mismo trabajo: la perenne renovación de la naturaleza. Le confieso mi preocupación por saber qué hará durante el invierno. Me contesta que entonces palea la nieve que se acumula frente a la puerta de su casa; el jardín es de todos pero las casas son de cada cual. Me comenta también que ha vendido la suya. De modo que no sé si considera este cottage su “casa” o su “hogar”.

Los norteamericanos tienen un concepto claramente diferenciado entre home y house, que no se rinde con exactitud para nosotros en hogar y casa.  “Hogar” puede sonar algo cursi –“el calor del hogar”-, o también relacionado con estadísticas -“los hogares dirigidos por mujeres”; o los cinismos políticos -“queremos devolver la paz a los hogares venezolanos”. Cuando queremos decir “hogar”, decimos “casa”. “Regreso a mi casa”; “me esperan en la casa”; ¿qué estará pasando en la casa?”; “nunca escuche decir eso en mi casa”. Casa es un sinónimo de familia. Los norteamericanos preguntan: “¿dónde esta el hogar para usted?”, sobreentendiendo que la casa donde uno esté viviendo no es necesariamente el hogar. Y que uno vive en múltiples casas a lo largo del tiempo sin que todas ellas hayan adquirido el estatuto de hogar. Son expertos en mudanzas. Axel, con el tiempo, también lo llegará a ser.

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