Una flor carnivora
por puro instinto cumplo mi papel
soy una flor carnivora
y estoy hambrienta de tu rosa piel...
(Ana Torroja 1997)
Some plants naturally avoid incest, ruminated Gaetano and yet the flower petals expressed a randy sigh of fragrance in his ample palm. Then he cut through the tropical midst of the vast conservatory with agile steps receiving the bows from the admiring Zingiber, the African flame tree, the Mirabilis, the Hibiscus, the Bombox ceiba, the Passiflora, the Frisia, the Oleander, the Mandragora, the Milkweed and the Belladonna. Hesitated for a second… before stepping firmly out from the warm hydroponics lights stage to the grayed porteño evening air that was brittle inside his potent chest. Deftly, he dialed his cell and talked to Mr. Rubin about the dilapidated shutters on the first floor at the back of the decaying mansion in Belgrano, and the important package pick up of a time sensitive delivery to Europe, and he talked about their recently departed gardening staff — he could hear Mattilda fussing over Mr. Rubin in his expansive oak chamber upstairs from where he didn’t descend any longer. After a pause, Gaetano softened his broad lips to a “You too, sir” and snapped shut the device like the Venus flytrap.
El morenito botija hopped on the SUV and gave Gaetano a peck in the mouth redolent of sugarless peppermint and burrowed his small hands under his impeccable shirt to count his six-pack, scraping the nape of the soft hair trail descending into his fitted trousers, the engorged money clip; the new fun. “Bashfulness with a dash of testosterone and an promising in botany,” thought Gaetano – “What’s not to like? Gaetano has a build resembling the iron clad 1950s conservatory on Barrio Belgrano, designed to withstand strong gusts of wind and gardening all year round. Rushing through Buenos Aires to the Buquebus ferry with a firm grip on the steering wheel and the young man’s sibilant young thick lips imbibing like an insect on Nepenthes. Such docile attention putting them over a slight impasse the week prior, their first in their short acquaintance caused by the usual (and tedious) awkwardness about fluids. This new millennium generation surely understands that suffering illness and painful death is a problem of the poor, not of the groomed and well-to-do. Gaetano made him reason on how fluids at times infect and others alleviate.
That evening, Gaetano was taking el morenito botija to an AIDS fundraiser across the water in Colonia, a swanky affair for minor starlets to show up in the social pages of El Pais. Taking the helm of the Belgrano and 9 de Julio Avenue with velocity, Gaetano’s smooth ride was a tad distracted by the crackling demands on the cell phone from the mansion in Belgrano – demands interrupted by bouts of Mr. Rubin’s ghastly hacking – the need to find a new apothecary, the needless dismissal of their latest gardener, the dilapidated shutters, the mounting electrical bill to keep the seedlings warm. Kind but firm words in Gaetano’s lips gave an explanation about a delayed shipment of rare cuttings from somewhere in the Amazons and his search to hire new gardener. Without missing a drop, the botija student tightened his glottis around nine inches and Gaetano without taking his foot from the accelerator pronounced his “you too, sir” gravely to Mr. Rubin and sealed it with a clack of the polished cell phone. The release made Gaetano’s muffler roar past two sports cars on the right lane. “Persu,” [1] buzzed the student admiringly, licking clean his lower lip, “Cedul”. Gaetano glanced from the corner of his eye at the reverberation of a Spanish word. Spanish allows others momentarily into the everyday of the centennial Conservatorio business in Belgrano, unavoidable outsiders but English is their daily language. He accelerated, both dressed to impress at the glamorous AIDS glitzy gala.
That evening, many mojitos later, having delivered the student back to his family home in Montevideo detour, a trip worth the effort – soon el botija would move to his new student quarters in Buenos Aires, thanks to Gaetano. He wouldn’t have to come up with excuses to go out or his whereabouts, he would be independent. Gaetano distractedly mulled over the need for a newer SUV. His mental abacus calculated whether Mr. Rubin’s allowance would be enough for this while reasoning on the cell phone with Mattilda, the conservatory manager, the housekeeper, an inconvenient call at the end of such perfect evening, her verbal auditing on the phone tested his patience like the sheathing drizzle on the treacherous highway. Gaetano, at the metronome pace of the windshield wipers, listed his responsibilities once more: the nursery, Mr. Rubin’s health, his own regime of pills and herbal supplements, the recently fired gardener. And the late evening personal training sessions at a fancy local gym, the same spot where he had first spotted the tiny and devoted Uruguayan botija and, at that time, aspiring botany student almost three weeks ago. Wanting to learn about ethnobotany at that age? Odd. He should have assumed he wanted mostly to grow his own weed. Cute! A chat in the locker room revealed much about the morenito; he was working the summer under the table as attendant in the upscale gym in Puerto Madero, his first time in the capital. The noise, the pollution, the dripping noses of the air conditioning units sticking out from windows, the humid worming of the Subte all over the city, the dilapidated old glory of buildings and avenues, Buenos Aires was a moody dragon taking a siesta, ready to wake up and flare his nostrils any time. Its massive and peculiar calm parlayed into Gaetano’s self-assured deportment. El morenito was dazzled.
“Can you hear me Gaetano? I was saying that El Cordovez was working out well as gardener.” Mattilda’s voice snapped Gaetano thoughts back to the present. Her puny creeping coleopteran vibrato, “But those people always marry so hurriedly? It is beyond me. For breeding purposes, I take it.”
“No, el Cordovez wasn’t efficient Mattilda; he became more interested in cavorting with Mr. Rubin’s day nurse.”
The woman who only leaves the Belgrano mansion to fly to England once a year delivers indictments in a soft drone, “Finding reliable employees is a predicament since the Falkland Islands. If it hadn’t been for the Corralito crisis in the 90s, nobody would have wanted to work, it seems. These people have always needed the discipline of a junta and…”
“El Cordovez was getting too old for his job anyway,” cuts in Gaetano while stepping on the gas pedal to take a swift long curve off the Uruguayan highway, he enjoyed the careening. “He didn’t want to learn …the business, or English, or about our plants.”
“He needed time; he was all of twenty-three or twenty-two. You were around that age when—”
“We’ll discuss this later.” Gaetano coasted faster around a highway exit. “At any rate, I have a prospective apothecary from one of the local colleges.” He disconnects.
In the downpour, a buquebus is docking, the one that will ferry him across from Montevideo back to Buenos Aires, Gaetano searches for one of his passports.
Mattilda probably guessed that Gaetano would be letting out steam by speeding up the slippery avenues leading to Belgrano. Two in the morning. A grey Volkswagen emerged from al the traffic and followed behind him closely, then started to flicker his beams on and off, maybe signaling him to the side of the street. Gaetano brought his foot off the pedal. Odd. He pulled up to the curb but kept the car idling ready to speed up. In Buenos Aires you never know, frequent carjacks, kidnaps. A man in a grey suit stepped off the grey Volkswagen, alone; approached the driver’s window, tensed hand near his hip, coked hammer, and an old horse swagger. Gaetano was alarmed and curious; you never know in Buenos Aires. Objects appear closer in the rear view mirror than in reality: the man’s pants rode too high up on his hips. Gaetano rolled down SUV window, the stout man showed his credentials, a Comisario Inspector. Why would a high rank policeman care about a speeding car? In a gruff voice, the officer solicited his licencia de conducir while adjusting his unnecessary tinted sunshades on the high bridge of his fat nose. He scanned the inside of the SUV. Had he seen this old man before?
“Usted se deplazaba por sobre los 60 kilometros.” The usual choice of overformal words by policemen, the fathering tone to anything they say.
“Disculpe oficial, no me di cuenta.” The years of bilingualism tint Gaetano’s utterances sometimes, not affected, comes out almost naturally.
“You were speeding.” The Comisario Inspector switched into English without complication.
Gaetano missed one beat but not a full breath. There has always been a British hangover in Buenos Aires after Las Malvinas.
“There’s no one around…officer.”
“Riding like a young buck, weren’t you son?”
“I’m young,” Gaetano responded flatly. (Son?) The crotchety Comisario Inspector took off his sun glasses with a squint inhis owl’s eyes.
“What’s all this equipment you’re carrying at the back?” He asked as he handed Gaetano a ticket.
“Plant nursery equipment.” A tinge of apprehension in Gaetano’s deep voice.
“For a grow-up?” shot the Comisario Inspector.
“I run the Conservatorio de Plantas Exóticas y Apotecario de Belgrano. We’re accredited.” Gaetano’s answered in clipped words. “It’s a conservatory of rare species for homeopathic and alternative medicine and—”
The Comisario Inspector interrupted without removing his eyes from Gaetano’s.
“I know, I know, son, the conservatory has been there since the 1970s, since the so-called guerra sucia…you might be too young to remember – you must have been in your early teens — anyway, slow down.” (Son?) He turned to leave, paused, hanged his sun glasses back on his nose and said, “What’s the rush anyway? Give my regards to Mr. Rubin, will you?”
The nearsighted owl wobbled away in the rain as if returning to its parliament. Gaetano was a bit stunned, “Calling me ‘son’? What kind of Comisario Inspector is this? How come he knows about the Belgrano conservatory? How much he knows?” In any case, in some select circles, many knew Mr. Rubin and about the conservatory. Gaetano recovered his cool as he pulled into the street and sped up with irk to erase the incident, and forget he did for the best part of the following four years.
≈
Moving stealthily around the house Mattilda beamed her antlers and rubbed her hind legs when passing and dispensing smiles to the attendants. With the suavity of a widow, a habit formed in the days before young seedlings had usurped her place as the mistress of this house. She arranged one of the crooked wreathes of exotic blooms without glancing at the little window on the casket where laid a powdered caricature of the octogenarian Mr. Rubin. Catholic visitors murmured to each other sheathed in yards of black fleece sidestepping the carcass like a murder of crows. A slew of old Anglicans expats silently observed the proceedings like shoppers checking each other’s their expiration dates with a stiff upper lip. Even in this gloomy morning, when the death of a plutocrat could make many heels heavy, Mattilda had found composure to arrange an impressive number of details including handling the first cheque to the new young apothecary for services rendered that very morning, before he marched out to his university graduation.
A generous well appointed foyer of the mansion, Mattilda straightened the doilies and the bite size cucumber sandwiches at the table without betraying a thought. She looked around for Gaetano; he had stepped out momentarily. She dialed her tiny cell phone to no answer. She peeled her small row of white teeth to a sorrowful smile to a Comisario Inspector wearing dark glasses who offered his condolences. Annoyed, Mattilda took it upon herself to carry the heavy silver tray to the kitchen. Found only a middle aged blonde waitress at the back chewing gum and looking bored. “Where did your young helper go?” Sotto voce. “Here, take this, this platter must be refreshed at once!”
The cell phone trilled, it was Mattilda, he ignored it. Rang again, he answered. Gaetano heard el morenito botija student’s voice had firmed up in the last four years, the self-entitlement of the newly schooled. He had nearly discarded his vesre quick permuting of syllables in his words, what Mattilda called “one more aberration of an already rowdy language.” On the cell, el morenito gave quick regrets to Gaetano for not being at the funeral interspersed with his admonitions for Gaetano to arrive promptly to his graduation ceremony at Universidad de Buenos Aires that very stormy afternoon. Gaetano offered reassurances that the funeral service would end on time – hadn’t he given this reassurance forty-eight hours before the beginning of Mr. Rubin’s end had started? Gaetano would find him in the graduation crowd; no member of the morenito Uruguayan family would be in attendance, but Gaetano would. They hang up. A raw porteño wind sneaked in when Gaetano pushed open one of the heavy metal gates into the conservatory. The exotics flutter nervously that their little world could be chilled.
Inside the conservatorio, Gaetano’s caught the young caterer smoking a joint.
“¿Que mierda haces aqui perdiendo el tiempo? ¿No te contrato acaso Matilde para ayudar con el servicio en el funeral?”
“Sorry mister. Me tomaba un recreo. Me llamo José.” Extended the hand but was not met by Gaetano’s ample palm.
“No me llames ‘mister’ ” had countered Gaetano. The caterer scurried past him muttering low, “loca entonces?”
“¿Que dijiste imbecil?”
“Nada ‘mister’.” Insolently, the young glowered over his shoulder.
“Te lo advertí, no me llamés ‘mister’ — vete a hacer tu trabajo.”
“Y la puta que te pario, gil.” Barely inaudible, under his breath.
Outside, a turbulent early afternoon bowled over cruel shadows. Inside, Gaetano had caught up with the young caterer at the end of the row of creeping mandragoras, snatched him by the elbow, but he missed one step and stumbled.
“¿Sentís que cagás fuego, no?… ¿Como el abuelo allí dentro en el cajón?” The young’s sputter had made Gaetano lose a beat.
“Ya me imagino lo que tu querés, hijo de puta.”
From behind, Gaetano hold was mighty but the lithe caterer drove a harder deal. Struggling to untwist his arm from behind his back, arching tight against Gaetano’s clutch, his vulgar lips curved up. A rudimentarily spoken “Whatchu got for me, mister?” and a “¿Que mas se puede pedir? Una buena propina y un pito” sealed a deal.
Gaetano undid his belt, unzipped, without letting go of the young’s arm; pulled his pants down, no words, no spit, no moan further curved their smirks, only the envious rustle of the Ibicella Luteas laid before them. Nearby, a devil’s claw yawned with disinterest. Gaetano dug in thick and strong while mentally revising the eulogy to be delivered in the next half hour before leaving to make it on time for the morenito’s graduation. A few minutes later, he distractedly handed a tip to the uncouth waiter.
The waiter glanced up. “Gracias.” He finished licking Gaetano clean not to spot his suit.
“¿Tenés mas rebusque aquí, otro dia quiza?”
“Hay laburo, necesitamos aprendiz de jardinero.” Thought Gaetano out loud, he needed a new gardener.
“Y, levantas el muerto tan bien como lo haces hoy?” whistled the young man tucking in the bills and tucking in his white shirt.
“Vete ya, te telefonearé la próxima semana,” sneered Gaetano, “learn some English, Goddamit. It’s the language of the future. Wait? What’s your name?”
“José, ya te lo dije…‘mister’.”
“Don’t call me ‘mister’. Fuck off!”
The lithe caterer did not wash his hands before rearranging the cucumber sandwiches, he was almost at the end of his shift, and he hurried to leave whistling under his breath leaving his co-workers to finish the cleaning after the velorio was done. Gaetano with unblemished suit and impeccable white shirt rushed to his SUV parked outside and inconspicuously left behind the ministrations of grieving. He rushed out of the neighborhood, crossed Buenos Aires going north and took Avenida Leopoldo Lugones past the Aeroparque Jorge Newbery thinking the morenito and he could go to the UK for a couple of weeks now that he was done with courses and Mr. Rubin was dead. And what to do with Mattilda?
At the Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales expansive graduation hall and through the first part of the graduation ceremony, Gaetano couldn’t spot the young man in the parade of starched suits and affected cocktail dresses flowing in the fall wind. His ample palms kept getting cold on his knees, or maybe numb, through the long graduation keynote speech by a retired physician expounding on the sanctity of life. Even the most liberal speeches have a dictator’s hangover in Argentina. Gaetano’s thoughts drifted back over the events of the last forty-eight hours. The sight of Mr. Rubin’s long fingers trembling like pistils that seek a thread of sunlight, the alkaloids producing the desired effect on his parasympathetic nervous system, decreasing the respiratory system secretions, the heart rate, and dilating the pupils. A final going to sleep competently assisted by Mattilda with the same muted equanimity with which she tends all the conservatory financial affairs. Mr. Rubin snoozed like a newborn in his arms while Mattilda dialed their family physician. The loyal Comisario Inspector, now close to retirement, arrived first. Although it has been four years since the odd encounter , Gaetano and the Comisario recognized each other silently, with barely a fleeting tremor of the eyelid, a widening of the irises, much the same way a mimosa pudica shudders to the touch. Later came the blue men and their tardy crimson of ambulance lights. There was a brief rosary of questions that did not jeopardize the fragility of their bereavement.
The graduation ceremony ended. Gaetano stood up in all his six feet of might, his cell not vibrating, and he identified the nearest exit to the auditorium to go and meet his young moreno botija.
“We meet again,” In English, stated a voice in the row behind him. The old Comisario Inspector in plainclothes, his pants riding high on his hips. He held Gaetano’s proud blue stare. “A moving funeral this morning, wasn’t it?” Pause. “You and I seem to know the same people.”
“Many die and many graduate on the same day.” Observed Gaetano.
His eyes continued scanning the corridor now plagued with mothers in gaudy flower patterns and fathers with digital cell phones crackling the Alma Mater colors into hundreds of pixels.
“So you know someone here…or just come for the picking?”
The old man’s remark didn’t make a scratch Gaetano’s veneer. An air of cheap tango was being siphoned through the loudspeakers.
“It wouldn’t be anyone you know. No worries. Adios.” Gaetano strode out in search of the young graduate.
At the top of the long flight of stairs outside the graduation hall, Gaetano arrived from the flank side to find the morenito reveling in the company of a classmate. They barely took one moment aside to give him his graduation present. When the old Comisario and another young man emerged from the other side, all four of them stood at the top of the steps. The auditorium crowd emptied noisily into the street below.
“You met my friend José, right?” The morenito made jovial introductions. “He’s a botanic major too.” An impudent breeze swept the stairs. José nodded mischievously without a mention to his new part-time as caterer arranging cucumber sandwiches in all kinds of social situations.
“¿Ya conocieron a mi— mi padrino?” José gestured toward the Comisario Inspector hardened face. Gaetano and the old man awkwardly shook hands.
El morenito talked to Gaetano, assertively, “Like I told you…we’re off to the party I told you in Montevideo. Will be back tomorrow afternoon,” he paused and then added as an afterthought, “and thanks for the…the present.” The SUV keys tinkled in his index finger. The old Comisario quickly handed José an envelope and adjusted his sunglasses.
“Gracias…er— padrino…and nice to meet ‘mister’”. The two young men pranced down lithely in their new suits heading to the parking lot.
The two men stood at the top of the barren long flight of stairs outside the graduation hall. The breeze was humid, insidious.
“I guess we’ve got each other’s company,” considered the cop.
“Fuck you,” muttered Gaetano and bolted down. At the bottom of the stairs he fumbled for his cell to call a cab. No signal. Had Mattilda not made the payment? A shadow of what was to come with Mattilda at the helm of the Conservatorio came upon Gaetano’s gray eyes, the coming day of Mr. Rubin’s last will probate. Gaetano was momentarily paralyzed.
“Want a ride, son?” Gaetano ignored the offer and flipped his cell open to dial again. “Te llevare a Belgrano. It’s an expensive cab ride from here to there.” The raspy voice of the retired Comisario startled him; it sounded like Mr. Rubin’s voice.
The Comisario drives his wide load truck the way only those who are above the law can. They ride in silence the beating of the rain on the windshield. The Comisario knows his way to el Conservatorio de Belgrano.
“Tough day.” Silence. “Listen — the young make their own way. We can only help.” Silence.
“They are ruthless.” Says Gaetano and accepts a gush from the flask that the old man puts under his nose. The content is harsh, somewhat acidic, but comforting, aguardiente or maybe grapa.
“‘Ruthless,’ is a big word, son. Weren’t you ruthless when you were that young?”
They drive past the River Plate stadium and soon he is turning into the service road leading up to the mansion in Belgrano. Mattilda would be ambling inside enveloped in the night shades: the next of kin, the would-have-been widow. Rubin’s body would have been taken away; the grumbling guests must have left a long while ago.
“You’ve got to be patient, the truth is that in Argentina things don’t change that much.”
“Thirty years of service?” Gaetano’s temples hurt. “I was brought up to tend the gardens.”
“You were brought up to be so much more and you need to assume that now.” The voice of the Comisario and his wrinkled hand descend on Gaetano. He parks the truck at the far side of the conservatory and dims the lights.
“Listen, son, Mr. Rubin was a loyal associate of mine, of many, and we take care of each other…”
Gaetano hops off the truck into the rain. He doesn’t walk away but turns his grimace to the conservatory. “You make me sick – all of you”. The Comisario steps into the rain and comes around; he is wearing his service gun. He escorts Gaetano through the formidable doors of the conservatory like a child on his first day of school.
“Defiance only hurts you.” Inside, the old man slowly helps Gaetano remove his soggy blue blazer, sleeve by sleeve. “There, there, my boy, take this shirt off too or you’ll catch a cold”. The old man’s rough finger nails run past Gaetano’s formidable neck, he unbuttons his well starched white shirt to expose his fitted undershirt. Gaetano’s flinches back a tad. “Shush, easy, it’s okay.” He is running his arthritic fingers over the fabric and the thick nipples. Gaetano stiffs like a blossom at the fright of a frost. The old man’s hands like an incantation work deftly around Gaetano’s narrow waist, undoing the belt. “It’s okay, it’s okay…okay.” The garments crumpled at their feet. Dutifully, Gaetano discards the rest of his soaked garments on the magnificent tiled dance floor for exotic flowers. The old man stands with his gun unloaded, monitoring with compassion.
“Why do we have to do this?” Tears well up in Gaetano’s eyes, not overflowing.
“Nobody must be left alone in our circle.” He moves around him. “We need each person like we need each seedling. You became defiant, you wanted to leave…tell others, break our tradition. It’s all we have.”
“I was so poor. All I needed was a job.” Gaetano is lightheaded.
“It was worse, and you know it now.” Mattilda’s coleopteran voice come from where she stands watching the two men, still dressed in funereal garments, arms crossed.
“You were one of the first orphans of La Guerra Sucia in 1976. You needed more than guidance. Like so many other youngsters, like those boys graduating today.”
“You! Someone else could have raised me.”
Mattilda stands her ground, small but terrific.
“Who? One of those abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo? They were just starting, they were many lost already. You had no one, no abuela, no father…almost no one.”
“Things have changed. Those two are free now. They’re onto us, onto everything we do. They’ll break with your tradition. Who the fuck needs an apothecary today!”
“Our tradition stays. Argentina wouldn’t be here without tradition. Not after all these economic disasters, not after the corruption of these years. You had to stay by Mr. Rubin’s side.”
“I had no choice. Rubin had me infected me so I wouldn’t run away.”
“You poisoned José today. You will poison the other soon. Sooner all later we all get poisoned by one kind of venom or another.” She slowly but firmly takes the gun from the old man and points.
“No one needs apothecaries or their potions for living today, only for dying. What we do will be obsolete.” Tall, beautiful, nude; Gaetano almost pleads, strangely immobile on his two feet.
Gaetano fumbles to grab the gun from Mattilda’s hand but he misses. She is so far away and yet so close. “That is foolish talk and you know it. Fluids can poison or cause illness but they can also alleviate. Mr. Rubin gave you a reason to stay, to better yourself, to work hard.”
“You see my son.” The Comisario’s old hands reach like ivy, conjuring up the yesteryears. “Mattilda has her own reasons, reasons like weed, inevitable but always sneaking up.” The stern voice is now behind him handcuffing him.
“Don’t be an ingrate. Mr. Rubin took care of you and your mother, and you’ll have someone to take care of you. Tradition is in the seasons and these plants, they die and come back.”
“I won’t stay.” Gaetano bends over to pick up his clothes, he makes up his mind, but he can’t find his hands.
“And go where? You have nothing out of here; in here you are safe.”
“I’ll go away with el morenito.” Gaetano voice breaks down sorrowful.
“That is crazy talk Gaetano, he’s in love with my boy José and that’s all right. It’ll pass. We have them, don’t we? You have made him one of yours; I have sowed my own seeds.” His utterance is brimming with daunting wisdom.
“You are grieving, it’s crazy talk. The plants need you. They need the flesh for living.”
Gaetano, intoxicated by the flask contents and the sadness of the evening, kisses the sweet and warm mulch.
“We all need each other…eventually. You’ll see; your new young chemist and your new gardener will need you,” Spellbinding words continue to trickle behind him.
“You’ll need these plants’ remedy when your time comes. Eat. Eat!”
Gaetano lies into the verdure shrine and his muscles begin to ease in to the rocking cadence of the old man. He feels the smell of the old, maybe Mr. Rubin’s scent transmogrifies in a corona around the mansion and the conservatory. He feels the old soft creases and the pleats of skin and the petals rubbing against him. In the chiaroscuro of the conservatory, the old man gnaws tender mercies at his neck, helps him blot his tears in the fertile soil. Gaetano’s quivering full lips masticate belladonna leaves. A quiet bashful cry reverberates through the conservatory.
“You must teach these young men. Pass everything to the young: the plants’ wisdom, the fluids.” The skies cry pouring on the crystal dome of the conservatory in Belgrano.
Thrusting in the mud, a gun barrel is dripping.
“Breeding is beautiful. One same sap in our bloodstreams.” Mattilda’s voice is nearer. “I had to bring you here son, we had to hide here, the killed the rest of our family, you and I escaped, I had to make hard decisions. I had to.”
Gaetano tightens in plain awareness. He remembers everything, the memories gush liquid through his limbs and dendrites. He arches his ample lower back, and opens wide. He cranks his neck to talk to the man inside of him.
“Mattilda wants to take everything away from me daddy, don’t let her.”
Gaetano’s words cajoled opening himself to the old man, meekly, writhing exhilarated in a bed of ravenous leaves.
The old man chuckles, “ah! Old mandragora. I’ll take care of her.” No sweeter words were uttered that night. “Open up, open up my Venus flytrap, and eat flesh.”
Mattilda lies naked on the checked black and white floor of the immense conservatory, two red ribbons flow from her left ear. Daddy and son cuddle and slept by her side, a whole family reunites.
[1] The character speaks a youthful form of Lumfardo, local slang shared by Buenos Aires and some areas of Uruguay. It is mostly formed by inverting the words verbally, for example, the word “super” is pronounced “persu”.
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