20
The kids are twins. A girl and a boy. They barely speak and when they do, it’s to each other in whispers, using secret codes and words with meanings that are only implied. He looks at them as though they were a strange animal made up of two separate parts activated by a single mind. His sister insists on calling them “the kids”, when everyone else refers to them as “the twins”. His sister and her idiotic rules.
The twins sit down at the dining-room table without saying hello.
“You didn’t say hi to Uncle Marquitos.”
He gets up from the kitchen table and walks slowly to the dining room. What he wants is for the formality to be over, to end this
obligatory visit as soon as possible.
“Hi, Uncle Marquitos.”
They say this in unison, mechanically, imitating a robot. They hold in their laughter, which shows in their eyes. They stare at him without blinking, waiting for a reaction. But he sits down on a chair and pours himself some water, doesn’t pay them any attention.
His sister serves the meal without noticing anything. She takes away his glass of water and replaces it with lemonade. “You forgot this in the kitchen, Marquitos. I made it just for you.”
Though the twins aren’t identical, their sealed and unwavering bond gives them an ominous air. The unconscious gestures that are duplicated, the identical gaze, the pacts of silence, make others uncomfortable. He knows they have a secret language, one it’s unlikely even his sister can decipher. The words that only the two of them understand turn others into foreigners, strangers, make them illiterate. His sister’s children are also a cliché: the evil twins.
His sister serves him the meatless food. It’s cold. Flavourless.
“Is it good?”
“Yes.”
The twins eat the special kidneys prepared with lemon and herbs, the potatoes à la provençale and the peas. They savour the meat while they look at him with curiosity. He sees the boy, Estebancito, gesture to the girl, Maru. He always laughs at the thought of the catastrophic dilemma his sister would have found herself in if she’d had two girls
or two boys. Naming children after their parents is stripping them of an identity, reminding them who they belong to.
The twins laugh, give each other signs, whisper. The hair on both of their heads is dirty, or oily.
“Kids, we’re having lunch with your uncle. Don’t be rude. Your father and I talked to you about this. At the table we don’t whisper, we talk like adults, understood?”
Estebancito looks at him with a sparkle in his eyes, a sparkle full of words like woods of splintered trees and silent tornadoes. But it’s Maru who speaks. “We’re trying to guess what Uncle Marquitos tastes like.”
His sister takes her knife and stabs it into the table. The sound is furious, swift. “Enough,” she says slowly, weighing the word, controlling it. The twins look at her with surprise. He’s never seen his sister react this way. He looks at her silently and chews a bit more of his cold rice, feeling sad about the whole scene.
“I’ve had it with this game. We don’t eat people. Or are the two of you savages?”
She shouts the question. Then she looks at the knife stuck in the table and runs to the toilet, as though awaking from a trance.
Maru, or Marisita, as his sister calls her, looks at the piece of special kidney she’s about to put in her mouth, and with a hint of a smile, winks at her brother. His niece’s words are like pieces of glass melting in extreme heat, like ravens pecking out eyes in slow motion.
“Mum’s crazy.”
She says this in the voice of a little girl, pouting and moving her index finger in circles near her temple.
Estebancito looks at her and laughs. He appears to find everything highly comical. He says, “The game’s called Exquisite Corpse. Want to play?”
His sister comes back. She looks at him, embarrassed, somewhat resigned. “I apologize,” she says. “It’s a game that’s popular now and they don’t understand they’re not allowed to play it.”
He drinks some water. She keeps talking and it’s like she figures he wants an explanation he hasn’t asked for.
“The problem is social media and those little virtual groups they’re part of, that’s where these things get started. You have no idea
because you’re never online.”
She notices the knife is still stuck in the table and yanks it out quickly as if nothing had happened, as if she hadn’t overreacted.
He knows that if he gets up and leaves as though he’s been offended, he’ll have to go through the whole thing again soon, because his sister will ask him over as many times as are needed to apologize.
Instead, he restricts himself to saying, “I think Estebancito must taste a bit rancid, like a pig that’s been fattened for too long, and Maru not unlike pink salmon, a bit on the strong side, but delicious.”
At first the twins look at him without understanding. They’ve never had pork or salmon. Then they smile, amused. His sister looks at him and doesn’t say anything. She’s only able to take another sip of water and eat. Her words get stuck inside her as though trapped in vacuum packed plastic bags.
“So tell me, Marquitos, does the plant sell heads to individual households, to someone like myself?”
He swallows what he believes to be vegetables. He can’t tell what he’s eating, not by its colour nor its flavour. There’s a sour smell in the
air. It could be his food or the house.
“Are you listening to me?”
He looks at her for a few seconds without answering. It occurs to him that since he got there, she hasn’t asked him about their father.
“No.”
“That’s not what the secretary at the plant said.”
He decides it’s time to end the visit.
“Dad’s fine, Marisa, in case you were wondering.”
She lowers her eyes and recognizes the sign that her brother has
had enough.
“That’s wonderful.”
“Yes, it is wonderful.”
But he decides to take it further because she crossed a line when she called the plant to ask about things she shouldn’t have.
“He had an episode a little while ago.”
His sister leaves her fork suspended in the air, halfway to her mouth, as though she were genuinely surprised.
“He did?”
“Yes. He’s doing fine, but it does happen from time to time.”
“Right, of course.”
He points to his niece and nephew with his fork and, raising his voice a little, says, “Have the kids, his grandchildren, gone to visit him?”
His sister looks at him with surprise and contained fury. Their tacit contract implies not humiliating her, and he’s always respected it.
Until today.
“Between school, homework, how far away he is, it’s really tough. And then there’s the curfew.”
Maru is about to say something, but her mother touches her hand and keeps talking.
“You have to understand that they’re enrolled in the best school— it’s an excellent school, a state school, of course, because private schools are terribly expensive. But if they don’t keep up, they’ll have to transfer to one with a fee and that’s not something we can take on.”
His sister’s words are like dry leaves piled up in a corner, rotting.
“Of course, Marisa. I’ll send Dad regards from everyone, okay?”
He gets up and smiles at his niece and nephew, but doesn’t say goodbye.
Maru gives him a defiant look. She takes a bite of special kidney and says, her mouth open, almost shouting: “I wanna go visit Grandpa, Mum.”
Estebancito looks at her, amused, and follows this up with: “Come on, Mum, let’s go visit, can’t we go visit.”
His sister looks at them with confusion; she doesn’t pick up on the cruelty of the request, doesn’t see the suppressed laughter.
“All right, all right, I guess we can go.”
He knows he won’t see the twins for a long time, and he knows that if he were to cut an arm off each of his sister’s children and eat them at this very moment on the wooden table, they would taste exactly like he predicted. He looks them right in the eye. First Maru and then Estebancito. He looks at his niece and nephew as though he were savouring the taste of them. It startles them and they lower their eyes.
He walks straight to the door. His sister opens it and gives him a quick kiss goodbye.
“So great to see you, Marquitos. Take this umbrella, do me a favour.”
He opens the umbrella and leaves without answering. Before he gets into his car he sees a bin. He tosses the open umbrella into it. His sister is watching from the door. She closes it slowly while lowering her head.