nada’s Reviews > The Remains > Status Update

She tells me about how he struggled to breathe, how he felt asphyxiated, about his pacemaker (an Argentine named Favaloro was one of the inventors of the pacemaker), about the oxygen tank he had to carry around with him everywhere, about the blood clot in his lung, how they had to puncture the pleura to extract the fluid, about the intense pain this had caused him, about him almost suffocating to death that night and many others, about the everyday violence that comprises the life of a sick person: exhaustion, depression, the drip, the needles, the drugs, the doctors, the pacemaker, the defibrillator (in case of real emergency), the angioplasty, the bypass between the aorta and the coronary arteries. Her tale doesn’t affect me much – rather, I’m fascinated by the way she tells it (hear me with your eyes), the way she moves her mouth so quickly, I can’t understand what she’s saying any more, I don’t care, I’ve zoned out, hypnotised, watching how she spits her words frenetically, her lower lip starting to thin as she talks; her upper lip, much thicker than the bottom one, gradually disappears too, and by the time she says: it breaks my heart just thinking about it, her lips pressed bitterly together, by that time she no longer has a mouth, she has swallowed it, her face has split in two, a bloody wound slicing across it, the edges of which are clearly visible, an intense red (crimson?) (the absurd wound that is life), leaving a dark trace.

她告訴我，他如何呼吸困難，如何感到窒息；告訴我他的心律調節器（阿根廷人法瓦洛羅是心律調節器的發明者之一）；告訴我他無論走到哪裡，都得隨身攜帶氧氣瓶；告訴我他肺部的血栓，醫生如何必須刺穿肋膜，抽出積液；告訴我這個過程讓他承受了多麼劇烈的疼痛；告訴我那一夜，以及其他許多個夜晚，他如何差點窒息而死；告訴我構成病人生活的種種日常暴力：疲憊、憂鬱、點滴、針頭、藥物、醫生、心律調節器、去顫器（以防真正的緊急狀況）、血管成形術、主動脈與冠狀動脈之間的繞道手術。

她的敘述並沒有讓我受到多大觸動。倒不如說，真正令我著迷的是她說話的方式（用你的眼睛聽我說），是她嘴巴動得如此之快的模樣。我已經聽不懂她在說什麼了，也不在乎。我走神了，像被催眠似的，看著她如何狂亂地吐出一個又一個字。隨著她不停說話，她的下唇開始變薄；原本比下唇厚得多的上唇，也逐漸消失。等到她說出「光是想起來就讓我心碎」時，她的雙唇痛苦地緊抿在一起。到了那個時候，她已經沒有嘴巴了。她把嘴巴吞了下去。她的臉裂成了兩半，一道血淋淋的傷口橫貫臉龐，傷口的邊緣清晰可見，呈現一種濃烈的紅色（深紅色？）（生命這道荒謬的傷口），留下一道暗沉的痕跡。

María picks up from where she left off and begins to lose her mouth again in the process. I’m feeling better and set about listening carefully to her, but as before the asymmetrical shape of her mouth distracts me, the (full) upper lip and the long, thin, lower one, pressed bitterly or fearfully together, destined to disappear: life is an absurd, red wound. I can still see the outline of the mouth in a single colour, a darker lip pencil – a fragment of lip peeps out, disappears, then appears again. I concentrate, fascinated, on the movement and the colour – what colour is it exactly? cherry? crimson? It’s a funereal colour, that’s all I know – cyanosis? I stare at her, hypnotised, hearing without understanding the incessant noise coming from her mouth, words uttered quickly, unevenly, distortedly; through her teeth (their whiteness contrasting with the bright red of her mouth), like a basso continuo (on the cello or the harpsichord), you can hear, above all else, the word heart.

瑪麗亞接著剛才中斷的地方說下去，而在這個過程中，她的嘴巴又開始逐漸消失。我感覺好多了，於是試著仔細聽她說話，但和先前一樣，她那形狀不對稱的嘴巴又讓我分了心：飽滿的上唇與細長的下唇，痛苦地或恐懼地緊抿在一起，注定要消失。生命是一道荒謬的、紅色的傷口。我仍然看得見嘴巴的輪廓，由一種顏色勾勒出來，一支顏色較深的唇線筆。一小片嘴唇探了出來，消失，然後又再度出現。

我著迷地凝視著那動作與顏色。究竟是什麼顏色？櫻桃紅？深紅？那是一種喪葬的顏色，這是我唯一知道的。發紺？我盯著她看，像被催眠了一樣，聽見她嘴裡不斷發出的聲響，卻無法理解其中的意思。那些字句吐得又快又不均勻，扭曲變形，從她的齒縫間擠出來（潔白的牙齒與鮮紅的嘴巴形成強烈對比）。就像一道持續低音（由大提琴或大鍵琴演奏），在所有聲音之中，最清晰可聞的，始終是「心」這個字。