Freshwater Literary Journal 2022

Fabiana Elisa Martínez Conquered by Fog The large woman carrying a chihuahua came in between Rita’s eyes and the informative signs. The little dog growled terrified while its owner rattled the clinic door with hands too round or too clumsy. When she finally mastered the proper motions and left, the glass panel diverged a ray of sun toward Rita’s pupils illuminating the long-time silenced memory the posters on the wall had already triggered.

The problem was not that they did not know. The problem was that when they got to know, when the only enlightened one had come back to unveil the truth for them, they had chosen to remain inside the cave, mesmerized by the shadows, engulfed by darkness. As if they had chosen not to see. What people choose not to believe is usually more interesting and ironic than whatever fantasy they decide to follow for life. Rita had always interpreted the drama of Plato’s allegory that way. And she wondered often what strange switch makes souls turn into the rocky surface instead of accepting the blinding truth of the sun. To her, it was the allegory of choosing a lie even when confronted by clear evidence, the most voluntary and tenacious form of belief. The acceptance of the unreal, dancing shadows coming off the wall because the fear of the real light might show our own disgusting insignificance. She could still see the look of offended pride from Professor Lauret when she dared to express the thought, followed by some regards of disdain and boredom from her classmates in Introduction to Philosophy. As a freshman, taking one of those proemial classes that a pompous hunger for intellectuality had pushed her to attend, Rita had defied her professor, who had reacted in a belligerent manner probably more out of tiredness than defeat.

“Mrs. Thielemann, the doctor is ready. Second room to your right, please.”

Rita’s mind crawled back from the safety of the images on the clinic walls and her early years untangling Plato’s myth of caves and fires. All those posters of dog eyes, the naked anatomy wisely hidden under the furry lids, those cavernous pupils, open wells of black depth surrounded by caramel irises. Magic lanterns of wonder and love. Piper’s pupils had long ago stopped being such mirrors of the night. Nowadays, her eyes seem more like the highest caverns that Rita had seen in Granada, in the Gardens of Sacromonte, the ones far up in the hills where the gypsies lived, curtained by clouds to veil the entrance of their abode made of rock and stalagmites. Milky and hollow were the eyes of Rita’s dog today, the happy eyes about to get a verdict from Dr. Douglas in Lexington, the eminence in veterinarian ophthalmology. Seven miles away from home to hear the death sentence of a Labrador’s sight, Piper’s panting had started accelerating, echoing the anxiety of the animal and the dread of a woman’s heart.

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