Thank you so much for the money for a ticket home, but I’m not coming.
Right now I’m going to write you all sorts of excuses for why I won’t buy a ticket and won’t come back, then I’ll delete them all, come up with another dozen reasons and delete those too, and I’ll keep doing that for another three days until I think of a suitable version.
For example, I could say that I looked up tickets back to our neck of the woods and realized that nowadays the only way to get there is through Papua New Guinea with five layovers, and that it takes 140 hours.
I’m not even sure planes fly there at all, and you’d start grumbling about why I had to choose such a distant country for emigration on the other side of the Earth. And then you’d remind me how, as a child, you walked 40 kilometers each way to school in twenty-degree-below-zero frost, while I can’t sit through 140 hours on comfortable airplanes with five meals a day once every five years for my own dear dad. That excuse won’t do.
I could make up a story that tickets have suddenly become much more expensive and now cost three times as much. That won’t do either—what if you suddenly decide that seeing me back home is your mission and sell something to buy me a ticket?
I could say that I have too much work in Paraguay and can’t leave for long. But then how would I explain why I don’t want to spend my vacation in our village? Because, Dad, our village has a river and cows, and we have plenty of those here in Paraguay already. I want to spend my vacation by the ocean on white sand, in Brazil, and besides that, life in Paraguay is practically a year-round vacation anyway—palms, sunshine, and beaches. You can even swim in winter. Back home, our summer is like a Paraguayan winter, and on some days it’s even colder.
And the reason I’m not coming home, Dad, is because you’d clutch your head and exclaim, “What has Paraguay done to you?” Where is that obedient little Varyusha who hung on her parent’s every word, got excellent grades, worked herself to exhaustion in an office job, wore what girls are supposed to wear, put on makeup, and straightened her hair every day? Well, I’m not Varyusha anymore! I’m Barbara now.
Maybe Paraguay made me into myself. Paraguay, and the time difference. Not overnight, of course. At first I sat there working nights, feeling sad and crying. Then I moved onto a rooftop overlooking Argentina, switched to bread and water so I could save more money for a ticket back home. Maybe that rooftop corrupted me, because you can’t work nights under the moon with a view of Argentina and keep thinking about returning to our village. Something had to be done about it urgently, because remote work across time zones and living on bread and water simply do not go together with Paraguay. Bread grows mold here instantly, water turns into wine all by itself, and from the street come the smells of asado and the sounds of Paraguayan polka all night long. So I gave myself a catharsis—I quit my remote job first, and then I went and threw myself into the river. Don’t get scared, I was at the beach where it’s shallow, barely knee-deep to a sparrow. I threw myself into it metaphorically. Just as I was, in a dress. I surrendered myself, so to speak, to Paraguayan fate. There, piranhas attacked me and chewed off my hair. And crocodiles tore off my respectable clothes, so I climbed back onto the shore and just kept going. And for three years now I’ve been walking around Paraguay wearing whatever the Paraguayan crocodiles left me in. Hahaha, just kidding. But I’d really love to see the look in your eyes when I tell you stories about all those horrors you used to scare me with when you found out I was heading for Paraguay.
Anyway. What I’m trying to say is this: you’d only try to re-educate me. Turn me back into respectable accountant Varvara Ivanovna. No, Dad. If you want to see me, then you’d better come here instead. For a vacation. As for me, I’m already home here. I’ve had enough of Varvara Ivanovna.
