“Herself”

“Herself” is Elena’s name for her Parkinson’s disease: a way of speaking about an illness that has taken control of parts of her body and disrupted the authority she once assumed over them. The name makes that estrangement grammatically and emotionally legible. Elena does not experience the disease as an abstract diagnosis alone; she imagines it as an adversarial presence, while trying to keep moving, pursue answers about Rita’s death, and enlist another person’s help.

Naming the illness

Elena considers whether Parkinson’s disease should be masculine or feminine. Its name sounds masculine to her, but she associates illness with feminine misfortune and curse. She therefore decides to address the disease as “Herself,” a choice that converts a medical condition into a figure she can name and address. The name does not mean that Elena mistakes the illness for a person. It gives her a vocabulary for the bodily changes that remain difficult to grasp in the doctor’s explanations.

The naming grows from a gap between knowing what is happening and understanding how it works. Elena can recognize that the disease is inside her body, but she struggles with some of Dr Benegas’s terminology. She remembers his explanation that the condition degrades or changes nerve cells and interrupts the production of dopamine. Her effort to make that account intelligible turns it into a small cast of figures: Herself, dopamine as a messenger, and the brain as a dethroned king whose commands no longer reach her feet. “Herself” is thus part of Elena’s own working model of the illness, alongside images that translate medical explanation into a problem of authority and communication.

A body that does not obey

Elena’s feet are the clearest example of the loss of control that Herself represents. Her brain may issue an instruction to move, but the message does not reliably reach her feet. Elena imagines shouting at them to hurry, then recognizes that her voice would be as ineffective as her brain’s command. She waits instead. The scene makes the name more than an insult: Herself stands for the force that has separated intention from movement.

The same estrangement affects her posture and daily routines. During her train journey, Elena’s stiff neck forces her gaze down, as though her body were demanding submission. Her stooped position makes it harder to keep saliva in her mouth. Rita had tried to manage the drooling with clean handkerchiefs and disposable bibs; Elena now carries a handkerchief she has had to wash and iron herself. She also refused to throw away used bibs because of their cost. These details show how the illness presses into ordinary acts, possessions, and care, rather than appearing only as a diagnosis or metaphor. Elena understands that the disease has no cure and that the measures available to her are palliative aids for tasks she can no longer manage as before.

Waiting, repetition, and action

“Herself” recurs in Elena’s attempts to organize time and endure the delay before levodopa takes effect. While she waits for medication to dissolve and begin circulating, she silently repeats the names of the streets between her home and the station, forward and backward. She also cycles through the names in her improvised account of the illness, pairing Herself with the messenger and the messenger with the king. Repetition keeps her company and gives the waiting a pattern, but it does not restore movement on demand. The pill must work in its own time.

That delay has immediate consequences for Elena’s plans. She needs to reach the station and travel to find Isabel, whom she hopes will help investigate Rita’s death. She considers avoiding the bank and the pensioners who might stop her with condolences, but taking the longer route would add three blocks that her illness may not allow. Elena says she dislikes owing Herself favors: even a detour becomes a negotiation with a body whose capacities she cannot command. The name therefore belongs both to her private language and to the practical calculations that shape where she can go.

Conflict over responsibility

Elena’s argument with Father Juan exposes the difference between calling the disease Herself and accepting a religious explanation of bodily ownership. Father Juan speaks of the body as belonging to God and places suicide, abortion, and euthanasia within the Church’s condemnation of the body’s wrongful use. Elena answers that she has not had the right to use her own body for some time, and insists that Parkinson’s disease—not God—has taken that control from her. Her naming of Herself carries a sharp accusation, but it also distinguishes physical incapacity from a voluntary act.

The disagreement turns on who has the authority to explain Elena’s body and Rita’s death. Father Juan urges faith and prayer, while Elena asks for help uncovering the truth and rejects his confidence that Rita took her own life. When he treats her insistence as pride, she challenges his claim to speak for divine truth. The scene gives the expression a wider significance: Elena’s bodily experience contests a framework that treats the body primarily as an object governed by religious law.

Dependence and the search for help

When Elena meets Isabel, “Herself” again names the practical limit behind her request. Elena recounts that she has drawn up a list of suspects for Inspector Avellaneda, but the people on it were elsewhere when Rita died. If the killer is unknown to her, the investigation may require more interviews, clues, and evidence than she can pursue alone. She explains that she needs a body able to help because she cannot control her own; Isabel recognizes the illness and lets Elena finish without hurrying her.

Elena asks Isabel to repay a debt connected to a day twenty years earlier, when Rita helped Isabel, and presents that debt as a reason Isabel might lend her the physical capacity she lacks. The request does not undo Herself’s power, and the meeting does not immediately resolve the investigation. It does show what Elena’s repeated naming can and cannot do: it helps her describe the force limiting her, but getting beyond that limit requires another person’s willing assistance.