The Invisible Mountain (30 page)
“Of course not. They’re his children.”
Eva lit a cigarette. “They’re mine.”
Xhana watched the smoke rise into the air in curls. “I can lend you the rent.”
“Thank you.”
They sat in silence while Eva smoked.
“I just don’t want to need him.”
“You could leave your apartment.”
“Where would I go?”
“You’re welcome here, but there’s more room at your parents’ house.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
Eva shrugged.
“You see your father a lot now, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And things are fine?”
“Overall.”
“Except?”
“I keep waiting for things to sour.”
“Maybe they won’t.”
“Maybe.”
Xhana watched her put out her cigarette. “How is the book?”
The knot in Eva loosened, began to glow. “Almost ready.”
It was coming out in three weeks.
The Widest River in the World
. A slim volume, a simple jacket with a line drawing of a naked woman silhouetted against a shore. Between the covers, poems sang of hunger and dawn and beloved cities, milk-filled breasts and haunted nights, passions without names and beauty without reason, a young man bleeding in a Buenos Aires cell, Marxists dreaming over a gingham table. The first time she held a copy in her hands, she thought of the girl who dropped out of school at the age of ten, and wished she could reach back through time and open the book before her eyes. That girl breathed between these pages, as did all the girls and women she had been; they stalked the lines of words like phantoms; she half expected the pages to
feel humid from their constant exhalations. Two people could read this book, or two thousand—it didn’t matter. It existed, she existed, she had sung.
Xhana and Pajarita organized a party to celebrate the publication, at the house in Punta Carretas. They cooked for days, filled the house with fresh-cut flowers, and shooed Eva from the kitchen when she tried to help. She felt a bit like a bride, the bride she would have been if she had married at home, as was the custom. She stood in front of the mirror, applying her lipstick, and imagined herself a bride, tonight, at thirty, in her red silk dress, only who would she be preparing to marry? The woman in the mirror stared and did not blush.
The guests filled the house to bursting, from people she knew well—Bruno, Marco, Tomás, Xhana, Artigas, Coco, Cacho, all the women from the neighborhood, all their families—to poets she’d recently met, and poets whom she hadn’t seen in years: Beatriz, Joaquín, and the Well-Known Poet arrived together and bellowed with joy as they embraced her. Beatriz, in particular, seemed hungry to talk. She had changed; her hair was a natural brown, she’d married Joaquín, she’d founded a women poets’ collective, would Eva like to join?
“I’d love to,” Eva said.
“Wonderful. I can’t wait to read your book.”
“Thank you.”
“Tell me something.” Beatriz lowered her voice. “Did you really run away with Andrés?”
Eva fingered her wineglass. “In a fashion.”
“I thought so. I really did. Where is he now?”
“That’s anyone’s guess.”
“I see,” Beatriz said, and Eva felt the sting of disappointment in her voice.
“Some say he started a new life in Paris.”
“Paris!”
Eva smiled. She couldn’t help it. “Who knows?”
Later in the evening, at the insistence of the crowd, she read some poems out loud. She stood in front of the living room window, framed by the cool prison walls, and almost wept at the force of the applause, it
shook her open, she’d had too much wine, the sound filled her body like a hot sweet drink. After the reading, someone turned the music up, and the crowd began to dance; first she danced with her father, then with Artigas, then with Xhana, then in a circle of fellow poets, and finally alone, among couples, moving her body so the silk of her dress caressed her, red silk, she thought, closing her eyes, what a color for a bride, what a night for an elopement—I could vow inside right now as music moves my hips and nobody would know; why not, who cares if it’s impossible, the possible with all its lies and walls can go to hell; the beat is good and raw, my eyes are closed, and you, you, poetry, what kind of groom are you, alluring, unfathomable, after all these years I still don’t know what you promise or what you are, but I do know you’ve never left me; you’re the only one that stayed close against my skin, my hands, my sex, my mind, my nights, when I had nothing and was nothing you were with me; rocked me; filled me; come closer, my groom, the heat of my skin and the push of my breath and the salt of my days I am giving them to you, for better or worse, they are yours, I am yours, I do. I do. She opened her eyes. The room was packed. She looked for Zolá, though of course she hadn’t come, as she could not risk recognition; Eva felt her absence like a tear in her own dress, but she held on to what Zolá had said the night before, surprising Eva with a candlelit bedroom crowded with fresh roses,
I’ll be there, I’m with you always
. She scanned for the children. Roberto was eating empanadas with his cousins Félix and Raúl. He looked so serious in his shirt and tie, like a miniature man. She looked on, for her daughter, but couldn’t find her. Salomé. Salomé. The house was full of good adults and this was not a shoe store, there was no reason for panic, but it came anyway, gutted her with its instinctive maul, and she pressed through her guests to the kitchen, where Pajarita stood frying
buñuelos
and did not know where Salomé had gone, rushed down the hall and into every room until she opened the door of her old bedroom and found her daughter sleeping in the dark.
She perched at the edge of the bed, and let her eyes adjust until she saw the curl of Salomé’s body, the dark splay of her braids, the crush of her ruffled party dress. Her breath calmed, and she almost laughed at her own flush of terror, but she didn’t want to break the quiet.
Salomé slept through all of it, far away on a raft of dreams.
——————
THE WORLD IS PUSHED
BY MANY HANDS
S
ome questions were not for asking. For example, the question of how Papá could be across the river when beyond the river you saw nothing but the sky. Questions about sky and fathers and many other things, they were just for turning on the great wheel of your breath; you inhale without knowing, you exhale the same. Gathered up inside, questions keep their intensity, circulating through you, gusts of their own. Better not to ask too much, better not to make Mamá sad, to chase away her laugh that broke the air to sharp and golden shreds, her smell of flowers and sweat and almonds, her presence itself, smoking, leaning, writing, composing secret messages to strangers or to God. And so Salomé did not ask why they were moving. In any case, she didn’t mind; she liked her grandparents’ house, with its ivory prison outside and the sleek wind in the oaks, its smells inside of onions frying, rosemary drying, Abuelo’s cologne as he gripped her in a tight embrace. Abuela always piled food high on white plates that had tiny pink flowers. Abuelo Ignazio told them stories while they ate: about his adventurous youth in the
campo;
the ride and shine and gamble of it all; the water-streets of Italy, the boats he used to build, and how his heart was stolen by a beautiful woman adept at sleight of hand.
“She stole it, I swear—right out of my sleeve! I never got it back.” He pointed at Abuela Pajarita with his thumb. “This one here. She leaped out of the crowd like that Wonder Woman lady.”
Abuela smiled. She looked small and old. Salomé pictured her in Wonder Woman’s bright bikini, lasso in hand.
“Eat, Salomé!” Abuelo said. “You’re growing.”
After dinner, Abuelo played with the enthusiasm of a fellow child. He showed them many things: how to play poker, how to bet with cow bones, the card tricks he’d once done on a stage. He shuffled extravagantly, cards flying through the air in a blurred arc. He spread the deck on the table with scarred hands.
Pick one
. She looked and picked. Then back it went, and shuffle shuffle, while his mouth told a tale or riddle. The cards spread out. He told her to pick another, and she obeyed. He knew—amazing!—exactly what card it was. He grinned at her expression, and leaned in close, wine sweetsharp on his breath.
“Do you want to know the secret?”
Salomé nodded.
“Promise not to tell?”
“Promise.”
“The trick is to keep their attention on one hand, and work your magic with the other.”
Salomé let the trick sink into her, never guessing how, when she was older, stroking guns in a dim room, it would resurface like a buoy in her mind.
As she packed, Mamá would stop in the middle of a gesture to stare out into space, book or dish or box flap in hand, as if something had entered the room that only she could see. She would stay that way, frozen, even if Roberto or Salomé called her name. The morning of the move, the two of them got up early, and toasted bread together for their mother, without discussing it, there was no need to say
she’s far away and so let us make toast
. The living room towered with boxes, piled everywhere, marked in pen. Salomé was five now, old enough to put the bread on the griddle, though not to take it off, and old enough to dab cold water into the
mate
though Roberto still did the hot. They brought the tray to Mamá’s room. They found her standing on the balcony, in her nightgown, her back to them.
“Mamá,” Roberto said.
She turned quickly. She was beautiful, even with that faraway look of
hers that revealed nothing. They raised the breakfast tray toward her, a hopeful offering.
“Oh. Thank you so much. Good morning.”
Mamá’s brothers helped carry and unload boxes. They arrived at the Punta Carretas house in a flurry of motion. Her grandparents were waiting for them with fresh lemonade. Tío Marco approached Eva with a big unlabeled box. “What’s this?”
“Nothing.”
“Damn heavy for nothing.”
“It goes in my closet,” Mamá said quickly.
Salomé wondered what the box contained. She followed Tío Marco and watched him stow it in the closet, on a shelf too high to reach. She carried a box of toys to her new room. She looked around. It was the same room Mami had grown up in, with its long window over the bed, overlooking a single tree, and its frayed lamp and creaky drawers. She tried to imagine Mami, in that bed, as a child, but she could only see her mother, all grown up but smaller, smoking a cigarette between the sheets.
“Wonderful,” Abuelo said that night. “The house is full again. I don’t like to see it empty.”
It seemed, to Salomé, a strange thing to say. The house was always full. Some nights, it swelled with tíos—Bruno, Marco, Tomás—and tías—Mirna, Raquel, Carlota—and cousins: Elena and Carlos and Raúl and Javier and Aquiles and Paula and Félix and Mario and Carmencita and Pilar. Abuela Pajarita worked a magic of her own: the table stretched, the walls pulled back, room appeared for every member of the family. The house roared with banter, gossip, quibbles, toasting glasses, shocks of laughter, squeals from boys. Mounds of food were reduced to crumbs. Card games extended late into the night. People sprawled everywhere. Salomé watched her uncles’ games of poker, played gauchos with her cousins (Aquiles the bull-skinner, Carmencita the wound-healer, Félix the villainous
estanciero)
, and sometimes, when quiet called her, retreated to the kitchen and drew pictures to the sound of washing dishes.
“Look at Salomé,” Tía Mirna said. “Such a good girl. So quiet and still.”
“It’s true,” Mamá said, sounding perplexed. “She’s very good.”
She spent many hours alone, submerged in private games. The buttons from Abuela’s sewing basket kept her rapt for days. She sorted them by size, color, texture, shape. They had parades. They formed families. They were a village of small round things, full of dramas and adventures. Metallic buttons were all merchants—grocers, butchers, spinners of wool. Green ones were clever. Pink ones were prone to fall in love. Little buttons tended to get picked on, and the biggest button, a velour veteran from an old coat, often came to their rescue. Every button had a story; every button could belong. The epic loves and struggles were invisible to the rest of the family; they saw only a good girl, unobtrusive, shifting little discs around in silence.
She and Roberto had a hallowed place for silence: a swamp at the edge of town, the last stop of the bus. They went there sometimes with sandwiches and coins for the ride home—to get a little air, as Mamá put it. The air out there was wide and cool and redolent. She drew pictures. She stared out at the gliding ducks, the breezy reeds, the opulent trajectories of bugs. Roberto caught frogs and poked them, released them back into the mud, and scrawled in his notebook.
“What are you doing?”
“Research.”