A Private Sorcery (28 page)

“I need to send her Santiago's mail. She didn't leave a forwarding address.”

“Pedro told me. Santiago's lawyer, Brenda O'Hare of O'Hare & O'Hare, probably has it. Whether Flora will do anything, that's a different question.”

S
HE CALLS
B
RENDA O'HARE
and, to her surprise, is put right through.

“The Cuban gentleman. Right, I remember. The blind professor who once taught Castro. Let's see.”

Rena hears things being moved around.

“Here it is. An address in Riyadh.”

Using Santiago's old typewriter, she writes a letter to Flora: undoubtedly, it has slipped Flora's mind to make arrangements for her father's mail; would she kindly confirm her address so that Rena can send what has collected and arrange for the post office to forward future pieces?

She sends the letter two-day delivery. Twelve days later, Flora calls. It's four in the morning on a Saturday night. She does not identify herself, but instead launches right in.

“I live in a tiny room. I have no space for all that junk, no money for these bills, these lousy leeching doctors. No time to write all his Communist friends. The word will get around soon enough that he is
did
.”

“Did?”

“Just throw it all out.”

Static fills the line. Either Flora has hung up or the connection has been lost.

In the afternoon, Rena xeroxes a notice stating that Santiago Domengo is deceased and no funds remain for paying his final bills. At first it's simple—bills, flyers from organizations for the blind, junk mail, all of which she clips to the notice and sends to the return address. Then a hand-addressed letter from Havana arrives. For a few days, she debates whether to do the same. The notice, though, seems so impersonal. She imagines the recipient reading the typed lines, leaning against a doorjamb.

She opens the letter. It's in Spanish in the large, loopy hand of a young person. Pedro translates for her. “It is, how do I say this, the godchild of a professor he used to work with in Cuba. She is planning to come here in the summer. She wants to stay with Mr. Domengo.” The next day, Rena brings him paper and pen and, while she dictates, he
translates her reply into Spanish.

S
HE WALKS HOME
from work the morning of her birthday. For a week, she's been dreading this day. A year since the bang on the door, since she watched the cops circle Saul. She counts the people who know: Ruth, Maggie, Leonard, Klara, Marc, Susan, Monk. Santiago. As for not telling her mother, it's not so much fear of being disappointed by Eleanor's response, the stretches when she could think of no one but herself long gone, as fear of herself—that buried wish to be someone's child, to be more vital to that someone than they are to themselves.

Like Saul is to Leonard. Like Bernardo was for Santiago. Unlocking the door, she hears the phone ringing.

“Happy birthday, darling,” her mother says.

Rena looks at her watch. It's four-fifteen in the morning California time. “What are you doing up at this hour?”

“Oh, I have all my little things I do before work. Yoga, the garden, writing in my journal.”

“You just caught me. I just got home.”

“You must be tired. Even when I was waitressing, I was never able to do that graveyard shift.”

Her mother's voice is soft and even. Rena closes her eyes. She focuses her mind as though preparing to parachute into something unknown. “There's something I need to tell you,” she says.

“Yes, darling.”

“Is this an okay time for you? I could call later.”

“It's fine. Is something the matter?”

“It's about Saul.”

“Yes?”

“He's in prison. He was arrested a year ago.” She braces herself for her mother's response. “Actually, it's exactly a year today. Some bad things happened at his job and he started using prescription drugs and it got out of hand. It's a long story. I'll tell you, just not this morning.”

Eleanor is silent for a time during which Rena tries to imagine her
mother now on the other end of the line, but can instead only see her pretty smile when they'd play cards both cross-legged on the rickety bed they'd shared over Nick's Ristorante, the broken blood vessels in her cheeks after they'd put her on medication and she'd eaten without cease until there'd been nothing she could fit in but an old Hawaiian muu-muu, her desperate look when she'd crossed the street from Russell's house in her too-tight miniskirt.

“You should have told me, but I guess I understand why you didn't. Do you need anything?”

“No. I'm okay.”

“Money?”

“No, Mom. I'm fine on that front.”

“Maybe I could come visit?”

She hears the hesitancy in her mother's voice, and it takes her a moment to recognize that it's not conflicted generosity but a fear—after all these years—of intruding.

“I could come on the weekend.”

Despite herself, Rena's eyes flood. She cannot remember when she and her mother were last alone, but then she thinks of the expense, of the months, the year perhaps, it would take her mother to pay off her credit-card bill.

“Thank you. Just knowing you would is a comfort.”

A
T THE END
of the week, she calls Leonard and asks if she can go with him on Sunday when he visits Saul. She detects his surprise, is grateful that he doesn't comment on its being the first time they'll travel together. During the car ride up, she tells him about Flora's refusal to handle her father's mail.

“There's nothing like the wrath of an indignant child,” he says. “Marc is more polished, but it's there underneath.”

“What's he so angry about?”

“The same thing as Santiago's daughter. He blames me for what happened to his mother.”

Rena drinks a cup of tea in the visitors' cafeteria while Leonard visits
with Saul. Afterwards, they switch. Saul is chipper, joking about his ex-wife and his father becoming buddies.

“I told my mother about you,” Rena says. “Your being here.” He looks at her curiously, and she realizes it had not occurred to him that she would not have told Eleanor long before. “She's been very sweet and attentive, calling me every few days. She told Gene, and he called me and we talked about it. When I said I didn't want him worrying about me, he said, look, Sis, I'm not a kid anymore, I'm twenty. Which, of course, I knew, but it still surprised me.”

“Ditto with your mother. You've always felt like she was a kid.” “True.”

“Nothing like having your husband go to jail to put you on the right track.”

A
S
R
ENA COMES
in the door, Pedro waves a certified letter addressed to Santiago (for which he unthinkingly signed) under her nose.

She takes the letter to the marble bench, where Santiago used to rest summer evenings in his black glasses and black beret. She studies the envelope and the State Department seal on the front. Carefully, she opens the letter and reads the three typed paragraphs. She feels lightheaded, as if ether is being released from the paper. When she looks up, Pedro is tugging on his jacket sleeve. She reads the letter through again.

“They've found the remains of a body they think is Santiago's son. They say it matches the dental records they have on file. They're writing to say that Mr. Domengo or his delegated representative can claim the body.”

Pedro crosses himself. “Fifteen years he waits for this, and then it happens three months after he dies.”

She sends a copy of the letter to Flora with a note clipped to the top: “I understand that you have not wanted to be bothered with your father's correspondence, but I thought you would most certainly want to see this. Kindly call me collect to acknowledge receipt.”

Two weeks later, Pedro hands the letter back to her. She waits until she's upstairs, seated at her kitchen table with a cup of tea and the phone in front of her, before she examines the envelope. It's covered with Arabic postmarks over which is stamped a red finger and the words
MOVED. NO FORWARDING ADDRESS
.

She picks up the phone. It takes three operators to reach someone who can give her the number for the American embassy in Riyadh, four transfers to find anyone who knew Flora Fahrsi.

“She never worked for us. Her husband ran a concession stand here up until last month. End of the month, he came in and said he wasn't going to renew.”

“Do you know why?”

“Oh, I just assumed he moved on. There's a lot of turnover.”

“Is there a forwarding address for him?”

“We don't keep that kind of information on people who have contracts with us.”

Rena's eyes feel dry from fatigue. She presses her fingertips against the lids. “It's an urgent family matter. Wouldn't the embassy be able to help in some way?”

“I'm sorry. If she were a tourist here, we'd be able to look into it. Otherwise, no.”

“Perhaps there's a number for him in the phone book? Maybe they're still in Riyadh.”

“There are thousands of persons with the last name Fahrsi in Saudi Arabia. If you need further assistance, miss, you will need to contact the State Department.”

With the
miss
, Rena hears that she has lost the sympathy of this woman six thousand miles away. She looks at her watch. It's almost five o'clock in Riyadh. Closing time.

She reads the letter again: Remains of a person identified from dental records to be Bernardo Domengo … found in a formaldehyde vat in the basement of the district morgue for the village of Nebaj and brought to a police morgue in Guatemala City. … Since the incident was classified as a hostile action against a United States citizen, the State
Department will arrange for the return of the remains following claim in person by the next of kin or their designated representative.

Bernardo, Santiago had told her, had been doing his dissertation research on the atonal music of the Queche people near Nebaj. At first he'd rented a room in the
pensión
, but after his recording equipment was stolen, he moved into the barn of a family of weavers who lived outside the village.

“I was seventy-eight when my son disappeared. The American embassy sent one of their investigators, but he brought back nothing of use. Rumors that the guerrillas killed him because they thought he was a spy, rumors that he used to wander alone in the woods and had been eaten by wolves. They never thought I would go myself to try and find him.”

Santiago held his head very still. “I cannot say what happened. Only that I know the army was involved. There was a journalist I met in Guatemala City who told me that the Guatemalan government kept track of every American living there and that the United States government let them see the FBI files. When we came back, we petitioned for Bernardo's FBI file. My son, who was never interested in politics, whose entire life was about music, who loved the music of daily life, songs never notated—the government of the country he was born in was keeping a file on him. Right on the top, first sentence, it said, Father: Cuban Communist. There were lists of the magazines my son subscribed to and the courses he took in college. An entire page on my contacts with Fidel Castro, all of it lies. So it was a farce, my asking the embassy to help me find Bernardo. They were in—how do you call it here—in bed with the killers.”

M
ONK PICKS UP
on the first ring. He is silent as she tells him about Santiago and the State Department letter and how she cannot find Flora Fahrsi to let her know about Bernardo's body.

“Okay,” he says when she reaches the end. “You're hitting me with a lot at once for nine-fifteen in the morning. The body they found of the boy in Guatemala is the brother of the woman in Saudi Arabia?”

“Yes. Well, actually, it's her half brother.”

Monk makes a little whistle. “Let's slow down here. It's very nice of you to try and find this lady, but you don't stand a chance of getting the State Department involved. It would be one thing if she'd said she wanted her father's mail, but she didn't.”

“Don't they want someone to claim the body?”

“There's no
they
. It's just one more task some low-level functionary has been assigned. He, or I guess it could be a she, doesn't give a damn about the Domengos. He just wants to be sure that everyone above him thinks he's doing a good job.”

“Managing the disposal of dead bodies?”

He sighs. What was it that Ruth's sister had said about Monk's older brother? That he'd gone to Vietnam and come back without an arm? Or was it without his mind? She waits for Monk to say something biting like
Don't go getting sappy and sixtyish on me; go find some deadbeat hippie publication and send them a letter about the inhumanity of the war machine
, but all he says is “Yes. That's about the long and short of it.”

“And what if you were to contact the embassy? Maybe they'd be more helpful if they knew a lawyer was involved.”

Rena can hear him pushing his chair back from the desk, the squeak of the rollers on the plastic pad. She imagines his wrestler's legs, tendons like cables, being hefted up to the desk. “What makes you think the sister, half sister, whatever the hell she is, wants to claim this decomposed corpse?”

Rena thinks of Santiago and the way the lids were puffy over his eyes. “I'll pay you for your time.”

Immediately, she fears that she has insulted him.

“It's not my business to waste people's money.”

“For me, it's not a waste.”

“I'll give it two days. Call me Thursday.”

She recounts the money in the file cabinet: eleven thousand eight hundred dollars. Outside her window someone is doing trick turns in a speedboat, and for a moment she imagines it's Reed sending her a coded message. You're flipping out, she tells herself. Next thing, you'll
be thinking the radio is broadcasting special messages to you.