The Distant Marvels (22 page)

But who was I? Fatherless. Helpless. Imprisoned. Loveless. No. Not loveless, I thought. “I'm going out,” I told Lulu, who did not even look up at me. This was new. Back in the tallér, she'd pin me with her eyes, like a butterfly being examined, my wings caught under her stare, and I would have to offer a detailed explanation for my every move. I suppose there wasn't a point anymore. La Cuchilla was fenced in. Where could I possibly go?

She didn't ask me, so I did not tell her that I was going to find Mario. The events of the last two days had taught me one thing—that life was a precarious deal made with an unpredictable god. I felt brittle as I made my way around La Cuchilla, like I might break at any moment. Thoughts of Mario kept me together. As I walked, I got to thinking about the mermaid I thought I'd seen, and then, other watery things—warm currents in the river that pleased you just when you thought it was too cold to go on swimming, the round, brown snails that tugged their shells up and down the banks of the Cauto, the click of stones in the shallow places, like the sounds of a hundred ladies' shoes on a tiled floor. This all made me feel better, somehow, and I searched most of La Cuchilla by lunchtime, having peeked into nearly every window in the village.

In the end, I did not find Mario. He found me. I heard my name being called from a great distance. I turned in all directions, searching for his voice. Then, he started to laugh, and called my name again. “Where are you?” I cried, surprised to hear desperation in my voice.

“Look up,” he said, and I raised my eyes to the roof of a bohío a few feet from me. There was Mario, standing on the roof, his face blotted out by the sun.

He moved down to the lip of the roof, swung his legs into the open air, and let himself drop. Like a cat, he landed on his hands and feet, and rose, shaking his hands and cracking his knuckles. He made a funny face, and I knew that the jump had hurt him.

“I'm not impressed,” I said, hoping to discourage that sort of risk-taking.

“Ah, well,” Mario said. “Next time, I'll jump from the top of that watchtower over there.” He pointed at a raised wooden structure at the north end of the village. Inside, I could barely make out a Spanish soldier, his rifle resting on the railing that circumnavigated the little tower.

“It's empty,” Mario said, meaning the bohío behind us.

“The owners?” I asked.

“Dead. Like so many others,” Mario said. He'd spotted the buzzards in the distance, too, and he'd made up a game in which he'd watch them, looking for patterns in the sky. “They make the shapes of letters sometimes,” he said.

“Are they trying to tell us something?” I asked.

“Don't know. I can't read,” Mario said, laughing. It was an odd sound in such a place. Across the path from us, a thin man smoking a cigar shook his head, as if Mario's laughter were an indecent thing. When we noticed him looking at us, we grew quiet, and Mario drew me into the bohío.

It was dark and surprisingly cool inside. The ceiling overhead was a dense patchwork of reeds and palm fronds. Inside, the old owners had arrayed their home with very little—a coal stove, a hay-filled mattress and a ratty blue quilt, a wooden box with a few chipped dishes and cups, no forks or spoons to speak of, a single iron pot, and another pot of white porcelain next to the bed. There were no interior walls, no rooms save for the one in which we stood.

“Are you allright?” he asked me. I nodded yes, but I felt my face contort into a mask, and soon, I was crying against Mario's chest. He said nothing, though; if he'd asked me what was wrong, it would have occurred to me first to say that it was Lulu. Lulu was wrong. She'd been so placid that morning, so still. My mother, in my imagination, had always stood out from other women I knew. If they were soft, yeasty beings, my mother was made of iron. Her arms weren't flabby and white, but rather muscular and ropy. Even when bearing the full force of Agustín's anger, there would be a bright charge in her eyes, and when Agustín had calmed, it was as if Lulu had chased down his rage herself, sending it back to wherever it sprouted in him. But Lulu was no longer Lulu, and this is what was most wrong in my heart. It came down to one selfish question:

Who would save me from this situation if not Lulu?

For the first time in my life, I felt truly unmoored. I realized then, crying within the circle of Mario's thin arms, that I'd been a barnacle of a person, clinging to Lulu and Agustín for safety. I remembered that night in Havana, when I broke into an inn to save my mother, and I wondered where the courage had come from. The year in the tallér had softened me further instead of making me strong. I'd grown breasts, and my waist had thinned, and all of those changes disrupted the equilibrium of my courage, had taken so much energy that now I was half the girl I had hoped I would become.

We talked all morning in hushed tones. I kept expecting Lulu's face to appear in the doorway like a sunrise, blinding and angry, but she did not come. We would have been easy to find. La Cuchilla, it turned out, wasn't very big. All day, the buzzards screeched overhead, and we watched them for a while, holding our breath when they all swooped down at once, like a lightning strike with feathers, thinking that perhaps fresh meat had been thrown onto the pile of bodies.

We talked about escape. Mario proposed daring. “We simply rush over the fence when no one is looking,” he'd said, reminding me that he was still a boy, just as Lulu had insisted. I was acquainted with escape, remembering how close it had been for us in Havana, how death had been the only open door for us. I lamented the loss of my pistol, though I don't know what I could have done with it against so many soldiers anyway.

It was noon, and my stomach rumbled loudly. “So hungry,” I whispered, which turned out to be a peculiar sort of trigger, for Mario laced his hands behind my head and pulled me towards him. His mouth pressed against mine and my lips parted, and then, he was swallowing me whole, one hand still on my head, the other running up and down my ribs, clenching the soft roll of flesh at my waist hard. I could hear myself moaning into his mouth, but the sound felt so foreign, as if some other creature had made it, and I was only the amplifier of the sound.

He released me, gasping, his forehead touching mine. “Perdón,” he said. “Ay, perdón.”

I thought of Lulu and Agustín in that moment, my brain betraying me at the worst time. “No,” I said aloud, confusing Mario. “No,” I said again, and the images of my parents winked out in my head, leaving only black space, and a gnawing hunger that had nothing to do with food anymore, but other, abstract things. I was hungry for love, and for survival and freedom, and in that instant, these things felt very much in reach if I were only to choose the right path.

I led Mario to the bed, which was full of some dry material, with only a few feathers to soften sleep. I lay down and looked up at Mario's dark eyes, which glittered like moonlight on water. His mouth hung open, gasping for air. His chest filled and then collapsed, drowning on land for me. “Ven,” I told him, and pulled him close. My voice was a pant, and I was dimly aware of my breath carrying that hungry odor, the sourness of a body empty of nourishment. No matter, Mario's lips touched mine again and I heard him sigh deeply.

I will say no more about it, except this: our love had not been destroyed that day, though the fates had attempted to raze what we had to the ground.

A
t noon, Ofelia returns with Mireya. Both women are laughing as they enter the room, each holding a tray upon which plates of congrís and chicken have been piled. Garlic smells fill the space and my stomach grumbles in anticipation.

“This arrived an hour ago,” Ofelia says, gesturing to the food that she has put on the bed, inviting each of us to take a plate.

“Who sent it?” Celia asks.

“Fidel, of course,” Ofelia answers automatically. We say nothing. Of course our new líder did not send the food. Someone else must have done the cooking. These young revolutionaries sometimes make Fidel sound like Santi Clo, or God himself. I stifle a laugh when I think of our commandante wearing a tall white chef's hat, up to his elbows in chicken fat.

“Who cooked it?” Dulce asks, suspicious.

“If you're asking where the food was made, it came to us from Santa Ifigenia's kitchens. They've set up a food distribution center there. They're delivering food via small boats.”

“Ay,” Dulce says, startled, and crosses herself. Santa Ifigenia is the cemetery in Santiago, the place were José Martí is buried. “Food of the dead!” Dulce says, and puts down her plate.

“Don't be ridiculous,” Mireya chides, her mouth already full of black beans. “Some people rode out in the storm in the mausoleum, and a lucky thing, too. It was high and dry there.”

“I would rather die than sleep among ghosts,” Dulce says.

“When you die, that's all you'll do,” Rosalia says, and we all laugh and eat.

“I heard the soldiers talking,” Mireya tells us. “Some people were sheltered in the mausoleum. Others in the cathedral. Some in the Hotel Casagranda,” she says, and Celia whistles in approval.

We chat amongst ourselves for a while. Ofelia has stayed to eat with us, and the women are a little more animated for her presence, as if we are all trying to impress the young woman. She's a good listener, and we are warmed from within by the food and her company. When she asks, “What did I miss in your tale, María Sirena?” I am too shocked to answer. I didn't realize she'd heard enough of it to make sense of any of it, nor did I think she cared.

Then, Estrella begins to catch her up, and I hear my story in her voice. She stumbles a bit when describing Mario's family, and Dulce picks up the tale, her own voice tremulous but consistent. Susana takes it from there, then Rosalia pipes in, each of them picking up the trail of the story like those children in the fairy tale who leave bread crumbs behind to guide them home.

Every once in a while, they look to me for clarification, and I only nod, and wave them on. Ofelia has all the right responses, her face revealing shock, sadness, longing, contentment, in all the right places in the story.

They ask me to tell them about Mario again, and I do, lingering long over descriptions of him. “He liked holding hands, you know,” I tell them. “If I could see him again, I would hold his hands forever. And he liked to eat chicken soup by the bucketful when we were in the tallér, which was a good thing since that was all we ever ate.” The women laugh a little at that. “I would make him soup every day of his life if only I could see him again,” I say, my voice breaking a little.

“Did he like to dance?” Estrella asks. “My own Paco, may he rest in peace, he loved dancing.”

I shake my head. “I don't think we ever danced together,” I say. “But his arms were strong, and his steps sure, and his hips were rounded just a little, just enough for me to rest my hands on the small of his back. I'm sure he would have made a beautiful dancer.”

“When did he die?” Rosalia asks quietly. Her hands are folded under her chin like a girl.

“You presume too much,” I say. “I haven't gotten far enough in the story to answer that question.”

Ofelia collects our empty plates and loads up the trays again. As she works, we all help tidy the room, straightening the bedsheets on the dusty bed, folding blankets, as if we are preparing for guests.

“Another night at least,” Ofelia says, pausing a moment to watch us. “The roads are bad. Be patient, señoras. Patient,” she says, and we groan and quit putting the room to rights again.

Mireya comes to me, her hand outstretched. “You have my photograph,” she says, and I nod, pulling out the picture of Alejandro and handing it to her.

“Gracias,” she says.

“My friend, I—” I begin.

“None of that. I can make an uneasy peace with you, but I can't forgive you, María Sirena. I can't. My Alejandro is dead because of you. How can a mother forgive a thing like that?” she says. She is not crying now, nor does her voice waver. Her eyes, too, are locked on mine, and what I see is righteousness and a woman so convinced of her error that she will not be moved.

“I've said it once, and I'll say it until I am dead, I have no idea what you mean,” I tell her. For a moment, Mireya seems to be taken aback. Then, her spine goes rigid again, and she stands a bit taller than me. “You and Beatríz might as well have tied the noose around his neck with your own hands,” she says, and now her voice does break.

Noose? What noose? “He died of an infection,” I say, but Mireya shakes her head and closes her eyes against me, as if I am too difficult to bear.

We have been speaking off in a corner, and when Mireya moves away from me, Estrella, ever cheerful, cries out, “Another story from our lector!”

“No more,” I tell them. “Not tonight.”

“Ah, we've tired her out,” Estrella says. “I have one then,” she says, and proceeds to tell a tale about her own youth, one involving roller skates, a steep hill in Havana, a deep sewer, and a bout of ringworm. I tune her out eventually, though the others seem to be laughing, including Mireya.

It's good for them to laugh, I think. Estrella's story breeds another from Rosalia, which is similarly ridiculous, involving a sailor in Havana with a tattoo of Mickey Mouse on the inside of his thigh. Then Susana tells the story of a student who locked himself in a cabinet with a lit bottle rocket in his hands. By the time the sun has gone down, the women have grown quiet again, though none claim to be sleepy.

“A story for us imprisoned women,” Mireya says, and I know she means for me to begin again. “I'm tired of laughing, María Sirena. I'm unused to it.”

I feel six pairs of eyes on me, and the weight of a story yet untold, and so I speak again.