A Far Country (15 page)

He was talking about a boy and a snake, or a boy who turned into a snake, or a snake who ate a boy; at first, Isabel caught only words. He held a pamphlet at arm’s length, waved his free hand, stomped his left foot and then his right, darted his head toward a pretty girl and went
‘Hissss
.’ The girl screamed. The crowd was still laughing when he said, ‘And that, my friends, is the tale of the boy who became a snake.’

The crowd moved off, and Isabel went to stand near the man. She found an unexpected solace in his familiarity. Noticing her waiting, he said, ‘My angel, shall you be purchasing anything today?’ She shook her head, intimidated by his elegant speech. ‘And what about your beautiful friend?’ he asked, bowing to Manuela.

‘Oh so charming,’ said her cousin flatly. ‘What do you have?’

He spread a fan of chapbooks in his hand. ‘I have
The ABC of Dance
. Do you like music? No? How about
The Man Who Became a Ford
—it is an industrial tale.’ Manuela shook her head. ‘The
Life of a Married Woman Is Never Secure
.’ ‘Too close to the truth!’ ‘The
Man Who Married a Mule.’
‘That’s disgusting. You should watch what you say; my cousin’s just a girl.’ ‘Then
Lives of the Cinema Stars
, about the visit of the great Bogart to this city?’ ‘That’s nonsense,’ said another woman who was looking through the chapbooks. ‘The great Bogart never came to the city.’ ‘Of course he did,’ replied the poet. ‘He called it
the city of lights
. With his wife, the stunning Hayworth.’ ‘That isn’t his wife! What kind of crazy poem is that?’ The woman shook her head and walked away.

The poet shrugged her off. He sold the last of the snake pamphlets and showed his empty hands to a disappointed customer.
As a new crowd gathered, Isabel pushed to the front. Around her, a group of children jostled, whispering secrets into one another’s ears.

The poet whistled through two fingers. ‘Ladies and gentlemen! Cowboys, taxpayers, beautiful girls! Gather around! One of you must be in God’s good favor today.’ He waved his hand. ‘Who knows the story of the Princess and the Mysterious Leopard?’ When no one answered, he clutched his chest. ‘No one? Oh! Your life is only hardship. No, I can’t tell you this story. Like a flood on dry soil, the joy will run right off your hearts. I must choose another.’ Laughter spread through the crowd. ‘No!’ shouted someone. ‘No!’ said a tall man.

‘No!’ blurted Isabel.

‘What’s that?’ said the poet, turning toward her. ‘You, young lady, what did you say?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘My dearest, I didn’t hear you say nothing. Come out with it: Which story do you want to hear?’ She whispered it: ‘The leopard story.’ ‘The leopard story?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘ “The Princess and the Leopard”?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘The tale of passion and punishment?’ ‘Yes, that one.’ ‘The greatest story of all time?’

‘Tell it, man!’ shouted someone. ‘Tell it, tell it, tell it!’ shouted a lady, clapping her hands together, and after shyly staring around her, Isabel joined in.

‘Silence!’
said the poet. ‘You are good humble people. Life has been hard for you. You’re far from home. I can’t let you suffer more.’ There were cheers. Isabel turned to catch Manuela’s eye, but a body was in the way.

The poem was about a poor peasant in a small backlands town that sounded very much like Saint Michael. As the peasant traveled to an enchanted city, rhymes sprang from the words, met each other side by side, bounced and pattered
along, hid and then jumped out when Isabel least expected. The poet sang, tipped his hat and shook his shoulders. He growled and pawed the ground with his foot. He tossed little kisses to the air, twisted his face, made his eyes bulge and puffed his cheeks. He swooned and passed his hand over his forehead, fluttered his fingers over his heart and sighed, ‘Aaaah.’ He said, ‘And so the princess thought and thought and thought. She looked first at the handsome prince, and then at the poor peasant, and said,
I have decided!’

He closed the book.

The crowd stirred. Isabel waited for him to continue. Perhaps the girl would marry the peasant who was a prince inside, or maybe the prince who was really a leopard: it wasn’t clear at all. The man tipped his hat. ‘Special price today!’ he said. ‘Know the ending for a special price.’ Someone in the crowd groaned, ‘Tell us!’

‘Yes, tell us!’ said Isabel.

‘Tell you? Sister, it’s all here! Buy my book and you will know.’

Eager people elbowed forward.

Isabel cursed under her breath. How dare he! She pushed her way back to Manuela. ‘I have to know.’

‘Just this time,’ said her cousin, rummaging through her pocket.

She went back to the poet. ‘The leopard story,’ she said, showing him the coin.

‘Ah, my saint, you’re too slow. I sold them all. But if you buy another, I’ll tell you the leopard’s ending. How about
The Girl Who Cursed Her Mother and Was Turned into a Snake
, or
The Boy Who Thought He Could Fly’?’

She selected the second one. It had a woodcut print of a boy with wings.

He wrapped it carefully in butcher paper, running a cracked nail along the edges.

Then he whispered in her ear. Now that he stood closer, she could see his tired eyes. He smelled of mothballs and cigar smoke. She nodded knowingly when she heard the ending. ‘The peasant,’ she said. ‘That’s the one I thought.’ He tipped his hat, and with a little bow he was gone.

Manuela took her to Cathedral Square. On the steps beneath a Gothic dome of marble and verdigris, Isabel read the story slowly. It told, in rhyme, of a boy from ‘a land so poor it grew only gravestones.’ One day there was a great wind that carried him into the sky. He stared down at his home and saw only hunger and sadness, so he flew toward the sun. Then another wind came and blew him down, crashing through the clouds and into the center of the city, where he landed in a tree. A man, seeing that he could fly, offered him a job at a palace. But the palace was a factory, and his life was full of suffering. Isabel’s mood darkened. She wished she hadn’t read it.

Manuela took out a small tin filled with rice. She fed Hugo and changed his diaper, setting him between her feet as they ate and watched the crowds in the square.

They walked again. This time they stayed away from the fair. Inside the marble entrance of a department store, Manuela took Isabel on an escalator. ‘Step!’ she whispered. ‘Now!’ They rode up to the mezzanine, then down, then back up again, all the way to the top. As they walked, Isabel ran her fingers along the soft clothes. Below sale banners like Carnival coats of arms, they passed aisle after aisle of toothbrushes, perfumes, soaps.

It is beautiful, she thought, but she began to feel dizzy. The perfume banks smelled of unfamiliar flowers. The soaps were
wrapped and sealed and couldn’t be touched. She had never seen so many toothbrushes.

They stopped before a towering wall of beauty products, photos of faces with hair done up in creams, gels, dyes, tints, oils, sprays, pastes. There was blond hair with brown ends and brown hair with blond ends, black women with straight hair and white women with curly blond hair, hair that fanned out like dry grass, that hid a face like a curtain, that tufted in a little wave, that glistened with wetness and shined like metal. When she had the money, she would choose something for her mother, she thought weakly. She wanted to sit. Manuela browsed a row of lightening agents. Suddenly, Isabel was angry. She shouldn’t have taken me here, she thought. She should have warned me so I could be ready. A girl in a store uniform touched her shoulder gently. ‘I can get you a basket,’ said the girl, pointing to a lace shirt in her hand. Isabel didn’t remember taking the lace shirt. ‘She doesn’t want it,’ said Manuela, and handed it back.

A voice boomed. ‘Not too early to start thinking of school! Come to our children’s department for the latest fashions. Make your children the envy of their classmates!’

Isabel pinched her eyes tight.

‘I know,’ said Manuela, taking her hand. ‘Come. Let’s go home.’

Isabel turned to look at her.

‘New Eden,’ said Manuela. ‘Home.’

The next morning, Manuela was gone when Isabel awoke. She left only a note that read,
See you Friday
, and a small fold of money. Isabel didn’t know what to do, so she waited until
Hugo began to stir. She spent the day seated at the edge of the bed, watching him play with a battered plastic doll, feeding him with a bottle when he was hungry. Later, she cleaned the room. She ate the beans and rice her cousin had prepared. She sat at the window and listened to sounds from the street.

The following days were the same. She stayed inside, leaving only to draw water and buy food from a market down the hill. She fed Hugo, cleaned him, played with him and waited while he slept. Watching him, she found herself wondering how he could grow up inside, alone without other children or animals.

Sometimes she listened to the radio, and sometimes she looked at the only book, the illustrated Bible, where Christ preached on a desolate mountain that reminded her of the ragged hills at home. Mostly, she lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling, watching the room fill with light and later with darkness. Her eyes followed the geckos and cockroaches, and she strained her ears for distant conversations.

At times, she paced the room, needing to walk and stretch her legs, but she didn’t go outside. She was terrified by Manuela’s warnings, by the noise. She had the impression that each time she opened the door she was crossing into another world, without empty space. She told herself that she would venture out once she became used to so many other people, once Isaias came. She wondered if others thought it was strange for a person to come from so far away only to sit in a little room.

As the week wore on, she found herself increasingly seized by an unfamiliar compulsion to speak. So she spoke to the baby: unconnected, hesitant stories of festivals and family, names of plants, attributes of town dogs, myths, bestiaries,
spirit hierarchies, dresses she had seen on television, a garden she would plant near the stream at home, tales of bandits, the Princess of China.

They were good stories, her best stories, but soon she began to wonder if words like
drought
or
cane
would mean anything to Hugo. ‘Drought,’ she whispered, once, staring at his face for a reaction. After a long pause, he laughed and reached for her eyes. She said it again, but the word was odd, meaningless, as if she were speaking a foreigner’s tongue.

She lay on the bed and sat him on her belly. He’s just a baby, she told herself, but now she was fascinated by the thought of a person who didn’t know what drought was. She wondered about other words:
cane, cactus, thorn. Thorn
, she whispered.
Buckthorn, Jerusalem thorn, gray thorn, rose thorn, whistling thorn, virgin’s thorn, wet thorn, blood thorn
, I know hundreds of kinds of thorn. ‘In the thorn,’ she began, ‘on an overcast day when you can’t see the sun—’ Then she stopped. The words seemed impossible now.

She found a colored sock and dangled it over the baby’s nose. His eyes followed. They were green, like Manuela’s, but darker. They met hers and then the colored sock was forgotten. She tried to distract him, but his gaze wouldn’t leave her. He wasn’t easily tricked, she thought. In the north they would say he was born old, like her. Like his mother, too, but not like her brother. Her brother was born very young; to him, everything was new.

Later, Hugo played with the doll, holding it by the hand and banging it on the bed. When he finally slept, Isabel took the short pile of beauty magazines and brought them to the bed. Back home, on market day in Prince Leopold, she and Isaias used to stop at a store with a shelf of monthlies. The
man in the store didn’t let them touch the magazines, but he took them from their plastic covers, set them on the counter and flipped the pages when the children said, ‘Turn!’ Once, as a gift, he had given her a cooking magazine with photos of heart-shaped red fruit on plates of white cream.

Manuela’s magazines were filled with colored photos of thin women. Isabel stopped at a page with a wrinkled dog that licked a girl’s chin, and another with a baby and a smiling mother. She read slowly,
Nutribébé infant formula–Why deny your loved ones the health they deserve?
On another page, there was a photo of a girl and boy kissing. She stared at it for a long time. The girl’s hand was on his shoulder, and his was on her belly. The article’s title was
WHAT IS LOVE
? Beneath were smaller words:
You feel empty when he’s gone. You want to share everything with him. Does he feel the same?
But the article was mostly about movies, kissing and holding hands, none of which seemed to answer the question it first proposed.

She looked through an old news magazine, with men in suits and soccer stars. She stopped at a photo of a black woman and a skinny baby in the desert. There were flies around its eyes, and its lips were chapped and swollen. Its ankles were thin like her fingers, and veins fretted its head. The headline read
THE END OF HUNGER
? She tried to read it but her hands began to shake and then she couldn’t read any more. She hid the magazine beneath the others. Then she thought of her mother for a long time.

At the window, the view was of the Settlements, the corrugated patchwork of tin and cement rooftops. She heard music from one of the houses, and from the wires, the legions of broken kites fluttered like flags.

Manuela came home on the weekend. ‘This isn’t a prison,’
she said. ‘I said be careful. I didn’t say you should curl up like an animal alone in its hole, doing nothing.’

‘I’m not an animal in a hole,’ said Isabel. ‘I’m not—’ She paused. She had almost said ‘lonely’ instead of ‘alone.’ ‘I’m waiting,’ she said. ‘Not doing nothing.’ But when her cousin left again for work, she took Hugo to the top of the road, where the view opened onto the forest, and dogs trotted gracefully through the weeds. She began to return to that spot. She spent hours watching the dogs, envious of the simplicity of their lives. She told herself that it should not trouble her that she had no friends, because Isaias would come soon. She left Hugo’s sling at home, and held him close against her body.