Burnt Water (11 page)

It seems we've arrived at the airport. The radar antennas are revolving and I stop talking with you. It's going to be an unpleasant moment. The passengers are stirring. I take my handbag and makeup case and my coat. I sit waiting for the others to get off. It's humid and cold and the fog conceals the mountains. It isn't raining, but millions of unformed, invisible droplets hang in the air: I feel them on my skin. I smooth my straight blond hair. I enter the building and walk toward the airline office. I give my name and the clerk nods. He asks me to follow him. We walk along a long, well-lighted corridor and emerge into the icy afternoon. We move across a long strip of pavement that ends at a kind of hangar. I am walking with my fists clenched. The clerk does not attempt to make conversation. He precedes me, a little ceremoniously. We enter the storage room. It smells of damp wood, of straw and tar. There are many crates lined up in orderly fashion, as well as rows of barrels, and even a small dog in a cage, barking. Your box is partly hidden behind some others. The clerk points it out to me, bowing respectfully. I touch the edge of the coffin and for several moments I stand there without a word. My weeping is buried deep inside my belly, but it is as if I were crying. The clerk is waiting, and when he thinks it seemly, he shows me the various papers I have been negotiating for during the last few days, the permits and authorizations from the police, the department of health, the Mexican consulate, and the airline. He asks me to sign the final embarkation documents. I do it, and he licks the gummed back of some labels and affixes them to the coffin, sealing it. I touch the gray lid once more and we go back to the central building. The clerk murmurs his condolences and says goodbye.

After clearing the documents with the airline and the Swiss authorities, I go up to the restaurant, with my boarding pass in my hand, and I sit down and order a cup of coffee. I am sitting next to a large window and I can see the planes appearing and disappearing on the runway. They fade into the fog or emerge from it, but the noise of their engines precedes them or lingers behind like the wake of a ship. They frighten me. Yes, you know I am deathly afraid of them and I don't want to think what this return trip with you will be like, in the middle of winter, showing in every airport the documents with your name and the permits that allow them to pass you through. They bring my coffee and I take it black; it's what I needed. My hand does not tremble as I drink it.

Nine weeks ago I tore open your first letter in a year and a half and spilled my cup of coffee on the rug. I stooped hurriedly to wipe it up with my skirt, and then I put on a record and wandered around the room looking at book jackets, my arms crossed; I even read a few lines of poetry slowly, stroking the covers of the book, sure of myself, far removed from your still unread letter concealed in the torn envelope lying on the arm of the chair.

Sweet souvenirs of love now sadly pondered,

Yes, sweet they seemed when God did so assign,

In memory joined and bound, mine not to sunder,

With memory, too, they work my death's design.

“Of course, we've quarreled. She goes out slamming the door behind her and I almost weep with rage. I try to get interested in something but I can't and I go out to look for her. I know where she is. Across the street, at La Clémence, drinking and smoking nervously. I go down the creaking stairs and out into the plaza and she looks at me across the distance and pretends not to notice. I cross the garden and walk slowly up to the highest level of Bourg-de-Four, my fingers brushing the iron banister; I reach the café and sit down beside her in one of the wicker chairs. We are in the open air; in summer the café spills out onto the sidewalk and one can hear the music from the carillon of St.-Pierre. Claire is talking with the waitress. They are making small talk about the weather in that odious Swiss singsong. I wait until Claire stubs out her cigarette in the ashtray and I do the same, so as to touch her fingers. She looks at me. Do you know how, Claudia? As
you
looked at me, high on the rocks at the beach, waiting for me to save you from the ogre. You had to pretend you didn't know whether I was coming to save you or to kill you in the name of your jailer. But sometimes you couldn't contain your laughter and the fiction was shattered for an instant. The quarrel began because of my carelessness. Claire accused me of being careless and of creating a moral problem for her. What were we to do? It would have helped if I had had an immediate answer. But no, I retreated into my shell, silent and uncommunicative, and didn't even try to avoid the situation and do something intelligent. There were books and records in the house, but I set myself to working some crossword puzzles.

“
You
have to decide, Juan Luis. Please.”

“I'm thinking.”

“Don't be stupid. I'm not referring to that. I'm talking about
everything.
Are we going to spend our whole lives classifying documents for the United Nations? Or are we just living some in-between step that will lead to something better, something we don't know about yet? I'm willing to do anything, Juan Luis, but I can't make the decisions by myself. Tell me our life together and our work is just an adventure, and it will be all right with me. Tell me they're both permanent; that will be all right, too. But we can't act any longer as if our work is transitory and our love permanent, or vice versa, do you understand what I'm saying?”

“How was I going to tell her, Claudia, that her problem was completely beyond my comprehension? Believe me, sitting there in La Clémence, watching the young people riding by on bicycles, listening to the laughter and murmurs of those around us, with the bells of the cathedral chiming their music, believe me, little sister, I fled from this whole confining world. I closed my eyes and sank into myself, I refined in the darkness of my soul my most secret knowledge; I tuned all the strings of my sensitivity so that the least movement of my soul would set them vibrating; I stretched my perception, my prophecies, the whole trauma of the present, like a bow, so as to shoot into the future, which wounded, would be revealed. The arrow flew from the bow, but there was no bull's-eye, Claudia, there was nothing in the future, and all that painful internal construction—my hands felt numb from the effort—tumbled down like sand castles at the first assault of the waves, not lost, but returning to that ocean we call memory; to my childhood, to our games, our beach, to a joy and warmth that everything that followed could only imitate, try to prolong, fuse with projects for the future and reproduce with present surprise. Yes, I told her it was all right; we would look for a larger apartment. Claire is going to have a baby.”

She herself wrote me a letter in that handwriting I had seen only on the postcard from Montreux. “I know how important you are to Juan Luis, how the two of you grew up together, and all the rest. I want very much to see you and I'm sure we will be good friends. Believe me when I say I already know you. Juan Luis talks so much about you that sometimes I get a little jealous. I hope you'll be able to come see us someday. Juan Luis is doing very well in his job and everyone likes him very much. Geneva is small but pleasant. We've become fond of the city for reasons you can guess and here we will make our life. I can still work a few months; I'm only two months pregnant. Your sister, Claire.”

And the recent snapshot fell from the envelope. You've gained weight, and you call my attention to it on the back of the photo: “Too much fondue, Sis.” And you're getting bald, just like Papa. And she's very beautiful, very Botticelli, with her long blond hair and coquettish beret. Have you gone mad, Juan Luis? You were a handsome young man when you left Mexico. Look at you. Have you looked at yourself? Watch your diet. You're only twenty-seven years old and you look forty. And what are you reading, Juan Luis, what interests you? Crossword puzzles? You mustn't betray yourself, please, you know I depend on you, on your growing with me, I can't go ahead without you. You promised you were going to go on studying there; that's what you told Papa. The routine work is tiring you out. All you want to do is get to your apartment and read the newspaper and take off your shoes. Isn't that true? You don't say it, but I know it's true. Don't destroy yourself, please. I have remained faithful. I'm keeping our childhood alive. It doesn't matter to me that you're far away. But we must remain united in what matters most, we mustn't concede anything to demands that we be anything other (do you remember?) than love and intelligence and youth and silence. They want to maim us, to make us like themselves; they can't tolerate us. Do not serve them, Juan Luis, I beg you, don't forget what you told me that afternoon in the Mascarones café. Once you take the first step in that direction, everything is lost; there is no return. I had to show your letter to our parents. Mama got very sick. High blood pressure. She's in the cardiac ward. I hope not to have to give you bad news in my next letter. I think about you, I remember you, I know you won't fail me.

Two letters came. First, the one you sent me, telling me that Claire had had an abortion. Then the one you sent Mama announcing that you were going to marry Claire within the month. You hoped we would all be able to come to the wedding. I asked Mama to let me keep her letter with mine. I put them side by side and studied your handwriting to see if they were both written by the same person.

“It was a quick decision, Claudia. I told her it was too soon. We're young and we have the right to live a while longer without responsibilities. Claire said that was fine. I don't know whether she understood everything I said to her. But you do, don't you?”

“I love this girl, I'm sure of it. She's been good and understanding with me even though at times I've made her suffer; neither of you will be ashamed that I would want to make it up to her. Her father is a widower; he is an engineer and lives in Neuchâtel. He approves and will come to the wedding. I hope that you, Papa, and Claudia can be with us. When you know Claire you will love her as much as I, Mama.”

Three weeks later Claire committed suicide. One of your friends at work called us; he said that one afternoon she had asked for permission to leave the office; she had a headache; she went to an early movie and you looked for her that night, as always, in the apartment; you waited for her, and then you rushed about the city, but you couldn't find her; she was dead in the theater, she had taken the Veronal before she went in and she had sat alone in the first row, where no one would bother her; you called Neuchâtel, you wandered through the streets and restaurants once more, and you sat in La Clémence until they closed. It was the next day before they called you from the morgue and you went to see her. Your friend told us that we ought to come for you, make you return to Mexico: you were mad with grief. I told our parents the truth. I showed them your last letter. They were stunned for a moment and then Papa said he would never allow you in the house again. He shouted that you were a criminal.

I finish my coffee and a waiter points toward where I am seated. A tall man, with the lapels of his coat turned up, nods and walks toward me. It is the first time I have seen that tanned face, the blue eyes and white hair. He asks if he may sit down and asks if I am your sister. I say yes. He says he is Claire's father. He does not shake hands. I ask him if he wants a cup of coffee. He shakes his head and takes a pack of cigarettes from his overcoat pocket. He offers me one. I tell him I don't smoke. He tries to smile and I put on my dark glasses. He puts his hand in his pocket again and takes out a piece of paper. He places it, folded, on the table.

“I have brought you this letter.”

I try to question him with raised eyebrows.

“It's signed by you. It's addressed to my daughter. It was on Juan Luis's pillow the morning they found him dead in his apartment.”

“Oh yes, I wondered what had become of that letter. I looked for it everywhere.”

“Yes, I thought you would want to keep it.” Now he smiles as if he already knew me. “You're very cynical. Don't worry. Why should you? There's nothing anyone can do now.”

He rises without saying goodbye. The blue eyes look at me with sadness and compassion. I try to smile, and I pick up the letter. The loudspeaker:

“… le départ de son vol numéro 707 … Paris, Gander, New York, et Mexico.… priés de se rendre à la porte numéro 5.”

I take my things, adjust my beret, and go down to the departure gate. I am carrying my purse and the makeup case and the boarding pass in my hands, but I manage, between the door and the steps of the airplane, to tear the letter and throw the pieces into the cold wind, into the fog that will perhaps carry them to the lake where you dived, Juan Luis, in search of a mirage.

These Were Palaces

To Luise Rainer

No one believed her when she began saying that the dogs were coming closer, batty old bag, crazy old loon she was, muttering to herself all day long, what nightmares she must have; after what she'd done to her daughter she couldn't help but have bad nights. Besides, old people's brains get drier and drier until there's nothing left but a shriveled little nut rattling around like a marble in their hollow heads. But Doña Manuelita is so virtuous, she doesn't just water her own flowers, she waters all the flowers on the second floor, every morning you can see her carrying her green gasoline tin, her yellowed fingers sprinkling water over the big clay pots of geraniums lining the iron railing, every evening you see her slipping the covers over the bird cages so the canaries can sleep in quiet.

Some say, isn't Doña Manuelita the most peaceful person you've ever known? What makes people say bad things about her? Old, and all alone, she never does anything out of the ordinary, never calls attention to herself. The flowerpots in the morning, the bird cages in the evening. About nine, she goes out to do her shopping at La Merced market, and on the way back she stops in the big square of the Zócalo and goes into the Cathedral to pray for a while. Then she comes back to the old palace, a tenement now, and fixes her meal. Fried beans, warmed-over tortillas, fresh tomatoes, mint and onion, shredded chilis: the odors wafting out of Señora Manuela's kitchen are the same as those borne on the smoke from all the meals cooked over old charcoal-burning braziers. All alone, she eats, and stares at the black grate awhile, and rests, she must rest. They say she's earned it. All those years a servant in a rich man's house, a lifetime, you might say.