Irma Voth (5 page)

I hope that someday somebody asks me where I was when I smoked my first cigarette so that I can tell them that yeah, well, you know, I was in my aunt and uncle’s bed with this fourteen-year-old German actress who had an eighty-year-old son. No big deal. Marijke talked about her son, about missing him. She told me that she was worried that maybe she had been too much of a friend to her son lately and not enough of a parent.

Friends are good, she said, but sometimes a kid needs someone just to say hey, don’t inject that, or whatever.

Are you from Russia? I asked her.

Yes, she said. I was born there but the place where I was born doesn’t exist now.

What do you mean? I asked her. I was having a hard time following this conversation. I knew more about the social significance of birdsong, I realized, than I did about human interaction.

We talked about Diego and the crew and we talked about the script which I hadn’t seen but which she told me was full of little drawings that accompanied the text and that she thought she’d be expected to take off her clothes for one or two scenes.

Do you want me to tell Diego that you don’t want to take off your clothes? I asked her.

No, no, she said. That doesn’t bother me. It’s his story.

What is the movie about? I asked her.

Agony. And swimming. I don’t know. I can’t quite figure it out from the pictures and it’s written in Spanish.

She asked me if I wanted to see the script and I said yeah but then she couldn’t find it in her room and didn’t
want to go out to the main room to see if she’d left it there because she’d be expected to socialize with a bunch of people she couldn’t communicate with beyond tequila and
danke schön
or learn how to juggle devil sticks or whatever they were doing in there.

I should go, I said. I was worried that Aggie would come looking for me here.

Why? said Marijke. You’re nineteen years old! Are your parents that strict?

No, no, I said. My husband.

What? said Marijke. You’re married?

Yeah, I said.

Does your husband mind that you’re working as my translator?

No, I said. Not really. Well, actually, he doesn’t know about it. He’s been away for a while.

Well then, how would he be worried? she said. Why should you go home? She put her finger gently on the bumpy ridge between my eyes. Where your source of energy begins, she said. She kneaded the bumpy ridge gently with her long finger. I tried to speak and she said don’t speak now, notice the light. Do you notice the light?

I don’t know, I said. I have to do the milking or the cows will explode.

Is your husband a good kisser? she asked.

What? I said. Jorge? I don’t know. I have nothing to compare him to.

We were quiet then, smoking, thinking about Jorge. At least I was. I think he might have been a good kisser. I pledged to tell him that if I ever saw him again. The
cigarette was making me feel dizzy and I was trying not to cough.

Have you heard of the four-part cure, Irma? she asked.

No, I said. Cure for what? I stood up and looked around for a place to put my cigarette.

Here, said Marijke. She took it and put it in a glass of water next to her bed.

She said she had googled a new philosophy, a four-part cure, that would help her to live life on life’s terms. She laid it out for me:

Don’t fear God, she said.

Don’t worry about death.

What is good is easy to get, and

What is terrible is easy to endure.

I’m quoting, she said. It’s Epicurean. From a thousand years ago. People misinterpret Epicureanism these days. They misinterpret everything.

Plus, she said, I’ve learned that thoughts are atoms flying around in totally random patterns.

Oh, I said. They are?

That’s all they are, she said. It’ll help me in the desert. And I do believe in my soul. Anxiety’s the killer.

Yeah, I said. That’s true. Can I ask you a question?

Anything, she said. She squeezed my red, chapped hands and the room suddenly smelled like milk.

Why were you crying before? I asked.

Oh, that, she said. Okay, here’s the thing. It’s true that I have a new cure that I’m counting on to get me through
life and it’s true that I’m a little bit tough but the reality is that I’m a middle-aged woman in the middle of nowhere, a Mexican desert for God’s sake, about to do something I have no experience doing and I’m feeling very, very alone and unsure and ridiculous and afraid.

Well, why did you agree to be in the movie? I asked her.

I’m not really sure, she said. Why did you agree to be my translator?

I’m not sure either, I said.

Well, I think I do know, actually, she said.

Yeah? I said. Why?

Because we were asked to, she said.

Oveja was stoned and following me from a distance. Elias, the cameraman, had told me on my way out that Oveja had eaten his stash of pot and that it had made him more philosophical. He’ll think twice before he attacks, he said. Elias made me laugh. He didn’t stop talking, like he didn’t care that silence was supposedly golden, his currency was different. He had bought himself some clothes from the store in town, Wrangler jeans and a plaid shirt and work boots. Now I’m a Mennonite, he said. He told me that when he was a boy in Mexico City he had learned about Mennonites. He had seen some of them selling cheese on the streets and he had wanted to be one. Elias told me that he had even drawn a self-portrait of himself as a Mennonite in a bathtub. It’s remarkable, he said, that now I’m making a film about them. He showed me a photograph of himself as a little boy on a beach in Acapulco. See that? he said. He
told me that when he was a little boy he had an ass but that somehow, along the road to adulthood, he had lost his ass. Do you see? he said. He turned around so I could look at him. I thought he did have an ass but a small one. Look at Wilson, he said. He’s got two asses and I have none. That’s not fair.

Wilson ignored him completely. He was writing something down. Then he looked up and smiled at me and shrugged his shoulders. I’m Wilson, he said. That’s fine, I said. Why did I say it was fine for him to be Wilson? I wanted to go back and tell him that I was Irma. But he knew that.

Diego asked me, before I left for home, if Marijke was okay and what we had talked about. She’s fine, I said. Diego told me that the others had returned with the essential camera part and that tomorrow morning, early, we’d start shooting.

I was less afraid of Oveja now that he was a philosopher but I was nervous when he followed me home. I imagined his brown teeth sinking, pensively, into the back of my leg in search of something elusive. I thought about what Marijke had said. Oveja, I said, would you please stop following me? Asking didn’t change anything with dogs.

Aggie was standing like a thief in the night at the dark end of my driveway. Her hair was tied back tightly, viciously. Her head shone like an egg.

What’s wrong? I asked her.

What’s that? she said, pointing at Oveja.

What’s wrong? I asked her again.

Everybody hates you, she said. She kicked a bit of sand in my direction. Oveja sighed. What was the point. Stars fell.

That’s not true, Aggie, I said. They don’t care enough about me to hate me. You’re the only one who does.

I don’t hate you, said Aggie.

I know, I said. How do you like my new friend?

He’s hideous, said Aggie. He’s an asshole and he stinks like shit. I hope he gets run over by a baler.

We stood quietly and stared at the night. We were living in a dark, empty pocket. Not even the Hubble telescope could spot us on the earth’s surface now.

Oh, c’mon, Aggie, I said. Stop crying. I wanted to tell her about the four-part cure. I wanted to convince her that everything good was easy to get and all that was terrible was easy to endure.

Hey Aggie, I said, you know what?

What? she said.

Oveja’s stoned right now and thinks he’s a philosopher. When it wears off he’ll go back to attacking people. I don’t think we have a lot of time. Then Aggie told me that her friend Aughte’s dad, Alfredo, was going to play the husband in the movie. That Diego had promised him and his wife and kids a two-week all-inclusive resort package in Cancún when it was over and now everyone was mad at him too, and maybe after the movie they’d all move to a colony in Veracruz and she’d lose her best friend and Alfredo would find out that I was working for Diego too and tell our dad and that would be it, curtains.

And Mom’s pregnant again, said Aggie. And doesn’t want to get out of bed and doesn’t smile anymore and I have
to do everything now and Dad just yells and prays and I have chigoe bites all over my legs. So, why did you have to be such an idiot and go and marry a cholo?

He’s not a narco, Aggie, I said. Let me see.

She lifted her dress a bit. There were ugly red sores all over her ankles and shins where the fleas had burrowed beneath her skin.

Let me sleep at your place tonight, Irma, please?

That night I had a dream about my mother and the next morning I saw her for the first time in months. I was up early, ready to start my new job, and I was standing in my yard waiting for the sun also to rise and warm me up. In my dream I was thinking about my dad yelling and praying and wondering if he got them mixed up sometimes and forgot who he was talking to. In my dream I looked at the road and there was my mother walking slowly, proud and majestic, or maybe just exhausted, like one of those giraffes you see briefly in shimmering sunlight on the savannah. She didn’t look real and for a second I thought my mind had conjured up the thing it craved, the way a pregnant woman cries so she can taste the salt her body needs. Which is actually a lie my mother told us to explain away all her tears. But I was thinking about that stuff while I was running and then I was hugging her and I knew she was real because she was holding me so close to her it hurt and I was coughing trying to catch my breath and I could smell fresh bread and soap. I touched her stomach. She was farther along than I had thought.

Another one? I said.

Is Aggie with you? she said.

She’s still asleep.

Send her home now, Irma, quickly.

I wanted to tell her about my dream but she had already begun to walk away and I stood there, like always, like forever it seemed, in the middle of the road waiting for something or someone to revive me, God or a parent or my husband or any of those things or people or ideas or words that by their definition promised love.

Diego suggested I keep a diary of “the shoot” after I mentioned a few things that Marijke had wondered about. For instance, why her character would be serene all the time. Was she in a depressive fog or not quite human or just plain stupid? He told me that he found it easier to understand certain ideas when he wrote them down or captured them on film and that I could try to do the same thing by keeping a diary of the shoot rather than by worrying about
his
ideas. Or something like that. He gave me a black notebook and a pen with a small light bulb on the tip.

Does this pen light up? I asked him.

Yes, there’s a switch, he said. It doubles as a flashlight.

Thank you, I said.

The first thing I wrote down in my new notebook was:

YOU MUST BE PREPARED TO DIE!

That’s what Diego told us this morning before we headed off to our first location. This is commando filmmaking, he
said. The little red dot in the white of his left eye shone brighter than usual, like fresh blood on snow.

This is guerrilla filmmaking, he said. When it’s time to work, it’s time to work. If you’re not prepared to risk your life, then leave now.

Irma, he said. Are you afraid?

Of dying? I said. I laughed out loud.

What is he saying? asked Marijke.

He wants us all to have fun, relax and be brave, I said.

I ran my fingernail over the leathery cover of the notebook and tried to carve my name into it. Then I thought to use the pen. I wrote my name on the inside cover and then crossed it out. I was afraid that my father would find it. I traced my left hand on a blank page and then filled it in with lifelines that somewhat resembled my own.

Diego has put Marijke into a dress like mine and tied her hair back with a kerchief and scrubbed off all her makeup. I explained to her that the first scene we’d be shooting was the family in their farmyard checking out a new tractor. We’d have to drive about an hour to the farmhouse where the scene would be shot. She stood in the yard like a smoking tree while the rest of us carried the equipment to the trucks.

Then Alfredo showed up with his wife and kids from Campo 3 a mile away, and they were not happy. I waved to them because I’ve known them all my life and Peter, the little boy who doesn’t know any better, waved back. His older sister, Aggie’s friend from school, pulled his hand down. They stayed in the truck and stared away at something. Alfredo ignored me and went over to Diego and told him that he had to quit.

What do you mean, quit? said Diego. What are you talking about? We haven’t even started!

Alfredo told Diego that he was getting too much pressure from his wife and his parents. They didn’t want him to act in a movie and it was taking him away from his work digging wells and his wife was jealous of his movie relationship with another woman.

Como lo arreglamos?
said Diego. He wanted to know how they could work things out. Alfredo shrugged.

Diego smiled at me and then took Alfredo’s arm and led him away behind the barn to talk about it and everybody standing around heard them yelling at each other in Spanish. Oveja went running around to the back of the barn to see what was going on and I heard Alfredo say he’d rip Oveja’s jaw out and crush it under his truck tires if he came any closer. Then Diego yelled at Wilson to come and get Oveja and tie him to the pump.

What’s the problem? Marijke asked me.

Nothing, I said. Diego is preparing Alfredo for his role.