Irma Voth (6 page)

At first Diego pleaded with Alfredo and then he was shouting, saying he had thought they had an understanding, and then he changed his strategy and appealed to Alfredo’s ego (There is nobody, NOBODY, but you who can give this part the depth and humanity that it demands) and then he shifted his position again and offered him some more money and shortly after that they stopped yelling at each other and emerged from behind the barn and Alfredo went over to his wife and kids and talked to them and they drove off without waving and without Alfredo.

I don’t want him to yell at me, said Marijke, if that’s what it takes to prepare me. I can’t handle that.

He won’t, I said, your role is different.

We all piled into the trucks and drove off to shoot the first scene. Elias was driving the truck that Marijke and I were in. In Rubio, the closest village to our campo, he smashed it into a fence trying to back up and Diego, following behind, radioed him to let me drive because I knew the roads around there. We had to wait for a while so that Diego could negotiate something with the owner of the fence. Alfredo came over to where Marijke and I were standing and asked me if my father and my husband knew I was working for Diego.

When Diego came back he suggested that Alfredo change trucks and sit next to Marijke so they could get to know each other because they did speak the same language, but Marijke said that in fact their dialects were entirely different, she was a Russian Mennonite living in Germany and he was a Canadian Mennonite living in Mexico, and Alfredo was drunk and reeked of booze and was completely unintelligible and so … no.

She just wants some time to herself to organize her thoughts, I told Diego.

What thoughts? he said. Is she unhappy again?

I drove for a long time past various campos, clusters of barns and houses here and there, and down dirt roads and through cornfields and little streams and mud and desert. Elias and Sebastian, the sound guy, were sleeping in the back seat and Wilson sat in between them writing in his notebook.

What’s he writing? Marijke asked me.

What are you writing? I asked Wilson, in Spanish, and he said stories, small stories. He said he’d like to read them at a festival in Guadalajara but he can’t now because he’s been commandeered to work for Diego and he needs the job.

Marijke, I said, does your husband mind that you’re here in Mexico working on a movie?

No, she said, not at all. I don’t think he does. Do I mind if he goes to work? Do I mind if he shits and breathes?

I thought, that’s what I should have told Alfredo when he asked me about Jorge.

Elias woke up and lit a cigarette. I forgot my light meter, he said. I’m a dead man. Wilson looked up briefly from his writing.

We drove through clouds of dust in silence. We passed a few Tarahumara Indians on the road, a mother and her daughters clad in beautiful colours. They didn’t seem to be walking anywhere. They were just there, standing brightly. I turned around to look a few times to see if they would move. I did it quickly, trying to catch them moving, but they had my number.

Marijke and I sat in an empty shed on upside-down feed buckets talking about the script and sex and the nervous system. She asked me if Jorge had wanted to have a baby with me.

I’m not sure, I said.

You didn’t talk about it?

I don’t think so, I said.

Would he make a good father, do you think? she said.

Well, I said, I’m not sure. What do you mean?

I mean would he be helpful with the baby and love it more than himself.

I was quiet, thinking of fathers, of my own and of Jorge’s, who had watched his small shoes bubble over and then disappeared.

Well, what do you think? said Marijke. Are you crying?

Diego had asked me to do Marijke’s hair like mine. I started combing it and a few chunks of it, long strands, fell onto the dirt floor. Those are my extensions, she told me. She told me they had been welded to her head with a heat gun and glue. She told me that mostly her hair would have to be braided and stuffed under her doak when she was acting but she thought there was one scene where it was required to tumble out of her kerchief and that’s when she’d need the extensions.

I had that dreamy feeling of falling, for a split second, and then losing my footing again. To regain it, I tried quickly to remember the meaning of the word
samizdat
. And then I heard screams. A kid came running into the shed and grabbed my hand and dragged me outside into the yard where a bunch of other little kids were standing around a four-foot tiger snake. I grabbed a rake from the shed and neatly (not to brag, but you know) sliced the thing in two and the kids stared for a while, a couple of the boys kicked at it, and then went back to their game. Marijke came outside and asked me what was going on. Well, this thing is dead now, I said.

We stood with our hands on our hips and looked at it. Marijke’s hair was half done and billowing out from one side of her head like the flag of some beautiful and indefinable region. She moved her fingers gently over the tight braids on the other side. Good job, she said.

Check this out, I said. I picked up a piece of the snake and peeled off its skin. I crushed the hard shell in my hand and showed Marijke the powder. You can sprinkle this over your food like salt, I said.

She licked her finger and dabbed at the crushed bits in my hand.

Hmmm, she said. Are you sure?

Diego called to say he needed Marijke then, to just shove the rest of her hair under the kerchief and come right now because the light was right and the Mennonites who owned the house were getting restless. The crew had set everything up and the Mennonite kids playing the Mennonite kids were in their places and their parents, Alfredo and Marijke, were supposed to talk about stuff while checking out the new tractor with the family. One of the kids didn’t want to be there and Miguel was trying to cajole him in Spanish, which the kid didn’t understand yet, and then to bribe him with chocolate. Eventually Miguel just said okay, go play, and he went out and plucked a different, more pliable blond-haired, blue-eyed kid from the crowd that had gathered around and set him down next to the tractor for the scene.

Diego asked Alfredo to remove his beer can from the hood of the tractor so it wouldn’t be seen in the shot and then he took me aside and said that this was the scene of
the family together, pivotal and establishing, and must be perfect. Alfredo will tell Marijke that he has to go to town on some kind of business and Marijke will indicate through her body language that she does not believe him but that she will accept what he is saying for the sake of peace in the home. Alfredo will take a few steps then come back and put his hand on her shoulder and tell her that he loves her. Marijke will tell him that she loves him too. Okay? he said. It’s simple, right?

I nodded. Yeah, I said. Should I tell her now?

Yes, Irma, please, said Diego. We’re ready. And can you also tell her to please not look into the camera.

I went over to Marijke and told her what Diego had said about not looking into the camera.

And when Alfredo tells you that he loves you, I said, you smile a little sadly and put your hand softly on his hand and tell him quietly that you’re tired of his bullshit. In fact, no, not tired, but very close to being
defeated
by his bullshit.

That’s what I tell him? she said.

Um, yes, I said. Quietly and sadly.

Okay, she said.

And remember the camera, I said. Not to look at it.

On the way home Elias and Sebastian smoked Faros and shared headphones.

Irma, said Elias. Do you know Neil Young?

Yeah, I said.

You do? said Elias.

No, I said.

He’s from Canada! said Elias. He handed me his headphones and I put them in my ears and listened. I heard Neil Young singing about a sky about to rain.

What does that last part mean? said Elias.

I don’t know, I said. Then I thought about it. I don’t know, I said again.

It comes out of fucking nowhere but it fits perfectly, said Elias. I don’t know what it means either but it’s fucking brilliant. He took the headphones back and listened to another song. When it was finished he took them off and told us that the song was about this guy, he loses his way, his map, he loses his telescope, he loses his coastline! It’s so great, he loses everything, he loses his words! So he keeps singing but just this la la la la la la la la and it gets more and more joyful and builds into this incredible crescendo, it’s so happy, because he’s finally free and he’s lost but he’s free!

Marijke slept with her rubber boots up on the dash and Wilson wrote in his notebook.

Hey Wilson, said Sebastian. What are you writing about?

Nothing, said Wilson. He closed his notebook and put it on the seat beside him.

C’mon, you’re writing something, said Sebastian. What is it? A love letter? Is it about us?

No, said Wilson. Fuck off.

C’mon, said Sebastian. What are you writing? Tell us.

I’m writing about how dreams are like art and how both are sort of a conjuring up of the things that we need to survive.

That’s why I always dream about sex, said Elias.

Even if it’s an unconscious or subconscious act, said Wilson. Art, of course, is a more wilful act than a dream, but it comes from the same desire to live.

I once had a dream that I was fucking the world, said Elias. Like, I don’t know how old I was but I was in Montevideo in a house somewhere and I was bored so I wandered around and then I got this idea so I went to the back door and I opened it and stepped outside and took my dick out and started banging the night. Like, I was just banging away at the night. But the night was dark, obviously, so there was no stopping it. I mean I couldn’t see where the night ended, because of the horizons or whatever, so it was like the night was the whole world and I was fucking it.

You weren’t fucking the world, said Sebastian. You were jerking off in the dark like every other night.

No, man, said Elias. It seemed like that but it was different in my dream.

I’m talking about dreams of guilt and dreams of redemption, said Wilson.

We don’t know it but we direct our own dreams, said Sebastian. A restructuring or an un-structuring of ideas and experiences that allow for our own salvation.

Give that to me, said Wilson. You’re an asshole.

Our dreams are little stories or puzzles that we must solve to be free, Sebastian said. He was reading out loud from Wilson’s notebook. My dream is me offering me a solution to the conundrum of my life. My dream is me offering me something that I need and my responsibility to myself is to try to understand what it means. Our dreams are a thin curtain between survival and extinction.

Sebastian, said Wilson. Can I have that, please?

I like it! said Sebastian. No, seriously, that’s heavy shit that clarifies a thing or two for me.

Sebastian, said Wilson. Please?

Sebastian handed over Wilson’s notebook and apologized for reading from it. Wilson waved it all off and smiled at me as if to say, would you help me blow up the universe?

Well, said Elias, my dream is me telling me to fuck the world. That’s my art. What can I say.

Wilson stared out the window and Elias and Sebastian went back to listening to their music. I looked at Marijke. She was still sleeping. Then she opened one eye halfway and looked at me as though she was incorporating me into her dream and closed it again. I drove slowly, trying to relate everything to a dream, hoping to see my Tarahumara family again before the dream ended.

THREE

IT WAS LATE WHEN WE GOT BACK
to the filmmakers’ house. Wilson invited me in for coffee and I said no, I couldn’t. Then I changed my mind and said yeah, okay. He told me he wanted to show me something. Marijke had gone to her room and closed the door—we could hear her laughing or crying—and Diego was busy talking on the radio. Wilson asked me if I would come into his bedroom. I stood still
and quietly panicked and then he said that it was okay, he didn’t mean it in that kind of way, he just wanted a little privacy from the others. So I followed him into his room and he closed the door and I went and stood by the window and he sat on his bed.

I’d like to read you something if you don’t mind, Irma, he said. He opened his notebook and read a story, half in Spanish, half in English, about an angry circus clown who was going through a divorce.

All the people in my stories are awful, he said. I agreed with him.

Why don’t you write about people who aren’t such assholes? I asked him.

Because, he said, that would be too painful.

I looked around the room. I remembered playing with my cousins. I remembered trying to climb out the window of this room and breaking the window frame. I got up and went over to the window and it was still cracked and crooked.

I used to play here all the time, I said.

Really? said Wilson.

Yeah, my cousins lived here.

One family? said Wilson. There are so many bedrooms in this house.

Lots of kids, I said. A soccer team.

Or a film crew, said Wilson.

They didn’t make movies, I said.

I know, said Wilson, I was just kidding. They probably didn’t play soccer either.

Of course they played soccer, I said. That’s mostly what we did all the time.

Oh, said Wilson. Are you any good?

Not really, I said.

Do you want to kick a ball around sometime? said Wilson.

Well … I don’t know, I said. I’m a married woman now.

So? said Wilson.

I could see Elias and Sebastian standing on the road talking to each other and passing a cigarette back and forth. Elias was waving his arms around and Sebastian was perfectly still. Corn was behind them. Endless corn. Then Elias crouched down to the ground and picked up some stones and threw them at the corn and there was a dark explosion of crows.

Why is it so painful to write about people who aren’t assholes? I asked Wilson.

Because I would start to love them, he said.