Maya's Notebook: A Novel (15 page)

The program was based on three concise questions: Who are you? What do you want to do with your life? And how are you going to achieve it? But the therapeutic methods were less clear. A girl who had been raped was made to dance, dressed up as a French maid, in front of the other students; they took a suicidal guy up the forest fire watchtower to see if he’d jump, and another who suffered from claustrophobia was regularly locked in a closet. They submitted us to penances—purification rituals—and collective sessions when we had to act out our traumas in order to overcome them. I refused to act out my grandfather’s death, and the other kids had to do it for me, until the current psychologist declared me cured or incurable, I can’t remember which. In long group therapy sessions we confessed—we shared—memories, dreams, desires, fear, intentions, fantasies, our most intimate secrets. To bare our souls, that was the aim of those marathons. Cell phones were forbidden, the telephone monitored, correspondence, music, books, and movies censored, no e-mail or surprise visitors allowed.

Three months after being sent
to the academy, I had my first visit from my family. While my father discussed my progress with Angie, I took my grandmother to see the park and meet the vicuñas, who I’d decked out with ribbons on their ears. My Nini had brought a small laminated photo of
my Popo, three years or so before he died, with his hat on and his pipe in his hand, smiling at the camera. Mike O’Kelly had taken it at Christmas when I was thirteen. That year I gave my grandfather his lost planet as a present: a little green ball with a hundred numbers marked on it, corresponding to maps and illustrations of what must exist on his planet, according to what we’d devised together. He liked the gift a lot; that’s why he was smiling like a little kid in the photo.

“Your Popo is always with you. Don’t forget that, Maya,” my grandma told me.

“He’s dead, Nini!”

“Yes, but you carry him inside, although you don’t know it yet. At first my grief was so huge, Maya, that I thought I’d lost him forever, but now I can almost see him.”

“You’re not grieving anymore? Lucky you!” I answered in anger.

“I am grieving, but I’ve accepted it. I’m in much better spirits.”

“Congratulations. I’m in worse spirits every day in this asylum of imbeciles. Get me out of here, Nini, before I go completely insane.”

“Don’t be tragic, Maya. This is much nicer than I thought it would be. These people are understanding and kind.”

“Because you’re here visiting!”

“Are you telling me that when we’re not here they treat you badly?”

“They don’t hit us, but they psychologically torture us, Nini. They deprive us of food and sleep, they lower our defenses, then they brainwash us and put things in our heads.”

“What things?”

“Terrible warnings about drugs, venereal diseases, prisons, mental hospitals, abortions—they treat us like idiots. Does that seem trivial to you?”

“It seems like way too much. I’m going to give that dame a piece of my mind. What’s her name? Angie? She’s about to find out who she’s dealing with!”

“No!” I shouted, grabbing her arm.

“What do you mean, no! You think I’m going to allow my granddaughter to be treated like a Guantánamo prisoner?” And the Chilean mafia marched off toward the director’s office. Minutes later Angie called me.

“Maya, could you please repeat in front of your father what you told your grandmamma?”

“What?”

“You know what I’m referring to,” insisted Angie without raising her voice.

My father didn’t seem too shocked, and simply reminded me of the judge’s sentence: rehabilitation or jail. I stayed in Oregon.

On the second visit, two months later, my Nini was delighted: finally she’d got her little girl back, she said, none of that Dracula makeup or gang member’s manners, she saw me looking healthy and in good shape. That was due to the five miles I was running a day. They let me because no matter how far I ran, I wouldn’t get anywhere. They didn’t even suspect that I was in training for my escape.

I told my Nini how we inmates outwitted the psychological tests and the therapists, so transparent in their intentions that even the new arrivals can manipulate them, and it wasn’t even worth talking about the academic level: when
we graduated, they’d give us a diploma of ignorance to hang on the wall. We were sick of documentaries about the warming of the poles and excursions up Mount Everest; we needed to know what was going on in the world. She informed me that nothing worth telling was happening, just bad news with no solutions—the world was ending, but so slowly that it would last until I graduated. “I can’t wait for you to come home, Maya. I miss you so much!” she sighed, stroking my hair, dyed several colors unknown in nature with dyes she had mailed me herself.

In spite of my rainbow hair, I looked discreet compared to some of the other kids. To compensate for the innumerable restrictions and give us a false sense of liberty, they let us experiment with our clothes and hair according to our own fantasies, but we couldn’t add any piercings or tattoos to what we already had. I had a gold ring in my nose and my tattoo of 2005. A guy who had overcome a brief neo-Nazi phase before opting for methamphetamines had a swastika branded into his right arm, and another had the word
fuck
tattooed across his forehead.

“He’s a vocational fuckup, Nini. They’ve forbidden us to mention his tattoo. The psychiatrist says he could get traumatized.”

“Which one is he, Maya?”

“That lanky guy with the curtain of hair across his eyes.”

And off went my Nini to tell him not to worry, there’s a laser treatment now that can erase the swear word from his forehead.

Manuel has taken advantage of
the short summer to collect information, and then, in the dark hours of the winter, he plans to finish his book on magic in Chiloé. We get along really well, it seems to me, although he still grunts at me every once in a while. I don’t pay any attention. I remember that when I met him, he struck me as surly, but in these months of living together I’ve discovered he’s one of those guys who’s ashamed of his own kind heart. He makes no effort to be nice and gets frightened when someone grows fond of him; that’s why he’s a little scared of me. Two of his previous books were published in Australia in large formats with color photographs, and this one will be similar, thanks to the backing of the Ministry of Culture and several tourism outfits. The editors commissioned an upper-crust painter from Santiago to do the illustrations. He’s going to find himself in difficulties trying to represent the horrifying beings of Chilote mythology. I hope Manuel gives me more work, so I can return his hospitality. If not, I’m going to be indebted to him until the end of my days. The worst thing is, he doesn’t know how to delegate; he assigns me the simplest tasks and then wastes his time checking up on me. He must think I’m a doofus. Worst of all, he’s had to give me money, because I arrived with nothing. He assured me that my grandmother wired some money to his bank for that purpose, but I don’t believe him; such a simple solution would never occur to her. It would be more in keeping with her character to send me a shovel to dig for buried treasure. There are treasures hidden here by pirates from way back, everybody knows. On June 24,
Saint John’s Eve, you see lights on the beaches, indicating chest burial sites. Unfortunately the lights move, which throws off the greedy ones, and besides, it could be that the light is a trick of the
brujos
. No one has ever gotten rich yet from digging up the beaches on Saint John’s Eve.

The weather’s changing quickly, and Eduvigis knit me a Chilote hat. Doña Lucinda, who’s at least a hundred years old, dyed the wool with plants, bark, and fruits of the island. This ancient little old lady is the resident expert. No one else gets colors as strong as hers—different tones of brown, red, gray, black, and a putrid green that suits me really well. With very little money I was able to outfit myself with warm clothes and sneakers—my pink boots rotted in the humidity. In Chile everyone can dress decently: there are all kinds of places that sell secondhand clothing and American or Chinese stuff left over from sales, where sometimes I can find things in my size.

I’ve acquired respect for the
Cahuilla
, Manuel’s boat, so frail in appearance and so brave at heart. She’s carried us galloping across the Gulf of Ancud, and once the winter’s over we’ll go farther south, to the Gulf of Corcovado, visiting the coves along the coast of the Isla Grande. The
Cahuilla
is slow but safe in these tranquil waters; the worst storms come out on the open sea, in the Pacific. In the villages on the most remote islands live the
antiguos
, old-fashioned people who know the legends. Those traditional folks live off the land, the animals they raise, and fishing, in small communities, where the fanfare of progress has not yet arrived.

Manuel and I leave at daybreak, and if the distance is short we try to get back before it gets dark, but if it’s more
than three hours away we sleep over, because only navy ships and the ghost ship
El Caleuche
sail by night. According to the
antiguos
, everything there is on land also exists underwater. There are submerged cities in the sea, in lakes, rivers, and ponds, and that’s where the
pigüichenes
live, bad-tempered creatures able to provoke swells and treacherous currents. Much care is required in wet places, they warned us, but it’s a useless piece of advice in this land of incessant rain, where everywhere is always drenched. Sometimes we find traditional people willing to tell us what their eyes have seen and we return home with a treasure trove of recordings, which are later a pain to decipher, because they have their own way of talking. At the beginning of the conversation they avoid the subject of magic; those are old wives’ tales, they say, nobody believes in that anymore; maybe they fear the reprisals of those “of the art,” as they call the
brujos
, or just don’t want to contribute to their own reputation as superstitious people, but with persistence and apple cider Manuel worms their secrets out.

We had the most serious
storm so far, which arrived with giant strides, raging against the world. There was lightning, thunder, and a demented wind that rushed at us, determined to send the house sailing away in the rain. The three bats let go of the beams and started flying around the room, while I tried to get them out with the broom and Dumb-Cat swatted futilely at them in the trembling candlelight. The generator hasn’t been working for several days, and we don’t know
when the
maestro chasquilla
will come—if he comes at all, that is; you never know, nobody keeps regular hours down here. In Chile they call any handyman or jack-of-all-trades a
maestro chasquilla
if he can half-fix something with a piece of wire and a pair of pliers, but there aren’t any on this island and we have to rely on outsiders, who make us wait for them as if they’re dignitaries.

The noise of the storm was deafening—rocks rolling, tanks, derailed trains, howling wolves, and suddenly an uproar that came from deep in the earth. “It’s shaking, Manuel!” but he was unperturbed, reading with his miner’s lamp on his forehead. “It’s just the wind, girl. When there’s an earthquake the pots fall down.”

At that moment Azucena Corrales arrived, dripping wet, in a plastic poncho and fishing boots, to ask for help because her father was very sick. In the fury of the storm there was no signal for cell phones, and it was impossible to walk into town. Manuel put on his raincoat, hat, and boots, took the flashlight, and got ready to leave. I was out the door right behind him, not about to stay there on my own with the bats and the gale.

The Corraleses’ house is near, but it took us ages to cross that distance in the darkness, soaked by the waterfall from the sky, sinking into the mud, and struggling against the wind pushing us back. For a few moments I thought we were lost, but soon the yellow glow of the Corraleses’ window came into view.

The house, smaller than ours and more run-down, seemed barely able to stand, its loose planks rattling, but inside it was cozy. By the light of a couple of paraffin lamps I could see old furniture in disarray, baskets of knit
ting wool, piles of potatoes, pots, bundles, clothes drying on the line, buckets to catch the drips from the roof, and even cages with rabbits and hens that couldn’t be left outside in the storm. In one corner was an altar with a lit candle in front of a plaster Virgin Mary and an image of Father Hurtado, the Chilean saint. The walls were covered in calendars, framed photographs, postcards, publicity posters for ecotourism, and the Nutrition Manual for Seniors.

Carmelo Corrales had been a burly man, a carpenter and boat builder, but he’d been laid low by alcohol and diabetes, which had been undermining his body for a long time. At first he paid no attention to the symptoms; later his wife treated him with garlic, raw potatoes, and eucalyptus, and when Liliana Treviño finally forced him to go to the hospital in Castro, it was already too late. According to Eduvigis, the doctors’ intervention made him worse. Corrales didn’t change his way of life; he kept drinking and abusing his family until they amputated one of his legs, in December of last year. He can no longer catch his grandchildren to whip them, but Eduvigis often has a black eye, and nobody ever mentions it. Manuel advised me not to inquire, because it would be embarrassing for Eduvigis. Domestic violence is kept pretty quiet here. It’s not something that ever gets discussed.

They’d moved the ailing man’s bed over near the woodstove. From the stories I’d heard about Carmelo Corrales, his drunken fights and the way he mistreated his family, I imagined him as an abominable man. But there in that bed was an unthreatening, emaciated old man with his eyes half closed, mouth open, breathing with an agonizing rasp. I thought diabetics were always given insulin, but Manuel
gave him a couple of spoonfuls of honey, and with that and the prayers of Eduvigis, the sick man came round. Afterward Azucena made us a cup of tea, which we drank in silence, waiting for the storm to abate.