Maya's Notebook: A Novel (40 page)

September, October, November
And a Dramatic December

T
he island is cheerful and
lively because the parents have arrived to celebrate the Fiestas Patrias, the Chilean equivalent of the Fourth of July, and the beginning of spring; the winter rain, which seemed poetic to me at first, became unbearable after a while. And it will be my birthday on the twenty-fifth—I’m a Libra—I’ll be twenty years old, and my adolescence will be over with once and for all.
Juesú
, what a relief! Normally on the weekends some young people come to see their families, but in September they start arriving en masse, the boats full every day. They bring gifts for their children, who in many cases they haven’t seen for months, and money for the grandparents to spend on clothes, things for the house, new roofs to replace those damaged by the winter storms. Among the visitors was Lucía Corrales, Juanito’s mother, a kind, nice-looking woman, far too young to have an eleven-year-old son. She told us that Azucena got a cleaning job at a guesthouse in Quellón, and that she doesn’t want to go back to school or come back to our island, so she won’t have to face people’s malicious comments. “Often in rape cases, the victim gets the blame,” Blanca told me, corroborating what I’d heard at the Tavern of the Dead.

Juanito is shy and wary around his mother, whom he only knows through photographs. She left him in the arms of Eduvigis when he was two or three months old and wouldn’t come back to the island while Carmelo Corrales was alive, although she did phone him often, and she’s always supported him financially. The kid’s talked to me about her a lot, with a mixture of pride, because she sends him good gifts, and anger that she left him with his grand
parents. He introduced her to me with his cheeks aflame and his eyes glued to the floor: “This is Lucía, my grandma’s daughter,” he said. Then I told him that my mother left me when I was a baby, and my grandparents raised me too, but I was very lucky—my childhood was a happy one and I wouldn’t trade it for any other. He looked up at me for a long time with his big dark eyes, and then I remembered the belt marks he had on his legs a few months ago, when Carmelo Corrales could still catch him. I hugged him sadly; I can’t protect him against that. He’ll carry those scars for the rest of his life.

September is Chile’s month. Flags wave all the way up and down the country, and even in the most remote places they erect ramadas, four wooden posts and a roof of eucalyptus branches, where everybody gathers to drink and shake their bones to American rhythms and
cueca
, the national dance, which looks like an imitation of the courting ritual of roosters and hens. We made ramadas here too, and there were empanadas to your heart’s content and rivers of wine, beer, and
chichi
. The men ended up snoring spread-eagled on the ground, and at dusk the carabineros and the women threw them into the greengrocer’s cart and dropped them off at their houses. No drunk gets arrested on September 18 or 19, unless he pulls out a knife.

On Ñancupel’s television I saw the military parades in Santiago, where President Michelle Bachelet reviewed the troops amid cheering crowds, who venerate her like a mother; no other Chilean president has been so beloved. Four years ago, before the elections, nobody thought she’d win, because it was assumed that Chileans would not vote for a woman, let alone a socialist, agnostic single mother,
but she won the presidency as well as everyone’s respect, or the respect of Moors and Christians, as Manuel puts it, although I’ve never seen any Moors in Chiloé.

We’ve had some warm days with blue skies, as winter has retreated at the onslaught of patriotic euphoria. Now that spring is arriving, a few sea lions have been seen in the waters around the cave. I think they’ll soon settle back where they were before and I’ll be able to rekindle my friendship with La Pincoya, if she still remembers me. I walk up the hill toward the cave almost every day, because I usually find my Popo up there. The best proof of his presence is that Fahkeen starts to get nervous and sometimes runs away with his tail between his legs. It’s just a vague silhouette, the delicious smell of his English tobacco in the air, or the feeling that he’s embracing me. Then I close my eyes and give in to the warmth and security of that broad chest, that big round belly, and those strong arms. One time I asked him where he was when I needed him most last year, and I didn’t have to wait for his reply, because deep down I already knew: he was always with me. While alcohol and drugs dominated my existence, no one could reach me, I was an oyster in its shell, but when I was at my lowest ebb, my grandfather picked me up in his arms. He never lost sight of me, and when my life was in danger, when I was doped up on tainted heroin on the floor of a public washroom, he saved me. Now, without all the noise in my head, I sense him always near. Given the choice between the fleeting pleasure of a drink or the memorable pleasure of a walk on the hill with my grandpa, I prefer the latter hands down. My Popo has finally found his star. This remote island, invisible in the world’s conflagration, green,
evergreen, is his lost planet; instead of looking so hard in the sky for it, he could have just looked south.

People have taken off their
sweaters and gone out to catch some sun, but I’m still wearing my putrid-green hat—we lost the school championship soccer match. My unfortunate and downcast Caleuches have taken full responsibility for my shaved head. The game was played in Castro in front of half the population of our island, who went along to root for the Caleuches, including Doña Lucinda, whom we transported in Manuel’s boat, tied into a chair and wrapped in shawls. Don Lionel Schnake, ruddier and louder than ever, supported our team with discordant shouts. We were about to win—a tie would have been enough—when fate played a dirty trick on us at the last moment; with only thirty seconds left in the game, they scored. Pedro Pelanchugay headed the ball away, amid the deafening cheers of our supporters and the enemies’ hisses, but the blow left him a bit stunned, and before he could recover, a little squirt came up and poked the ball into the back of the net with the tip of his toe. Everyone was so astonished that we were all paralyzed for a long second before the explosion of warlike screams and beer cans and pop bottles started flying through the air. Don Lionel and I were on the verge of suffering simultaneous heart attacks.

That afternoon I turned up at his house to pay my debt. “Don’t even think of it,
gringuita
! That bet was just a joke,” the Millalobo assured me gallantly, but if there’s one
thing I’ve learned in Ñancupel’s tavern, it’s that bets are sacred. I went to a humble barbershop, one of those staffed by its owner, with a tricolored striped tube outside the door and a single ancient and majestic chair, where I sat with a bit of regret; Daniel Goodrich wasn’t going to like this at all. The barber very professionally shaved off all my hair and polished my head with a strip of chamois leather. My ears look enormous, like the handles of an Etruscan jug, and I have colorful stains on my scalp, like a map of Africa, from the cheap dyes I used in the past, according to the barber. He recommended rubbing it with lemon juice and bleach. The hat is necessary, because the stains look contagious.

Don Lionel feels guilty and doesn’t know how to make it up to me, but there’s nothing to forgive: a bet’s a bet. He asked Blanca to buy me some cute hats, because I look like a lesbian in chemotherapy, as he actually said, but the Chilote hat suits my personality better. In this country, hair is the symbol of femininity and beauty; young women wear their hair long and care for it like a treasure. What can I say about the exclamations of sympathy in the
ruca
, when I showed up there as bald as an alien among those gorgeous golden women with their abundant Pre-Raphaelite manes?

Manuel packed a bag with
a few items of clothing and his manuscript, which he’s planning to discuss with his editor,
and called me to the living room to give me some instructions before going to Santiago. I came out with my backpack and my ticket in hand and announced that he’d be enjoying my company, compliments of Don Lionel Schnake. “Who’s going to stay with the animals?” he asked weakly. I explained that Juanito Corrales was going to take Fahkeen to his house and would come over once a day to feed the cats. It was all arranged. I didn’t tell him anything about the sealed letter from the extraordinary Millalobo that I had to discreetly hand to the neurologist, who turned out to be related to the Schnakes, as he was married to one of Blanca’s cousins. The network of relationships in this country is like my Popo’s dazzling spiderweb of galaxies. Manuel couldn’t get anywhere by arguing and finally resigned himself to taking me. We went to Puerto Montt, where we caught a flight to Santiago. The trip that had taken me twelve hours by bus on my way to Chiloé took an hour by plane.

“What’s the matter, Manuel?” I asked when we were about to land in Santiago.

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing? You haven’t spoken to me since we left home. Are you feeling okay?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re mad.”

“Your decision to come with me without consulting me is very invasive.”

“Look, I didn’t consult you because you would have said no. It’s better to ask for pardon than for permission. Forgive me?”

That shut him up, and soon he was in a better mood. We
went to a little hotel downtown—separate rooms because he doesn’t want to sleep with me, even though he knows how hard it is for me to fall asleep on my own—and then he invited me to go for pizza and to the cinema to see
Avatar
, which hadn’t yet reached our island and I was dying to see. Manuel, of course, would rather see a depressing movie about a postapocalyptic world, covered in ash and populated with roaming bands of cannibals, but we flipped a coin, which landed face up so I won, as usual. It’s an infallible trick: heads I win, tails you lose. We ate popcorn, pizza, and ice cream, a feast for me, who’s been eating fresh, nutritious food for months and missing a bit of cholesterol.

Dr. Arturo Puga sees patients in the morning at a public hospital, where he saw Manuel, and in the afternoons at his private practice at the Clínica Alemana, in the rich neighborhood. Without the Millalobo’s mysterious letter, which I passed to him through the receptionist behind Manuel’s back, they might not have allowed me to sit in on the appointment. The letter opened the doors wide for me. The hospital seemed like it was out of a World War II movie, antiquated, enormous, and messy, with pipes showing, rusty sinks, broken tiles, and peeling walls, but it was clean and efficiently run, considering the number of patients. We waited almost two hours in a room with rows of wrought-iron chairs, until they called our number. Dr. Puga, head of the neurology department, received us kindly in his modest office, with Manuel’s file and his X-rays on the table. “What is your relation to the patient, señorita?” he asked me. “I’m his granddaughter,” I answered without an instant’s hesitation, ignoring the stunned look on the aforementioned patient’s face.

Manuel has been on a waiting list for a possible operation for two years, and who knows how many more will go by before his turn comes, because it’s not an emergency. They suppose that if he’s lived with the bubble for more than seventy years, he can easily wait a few more. The operation is risky, and due to the characteristics of the aneurysm it’s advisable to postpone it as long as possible, in the hope that the patient will die of something else, but given the increasing intensity of Manuel’s migraines and dizziness, it seems the time has come to intervene.

The traditional procedure consists of opening up the skull, separating the brain tissue, inserting a clip to impede the flow of blood to the aneurysm, and then closing it up again; the recovery takes about a year and can have serious consequences. In short, not a very reassuring picture. However, at the Clínica Alemana they can resolve the problem with a tiny hole in the leg, through which they introduce a catheter into the artery, reach the aneurysm by navigating the vascular system, and fill it with a platinum wire, which rolls up like an old lady’s chignon inside. There is much less risk, the patient need only stay in the clinic for thirty-six hours, and convalescence takes about a month.

“Elegant, simple, and completely out of reach on my budget, Doctor,” said Manuel.

“Don’t worry, Señor Arias, that can be resolved. I can operate without charging you anything. This is a new procedure I learned in the United States, where it’s now performed on a routine basis, and I need to train another surgeon to work on my team. Your operation would be like a demonstration class,” Puga explained.

“Or, in other words, a
maestro chasquilla
is going to
stick a wire in Manuel’s brain,” I interrupted, horrified.

The doctor burst out laughing and winked at me. Then I remembered the letter and realized it was a conspiracy the Millalobo had cooked up to pay for the operation without Manuel finding out about it until afterward, when he can no longer do anything about it. I agree with Blanca: between owing one favor or owing two, what difference does it make? In short, Manuel was admitted to the Clínica Alemana, underwent the necessary examinations, and the following day Dr. Puga and his supposed apprentice performed the procedure with complete success, as they assured us, although they cannot guarantee that the bubble will remain stable.

Blanca Schnake left the school in the care of a substitute and flew to Santiago as soon as I called her to tell her about the operation. She stayed with Manuel to care for him like a mother during the day, while I was carrying out my investigation. At night she went to her sister’s house, and I slept in Manuel’s room in the Clínica Alemana on a sofa that was more comfortable than my bed in Chiloé. The cafeteria food was also five-star quality. I got to have my first shower behind a closed door for many months, but with what I now know, I can never be annoyed with Manuel for banning doors from his house.

Santiago has six million inhabitants
and keeps growing upward in a delirium of high-rises under construction. The
city is surrounded by hills and high, snow-capped mountains. It’s clean, prosperous, and busy, with well-maintained parks. The traffic is aggressive, because Chileans, apparently so friendly, take their frustrations out behind the wheel. People swarm among the vehicles, selling fruit, television antennae, mints, and whatever else they can think of, and at every stoplight acrobats perform death-defying circus tricks, hoping for a coin. We were lucky with the weather, though some days we couldn’t see the color of the sky for the smog.