Private House (30 page)

The woman smiled, pleased to accept this compliment, but also turned her head away, as though abashed. “Is the end of my daughter's year,” she said.

“Her year in white?”

“Ah, you understand. But today is the last day, and she can dress in every colour. Her friends will be having a party.” She made a gesture, indicating the emptiness of the room.

“This is Mother's Day, isn't it?”

“Yes, is a good day to begin . . . and to end. Many, many do that.”

“I see,” said Lorraine. “You daughter is very beautiful. She is very lucky.”

It seemed that the woman thought her English was better than her daughter's for she translated,
“Bonita . . . afortunada . . .”
The young woman smiled, and Lorraine realized that she'd spoken the truth, that the girl was beautiful, her girth and abundance a celebration of her flesh. The girl replied in Spanish, her mother interjecting
“Sí”
at several points before turning to Lorraine and saying, “Caridad asks if you wish something . . . is something in your life . . .”

This was slightly unclear, but then the woman gestured toward the couch draped with cloth—the figures enclosed by the cloth. The gods. It was an altar. Lorraine looked at it. This was what
they
believed, what they knew . . . Was she expected to pray? Offer a sacrifice? She turned back toward the woman, and she could feel forming on her face a pained smile of regret that sought not to offend, but even as it formed—for she could still see the figures on the couch from the corner of her eye, waiting—all the feelings she expected,
pity, scorn, and her own offence at the assumption made, slipped away, and something like the hollowness of her chest after her panic now formed in her breast: she was so tired, and what did she know, could she really be sure? So what she said was, “I am not sure . . . what should I do?”

The woman now took Lorraine's hand between her thumb and forefinger, lifting her arm and leading her over to the couch and its accoutrements.

“Shake,” she said, “shake,” and she pointed at the rattle. And Lorraine was about to step forward when Caridad floated beside her and knelt by the little dish. Lorraine saw that it held a peso. The girl tapped it with her fingernail and looked up, her eyes very large, seeking her mother, who said, “Yes, yes,” as Lorraine went into her bag. An offering. Of course. To the gods. The daughter? Both, presumably. The collection plate. The neck of the ewe bent over the altar as its throat was slit. Sacrifice and then prayer. The peso in the dish was virtually worthless: but Lorraine discovered that she had no change at all, that her smallest note was five convertible pesos. She put this on the dish, and placed the coin on top of it. She was about to move away, when the woman tapped her shoulder. The rattle. She took it up, stepped back.

She faced the couch. She was now certain that the gods themselves were beneath the cloth, studying her, waiting, expecting. Were they there? If the cloth was whisked away, and nothing was revealed, it would only mean that they had been quicker to vanish, quicker than the hand of any magician or the eyes of unbelievers. Yes, they were there, whether you liked it or not. She gave the rattle a shake. It was very light. A gourd. She shook it again. A scratchy sound. Again. The woman said, “Shake, shake.” She did. She shook more vigorously, not establishing any rhythm, rather leadenly, she thought: shake, shake,
shake. She wanted to ask, Is this all right? and was in fact going to ask but then the two women, now behind, said together, “Shango . . . Oshun . . . Obatalla . . . Yemaya . . . Shango . . . Oshun . . . Obatalla . . . Yemaya . . .” This was not exactly a chant, though Lorraine assumed them to be the names of the gods, but hearing the stress of the syllables,
O
-shun,
Shan
-go, Lorraine found herself shaking to them while she stared at the cloths, or the gods lurking behind them, or in them, or whatever it was, so still, so silent, so pure, most particularly the yellow cloth, she thought, yes, the yellow, and she closed her eyes and thought, Oh God, I don't want to be afraid, and if I must be afraid please show me what it is I'm afraid of. She opened her eyes. Surely that was too complicated. She shook the rattle five more times and then stopped. Now the room was silent. Lorraine stood quite still. Should she put the rattle back? For an instant, she wondered if Caridad and her mother might have disappeared; but finally, without looking back, she stepped forward and put the rattle back where she'd found it. Only now did she turn around. The Cuban women were standing quietly, at the back of the room. Caridad's mother was holding her right arm in her left hand, in front of her; now she made a little gesture with her right hand and said, “Is better now?”

“Yes, thank you.”

Was it better now? She had blasphemed—surely. Worse. She had worshipped strange gods. Did this mean she had lost her own? Had she not prayed as fervently here as in her own church? Had that been her voice, saying her prayer while the women had chanted, “Yemaya, Oshun, Shango”? And now she thought—made herself think, I do not believe. But was it true?

Now the woman spoke to her daughter, who disappeared, returning a moment later with a parasol—the sort of parasol that might
have found a place at the altar: it had bamboo spokes, and a fancy printed pattern, like something from a cocktail glass. “Is very hot now. You come with me.”

This seemed rather abrupt. “Where?”

“A friend. Is not far. You will see.”

Lorraine was feeling better, but not so much better that she wanted to try walking back to the hotel; she was exhausted, perhaps too exhausted for fear, but she wasn't ready to take any chances. What she wanted was a taxi. But it was clear that it wasn't convenient for her to stay here, not on Caridad's special day. So she followed Caridad's mother outside, stooping dutifully to stay under the parasol, for the sun was still blinding. As good as her word, they only went a few doors down, stopping in front of an ornate metal grille, all tendrils and curlicues, that let them see into an apartment where a woman was sitting on a red couch. Caridad's mother called to this person and the two talked equably for a couple of minutes, although the woman inside stayed on her couch and made no show of inviting them in. Lorraine's presence, so far as she could tell, wasn't considered surprising, and didn't seem to create any special concern; she even wondered if she was being discussed at all—perhaps this wasn't their final destination and they'd be moving on. But then the woman did get up, acknowledged Lorraine with a smile, while Caridad's mother said, “You go in. This is Mercedes.” Lorraine felt uncertain, and looked uncertain—Caridad's mother began nodding, “Is all right, is all right”—so what else could she do? She stepped up and went in.

She was in a small front parlour, the long side of an L-shaped room; the shorter was enclosed in Cuban shadow. Mercedes closed the grille behind them, but there was a sense of the room, withdrawn from the street, also giving on to the street. Lorraine said, “I am Lorraine Stowe. It is very nice of you to invite me in.”

Mercedes smiled. “Look after. Sit. Tea.”

Look after . . .
So she had been discussed. But before Lorraine could consider the implications of this, or protest, Mercedes disappeared, around the corner of the L.

Lorraine sat down on the couch. It was covered in red leatherette, some kind of plastic; she wanted to lean back, but it stuck and squeaked against her skin, and she leaned forward again. She took a slow, deep breath. She had been passed along, but on what terms? A patient? A crazy woman? A stranger in need, a potential convert . . . ? She wanted to flee; Mercedes still hadn't returned, so it wouldn't be hard. But people were passing on the other side of the grille, where the world opened up; and she couldn't have said what would happen to her in it. If
agora
meant market, what did
claustro
mean? But it wasn't
claustro
, of course not, it was
claustrum
, the part of monasteries you couldn't go into, and so
cloistered
. Yes, that's where she belonged! And that's what this was, clearly. No wonder she felt better. At the far end of the room, and clearly its focus, was a rather fancy stand—shiny black wood and gold trim—designed to display ornaments or bric-à-brac, but here, even more obviously than Caridad's, used as an altar. Religious figures and other objects were displayed on four glass shelves, a profusion of fetishes carefully arranged—a covered dish on a multicoloured plate, a ceramic statue of a South American Indian, a vase in the shape of a swan that held yellow china roses, even three miniature bottles of Havana Club rum sitting atop a large brown urn. There were rattles and a china bell, a mortar and pestle, figurines of ladies and gentleman wearing bowler hats or carrying parasols and fans. The highest shelf was just that—the highest. Here, behind a white ceramic horse and a soup tureen, stood a statue of the Virgin—presumably—crowned, and holding a babe in arms; around her feet, sitting in a storm-tossed
boat, children and a bearded man were looking up, beseeching. And at the opposite end of the shelf another saintly figure stood, also crowned, wearing red robes and holding a sword in one hand and a chalice in the other. She stared across the room. The altar, and all it contained, was extraordinarily
still
. At peace. Settled. And she thought what a power the inanimate could be, perhaps to be worshipped simply for that: a rock; some fragment of the Canadian Shield—granite a billion years old, unmoved since the Ice Age: or that meteorite in Mecca . . . they were hypnotic; once you started looking, they asserted an overwhelming claim to attention. Now, could she look away? Was it not their power that held her? Of course it was absurd, and she revealed their absurdity by unravelling their meaning. A chalice, and red robes. Saint Barbara, not the Holy Mother. She remembered the story, more or less: she'd been locked up by her father, in a tower, but had studied the Holy Fathers and turned her prison into a cloister, for which the father had then chopped off her head. Of course the father had been a pagan—but everything that goes around comes around, so now his daughter was worshipped here. As for the other, the children in a boat, looking up, it was in all the guides. This was the patron saint of Cuba, Our Lady of Charity—del Cobre? But she knew that wasn't the statue's true meaning, only the first step on the road to discovering it, the first clue. They were gods, Gods, not merely their representation but Gods confronting her now, watching. She looked away. She held her hand against her face, shading it. She didn't believe: but the altar only mocked her unbelief, and what did she know? So much meaning was there, everywhere. And it was hard not to think of how, in her panic, the world broke up around her, flying at her, slashing at her, daggers, missiles, shards. Her eyes became burning coals.
The world in a grain of sand
—the world everywhere, all at once. But here everything was known, even the unknown . . . and all so calmly, as part of ordinary life. A soup tureen on an altar . . . And you can pray anywhere, as Don always reminded them; did she not believe that? She leaned forward, peering; behind the altar, photographs were pinned to the wall. She could make out some children. Well, it was a family altar, like a Roman's . . . so the family, through its pictures, was blessed. . . .

Lorraine was seated like that, but with her eyes closed, when Mercedes returned, bearing tea in a china cup; but only one cup. She extended it to Lorraine, and rather as Caridad had done with the water, watched over her as she drank. It was herbal. Might it be drugged? In fact, the flavours were leafy and citrus and smoke. She smiled after she'd taken a sip. Mercedes kept watching her. She's older than I am, Lorraine thought. Her hair was touched with steely grey, her light caramel skin was pulled tight across high cheekbones. Her eyes, large and dark, had an oriental slant. Lorraine smiled again, looking into her face. What races were mixed there? Her eyes were without expression, they gave the same impression as these gods, of watching impassively, waiting, revealing nothing. It was the eyes that gave away her age: they had seen everything, they'd been looking out so long. Now Lorraine felt her whiteness, against the other's blackness: her absolute removal from the life this woman led. They believed in different gods, and they believed that gods were different—it was not quite the same. Everything they might seem to have in common, even their femininity, only set them apart. And now, she thought, she was in this woman's hands, and indeed when she'd finished her tea, Mercedes actually held out her hand, and said, “Come.”

Lorraine followed her around the corner of the L; now she saw a door, closed, leading into another room, and a curtain—Mercedes
drew this back—leading deeper into the house. Stepping through the opening, Lorraine could see a tiny kitchen to her left and another closed door to her right. But directly ahead was an alcove, a very small room, brightly lit from the ceiling. Mercedes said, “This is our altar to peace.”

It was like a stage. A straw mat formed the apron; two curtains, made from long sheets of aluminium foil that had been folded, and then folded again and again—accordion folds—defined an arch. In the centre of the arch, draped over a form that created the impression of a person sitting on a throne, was a shimmering white cloth, with a head of silvery gauze, so it was like the white section of the couch in Caridad's home. Or was it Revelations, the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven like a bride dressed for her husband? It was as innocent, as straightforward. Two bowls of ceramic red roses sat at the feet of this creation, with two white candles—they were not lit—in glass candlesticks; completing the display were two black candles lying on their side, a fan, and a white dish holding a Cuban peso coin. Well, of course, thought Lorraine. She wondered, had Caridad's mother told Mercedes through the grille, She's good for some money? But she wasn't offended. One. Peso. One. Coin. Yes, it was an offering, but also a universal, an absolute signifier, an ultimate expression.