The Lazarus Rumba (7 page)

One Tuesday, Alicia arrived and the old woman informed her that Renata had expanded her installation of noted memory. She pointed to the little notes pasted to the hood of the already rust-spotted yanqui convertible, to the railing of the veranda, to the begonias in the flower garden, to the trunk of the almond tree, to the tiles on the roof, and even one (and the old woman lifted her haunch to prove it) to the seat of her rocking chair. Looking at all the notes, their edges stirred by the breeze so that they seemed like insects caught in a web, Alicia realized for the first time that her father had not restricted his visits to this house merely to Tuesdays, had loved his mistress more, much more than on those afternoons when she and her sister sat on the veranda and listened to the old woman's tales. She felt for the first time a stab of shame for her abandoned mother (alone in that room where Alicia would later hide from her own grief), thinking Teodoro at work late, in the capital on business, out with yanqui buyers, when the desperate wings of these webbed insects told Alicia where Teodoro had been all the while:
here … here … here …
and she could not find the dignity with which to sit on the sun-bleached porchsteps and wait for her sister any longer. So she stood under the small attic window and called to her: “Mi hermana, coño, it has been a whole year, this is my last Tuesday. Either you come down now, or we will never see each other again.” She waited and there was no answer and just as she was about to turn and leave, her fate as an only daughter sealed, the lace curtain was parted and the window cracked open and a piece of paper flew out like a butterfly and fluttered down to her and rested on her palm and opened its wings to a script as small and delicate as any Alicia had ever seen:
Meet me tonight at eleven, after the two witches have gone to sleep, in the backseat of the convertible. I will tell you all, my lovely sister, and for every hour you have waited, for every day we have behaved as perfect strangers, I will kiss you a hundred times.

That night, Alicia found her sister curled in the backseat of the convertible. She had a ball of her mother's notes crumpled in her hand. She had removed them from the hood of the car. “These are lies,” she said to her sister. “I followed her out every night. I know exactly every place they've done it. Most of them are true—” she pointed to the note that glimmered with the moonlight on the roof tiles, “even that one … but these are lies. She has begun to invent some things that never happened. Not like she doesn't have enough true places. If she goes crazy enough then we're in for it … there'll be little notes pasted all over town. I know, I followed her, to Parque Martí (under the poinciana trees), to the papaya gardens of the Jewess doctor Sara Zimmerman (where the old lady was said to watch joyously from a second-story window at all the illicit lovers who went there for refuge), to the hills overlooking the naval base (the roar of yanqui warplanes drowning out their moans), to the empty stalls of the farmers' market (the nectar from yesterday's fruit smudging their skin), and even, once, to the front steps of the yellow church (where she made him, since he was a little drunk, swear a wedding vow before she'd let him do it). Where haven't I gone in this town following my crazy mamacita and her beautiful lover?” She jumped out of the car and kissed Alicia on both cheeks. “He
was
beautiful, wasn't he? Beautiful as you, mi hermanita.”

She jumped into the driver's seat and shifted the gear, then threw her shoulder to the trunk of the convertible and Alicia was surprised at how easily the tires began to move on the gravel. “Come on, help me, once we get it going it's mostly downhill to the river.” The car was just a hull with tires now, she explained. Her mother had always hated it, even when Teodoro was alive and they would ride in it on Tuesday afternoons (their nightly adventures were all done on foot). Renata had never driven the car. After Teodoro died, and their financial situation had become a little more desperate, the old woman began selling the innards of the car to those in the neighborhood, yelled outrageous prices right from her rocking chair, till the car was nothing but a rusty frame and bucket seats on rubber. (She figured that piece by piece she would get more than if she sold the whole thing at once; and besides, she knew she could never convince Renata to get rid of it, for it had become a too-obvious symbol of her capitalized hatred for the bastard of a father. The more its hull rusted, the happier she grew. Though she would never know, till the day of her death some two years after her lover's death, the venomous silence finally choking her, how much more powerful a symbol it might have been—for it was hollow on the inside, as she came to know her lover's passion had always been.)

“Come on, my beautiful hermanita,” Marta called, “help me here!”

When they got the car to the edge of the hill and it began to roll on its own, Marta ran to the driver's seat and Alicia hopped into the passenger side. They rode down to the shore of the river as if there were a most powerful yanqui engine in that rusty hull of a thing. They listened to the current and sat in the backseat and held hands again and Alicia let her sister kiss her, on the cheeks, on her hands, on the soles of her feet, as many times a hundred as the hours Alicia had waited through leafstorms on sun-bleached porchsteps, as many times a hundred as the days when they had behaved as perfect strangers. It was near dawn when the sisters had pushed the car back up the hill, Marta's white summer dress soiled with sweat and wrinkled with yearning, and parked it on the exact spot where Teodoro had parked it last.

Some years later, when Alicia's future husband would take a liking to that empty hull of a car, and figured out a more efficient way to start the ghost of an engine, hitching two spotted mules to the front fender, and passing a steering strap through the glassless windshield, the yanqui thing was driven again around town, to Mass, to the circus, to the market, the retired comandante in the driver's seat, his rooster perched on his shoulder, the two sisters holding hands in the backseat, as joyously and carefree as Teodoro had once driven it, though the old woman railed at them from her rocking chair on the veranda that every time the car was moved from its spot on the gravel in front of the olive house, Renata's ghost would take to littering the house with crumpled notes, which the old woman opened, hoping to find some message from the beyond, but never found as much as one word, one exclamation point, one capital, the little sheets full of nothing, like the insides of the black Ford convertible.

Though she still fingered the same ebony rosary she had held tight since reopening her heart to the Lord, on that Christmas morning 1963, that day of tribulations and extravagance, Alicia had forsaken the black trappings of mourning. She wore a light cotton tawny dress that was soberly tailored at the neckline and hugged the waist with a modest assurance. Its hem toyingly revealed and then hid her knees as she paced. Only her face betrayed her simplicity. In less than a month, it had regained its irresistible fullness and her fair skin accented her black straight hair that fell down to her collarbones. She matched again the beauty of her sister, who wore, as usual, a white summer dress and leather sandals. Some of the handful who noticed them called out prayers of endurance. Others suggested they mount the mule-drawn convertible as an affront to the unwelcome soldiers. Alicia shook her head and continued to walk serenely just twelve steps behind. Soon she was forgotten. The revels proved too attractive for anyone to dwell on the rueful widow and her condolent sister for long. Only the soldiers kept a judicious eye on them and only they noticed when the sisters entered the big top and took their place in their customary seats (the husband's seat, between them, empty), in the fourth row facing the center ring. Only they saw Héctor, the lead acrobat dressed in a blue robe, come to Alicia and take her hand and plant three quick kisses. So only they could later testify that while Oscar made havoc of that day's performance, literally rampaging over life and limb, while others were darting for the exits like rats from thunder, Alicia remained in her seat, holding hands with her sister, indestructible, her head bowed, whispering to her ebony rosary.

So? Is divine composure a crime? Can the healing power of ultimate renascent faith be judged subversive?

The 83rd Neighborhood Committee for the Defense of the Revolution set up a separate subcommittee to investigate the
accident
at the circus; as chairman it appointed one of its most vocal officers, Ana Josefa Risientes, known to everyone in Guantánamo as Pucha. Six days after the accident, on New Year's Eve morning 1963, Pucha paid a visit to doña Adela. She was out rocking on the porchswing. When she saw Pucha approaching, she closed her eyes and tilted her head back.

“Buenas,” Pucha said, still on the sidewalk. “I am looking for Alicia Lucientes.”

Doña Adela did not open her eyes. Pucha tapped her key on the curled iron railing of the balustrade.

“Señora, this is important. I am here as a minister of la Revolución. I know that you are her mother.”

Doña Adela opened her eyes and sat up. Her visitor was wearing a straw hat and round dark-tinted sunglasses and pants rolled up at the hem and an untucked oversized man's shirt. Her face was bony and her nose sharp. Her skin was orange and she wore no paint.

“Don't you animals ever take a holiday from your revolution?”

“No seas bruta, Señora, we have made arrests and we plan to make more. I just want to speak to your daughter.”

Doña Adela began to swing, the rusty chains creating a naughty metallic symphony of protest. “My daughter is not here.”

“May I come into your house? I will talk to you then.”

“No, you may not. I have nothing to say to you. Besides, I don't let your
gente
into my house.”

“Mire, whatever that means, I am not disrespecting you.”

“Ni yo a tí. And we both know what it means.”

“Very well then, let me just say that we are investigating the unfortunate events at the circus last week. We need to speak to Alicia Lucientes. We know she was there. And let me say more, that you have not been any help, neither to us nor to her. I repeat, arrests have been made. Buen día y feliz año, señora.” She turned and walked away, the flapping of her plastic sandals a vulgar answer, doña Adela thought, to the magnificent caterwauling of her porchswing.

In the chapel of St. Catalina de Ricis Church, Father Gonzalo's book club was in the middle of a seemingly unlearned uproar.

“This is outrageous,” one member muttered. Alicia knew her as a schoolmate of her mother.

“We won't have it, Gonzalo,” another member said, a finquero with hairy ripply forearms who had lost most of his lands to the Second Agrarian Reform Act. He waved a thin paperback with scripted red lettering. “¿Pero cómo vamos a aceptar esto? How dare you propose as the next book on our agenda a work written by an admitted socialist! ¡Esto es basura! ¡Propaganda! Can't you see what thinking like this has done to our country? What tyrants it has bred! Don't you know that this author, this damnable atheist, this Peruvian pig, supported the godless revolution, and
to this day
still speaks well of our besotted Líder!”

Father Gonzalo, seated on the steps of the altar, face down, shook his balding brown head. He too was holding a copy of the paperback he had hand-delivered to each of the members' houses a few days before. He began to finger through the pages gently, cautiously, as one might approach an insulted lover. He spoke without raising his head.

“Mi amigo Mingo, I don't suppose you have read this work and thus I can't accept your condemnation as valid. Sí, es verdad, the author is a socialist, an atheist, some say even a Marxist-Leninist. But you will find in this great short novel,
when you do read it
, that he condemns tyranny twice as heartily as you. Así que, next Monday when we meet again we will talk about
La ciudad y los perros
, forgetting about the author, and certainly forgetting about the author's politics, for writers, poor souls, are only themselves in the worlds of their fancy.”

“No, Gonzalo, no puede ser,” Mingo said. He walked up to Father Gonzalo and tossed the book on his lap. “You are offending us, offending especially that woman there who less than three months ago had her husband brutally murdered by a regime this author openly praises. Why? Because her husband had grown tired of being lied to. And now you want us to read this garbage!”

All looked to Alicia and her sister, Marta, seated together in the second pew, ready to follow her out, leaving the suspect Father Gonzalo with a book club of one. But Alicia did not move. She put on her silver-plated reading glasses, which made her look incongruously older and slowly leafed through the thin novel. She removed her glasses and looked up towards the altar. “I will read this,” she said. “You are not offending me, Gonzalo. I will read this and we will discuss it next Monday.” She grasped her sister's hand.

Mingo threw up his arms. “No lo creo. Well,
I
won't read it. I'll be back when you pick something more appropriate.” He pointed a finger at Father Gonzalo. “What about your promise to find a good translation of Proust? Or wasn't he as important a writer as this Peruvian comunista?” Without waiting for an answer, he exited the chapel.

“Too bad,” Father Gonzalo said, “Mingo is a good reader. … He would have liked this novel. Maybe he'll repent and return next week.”

As they were dispersing, a light tapping was heard on the chapel door, which was then hesitantly pushed open. Father Gonzalo half expected it to be Mingo, already repented, and he was about to proclaim, as a conciliatory gesture, his resolve to definitely find Proust the next time he visited Santiago. Instead Father Gonzalo saw a diminutive figure enter his chapel, comically dressed in a campesino's outfit, the straw hat and the workshirt and the canvas pants.