The Living Infinite, page 26
Tomás, who had taken the morning for himself to walk about the White City, returned to the parlor flushed and sweaty. He had seen a hot air balloon crash on the Midway that morning. The balloon was tethered to a post, and a wind had carried the balloon and smashed it to the concrete below. Two women and a man tumbled out of the basket, dazed but unhurt. Around the scene, people screamed, and the Midway emptied out, as if balloons were going to continue falling from the sky. Tomás had stayed to help the balloon’s owner unleash the basket from the balloon, and take out the post.
“You won’t believe what—” Tomás began to say, when he found Eulalia in the parlor, her left hand over her face, and the silver ring in her right, resting there. “Su alteza, are you—”
“I am not. I am not well, Tomás.”
“I’ll fetch the doctor,” Tomás said.
She waved him off, her movements languid, as if she truly had fallen ill. “Look,” she said, and held up the ring. “The inscription.”
Tomás turned the light ring over in his fingers and read the name, inscribed not once but twice, inside and out.
“If only it were just this ring,” she said. The rumors had been about for months. Antonio’s gifts were lavish ones, and now Eulalia began to list them for Tomás. “Grecos and Goyas, a farm in Maestra, a mausoleum in Cabra, chains of pearls. Diadems that once had rested on my sister Pilár’s head, Pilár’s innocent head, now sit atop that woman,” she cried, and flung the ring across the room, where it tinkled against a glass lampshade and bounced to the floor.
Is this what Amalia had been like, when she learned about Gisela, Tomás wondered at once. He had not considered his mother’s feelings when she told him the story, only his father’s, only Rubén, torn between two women, between two sons. But now, seeing it for the first time, seeing the way her face shaped itself into contortions, Tomás felt a different sort of anger, except it had doubled in his heart—anger on behalf of his mother, and absolute rage on behalf of Eulalia.
What could he do? Were Antonio not a prince, he would find him and he would throttle him. His size alone was good for that. In school, he had never had to fight anyone. The mere thought of coming to blows with Tomás Aragón scared the other boys away. Now, too, he thought of something else for the first time. Eulalia, small as she was, had only her mouth and her money as her weapons. If Antonio had control of her wealth, then all she had was words.
“Sylvester Hartwell wants to meet you. He wants to help you change the world,” Tomás said. Mr. Hartwell had said nothing like that, of course, but it seemed to be a helpful thing to say in the moment.
Eulalia brightened a little. She rose, went to the ring, and bent down to pick it up. Then, she placed it among the other souvenirs, as if it had never been touched.
“Where is Antonio?”
“Touring the Military Building,” she said.
“Come with me then. To the Midway.”
Eulalia’s lips parted, she leaned forward, but she stopped. “I can’t. Tonight, Bertha Palmer is hosting a party in our honor.”
Tomás knelt before her and took her hands. Eulalia’s eyes were wet, her face drawn. He said, “Su alteza would let an innkeeper’s wife keep her from enjoying herself?”
Eulalia laughed a little, and settled her hands in his. “It is the Columbian Exposition after all. What would the occasion be if not for Columbus, and who would Columbus have been if not for Spain?”
“For Spain, then,” Tomás said, and kissed the backs of her hands.
Later, the newspapers would turn on Eulalia, prompted by Mrs. Bertha Palmer, who told the press that the haughty infanta had stayed at the festivities she had organized in her Highness’s honor for less than an hour, and then, complaining of a headache, had left. “We had mountains of food prepared, an orchestra, the very best people of Chicago, including artists and singers, and yet Eulalia is too good for us here in Chicago. Thank heavens,” she told all who would listen, “that we threw off monarchism when we could.”
Later, Eulalia would see those newspapers and her heart would pound with regret. But that night, she had no such feelings. She and Tomás climbed aboard the steamship that took fairgoers into the exposition and went wholly unrecognized among the crowds. At night the White City twinkled like the firmament. The electric lights were better than candles, she had remarked. Searchlights atop the buildings swept the sky, as if giants were running about, lanterns in hand, looking for their kin. But it was the Midway that drew them both.
They wandered through a Turkish bazaar, and Eulalia stood still as a woman fit a little red cap over her head and handed her a mirror with which to see herself. They saw a chamber of horrors, where, for a dollar, they witnessed Marie Antoinette being executed. The woman who played her screamed even when her head was supposed to be off her shoulders. Eulalia had not liked it, though Tomás had laughed and clutched his throat. Then, as the night cooled, they climbed aboard the wheel, just the two of them in a single car. As the wheel spun, it reached its greatest height, and all of Chicago was laid before them, the White City like a jewel on one side, the lumpy shapes of buildings in the darkness on another, and almost at their feet, the waters of Lake Michigan.
Up there, they were girded by silence all around. The sounds of the Midway did not reach their ears. Up there, Tomás and Eulalia had nothing to do but take stock of the moment.
“All my life,” Tomás said, “your name has been in my ear. ‘Eulalia,’ my mother would say whenever she saw a little blond girl. Or she would reprimand me when I was being a boy, just a boy, and say that I was raised in a palace, where boys had to be men from the start. Always Eulalia in my ear.”
“I am sorry,” Eulalia said, laughing a little. She was leaning against him, the air cold and biting. “I can’t say the same about you. I gave no heed to you in my memories, because I had no one to keep a memory of you alive for me.”
The car rocked violently then, jolting them both. Eulalia yelped and Tomás gripped the handrail. He had forgotten the crashed hot air balloon from that morning until that very moment, and now his heart was pounding.
“We wouldn’t survive this fall,” he said, looking down to the ground.
“No, we wouldn’t,” Eulalia said softly. He knew she had meant something else altogether. There were facts running through his mind now—the fact that she had acceded to this little escape, the fact that she had returned his kiss, the fact that she did not love Antonio. Yet it was silence that held them in place, static as strangers to one another as they slowly dropped all the way down to the ground again.
The Midway was closing for the night, and so Tomás and Eulalia headed back toward the lights of the White City. Edison’s incandescent bulbs would burn the whole night, and only a few dark spots remained along the Court of Honor. They walked without talking, Eulalia taking deep breaths of the night air every so often, shivering a little. They walked toward the Palace of Fine Arts, which was closed for the night, glowing along the banks of the basin. Inside, figures in bronze and marble embraced, draped themselves lazily upon rocks, and peered into far-off distances. Outside, Eulalia and Tomás formed a different pair of figures, as Tomás helped Eulalia board a small boat. He sat, too, and released the rope that had tied it down. He wasn’t an experienced rower, and so they meandered a bit before he got the rhythm of the oars in the water. Still, they kept to their silence. Tomás had wondered if she would follow as he led her to the boat, and she had asked no questions. In the distance, the small island was lit by lanterns. There, a Japanese palace had been erected, replete with gardens and blue-tiled buildings. They tied the boat to a post on the shore and disembarked, their shoes sinking in the mud a few inches.
“It’s a favorite of the Exposition, I’ve heard tell,” Tomás said, meaning the Japanese island. It was the only permanent exhibit by any country, a gift from the Japanese to the Americans. How odd the architecture seemed to Tomás, with its gently curved roofs held up by dark posts, its paper walls, and the large gables, covered in gold leaf.
In one of the buildings, they could see the silhouettes of people settling in for the night—Japanese men and women who were spending their summer in Chicago to work at the exposition. Faintly, they heard laughter, and the tinkling of plates from within. The other buildings were dark, as were the gardens.
“It’s closed for the evening,” Eulalia said, and wondered about the time.
Tomás fumbled for his pocket watch, but he couldn’t read it in the dark. “Should we go back?” he asked.
“Not yet,” she said.
Tomás and Eulalia stumbled along the wooded paths without making a sound. Without light to guide them, Tomás let the fingers of his free hand trail above the short hedges that lined the walk. He closed his eyes as he led her, feeling better in a darkness of his own making. A light rain started up. Lightning forked in the sky directly over the Palace of Fine Arts, then again a little farther away, but the rain did not thicken.
“Over there,” Eulalia suddenly whispered, her chin brushing against his arm. A smaller building emerged from a stand of pines. They slid open the door and went inside. They listened as the light patter on the roof slowed, then stopped altogether. Thunder rumbled in the distance, but it seemed far away now. It was just a room, and inside, flat blue cushions lay on the floor, with a low table in the center. Small teacups and teapots sat on shelves along the wall. The air was fresh and green-smelling inside. “It feels so proper in here,” Eulalia said.
“I feel like a giant in here,” Tomás said, nudging the table that was only as high as his shins.
“You are a giant,” Eulalia said.
“Grande por gusto,” Tomás said.
“I wouldn’t say that.” She sat on the cushion and pulled her knees up to her chest. She rolled her head a little, stretching her neck, then sighed.
Tomás sat down beside her. Yes, he thought, the place felt very proper. All proper, and more importantly, true. He felt that they had been meant to come to this place, their lives’ decisions leading them, meandering, to this moment.
Eulalia looked up at him, her lips parted, and she asked, “What do you think of Bertha Palmer?”
“Oh, I—” Tomás began. He hadn’t given the woman much thought. “She’s lovely, But not as lovely as y—”
“I envy her,” Eulalia said, only half-listening to him. “The Women’s Building is magnificent, and she managed it. The hotel, too. These American women do so much. All of this progress, Tomás, and women have had a hand in it. Is such a thing possible in Spain?”
Tomás thought of Juana and her love for the bookshop that she could never run, and of Amalia, who sometimes had referred to her past self as una vaquita de oro, then laughed darkly. He thought of the innkeeper’s niece back in Cuba, and her perpetual scowl, and then, of the women he’d seen everywhere in Chicago, pushing children in prams, helping their old mothers onto the deck of the Santa María, crashing in a hot air balloon. Just that morning, he had read in a Chicago newspaper about three missing women in the city, and a woman who had once been a slave in Alabama, found dead in Lake Michigan, bruises around her neck. The freedom Eulalia spoke of eluded Tomás’s imagination.
“Is this freedom?” he asked, gesturing to the room around them.
“No,” she said.
“Just an indulgence then?”
Eulalia said nothing, only lay, face down, across Tomás’s lap. He ran his fingers up and down her back, wondering if she could feel it through the whalebone corset. She turned to face him. “Tell me it isn’t vengeance, Eulalia,” Tomás said, his voice not quite steady.
She sat up, shook her head. Slowly, she undid the black ribbon that laced up her dress in the back, expertly tugging on the ends, as if she had always dressed and undressed herself. Then she stood, and stepped out of the dress, out of the hard corset. It was dark, and so the shape she took was all shadow, all confusion. Down she sat again upon the blue cushion, and then, all at once, Tomás’s mouth was on hers. His lips parted and hers followed. He undressed with one hand, warming his other hand on her skin, upon her arms, her hip, and lower still.
Eulalia, gasping in his ear. Eulalia’s breath warm in his mouth. Eulalia’s thighs alongside his own, her own shattering happening in silence, her teeth upon his shoulder, pressing only just so. Lala, Lala, Tomás thought, and then he said it aloud, into her hair, the heat of her rising, volcanic, his face feeling as if it were on fire.
4
They dressed slowly, talking in quiet tones about the room they were in, the exhibits they had seen, the food they had eaten. Tomás knew it was strange, but he had no words for what had just happened between them. The scent of it was everywhere, the proof in Eulalia’s reddened lips, and Tomás’s wrinkled clothes. They made their way back to the boat, passing a gray-haired Japanese woman carrying a red lantern. She eyed them with suspicion, and said something to them in Japanese. It sounded like a scolding, and Tomás and Eulalia hurried away from her. Tomás rowed hard, until the woman’s red lantern could no longer be seen.
The White City did not go dark at night. The searchlights swept the sky without ceasing. Even so, the Exposition was asleep, and there were no carriages to be found anywhere. The steamship that brought passengers to the fair via the lake was docked and shadowy. Dawn was not so far off, and soon there would be carriages again, and streetcars. But in that moment, sleepy and spent, Eulalia and Tomás could do nothing but wait there on the steps of the Palace of Fine Arts.
They stared out at the little wooded island together, watched as soft butter-yellow lights flickered in the buildings. Time and again, the red lantern would appear like a dying star, and they wondered whether the old woman was looking for them, whether she knew what they had done.
“The light is like a message, isn’t it? Like Morse code,” Tomás said.
“I don’t know what that is,” Eulalia said. Tomás resisted the urge to explain it. “Do you mean it’s like a sign? It might be a sign,” she said. Eulalia leaned her head against his shoulder. He felt her sigh, her whole body moving up and down. He felt himself a peculiar shock running up his spine, a trembling that came and went so fast he could attribute it only to the astonishing fact that Eulalia was there, beside him.
“A sign then,” Tomás said. “But of what?”
Eulalia leaned forward, rested her elbows on her knees, and gazed intently at the woods, as if she could derive meaning from the lapping of the water, the chirping of the cicadas, the curling smoke that rose above the tree line like a spirit.
“If I leave him,” she began to say, then stopped. The noises of the night filled in the pause.
Tomás held his breath. He felt as if anything was possible. His stomach constricted in a tight knot of hope, and then the feeling was gone. Of course she couldn’t leave Antonio, not permanently at least.
“My grandmother left my grandfather for a soldier. And Heaven knows my parents never shared a bed. But they pretended for everyone else’s sake, that they were still together,” she said.
“Would you live separately then? The church would frown—”
“The church is not God,” Eulalia said fiercely. “The church may judge me, but God will not.”
Tomás looked down to see her face, her open, gorgeous face, which was set hard now, her eyes narrowed, tears collecting near her lashes. He knew those were angry tears, not sad ones. Otherwise, she was very still, almost as if she were ready to sit for a photograph. Juana’s was a warm, heated anger. When incensed, Juana would stomp around the store, slamming drawers and stacking books as if they were heavy bricks. Eulalia, however, ran cold.
Tomás took her hand in his, felt her resist briefly then relent. “You don’t have to get a divorce,” he said. “I won’t go anywhere. I’m your secretary, remember?” Even as he said it, he felt unease, heard his mother whispering Tenorio’s name in his ear.
Then Eulalia looked at him slowly, sleepily, the anger he had seen in her eyes now fled deep within, seeded inside and turning into something new. Tomás understood it at once—Eulalia wanted a divorce for reasons that had nothing to do with him. She patted his hand and commented on the coming dawn, which was coloring the sky a bright coral.
“The carriages will be back soon,” she said, and they rose from the steps and made their way to the edge of the exposition grounds, where they could hear the clop-clop of horses bringing the first guests of the day.
Tomás and Eulalia went through the kitchens of the Palmer Hotel, via doors that Tomás had discovered earlier. They climbed a set of spiral staircases, then reached the suite of rooms. The sky was still blushing in the dawn, and the snores of the ladies-in-waiting could be heard coming from the adjoining rooms. The parlor itself was dark, the curtains drawn. A fire was set in the fireplace. So it was they did not notice Antonio, sitting nearby, Eulalia’s manuscript in his lap.
He said nothing to them, only lifted a page he finished reading, crumpled it up, and tossed it into the fire. His movements were liquid, gentle, as if he had merely decided to destroy old school notes.
Eulalia gasped and rushed forward, stumbling over her own skirts on the way and righting herself without falling. Antonio snatched up the manuscript before she could reach it.
“Leave the room, please, Aragón, I need to speak with my wife,” Antonio said.
Tomás hesitated. Eulalia turned to look at him, her eyes round and wild.
