The Living Infinite, page 27
“Thank you, Aragón,” Antonio spoke again. “We will not be needing you again this morning.”
Tomás found his voice. “We were only taking in the Midway when the carriages stopped running for the evening. The Ferris Wheel, isn’t that right, su alteza?”
Antonio crumpled another page and fed the fire again.
“It’s her life’s story. She has a right to tell it,” Tomás said, taking a step forward.
“Go!” Antonio said, standing. The remaining pages, of which there were now only a few, fell to the carpet. Eulalia dropped to her knees to gather them up. She turned to Tomás and mouthed the words “Just go,” before picking up the pages.
For as long as he lived, Tomás would remember the feeling of backing out of that room. He would dream of it often, and in his dream, his feet would feel moored to the floor, incapable of movement. In his dream, Antonio would ask him to leave, ask again, beg and beg, but Tomás’s legs would not move. They were oaks rooted in the ground.
But in real life, he left, walking backwards, finding the doorknob without looking at it, and falling into his room, where he could still hear everything that was going on in the parlor.
He listened as Antonio called Eulalia “cousin,” as he brought up Isabel’s infidelities, and those of Isabel’s mother, and all the way down the line of Spanish queens and princesses who knew nothing but betrayal.
And then, Eulalia’s voice, shrill as a hurt bird, the name “Carmela” on her lips, again and again.
Finally, after a long while, they were quiet. Tomás opened the door to the parlor and found it empty. Around the room, other doors opened, the ladies-in-waiting peering out like frightened cats. In the fire, the rest of Eulalia’s book crackled, her words turning to ash, the bright embers floating for a second before falling.
Tomás slept through most of the day. He would pack his things later. Hartwell had a copy of the book, and this, at least, gave Tomás comfort. A knock woke him from a dreamless sleep. An envelope was slipped underneath the door, containing a letter from Martín. It read:
Querido Hermano,
Yesterday we received your letter, and were happy to learn that you are well and that you enjoyed New York City and your time with the infanta. Amalia had just complained that morning that you never write us, and you can imagine how she felt when your letter was in her hands at last. But our happiness was short-lived. In the evening, your mother fell. It had rained, one of those tropical thunderstorms so common here, and the steps were wet. Her hip is broken. So is her wrist. In addition, she is running a fever. The doctor’s countenance upon examining her was quite serious. We are frightened for her, hermano. If you can get away, please come.
Tu hermano,
Martín
Tomás reread the letter several times. Then, his heart in his throat, he went downstairs to the lobby to inquire about train tickets. He saw Eulalia in passing, Antonio at her side. Her face was pallid, and she gripped a parasol tightly with two hands, the handle at her chest, as if she were holding a sword. He thought of her manuscript, how the fire had flared when it touched the pages, and the light piles of black ash that had been left behind, and Tomás wondered how it was that bright, blinding things could be reduced to almost nothing so quickly.
Later, they would watch a different kind of fire from rooftop of the hotel. The Cold Storage Building at the Exposition, which housed an ice skating rink, had gone up in flames overnight. They could just make out the towers, their flags ablaze, and tiny figures jumping from the top, trading one kind of death for another. Antonio held Eulalia about the waist as they watched in horror, while Tomás hung back with the ladies-in-waiting, and a few other servants, unsure of everything now. The fire almost distracted him from the ache that had settled in his chest. Around them, the air shuddered, as if the violence only a few miles off had reached them too.
5
“Come with me,” Eulalia pleaded with Tomás as he packed his trunk.
Tomás did not look up to see her. It would hurt too much to see her round face, her precise little curls. He did not want to think of her tomorrow, or the next day, or twenty years from now, beautiful beyond the wreckage of time, existing without him.
But that was folly, of course, and he knew it.
“My train leaves tomorrow, early. Mamá needs—” he stopped himself, raised his head to look at Eulalia, pale and trembling in the doorway. “I shouldn’t have left her there, alone.”
She held up a piece of paper. “It’s from the editor. He wants to see me today. About the book.” The paper, which was a telegram, Tomás could now see, shook in her hand. “I can’t tell him that Antonio destroyed it, of course. I’ll have to make up another—”
“Mr. Hartwell has a copy, Eulalia. I typed up a spare.”
Her mouth dropped open, the corners of it twitched a little, almost a smile. “Why didn’t you mention it? How I wept for those pages,” she said.
“I did. I told you about it days ago. You were in the glass dress, remember?” Tomás felt frustration grow in him like a weed, tangling up his feelings.
“Oh,” she said. “I must have been distracted. Your train leaves today?”
“Tomorrow,” Tomás repeated, and folded a sock carefully.
“Oh. Well, then, you are free to come with me to Mr. Hartwell’s today, aren’t you?” She placed her hands, one folded over the other, upon her stomach. She was holding her breath.
He thought of his mother, frail, hurting, in a strange bed, in a strange country. What a mess Tomás had put them in. And all for what? Because that American woman, that Eliza Jane, had dangled something like hope and progress before Tomás’s eyes, and he, like a hungry fish, had swallowed the shiny thing that concealed a hook.
Eulalia took a step into his room, stopped, then took another. “I don’t know what you are thinking, why your brow is so furrowed. Perhaps your mind is on Ama. I can feel it in my heart,” she said, her hands coming up to rest between her breasts. “Ama will be well again. I’m not saying that to convince you, I just feel it. I knew when my brother would die, and I knew about Pilár, too. I just knew. Ama will be well again. All I am asking for is one day. One more day. With you.”
Tomás nodded. The truth was, he had dreamed all night of the moment he would say goodbye to Eulalia, and in his dream he reached for her face and she said, “I belong to no one,” and then he was hurled away from her, as if by a mighty wind. When he woke, he searched for who he had been before Eulalia came into his bookshop, and could not find that man anymore. It seemed to him now, with Eulalia before him, that he would do best to see the adventure through, to put an end to the story he and she were writing, a fin that would propel him back to Cuba, back to Ama.
Eulalia approached him slowly, like a person coming toward a feral cat. She put her hand on his shoulder and applied pressure there. He bent to her will, lowering toward her, until she was able to plant a soft kiss on his stubby cheek. “Thank you. This afternoon, at two, the carriage will take us to Sylvester Hartwell’s office.”
“Antonio?” Tomás asked.
Eulalia hardened before his eyes, and it was clear that she had been thinking perilous thoughts about Antonio since he had destroyed her book. She spoke in a vicious whisper. “Our marriage is only a memory of what once was. Or, better yet, what never was. Antonio knows it, as do I. If a woman like Bertha Palmer can curate masterpieces, name a building after female artists, and run a hotel, then I can separate from half a man who is draining my wealth and embarrassing himself with a little-known actress.”
Hope flared and died in Tomás, all at once. A liberated Eulalia would be free to—do what? Live with Tomás? She would still be a married woman, the law permitted nothing else. A mirthless laugh nearly escaped him. Besides, his mother needed him.
“Two o’clock, then,” he said.
Eulalia opened her mouth to say something, perhaps to ask his opinion about what she had just said, but she thought better of it, nodded, and left his room without another word.
Sylvester Hartwell did not keep the Infanta of Spain waiting. Rather, he stood outside his building, hat in hand, and helped her out of her carriage himself. He led her and Tomás to his office, which was spacious and carpeted in jewel tones. His desk was large, and glass-topped, with many small drawers in it. On the front of his desk gleamed a copper shield with an engraving of the New York City skyline.
Four chairs sat in a half-circle before his desk, and Eulalia and Tomás took their seats. Eulalia wore a yellow dress with a lower neckline than usual. She had folded her gloves on her lap and sat comfortably, her ankles crossed, her fingers tapping on the arm of the chair. Tomás was astonished by how much she had changed while in Chicago, how her body seemed to have grown languid, more at ease in the world. Or, perhaps, not in all of the world, only here, in this place.
Sylvester Hartwell rounded his desk and sat down, his chair set so high on its legs that he appeared to tower over them. Eulalia sat straighter in her seat, pretending not to notice that her gloves had tumbled off her lap.
The typed manuscript was at Hartwell’s fingertips, and he fiddled with the edges of the pages. “We would be very honored to publish your memoir,” he said, without further preamble.
Eulalia looked at Tomás and reached out, grabbing his forearm and squeezing.
“You should be prepared for, ah, repercussions, however, back home, in Spain, I mean,” Hartwell continued.
Eulalia cleared her throat. “Spain has never felt like home to me,” she said. “I’ve lost nothing there that I can’t find somewhere else.”
Tomás took a deep, tremulous breath. One of the things he had worried about when he left Spain was that he would spend the rest of his life missing it.
“You are everything the newspapers say about you and more, your highness,” Sylvester Hartwell said, leaning back in his chair.
“What do they say?” Eulalia asked. She was flushed with excitement. Her chin lifted, all of her agitated.
Sylvester Hartwell opened his mouth to answer her when he was interrupted by someone opening his office door. A woman came in, dressed in dark brown, her face tight, chewing her bottom lip.
“Birdie, come in. Your highness, this is my wife, Birdie.”
Birdie curtsied, and Eulalia rose and shook the woman’s hand. Tomás stood, too, and offered his own hand. “Tomás Aragón, at your service,” he said.
“You are Eliza Jane’s friend, yes?”
Tomás nodded, and suddenly, Birdie had sprung all of her attention on him. “Here,” she said, and pulled a small bible out of a pocket in her skirt. The cover was embroidered with Eliza Jane’s maiden initials—EJH—in tiny pearls. “Her childhood bible, you see. I thought she might want it at a time like this.”
“A time like this?” Tomás asked.
“The baby. The baby died,” Birdie said, choking back a sob. “And our Eliza Jane isn’t herself anymore. And now, now she’ll never come home, will she, Lester,” Birdie said, turning to her husband. “Not now that her baby is buried in Spain. How could she leave it? It was a girl,” Birdie said, dissolving into tears.
Eulalia’s hand was on Tomás’s forearm again, and she was gripping him hard. Emilia, Francisca, Rubén, Alicia. The names came like whispers to Tomás, and he knew Eulalia was thinking of her own baby, and, perhaps, her own siblings, the ones Isabel could not keep alive.
“Forgive me, your highness,” Hartwell said, though he did not rise to comfort his wife.
Then it was as if Eulalia remembered herself again, and Tomás wondered how she did it, how she rose and embraced Birdie. Tomás recalled the stories of Eulalia and her sisters attending the deathbeds of others, how that must have hardened them, made them strong in the places where everyone else was weakest.
“Thank you, your highness,” Birdie said, and curtsied again, even though she was gripping Eulalia’s arms still. “As a woman, you understand. You have children, yes?” Eulalia nodded. “Then you know that we do what we can to protect them. It’s our lot, and it’s a consecration upon us, isn’t it?”
Eulalia nodded, and Birdie excused herself. The infanta sank slowly into her seat. Her hands reached out to the manuscript, and little by little, she pulled the book back onto her lap. “We are afraid that we cannot proceed,” she said, her voice small.
Tomás felt as if his bones were suddenly shifting within him. He looked into Eulalia’s face, which had gone blank, and felt as if he understood her thoughts. He mouthed the word no, and then he spoke it out loud. Eulalia turned to look at him, held his gaze for only a moment. Her blue eyes were glossy, and she gripped the pages of her manuscript forcefully, as if strangling the life out of them. Tomás tried to focus on what had just befallen them in Sylvester Hartwell’s office. There would be no separation for Eulalia and Antonio, no scandalous book to provoke it; as far as the eyes of Spain were concerned, the Infanta Eulalia would return from her trip abroad with a trunk full of souvenirs and cheeks lightly sunburned. She would be a pretty bird with clipped wings. Her sons would be infantes, own property, marry young duchesses and marquesas, and he could see in her tenacity her hope for them, for their future. Eulalia, Amalia, Gisela, Birdie, Eliza Jane, Juana, he thought woefully of them all, imagining them bent down, laying cobblestones on the ground, creating pathways for the futures of men.
Hartwell shifted in his chair. He picked up a pen and set it down again. “Perhaps,” he said carefully, “there is something still in Spain that you cannot find elsewhere.”
Eulalia did not nod, or say anything other than a curt thank you. Tomás followed her out, feeling in her wake as if the courage were leaving her moment by moment, as if he were wading in its residues.
“Eulalia. Eulalia!” he called to her, but she would not turn. She walked past the carriage, her manuscript tight against her body. “Eulalia!” he cried again, taking long strides to match her pace.
“Which way is the lake?” she asked him then, frantic, and he pointed toward it, peeking out blue and knifelike between buildings. Eulalia marched toward the watery horizon in silence.
“Your sons, is it?” he asked, and got no answer. Hadn’t Amalia done the same for him? Changed her life so that his would be easier? “You’re putting them first, aren’t you?”
Eulalia stopped. “Do you know that Luis Fernando writes me letters from school? In the letters he tells me, ‘Papa is more like a bear than a man, more like a beast, a brute. I have never loved Papa, never, never.’ This is from a child. Yet I hide these letters so that Antonio does not see them.” She was breathing hard, and two parallel lines of sweat ran down her temples, like the ties to a bonnet. “I will leave him, Tomás. I will light my love in a new lamp. But this, this?” she said, gesturing to her book, “I realize now, it can ruin everything for my children.”
They walked on until they reached the lakeshore. A path had been made between a stand of brush and the water, and they went along it. Tomás held back branches so that Eulalia might duck under them, and soon their feet were in the muck of the lake’s edge. The sun was low in the sky, and the wind pushed at them a little, as if it might toss them into the lake. Droplets of water fell onto the manuscript, and Eulalia wiped them off then, but there was no point to that.
Hartwell had bound the pages with a gray ribbon. Eulalia peeled the ribbon off first, and let it go.
It whipped into the sky, fluttering like an insect, before landing in the water, where it floated for a bit.
Tomás knew that Eulalia would not listen to reason. He remembered how his mother had always said that it was impossible to argue with an unreasonable person, that the only counter to their irrational thinking was a startling act. Eulalia peeled the first page off the manuscript and let it go. She took the second page in her hand, held it aloft, then stopped.
“One of the servants in Cuba told me how people there sometimes throw bunches of flowers into the ocean, sometimes tied with ribbons of different colors. They are offerings to the African gods. I liked the idea of it.”
Tomás noticed then that there were tears in her eyes. He reached over and gently took the book from her. Then, with a suddenness that made Eulalia yell out, he threw the bundle into the sea.
“All at once, is how you do it,” he said. Some of the pages flew off, wrapping themselves along the slimy legs of a nearby pier. Another page sailed deep into the city and disappeared among the buildings. But the bulk of the book scattered across the surface of the lake. They watched as page after page was pulled down, some very quickly, so that Tomás imagined a school of fish feeding on Eulalia’s words.
They sat in silence until the last of the pages were gone, Eulalia’s written life sucked into Lake Michigan, parts of it strewn deep in Chicago. The water glittered in the afternoon light, the very color of an aquamarine, and Eulalia said so to Tomás.
“Never been rich enough to have one,” he said.
6
Tomás woke early the next morning, before the sun was up. He heard movement in the parlor outside his room, and cracked his door open to see who it might be. He had hoped it might be Eulalia, and she did not disappoint. She paced the parlor, back and forth, still in her creamy silk dressing gown. Her hair was loose and curled against her back.
She started when she felt his hand on her arm, pulling her back gently into his room. With a quick glance backwards, she followed him in. Tomás palmed the back of her neck, a perfect fit, and she tilted her face up at him. He kissed her gently, and felt her warm lips responding for a moment, but pulling away too soon.
“Sometimes, I think too much,” she said, averting her eyes. “I deprive myself of joy from overthinking. But I cannot help it.”
“Then don’t think. Come with me, back to Cuba. We can send for your boys, change our paths.” Overcome with the intensity of his feelings, he stopped short. The words he had uttered, so full of hopefulness, felt empty hearing them out loud.
