Head Games, page 11
“I guess you aren’t into history,” Jim said, putting an arm around her drooping shoulders. “We’ll go to the market. I think you’ll like it.”
It was a produce market, but at the far end there were stalls selling cooking utensils, clothes, and handicrafts. They walked through the aisles, Jim’s arm keeping Lisa close, but not close enough to shield her eyes against the omen: Jesus Malverde. She stopped in her tracks. Jim stopped, too.
“Hey,” he said. “That looks like the statue Santos had in his shop. Must be a new stall.”
A young woman sat among the painted figures, crouching on an overturned crate. She had a child’s body, skinny without being angular. Her brown face was framed by glossy black hair. And she looked at them with the bad-luck eyes Lisa knew by heart.
Jim picked up one of the wooden saints.
“Es Jesus Malverde, no?” he said.
The woman got up and answered in English: “You know about Jesus Malverde?” She spoke to Jim but she looked at Lisa. Her eyes were of a brooding blackness that swallowed the light.
“Just his name,” Jim said.
“He is the Mexican Robin Hood,” she said. “They call him the ‘Angel of the Poor.’” She spoke English with the stiff correctness of someone who uses it infrequently. “And this is San Simón of Guatemala.” She pointed to a seated figure with a wide-brimmed hat and a white shirt. “He is the trickster. People invoke him when they are in trouble with the law.”
“Your English is very good,” Jim said. The woman gave him a tight smile.
Jim picked up San Simón. “How much?” he said. “Depends,” she said.
On what did it depend? Could San Simón the trickster be bought off?
It depended on the exchange rate. The woman quoted Jim a price in dollars, but that left the question of converting dollars into pesos. Was it to be the official bank rate or the paralelo, the higher rate paid on the street? Jim haggled without conviction and ended up paying the paralelo.
Lisa kept watching for a sign from the woman as she wrapped the statue in newspaper and tied it up with string, but she did not give her another glance.
“It’s for you,” Jim said to Lisa, as they walked back to the car. “A souvenir.”
“No,” she said, hiding her hands behind her back. “I don’t want a trickster.”
Jim laughed. “Oh, come on, Lisa,” he said. “Don’t be so superstitious.”
But Lisa couldn’t afford to be careless in the face of fate. She refused to touch San Simón, and Jim gave up.
“Okay,” he said. “Forget it then.”
He put the statue into the trunk of his car and drove Lisa to her hotel. And as if to knock me down/ Reality came around. The porter came out, opened the car door for her and took possession of her suitcase. Jim kissed her on the cheek.
The distance between them widened.
“I wish you’d come up north with me,” she said. “I wish I could,” he said, “but I told you: this week is crazy. The head of the junta is scheduled to visit the site tomorrow. If I don’t show my face, they’ll interpret it as lack of respect. It might have serious repercussions for the project. They are boneheaded about that sort of thing. Otherwise I’d come along.” He hugged her. “I wish you weren’t going to Tilcara.” “Maybe I won’t,” Lisa said, but she knew she was fated to go. She had seen Asu at the market and looked into her eyes. San Simón the Trickster was in the trunk of Jim’s car.
“I tell you what,” Jim said. “Phone me on Friday night, and we’ll arrange something. I’ll drive up north and meet you halfway. We can take it from there, do our own tour.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll phone you.”
“Promise?” he said. She promised, but really it wasn’t up to her. It depended on fate.
Her arms were around his neck. She couldn’t let him go. “Jim,” she said. “I have this tune going in my head: Alone again, naturally. If it’s natural, I guess I’ll have to get used to it.”
“You think I don’t feel lonely sometimes?” he said, holding her tight. “But we’ll have a weekend of luxurious togetherness. Maybe I can take Monday off, too.”
She couldn’t ask for more. She had to let him go.
LISA’S HOTEL ROOM WAS CRUELLY neat. It was as if her mother was silently presiding over the scene, with her “don’t touch” housekeeping. The dreary atmosphere of back home, the doldrums of suburbia, descended on Lisa. The covers on the bed were creaseless, the mahogany table by the window polished to a sheen, the chair pushed in tidily. There was something reproachful about the room, telling her: see how neat everything is? Keep it that way, Lisa.
“Todo bien?” the busboy asked. He was standing at the door, discreetly waiting for his tip. Lisa found a crumpled dollar bill in her wallet and gave it to him. His radiant smile made her suspect it was too much. Si, todo bien, she said. Everything was in order. There was a crisp clarity about the room. Not a setting in which to conjure up the ghost of Soriano padre. Hetta was her only hope. On the phone, her voice had sounded promising: a high, pure soprano inviting Lisa to tea – to read the tea leaves? She sounded like a woman who could channel a dead man’s spirit.
In the afternoon Lisa took a taxi to the address Hetta had given her. The sky, lucid blue in the morning, was streaked with white clouds now, blurring the picture. The driver looked into the rear view mirror. “Americano?” he asked. His eyes were eager. His mouth and the little moustache above it were askew, a question mark. He seemed disappointed when Lisa said: Canadiense. Perhaps American tourists were better tippers.
He dropped her off at a fine old building not far from Parque Navarro. Lisa walked up to the second floor, the belle étage, and was shown into the living room by the maid.
A woman was standing by the glass doors leading to the balcony, petite, elegantly dressed, a slim silhouette against the afternoon light. She closed the balcony door, shutting out the windblown sound of traffic, and stepped into the room. The slanting rays of the sun left the room in semi-darkness and gave her a mysterious air.
“So you are Maria’s daughter,” she said, holding out her hand to Lisa. “Welcome to Catamarca.” Her hair was a forced blonde, and some of the peroxide brittleness seeped into her speech. She had a small face and wide-set eyes like a Pekinese, delicate and purebred, showing traces of the perfect child Lisa’s mother had adored.
A faint scent of lavender rose from the pair of cropped plush sofas facing each other. They had the withered look of pieces in an attic. The walls were hung with colonial portraits and classical landscapes. Yes, this was the place to meet the dead. Miguel Soriano’s spirit was palpable.
Hetta sat down under the pensive portrait of a distinguished gentleman – Lisa’s father? She sensed his aura, but his face remained flat, two-dimensional. She missed the softness, the warmth, the feel of skin against her fingertips.
Hetta crossed her legs decorously at the ankles. An elegant economy governed all her movements. Lisa was cowed, intimidated by her daintiness, embarrassed by her own crass fatherless past. She felt humble, an intruder in the Soriano noblesse, a bastard.
The maid reappeared with a silver tray of tea things and set it down on the table between them. Lisa secretly touched the table’s edge for luck and pointed to the portrait over the sofa.
“Is that your father?” she said. She would have liked to say “our” father, but so far no tokens of kinship had passed between them. There were no distinguishing marks, no subliminal signs as yet that they were half-sisters.
“That’s my father,” Hetta said. “But he was a father to everyone. People couldn’t help loving him.”
Lisa’s mouth formed an O, perhaps she said Oh! She couldn’t hear herself talk. Her ears were blocked. A father to everyone, couldn’t help loving him was humming and vibrating in her head. Hetta was speaking to her in code, in signs, willing to share her father, willing to admit: Lisa’s mother couldn’t help loving him.
“He was a wonderful man,” Hetta was saying, “warm, kind-hearted, generous – I wish you could have met him.”
“He was generous to my mother,” Lisa said.
A shadow passed over Hetta’s face. Memories of the sins of her father? But the shadow cleared.
“I have very fond memories of your mother,” she said. “She had a thousand ways of making a child happy.”
All of them spent on Hetta, nothing left for Lisa. “But you didn’t stay in touch with her,” she said.
There was the shadow again. “It was an awkward situation,” Hetta said.
“Awkward? You mean because – ” Lisa let the words dangle. She wasn’t sure whether to go on.
“Did your mother tell you – ”
“She told me nothing,” Lisa said quickly. “But I always had my suspicions. The way she talked of him – ” Again, she wanted to say “my father” but perhaps this wasn’t the right moment or the right order of things. To be on the safe side, she said “him” and pointed at the man in the painting. “The way she talked about him – I could tell she was head over heels in love.”
“In love?” Hetta raised her eyebrows. “You mean to say, fond of him?”
“No, I mean in love. And he with her.”
Hetta put her hand to her mouth. “Dios mio!” She leaned back in her chair to distance herself from such blasphemy. “I cannot imagine who put that idea into your head. No, no! My father was the most proper person in the world. He would never – ” Her lips were a prim line of disapproval.
“But you said yourself that it was an awkward situation.”
“Let me explain,” she said. She paused, gathering up the threads of the story. Lisa had no desire to hear it. She could tell Hetta was no storyteller. The best she could expect from those prim lips was a sermon.
“My father treated everyone like family,” Hetta said. “Your parents didn’t have enough money to pay for the passage to Canada. They came to my father, and he helped them out with a loan.”
“A loan?” Lisa said. “I was under the impression that he had made them a present of the money.”
“There was a misunderstanding. Nothing was put in writing. My father was like that.”
“You mean to say: he considered it a loan. My parents considered it a gift, and he was never repaid?”
“I don’t like to put it that way, querida. Let’s just say, they disagreed about the nature of the transaction. Your mother, who is a decent woman, was embarrassed and wanted to pay the money back, in instalments. But my father was too proud to accept it in the circumstances. If they were under the impression that it was a gift, he would leave it at that. He didn’t want to hear anything more about the business. He wrote the money off. And that was the end of our correspondence. I didn’t mean to tell you all this, but I couldn’t leave you under the misapprehension that, that – .” She trailed off.
Lisa was unsure what to do with Hetta’s explanation: Swallow it whole? Eat it piecemeal? Spew it out as a lie, a cover-up? There was nothing to guide her now. The aura around Soriano’s portrait had vanished. His spirit had fled the room and left it slightly shabby. Lisa saw that the Persian carpet was faded and threadbare. The frame around the portrait was chipped and tarnished – she hadn’t noticed it before.
“It happened so long ago,” Hetta said. “It’s time to forget.”
Lisa looked into Hetta’s melancholy eyes. They were both grieving for Miguel Soriano. She made faint excuses, about another appointment, about needing to be on time. Hetta walked with her to the door, put a limp hand in hers and wished her Buen viaje.
All the loose ends Lisa had hoped to tie up were still loose, trailing, entangling her, tripping her up.
At the corner of the street, Lisa stopped, looking for a taxi in the parade of cars going by, or else she was looking for the right father in the phalanx of ghostly images in her head, an unattractive line-up: Don in Mar del Plata, curled up on the sofa bed in a fetal position, moaning “baby, baby.” Jorge Martinez, pouring over his accounts, refusing to pay back the loan. Soriano padre, his suit jacket ripped open, his hand pointing to a flaming heart. An electric storm was raging in Lisa’s head. Who would make it up to the weeping orphan? She had to go to Tilcara. That was the meaning of Asu’s words at the market stall: Depends. Depends on whether you believe Hetta’s story. And that was the meaning of Jim buying the Trickster. Fate was against Lisa. She needed a saint’s touch now.
AT THE BUS DEPOT THE next morning, the tour guide handed Lisa a nametag. She put it away and climbed on the bus incognito. Most of the seats in the front half of the bus were taken. She headed for an empty row near the back and put her bag down on the seat beside her to discourage anyone from joining her. She was practising loneliness. This was an educational tour for Lisa, an instruction in the art of being Alone again naturally. That’s how it was going to be from now on. One more indulgence: the embrace of the Saint. After that, no more gurus. Lisa wanted to wean herself off fathers and mothers, off the advisors she had tried and found lacking: Don, Santos, Dr. Lerner. She would have liked to keep Jim, but she had a premonition that he wasn’t in the cards.
A couple of pensioners, tagged Osvaldo and Felicia Guzman, settled heavily in the seats across the aisle from Lisa. Osvaldo eyed her, leaned over and asked about the missing nametag. His voice was full of paternal admonition. He would not accept anonymity.
“I don’t speak Spanish,” Lisa said in English. “I’m from Toronto.” Her best defence was pleading ignorance of the language.
“Ah, Canadiense,” Osvaldo said and lapsed into enforced silence. Felicia craned her neck and gave Lisa an uneasy smile. It wasn’t fair, her crimped smile said. A whole bus of happy, chatting people, and they had ended up across the aisle from a silent foreigner.
The bus lumbered out of the terminal, burping a cloud of diesel fumes, clattered through the outskirts of Catamarca, and picked up speed on the open road. Dust curled up, seeped through the bus windows, and settled in Lisa’s lungs. She felt parched and dry-mouthed, thirsting for an answer from the Saint of Tilcara. The Guzmans were watching the road in discontent. Osvaldo twisted restlessly. He half rose from his seat, waved to someone up front with comeback-here fervour, but they insisted on staying in their premium seats right behind the driver. He got up and made his way forward, swaying. He stood in the aisle beside his friends, gripping their headrests, gesticulating, joking, and returned with a fellow pensioner in tow.
“Mi amigo,” he said to Lisa, introducing him: Manuel Sanudo.
Manuel smiled broadly. “I speak the English,” he announced.
Lisa lowered her eyes, too late to discourage him from giving her a demonstration.
“Has very cold in Canada, no?” he asked.
“During the winter, yes,” Lisa said, and clamped her mouth shut again.
Sanudo wrinkled his brow trying to put together another sentence. “My friends,” he said, pointing to the front of the bus. “You must come. I introduce you.”
“Later,” Lisa said tonelessly.
The two men exchanged looks of disappointment. They had hoped for more give and take. Manuel was running out of English. “Hasta luego, entonces,” he said, looking defeated. He shook hands with Felicia, exchanged perfunctory family news, and returned to the front.
The bus was rolling through a bare landscape of salt flats. Lisa closed her eyes and beckoned the dazzling white sheets into her mind, a vast tabula rasa, on which to design the rest of her life in clean, strong outlines which would not fade at the first sign of doubt. When she opened her eyes again, sugar cane had replaced the white desert, but the outlines of her life remained flat. The foreground refused to meet the background. A gap remained, and Tilcara was spreading its name like a mist over the tableau. Tilcara was on her mind all day, until the bus stopped under orange trees in San Miguel de Tucumán. Lisa suffered through lunch and a walking tour of the town, playing dumb, stuck with her lie. She had to remain Spanish-less and allow Manuel Sanudo to interpret her words. She was glad when they boarded the bus again and she could escape to the isolation of her seat. Was she falling in love with loneliness, or was it the dearth of single people on the bus? There were only jubilados, round matrons and their puffy-faced white haired husbands, and a few young couples freighted with children.
THE FULLNESS OF HIS DISCONTENT struck Jim later, when he was driving out to the construction site. He could have had a good time with Lisa, break out, escape to the jungle of Lisa’s mind, to the pulsating wilderness of her life. But he had opted to stay in his prefab cell. Instead of spending the night in Lisa’s tree house, he was staying on the ground. As he was driving, reality closed in on him. Go to the dam, sleep at a trailer camp, eat breakfast in a canteen from dishwasher-safe plates, use tinny cutlery, sit on wooden benches elbow to elbow with beefy men reeking of sweat and tobacco. There were no urban comforts at site, no refinements, no air-conditioned rooms, no movies, no gourmet food, nothing to please the eye or the mind. No Lisa. There were only deadlines. The men were gruff and foulmouthed, working under pressure. Jim suspected there was camaraderie under all the coarseness, under the brutish snarling and muscle flexing, but he was on the outside looking in. He was management, city bred, a man with a university degree – three strikes against him.
The site supervisor, Brian Cowley, was a sad-faced Irish bulldog, fluent in the poetry of Yeats and in the American vernacular. He and Jim were on hand when the General and his retinue came out for the “opening ceremony.” They were more than a year away from handing over, but that timetable was at odds with the junta’s scheme. They needed a photo op now. Some ribbon-cutting hoopla was called for. The General’s handlers had scouted out a photogenic spot and instructed Brian to clear it of debris. They set up a carpeted dais and a microphone. The white and blue flag went up on the improvised flag pole to the melancholy strains of the Argentine anthem. The medals pinned to the General’s chest glittered in the sun. His goons stood at attention. He gave his standard progress and prosperity speech, and shook hands with Jim, too briefly apparently for the cameras. They shook again, this time with the General’s left paw resting firmly on top of their joined hands, locking in the success story. Jim looked into the mirror of the General’s black sunshades and saw Lisa hogtied in a concrete cell, kicking her legs to a chorus of women like the one who had sold him the statue of San Simón. What the hell was going on in his mind! It must be the Lisa-effect. She always put him into a fantasy spin.
