The Weight of the Heart

by Susana Aikin

  “I’m afraid he’ll go crazy. I’m afraid he’ll hurt Marcus,” I’d respond in a daze. I didn’t want any conflict. I just wanted to make love to Marcus for hours on end, and then sleep tight in his arms before I woke up to make love to him again.

  “Don’t be silly, Anna. Why give him so much power? What can he do besides throwing both of you out of the company, and you out of the house?”

  “C’mon, you know him better than that! Is that all he did to you or Marion?”

  Julia would then remain silent for a bit, but a while later she would take it up again. “Are you sure you want to work in that awful place anyway? Look at you! You’re becoming a total square! Look at your jerky clothes, at those stupid pointed pumps. All these ridiculous, rich Daddy’s girl accessories! What a way to waste money! Jeez, Anna, soon I won’t even recognize you. Get out of all this while you can!” But listening to Julia’s sound advice has never been my thing.

  Then there was Father. Opening the door when I returned from my weekends, or sitting at the breakfast table the morning after I had ravaged Marcus at night in the garden. His pupils had a way of flickering every time he met mine after I had been with my lover, or when I lied about my whereabouts. Like a twinge of pained fear, followed by a hardening. And each time, as I averted my eyes and held my breath, I knew it was a matter of time. I knew it was coming.

  No one was being fooled.

  * * *

  Delia sits in her chair by the altar; Constantine is putting away the ritual paraphernalia. No one speaks. The room is heavy with smoke from the paraffin candles, many of which are already consumed or close to extinction. There is a strong odor, a mix of cigar, whiskey, and the leaves they used on my body. I notice a new sudden clarity of mind. My eyes can move quickly around the room, can zoom in to the different objects on the altar, to their minute details. My hearing seems to have unfolded into different layers, I can hear the remote, raspy song of crickets in the garden as clearly as I hear the small noises Constantine makes beside me as he folds a paper bag into his backpack.

  “Let’s not lose momentum.” Delia’s words throb inside my ears and I reflect on the weight of their sound, as if they carry deep musical notes. Then I see her stand from the chair without the aid of her staff, her body looking young and supple for an instant, although the moment Constantine puts a cane in her hand, her mass seems to slump again into the old shape. I follow them as they walk up the stairs toward Father’s study. I am wondering what I will have to do once we get there, but feel no inclination to ask.

  We stop in front of the double paneled door and Constantine takes up the metal bowl full of herbs I had seen in his hands before, and lights it with a long stick match. The greenish mass starts smoking and the sickly smell of burned sage rises. Delia points her staff and Constantine follows the lines of the door frame with the smoking bowl as if he were drawing its shape.

  Delia places a hand on my shoulder, and says solemnly, “Now, Anna, youngest daughter of the house, I ask you in the name of Eleguá, the opener of paths and roads, to give us access to this room by removing locks, opening doors and windows, so that we may bless it.”

  I take a step forward and place my hand on the doorknob. A flicker of trepidation freezes my fingers. Delia’s hand squeezes my shoulder lightly. I turn the knob and push the door open.

  CHAPTER 14

  The first impression is an erratic pattern of light and dark. The old wooden venetian blinds are half drawn over the large window at the far end, and the blazing sun squeezes through the slits, creating a zebra effect over the walls and floor. As my eyes adjust, the objects in the room start taking shape: the desk by the window, the tall bookshelves, the chesterfield sofa, the wooden filing cabinets. Everything seems to be in place. Particles of dust dance in the shafts of light as I step in and walk to the window. A feeling of suffocation grips my lungs in the airless, oppressive silence that envelops me as I move through. The window opens easily, and clean hot air rushes in, pushing out the musty smell of the long closed room. I grope along the window frame to find the canvas strap that rolls up the blind, and pull it down hard. The blind hauls up with a sore, cranky noise and my vision is blanked out by a burst of white light. I turn around and get a different view of the room. Strewn all over are books and papers, stacks of newspapers and old magazines, cardboard boxes containing all sorts of unidentifiable things, documents and pictures pinned up on the bare walls, dark figurines standing on surfaces. Then the strap snaps in my hand and the blind falls heavily over the windowsill with a loud bang, and the room is enveloped in total darkness.

  “Are you all right?” Constantine’s small voice sounds very far away, although I know he and Delia are still at the threshold.

  “I’m fine,” I say, as I fumble around the desk to find the lamp switch. “But I’m afraid the blind is now permanently broken and there will be no natural light in here.”

  “Maybe I can fix it. I used to work for a company that made blinds and canopies and—” Constantine starts, but Delia cuts him short. “That will not be necessary for our purposes. Please switch on any light in there and leave the room immediately,” she adds in my direction.

  I’m jarred by her urgency and knock over the desk lamp. It falls to the floor, where it emits a small explosion of sparks as the bulb crashes. My hands turn to the glass cabinet behind the desk, and soon find its switch by the wall. A small, yellowed light shines inside the cabinet, illuminating a collection of African statuettes and Egyptian figures that startle me.

  “This light is very dim, let me find another,” I say, stepping back.

  “Don’t. Leave the room now,” Delia says. I walk out of the study before they step in and close the door behind them.

  I stand outside the study savoring my discontent. Something inside the room pulls at me with the strength of a magnet. I want to peek in; I want to put my ear to the door as I have done many times in my life before. But I resist and walk away. It’s strange how the room has taken me by surprise, shocked me with its aura of clutter and neglect, as if I hadn’t accessed its filing cabinets in the past years and accompanied the real estate agent as he inspected the house. But what is so surprising? Among other things, this room ended up being the depository of all that was left after the business was closed down, a cemetery of documents, archives, and all sorts of memorabilia of a lifetime of work.

  Noises of someone unwrapping large sheets of paper or plastic coming from the corridor on the second floor divert my attention.

  “Julia?”

  No one answers. I walk up the stairs, which are still wet and slippery, and as I reach the landing, I see Julia ripping the wrappings off a large canvas she has taken out of the closet in the corridor opposite Mother’s old studio. Other canvasses stand against the wall.

  “What is this?” I ask.

  “I don’t understand anything. I thought all these had been destroyed long ago and . . .” Julia doesn’t finish her sentence. We both look at the painting that emerges behind the ripped brown paper. It’s a portrait of Alina. Actually, it’s the portrait of Alina that made it to the collective exhibit and won Julia her reputation back in the day.

  On the large canvas, splashed with green and orange, Alina lies nude on her stomach with round golden buttocks and splayed thighs in the forefront, her head and torso turned toward the viewer. A black-and-white toucan she holds in one hand pecks her on the red lips with the tip of its wide yellow beak while she stares at us with vacant, liquid eyes. This was one of the paintings Julia had slashed the night she was mad with pain after being snubbed by Alina. But now it appears to have been repaired to its original integrity, although on closer inspection it shows its carefully concealed scars worked over by skillful restoration.

  “Who did this?” Julia asks, holding back her rage.

  “Father did. He sent a bunch of your canvasses away to be restored. There’s more in the attic. Don’t you remember?”

  “Of course I don’t. You never told me
anything about this!”

  “I did too. You said you didn’t want to have anything to do with him or the pictures ever again.”

  “I did not! Why are you lying? What’s wrong with you? What else are you hiding?”

  “Hiding! Why would I hide anything?” My head reels as Julia’s hatred radiates through me. I’m not sure what’s happening, I only sense Julia struggling with some unspeakable pain, and clawing around to get a grip on herself.

  “I would have felt and acted very differently these last years, had I known about this.” Julia’s face is drawn and livid, as if the blood has drained out of her in an instant.

  “Known what? That your father kept your precious artwork in the house all this time? That he didn’t burn it all in a blazing pyre in some crazy act of revenge?” I’m the one screaming now and Julia’s reddened eyes are beginning to overflow with tears.

  “That he thought they were worth keeping,” she says in a broken voice.

  Julia turns toward the door at the end of the corridor that leads to the attic. She disappears up the narrow staircase carrying Alina’s portrait. I want to follow her, but know she’d fight me back. I’d totally forgotten about these pictures. I do remember Father sending them off to a restoration atelier. Once they were back in the house, I lost track of them.

  Fighting with Julia is always draining; seeing her upset is unbearable. When we were small and I saw her cry, I would run for my most precious toy and insist she accept it as a gift. A doll that had already lost an eye, an arm, and most of its hair was offered endlessly in this way. Anything was a small sacrifice if I could see my sister restored to balance, if those tiny, disconsolate eyes filled once again with wonder. Her last words still reverberate in my mind: I would have acted differently, had I known that he thought they were worth keeping. Now this was a real offering coming from Julia, she who had been so dismissive of Father all these years, his caustic critic, his most fearful detractor. So this is what lay underneath her animosity, the slashed acrylic body of Alina and Father’s disdain of the brushstrokes with which she had caressed it into a portrait. Now, after Alina’s careful restoration and her nudity accepted, admired, and wrapped, Julia’s heartache was assuaged, and her past resentment reconsidered. Why hadn’t Father told her about the restoration, sent her the repaired picture, or even just hung it on the wall as an act of reconciliation?

  All of a sudden, I’m aware of all the things stored in the house. Not just the things still on display in rooms and on walls, like furniture, rugs, or pictures, but the collections of objects, books, photographs, postcards, souvenirs, and heirlooms, endless lists of mementos from our past, hidden away in closets, stashed inside drawers, hoarded up in the attic. And buried among the piles, what surprises can we find that will reveal different angles of bygone moments?

  A cramping feeling of regret takes hold of me. I should have made an effort to put some order into the whole house during these two long years after Father’s death. Even before his death, when the house began to slip into decline. All of a sudden the house’s state of neglect hurts me, as if I had failed to attend to a child or an animal entrusted to my care and now found them sick or deteriorated beyond recovery. But in all fairness, when Father was alive the house was still the unconquerable lair of the demonic energy that possessed him. There was no way any of us could have barged in here with brooms and dusting cloths. The only thing to do was to flee, to seal the house in our hearts and minds, step away from its influence; from its dangerous, difficult memories.

  I walk into Julia’s old room; the room that was also mine, before I was ousted by Alina. The wooden blinds on these windows crashed down a while ago and now lie scattered around between the sill and the floor. The room is scorching hot. Blinding sunlight pours in through the glass panes. I shade my eyes and look around. It looks like it’s been ransacked or evacuated in anticipation of a demolition or a diaspora following war. The beds’ box springs stand on their sides by the wall beside the splintered head- and footboards. One stained mattress lies on the floor with metal springs sticking out through the cover. The old blue and lime carpet is curled up on all corners, splashed with stains of paint and glue. The walls are scratched and puckered with holes from the nails and tacks with which Julia hung her sketches and pictures. Dirty, broken objects, disfigured books and other junk is strewn around, now wet with the water that has flooded from the corridor under the door. I step on something squishy and bend down to pick up a small teddy bear lying among the mess. I recognize the grimy face with no nose button, and only stitched-in eyes. This used to be Marti, Julia’s inseparable bedtime teddy from eons ago. Is it possible that the objects contained in this room go so far back? Isn’t it pathetic that holding this grubby little piece of stuffed terry cloth is making me feel nostalgic?

  I tried to return to our old room when Julia left the house after her fight with Father. It made all the sense in the world. It was the largest bedroom, the most beautiful, with its huge bay window bordered by a plush green seating area topped with seashell-stamped cushions, and a stencil trail of butterflies over the wall by my bed. But all its prettiness was gone by then. Julia and Alina had trashed it severely while using it as an art atelier, and it never felt like the old bedroom again. Taking up this bedroom again also made sense because it was the farthest removed from Father’s, and I could sneak Marcus in at night. But that never worked out either. Marcus’s dignity could accept romancing in the garden, but not inside the house when Father was asleep. I felt lonely when I slept in this room. I thought of Julia and Nanny; I was swamped by childhood memories that filled me with longing. It was like the space belonged to a time of innocence that had disappeared from our lives. I felt disenfranchised from my girlhood, troubled and insecure about my womanhood. After a few weeks, I returned to Mother’s old studio. This bedroom then became a sad depository for all kinds of unwanted items in the house.

  Across from the window is the large built-in wardrobe that became the storage for out-of-season coats and other discarded garments. As I approach it now, I see it’s also stuffed with a jumble of leftover objects. Father’s golf gear and Marion’s old ice skates sit alongside moth-eaten blankets and taped-up boxes of small appliances. I try to close its mangled panel doors and struggle with the long handle of an ancient vacuum cleaner angled into one of the hinges. Some water has flooded into the bottom of the closet, creating a muddy residue along the base. I bend over to remove a wet clump of fabric wedged between the vacuum’s handle and dust cover. As I pull it up to throw back into the corner, I recognize its touch. I hold it to the light as its damp weight unfolds its length toward the floor. My old emerald-green silk dress! It’s been years since I last saw it. I can’t believe it still exists. I don’t think I’ve ever owned a more beautiful, provocative dress. I don’t think I’ve ever paid more for a piece of clothing.

  My body still remembers the feeling of its soft touch around the low shoulders and how its sleek wrap bandaged my waist and legs and fell down to my ankles. Walking in it was only possible in short steps, one foot in front of the other, thighs rubbing against each other, hips forced into sinuous sway. Heads turned in halls and rooms as I slithered along in this green skin.

  All but Marcus’s.

  * * *

  “Why are you leaving?” I ran down the stairs outside of the British Consulate, careful not to trip over the long silk dress. We were attending a cocktail party for Business Week, organized by the chamber of commerce.

  Marcus stopped ahead of me and turned around. “Don’t you think I’ve paid my dues for the evening? Or should I wait it out until midnight, looking on while Mr. Anderson and his partners swoon all over you?”

  “What’s your problem? This is just a business gathering!”

  “Really? There’s always some sort of business around you.” He took a step closer. “You’ve finally become an accomplished actress, you know that?”

  I slapped him on the face, hard. Marcus rubbed his cheek for a moment
.

  The embassy porter walked toward us. “Is there a problem, miss? Should I call security?” I shook my head and he moved away.

  “Look.” Marcus undid his bow tie and stuffed it forcefully into his pocket. “I’m just a simple guy, I’m not cut out for complicated plots. There’s only one thing that’s plain right now: There’s not enough space in your life for me. And I’m thinking it’s time for me to clear out.”

  I stood shivering in the cold air, hugging the green silk around my ribs. I hated him. I fought with that part of me that always wanted to bury itself in his chest. “Do whatever the hell you want. I don’t care!”

  I stomped back up the stairs into the building, fuming.

  * * *

  Only eighteen months ago we had been so close that pulling apart from each other to reenter our separate worlds was unbearable. There had come a point where no matter how much we tried, however impeccable the strategizing of our hiding, our togetherness was impossible to mask. It was as if the aura of our belonging pulsed into rooms and wrote itself all over walls with the certitude of sunlight pouring in through windows. Everyone’s silence reflected this knowledge. It should have been a sign to blow up the bunker I had created around us. But I didn’t. I held fast to my game plan.

  Father then decided it was time to act. He started by marching in from the fringes, his heavy machinery directed toward the difficult, delicate target of destroying the core of my affection. He had refined his cunning and understood that direct warfare would only draw me closer to Marcus. Firing Marcus was no option either. He was the employee of our company’s German partner, very well considered and key in personnel training of field equipment.

  First, he tried to get me out of the company. Come April, he insisted on my taking up the degree at Saint Martin’s in September, assuring me he would take care of all expenses, and that he would rent a nice flat near the college that I could share with Marion. I sat listening to him as he tried to convince me of the importance of a college education and the need to spend time in a big metropolis like London, feeling stunned at the thought that the offer I would have died for less than a year ago now sounded like an empty, dreary scheme in which I would just wither away pining for Marcus. Nothing made sense without him. Acting and Saint Martin’s could go to hell as far as I was concerned. I wanted to stay in the now, and the now was the electrifying flush that galvanized my every cell when I stood in the presence of my lover.