Prodigies

by Angélica Gorodischer

  A book that would enumerate weapons and make an inventory of the virtues of soldiery, that would have a section dedicated to the undesirable aspects of the enemy, where surly looks and transparent silhouettes could be erased, which would forever annihilate jumbled words and synoptic charts and maps and ink sketches and above all prohibit the most bloody hours of the night and also the time, five after eight, to enter the dining room in the morning after the hike to Krieger Park and back. A book that would clearly state the ways to fight, the ways to take eyeglasses out of the interior pocket of a jacket, the ways to die, to erect fountains that collect water from geysers, to forget for no reason, to describe apt bodies for victory fluttering down alert from eagle nests, to put on shoes, stand up straight, kill oneself, enter the dining room again, the library, the vestibule as if nothing had happened nor as if ice were rising in crags there, prepared to accept the wounded body covered by scabs, etched by scars, opened and finally stitched up so it might serve in another winning battle from the shelter of the door that leads to the dining room at five after eight in the morning in the house on Scheller Street.

  26. Nehala

  From her armchair, she could not see the fire in the fireplace, only the glow of the fire on the rug and the windows through which early morning light entered. The bed was unmade because that girl, not the one who fell down the stairs but the other one who seemed even more stupid, had come in to revive the fire but left right away on the pretext of breakfast downstairs, saying that no other room still had a fire going; she thought about how to answer but could not because the girl left right away over that breakfast thing in the dining room, obviously too fast after her insolence about the fire. It should not matter to a maid and if it did, she should not say so. Since she had not gone down to eat breakfast for a long time, she would go down that morning, she had thought about it the night before when she went to bed and she had even dreamed about it, eating breakfast in the theater beneath a grand chandelier of a hundred lights, Mimi or Gilda singing or someone, anyone else singing Norma or Desdemona, what did she care as long as she could eat breakfast on stage or in the dining room downstairs surrounded by people she could tell about her trips because she would travel, of course she would, what else was she going to do now but travel, not spend her whole life sitting in that armchair or lying in that bed in that room, no, she would travel, have breakfast on ships and trains, buy black idols in the heart of Africa, go to the Americas and marry a rancher and live on the savannas next to grand rivers, to look through other windows instead of those, windows that opened onto estuaries, saltpeter mines, jungles, oases, windows where the night would fall slowly and not like these where it came suddenly and worse hid her from the street rather than showing her as if she were on stage; and in any case she could eat breakfast or perhaps lunch or afternoon tea, not on a tray the way she did when she had to do as she was told and go see if that stupid girl was coming up with the tea or if she had forgotten what she had been asked to do. Madame Nehala Simeoni, alone, a frightened lady next to the fire, hidden, defenseless, her lips shut like a meleagrina martensis clam and her eyes like a mollusc’s in the coldest seas of the world, sitting facing the windows, door to the right, fire to the left, and behind her the tiny room that had been her bedroom for so long, had a moment of hesitation, teetered on the very edge of the word she had resolved to never say, and fought bravely not to fall. She could because she had seen many things: tightrope walkers and jugglers incapable of error, trapeze artists and acrobats who leaped from one swinging bar to another in the air without a net, lifeline, or God; she had seen the eyes and dresses and fingers full of pearls of that woman who came from so far away and whom her mother had despised too much to even say hello; but she would not, she refused, fought not to remember, not to know, not to look back, not to say it; then she thought about that smiling woman who would not go where she would because she was so different and instead would travel from one sea to another and yet another like the birds that cry out because they emigrate alone, like the slaves in chains who kidnap the lady of the plantation and flee with her to the mountains when the curtain falls at the end of the second act. Outside the morning grew later and if it was true that she could no longer go down for breakfast in the dining room and that the more stupid of the two girls would bring it to her on a tray but without her having to go to the door to open it and see if she was coming since no one had ordered her to do that, yet it was also true that she could go down for breakfast, it would not matter if she were late, if she had not dressed earlier, in black as she ought to and not in the gaudy woolens that she could wear when she was alone in her bedroom when no one was going to see her, and if she went down when Madame Helena and her guests were already seated, the men would have to stand up when she entered and the women would turn their heads to look at her and they would all have to smile at her and talk to her, say something to her, the first thing that occurred to them, and she could answer them or not, and raise a kerchief to her eyes where tears were about to slip out from the lids, which was not true but she could fake it. She would talk about her trips because now, yes, she could travel, not spend all day sitting on that armchair: no, she would go, she would go to Berlin and Paris and then to the Americas, to Africa first to buy black idols and visit the ruins as well as the dens of the pearls which that woman had counted, to see how naked young men attacked and scattered them and rose up to the surface, and she could watch because they were like little animals that had no shame, almost boys without hair or beards and their hands full of pearls. She would go to the dining room that very day, without thinking about it, without turning it over and over in her mind again and again like someone playing with a earring or paperweight, something round and smooth in their hands sliding from palm to palm, slipping between fingers, almost letting it fall but no, holding it, squeezing it, caressing it, and passing it from one side to another, warmed, almost softened by repeated touch, yes, without further ado, she would go downstairs, if not for breakfast at least for afternoon tea, and she would take her tea with cream and sugar, not thick cream, she would mix in milk so it would not fall into the cup in huge drops, cream and a lot of sugar, and she would eat butter rolls or gingerbread or malt cakes and would quietly tell, as if she were talking to no one in particular, how she was planning a trip, a long trip that would take her to stages all over the world, to cabins on ships, compartments in trains, to Africa, to Japan first of all, then to Berlin and Paris, and to the Americas. She would hesitate no more, no, she would rock on creaking wicker armchairs next to the splashing salty sea, the voice, the door, the intrusion, the reflection of the fire on the rug, the threatening suns on the window, the lengthening morning, and the crunch of toasted rolls between her fingers and halting words; and at that moment when Wulda entered to make the bed, she abandoned it all, the trip, the sea, the rocking chair, now devoid of all intent, all the immensity shrunk down to one unspeakable word: gone. She was gone and never ever would be there again in the exterior suite on the second floor of the house on Scheller Street.

  27. In This World

  Dangerous times could befall the boarding house on Scheller Street if danger meant more than one warning, a kind of outbreak, a seemingly inevitable lack of control that led to disobedience because there were so many things to do, too many getting in the way of the most careful plans from earlier days, an impression or a mark that wedged its way perfectly into those empty moments of confusion or lack of energy, for either one could be the cause as well as the effect; the same people were not always involved because young Gangulf or the General or Miss Esther when she had “Miraflora” were hard to find in the house, since it often happened halfway through the morning when the most urgent tasks had been finished and it was time to begin to prepare everything for midday, which seemed so distant and in the next second so close. Curiously, Wulda was one of those who felt time slip past most sharply, but she could not in any way name that instantaneous wisdom: she knew something was happening and
the day held danger, she knew that a very secret eagerness had been cast aside and nervousness had taken its place because she did not know if she could properly do a task that would have been Katja’s if she were not ill; she caught her breath and a light exploded with a bang between her forehead and ears. In that moment she thought about Aunt Bauma’s advice and looked at Lola but neither of the two could offer her help; Aunt Bauma because she was not there but at home shaking out paper and wet rags, squeezing out wet fiber, drying it on a grille over an alcohol lamp, driving those enormous needles into the grayish ball, wet but not viscous, which told her what was the exact moment when it was not too wet or too dry to start to give it the right form, skillfully, swiftly, such fast invisible hands, eyes watching as fingers gallop, stretching it suspended in the air toward one edge, then the other edge, then the other again, until the wet ball became a translucid disk and Aunt Bauma could slow the speed of her hands, not enough to rest but enough to sigh and moisten that which instead of dregs of paper and worn out rags was now tissue, a veil, a fragile and glowing gauze in the lacquer so thick it seemed solid in the tank, to take it out and begin again with rapid fingers and untiring eyes until soon on the table lay the perfect mold for the perfect hat for an elegant woman, a blonde or a wretch, young or foolish, who would wear it to stores and visits at four o’clock in the afternoon; and because Lola wandered around as if she were not there although she was, and had to remind herself to laugh or do something, look at Wulda and tell her what she had to do and how she had to do it, had to remember that she was there at her side in the kitchen, in the storeroom or the pantry, and it did not seem as if it was as easy for her as before. Wulda had wanted to help her, help Lola, and had told her that if it was about the plants, not to worry so much, because the seedlings would be protected in the kitchen window until spring came again, when Lola could do it, of course, without her help because she would not be in the house, but who knew whether with the help of Katja if she got better or with the help of whoever would come to replace her, could transplant them to the garden like the creeper that had grown up and up much higher than they had thought it would and now was wrapping around the railings up there, and then Lola really laughed and agreed and said something like you are going to be very happy, girl, because you are made for that, for being happy. Wulda wondered if she could be happy, a lot or a little, because Aunt Bauma had assured her that happiness can be achieved only after death when you go to Heaven, and had assured her of this nodding her head at the bed where her mother lay waiting for the sun, breathing so hard that the skin stretched tight around her nose. But her mother had died slowly without complaint, almost content to leave or at least peaceful, without bothering anyone because it was Sunday and Wulda was ironing next to Aunt Bauma, and after that there was more room in the house and she and Aunt Bauma had rearranged the furniture and given the bed with its mattress and pillows and bedclothes to the church, and Aunt Bauma kept saying that happiness could not be found in this world but only in the next one, but now she spoke without looking anywhere, eyes lowered, watching what her fingers were doing with the ball almost dry almost wet that was going to be one of the best molds for hats that could be found in the city. Wulda did not wonder what this other world was or even whether or not she knew, although if someone besides Aunt Bauma spoke about the world for some other reason that was not happiness, in confusion she looked behind all her other thoughts shimmering beyond the curtain of her eyes reaching her neck, forehead, and at times as far from her head as her hands, those two big shiny hulking animals sleeping one wrapped around the other breathing the sweet air of heaven while Lola said they could be the world, why not; but once, intrigued, she had held on to the word happiness and without any possible response had felt a pit, something softer than a pit, a warm cherry between her lips and in that mysterious place where her throat united with her chest where she felt fear, pain, and hunger, but also where, when she discovered that Hans Boher had opened a store on Firen Street and she had begun to go there to buy the broaches and belt loops that Aunt Bauma sent her for, other things happened, as mysterious as the body and death: trembling although it was not cold and singing although she did not know the song and feeling the roughness of the leaves that Lola put between her fingertips to find out what was happening to plants as they grew. However it was not plants that worried Lola, but what did? What made her absent although she was there, as if she were folded, bent double over herself in a way that made it hard to talk or laugh; at times Wulda wondered what it could be, this thing that had attached itself to Lola, had her cornered so she had to fight to get out: a siege, an enclosure, a glass box that she could not see. But she was happy in spite of it all because Lola had not changed like Madame Helena when something worried her, who threw hard chunks of her worry all around like cinders and if they hit someone, so be it. Lola did not. Lola had been made of the clay that Aunt Bauma said the Lord had kneaded in His hands after separating light from darkness and land from water and from the air in the sky, but she herself, Lola herself, when Wulda told her what Aunt Bauma told her, had said that the Lord had put some drops of carissa perfume mixed with the breath of newborn cows and the hundred yellow eyes that float on broth when a fat hen has been boiled for three hours into the clay that His fingers kneaded. Wulda asked if these carissas and hens and cows had existed when the Lord kneaded the clay and Lola laughed at that and said of course: cows, for example, had been the first creatures that the Lord had made. Why, Wulda asked. What a question, really, what a question, Lola answered, well because they are warm and round and take their time chewing and have a map drawn on their tongue and palate, a map of distant lands where palace towers touch the clouds and the kings and queens dress in gold and silver and eat from plates carved from enormous diamonds and emeralds and sleep on mattresses filled with swan down. Wulda had thought a lot about all that and above all about the cows because kings and queens were in books of sacred history, like King David and the Queen of Sheba and not in the world; but since she had never been close to cows, not a single one, although she had seen them from a distance when she passed a dairy with their clattering churns, she had found nothing useful in this line of thought and had accepted what Lola told her. Which usually happened because Lola said things that were true, she had already confirmed that, even things that had not happened yet: she knew they would eventually happen just because Lola had said so. She knew that the carissa and breath of cows and broth were why Lola did not have cinders and Madame Helen did because perhaps the Lord had overdone it when he put them in the clay for making Lola and almost nothing had been left for Madame Helena, and this was why the dumplings that Lola cooked tasted of the countryside and the heavenly air that little animals breathed in a world where there were cows but not kings or queens. It was not as complicated as it seemed. Aunt Bauma had told her that men were all wicked and she had to be very careful and keep away from them because they would make unlucky women unhappy whether they married them or not, and Lola had told her this was true because everyone made an effort to say so and to swear very seriously that this was true, so what she had to do was swear very seriously the opposite, and besides Hans Boher was a good man, a hard and willing worker, tidy, elegant, handsome, and he enjoyed a good job and had said from the beginning that his intentions were serious, that he wanted to marry her and not carry on foolishly, and had repeatedly said she would be very happy with him, and she should not forget what she had told him. Wulda had raised some warm beer to her lips and had promised not to forget it and had wondered what would happen in the house on Scheller Street when she was not there and was Mrs. Boher and she lived opposite Three Republics Park on the other side of the city. She had concluded that nothing would happen, nothing that had not already happened, nothing that Lola had not talked about once, people who come and people who go, people who stay forever, people who get sick or marry and plants that grow and die and are born again and grow. Aunt Bauma had said Wulda was ungrateful because she was leaving
the house like that where she had always been treated well and had been given clothing and shoes and gifts for her mother and her home, and this was a sin, so she would have to do penance by returning to Madame Helena’s house often to offer to help, but Lola had said just two words when she had told her, as always, what Aunt Bauma said; Lola had stood round like cows, sails unfurled, flags flying high, cannons ready to fire in the middle of the storeroom with her hands on her hips, looked her carefully in the eye, and the mouths of the cannons had fired these two words: that’s stupid. Wulda was content. Whatever happened in the house, she would not return: strange women would come who would make you feel paralyzed and dream what you should not, see shadows where they were not, and be afraid of everything, and they would leave and what would remain, nothing, an empty suite that would have to be cleaned and aired out, where rugs would have to be shaken and drawers emptied so threads, a button, pins, and a scrap of silk paper would fall onto the bare floor; curtains taken down that had been impregnated with a perfume that had never been smelled in the house before; picture frames polished, made sooty by the smoke in the fireplace; the bathroom would have to be scrubbed and black hairs cleaned from the drain and the remains of honey soap from the soap dishes and the mirrors polished with an alcohol-soaked cloth; someone would go to the Americas the way Miss Esther was going and who had given her lovely clothes telling her that she would not need them there and promised to send her a post card with a green and yellow parrot perched on the branch of a pineapple tree; someone would go crazy or half-crazy like the General who talked to himself in the corridors and did not seem to see anyone or like Miss Nehala who wore her mother’s clothing and sat and called to have her food brought up on trays, and all the others would always be the same like Madame Helena overseeing all of them so seriously, or like the skinny man who looked more like his itty bitty giraffes every day, or the student who looked at her strangely when he looked at her but who had consoled her when her poor mother had died. But the creeper kept growing and one day it would cover the entire wall of the house that faced the garden and it would have to be trimmed so it would not enter the windows and doors. It would not flower because this kind of vine did not have flowers, but its pale green leaves would be bright and pretty, and when Katja recovered and could go out into the garden she would be surprised to see how much it had grown. Wulda would plant a creeper at her house, too, she had already told Hans Boher, and he had promised to dig the hole and put up wires for it to twine on. She would visit Aunt Bauma from time to time, she would, not very often but she would, just as she knew for certain that she would never, ever return to the house on Scheller Street.