Dying Unfinished

by Espinosa, Maria

  The Consul was a short, plump, dark-haired man. His wife, taller than he, and also dark-haired, was very thin, with an Arauqui Indian cast to her features. Their elegant apartment was on a street with manicured gardens and chauffeured limousines. Antonio’s drinking had begun to show. He was too loud and boisterous through dinner, although the most magnetic of us all. Handsome. Eyes flashing as he talked. Dinner was paella, Chilean style, served by a maid.

  Afterwards Eduardo put on some music, and we began to dance. At first Antonio danced with me. Then we exchanged partners. As we moved to the music, a foxtrot I think, Eduardo’s hand slipped down from my waist to my buttocks, and he pulled me against his groin, while with his other hand, he cupped my breast.

  When he tried to kiss me, I pulled away, screaming, “NO!! No! Stop!” I kept on screaming. The others stared at us. Then Antonio slapped me hard across the face, and I came to my senses.

  Afterwards he said, “My job prospects with Eduardo—foutu, finished.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to ruin things for you.” I was weeping. He stopped walking. Cold wind blew my face raw. “Eduardo is a con, a bastard, an idiot! To hell with him!” He kissed my lips. “Je t’aime,” he said. “Tu es impossible, mais je t’aime. Tu es ma femme.”

  After this, he began to drink more heavily.

  What did he see in me? How could I attract him when he had been with so many women who were far more beautiful and sure of themselves? We communicated telepathically. He could sense if I fantasized about another man. And he would be as vengefully jealous as if I had actually acted. At times, if I were desperate enough, I could sense exactly what café he would be in, where he would be in the city. I knew when he was at the edge of leaving me, and then I would cling to him with all my might.

  Antonio taught me to see the world through different lenses. He confronted my family’s lies, and he suffered for it. On the surface, he was abusive. But underneath, it was different. He was like a steel pole. I could flail against him with all my force, which would cause anyone else to flee. But he didn’t. He stood steadfast. He was the only one who could withstand the full force of who I was.

  Did I love him? I sought him the way a plant seeks light and air and water.

  Did he love me? I don’t know. For a long time I clung to the illusion that he did. An intense bond of energy held us together. Energy is like a clear current of liquid. Emotions are the pigments that color this liquid.

  I think he felt a terrible kind of pity for me and a sense of fate. He told me that long ago he bought a portrait from a secondhand shop in Santiago because the woman in it haunted him. For years the painting hung on his wall. He knew that one day he would meet her. She looked like me.

  CHAPTER 23

  ANTONIO, 1963

  In October, Eleanor boarded an ocean liner bound for France. The baby was due in a month. A group of friends came to see her off. Aaron hugged her fiercely. “I’ll see you in a few weeks,” he whispered. They drank champagne and ate caviar and oysters. While everyone was laughing and talking with inebriated gaiety, she scribbled a note for Heinrich. Unnerved by his absence—she had called and pleaded with him to understand—she drank far too much.

  A few nights later, as the ship lurched beneath her, she watched white-crested waves boil up against the darkness. She was the only one on this part of the deck. Cold rain pelted down and streamed over her face. She gripped the rail to keep from falling. It would be so easy to slip over, to sink beneath the sea. She experienced an intense longing to be with Heinrich, his arms around her.

  Antonio, the father of her grandchild, was there to greet her when she walked off the gangplank at Le Hâvre. He seemed to know immediately who she was, as he strode through the crowd and grasped her hand in his warm black leather gloved ones. “Bonjour, Eleanor. Je suis enchanté.” The force of his handshake and his intensity of his gaze unsettled her.

  Slender and handsome, of medium height, his face was red from exposure to the cold. A shock of chestnut hair fell over his forehead. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties. “This is your baggage, Madame?”

  He picked up her two suitcases and guided her through the crowd to the station, where they boarded a train for Paris. Industrial outskirts of Le Hâvre rolled past them, as twilight turned into darkness. They sat alone in a compartment with an old-fashioned glass-paned door that opened onto a narrow corridor.

  Speaking in a mixture of English and French, he told her that Rosa had given birth to a girl three nights ago. The delivery had taken less than an hour after Rosa’s arrival at the hospital. Because the baby was premature and weighed so little, she was in an incubator. Both of them were both doing fine.

  “Rosa is ecstatic,” he said.

  “Are they really all right?”

  He assured her they were. “We named the baby Isabel,” he said. “She is marvelous, this grandchild of yours. She is healthy, and although she is so small, she is perfect.”

  “What color is her hair?”

  “Blonde.”

  “Oh!” Her face lit up. “I’m glad! And her eyes?”

  “Blue, like mine,” he said, looking at her curiously. In English he added, “Is very important to you the hair color, yes?”

  “Yes,” she muttered, feeling as if he’d discovered a shameful secret.

  “Madame, you are hungry after your long trip, yes?”

  “No, not really.”

  “What about a little wine?”

  “Why, yes.”

  He left for the dining car. A large man in a black suit and Homburg accompanied by a small, hunched woman entered the compartment and sat down on the seat facing her. The woman took out her knitting, and the man lit his pipe. The strong tobacco odor filled Eleanor’s nostrils and tired as she was, the motion of the train lulled her into a light sleep. Antonio’s touch on her shoulder awakened her. He had brought back two small bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon and ham sandwiches on crusty loaves of bread.

  “I’m not really hungry.”

  “You need food in your stomach,” he said emphatically.

  She sipped the wine, which was surprisingly good, and nibbled at the sandwich, but could barely swallow even a mouthful. Carefully, she folded it back in its cellophane wrapping.

  “You must eat, Eleanor.”

  “Later, thank you.”

  He took out a package of filter-tipped cigarettes and offered her one. As he lit it for her, their fingers brushed. He leaned very close. The silent couple opposite them seemed to disapprove, and she was relieved when they got off at the next station.

  She told him about her sea voyage and described the champagne send-off. It didn’t matter that her French was rusty and his, with his thick accent, was imperfect. She felt as if they knew each other, as if they had for a long time.

  He told her a little about his life. He had grown up in the south of Chile, the seventh of ten children. His father was a lawyer, and the family had lived in comfort until his father died of a heart attack when Antonio was only thirteen. After that, things were difficult, although all the sons managed to obtain a university education. He had worked for many years as a reporter for El Mercurio in Santiago. Then four years ago the French government awarded him a visiting fellowship. After it expired, he stayed on.

  “How do you make a living now?”

  “I write articles for French and Spanish newspapers,” he said. “But free-lance journalism pays very little. I am also a photographer. Sometimes I paint apartments. I clean our building.” He flicked his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “C’est dégalasse, tu comprends. For a writer, the life can be hard.”

  “What has kept you in Paris?”

  “I can’t go back to Santiago. I have—how do you say—‘burned my bridges.’”

  She thought of how Heinrich had burned his.

  Far off lights flickered as they rolled on through the darkness.

  He told her how he and Rosa first met in a café. “I felt her electricity when she stood behi
nd me,” he said. “It was Rosa. I felt her need. Do you know that she and I communicate without a telephone. No matter if we are in different parts of the city, she will find me.” He laughed with artificial jocularity. Then he swallowed more wine.

  “She is very talented, your daughter.”

  “Really?”

  “She has talent to write. But she is nevrosée. Hysterique. She makes my life full of difficulties.”

  “I can imagine,” said Eleanor.

  “You do not believe in her?” He gave her a penetrating look.

  “When one is so close … it’s hard to see …”

  “She does have talent, believe me, Eleanor. That is what drew me to her. But she is full of complexes. She has created enormous problems for me.”

  “What has she done?” A tinge of anticipation mingled with dread.

  “She has fits of jealousy. She has alienated many of my friends, so that I do not get the jobs I used to get painting and repairing their apartments and taking photographs.

  “I used to siphon off free gas to heat my apartment. Gas, Eleanor, it is very expensive.” He gestured to emphasize its cost. “Rosa turned the spigot too hard one day when she was angry, and it broke. I couldn’t fix it. So now we pay eighty dollars a month to keep warm in the winter.”

  She laughed in spite of herself.

  “Ah, you have a sense of humor.”

  “Do you love her?”

  He hesitated before answering. He had drunk all his wine, and now he opened another bottle that he had hidden inside his jacket.

  “What is love? Love is connection—yes? Is the call of the species.” His eyes were blue gray, like dry ice.

  On the way from the Gâre du Nord to her hotel, he insisted that they stop at one of his favorite haunts on the Boulevard Saint Germaine. He ordered cafés royales with a good bit of whiskey in them, “pour nous chauffer,” and then insisted they walk on, while he carried her heavy suitcases. She felt as if she were still on board ship. The sidewalk rolled beneath her. Her breath steamed in the cold air. He guided her into still another café for more warming drinks. There he met a frail artist whom he knew. After a moment’s conversation, Antonio impulsively removed his green flannel scarf and wrapped it around the other man’s neck. “He is a gifted painter,” Antonio said. “But he is very poor.”

  “Won’t you be cold?” asked Eleanor. Above the collar of his tweed jacket, his reddened throat was bare.

  “Le bon Dieu me garde,” he said.”

  At last they reached the small hotel on the Left Bank where she had reserved a room. He accompanied her up the stairs, still carrying her suitcases, ignoring the concierge’s offer of assistance.

  Warning bells flashed, but she ignored them, a little unsteady on her feet from the wine and several cafés royales. The stairs were narrow and winding, with black metal railings. How clever the minuterie lights were, which lit up just long enough for a person climb one flight. On the third floor, the light went out, leaving them in darkness until Antonio found the button.

  When she opened her door with a large, old-fashioned key, he followed inside. It was a comfortable room with dusky walls and rich red satin drapes. In the bathroom was a bidet—ah, she had forgotten these.

  At a loss as to how to dismiss him (In truth, did she want him to leave?) she rummaged in a suitcase and found her leather flask of scotch. “Will you have some?” she asked.

  They drank, sharing the flask.

  “Prost.”

  “Prost.”

  “To the bébé.”

  “To Rosa.”

  “To you, Eleanor.”

  She was tired—so tired—her head was swimming. She could scarcely keep her eyes open.

  Then without warning, his arms were around her, and somehow it wasn’t in her to resist. She wanted to be touched. She felt dizzy and weak. His mouth pressed against hers so hard that she could scarcely breathe. His strong hands felt beneath her woolen skirt and slid to her inner thighs. He was unbuttoning her silk blouse, sucking one of her nipples as he felt inside her vagina.

  “Stop!” She cried. But she didn’t want to create a disturbance in the hotel. When he pushed her down on the bed, she tried in vain to resist. He mounted her, unzipped his trousers—he wore no under-wear—and tried to force his swollen penis inside her. As she was dry, he moistened her with saliva, which he spit into his hand.

  It hurt a little.

  Then he descended upon her breasts and kissed her lips again, too dryly.

  This is a manipulation, she thought. Not an act of lust or love. He wants to show his power.

  He thrust again and again, sometimes rising up above her body in order to thrust harder.

  The bed seemed to surge, as if she were at sea.

  Nightmare. Train in slow motion, going into the murky night countryside.

  She felt overcome with fatigue. Years and years of it. The habit of casual love making. The habit of shedding clothes too easily. Ah yes, Antonio sensed all that about her. Damn you, Heinrich, you were right. Damn you for deserting me. How did you know?

  As Antonio pumped furiously inside her, through her mind flashed the image of a shallow treacherous harbor with jagged rocks. A small boat. She was sinking beneath huge waves.

  Tired of pretending. Tired of hiding. My body is mine. No one need ever know. This secret is Antonio’s and mine alone. So tired. Jagged gray rocks. I am in that mountain stream long ago, where rocks are tearing my flesh. In the face of death, everything grows calm and clear. Rosa. Rosa. I am betraying her. I am treacherous like the jagged rocks beneath the water.

  After he left, she dreamed that she was on fire. How could she quench the flames? She awakened to find herself in the dark. At first she couldn’t remember where she was or what had happened. She switched on the light. Red satin drapes and coverlet. Beige wallpaper with ivory molding. Let what happened be a nightmare. Yet she recalled his thin, pale naked body. She wanted to scream. Tear out her hair. Die.

  Instead, she bathed and swallowed four sleeping pills—she was tempted to swallow the entire contents of the bottle—along with more scotch. Still she couldn’t sleep. Perhaps she could board a train and disappear. But then she would never see the baby. She would never see her family again.

  At last daylight came. She dressed, closed the door behind her, and greeted the concierge, a plump woman with brown hair at the front desk, who seemed to give her a knowing look. Bonjour, Madame … Bonjour, Madame. Ca va bien? Oui, merci. On the narrow street, the buildings leaned intimately towards each other. She took a few deep breaths. Her legs felt shaky. She wanted the street to swallow her. But the smell of fresh-baked bread lured her into a café. Trembling, she sipped black coffee. How could she face Rosa now?

  CHAPTER 24

  ISABEL

  The pink yarn felt soft beneath my fingers. I was knitting a blanket for the baby as I sat up against a thin pillow backed by the metal frame of a bed in the Maternity Ward. At times, cockroaches would crawl through cracks in the walls. The hospital was very old. It was built at the time of Louis XIV. Large windows at one end of the room gave a view of the busy avenue.

  “Look at the cars and the chestnut trees,” said a pretty blonde woman with flushed cheeks to her newborn. Although the infant could barely see, she held its face next to the window glass, and the new mother beamed with happiness. Soon she would return to her job as a live-in servant. Her own mother, who lived in the Normandy countryside, would care for the baby.

  Half the women here are unmarried, and their medical costs are completely covered by the government. Somehow Antonio has managed to get me into the French welfare system. He knows how to deal with the world. I don’t yet. La Maternité is what counts. These women are filled with pride and joy in their babies. They aren’t judged as they would be in the United States. For these women, a man is not a necessity but a luxury, at times a nuisance.

  Eleven of our thirteen babies are girls.

  Curious, in time of war more boys a
re born, they say.

  If so, Antonio and I should have engendered a boy because we fight instead of making love. Our bodies are dissonant. At times I shrink from his touch, feeling something like an electric shock surge through me. Fair-skinned and slender he is. While we crave each other, our bodies crave different lovers.

  We got married two weeks ago by a magistrate in a kind of group bargain-basement ceremony. Afterwards we cooked dinner for several of his friends: the photographer across the courtyard, a Spanish girl, and a poet with his wife. Then Antonio got drunk and wandered off, God knows where, leaving me alone. He came home at three in the morning and collapsed on the cold tile floor. I covered him with a blanket.

  He lusts after blondes, while I crave someone heavier and darker who would give me a sense of certainty about my femaleness. At the same time I cling to him like a life preserver.

  Isabel is the two of us joined in flesh. She’s only two days old. She’s in her incubator, sleeping beneath harsh electric lights, poor thing. When she came out of me, all red-faced and squalling, and I held her against me, she became quiet, and I was ready to burst with joy. At that instant, she was all that mattered. As for Antonio, I felt a sublime indifference. She would be my revenge against the world—a spirit incarnated in a fragile human body. For her I vowed to be the mother I had always wanted to have.

  Only for a few hours was I tranquil. The next morning my longing for Antonio surged up again. As if he were oxygen, and I were gasping for breath. When I looked down at Isabel in my arms, I felt detached from this tiny creature.

  “With me, petite oiseau, you will become someone. Without me, you are foutue,” he once said. He sees my secret vices and virtues. “You are gifted, and you have too much talent. But your family has fucked you over. With me, you will triumph over them.”

  Visiting hours have begun. Husbands, lovers, and relatives crowd into the room bearing gifts of flowers and food. A Moroccan woman in the next bed embraces her husband. Their mouths press together. He gently caresses her back and shoulders. Then his blunt workman’s fingers move inside the opening of her robe.