Costalegre

by Costalegre (retail) (epub)

  The glass was warm and I was glad for it. I felt cold right through. I felt that if I were left alone, I’d be shaking like a puppy, born without full fur. My humiliation was the only thing providing any warmth at all.

  “And here,” Jack said, cracking something from a foil packet on a shelf above the stove. “Chocolate. Your sugar’s probably down.”

  I accepted the chunk gratefully. It had a bitter taste with a bit of heat to it, like eating teeming dirt.

  Jack let go a mighty exhale, losing height as he did breath. He got down on his knees again, watching his fire try to go, and I felt the weight of my imposition once again. He was a man not used to having company, and now we had to talk.

  “I bet I lose some cows,” he said, his tone forced, which I was glad for. It would have been even worse to pass the storm in silence. “You know that they lie down? Bellies east, backs west. Horses do that too. You can tell the coming weather from them, days and days before. But those cows . . . lightning hits and they all get it. You come out in the morning, they’re all still lying down. You don’t know until you get right up there whether they’re scared or dead.”

  He rose to his feet. The fire had finally started. Jack latched the door on it, and the room lost some of its glow. I looked to his bed, and he saw me.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Sit. It’s never fun to fall.”

  I didn’t really want to; it made me feel more helpless. There was a table across from his bed, near one of the closed windows, but it had only one chair. Jack sat down in it, and I sat on his bed, because what else was there to do? I watched him take his boots off.

  “Leonora know you’re gone?”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t heard my own voice say too many words yet, and it seemed frightening to try.

  “Well,” he said, his long hands on the table. “She’ll know soon enough.”

  “I doubt that she’ll care,” I managed, watching the way the fire danced.

  “She’ll care,” Jack said, nodding with me at the flames. “When the others notice.”

  My heart fell at this. It was true, but I thought he might say something more generous than that.

  Jack stood back up, took down an unmarked bottle from the shelf with a yellow splash inside.

  “I wouldn’t usually offer a young lady tequila,” he said, grabbing two tin cups. “But you’re shaking. I could give you a shirt.” He held the cups a moment, still. “I probably should. They’re not entirely clean, though.”

  “No, no,” I said, heating to imagine just what his shirt would smell of. “I’m fine.”

  “Tequila, then,” he said, pouring two cups out, and not too much for me. “Just sip.”

  I closed my hands around the mug. Knowing he was watching made me shake all the more. I sniffed the liquid first, smelled saddle and old tin. The taste wasn’t much better, ghastly and all pucker, like being forced to drink from a washed-out perfume bottle. The color of old chamomile with a whole life inside it.

  “Warmer?” he asked.

  And I laughed. I couldn’t believe I laughed. The sound of it made me realize that the rain had slowed.

  “Hear that?” Jack asked, looking toward the ceiling. “That silence? Never good. You know about the oracles? The horse ones?”

  “I think so?” I lied.

  “Hippomancy. Do you know what I’m saying? My horses have known for days about the storm. And yours too.” He shook his head. “So abysmally stupid,” he said, still doing the shaking. “I’m almost impressed. But you’ve heard about it, haven’t you? The oracles?” He took some of his tequila. “A horse is running through a pasture, head down, for no apparent reason?” He raised his shoulders in either a shrug or an attempt to warm himself; his body was a stiff body, although he was relaxed. “A neighbor’s life will end. Their tails swell, get a shaggy look to them? Rain will come in a few days. The Celts used to leave the question of war to their white horses. A clever, clever folk. They’d draw a line where the battle would commence, and have a white horse cross it. If the horse crossed with his left foot, they’d call the battle off.”

  I found these stories terrifying. I could see the white horse on the battleground. And the armed men, holding breath.

  Jack made as if he were looking out the window. The window that was closed. “War is going to come for our countries,” he said. “You’re old enough to know that.”

  I swallowed what I could of the drink he’d given me.

  “I’m telling you this because I don’t know what slosh Leonora invents. Who plans a museum, now?”

  “They wouldn’t take the paintings,” I offered, the drink making me bold.

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “The Louvre.”

  Jack’s eyes went huge. “You’re serious.”

  “They said she was peddling trash.”

  He bellowed. Raised his glass. “What a tremendous compliment!” He actually got up and clinked my glass. “To trash! She’s got a good number of mine with all the rest of them. I’m honored.” He was smiling to himself. “Rejected by the Louvre. As well we should be! We’re not making art of the dead! You’re housed up with some of the greatest jackasses of this century, but at least their art’s alive.”

  “So you do like them?” I dared.

  “You can hate a man but still respect his art. In fact, I don’t think I could tolerate the work of a man I actually liked. Except perhaps for your Walter, there. Although he’s a cartoonist. Sardonic lot.”

  “He isn’t well,” I said.

  “And he shouldn’t be. None of us should be. We should be worried and we should be guilty and we should be very scared. But she finds that all beneath her, your mother.” He took more of his drink. “Or rather, she’s completely insensitive to it. Was built with different fuses. It almost makes you wonder if something’s—” He stopped. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. Forgive this kind of talk.”

  I both wanted to hear more and wanted to hear none of it. I’d heard the talk, of course, that my mother was dim-witted, that senselessness ran in the family, that my own great-grandmother talked only in singsong, that her husband found it preferable to shoot himself than to listen to her warble. Jack continued with the drinking, not really intent on it, not like my mother’s loons, but probably it was because I wasn’t saying anything back. I didn’t know what to. I’d had sips of wine with meals, of course, but nothing like tequila—this brushy, grassy thing pushing thrills through like a snake. I had to pause for the whole of it now that the shame was fading, the madness of the recent hours. A great beach conquered on horseback, and me underneath the starshine with no breath left in my chest. And now, a conversation, with no one to correct me. And no one else to hear.

  “May I ask you something?” I tried, more nervous by our silence than the thought my voice might break.

  “You may,” Jack said, “but I may choose not to answer.”

  “Charlotte called you Heinrich. From the pool. The other day?”

  “Observant. We might just make an artist of you yet.”

  I did, diary. I glowed.

  “Heinrich,” he said, getting up to spoon his stew. He tasted it. Spooned it into bowls. “I’m sorry.” He handed a thick bowl to me, cradled by a greasy napkin. “I only have this one chair. You’ll sit at the table?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, looking to the left of me. “The fire.” I hoped from my expression that he understood I needed the warming.

  He watched me for a bit. Because I didn’t know what else to do, I ate.

  “Heinrich,” he started up again, after some stew and more tequila. “It was something we were all doing, after the war.” He scratched the back of his neck, uncomfortable, I feared. “My closest friend, Helmut, he became John. And Grosz went George, which I teased him for. George!”

  I had no idea why he was laughing, so I laughed a little as well.

  “So close, the two, why change? But I liked Jack, the sound of it. Everyone in Germany was trying to turn us against Engl
and. But the English loved our art. We were doing things then, this lot of us, a kind of riot we called Dada. Which means—” Jack paused here, and pushed his food around. “Well, it doesn’t mean anything,” he snorted. “Which was the point of it, you know. ‘Controlled hysteria.’” He grinned in his remembering. “The Germans wanted ‘inoffensive landscapes.’ Put out an edict for it, even, and it became a rule. Changing our names was a way to stand up for what we were making. Or so we thought! And then you go by one name long enough, and that’s the name that’s yours.” He dug back into his food.

  I scraped at my own stew, my belly nervous from everything I could ask.

  “Is it true you knew the Führer?” I decided on, spoon halfway to my mouth.

  “Christ,” went Jack. “Of course. A wretched little snivel. But we used to have good fun with him, firing him right up. Helmut used to collage things onto his awful landscapes. He’d put a cutout of a dead cow into one of his fields, or paint figures engaged in, well, let’s say ‘engaged in their activities’ beneath some pretty tree. One time, Schlechty—that’s how we called him, it’s from the German for a kind of bad—he didn’t find it until his critique: there was a toppled wine bottle painted near a forest. Beautiful stuff, actually. A fantastic fool, that Helmut.”

  Jack smiled at his cup as if this Helmut might have been inside of it, swimming up and out. “We had fun for a while,” Jack said. “Beautiful. Then he really did it. Bitter little Schlechty. Declared a ban on modernism in the Reich. You couldn’t even do allegories. Bit of a letdown for the medievalists, we joked!” Jack’s smile looked awful now. “God knows where he is now, Helmut. Or any of the others. Helmut jumped right out of a balcony when the National Socialists took over. And walked to Czechoslovakia. That’s right,” he said, catching my expression. “Walked.” He looked back in his cup and I wished it all for him. Wished them back, his friends, the funny drawings. “And I ended up in Costalegre. And it’s all starting again.” He bit his thumb a bit. Looked over. “I’m sorry.” He frowned. “I don’t know how to make conversation to . . . with little girls.”

  I wanted to protest that I was not a little girl, but there were so many ways that he could prove this to the contrary, and if he did, I’d probably cry.

  “Shall I ask you something, then?” Jack said.

  “Yes?” I braced myself.

  “You know that if you don’t want to be here, you could say something. You could simply say something. Leonora has been known to change her mind.”

  “Say what?” I did not appreciate my mother being brought into our evening. “It’s not like we can go home.”

  “What home?” he answered. “It doesn’t need to be Europe, but this is no place for a girl.”

  “She wanted me with her, you know,” I said, more loudly than I planned.

  “She did,” I insisted, when he said nothing in reply. “She took me instead of Stephan. I was . . . she chose me.” My voice wavered, so I coughed. “She’s not . . . she’s not what people say about her. My mother . . . she believes that something could come of it. My art.”

  I let the sentence hang there. Would it rise or would it fall? Worse yet, it floated, pointless and rejected, out into the dark.

  Jack crossed his hands upon his leg. He was thinking through his words now, and that made me feel worse. “Does your brother paint?”

  “He could, but no.”

  “Do you mean he’s good?”

  “He certainly could be. But it doesn’t interest him.”

  “Clever boy. What does?”

  “Oh, sports. Walking up mountains. Skiing down them. And he’ll probably go into banking, too, one day.”

  “I see. Well, someone’s got to keep the art boat afloat!”

  “Do you really think that it could sink?”

  “I think it probably won’t,” Jack said, sipping his drink, which made me realize I’d stopped noticing the way mine felt. “I don’t think it’s going to reach us. We can’t even get the post. And your mother thinks her collection is going to arrive here safe and sound? She’s always thought the best of people, it’s charming, in its way. It actually is quite charming. I don’t want you to think otherwise. I like your mother very much. I just think she’s selfish with you. Tugging you around.”

  “Well, what should you know about it?” I blurted. “You don’t even have any!”

  “Any what now?”

  “Children!”

  “It’s true,” Jack said, looking amused. “I don’t.”

  “So what do you know?!” I yelled, because he looked close to laughing, and I couldn’t have him laugh.

  “Apparently, not much.” His voice was different and was closed to me. I’d really done it, then. “I’m sorry,” he said, rising. “I’ll let you go to bed.” He picked up his plate and mug and then reached out for mine.

  “I’m not finished.”

  “There’s nothing left.”

  “I’ll ride back, you know!”

  “Ha!” He laughed. “Give me your plate, won’t you, and the rest of that tequila, I think, too.”

  “Why don’t you have a family?” I insisted, still clutching the plate.

  “Ah,” Jack said, grabbing my dish and my tequila. “How much of life do you want to know?”

  He placed the dishes in a sink and ladled water over them, from a dirty bowl. The sound was a warm clutter, and the storm had further quieted. With the closeness and the silence I felt like we were traveling across the whole of Costalegre in a massive blimp.

  “I know a little.”

  “I had a woman, and she left me for a woman. Did you know that?”

  He started drying the plates busily while I tried to tame my face.

  “Not that I can blame her,” Jack continued, drying. “If I were a woman, I wouldn’t want a man either.”

  “So there you go,” he said, after I gave him no reply. “Are you satisfied? Any other questions?”

  “Won’t you really let me go?” I didn’t mean it, which he realized, so this softened him a bit.

  “No one’s going anywhere,” he said, a gentleman again. “We’re only in the eye of it, there’ll be another storm coming any hour. You sleep here.” He indicated the bed by the small stove. “I’ll sleep in my studio. There’s an outhouse in the back. Make sure it’s cleared for snakes first.” He laughed. “First thing in the morning, if my horse hasn’t been struck by lightning, I’ll see you home.”

  I sat there clasping my hands like a small child, because deprived of my drink and dinner plate, I had nothing else to clasp.

  Jack washed the dishes still remaining. Dried them. I didn’t offer help.

  “You know,” I said, suddenly desperate for another chance. “She isn’t always terrible.”

  “Lara,” he said, a stopping to his movements. “I know.”

  If I did art in Jack’s style, then I would do the landscapes.

  Baldomero’s tower would be black and white, a cob over the sea.

  The squares of cotton fabric would be hanging inside loops of barbed wire, dried out from the sun.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be just painting. I could make a hoofprint out of sand and deep inside, a thousand pieces of live jellyfish that would make all of the sand glow.

  There’d be drastic weather. A soldier climbing out of snow.

  Or the belly of our art boat? From a mermaid’s view. Not the belly. Hull.

  How much water would it take to make a beached piano move?

  Domingo

  That night—that one—Jack went into the room beyond the curtain. Later, I thought how it would have been completely dark as he’d left me all the lanterns; he didn’t even have the fire. How curious to know that a space is there and being used by someone but not to know the room. I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but the rain had slowed, was lulling, and I did.

  When I woke, dawn had broken, but the embroidered curtain between our areas was closed. I went out as quietly as I could and headed for the outhouse. Snakes d
idn’t matter as much as my need at that point.

  While I was getting myself sorted, I heard yelling from the enclosure. Strong words in Spanish. Estúpidos again.

  I left the outhouse and walked about a little so that it wouldn’t look like I was coming from where I was. The sky had gone pink and there was mist over the scrub. I could see horses up and about, neighing and tossing their heads as they ran in circles, then settling with a smugness to push their noses through the grass. Cows too, dark shadows to the corner. And I could see Jack in the middle of this, swinging a lead line at the animals who didn’t go where he desired.

  I scurried back into the house. Made my little bed. I looked behind me—it was hard to gauge how long Jack would be out there, but I thought I’d hear the gate close when he was done. I decided to look behind the curtain that had separated our beds.

  What I saw was a studio, a kind of greenhouse studio: great slabs of stone in the center and blocks and blocks of wood. He was making sculptures from them, but not the forms I knew. They didn’t seem to represent anything obvious, circles and huge cubes.

  And next to all of this on a table, a wooden block with a figure leaping up and out. Smoothed and arched, this figure, like a bird but without any of the bird things: no feathers and no beak, not even the shape of wings. What it made me think of was the moment right before a heron flies. Such odd creatures, “prehistoric” is what Papa used to say. There were a few of them in England; I thought of them as mine. You had to walk quietly, or else they’d fly away. But still, that moment just before they went, it was like that, it was slow, like they might decide to stay.

  I was doing something that I shouldn’t have been, but the shapes made me feel calm. In all the places mother’s forced me, I’d never seen such stillness, or such gigantic stones. Plus there is something so old and wise about it, about the wood, and stone.

  Behind the leaping figure and the other carvings there were two more sections of the studio, one immaculate and empty, the second cluttered with wooden tree trunks and stone objects placed here and there. A faceless head on a gray block. An egg the size of a boulder. Pulleys hanging from the ceiling and a broken chandelier. A wooden trough filled with chisels and an axe.