Peeling Oranges

by James Lawless

  The rich pass by, los ricos who are afraid of a pinprick, ornately decked out on their way to the opera.

  As night falls I watch the prostitutes, the rameras or putas,standing in shadows.

  Suddenly my arm is pressed.

  ‘¿Señor, quiere compañía…?’

  She looks about nineteen or twenty and, although she gives a hint of her wares with a bum freezer of a skirt, her face is masked in thick makeup.

  ‘I’m looking for someone,’ I say in faltering Spanish, ‘someone who is called Luisa.’’

  ‘¿Luisa?’

  ‘Si.’

  ‘¿La Santa?’

  ‘Si,’ I say, not understanding what she means.

  She laughs. ‘She is old for you. But if you wish?’

  I go with her through a warren of streets, and then into a tall building and up many flights of stairs. I feel the frisson of danger once more, like when I turned towards the lighthouse in Cuadro, wanting to turn back, yet daring to go on.

  She knocks at a door bearing the number 47B.

  ‘Oye, Santa. There’s a young fellow here to see you. Without his mother.’ She laughs again. I understand what she says but I haven’t the opportunity to take umbrage, for she has gone, her laughter fading in the darkness of the stairs.

  ‘Un momento,’ says a voice from inside.

  The door is opened by a woman adjusting her blond hair. She is perhaps in her early forties, dressed loosely in a blouse and skirt. She is like the girl from Patrick’s magazine. Older, but the same dark eyes; just like her, except for the colour of her hair.

  ‘¿Inglés?’

  ‘No,’ I say, ‘but I speak English.’

  She beckons me into the room. A naked bulb shines down on a bed, a little table with a drawer, a sink and a fridge; and on a shelf, with a cracked ceramic vase.

  A window with open shutters looks out on the night.

  ‘¿Americano?’

  ‘No,’ I say, irlandés.’I am slow to say where I am from this time, partly because of shame, and partly because, if she did know Patrick Foley, it might make her suspicious of me.

  ‘¿Holandés?’

  ‘No, irlandés.’

  ‘Ah, irlandés,’she says rolling her r, something which I had not done. Nationalities can change in the slip of a tongue.

  ‘The country of the bang bang.’

  ‘That is only in the north,’ I say, ‘not where I live.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Not where you see on the TV,’ I say, trying to confirm the point. ‘I live in the republic.’

  ‘Viva la república,’ she says. ‘We tried to live in one too. You like dark hair?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘it’s okay.’

  She takes off her wig. Her hair is dark brown. ‘The espanzish,’ she says, ‘they like rubia. They think it is more foreign.’

  She sits on the bed and starts to unbutton her blouse. ‘You asked for me especially?’

  ‘Yes. I…’

  ‘You are timid.’

  ‘One of the girls... she…’

  ‘Ah yes, sometimes they send the timid ones to me to make up for the other ones.’

  ‘I’m not timid,’ I say, taking offence.

  She smiles. ‘You have a kind look on your face, simpático. You are lonely for your patria, yes? Let me...’

  She puts her hand on my crotch.

  ‘I must be going. I made a mistake,’ I say, removing her hand. Maybe I was like my mother after all, an adventurer but only in safe coves.

  ‘Already? Wait a while.’

  She offers me a drink. I hesitate. I’d heard in the hostel about Spanish fly and substances that can alter the way we are in our heads, in our organs.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she says, ‘it’s good.’

  Slowly I raise the glass to my lips and sip. It is some kind of liqueur with a flavour of orange. ‘Where did you learn your English?’ I ask, trying to steer her away from the physical.

  ‘Oh, from the marineros and distinct clients. You are sad?’

  ‘I’m not sad.’

  ‘It is all right to be sad,’ she says. ‘I am sad if I don’t bring in enough pesetas for el tío.’

  ‘Uncle?’

  ‘Yes. Uncle.’

  Before I can offer her money or do anything, she has removed her clothes; the already loosened blouse and skirt flow down effortlessly from her frame. She comes towards me smiling, and unbuttons and removes my shirt.

  ‘Oh, you’re burned,’ she says. ‘You are so red. You must be careful of the sun. Such fair skin.’ As she turns to get cooling lotion from the drawer of her little table, I see the shape of a triangle scorched into her left buttock.

  She rubs the lotion on my shoulders, her fingers sliding slowly down my chest towards my stomach. Her breasts are swinging as she works, a nipple grazing my skin. I look at the folds in her thighs, the mole with little tufts of hair on her right arm.

  She undoes the buckle of my belt. I resist.

  ‘What is wrong?’ It is not annoyance but concern that is in her voice.

  ‘I must go. Perhaps tomorrow.’

  I put my shirt back on and leave pesetas on the bed.

  ‘You must go?’

  ‘I must,’ I say.

  ‘And your name? For when you call again.’

  ‘Derek,’ I shout, as I hurry out of the room.

  ***

  I think of Luisa as I lie in bed in my pensión. I think of Patrick Foley. I should have asked her straight out if she knew him. She could be a different Luisa. I was afraid of what I might hear. I need a little time. Everyone needs a little time to confront the unsavoury aspects of their lives. I wonder about the identity of my birthfather – no, that term is too complimentary. I wonder about the identity of my begetter, my engenderer. Is he dead? If not, does he know? Does he know anything about me?

  I look up at a full moon through the open shutters. It is like the Host just hanging there without a priest to hold it up. I hear the sound of a ship’s siren, and I wonder how many men bring children into the world through dark ports? I turn on my side. Sometimes even boys who are nearing manhood cry themselves to sleep.

  ***

  But it has to be done. I have to see her again.

  It is evening as I walk up and down the Ramblas trying to summon the courage needed to face what lies ahead, trying to rehearse what I want to say to Luisa. I go to a flower vendor’s stall and buy a bouquet of red roses.

  It is dark inside her building. I am about to mount the stairs when I stop suddenly. I hear voices coming down. I step back into the darkness. They are two men. German accents. I recognise the laugh. I can just make them out as they go out the door: Klaus and Lothar.

  I wait until they pass. I then press the light switch and mount the stairs. I knock at Luisa’s door. The light on the stairs goes out. It is obviously on a timer, just like the light on the Liberties’ stairs to my aunt Peg’s flat. I fumble in the darkness until I find a switch once more. I knock again on the door of 47B. I hear a groan.

  ‘Vayase, vayase.’

  ‘Luisa, it is me; it is Derek’.

  I push the door slightly. It is not locked. The room is unlit. The shutters drawn. I switch on the light. The bare bulb bears down on a woman sobbing, enfolded foetally into herself on the bed. Her hair is dishevelled.

  ‘Please turn off the light. Please go away.’

  ‘What happened?’

  She turns around. There is a bruise below her left eye.

  ‘Those two?’

  ‘One or two or three; what difference does the number make?’

  I sit down on the bed beside her. ‘The ones who just left?’

  ‘You saw them?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll get ice,’ I say.

  I put the flowers in the sink and get ice from the fridge. I put the ice in a towel and sit by the bed dabbing her eye. I don’t know why I am becoming so concerned. What’s it all to me? What is it with Spanish women? Women I hardly know. Am I concerned
for Luisa because she and I share a common victimisation – the appetiser and the end-product of lust as it were? Or perhaps it’s due to my mother’s social conscience stealing out of me despite myself.

  ‘You could get out of the country,’ I say.

  ‘You see,’ she says, turning around to show me the mark of iron; ‘it is so none of us can run away, or no other uncle can claim us.’

  ‘All the nieces …?’

  ‘Yes, all of them and the nephews too.’

  ‘Nephews?’

  ‘Oh yes, he prefers them the most.’

  She ponders. ‘Also I have no passport, so you see how it is.’

  ‘That should be enough,’ I say, removing the towel. The ice has melted. I drop the wet towel in the sink, and take the roses and present them to her. Tears well in her eyes.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘They remind me of her.’

  ‘Of her?’

  She raises the flowers to her nose and closes her eyes in reverie. ‘My mother. She always had rosas. I remember as a child the pétalos falling. I remember going around on my knees, gathering them up, and being made drunk by their scent. I saved them. Let me show you.’

  She gets up from the bed.

  ‘Easy,’ I say as I help her to her feet. Her flimsy nightdress is creased and slightly torn at the shoulder. She takes the vase from the shelf and fills it with water and puts the roses in it.

  ‘Such kindness you show to someone like me.’

  She opens the drawer in the little table and takes out a book. It is a bible with a black cover. She opens it to show me dried rose petals pressed inside. ‘You see?’

  ‘Yes, I see.’

  ‘Someone dear who is not existing any more gave me this book and I have my mother always inside it. We have to hold on to such things.’

  ‘Your mother, Luisa…she…?’

  ‘You don’t want to hear.’

  ‘Please, I don’t mind.’

  She sighs. ‘My mother worked the streets, like me. One night there was gunfire; the Catalans were rebelling.’ She pauses for a moment, breathing in deeply. ‘I remember her face, thinking it was mascara running down her cheeks.’

  She tries to smile. ‘Forgive me. I’m not used to talking like this.’

  She goes to the window and opens the shutters. ‘It’s a sign,’ she says, ‘that there is business.’

  ***

  My mother told me that ‘going to me uncle’s’ in Dublin slang was a euphemism for going to the pawnbroker. People hid their shame, Mam said, as if it were their fault for the conditions into which they were born. But there are also uncles who are unseen, who put presents in the post, or are ghosts playing accordions.

  Luisa sits down beside me and puts a hand on my thigh.

  ‘You are so tranquilo.’

  She takes out a packet of Ducados from her handbag. I wave her offer away. She lights the black tobacco, and I watch the smoke curl up around the tungsten bulb.

  ‘You are not married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, of course not. You are too young.’

  ‘Many married men come to you?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘And the book?’ I say, pointing to the little table.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The person who gave you the book?’

  ‘Patricio. He saved my life.’

  I feel a rush of blood to my head. ‘You said, Patricio?’

  ‘Yes. In all the time I never got his appellido. How you say?’

  ‘His surname.’

  ‘Patricio was kind, not like many men and muy muy culto. He showed me glimpses of things I had never known: the beauty of the Bible, the saints, beautiful poetry which he recited. He made it possible for me to accept the world.’

  She smiles gently, showing up the lines around her eyes. ‘Patricio had a little joroba, you know like a little hill on his back.’

  ‘A hump,’ I say.

  ‘Yes. The other girls, they jeered his hump.’ She sighs. ‘And other things.’

  Kyphosis. That’s what Patrick had, an excessive curvature of the spine. Mam told me that, caused by his contracting TB in his early years.

  ‘Oh, but I am talking too much,’ she says getting up, ‘Let me get you a drink.’

  ‘You are feeling better?’

  ‘A little better now thanks to you.’

  ‘Please continue,’ I say, after she pours the liqueur into my glass.

  ‘You are sure you don’t mind?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  A gust of wind blows one of the shutters across the window space. Suddenly, she looks alarmed.

  ‘One moment,’ she says. ‘We must not forget the time.’

  ‘Should I go? I can come back another time. I mean I don’t want to get you into trouble.’

  ‘No. Once I open the shutter it will be all right.’

  She goes to the window. The light catches the curves of her body through her nightdress. Suddenly I want to touch her. To touch her back. What is the effect on one of suppressing an urge? Where does a sublimation go?

  ‘It is a spirit,’ she says. ‘It is trying to keep him out.’

  ‘¿El tío?’

  ‘El Diablo. Oh, I hope he does not come tonight.’

  She sits down beside me again on the bed. She shivers.

  ‘Put this around you,’ I say, placing a blanket over her shoulders, glad of the opportunity to touch and to care at the same time.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She presses a finger against the bruise under her eye.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘All men are not like those. There is a man who comes to me who has no arms. And another has his face eaten by cancer. He is.... what is the word?’

  ‘An outcast,’ I say.

  ‘Yes. He is happy just to dance with me, to feel the human touch. And the married men, most of them, they come to me because their wives are frígidas, you know; they do not open like the flower.’

  My thought: was my mother a flower that opened or a lock that was forced?

  ‘Patricio, he came to me because I was able to help him when his wife was not.’

  ‘He told you this? I mean he actually said his wife was…’

  ‘Oh yes. But he taught me things too. He taught me English. It was not the marineros. All they taught me were words like coont and fuuk.’

  She draws out the vowels as if her tongue is elastic, stretching them, rendering the words innocuous, nullifying their originally vulgar connotations.

  ‘It was so easy with him, you know? He did not want any questions about himself. I did not even know what country he was from.’

  ‘But you knew about his wife?’

  ‘I knew nothing except that with her he could not… you know, there were problems.’

  ‘Yes, problems. Of course.’

  She looks at me quizzically. ‘You are all right?’

  ‘Fine, fine.’

  ‘He was so generous. He gave me a cross on a chain made of gold. I will show you. I have kept it all the years. I never let Uncle see it. He would only sell it.’

  She opens a drawer of the little table and lifts up a false bottom. She takes out a small, black velvet-covered box which she unlatches to reveal a Celtic cross and chain. I turn the cross around and see the letter M marked on its back.

  ‘The mark,’ she says, ‘it is a sign, Patricio told me, that the gold is pure.’

  ‘Pure?’

  ‘Yes. You can see the sign there?’

  ‘But the book, Luisa?’

  ‘The book?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh yes. Patricio used to read to me in a high voice.’

  ‘Patricio read? ’

  ‘Yes. He read and I remembered.’

  ***

  Time can distort events, which can lead to vagueness and uncertainty. It happened in my recollections of Counihan. Memory recalls but it also imagines. However, there was no such channel in this dry land. Her memory ther
e was sharp in every detail. And the more she spoke, the more the cryptic entries in Patrick Foley’s diaries began to loom clear.

  ‘When Uncle found out that I was getting, you know… close to Patricio, he made me charge him more money. Mi pobre cariñopaid it immediately without question. He was afraid of Uncle.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Uncle knew about his work, although he never told me what it was. He threatened to tell Patricio’s superiors that he was visiting me, unless he got more money. Uncle had friends in the Falange. It put terrible preoccupation on mi cariño. I knew he was ill, that he needed me.’

  ‘But he was married.’

  ‘To an unfaithful wife, a sinvergüenza.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I shout, rising to my feet.

  ‘Have I offended you? What is the matter?’

  I see the hurt in her face.

  ‘Perhaps you should go.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ I say. I put my arms around her and hug her.

  She says, ‘We are all what we are in the eyes of others. I mean, I am what I am.’

  ‘Not wilfully,’ I say.

  ‘No importa.’

  ‘Please forgive me.’

  ‘Only God...’

  ‘Continue with your story.’

  ‘It’s just boring you.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘You won’t get angry?’

  ‘No. I promise.’

  She draws in a breath. ‘Pues, he wanted me to go to New York to his doctor friend. To implant me.’

  ‘Implant you?’

  ‘It is the word?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘His wife would not agree. I owed him my life, you understand, so I agreed. He said he could get me to America. All the arrangements were made. I was to meet him at the Ramblas,and that was when he fell down.’

  ‘Fell down?’

  ‘He was waiting for me. Some of the girls told me they saw him talking to a man with a beard, before he collapsed. He was taken to hospital. I found out where, or rather Uncle found it for me. I don’t know why. ‘Your eunuco comunista is dying,’ he said. She looks up at me with flooding eyes. He was mocking me, Derek, you know?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say.

  She joins her hands, crunches up her shoulders. ‘I remember... I remember standing outside a glass wall. I wanted to shout through the glass to mi cariño,but there was a woman with him and a little boy. I did not want to believe it was his wife, but who else could it have been? She seemed, you know, trastornada.’