The Invisible Mountain

by Carolina de Robertis

  She had developed a peculiar sort of fame. Her name was whispered through the kitchens and vegetable stands of Montevideo. Pajarita, she cured me, you should go see her too. And when I almost. You saw me then. If it hadn’t been for her. Strange, she thought, that all of this should grow from something as familiar as plants, such ordinary things, opening new worlds, drawing the souls and stories of this city to her doorstep, unveiling a startling thing inside her: a reach, a scope, adventures with no road map, forays into the inner realms of strangers where she roved the darkness in search of something that bucked and flashed and disappeared, slippery, evasive, untamable.

  One sweltering afternoon, as a hunchbacked woman who smelled of garlic confessed her infatuation with the new priest, Pajarita felt something stir inside her body. Her mind reached in to feel. She was pregnant. A girl. She filled with the memory of conception, that final night, the clawing, Ignazio’s torn and hungry skin. And he was gone. She almost imploded from the sadness.

  She let the garlic woman finish and offered her sympathy, a package, and instructions. She crossed the curtain.

  “Coco.”

  “Sí.”

  “I’m stopping for the day. I’ll take the children upstairs for siesta.”

  “All right, Rita, I’ll join you soon.”

  She returned to the children. Bruno crouched behind the chopping block, a soldier in combat, cow-bone gun aimed at his brother Marco.

  “¡Paf! You’re dead!”

  Marco dropped his femur on the floor. “You cheated,” he grumbled. Tomás toddled over and picked up one end of the bone. It fell from his hand and made a small crashing sound against the floor. He gurgled with joy.

  In the corner, apart from the game, Andrés Descalzo sat drawing a stick of a person, a square of a house. Plenty of green and orange and purple lines everywhere. Finally a son, Coco had shouted when he was born two years ago. People called him El Carnicerito, The Little Butcher, born to carry on the family store and save it from the fate of sons-in-law. He even looked like a miniature man, with his earnest face, as if he were always cracking the most important code.

  “Time for siesta. Put the bones away.”

  They did as they were told in a burst of noise. Andrés returned his colored pencils to their box. Pajarita pulled an apple and a knife from her basket, and whisked off slices. She gave slices to her sons. Andrés was ready with an outstretched hand, the only son, just as the one she carried now would be the only daughter, and for one instant, as his hand touched hers and took the fruit, she flashed to a story, an old story, of an apple and a woman and a garden.

  Eva, she thought, as she followed the children up raucous stairs. That is your name, and who can help it—no matter what you want to choose, the name chooses the child.

  The year Eva Dolores Firielli Torres was born, the Rambla’s construction began on the shore of El Río de la Plata. The loud growl of machines lined the city. They carved a sidewalk along the beach, a curving path with cream and maroon tiles where uruguayos could walk the edge of things, the line between water and city.

  Eva was an acutely curious baby. She had pale skin, like her absent father and Marco and like the city women, but her hair was as black as her mother’s, thick from the day she pressed out into the world. She loved things that glowed or glittered, like Pajarita’s jade bracelet, bright bits of sun on water, the beam of the lighthouse as it slunk along night rocks.

  When Eva was almost two, and talking with great enthusiasm, Pajarita received a letter from Ignazio. She ran immediately to Coco’s to have it read aloud.

  “ ‘Mi Reina,’ ” Coco read. “Hmmph! He has some nerve! ‘I pray that you are well. I’m sure the family has been better off without me. Until three weeks ago, I have been in an underworld no lady should ever see. Nor should our sons. Here is a bit of money. I’ll send more when I can.

  “ ‘I can’t think that you’ll ever forgive me, nor believe me when I say this is for your protection. When my demons are gone, I will come home. I love you. Ignazio.’”

  Over the next few years, his letters continued to come: intermittent, vague, amorous, folded carefully around damp pesos.

  The storm came in from the east. Rain shouted against the roof. The sound of thunder woke and scared Eva, who ran from bed to find her mother in the kitchen, washing pots.

  “Mamá! Can I stay with you?”

  “Bueno.”

  “Tell me a story.”

  “Once there was a very friendly storm cloud—”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Storm clouds are mean.”

  “Some are nice.”

  “No!”

  “Why not?”

  “They bring dark, and noise, and lots of rain.”

  “Rain can be a good thing.”

  Eva looked doubtful.

  “It helps the plants grow.”

  Eva shrugged. “So?”

  “¿Cómo que so? So—”

  Knocking at the door. The roar of rain. More knocking.

  They stared at each other.

  “Do you think it’s a storm cloud?” Eva asked.

  “Let’s go find out.”

  They walked, hand in hand, to the door.

  “¿Quién es?” Pajarita called.

  “Ignazio.”

  Can’t be. Can’t be. The door pulsed like a great wooden beast, breathing in rhythm with the rain. She opened it and there he stood, umbrella in one hand, a bouquet of roses in the other. Yellow. Ivory. Red.

  She let him enter. He stood uncertainly at the lip of the living room. “Querida.” Drops gathered and fell from his hat’s brim.

  “Who’s that, Mamá?”

  Ignazio stared down.

  “Eva,” Pajarita said, “this is your papá.”

  Ignazio’s eyes widened. Eva’s narrowed. He crouched to her level, taking in her face, her set jaw, thick black hair in braids.

  “You don’t look like my papá.”

  “What does your papá look like?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe he looks like me.”

  “Why do you have those flowers?”

  “I thought … you might like them.”

  “Why were you out in the rain?”

  “I … este …”

  “Eva,” Pajarita said, “back to bed. It’s very late.”

  Ignazio hovered in the doorway while Pajarita smoothed the blankets over Eva, crooning a lullaby. Arrorró mi nena, arrorró mi sol. She felt his stare on them and on the second bed where Tomás slept. Arrorró pedazos, de mi corazón. Rain still pounded above them but, for now, no thunder. Eva’s muscles softened into rest.

  They tiptoed back to the living room.

  Ignazio extended his flower-hand. Sheepishly.

  Pajarita took the roses from him. Their tissue paper crinkled in her hand. She pictured herself pulling each rose out, stem by stem, and throwing them at this man now dripping rain onto her carpet. She pictured herself winding them tightly around his neck. She pictured herself slipping them down the top of her dress, crushing them against her, thorns and all. Instead she got a vase of water from the kitchen, and placed the flowers on the coffee table. They sat down on two chairs, with the bouquet between them, two people in an ordinary storm.

  “You’ve kept the house so pretty.”

  Husband, Pajarita thought. This is my husband. “Where have you been?”

  “In the old part of town. In a tenement near Calle Sarandí. Living—no, not living.” He paused. He examined the arm of her chair. “One night, Cacho found me in an alley. I was unconscious, bleeding from a stab wound. He saved me. He took me in, cleaned me up, found me work and made me take it. Pietro helped me too. I started writing to you. Every day I dreamed of coming home.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “I couldn’t. I was a monster.”

  “What are you now?”

  “A man. A husband.”

  “Do you have a
ny idea what it’s like to see your children hungry?”

  “They won’t be hungry anymore.”

  “No, they won’t—whether you stay or not. I work. We have enough.”

  Ignazio looked surprised, and she could have slapped the expression off his face. She felt strong, hot, alive with triumph. Oh, Ignazio, sad man, sad bastard, you left one woman but you came home to another, little do you know who I’ve become: I crush leaves by the kilo, my teas have warmed the city, the city has left apples at my door. She felt her own height, her substance, beyond the dimensions of her body. She sat up in her chair, a queen on her throne, gazing at the supplicant before her.

  “I want to stay,” he said.

  “You’ll have to change.”

  “I will.”

  “It’ll take time.”

  “I’ll wait. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

  “Yes. You will.”

  He drew back. They sat in the dim lamplight. This could be such a wet and heavy world. It could flood a normal night with ruthless rain; could sweep a man away along its currents, and spit him up again on long-lost shores; could seep into your secret soil, even when you wish you wish you wish you could stay dry. The roses had filled the room with a scent you could get drunk on. Petals preened as if forgetting the dark shrivel of tomorrow or the next day or the next. Ignazio leaned forward. He had that look that happened when he hoped—a kind of lifting in the eyes. His hand touched hers and it was warm and it had stroked her sons at birth, had trembled in her body, had built the roof that stretched above them, wet sky kept at bay; she missed the calloused contours of this hand that made a fist (once) and reached for liquor (more than once). One hand so many uses. One hand so much to hold.

  “Pajarita.”

  She longed to curl up to his body, longed to throw him out into the rain. She stood, left, returned with two blankets and a pillow. “You can use these.”

  He looked bruised. “Thank you.”

  “Good night, Ignazio.”

  “Pajarita.”

  She turned away and left the room without looking at him.

  He slept on the floor for a month. Every morning, she woke up thinking he was gone, he could be gone, she’d go out there and see nothing but a twisted blanket. But every morning, he was there, still sleeping in the pale dawn light. She clanged the pots overly loud as she made breakfast, to wake him up. She thought she’d have to fold the blankets herself, but he put them away as soon as he rose. The children never saw his makeshift bed. The boys were thrilled to have their father back, clambering all over him, laughing at all his jokes, fighting one another for his attention, as if he’d just returned from a protracted but perfectly explicable trip. Eva hung back at her mother’s skirts at first, eyeing him, unsure. But within two weeks, he’d wooed her with his conspiratorial smile and old Italian songs. He held her on his lap, My sweet, my only princess, and Eva glowed with her transformation into royalty. His tenderness was palpable. It enraged Pajarita. She did not touch him. During the day, he went to work at the port and she went to the butcher shop. In the evenings, he played with the children while she did the dinner dishes. He waited until they had been in bed for three hours before spreading his blankets on the floor. Some nights, she shut herself into her bedroom and left him to spend those hours alone. On other nights, he persuaded her to stay.

  “Tell me about your work.”

  “I’ve already told you.”

  “Tell me more.”

  He failed to hide his amazement at the butcher shop, the bundles, the lines of women waiting for her help. He listened avidly, as if the stories held something he had lost. He himself seemed lost. He was a ship with no anchor, in uncharted waters, uncertain how to steer his bulk and weight.

  “When are you going to let me back in?”

  “You are in.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Good night, Ignazio.”

  She didn’t have the answer to his question. It might have taken much longer if it hadn’t been for the second homecoming. Years afterward, as a gray-haired woman trying to understand her granddaughter Salomé, holding her thin hand on a rattling bus after fifteen years of fearing for her life, Pajarita would think back to this year, 1930, the year of homecomings, and decide that there must have been a magnet, some cosmic unseen magnet that attracted—instead of pots and nails—the men she loved back home, just as Salomé was coming home now, like some miraculous, emaciated changeling. Such things do happen; all kinds of ore lies buried inside lives, and surely people can’t see all the forces that push them, draw them, hold them up. Sometimes you call the forces forward yourself, without knowing that you’ve done so. In the year of homecomings, in 1930, two weeks before Ignazio came home, Pajarita had knelt before a ceramic statue of San Antonio and prayed on Coco’s behalf. San Antonio, patron saint of lost things, please make Coco’s shawl appear. The red one her abuelita made. She’d lit a candle and dropped coins in the box. And also please make anything I’ve lost come back. Hail Mary and amen. San Antonio flicks his holy wrist. A magnet stirs. And if she could believe in that, the wrist, the coins, the magnet, then she could believe that what washed up at her door could still be hers.

  Late one night, a knock sounded at the door. Ignazio had been home a month, and they sat in the living room, listening to the winter rains.

  “Are you expecting anyone?”

  She shook her head. More knocking.

  Ignazio stood, looking wary. “Who is it?”

  “Pajarita?”

  The voice pushed at her, made her rise and grasp the knob and turn and pull and there he was. Artigas. Drenched and shivering under a too-small umbrella. Overgrown hair clung to his head. He held hands with a little girl, about five years old, a mulata with Artigas’ hazel eyes. She was also wet. She stared up at Pajarita.

  Artigas said, “Are you going to let us in?”

  She motioned for them to enter. Her brother dripped onto the rug. She could taste the verdant plains of Tacuarembó, the hot dry wind, the smell of stew from the cooking pit, the crack of firewood under Artigas’ ax, his smell, his voice, his shadow in the dark.

  “Hermana.”

  She fell into his arms and he drenched her. Ignazio was on his feet, staring at the handsome man, the child, his damp wife. I’m dreaming, Pajarita thought. Any moment I might fly or wake or turn into a frying pan. “Artigas, this is my husband. Ignazio, this is my brother—”

  “And this is Xhana. My daughter.” Artigas squeezed the girl’s hand. Xhana pressed her cheek against his trouser leg.

  “Hola, querida,” Pajarita said. “You must be cold.”

  Xhana nodded.

  “Let’s dry you off. Both of you. You’ll stay the night.”

  “You don’t mind?” Artigas said. “You have room?”

  Pajarita raced through the domestic calculation in her mind. Five beds, four of them children’s. Xhana could sleep with Eva: one plus one made one. Artigas could take the living room floor (space number six), except that place was taken by her husband. And what would her brother think at the sight of her husband on the floor?

  “Of course there’s room. If you don’t mind the floor.”

  “I love the floor.”

  “Ignazio, could you please get the spare blankets?”

  In the next few minutes, Pajarita heated milanesas, made hot chocolate, and found dry clothes for her guests while Ignazio made the bed on the living room floor. Artigas put his daughter to bed with Eva.

  “She’s fast asleep,” he said when he came out.

  The three of them hovered in the living room.

  “Ignazio,” she said. “I know you’re tired. Perhaps you’re ready for bed.”

  Ignazio hesitated. “Este … to bed?”

  She nodded, as if it were quite natural.

  “Artigas. If you’ll excuse me.”

  “Of course. Good night.”

  She watched her husband disappear behind the bedroom door. “More hot chocolate, her
mano?”

  They sat down at the kitchen table. Artigas wore Ignazio’s sweater, which was too broad in the shoulders, and musty from five years spent in a drawer.

  He watched her pour more hot chocolate into his cup. “Are you angry?”

  She put the ladle down. Looking at Artigas was like peering down a well into the past. You can’t see the bottom, you balk at the echoes, but you look anyway. You chase shadows. You wait for lost coins to catch the light. “You promised you would write.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  He meant it. If she wanted to, she could stay tightly wrapped and keep the knots inside her. But what a storm, what a late night, what a steaming cup of chocolate in her hands. Time to untie, unfurl, open to this kitchen with its jars of herbs, the miracle of children safe in sleep, the man with magic hands who’d called her to a stage so long ago, torn up and resewn and calling silent questions in her bed, Artigas back from the dead and gazing with the same eyes that, legend had it, coaxed a feral baby from a tree. She covered his hand with hers. “I missed you.”