The Invisible Mountain

by Carolina de Robertis

  She was silent.

  “Evita?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Hija—”

  “Mami, I can’t feel my legs. I can’t move them—what’s wrong with me?”

  Her legs had disappeared—or, rather, she from them. They were empty, uninhabited, unreachable, like the glaciers at the bottom of the continent. As Mami gently prodded, as the sun fell in a distant sky, as night washed her little room with darkness, Eva sent the tendrils of her mind down past her belly and felt nothing. No pain, no warmth, no hint of movement. She fell asleep and dreamed of a torso with head and arms, her own, dragging itself down a hall by the knuckles.

  Dr. Zeballos came the next day. His paunch and jovial voice had always reminded her of Santa Claus. “There’s nothing wrong with her, as far as I can see. Inexplicable paralysis. The French call it a symptom of rebellion.”

  There were apparently no cures for this condition. She stayed in bed. Mamá brought meals, changed her bedpan, and kept Papá at bay. On the third day, Pietro came to visit. When Eva saw him, grinning broadly behind a bouquet of pink carnations, the half of her body she still felt filled with a liquid scream.

  “Evita. I’ve been worried about you. Look, I brought carnations—aren’t they your favorite?” He paused for her to answer. She didn’t. “I’m giving you another chance.”

  “You’re too generous with us, Pietro,” her father said, standing against the wall, stiff as a soldier.

  “Por favor, Gondola, how long have we been friends? Did you think I’d forget?” Tiny hairs dotted his jaw, more gray, Eva saw, than black. “Your daughter is young; she can still learn. I’ll wait.” Pietro scanned the room, taking in the homemade quilts, the frayed lamp shade, the Worried Mother Hovering in the Doorway, the girl. “Oh, and I brought your shoes. Don’t worry about the ones you stole.” He smiled kindly, exposing the pale yellow of his teeth. “I have plenty more.”

  If only, she thought that night, awake in the dark. If only time, that ferocious river, could be turned to flow back where it came from. If only things could be made to unhappen. She watched the moon rest its light on her windowsill. It was pooling whiter. It looked like fallen milk. It had no right to be here, in this room invaded by pink carnations, whose petals made sharp-toothed shadows on the wall, like crocodiles, like the crocodiles she and Capitán Andrés had fought off a thousand years ago, back when she’d believed in stupid things like Sweet Gold, back before Andrés was so busy with school and she with work they hardly saw each other and even when they did she walked off quickly, not knowing what to say, not wanting to hear his questions about life, work, where-have-you-been, how-do-you-spend-your-days—before all this, a fallen moon, shadows of flowers, villaingirls, the burn (yourfaultyourfault) inside her. And the absence. Absence of legs. Absence of light. Absence of words in her throat. Absence was a viscous thing; she let it spread and spread and swallow everything.

  Mamá waged a war against the absence. Every morning, every afternoon at three, and every evening when the dishes were done, she boiled a bitter brew that surely could restore ambulation to the dead. They mended Eva’s insides, slowly, by force. Mamá sat and watched and made sure each drop was drunk and said, What are you thinking? what are you thinking now? tell me Eva, but even when the absence faltered there was no conquering the yourfaultyourfault underneath. It steamed and curdled and threatened to drown her world. She could not let it leak out even for a moment. She escaped into shoes on the floor by the closet. She curled there while her mother watched her drink. She curled there when her father poked his head in, briefly, as if she had some disease that would flare up again unless he kept his distance. She curled there when her brothers gave her lectures—Bruno on how to behave with men, Tomás on keeping Papá happy, and Marco on the ethics of stealing. Nobody could touch her, nobody would find her, absence sheathed her from them all. But not completely: Mami’s teas (and stark looks and soft kneading) conquered Eva’s legs. After two weeks, Eva could move her toes again. In three weeks, she could stand. In four, she could walk and had no numbness to excuse her from work.

  On her first day back, Pietro greeted her by pointing to the storeroom. At closing time, she did not fight him off.

  Days passed. Weeks. Eva learned the inside soles of a thousand shoes. She learned to scrape herself away from the present moment like a snail abandoning its shell, stowing her soft inner parts in caves of leather, leaving the rest behind to its slow death. This was easier at some times than others. At night she dreamed of falling into blackness, cut open by the long incessant heel of a great shoe. Sundays loomed each week, with their dreaded visits to the confessional. Now that she could walk again, she had to kneel and fabricate petty sins, as if she were a normal girl with a normal soul and normal problems. It was a sin, surely cardinal, to keep this secret and still eat the body of Christ, but Padre Robles’ penances had been harsh for daydreaming in class and taking more than her share of birthday cake, and so she couldn’t imagine what he’d require now. And yet La Viuda had said once in the carnicería that God sees all of it anyway. If there’s anyone who can take the truth, it’s God.

  Surely God would help because God loved her mother, didn’t he, and surely did not want Mamá to keep looking the way she did, all stern and sad and probing, as if by sheer exhaustive staring she’d cut through her daughter’s curtains, one by one, and unearth the rotten things behind them? Surely God was still with, if not Eva, then at least Mamá, and Mamá was still in battle, wasn’t she, and wouldn’t it be better if, before her mother won and Eva broke and told, she could do penance and become a bit more pure, a bit more clean, at least in the eyes of God, wherever and whatever his eyes were?

  It took two months to seek absolution. She chose a Tuesday so she could have the church to herself. It was a groggy afternoon. The confessional tiles were cold against her knees.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  “Praise be to God,” Padre Robles said mechanically through the grating. “Tell me your sins, my child.”

  “It’s about the man I work for. He … does things. I think I started it.”

  “What sorts of things?”

  “He touches me. Makes me touch him.”

  A pause oozed through the grating. “This is very serious. You must tell everything that happened. God must hear each detail.”

  Eva pursed her mouth. She forced it open. Her stories poured from her, word by word, touch by touch, prompt from the priest by prompt from the priest. Images slid across her memory like slugs. A waist’s-eye view. Hard desktop under her face under her grip. Two knees, her own, too far from each other. Then she stopped, did she hear, no it wasn’t possible, from the priest’s side of the booth, through the grating, his breath, short, heavy, hard, like Pietro’s. She froze. Bile rose to the back of her mouth.

  “Continue, my child—” but she had already stumbled out of the confessional, forgetting even to cross herself before turning her back on Jesus nailed above the altar. Outside, the sky stretched its limp gray blanket over Punta Carretas. Behind the prison gate, a guard scratched his crotch and squinted up at the vast lack of sun.

  Cierre. Cielo. Cerrado. Siempre. Lock. Sky. Closed. Always.

  In the days, the months, the year that followed, and in the year that unfurled after that, Eva burrowed deeper and deeper into the dark caves of shoes that she sorted and stocked and sent her mind reeling into, shrinking, curling, again and again.

  Something burst inside her when she saw the blood. She stood in the tiny bathroom at work, staring at the middle of her panties. Pietro had not touched her there in at least a week, yet there it was: a stain like a serrated flower. She had heard about this from the women in the butcher shop. It had something to do with being a woman. Just the week before, Eva had turned thirteen, and there had been cake and candles and a new blue sweater. Bruno’s wife, Mirna, had baked the cake; Mamá had spun and dyed the wool and knitted the gift with her ceaselessly moving hands. It was cold outsi
de, rain blowing down, and she wore the sweater now. It felt soft and scratchy at the same time, and here she was, thirteen, two years away from public womanhood, two years since she’d been a little girl. She gaped at the stain. Nobody had caused this blood to flow except her—or whatever mysterious force had found the switch within her, had known to flick. (La Viuda had called it God’s curse. But Clarabel, La Divorciada, had scoffed and said, Why listen to priests about a lady’s tú sabes qué? They’re hardly experts, she’d remarked, and she was right.)

  Gingerly, Eva touched the spot. It was warm—she jerked back rapidly. She looked at herself in the mirror. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d truly looked. A face met hers, high-boned, smooth-skinned, dark eyes staring right at her. She was growing. She had formed a flame of blood. She thought of blood and flames and things inside her that she didn’t know about, things that might exist and were not pain. It was almost closing time; she had to hurry. As she stuffed toilet paper into her panties, she ran through the day in her mind to weigh his mood. Closing times were dangerous, more so when sales were slow.

  He glared when she emerged. “Where’ve you been? The water boiled—I had to pour it myself.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Hmmph.” He came closer. He’d been drinking. “You look flushed.”

  She looked straight ahead at the middle of his chest.

  “What were you doing in there?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t lie.” He pushed against her. She stepped backward, one step, two, until the desk reared up behind her and his hard sex pressed into her waist. He turned her around to face the desk.

  “Bend over.”

  She thought of the red stain, the awkward ball of toilet paper. She didn’t move.

  “I said bend over.”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “No.”

  “Fucking puta,” he said, and grabbed her hair, pulled it so her neck arched back and she saw familiar cracks in the ceiling. “You do as I say.” He softened his grip, opened his palm against her scalp. “Now. Bend over.”

  At that moment Eva saw a weapon, a secret weapon, right there in the open. Slowly, arms out, she bent. Pietro’s hand, satisfied, relaxed from her. She neared the desk, he was unbuttoning his trousers, she curled her hand around the mate thermos and spun and watched the steaming water fly at Pietro and he screamed and the image seared her—Pietro burned and cringing—before she ran, out, out, down the wet street, without unleashing her high-heeled shoes, through sheet after sheet of shouting rain, running until her lungs burned, running on, not home, not this time, running now on Avenida San Salvador, toward that blood-red door, the streets were dark with rain and she was wet and she was at the door, she pulled the handle, she stepped through.

  It was dinnertime at La Diablita. A stir of savory scents rose to meet her. Silverware clinked hungrily on plates, percussion for the melodies of voices. A foxtrot flew on jagged wings out of a piano. The clientele wore well-pressed clothes and leaned into clouds of cigarette smoke. Lush young waitresses glided past wood-paneled walls. Eva slunk into a red chair. She sat for a few minutes, catching her breath, looking for poets, until a waitress approached her with mild curiosity.

  “Do you want to order something?” Her skin was heavily made up, hair in careful ringlets around her face.

  “Ah, no,” Eva fumbled. “Actually, are you hiring?”

  “We might be.” The waitress eyed her more closely. “I’m leaving for Buenos Aires.” She beamed. “I’m going to be an actress. You want to talk to the owner?”

  Eva nodded. The waitress led her through the room, past the bar, through a threshold hung with beads, behind which the owner lounged with four drunk friends.

  “Che, Pato. This girl wants to work here.”

  Pato looked up. He was a stout, balding man. He’s always eaten everything he wanted, Eva thought. Ladies. Food. The moon. He examined Eva. She felt foolish in her homemade sweater, wet with rain, and was grateful for her high heels.

  “Have you worked before?”

  “Yes, Señor. Three years.”

  “Where?”

  “At a zapatería.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen,” she lied.

  “And why do you want to work here?”

  The table went quiet. A woman in black silk lit a slim cigarette. They stared at her. She felt too small to answer but she could not let them know that, they would only see her mask. She stood taller. “I believe in poetry. In beauty. I want to work in a place where people are beautiful and free.” She let herself draw an innocent smile. “This is that sort of place, isn’t it?”

  The black-silked woman laughed. “Well, Pato? Is it?”

  Pato looked at the woman’s glass, her shoulders, the ample cleavage pushing from her dress. He looked at Eva. “What’s your name?”

  “Eva Firielli Torres.”

  “Eva, come back on Saturday at five. We’ll find a way to keep you busy.” He turned to his companion. The interview was over.

  Eva retraced her path out to Avenida San Salvador, tinged with magic in the gathering night. She walked toward home. Rain traced a mottled crown on her head. She strode for almost seven blocks before the dread set in. Her steps slowed to a stop. Her mother was not home—she was out playing canasta at Coco’s, or La Viuda’s, or maybe it was Clarabel’s apartment. Where else could she go? She could turn and head to Parque Rodó, sit by the fountain with nuzzling couples. She could return to La Diablita and wash some dishes in exchange for a Coca-Cola. She could go to La Rambla and walk up and down, up and down the shore. This would do for an hour, maybe even a night, but not for the rest of her life. And the paper between her legs was soaked, she was bleeding, she was tired, she was wet all over. She would have to find something to tell her father.

  By the time she arrived at her house, a dozen possible stories jostled in her head. She unlocked the door and entered. Papá sprang up from the sofa. He hulked toward her. An empty bottle of grappa leered on the table; its sweet-liquor smell filled the air. They stared at each other. Papá’s hands rolled into fists.

  “I talked to Pietro.”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “Slut.”

  “He’s a liar.”

  “He’s a good man.”

  “He’s not.”

  “You break my heart.”

  “Papá—”

  “Whore.”

  She opened her arms to him.

  A fist flew at her face. She reeled back, the taste of iron on her tongue. He punched her again and she fell against the wall and braced herself for more blows, and when they came she was ready, covered, limp, far away from the man whose body had so much to say. When he stopped, she waited to make sure that he was done. Silence. She looked out. He was staring at his hand, watching it curl open, close, open again. He looked at her with crumpled eyes. He looked as though he might say something but there was iron in her mouth, sparks in her head, a space between them that was ripping wider, a steep black rift into which she would not fall.

  She said, “I will never speak to you again.”

  She stood shakily and walked down the hall. She heard him call out, but it didn’t sound like Spanish and she had never learned Italian. In the bathroom, she changed the blood-swelled paper, and scanned herself in the mirror. A cut at her lip, slightly darkened, no teeth lost.

  She lay in bed and railed against the creep of numbness. Her legs were fading, but no, they could not go this time; what would happen to her new job if her legs disappeared? Don’t go, don’t fall, don’t die, you have to stay. Papá was not the world, and though it broke her in two to think of him, her mind had other places to fly, like the luminous thought of Pietro’s skin burning with pain, and La Diablita, with its bright warm smells, its bustling noise, its air that crackled, crackled, calling to that nub in her she’d thought would never flower but that waited (dense, explosive) under her skin.


  The café’s colors reared toward her as in dreams, from brown wood walls, brown hair glistening in candlelight, a brown piano pouring songs, black dresses, black slick keys trembling all night, black kohl emboldening the curves of women’s eyes, pale cigarette smoke, pale pearls around pale necks, red chairs, red tables, red lipstick, bright red laughter, dark red wine.

  She wanted to swallow every inch of light and glamour. She stole slices of conversation she culled from clientele. She had a covert way of leaning in, just close enough to pick up words along with dirty dishes. A woman with expensive hair praises a poet in slurred speech. Spittle clings to a student’s mouth as he expounds on the Russian Revolution. Young lovers argue about the future of theater, their tones passionate, hands clasped tight under the table. Eva absorbed everything. She took strange orders: “Dante Alighieri” beside “martini;” “existentialism” next to “Chianti chileno—another round;” a long list of pasta dishes peppered with names of books. When the food and wine had been delivered to their tables, she stuffed the little pages into her brassiere, to use later in her own voracious feasts at the library downtown. The papers were stained with olive oil and liquor, slick and potent between her breasts. They were treasure maps. She used them to navigate the citadel of books, where each text was a plush home; each text had rooms full of finery to touch, feel, taste, shatter, stroke, knead, rub, fall asleep next to and dream. She loved to break and enter them, a secret interloper on the page.

  He wanted to know her secrets, that man who was her father. Where she worked. What she was doing. What was in her mind. On the first night, he’d knocked—“Eva? Evita?”—six separate times on her bedroom door, every hour on the hour until dawn, and she kept thinking he would come in—there was no lock, after all—but he didn’t open the door and she didn’t either. The second night he made two visits that consisted of pure knocking. On the third night she came home from work at 3 a.m. to a note on her bed, in that handwriting of his that looked like a series of tiny balloons: I’ll be awake. This is your last chance. She tore it into pieces and flushed it with her urine.