The Invisible Mountain

by Carolina de Robertis

  “It has to change.”

  “It won’t.”

  “Then the people will,” said Xhana.

  Salomé was listening so intently that the meat had fallen off her fork; she held it absently, spearing the empty air. Eva felt a dual urge to plunge into the conversation—to say this couldn’t be, Uruguay was not so fragile, hard times had come and gone before and would surely pass again—and to move it in a wholly new direction, away from anything that could sound to young ears like danger, like a cause for leaving home, as they had done once before. She admired Xhana, with her communist committee meetings, her flyers for labor strikes, her unrelenting analysis of social issues, but she was torn between the instinct to join in and the instinct to protect her family. It was just her now with the children, and they had so much less than before, and yes, true, no one was getting exiled from Uruguay, and surely no one would be, but still, if, if, where would they go? Better to support the struggle in the ways she could, from a distance, in the realm of poetry, and poetry, after all, did matter; words did matter; her weapons were her words.

  When they stayed over late, the children fell asleep in Tío Artigas’ bed, and Eva and Xhana would spend time alone in the kitchen.

  “Have another, Eva.”

  “Thanks, Xhana. I really am full.”

  “Any news from Roberto?”

  “A letter. He’s landed, he’s settled in. I suppose he’s doing fine.”

  “Are you getting a divorce?”

  “We can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s illegal in Argentina.”

  “So you can’t remarry.”

  “Not that I was going to.”

  “But in the future, Eva?”

  She hesitated for a long time, surely too long. “My future is with my children.”

  “You could still meet another man.”

  She didn’t mean to laugh, and tried to suppress it, so the sound came out twisted into a witch’s cackle. “Let’s not count on it.”

  There was no thought of marriage, no thought of any lover but Zolá, whom she saw several times a week, after work, or before work, or during hair appointments, while her children were under their grandparents’ watchful care. She wanted to grow old with Zolá, wanted to know how her touch would feel on wrinkled skin, what age would do to their two naked bodies. She wanted to dig deep into Zolá and curl up at her center, make a nest there, never leave. She wanted Zolá to fill her, again, again, to walk the streets full of her lover’s fingers, baptized by her tongue. All their moments were stolen and there were never enough. Tell me more. Tell me your heart, the whole of it. I was born to touch you, my life for this, my hand along your skin. Once, years ago, she had wanted to die; now she raged that there was not enough life, that they did not have a thousand years to spend, that one day their pockets would be emptied of days. They had only little coins of time and they spent and spent and spent them, polished them with their pleasure, made them gleam. So this is what joy does to a woman, she thought: it makes you hungry, makes you long to live and live, makes you guard the secret at any cost, wakes the animal inside and makes her growl to break the heavens into pieces.

  Fall came and draped the streets with leaves begging to be crushed underfoot. Eva felt them crack against her soles; sometimes she broke them lovingly, a slow, heavy caress, and other times she brought force into her step, imagining they were her husband’s face. Roberto had been forgetting to send money. That’s what he said when she called him: I’ve forgotten, yes, yes, I’ll send it soon. His voice was tense and he rushed to hang up, the woman who’d answered the phone surely tapping her foot in the background. And Eva believed him, that he’d meant to send the money, that it had slipped his mind, that Montevideo was simply drifting farther and farther from the scope of his thoughts. It was a small sum to him, after all; a trifle. Eva kicked a little pile of leaves as she walked through it. Rent was due in four days, and she did not have enough.

  She confided in Xhana, in her kitchen at 2 a.m.

  “Call him.”

  “I already have.”

  “Call him every day.”

  “The woman clearly doesn’t like me.”

  “Who cares? This is his responsibility.”

  “I’m not a charity case.”

  “Of course not. They’re his children.”

  Eva lit a cigarette. “They’re mine.”

  Xhana watched the smoke rise into the air in curls. “I can lend you the rent.”

  “Thank you.”

  They sat in silence while Eva smoked.

  “I just don’t want to need him.”

  “You could leave your apartment.”

  “Where would I go?”

  “You’re welcome here, but there’s more room at your parents’ house.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  Eva shrugged.

  “You see your father a lot now, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And things are fine?”

  “Overall.”

  “Except?”

  “I keep waiting for things to sour.”

  “Maybe they won’t.”

  “Maybe.”

  Xhana watched her put out her cigarette. “How is the book?”

  The knot in Eva loosened, began to glow. “Almost ready.”

  It was coming out in three weeks. The Widest River in the World. A slim volume, a simple jacket with a line drawing of a naked woman silhouetted against a shore. Between the covers, poems sang of hunger and dawn and beloved cities, milk-filled breasts and haunted nights, passions without names and beauty without reason, a young man bleeding in a Buenos Aires cell, Marxists dreaming over a gingham table. The first time she held a copy in her hands, she thought of the girl who dropped out of school at the age of ten, and wished she could reach back through time and open the book before her eyes. That girl breathed between these pages, as did all the girls and women she had been; they stalked the lines of words like phantoms; she half expected the pages to feel humid from their constant exhalations. Two people could read this book, or two thousand—it didn’t matter. It existed, she existed, she had sung.

  Xhana and Pajarita organized a party to celebrate the publication, at the house in Punta Carretas. They cooked for days, filled the house with fresh-cut flowers, and shooed Eva from the kitchen when she tried to help. She felt a bit like a bride, the bride she would have been if she had married at home, as was the custom. She stood in front of the mirror, applying her lipstick, and imagined herself a bride, tonight, at thirty, in her red silk dress, only who would she be preparing to marry? The woman in the mirror stared and did not blush.

  The guests filled the house to bursting, from people she knew well—Bruno, Marco, Tomás, Xhana, Artigas, Coco, Cacho, all the women from the neighborhood, all their families—to poets she’d recently met, and poets whom she hadn’t seen in years: Beatriz, Joaquín, and the Well-Known Poet arrived together and bellowed with joy as they embraced her. Beatriz, in particular, seemed hungry to talk. She had changed; her hair was a natural brown, she’d married Joaquín, she’d founded a women poets’ collective, would Eva like to join?

  “I’d love to,” Eva said.

  “Wonderful. I can’t wait to read your book.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Tell me something.” Beatriz lowered her voice. “Did you really run away with Andrés?”

  Eva fingered her wineglass. “In a fashion.”

  “I thought so. I really did. Where is he now?”

  “That’s anyone’s guess.”

  “I see,” Beatriz said, and Eva felt the sting of disappointment in her voice.

  “Some say he started a new life in Paris.”

  “Paris!”

  Eva smiled. She couldn’t help it. “Who knows?”

  Later in the evening, at the insistence of the crowd, she read some poems out loud. She stood in front of the living room window, framed by the cool pris
on walls, and almost wept at the force of the applause, it shook her open, she’d had too much wine, the sound filled her body like a hot sweet drink. After the reading, someone turned the music up, and the crowd began to dance; first she danced with her father, then with Artigas, then with Xhana, then in a circle of fellow poets, and finally alone, among couples, moving her body so the silk of her dress caressed her, red silk, she thought, closing her eyes, what a color for a bride, what a night for an elopement—I could vow inside right now as music moves my hips and nobody would know; why not, who cares if it’s impossible, the possible with all its lies and walls can go to hell; the beat is good and raw, my eyes are closed, and you, you, poetry, what kind of groom are you, alluring, unfathomable, after all these years I still don’t know what you promise or what you are, but I do know you’ve never left me; you’re the only one that stayed close against my skin, my hands, my sex, my mind, my nights, when I had nothing and was nothing you were with me; rocked me; filled me; come closer, my groom, the heat of my skin and the push of my breath and the salt of my days I am giving them to you, for better or worse, they are yours, I am yours, I do. I do. She opened her eyes. The room was packed. She looked for Zolá, though of course she hadn’t come, as she could not risk recognition; Eva felt her absence like a tear in her own dress, but she held on to what Zolá had said the night before, surprising Eva with a candlelit bedroom crowded with fresh roses, I’ll be there, I’m with you always. She scanned for the children. Roberto was eating empanadas with his cousins Félix and Raúl. He looked so serious in his shirt and tie, like a miniature man. She looked on, for her daughter, but couldn’t find her. Salomé. Salomé. The house was full of good adults and this was not a shoe store, there was no reason for panic, but it came anyway, gutted her with its instinctive maul, and she pressed through her guests to the kitchen, where Pajarita stood frying buñuelos and did not know where Salomé had gone, rushed down the hall and into every room until she opened the door of her old bedroom and found her daughter sleeping in the dark.

  She perched at the edge of the bed, and let her eyes adjust until she saw the curl of Salomé’s body, the dark splay of her braids, the crush of her ruffled party dress. Her breath calmed, and she almost laughed at her own flush of terror, but she didn’t want to break the quiet.

  We’ll be fine. All of us. The thought swept over her with its plush comfort. We can move into this house and we’ll be fine. There was a delicate grace to this night, in which it all seemed possible, all the thirst and also all its quenching; the world itself felt different, vaster, dazzling, an ocean of a world where men and women pushed their lives forward like waves; perhaps no surge (no written word no broken night no steam-in-the-dark secret) went unwasted; perhaps they fed the swell of life to come. She could crush this little girl against her, show her viscerally that she’d be safe and free, two things she herself was not in the years she slept in this same bed; safe and free and loved with such ferocity that nothing could keep her from the bright crests of her destiny. But she didn’t want to wake her, so instead, Eva etched the promise in her mind.

  Salomé slept through all of it, far away on a raft of dreams.

  SALOMÉ

  Seis

  ——————

  THE WORLD IS PUSHED

  BY MANY HANDS

  Some questions were not for asking. For example, the question of how Papá could be across the river when beyond the river you saw nothing but the sky. Questions about sky and fathers and many other things, they were just for turning on the great wheel of your breath; you inhale without knowing, you exhale the same. Gathered up inside, questions keep their intensity, circulating through you, gusts of their own. Better not to ask too much, better not to make Mamá sad, to chase away her laugh that broke the air to sharp and golden shreds, her smell of flowers and sweat and almonds, her presence itself, smoking, leaning, writing, composing secret messages to strangers or to God. And so Salomé did not ask why they were moving. In any case, she didn’t mind; she liked her grandparents’ house, with its ivory prison outside and the sleek wind in the oaks, its smells inside of onions frying, rosemary drying, Abuelo’s cologne as he gripped her in a tight embrace. Abuela always piled food high on white plates that had tiny pink flowers. Abuelo Ignazio told them stories while they ate: about his adventurous youth in the campo; the ride and shine and gamble of it all; the water-streets of Italy, the boats he used to build, and how his heart was stolen by a beautiful woman adept at sleight of hand.

  “She stole it, I swear—right out of my sleeve! I never got it back.” He pointed at Abuela Pajarita with his thumb. “This one here. She leaped out of the crowd like that Wonder Woman lady.”

  Abuela smiled. She looked small and old. Salomé pictured her in Wonder Woman’s bright bikini, lasso in hand.

  “Eat, Salomé!” Abuelo said. “You’re growing.”

  After dinner, Abuelo played with the enthusiasm of a fellow child. He showed them many things: how to play poker, how to bet with cow bones, the card tricks he’d once done on a stage. He shuffled extravagantly, cards flying through the air in a blurred arc. He spread the deck on the table with scarred hands. Pick one. She looked and picked. Then back it went, and shuffle shuffle, while his mouth told a tale or riddle. The cards spread out. He told her to pick another, and she obeyed. He knew—amazing!—exactly what card it was. He grinned at her expression, and leaned in close, wine sweetsharp on his breath.

  “Do you want to know the secret?”

  Salomé nodded.

  “Promise not to tell?”

  “Promise.”

  “The trick is to keep their attention on one hand, and work your magic with the other.”

  Salomé let the trick sink into her, never guessing how, when she was older, stroking guns in a dim room, it would resurface like a buoy in her mind.

  As she packed, Mamá would stop in the middle of a gesture to stare out into space, book or dish or box flap in hand, as if something had entered the room that only she could see. She would stay that way, frozen, even if Roberto or Salomé called her name. The morning of the move, the two of them got up early, and toasted bread together for their mother, without discussing it, there was no need to say she’s far away and so let us make toast. The living room towered with boxes, piled everywhere, marked in pen. Salomé was five now, old enough to put the bread on the griddle, though not to take it off, and old enough to dab cold water into the mate though Roberto still did the hot. They brought the tray to Mamá’s room. They found her standing on the balcony, in her nightgown, her back to them.

  “Mamá,” Roberto said.

  She turned quickly. She was beautiful, even with that faraway look of hers that revealed nothing. They raised the breakfast tray toward her, a hopeful offering.

  “Oh. Thank you so much. Good morning.”

  Mamá’s brothers helped carry and unload boxes. They arrived at the Punta Carretas house in a flurry of motion. Her grandparents were waiting for them with fresh lemonade. Tío Marco approached Eva with a big unlabeled box. “What’s this?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Damn heavy for nothing.”

  “It goes in my closet,” Mamá said quickly.

  Salomé wondered what the box contained. She followed Tío Marco and watched him stow it in the closet, on a shelf too high to reach. She carried a box of toys to her new room. She looked around. It was the same room Mami had grown up in, with its long window over the bed, overlooking a single tree, and its frayed lamp and creaky drawers. She tried to imagine Mami, in that bed, as a child, but she could only see her mother, all grown up but smaller, smoking a cigarette between the sheets.

  “Wonderful,” Abuelo said that night. “The house is full again. I don’t like to see it empty.”

  It seemed, to Salomé, a strange thing to say. The house was always full. Some nights, it swelled with tíos—Bruno, Marco, Tomás—and tías—Mirna, Raquel, Carlota—and cousins: Elena and Carlos and Raúl and Javier and Aquiles and Paula an
d Félix and Mario and Carmencita and Pilar. Abuela Pajarita worked a magic of her own: the table stretched, the walls pulled back, room appeared for every member of the family. The house roared with banter, gossip, quibbles, toasting glasses, shocks of laughter, squeals from boys. Mounds of food were reduced to crumbs. Card games extended late into the night. People sprawled everywhere. Salomé watched her uncles’ games of poker, played gauchos with her cousins (Aquiles the bull-skinner, Carmencita the wound-healer, Félix the villainous estanciero), and sometimes, when quiet called her, retreated to the kitchen and drew pictures to the sound of washing dishes.

  “Look at Salomé,” Tía Mirna said. “Such a good girl. So quiet and still.”

  “It’s true,” Mamá said, sounding perplexed. “She’s very good.”

  She spent many hours alone, submerged in private games. The buttons from Abuela’s sewing basket kept her rapt for days. She sorted them by size, color, texture, shape. They had parades. They formed families. They were a village of small round things, full of dramas and adventures. Metallic buttons were all merchants—grocers, butchers, spinners of wool. Green ones were clever. Pink ones were prone to fall in love. Little buttons tended to get picked on, and the biggest button, a velour veteran from an old coat, often came to their rescue. Every button had a story; every button could belong. The epic loves and struggles were invisible to the rest of the family; they saw only a good girl, unobtrusive, shifting little discs around in silence.

  She and Roberto had a hallowed place for silence: a swamp at the edge of town, the last stop of the bus. They went there sometimes with sandwiches and coins for the ride home—to get a little air, as Mamá put it. The air out there was wide and cool and redolent. She drew pictures. She stared out at the gliding ducks, the breezy reeds, the opulent trajectories of bugs. Roberto caught frogs and poked them, released them back into the mud, and scrawled in his notebook.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Research.”

  She looked out across the swamp and wondered what he’d find. Roberto was going to be a famous scientist, like Papá. “Your brother is a genius,” her teacher had said on her very first day of school. “Let’s see how you measure up.” Salomé didn’t know what “Measure Up” meant, but she knew she longed to do it. She paid attention in class, did all her homework, recited the alphabet on her walks to and from school, a letter for each step. When she got to the end, she took three Z steps, for good luck. She wrote her name in big block letters. She cut out hearts and decorated them carefully with dry pasta, felt, and shells from the river’s edge. She learned how to put numbers together to make new numbers, and, toward the end of her first year, began to read. Black lines and curves became sounds in her mind. She wanted to be able to read everything: street signs, schoolwork, her mother’s book with poems in it she herself had written, now alive on shelves throughout the city. In the afternoons, she studied beside her brother in the kitchen, until it was time to set the table.