The Invisible Mountain

by Carolina de Robertis

  I was here.

  I was there.

  I was not there, I want to know. Tell me.

  No.

  Oh, come on.

  It was like this—

  I always wondered.

  One time I.

  And I.

  Now that you say it.

  And what about.

  And also—

  Don’t get me started.

  You already have.

  That’s true.

  Another time I.

  And I.

  I never told, never.

  Tell it tonight.

  Tonight—

  She came home late and lay awake, swimming with their stories and her own, imagining the dizzying routes that uruguayos had taken through the years, imagining a house in Spain, an Australian bar, a certain family in Mexico, a certain girl on a California beach, in a California car, until she slept and dreamed of dark lakes, oceans, Victoria on a raft that Salomé was swimming after. In other dreams she was alone in a dark room, and suddenly Victoria was present, she could make out the shape of her but could not see her face, and Salomé would say, Turn on the light so I can see you, but when Victoria did, she disappeared, the room disappeared, and all around her on the walls were the shadows of the past, shifting, dark, expansive, demanding witness, demanding space, demanding light.

  And there was this city. Montevideo. She lived and rose each day to see it. It was the only city she’d known, and not the flashiest, but surely like none other, so it was said by those who’d returned from Paris, New York, Caracas, Sydney, Salerno. Anyway, it didn’t matter what they said. It was her city and she roamed it, at 3 p.m., at 3 a.m., skulking the streets, touching windowpanes, inhaling the scent of other people’s cooking, turning left or right according to her impulse. She was free. She could walk anywhere. Usually, though, she found her way, over and over, to the water. She walked along La Rambla, watching moonlight wink along the wide river. There were always other people, day or night, mate thermos under one arm, ambling slowly, talking, laughing, never rushed; perhaps most of their relatives were gone overseas; perhaps their jobs had evaporated; perhaps their lovers were haunted by La Máquina; perhaps they wished they were living in the United States; but here they were. Many had gone. The years had been centrifugal, distending her known world, scattering uruguayos across the globe. But look, some clung on, insisting, Uruguay still exists within its own borders, even though it’s not the same, will never be the same, the idyllic country Batlle shaped is gone forever. But we have this one. This Uruguay: less innocent, smaller somehow, dwarfed by the looming world, more wounded, bleeding people out through its wounds, mourning the lost blood of the exiled and the dead and also those who simply shrugged and flew away, but also stronger for its wounds, mature, tenacious, wiser about what it can withstand, with a heart that beats and people who pulse through its pathways. She watched the people walk by. She made eye contact and struck up conversations. La Rambla opened its curved path to everyone, echoed all their feet, caught their gazes in the glitter of the river.

  One night, Orlando kissed her at the shore, gently, his tongue like water.

  “Come home with me,” he whispered.

  Phhh, said the waves on the rocks.

  Salomé leaned into him. He smelled of musk and wool. “I don’t have much to give you.”

  “So don’t give anything. To hell with giving. Just come home.”

  That night she touched him like a feral cat, all claws and hunger.

  Victoria had grown up. She was a young woman. Salomé heard it in her voice on Christmas Eve of ’88. It shouldn’t have shocked her—it was normal, inescapable, it happened to everybody after all—but still she could have crushed the receiver in her hand.

  “Victoria? That’s really you?”

  “Sí, Tía.”

  “You finished high school.”

  “Yes. I’m in college.”

  “You like it?”

  “Mostly. It’s cold in New York.”

  “You must be glad to be back home.”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you studying?”

  “I don’t know yet.” Static. “How are things in Uruguay?”

  “Fine. Maybe you’ll come visit us one day.”

  “I’d like that.”

  The force of Victoria’s response surprised her. “Me too.” She’d been terribly greedy. It was a costly call, she should stop, she should pass the phone. “There’s always a place for you here.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” Salomé said. More static. “Okay, I’d better pass you to your great-grandmother, before I get in trouble. You know how threatening she can get.”

  Victoria laughed. “Okay. Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas.”

  Salomé gave the phone to Pajarita and slipped into her bedroom. Victoria’s voice echoed from the bare walls. Really? She couldn’t discern the tone of the question, and with each unheard echo it shape-shifted from pleasure to longing, from longing to surprise, from surprise to mere familial courtesy. She a girl with remote origins in a small and remote country, a place she’d never been to, or at least not since she was old enough to retain memory. Perhaps she’d been raised with bits and pieces: inflected Spanish, an amethyst doorstop, occasional empanadas, branded leather images of gauchos on the walls, photos of her parents’ childhood homes, selective tales of how things used to be, an annual call. Perhaps she hadn’t. Perhaps she felt like a plant cut at the root. She might crave this place—to know it, to imbibe it—or she might not care at all. Maybe Roberto and Flor were experts at forgetting, and raised Victoria not to care. But girls don’t become exactly what they’re shaped to be, I of all people should know that. All this forgetting, it was exhausting, it required intricate invisible convolutions of the mind, and what was served by it? What would she do if she were not a coward? She was a terrible, terrible coward. The room was quiet. The sealed envelope leered at her from the bedside, another annual card from Mexico, unopened, as always. She looked at it for a long time. She picked it up and traced its edges with her fingertip. No, I can’t. She put it down and picked it up four times before tearing the flap open. The front of the card held an image of Frida Kahlo, bleeding, heart exposed. Inside, she read:

  Dear Salomé,

  We hope that you are well. We are well here, the three of us and the children—Cacho is 10 now, Ernesto is 7, and Salomé has just turned 6 years old. We are grateful for our health, our humble house, and the carpentry business. This year, Leona became a full professor of history. We celebrated with a Uruguayan-style asado, which our Mexican friends enjoyed!

  We think of you often. The offer of flying you out still stands. We hope that one day you’ll accept it and come visit us, here in México D.F.

  With lots of love,

  Leona, Tinto, Anna, Cacho, Ernesto, and Salomé

  She reread the card several times. Her hands shook. She closed it, looked at the picture on the front, put it back in the torn envelope, took it out, looked at the picture, put it away and took it out and read it again and again and again. We hope that you. The offer of. Salomé has just turned. She felt sick. She felt like laughing. She felt like throwing everything in sight. She felt as though she were in a glass box and the world beyond it breathed a different air. She wanted to break every pane around her. She wanted to cling to the staleness inside, but no, you can’t, you won’t, not this time, there is too much waiting on the other side. She rose and walked to the hall. From the living room, she heard Abuelo telling some exaggerated tale about a man staying up all night to build a boat. He was making his wife laugh, well into his nineties—miraculous, really, their good health. The door to her mother’s bedroom was ajar. She went in without thinking. She was alone. She opened Mamá’s closet with hands that seemed to know before her mind what she was doing, and reached up to the shelf that she now accessed with no trouble, pulling down the heavy box that was still there. She unfolded the flap
s and pulled them out, her childhood shoes, Roberto’s shoes, the Mary Janes and oxfords and worn tennies, red galoshes, white leather that must have been her first communion, white patent baptisms even deeper down, all with three eucalyptus leaves hanging from their mouths like tongues; somewhere one was broken—she had broken it—but which one, she didn’t know, couldn’t remember, it was too late to find it, too late to fix it, the shoes spread across the floor like an army. She stared at them. They didn’t charge. They stuck their leafy tongues out at her.

  She heard steps and looked up. Mamá stood in the doorway. They stared at each other. Mamá made a sound that could have been the first part of a word.

  “I’ve always wondered,” Salomé said, “what these were for.”

  Mamá hovered for another moment. She was wearing a red silk blouse for the occasion; it matched her lipstick. Her hair was swept up with two silver combs. She sank down on the floor beside her daughter. “Me too.”

  “I failed you.”

  “No.”

  “Of course I did.”

  “Stop it.”

  “I thought things would go differently.”

  “I know.”

  “You must have hated me.”

  Mamá looked immensely sad. “No.”

  “How can that be?”

  Mamá leaned forward. She smelled of rose perfume. “Salomé. Salomé.”

  Salomé looked away, at the crowd of child-shoes. Her mother gripped her, wide awake, right there in the lamplight, and wept without making a sound. Years of unsaid words shook out in her mother’s convulsions, shook out the way dust shakes from a beaten rug, and Salomé felt that it was true—she somehow knew it—her mother had no hate for her, had never hated, and this shamed her but made her feel something else also, something nameless and sharp and hollowing; I can’t ever be the same woman I was or would have been, and if I am to live then I must kill her—now, here, sitting on this floor—must kill the woman I could have been and cannot be. Because there is another woman waiting that I can still be, but am not yet, am just now becoming. She held her mother tightly and let her sob. Over her shoulder, she watched the oxfords, galoshes, tennies, Mary Janes hold their leaves and do nothing.

  Mamá finally subsided. They leaned into each other. Time passed.

  “Mamá.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “You could rest—”

  “I’m tired of secrets.”

  “You can tell me anything.”

  “I want to meet Zolá.”

  Mamá stiffened. “To get your hair done?”

  Salomé touched her mother’s gray locks. “You must love her very much.”

  Mamá was silent.

  “I hope she’s good to you.”

  Very softly, almost inaudibly. Mamá said, “She is.”

  Salomé traced slow arcs along her mother’s scalp.

  Zolá was a graceful lady in her sixties. Her hair was sleek and white. Her apartment was a tableau of peach marble, mirrors, gold. She received Salomé with mate and a platter of bizcochos. Salomé sat down on a velvet sofa by a floor-to-ceiling window, where the eye could roam out over buildings to the river to the sky. She had never been so high up in her life.

  “Thank you for coming to visit an old lady like me.” Zolá smiled. She wore pearls, bold makeup, and a periwinkle dress. “Go ahead. Ask me.”

  “Ask what?”

  “Whatever you like.”

  “How did you meet my mother?”

  “She didn’t tell you?”

  “No.”

  “Long ago, when we were children. We met again when she returned from Buenos Aires.”

  “How long have you been … ?”

  “Thirty-three years.”

  Salomé watched her hostess fill the gourd. “And do you lo—”

  “Immensely.”

  “Ah.”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  Salomé smiled, almost parting her lips, almost forgetting her lost teeth. “I can’t imagine.”

  Zolá handed her the mate. “I’m glad to meet you.”

  Salomé drank.

  “I’m glad to see you in one piece.”

  She sucked until the gourd was empty, gurgling at the bottom of its leaves. She imagined her mother coming here over the years, while her daughter was imprisoned, to weep or kiss or rage at heavens that were a few flights closer to this space. Zolá’s home, the sanctuary. The brightest secret. Outside, the sun was shattering in its slow fall toward the water, shards of it catching on the waves. A gull rose from a rooftop and slanted into flight. “Am I in one piece?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  She handed the gourd back. “Why not?”

  Zolá refilled the mate and drank. She lowered the gourd. She looked at Salomé. Her eyes were dark, almost painfully awake. For all the powder on this woman’s face, there was nothing masked about her eyes. “Would you let me wash your hair?”

  In the basin, Salomé slowly surrendered her own weight. She was submerged in the scent of her mother, that sharpsweet emanation of hers, rose and almond, opulent, mysterious to her when she was a child. Two hands entered the water and touched her, lightly, sinuously, like fish. Like fish they dove through hair and reached her scalp, which was so naked and so pale, it was unbearable, this touch, it hurt, it was sweet, hurt sweetly, she loathed it, cringed from it, but when the fingers backed away she heard her own voice say No, come back please, and they did. She didn’t know what fell from her, into that water, what unseen crusts broke off and turned to foam or filth or barnacles, but she was naked with torn skin and a man laughed as he raped her; no, not true, she was not there, she was in Zolá’s home, and a voice came through the water, Breathe, Salomé, breathe. Such gentle hands. Now they rocked her head as if she were a baby who couldn’t lift it for herself. Roses. Almonds. They seeped into her scalp.

  When it was over, Zolá wrapped her in a fresh, warm towel. “Don’t get up. Just relax.”

  She lost track of time. When she opened her eyes, Zolá was reading on the sofa. The sun had fallen farther, and stared straight into the room.

  Zolá looked up. “How are you?”

  “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “On the contrary. Why don’t you stay for dinner?”

  “I have to be somewhere,” she lied.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “More than all right. I have no way to thank you.”

  Zolá smiled. “That’s easy. Just come back.”

  Salomé descended fifteen floors and walked to La Rambla. There was gold in the light on the sidewalk, fleeting gold, the kind that would be swallowed by the dusk any moment. She traced it with broad steps.

  She went back to Zolá the following week. She wanted to be cut. Zolá received her with open arms, a warm basin, and ready scissors. Snip, snip, the tufts of her, worn ones, split ones, fell to the floor. After her first cut, she went to Orlando’s house and wept for seven hours (he didn’t ask her anything, he dried her face with his palm, his shirt, his towel, he enfolded her, he smelled of forest floor). She woke up the following afternoon, at 4 p.m., exhausted, thick-limbed, rearing slowly out of a deep fog.

  She went to her second cut with pen and paper ready in her purse. Afterward, she went to the bench at Parque Rodó she used to share with Tinto, but could not sit there because a young couple sat entwined. Their thrill at each other’s touch was palpable. She kept her distance, resisting the urge to run up to them and say, We did that too, we did, but not in full view of the sun, we did it under the cover of night, we had so many things to hide, I’m sorry, am I interrupting? Of course she’d be interrupting. They were young, they could not imagine and did not want to imagine a couple who had found refuge on that same bench over twenty years ago. Instead, she went to the fountain and sat down facing it. The water rose and fell and whispered in a liquid language she could not interpret. She stared at the green crowns of the trees. Pen and paper sat sti
ll in her hands for a long time, until finally she wrote to La Familia Cassella y Volkova: Thank you, so good to hear, I’d love to accept your invitation, perhaps next year.

  After the third cut, she drank a whole bottle of red wine, alone in her room, watching the oak outside her window cradle the cold moon. At two in the morning, when she was sure everybody was asleep, she went to the hall and picked up the phone. She dialed. The rings were long and foreign.

  Her brother picked up first. “Hello?”

  “Roberto. It’s Salomé.”

  “What?” He sounded alarmed, across the distance. “What time is it over there?”

  “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “Of course not. We just finished dinner.”

  “Good.”

  “Everything’s fine?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. No deaths in the family.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  “I want to talk to you about Victoria.”

  Crackling silence.

  “I want to tell her.”

  More silence.

  “Roberto?”

  “I’m here. This is expensive. Let me call you right back.”

  She hung up. She waited. The hall was full of shadows; through her bedroom door she saw her window and, through that, farther away, the oak. She saw herself, in bed, at seven years old, gazing at that oak, deciding to break her first rule. The phone screeched. She picked up quickly. “Roberto.”

  “Yes. Flor’s on the line too.”

  “Hola, Salomé,” Flor said, shortly, or perhaps it was the static, hard to tell.

  “Hola, Flor. How are you?”

  “Fine.”

  “So,” Roberto said, “you’ve thought about this?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Look, I’m just—”

  “Sorry, Roberto, sorry. Don’t hang up.”

  “I won’t. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Salomé tried to picture them, in their pretty house, the dinner dishes stacked up in the sink, ready to wash, now poised on separate phones, on tasteful chairs, casting glances at each other across the room. She saw her brother in his old Donald Duck pajamas.