Back at the apartment, I checked the message machine. There were two calls, both around a minute of crackling silence. No Avendaño. No Claudia. I erased them. After calling information, I contacted a local travel agent about a flight to Buenos Aires and she said she could have an itinerary by the end of the week.
That night, I turned my attention to the photographs of Opusculus Noctis, since they figured so prominently in Avendaño’s testament. I compared my translations with his writing in the testament and continued on, focusing on the photo I had come to think of as A Passage to Dreams. His “doorway” out of his cell. Maybe the photograph held some inkling as to the source of The Eye’s madness. Knowing it, I could know his mind. Still Claudia did not call. I worked through the Latin, Quam alibi, ex solis luce refulgens. Caro referta regia mundi et villae multa cubicula iure pretium, pretium clarissimae licet adhuc in atriis gallerys paris . . . there are other worlds than these, and with the right payment, one can move through the universe’s rooms and halls. The pretium is dear.
After setting out tuna for Tomás, as I began to think of him, I poured vodka over ice for myself, sat at the kitchen table and began smoking, poring over the photographs, surrounded by typewriters.
The night wore on. I boiled eggs, ate them. I made coffee, found it bland, poured myself more vodka. I picked up the phone, recalling Claudia’s number, hand poised over the rotary dial. I hung up without calling her. Reread sections of Below, Behind, Beneath, Between, the ones focusing on Avendaño’s translation. I found myself in that same strange state that long periods of study for my doctorate left me—dissociative, sleepless, and wrung out. The rucks and runnels of my mind blank except for that which I focused on. Pinching filters from the cigarettes, I twisted their ends until they were puckered little white sausages, stronger now than normal. Their smoke burnt when I took it in my lungs. I searched The Eye’s room, looking for I don’t know what. Returning to the kitchen, I found A Little Night Work before me, both The Eye’s typed Latin and the rumpled photographs. The vodka tasted like water, the cigarettes, even filterless, as plain as air. I should be thinking about packing, I thought. I guess I am. What will I need? Warm clothes, boots, gloves, lots of money. Nothing else. I felt some sort of kinship with Avendaño, laboring for Sepúlveda and Cleave, if that really happened—I entered a soporific waking-dream state, head full of grammar and declensions. But also, displaced, lost. I was leaving home, to go home.
I rolled the Latin over my tongue like a bitter lozenge, sounding the words out. Scribbling over a piece of paper, I took down my interpretation of the words, in Spanish. You can only enter the river once, they say, and I was in it. I placed a Louis Armstrong disc on the turntable and in some Latinate oblivion, began singing foreign words to “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” that must’ve sounded deranged to the cat if he lurked about, or someone strolling on the street below, passing my open windows.
I did not notice when the black-clad figure appeared in the room. Holding a photograph of A Passage to Dreams, hunched over, looking at it so closely that my hair fell down on either side of my face, to me the figure was simply a darker lock, a tress wavering indistinct in the corner of my vision. It was this photograph, these words, he read before taking out his own eye. There is a shadow of the photographer, the foot of a chair captured at the image’s corner.
I was smoking too much, my throat ached, and I was at a state of drunkenness where I felt elated, sober. The room was hazy with blue smoke. The French doors leading to the balcony were cracked, the air was warm, and I could hear conversation from passersby coming from outside, the buzzy honking of mopeds and cars, the cry of cart vendors down off the Paseo Maritimo below, near the shore mingling with the strains of Louis Armstrong’s pealing horn.
The record ended, the needle taking its final plunge to the record’s center. The tonearm, through some sensory mechanism, detected this and rose from the vinyl, and seated itself back in its cradle.
Silence.
The music, the world outside, the sea, the cars, the passersby. All quiet, as if they never existed.
My eyes shifted in their sockets; I was arrested with fright yet straining to see. The lights in the apartment flickered and, somehow, I realized all of Málaga’s lights were flickering. Or maybe it wasn’t Málaga’s indecisive and irregular power supply—possibly it was something else pushing in. I could not tell.
Awareness filtered in. My breath caught, and I turned my head slowly away from the photograph. A cigarette sat with an inch-long ash in the tray, spooling out thin blue-white smoke to the ceiling. Behind that smoke, indistinct and defocused, a man. He seemed as though I observed him through a camera with a long lens, and he was outside of my depth of field. At any moment he could snap into focus. Despite the vodka, my heart began to skitter in my chest. My hand found a pencil; I gripped it like a dagger.
I tilted my head to get a better look, pushing myself away from the table. His appearance warped and wavered, like a shadow puppet from a candle. Somehow, he remained behind smoke. The room darkened and filled with his presence, hazy, muddied. A flash of water, over my head, full of sediment and silt, hair floating in a benthic halo. Then it was gone. Yet the occlusion remained. I wondered if something was on fire, if I left the burner on when I boiled eggs.
But I wasn’t choking. I could breathe—no smoke, no opalesced water. The shape—the man—seemed to loom larger in the room, a shadow lengthening up a wall.
Coming closer.
Then there was another movement, smaller. More centered. Tomás stood inside the open balcony doors, head canted down, so his eyes seemed ominous and veiled at the same time. He took five slow, measured paces into the room, staring unblinking at the shape. The cat made no sound, gave no hiss, but the scarred fur on his back rose in hackles. He placed himself between the dark figure and me.
The cat’s action snapped me out of whatever it was that held me silent. “Who—” I started. “What do you want?”
I do not know what I expected. For him—it—to answer I’m from the CIA. Or an ANI assassin. To reveal himself in a puff of diabolical smoke as Vidal himself?
To show himself as Cleave?
Tomás took another step, his paw wavering, as if testing invisible currents in the air. He placed his paw and settled, sphinxlike, on the floor. Oh, he’s resting now? Is this real? I thought. And then I realized that, no, Tomás was readying himself for a pounce. I turned to face the figure, brandishing the pencil. If the cat could attack, then so could I.
And then the darkness lost cohesion, dissipating. I laughed. Took another drink of vodka. What tricks loneliness and alcohol can play on a person!
Yet Tomás remained there, silent, still, and watchful, for the rest of the night.
6
I bought a military backpack from one of the sports stores that offered hunting and fishing supplies for the adventurous sort and returned to the apartment. I found Claudia pounding on the door, yelling, “Open up! I know you’re in there, Isabel! You can’t hide from me!”
I said her name and she froze, midstrike upon the door. Her head pivoted toward me on gimbals.
“You,” she said. “You—” Words failed her.
I passed her, unlocked the door, opened it. I gestured for her to enter. She looked at me warily.
I am, after all, very much like my mother. When things escalate, I grow cold, distant. I’m sure my face reflected this. Claudia became more and more agitated.
After placing the backpack in the bedroom, I set the kettle to boil and made a cup of tea as Claudia stared at me and huffed and puffed until she grew calm enough to speak.
“What?” she said. “You were just going to leave? No call? No word?”
I placed tea bags in a cup, poured steaming water over it, and raised it in offering to Claudia. She shook her head, vehemently. A little too vehemently.
“I didn’t think you’d care, honestly,” I said.
“Care?” she said. “I don’t just fuck any
one. Of course I’d care.”
I shrugged. “Maybe you’d be too occupied to notice.”
“Is this about Laura?” Claudia asked. “Laura is great. You’d like her. We asked you to join us.”
I opened my mouth, closed it. It would be so easy just to enter into a spat. A little lover’s argument about who said and did what.
I won’t do that. Can’t do that.
“There’s more to it than Laura. It’s Avendaño,” I said.
“You told Tilly that your uncle was dying of cancer. She’s asking everyone in your department to take over your classes.”
I ignored that. “He’s gone missing. And I think I might know where he is. But I can’t help him if I don’t go back home,” I said.
“Who cares? He’s a relic!”
I wanted to say, I care! He’s Mageran! And the closest thing to family I have, but it would be hard to explain, even to myself.
Instead, I said, “It’ll only be for the summer, and I’ll be back.”
“No, you won’t. You’re going to Magera! I’ve done some reading up on it. The lunatic who’s in charge there tortures and kills students. He ‘disappears’ intellectuals, or anyone his secret police think could be subversive.” She was furious. “And you’ve got subversive written all over you. I can’t imagine that Señor Vidal will spare lesbian professors from his scourging of the country.”
“I will not wear a sign regarding those I like to kiss,” I said.
Claudia laughed. “You never have,” and then she was kissing me and I could not think for a long while. From the kitchen to the bedroom, her hands were on me and mine on her. Oblivion through taste, touch, smell.
When we could breathe again, she said, “I’m glad you reconsidered.”
“Me too,” I said. I pressed into her body, glad of the closeness and warmth. Tomás entered the bedroom, paced around the bed, hopped on the chair nearby and watched us for a long while.
“Here’s a little perv,” Claudia said. “Lookin’ for a show, buddy?”
I thought about the figure I had conjured, vodka-drunk and translation-fevered, and how Tomás had intervened. How did he know I needed something or someone to play into my imaginary intruder? The alternative was untenable. Could I tell Claudia any of that? She wouldn’t understand and I couldn’t express it in a way that she wouldn’t want me to be checked out by a psychiatrist.
So I kissed her.
Tomás, bored, blinked slowly once, hopped down from the chair, and padded out of the room.
* * *
We spent the next five days basking in each other’s company. Whatever distance had grown between us was gone during that time. Food, sex, liquor; laughter, lightness, music. We watched television late at night, and I took her to see a Mexican luchador film at the Cinema la Playa, where the masked Toro fought a number of voodoo-possessed zombies who seemed intent on molesting Toro’s busty aunt, Maria. Claudia laughed throughout the screening, and I couldn’t help but compare her sense of humor to Avendaño’s. They would like each other, I thought. Or hate each other. But they’d definitely be quite a bit more than I could handle as a pair.
One afternoon, the post arrived and we were just recovering from a postlunch siesta in which very little sleeping occurred. I roused myself to collect the letters and sat in the kitchen with a cigarette flipping through envelopes. One had no return address.
I opened it and withdrew a torn piece of yellow legal paper.
-19.569912, -70.197901
Rafael
“What’s that?” Claudia asked. She stood at the bedroom door, in a T-shirt and nothing else.
I slipped the paper back into the envelope. “Nothing. Just junk for Avendaño,” I said.
She kissed the back of my neck. “I might be hungry again,” she said.
“You’re always hungry.”
“This is true,” Claudia said, and nothing else. I liked that about her. She didn’t feel the need to add Hungry for you or quote Police or Rolling Stones lyrics. I put down the mail and returned her attentions.
On the sixth day of our time together, I woke before Claudia, as usual, dressed in jeans, boots, and a black T-shirt, and pulled my hair back in a severe knot. Taking a piece of paper, I wrote:
Claudia—
I have left word with the landlord that you will be staying here for the duration, if you so wish. The Bank of Barcelona will have a 10,000 peseta a month stipend for the person who watches over Avendaño’s apartment and I’d rather it be you than anyone else. The rent, of course, is already paid. It is a wonderful apartment and I’m grateful for the time we spent together here. I think there will even be enough room for Laura, if you wish. She is very lovely, and I think you’ll be happy together.
Do not fret yourself about my departure; I doubt very much you will, anyway. It doesn’t seem within your character. Just as my character will not allow me to let Avendaño join the ranks of disappeared without at least trying to find him.
I will return.
Feed the cat, for your protection.
Isabel
Leaving the note and keys on the kitchen table, I grabbed my backpack stuffed with clothes, manuscripts, photographs, and let myself out into the steaming Málaga morning. In my back pocket, a plane ticket, and in my wallet, two torn pieces of legal paper bearing the names Alejandra and Rafael.
Within the hour, I was at the Costa del Sol Airport.
By early morning, I was in Madrid, and before noon I was a thousand miles away, over the Atlantic, flying west to Buenos Aires.
7
Green patchwork on copper brown fields. Brilliant standing water flashing from the sun after the long refraction of blue sea. We had crossed the Atlantic, along with the equator, and more than anything, something about the quality of light indicated to me I was closer to my childhood home. Magnetic fields from the innards of the earth to tug upon my belly; the subtle twinges of the Coriolis effect on the inner ear maybe; the secret calendar that my body kept, all these long years since I had been in Spain indicated something was wrong, that the seasons were off, the sun was in the wrong place, and it was hot when it should be cold. Just as Málaga was heading into the swelter and sway of summer, in Buenos Aires autumnal light filtered into the cabin—ochre, russet, copper, ecru, carmine, blood-red. The stewardesses of the Iberia Airlines flight from Barcelona to Buenos Aires directed us to buckle our seat belts, finish our drinks, and extinguish our cigarettes, and after twenty-four hours, we obeyed all instructions with alacrity. From the window, I watched miniature trucks cast rich dust in long tails on dirt roads veining the fields surrounding the airport, growing larger, growing. Black wheels lowered, pneumatics cranked ailerons into awkward angles, and the dusky land rose to meet the plane with a screeching kiss and shudder.
I had checked no baggage. At a counter, I exchanged half of my money to Argentinian pesos, and the rest to Mageran ones. Moving through the airport, I pressed through the crowds, listening to the rounded syllables and long vowels—the liquid, mellifluous accents of Argentinian Spanish speakers. I had been gone so long, even the same language sounded different. Weary from the flight yet exhilarated—it was just midday—I made my way out onto the street. Hustlers and grifters stalked the shoals of travelers, looking for a score—a shifting school of hawkers, escorts, chaperones, panders, facilitators. Catcalls and propositions, blaring beats from cassette players, cries of salesmen. A deluge of penetrating noise. Beyond the line of men, taxis cruised the surf like sharks. I hailed the most official-looking one, a black-and-yellow radio taxi, but the car just continued trawling for fares, ignoring me.
“Allow me. You might be a little too short to be seen over this crowd,” a man said. I found him standing closer than I was comfortable with. I stepped away to get a good look at him and to prevent him from touching me. He wore a black suit that, despite its natty cheapness, fit his lean frame very well. His accent was harsh, his vowels long when they should be short, and short when they should be long; th
e sum of all the little parts of him—his hair, his nails, his complexion, and his tie, his shoes—told me he was American.
Having read Avendaño’s testament, the fact he was American made me very nervous.
“Hey,” he said, seeing my expression and body language. He held up his hands, not to hail but to prove his innocence in some way. “I’m just trying to help.”
“I’ll hail my own taxi,” I said.
“I’m happy to—”
I turned abruptly and walked away from him at a brisk pace, not looking back, breath coming fast. At any moment I was sure his hand would fall on my backpack and jerk me off my feet.
It did not.
When I was near the northern end of the platform, I was able to get the attention of a radio taxi and instructed the driver to get us away from the airport and take me to a hotel near any commerce center. He dropped me at a newer hotel, close to the city center, towering twenty-five stories tall. I took a room, paying cash. It was expensive, but I couldn’t bring myself to hunt for something cheaper. I drank water from the sink, uncaring if it was safe, and fell into bed. I do not remember closing my eyes.
* * *
I woke in the dark, not knowing where I was.
“Tomás?” I said, sitting up.
The cat was not there. He was an ocean—a world—away.
A shadow was, though. It loomed in the far corner of the room, near the dull, shark’s eye of the television.
“All right then, fucker,” I said. Tensing, I reached out and turned on the side-table light . . .
Nothing. White stucco walls, puce-stained furniture a mockery of mahogany, green-and-yellow-patterned drapes. A hideous sfumato landscape above the bed.
I had no watch and the clock near the television was unplugged, stalled on 3:12. The sky, from the window, looked blue-black; morning was hours away. I smoked and flipped through the Buenos Aires telephone book until I found the page I was looking for. Moto Mejor Real, motorcycle and moped sales. I tore the onion-skin page from the book, neatly folding it and storing it in my bag.
The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky Page 8