by Calvin Baker
“So I see.” She laughed.
“What do you see?”
“You’re in a bad situation either way.”
“It is only a game.”
“That is what my ex-husband used to say, and he meant it. But I don’t believe you think anything is only a game.”
“You were married?”
“Yes. I thought I mentioned it last night. It was what you were supposed to do at the age I was then, which was also old enough to know better.”
“Who did you marry?”
“A man I thought was the right kind of man to marry.”
“He was not?”
“He was the right kind. He just was not the right man. Uncle Thiago is the only one who saw that, and questioned why I was doing it.”
“You didn’t know?”
“I didn’t listen. I was doing what I was supposed to do, because I did not know what I-me-myself wanted to do. And even if I had, I might not have known how to do it, let alone how to be in a real promise with someone else. I went ahead with it, and it was just right, except for the voice somewhere saying, are you sure? Are you sure? Of course I wasn’t. How could I be? But the people had been invited. The hall was reserved. I walked down the aisle to the wrong prince, and the wrong castle. They all look the same from the outside. But once you get inside, oh boy little boy, that’s a whole other story.”
“How long since you divorced?”
“We separated three years ago. We just filed the final papers. I came here to get away from all of it. The papers had a meaning I didn’t expect, and the lawyers were a way I did not know.”
“But you’re a lawyer.”
“Not that kind. I know about hammering together constitutions, not chiseling apart marriages.”
“Sorry it was difficult.”
“No harder than it should be. But no one ever listens to that part of the fairy tale. They tell you all these little girl lies, and I’m sure they told you little boy lies too, and then you are living to fulfill the lie, not knowing what else there is, and so you are stuck in a relative life. I have this in relation to that. But still need that over there. Once I find my prince, my castle, my pot of gold everything will be fine. For men, it is probably just: be tough and work hard. That is the only thing you think is required of you. But you think I’m just justifying my mistake.”
“How do you know what I think?”
“I’m sorry. I should not assume. All I meant to say is if you have just a partway idea of yourself, how can you have a wholehearted relationship to anyone else? Does that make sense? It’s too hard to understand what another person goes through, if anyone ever really does, if you don’t know what you yourself have been through, so that was the hard part of it for me.”
“You think you know now?”
“I see the look in your eye. Maybe. I just hope someday, some wise kindergarten teacher will take all the boys and girls into the coatroom, right after they have heard their first fairy tale, and tell them the score: Okay, now forget everything you just heard about the end. You are going to keep hearing it in everything they tell you from now on—how beautiful the princess is, how rich and handsome the prince, all about the gold standard. Just listen to me, kids, and pay close attention. First you will get lost in the woods. Or waylaid by ogres who sell you out to the witch, who is going to put you in her pot. Or else you will spend the best hundred years of your life fast asleep. And for you poor coyotes who think you are clever, Acme has special traps they are going to use to fix you up like Ozymandias. If not that, it will be the dragon who catches up to you and singes you to within an inch of your life. You will have to spend years in psychotherapy explaining why you can’t go into the kitchen, because you are afraid of fire, and that’s why you’re so goddamned thin.”
She took a drink from my water bottle, before finishing her thought. “So you might as well do your own thing starting now, and live your own life in your own way, because I promise you this, whichever way you head, and whatever it is you’re after, if it is worth anything at all, sooner or later it’s going to hurt like hell.”
“Can’t we all just stay out of the woods?”
“What, and turn into the dragon one scale at a time?”
Our game was long since ended, and we were sitting on the red clay, next to the net posts, careless of anything else. I wanted to spend more time with her, and invited her to join me on the river later in the week.
“I return to the city tomorrow,” she said. “I can come back on the weekend, and we can go out together then.”
“I would like that,” I said.
“I see what you are thinking,” she smiled. “Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry about what?”
“You are wondering whether I’m available.”
“I am?”
“That’s what I would wonder if I were a sensible man and had met a random girl I liked. But you should not. I have paperwork to take care of in the city that will dredge up old feelings, and I’ll be sad and probably cry. But that will be to clean it all out. Hopefully you won’t get insecure, or run away, because it will just be the sadness, complex but complete, you feel for what is vanished and gone. I will be better than new after that because I know something I did not before. Some of it I wish I did not, but I do, which makes me wiser and perfectly available. And if you play your cards right—who knows? So, second date?”
As I listened to her the idea lodged in my mind, and with it that joy of anticipation and new possibility. I was impressed again with her forthrightness and self-possession, and not anxious as I had been the night before, as I commanded myself to meet her steady gaze, and tried to observe what I was feeling, which was that perhaps it was not only my subconscious that was being snagged but my spirit.
Still I only did not know what our next meeting would hold.
24
A torrential rain was falling in Farodoro and predicted to sweep over the islands by evening, lasting through the weekend. Sylvie postponed, and I rowed to the main island in the afternoon for supplies to last through the storm. At the counter I asked Doña Iñes for batteries, but she had already run out, so I bought candles and extra matches, hoping if there was a blackout I would not burn the place down. There was only intermittent Internet on the island, and I had not read anything of the outside since arriving, so I put a stack of days-old newspapers in my basket as well. I scanned the headlines as I waited on line, saw the world was unchanged since I’d left, then put them back.
“Oh, mi niño,” Doña Iñes said, pushing me aside and packing my rucksack with the groceries, when she saw how ineptly I did it. She was from the Canaries, and had married a local man who died on her three years after she arrived. She never remarried or had children and called everyone “my child.” But I thought she was especially fond of me, because I knew her island and all about how the sea was there, and the fish and volcanoes and the light of first day in the middle of the Atlantic.
“Buena suerte con la tormenta,” she waved, as I took my supplies out to the dock.
“Gracias.”
Outside again I could see the pregnant, swollen clouds up river, and hurried to get back before they burst. As I loaded the boat the unmistakable sound of a child’s crying reached me, and I turned to see a nine-year-old girl, in a navy dress, bawling on the other side of the wharf.
“¿Por qué lloras?” I asked, looking up from the boat. The child did not answer me, but kept bawling, and I was helpless of what to do until Doña Iñes ran out of her store to check on the commotion.
“¡Su hija!” she exclaimed. “¿Perro, por qué llora?”
“She is not my daughter.”
“Ich kann nicht meine Vetters finden,” the little girl wept, explaining her misery.
“No? But she speaks English.”
“She’s German. Have you seen her before?”
“No,” Doña Iñes said. “And there are not any Germans around here. They go to the south.”
&nb
sp; I asked the child her name.
“Lenore,” she said.
“Und hast du einen Nachname, meine kleine Dame?”
She giggled. “Ja. Himmelstein.”
“That’s a funny name you have,” I said. Lenore laughed.
“Is there a Himmelstein family on the island?” I asked Doña Iñes.
“Ah, she must belong to Juan’s family. They live on the island just there,” she pointed across the watery flats to a spit of land with a single house perched on it.
“Can you telephone over?” I asked. The clouds were gathering more quickly, and I was anxious to get back before the downpour.
“Why don’t you take her?” Doña Iñes asked, incredulous. “It’s right there. You can see the house.”
I did not want to be responsible for a child, and made the excuse that I had left my house open and did not want it to flood.
“What is there to flood?” She laughed at me. “Ah, mi niño, you do not wish to be involved,” she gleaned. “Here we may not be rich as in your country, but at least if someone loses a child we do not worry they will sue us if our boat capsizes. Ferry the child.”
“Call to the house, and ask them to meet us at the dock,” I agreed reluctantly.
“Sí,” Doña Iñes smiled. Lenore beamed, and climbed into the boat. “You are doing the right thing.”
Lenore was sitting near the prow like a creature born of the sea, happy to be going home. I was never around children, and as I rowed her toward the island, did not know what to say, so asked the usual questions you would a stranger.
“Who do you think will win the elections?”
“I don’t know. I can’t vote.”
“What are your teams for the next World Cup?”
“I do not like sports,” she answered. “You seem sad. If I had such a wonderful boat I wouldn’t be sad.”
“You think so?”
“Yes. No one would be able to tell me where to go, or make me go anywhere I didn’t like, or ever be able to leave me.”
“Where would you go?” I asked, wondering about her parents.
“Oh, everywhere,” she lit up. “Even the moon, if I could row there. But everywhere on earth.”
“You’ll go lots of places, Lenore, when it’s your time for it,” I said. “When I was your age I had never been anywhere yet.”
“You think?” she asked, hopefully.
“Absolutely,” I assured her.
“Which place do you think is the best in the world to see first?”
“It does not matter,” I said. “It is just the land, the language, and the people that change.”
“Well, I can’t wait,” she hugged herself.
We neared shore, and she brightened to see her mother waiting on the dock. The mother was a handsome woman, but tipsy with drink and beside herself with worry, as she stooped down to lift Lenore from the boat.
“What happened?” The mother asked the child.
“They left me,” Lenore told on her cousins’ mischief. “And this nice man brought me home. Thank you.” She turned to me.
“Would you care to join us for a coffee?” the mother asked. She was ringless, and I might have been curious to hear their story on another occasion, but I realized I was uninterested in anyone but Sylvie. Besides that she had used the formal tense, and I had been in nature too long, so the remove seemed dissonant with the landscape itself. I shook my head, pointing to the clouds, which had already begun to open.
25
An Egyptian blue sky unfurled overhead, clear to the edge of space, and the prelapsarian air below fluttered with a clement, pure breeze to inspire the blood. The usually muddy delta waters shone like a mirror, rippling gently each time we broke the surface with our oars.
Near the market we crested alongside another couple, out rowing for sport. Sylvie began to pull with a quickened pace, and I followed suit, and they smiled at us, like-minded, pulling even again until we had a race.
“To the next island,” they cried.
“¡Vale!” we answered. We sprinted prow to prow, exhausting ourselves, until they seemed to flag as we opened enough of a lead to be sure of victory. They took advantage of our slacking off to surge again, though, and soon began pulling even, but we had by then reached the island, doubled over from the effort.
“Bravo,” they called, and waved in a gesture of fellow feeling. We were all drenched with sweat and our hearts beat quick and glad, as we floated down near the sea basin, relaxing again. Sylvie and I smiled at our victory. I still felt the bliss of physical exertion and the bliss of being with her, making me never want to leave that little corner of the world.
“We make a good team,” she said, as we neared the open sea. She saw the fishing tackle under the seats and maneuvered it out through the slats. “May I?”
I took her oar. She baited the hook with a lure, then cast an expert line into the sterling water.
“You cast well,” I said.
“My family used to go when we were young. I did not like it, but it was always nice to be on the river with the people I cared for. I felt we could be anytime in all of history, and it would be just like that. I would cast my line, telling myself if I caught a fish I would get to the next epoch in history.”
“That was a lot of pressure.”
“I know.” She laughed at herself and her amber eyes shone, as her bare arms arced over the water with a sensuous poise.
I idled the boat on the current, letting us drift around toward one of the seaward islands in the full midday heat, though it was not as hot as it had been in previous weeks, so I felt the season beginning to ebb.
As we reached the open sea, I rowed around the island, the fishing line tensed.
“We caught something,” she said excitedly, the breeze playing in the folds of her white summer dress.
The fish leapt, and the line played out until I thought she was going to lose it, but she pulled up expertly and it was snagged sound. She began to reel it in toward us, but too quickly, and gave way when the line tensed tight to the point of snapping. The fish ran free again, fast toward the open sea, but she had it with both hands and all her might, so it was clear how big it was. She opened the line, letting the fish run until it seemed to tire. When it swam less furiously, she began reeling in intently. From the curve of the pole I was afraid it might snap, but she loosened it in time, as the fish ran back, in a mighty struggle I would not have imagined she had in her.
“Is it too much?”
“No.” Her face was furrowed with sweat, and I could see she took pleasure in the contest. But the fish was massive, and I put one hand on hers to help her steady it, helping her coax it hard or slack as the fish kept struggling below.
“Yes, you can help me now.”
We saw the fish down in the clear water, close to the boat, and began to haul it in, as the beast lunged angrily into the air. Sylvie let out a shriek of fear and surprise at the sheer size of it, then surprise and joy. The fish dove under again, and we pulled up again, one final time, to claim it silver and glistening into the boat.
“What do we do now?” She laughed, proud, but drawing away from its convulsive final moments. It was a giant river creature, but I managed to pick it up soundly by the gills, and hold it against the bottom of the boat, where I so took up an iki stick.
“Don’t look,” I said, seeing her agonize, as I prepared to kill it.
“Yes, you can do this part,” she said.
“It will be painless.” I kept my voice calm, though it was something I had only forced myself to learn since I was on the island, and did not look forward to it.
“Do we have to kill it?” she asked when she saw the spike.
“We can throw it back, but if you want to eat it, this is the best way to end it.”
“It looks cruel,” she wavered.
“It is your fish. You can do whatever you wish.”
“It is our fish. We should cook it for dinner.”
“Then t
his is the best way.”
I got it over with quickly, and we rowed directly back to the Saavardra’s dock, where we carried the fish into the kitchen. There was no one about, as we cleaned the fish in the sink, then packed it in ice, and put it in the refrigerator for later, before cleaning up.
“You think it is okay we took the fish?” she asked.
“It is terrific we took such a fish,” I said. “It will be a great dinner.”
“Yes,” she said. “We can do it on the grill. I don’t know where my uncle and aunt are, but you will come for dinner tonight, and we will make a fire for the fish.”
I nodded.
“Then one day it will be our turn for the fire.”
“Eventually. It is the second law of nature, or so they say.”
“What do they say is the first?” she asked, though I think it was just to hear me say it.
“It is the radiance and connection of all things.”
“Have you ever seen it?”
“No, but I’ve been told.”
“Yes, they told me that, too. Do you believe it?”
“I want to believe it.”
“I don’t know that I can anymore. I once did, but you go out and give your heart to doing things you think matter, and find out how little all your efforts are worth, and it weighs on you. Does that make sense?”
I looked at her in the diminishing light and nodded, and felt a great uprush of kindredness and the desire to continue with her.
She had walked with me toward the river, and we were still on the verandah of the house. I put my arm around her waist and she did not move it. But when I bent to kiss her she turned away.
“Don’t you feel what I do?”
She looked at me with the full force of our attraction, before turning back to face the dock. “I’m not sure I know exactly what you feel.”
“Yes you do. I don’t want to name it yet.”
“Then we won’t.”
“So that means you feel the same way?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“That makes me glad.”
“It scares me. You don’t live here, so we may suffer, and even if you did, we might still suffer.”