Beyond the Snows of the Andes

by Beatrice Brusic

  The guests are already in the terrace drinking and smoking, and I’m very surprised to see that Laura has regressed and gone back to smoking. Aunt Eli looks the same, healthy and robust, but Laura looks sad, pale and thin. I haven’t seen her in a couple of weeks, and she has changed noticeably.

  “Laura, you shouldn’t,” says my aunt taking her cigarette away.

  “That’s what I tell her,” says her husband with distress. “But she won’t listen to me; perhaps you can talk some sense into her, Sonia.”

  “Oh, what does it matter now, Carlo,” responds Laura with dejection. “Nothing is going to make any difference anyway, so I might as well enjoy myself.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” says Uncle Pablo, Aunt Eli’s husband, with a mischievous look. I notice he never seems to change. He always wears suspenders like a lawyer, and he fusses with his mustache when he talks. He reminds me of Mario Moreno, my favorite comedian, because he has big eyebrows, eyes set wide apart, and a rather thick nose. Natural warmth and a sense of devilish fun emanate from him, and he’s full of raunchy stories.

  “You would find an excuse to drink for everything,” scoffs Aunt Eli. “You don’t believe in depriving yourself of anything, do you?”

  “Things could change, Laura,” says Uncle Berto,” looking at her gently. “You have to take care of yourself.”

  She gets up and looks out of the window. “Funny, everything looks so different now. I must have stood at this terrace, looking out of this window a million times before, yet I never noticed that bird house you have on that tree, Sonia.”

  “Oh, that’s such a nuisance,” says my aunt with disgust. “I hate birds and their messiness, and they had to choose my tree of all trees to build their nest.

  “They must have done it to spite you,” says Laura smiling for the first time. “These feathered creatures really know how to get even with people.”

  “Let’s go to eat, I’m starving and you must be too,” says my aunt proceeding to the dining room. “Josefa has cooked a great meal in your honor, Laura.”

  “Why? It’s not even my birthday.”

  “Because we love you,” says my aunt putting her arms around her. “And we want you to feel good.”

  Her eyes fill with tears and she thanks her. I’m aware that something is happening but I can’t understand what. I’ve heard long conversations my aunt had with Aunt Eli referring to Laura but I never caught the gist of it, and just assumed she was having marital problems again.

  “I hear you’re getting closer and closer to your destination,” says Laura turning to me with a smile. “Let’s drink to you, to your future life in America.”

  I redden and thank her. I love this woman but I have never seen her so sad. I miss the old Laura, the one who throws her hair back and laughs heartily, the discontented beauty with the defiant air that fascinated me from the start. Where has that elegant, passionate woman gone? There seems to be such pain and regret in her now even when she smiles, that I’m compelled to ask my aunt what the problem is the moment we meet in the kitchen.

  “Later,” she whispers. “I’ll tell you later.”

  I go back to the table and observe her mannerisms, she is drinking a lot now and her husband is begging her to stop. She seems to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and everyone at the table is making a great effort to act normal. She turns to me again and raises her glass.

  “Set the world on fire in America for me too, Vicky,” she says. “Don’t forget now, I’ll be watching you from heaven.”

  “You had enough, Laura, you’re going to get sick” says her husband begging her to drink black coffee.

  “There aren’t enough drinks in the world to drown my sorrows,” she says pushing the cup away and spilling it on the table. “So leave me the hell alone, will you?”

  The maid cleans the table quickly and a heavy silence follows her words.

  “I was sixteen once,” says Laura looking at her husband. “Had big dreams also but you interfered with them, didn’t you love? Aren’t you sorry now?”

  “Laura, please, this is embarrassing.”

  “Don’t ever let a man stop you from doing what you want to do in life, Vicky,” she says slurring her words. “He had no business getting me pregnant and threatening to commit suicide if I didn’t marry him.”

  Carlo’s face is on fire now and he gets up from the table abruptly. “We have to leave now, Sonia, I’m awfully sorry about this.”

  “Why don’t you let her sleep it off in my bedroom, Carlo? You don’t have to go home so fast, we all understand.”

  “It’ll be worse later and you don’t want to be there. No, it’s best that we go home now,” he says with his handsome face tight and white.

  “Isn’t it great that everyone is being so nauseatingly understanding?” says Laura leaning on him. “I can do whatever the hell I want now and everyone understands. I have a license to misbehave, to be as obnoxious as I can possibly be, and nothing will happen because the worst has already happened to me, isn’t that a hoot?”

  In response Aunt Eli and Aunt Sonia hug her, and she recoils like a serpent.

  “For God’s sake tell me off, call me an ungrateful bitch, but don’t feel sorry for me. Don’t you dare feel sorry for me because you’re nothing but a pair of self centered old witches, do you understand?”

  Stung, they let go of her, and her husband gently leads her out the door. My uncle’s face looks pained and he goes to his office alone, turning down my offer to walk him.

  “I can’t believe she found it necessary to insult us,” glares Eli angrily. “All we want to do is help her and this is the thanks we get?”

  “Oh, Eli, please, you’re not going to take offense now, are you?”

  “Well, I don’t appreciate being called an old witch, do you?”

  “She’s upset, she doesn’t mean it.”

  Aunt Eli lights a cigarette. “She made a spectacle of herself and ruined the whole lunch.”

  “Eli, Eli, after what’s happening to her, who could blame her? Have a heart.”

  “I guess so; I just didn’t expect it, that’s all.”

  “None of us did, but where is your compassion? Put yourself in her place.”

  ‘You’re right, absolutely, I’m just not used to being attacked that way, and my first instinct is always to fight back, you know I’m not a passive person.”

  “Can anybody tell me what’s going on here?” I ask, bewildered.

  Aunt Eli looks at me with shock. “You don’t know anything?”

  “No, that’s why I asked Aunt Sonia in the kitchen.”

  “She is dying,” says Aunt Sonia drying her eyes. “She has an incurable disease. She has to move to Cochabamba as soon as possible because it will be better for her lungs there, but nothing is going to help her for long.”

  I look at them with horror. “Dying? Laura?”

  “I’m afraid so,” says Aunt Eli, with a grimace. “She found out about it a few weeks ago, and still hasn’t come to terms with it.”

  “What does she have?”

  “It’s a disease of the lungs,” says Aunt Sonia. “She has shadows in her lungs and…”

  “She’s got lung cancer,” says Aunt Eli, sharply. “Let’s call a spade a spade, Sonia.”

  I sit there speechless, and my mind is reeling. How could she be dying? She’s always been so full of life, so vibrant and beautiful that I naturally assumed she would go on forever.

  “I can’t believe it,” I tell them, getting emotional. “Are you sure there is no hope?”

  “No hope at all, and she was told that by the doctors too,” says Aunt Eli. “Nice, real nice, isn’t it? Sometimes I think all doctors ought to be shot.”

  Tears roll down my cheeks and I can’t stop them. Aunt Sonia hugs me. “Isn’t it awful? We’re all devastated.”

  Now I understand the long phone conversations my aunt had with her friends that wrapped up in my own problems, I hadn’t paid any attention to. The w
arm, complex, beautiful woman I have most admired from the start is dying, and my shock knows no limits. I remember our first meeting, and the charm, glamour and excitement she exuded in abundance. I think of the dances at the Tennis Club where she flirted outrageously with the men, basking in their attention and the growing jealousy of her husband.

  I go to bed depressed and wake up listless and unhappy. I see mother the next day and tell her about it. She had never forgotten Laura’s kindness and integrity towards her, and feels very sad and upset.

  “Let’s pray for her,” she tells me, crossing herself. “Maybe she’ll get better. The climate in Cochabamba should help her.”

  “I don’t think prayers are going to help, ma,” I say, disgusted. “Why did she have to get this illness to begin with? What did she ever do to deserve this?”

  “I’m afraid we are in this life to get sick, to get hurt, and to experience all kinds of things, Vicky. God didn’t promise us a paradise here on earth.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I snap, hotly.

  “In life joy and pain go hand in hand, my child,” says mother hugging me. “And this is a very, very cruel world that eventually gets all of us.”

  “I wish there was something I could do, mom, some way I could help her.”

  “It’s in the hands of God, Vicky, but miracles do happen, we mustn’t give up hope. It’s a real tragedy for this horrible illness to strike someone so young, so beautiful, easily the nicest and most compassionate of your aunt’s friends – a young mother, someone so needed in this world. Yet Laura must have sensed her life would be short, and was anxious to experience everything. There was always a certain restlessness and wildness in her that even marriage and three children couldn’t curb.”

  It’s cold and raining and a chill goes through me. To be told that one is dying has to be the hardest thing in the world, and I can only imagine the horrors she went through before reality hit her.

  ~~~

  The results from my tests are in and we take a cab to the embassy a week later. I have always been a healthy girl so I’m not worried, but this thing with Laura has shaken my faith in life, and now I think that anything is possible. The handsome doctor with the tall, imposing frame and brown eyes sticks his head out and asks to see my aunt in private. She goes in and after twenty minutes pass, I begin to feel some anxiety.

  “I’m sure everything is fine, dear,” says the stocky nurse with kindness. “This is just part of his routine.”

  I smile at her but I’m not so sure, and trying to control my anxiety, I start looking at his diplomas on the wall. He has been educated in the U.S., and speaks flawless English and Italian. A doctor is a privileged person in Bolivia, and one with his credentials probably earns his salary in dollars and lives in a mansion in Sopocachi. I picture his house and imagine it’s beautiful, with ample gardens, caretakers and expensive furniture like the ones I’ve seen at Aunt Sonia’s rich friend’s houses. I imagine he’s close to “El Mirador del Montículo” [“Viewpoint of Montículo – the bohemian zone of Sopocachi”] located on a hill where one can see the entire city and the elusive Mountain Illimani, in all it’s splendor.

  I look at the clock nervously and notice that half an hour has already passed and still no sign of the doctor or my aunt. Alarmed, I begin to chew my nails, when they finally emerge, smiling and chattering.

  “Wasn’t he incredibly handsome?” says my aunt taking her small mirror and looking at herself while we ride back home in a cab. I shift in my seat uncomfortably, and she snaps her mirror shut.

  “It’s the blood test,” she says with a funny inflection in her voice. “It didn’t come out right. We have to retake it.”

  “What is it, what Laura has?”

  “No,” she says with discomfort. “With Laura it’s the lungs… this is quite different ….here, they are suspecting…”

  “What?”

  “I can’t talk in the cab. I’ll tell you when we get home.”

  “Please, Aunt Sonia, whisper it in my ear if you must, before I die from anxiety,” I beg, imagining leprosy or some other ghastly disease.

  She takes a deep breath. “I don’t think we should talk about it now.”

  “We have to talk about it Aunt Sonia, nothing can be worse than what I’m already imagining.”

  “Look, I’m sure it’s a mistake, there is really no reason to upset you now.”

  “Please, Aunt Sonia.”

  “There seem to be vestiges of syphilis in your blood.”

  I burst into tears and she puts her arms around me. “It’s the way you were brought up, in such squalor, with public toilets and filthy people all around you.”

  The world has stopped turning and the ride back home is long and tortuous due to blockages from striking university students. She keeps talking but I’m no longer listening. I feel doomed, condemned. My aunt starts blaming my mother, accusing her for everything under the sun and despite my sense of horror, I don’t have the heart to blame her. It seems this nightmare is happening to someone else, not me, and I have an out of body experience where I see myself sitting in the cab from far away, as if suspended in space. When I come to, I tell my aunt it’s a mistake, this can’t be happening to me.

  “I’m only sixteen,” I say, passionately. “I can’t be dying.”

  “You don’t die from this disease right away. It takes many years but it’s not a clean disease like cancer which anybody can get. This is a low class, degrading disease that only whores and people of ill repute get. It’s associated with the dregs of society, not with a young, clean girl like you, and that’s why he was so shocked.”

  “Mother always used alcohol to clean our toilets and showers; we were not filthy Aunt Sonia.”

  “Alcohol is nothing against this germ.”

  “I never had any symptoms – have had very few illnesses in my life.”

  “It’s an insidious disease, you don’t get any symptoms till it’s very advanced and that could take twenty years.”

  “Then everyone in the family would have it and nobody does.”

  “We don’t know that, do we? They haven’t been tested yet.”

  “Then we should wait for that to happen before we blame my mother, shouldn’t we?”

  “I’ll let you get away with that remark because you’re in shock and don’t know what you’re saying, but don’t you ever dare speak to me in that tone again.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s been a rough day. Let’s not say anything to your uncle till we know for sure, not sense worrying him too. Let’s have lunch and forget all about this.”

  But I can’t swallow a bite, my healthy appetite has deserted me completely and everyone notices it at the table.

  “Do you have a fever?” jokes my uncle. “In all the years I’ve known you I have never seen you pass up food before.”

  I don’t have the heart to laugh. There is a death knell about me and all I want to do is go into a corner and cry.

  “She’s got the blues,” observes my uncle. “Did anything happen?”

  “No,” says my aunt cutting her steak nonchalantly. “Did Ana write?”

  “Oh, yes, her letter is on top of your dresser, she sent pictures and everything, but I’m afraid she’s gotten heavier. I’m not sure she should be there alone with no supervision, Sonia. We thought she would live with Ramiro but he’s in another state, and she’s all alone in that big metropolis. I told you America is not for everyone, and I think Ana is not fit for that country; she’s not tough enough to survive the loneliness everyone experiences there. She should come back home.”

  Ana had gone to New York for vacation with Aunt Sonia when I was in Uyuni, and she had fallen madly in love with the city, deciding to stay there permanently. It had been so easy for her, everything had gone smoothly, and now she had the freedom to send glowing pictures of herself in different parts of the city like a movie star. All that had ever given her grief in life was her weight problem, but with me
it was always a great crisis. My uncle passes a picture of her she has taken at the Empire State building where she is wearing a yellow dress with white gloves, and she looks very beautiful and happy, even if her body seems larger.

  My uncle retires to his nap, and Aunt Sonia noticing my envy, says that some day I’ll be sending her pictures from America too, that this is just a temporary setback and I should try not to dwell on it.

  “I know,” I say swallowing my tears. “But that seems so impossible now.”

  “You need distraction,” she says giving me some money for the movies. “That’s my remedy for everything in life, Vicky. Go see a good movie and forget all about this. I have to play bridge this afternoon so I’ll be home late tonight, but remember, not a word to your uncle till we do the retest.”

  Sitting quietly on her bed, I watch her get all dolled up for her friends, and she smiles at me conspiratorially.

  “I had a similar scare in my life,” she says looking at me intently. “I fooled around with so many guys in Oruro I got gonorrhea, but I got treated and got cured, the same thing will happen to you, it’s not the end of the world.”

  Outside is cloudy and gray, with a fine rain that gives no sign of abetting. I wrap my scarf over my neck seeking warmth but the cold is internal, it’s the cold of fear and near panic that is threatening to engulf me. The ride to mother’s house is a blur, I’m not even aware of walking the long cobbled streets, till I see the eager face of my brother waving from the window. He’s always very happy to see me and comes down to meet me excitedly. Mother is sweeping with her hair wrapped in a towel and she looks weary and complains about the dust, hating the fact that she can’t get rid of it no matter how many times she dusts because it comes from the trucks and cars that pass by her windows day and night. She asks me if I want fritters with my tea, and I send my brother to buy the dough and syrup with the money I got for the movies.

  She spends the afternoon making fritters and it brings me back to my childhood, to the joy we experienced as children when she made us fritters and we ate them licking our fingers. I long to tell her my troubles, but she has so many of her own that I decide to wait till we know for sure before giving her the dreadful news. I do make up a story about a friend of mine who has tested positive for syphilis, however, and study her face closely for a reaction. She opens her eyes wide and asks me who the friend is.