Plaza Requiem

by Martha Bátiz

  “Can I help you?” the waiter inquired, offering her another rum.

  Maggie gulped down the rum in one swallow, paid the bill, got to her feet and said to the waiter:

  “Polar bears are bullshit, don’t you think?”

  Maggie tilted her head back as she walked out into the dark street, heading for home. Taking the bus never occurred to her. The water trickled from her hair down her neck and her back, down her shoulders to her chest, until her wet blouse stuck to her body and her shoes made a squishy sound against the pavement. She stopped to search inside her purse. She felt her phone and was tempted by habit to turn it on, to check her messages, but she didn’t. Her pink perfume was at the bottom of her purse. She took it out and threw it into a sidewalk trash can.

  The rain had stopped when she got to the front door and she saw that Henry was still awake. His window was the only one with a light on. She opened the glass door to the lobby. The letter was no longer scattered on the floor. She paused before the door to her own place but suddenly went to her neighbour’s. She pressed the doorbell and held it until Mr. Lee appeared.

  “I just wanted to tell you to go fuck yourself.”

  Mr. Lee, not knowing what to say, stood in a daze, watching her, barefoot and soaking wet, go down the hall to her apartment.

  Henry was ready for her. “Where were you?”

  “Better yet, where are you going to be starting tomorrow, because I don’t want you here,” she said sternly.

  The smell, the stench of cigarette smoke and stale beer took her by surprise but she said nothing about it, nor about the beer cans on the table by the TV. She saved herself the trouble of going into the kitchen. She assumed that the leftovers from breakfast, lunch and dinner were waiting for her in the sink. She was in no mood to wash even a single dish. Never again.

  Her temples were about to explode.

  She shut herself in her bedroom and undressed in front of the mirror. Her makeup had become two dark circles around her eyes. With her hair drenched, her head seemed too small for her body. The flabby, white skin bunched up below her breasts and her wide thighs disgusted her. She heard water running in the bathroom. Her father was drawing her a bath. She slipped on a robe and stepped into the hall. She didn’t look up to see Henry, who was watching her from the kitchen door.

  She felt an almost unbearable burning as she put her feet into the hot water, but she forced herself to climb in anyway. The clear water became clouded with dirt. Maggie scrubbed her body with soap until the heat became so concentrated in her head that she couldn’t go on. She dunked her face in the grey, scummy water and remembered the ducks. She held her breath until anguish made her straighten up. She was ashamed of her cowardice and began hitting the tile wall with her fists. She could hear her father’s footsteps up and down the hall. She bit her lip so she wouldn’t say anything and waited until the water, too, was completely still.

  Finally, after staring at Henry’s old-fashioned razor blade, she picked it up and held it in her hands, wondering, and then suddenly certain that she would not show up for work the next morning.

  Henry was waiting for her by the door when Maggie finally came out. She saw relief in his face.

  “I left a cup of tea on your dresser. We can talk tomorrow,” he said. His voice caressing, the way it had been when she was a little girl needing to calm down after a nightmare.

  Maggie nodded, still drying her hair with a damp towel.

  “By the way,” she said, averting her eyes, “just for laughs, I hid your razor, I maybe even threw it out.”

  Aztec Woman

  They came and took everything. What was ours, our children’s – what the wise men had given us. They ran off with all that was beautiful, and destroyed the rest. They taught us how to speak in this language that tastes of foreign skin. They turned our waters into rivers of blood: our own blood spilled without reason, without anyone to be nourished from its strength. They thought death would make us docile. No. We tamed death long ago.

  I am not Maria, nor Guadalupe, nor Marina, and even if they call me by any of those names, I know none of them is mine. They stole my name when they silenced my gods, when they killed my parents, and I’ve been looking for it ever since. That’s why I came here. To claim it. I don’t care what they do to me. Nothing can be worse. My world is no more.

  He was already old; he couldn’t defend himself. My trained hand and sharp obsidian knife were quicker than his voice yapping for help. Help is what we deserved, what we were desperate to receive. They took it all away, even the hope of having someone hear our screams and come to our aid. He deserved to be, like us, alone in his fear. The knife entered his stomach, and when he tried to cover the wound with his hands I opened his neck like those of the gobblers that hang upside down in the market square. He fell to the floor and, before he finished drowning, I said to him, loud and clear so that he would hear me: “Father, I accuse myself of not loving your God like the ones you robbed from me, and of not being able to continue living with a name that has erased my voice. Amen.”

  I opened his chest and my hand dived into his body. The sound of my fingers searching that warm territory reminded me of the rivers flowing in the spring, of the water that sprouts from the earth’s guts when the sun is shining. I finally took it out: his heart, a newborn animal unable to breathe. The palm of my hand became its nest. A shiny heart, shiny like the gold they came looking for, which cost us so many dear lives. I didn’t turn around to see the Father’s face: he was not my father… I don’t know why he forced me to call him that. I watched his heart slow down between my fingers and, crying for all that I had lost, I told him: “I don’t care what they do to me. This is who I am.”

  Paganini for Two

  Edith was the first to congratulate him. She looked at me with amazement when I opened the dressing room door, but at that moment I didn’t pay too much attention. People’s gestures of surprise – of fright, almost – on seeing me for the first time stopped being relevant to me some time ago. Many need to look up to meet my gaze. I must confess that this gave me a complex until I discovered the advantages of observing and defying people from above. For one thing, it’s fun to realize how few of them dare provoke me. It’s very unlikely that anyone will bother me on the street. But the best thing is that Father lets me take care of his violin. He says it’s safer with me, that only a crazy person would attempt to take it away from me, and then he laughs. That’s why when we travel he takes charge of all the rest of the luggage and I concentrate only on guarding the Stradivarius. I was just putting it away in its case when Father told me I could let in the audience members who wanted to see him. There was a long row of people, as always, but she was the first to enter.

  Edith had seen several people drying their tears as they listened to Fabián play the violin. The orchestra musicians rose to their feet to applaud him for several minutes, and at people’s insistence he gave two encores. As soon as he finished the second, Edith hurried to get to the dressing room, as they had agreed the prior afternoon. She wanted to tell him how much she’d enjoyed the concert and, besides, she was terribly curious to see Rebecca: the last time they were together, the girl was only five, although she looked older. Fabián had spoken to her of his daughter with pride during the cancer fundraiser where they’d run into each other by chance. “She does sculptures in marble.” Edith remembered Rebecca’s pale face perfectly, her light-coloured eyes, her childlike voice that asked for her mother when Fabián still didn’t know how to explain to her that she was dead.

  “Marble? She’s that strong?” she asked right away.

  Fabián nodded.

  “Wait till you see her.”

  Edith found it almost impossible to imagine what Rebecca would be like now, how she would behave, and that made her somewhat nervous as she waited outside the door.

  People had formed a long line, readying their pens and programs. Several minutes later the door was opened, and Edith had to try hard to hide her a
stonishment upon seeing Rebecca. She realized immediately why her father had compared her to a Valkyrie.

  Father greeted her with surprising familiarity, and it was at that instant that I recognized her. I almost never forget people’s faces, though I must admit I didn’t remember hers in detail. Then he introduced us.

  “Becky, this is Edith. Do you remember her?”

  “No, not at all. Why?”

  Edith smiled at me and held out her hand. Shaking a clammy hand is so unpleasant for me that I automatically wiped mine on my skirt after the exchange. Edith was disconcerted, but luckily Father didn’t catch on because he was busy with other people. She took advantage of the chance to explain to me that we already knew each other but that the last time she had seen me I was too little, so it would understandably be difficult for me to remember that now. I preferred not to make any comment about it.

  “What a nice concert, don’t you think?”

  The poor woman was not very original, so I didn’t even turn to look at her. I just sat down in the armchair, with the violin case on my lap, waiting for Father to finish.

  Edith didn’t know what to talk about with Rebecca, but she thought it wasn’t good manners to keep quiet. She thought Fabián would blame her for not being friendly with his daughter, and it had been so long since she had seen them that she wanted to make a good impression.

  “Do you play too?”

  I hate to be asked that question.

  “No. And you?”

  Edith didn’t understand why Rebecca looked at her with such disdain or why her attempts at being nice were backfiring. She looked at Fabián, who was conversing with some of the musicians in the orchestra, and hoped he would be done soon. Perhaps during dinner things would get better. She resolved to be patient and sat down beside Rebecca, who immediately went over to her father.

  “Daddy, let’s go. I’m hungry.”

  Father said goodbye to everyone except Edith. I realized then that she would be coming with us to the restaurant. After concerts, both in our hometown and abroad, we always went out to eat with some friends, musicians from the orchestra and acquaintances. This time it would be just us and Edith. I forced a smile so that Father couldn’t accuse me of being impolite. I thought it would just be a matter of pretending for a few hours, so I resigned myself to it. Would we be going to the usual place Father liked when we were home, or somewhere new? I was curious but didn’t ask, so that Edith wouldn’t think I cared too much about it.

  To my surprise, however, we didn’t go to a restaurant. Father told Ambrose, our chauffeur, to drive us to our place. “What do you mean our place? We have to go somewhere else to celebrate,” I insisted. He smiled and stroked my hair. “No. I’d rather be somewhere peaceful,” he replied. I couldn’t see Edith’s face because I was looking out the window at the street, but I could swear she smiled. If she knew Father, she must have known that he almost never invited guests home.

  It was better to look out at the street than at Fabián, with his daughter’s hand between his as she insisted on going to a restaurant. Dining at Fabián’s house, seeing the place he lived in now, made her happy, and Rebeca’s anger – she had to confess – made her feel important. She felt she really couldn’t complain, and so she kept quiet.

  “You don’t know this, but Edith was about to become your mother.”

  “Will you pass me the bread, Daddy?”

  Yes, I did know it. And it was clear she still wanted to be, but I simply preferred not to hear any more about the matter. I took a roll, broke it into several pieces and played with the crumbs during most of the dinner. I couldn’t eat a bite.

  Edith blushed.

  She recalled Fabián’s rejection to her offer to be together all too well. “Rebecca doesn’t accept anyone being in her mother’s place. You have to understand that.” Edith understood and therefore decided to stop seeing him. But this time she wasn’t willing to give in so easily.

  “So you ran into each other at the fundraiser the other day. What a coincidence.”

  “That’s right.”

  She didn’t fool me. She must have known that Father was going to be playing to help raise funds for cancer research and she went there to see him. But she wasn’t going to get away with it.

  When Rebecca agreed to show her the house, Edith felt relieved, almost contented. At the back of a very large garden was Becky’s sculpture workshop, a spacious room with several windows.

  Scattered on the floor were sheets of newspaper, tools and several small blocks of marble. Atop the table was one which was larger than the rest, half finished.

  “Who is it?”

  “Euterpe.”

  She didn’t know what I was talking about.

  “The Greek Muse of music. I’m sculpting her for father.”

  I only needed to complete the detail on her face and arms. I wanted to have her finished so I could give her to father before we went to Berlin. It was only six weeks until his concert with the Philharmonic.

  Besides the workshop, Rebecca showed her the gym, which was in an adjacent room. It had all been especially built for Rebecca, so she could have some privacy and work on her sculptures at peace while her father practiced the violin.

  “I wouldn’t know what to do with all this equipment,” Edith said.

  No, of course she wouldn’t.

  The workshop had an ensuite bathroom which was one of her favorite places, Rebecca told her: it was decorated with real plants, and had a huge skylight, a sauna, and an antique bathtub.

  “How beautiful! It has legs and everything!”

  I showed her the whole house, with the exception of Father’s studio. It turned my stomach to think of her making some stupid remark about that sacred place. But Father took her there and told her the story behind some of the paintings and our photographs. He said there were no pictures of Mother because her memory was painful to both of us. So we preferred to display only our own, taken in England, Buenos Aires, Moscow. But to me, Mother’s memory was no longer painful. I guess that’s because of how little I really knew her. I refused to put her photograph in the studio because it would have been a distraction for Father. He’d have another face to look at, besides mine, and that bothered me.

  Edith felt goosebumps when he agreed to play a piece for her on the violin. She didn’t even turn to check Rebecca’s reaction: she never took her eyes off Fabián for a moment.

  That was too much. Paganini is my favourite. How could he dare play him for her?

  “He’s Becky’s favourite composer. Ever since she was little I’ve been playing one or two pieces every night before she goes to sleep.”

  Well, at least he put away the violin before Edith had a chance to ask to see it up close. I was starting to feel more relieved until Father asked Edith to visit us again the next day. I made it a point to chime in: I told Father not to pressure her, that maybe she would be bored coming back to see us so soon, but she handled it well. How was she going to be bored with us if she liked us so much? I hated the gleam in her eye. That night I didn’t want to listen to any more Paganini before bed, and naturally I didn’t get any sleep.

  I couldn’t keep the two of them from going out several times together. While they were out I would shut myself up in my workshop to work on my sculpture, but I couldn’t shape the muse’s arms to my satisfaction. I couldn’t decide what position they should be in. I was anxious about the trip to Berlin because I wanted to finish the statue on time, although deep down it was a consolation to know that the date was fast approaching and it would be the perfect opportunity to get away from Edith.

  “What about school?”

  “I quit a year ago.”

  Fabián explained that Rebecca had asked him for a few months’ break, not just so they could be together for a longer time, but so that she could make a decision about her professional aspirations. If she definitely chose sculpture, he would want to spend all the time he could with her before sending her off to study. It would be h
ard to be apart, and he didn’t want to pressure her. Edith agreed. She searched for some gesture on Rebecca’s part that would signal the approval she expected to get in exchange, but she saw nothing out of the ordinary. Rebecca only paid attention to the actions and words of her father.

  I was about to scream but managed to control myself. Father told me after he had been practicing the violin for several hours. It’s true, there was something strange in the notes I happened to hear him play that morning. I don’t know why I didn’t pick up on it. He came into the workshop and told me: Edith would be coming to live with us.

  How could he do that to me? To us? How could I concentrate on my sculpture now?

  Edith didn’t have much luggage, and she quickly found a place for her clothes next to Fabián’s.

  No. I couldn’t concentrate on the sculpture; or on anything.

  The trip to Berlin would be the ideal opportunity to spend more time with him. Besides, she was fed up with Rebecca’s indifference and wanted to teach her a lesson.

  “I promise you I’ll do everything possible to win her over,” she lied. “Let me go with you.”

  I broke it.

  I broke the sculpture when I found out she’d be coming along on the trip. It was too much, too much for me to handle. Who did she think she was, creeping into my life like that? How could Father not see what she was trying to do?

  Two days before leaving, Edith decided to give the house a thorough cleaning. She emptied the shelves in order to clean off Fabian’s scores one by one, and she refused to let the servants help her. Rebecca sat sullenly in an armchair watching her. Then she went up to her room and stayed there the whole afternoon because, as Edith was cleaning the studio, Fabián had to lock himself up in Rebecca’s workshop to practice his instrument. At nightfall, Edith went in to tell him that all the scores were back in place and that he could return to the house to continue playing. There would be no further interruptions.