Longing

by Espinosa, Maria

  “What are you then?”

  Jean, adjusting his tripod, paused to listen.

  “Agnostic.”

  “But we’re Jewish,” said Rosa. “Father’s family still goes to a synagogue, even if your family stopped going a few generations ago. If we’d been living in Germany under Hitler, we’d have been put in a concentration camp.”

  “Not at all,” said Eleanor. She was angrier than Antonio had ever seen her. “We are citizens of the world.”

  “Mother, I have no roots. I have no cultural or religious roots.”

  “But you do. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I had the baby christened.”

  “You did?”

  Antonio and her mother were both surprised.

  “Yes . . . there was a priest who came to the hospital. I asked him to baptize Isabel. I don’t know why . . . I wanted her to be something.”

  A priest in a black cassock had been walking through the Maternity Ward. He stopped at a bed near Rosa’s, sprinkled water from a flask over a baby’s head, stopped at another bed and talked to the woman there for a few minutes.

  As he passed Rosa’s bed, she cried out, “Stop!”

  “What do you want?”

  “Are you baptizing babies?”

  “Yes, the frail ones, the premature ones.”

  The baptism was a phosphorescent glow in the darkness that connected to a larger beam of light, Rosa thought. As a child, most of her playmates on Long Island had been Catholic. They used to say the unbaptized were damned. While she did not believe this, it seemed baptism could not hurt. The ceremony went back two thousand years, trailing a tradition of power, of blessing in its wake, attached to something holy, magical, something that glowed.

  Just in case there were a germ of truth in what Catholics said, let Isabel be protected. Maybe the ceremony had some power beyond her understanding.

  Furthermore, Antonio could not have entirely forgotten his Catholic upbringing—although he scoffed, maybe in some obscure way she was bringing the baby closer to her father.

  “If she had been a boy, I would have insisted on a briss,” Antonio said. “Why are you crying, Rosa?”

  “I don’t know. I’m Jewish, yet I’m not. I’m not Catholic. I don’t know what I am.”

  Eleanor felt in quicksand with her daughter. Rosa’s reactions, unexpected, caused terrible jolts. She thought Rosa had an Egyptian beauty, a wildness beneath her stiff exterior that reeked of North Africa. Involuntarily she shuddered. There was something alien about Rosa, something stemming out of Aaron, alien to Eleanor’s comprehension, and Eleanor could not make peace with it.

  Antonio felt compassion for Rosa. Her instincts were correct, but they had been muddled by her family. Eleanor was a fool to deny her entire background. No wonder Rosa was confused.

  Eleanor, wrenching herself away from the emotion that flooded her, said, “We must have some shots of Rosa with the baby.”

  Isabel gave a little cry as Antonio shifted her into Rosa’s arms—he had taken her for a few moments. Rosa soothed her. The infant fell asleep, let go of the bottle, turned her face to the side. A lock of hair fell from Rosa’s chignon and dangled over her ears. In a surge of pity and protectiveness, Antonio arranged the stray lock of hair. There were goose-pimples on her arms. “You need a sweater, Petite,” he said. He rummaged in the closet behind their bed, pulled out a grey cardigan, and put it around her shoulders. She leaned against him. She still seemed to be in anguish. He pulled her down into his lap. He could see Eleanor flinch.

  “Let me shoot you like that!” cried Jean.

  Rosa felt bony against him and smelled of a newly purchased sharp and almost bitter perfume. He thought of the portrait of a girl that had hung over his bed for years in Santiago in whatever small apartment he lived. He had bought it for only a few pesos from a second-hand dealer. When he had met Rosa for the first time on that cold winter’s day, quite by accident, she seemed to be the embodiment of the portrait. What a joke life had played on him! What a poor bastard he was!

  “Now let me take Rosa alone with the little one,” said Jean.

  Antonio moved her off his lap.

  Eleanor lit a cigarette. She had begun smoking Antonio’s brand, Royales. Unconsciously Eleanor moved towards him, then stopped short, aware of Rosa’s presence.

  “Très bien,” said Jean. “That’s the end of the third roll. I’ve shot enough for you to make a selection.”

  “Won’t you stay for some wine and cheese?” asked Eleanor.

  “I’ve got to go home,” said Jean. “I have work to do.”

  “Now that you have immortalized us, old man, you’ve got to stay for a small glass—just one—to warm your throat.” With a flourish Antonio poured out a glass of wine. “Just one,” said Jean. “Then I go. Ah but this is good wine.”

  “Beaujolais,” said Eleanor. “Quite a delightful fresh wine. Don’t you think?”

  “My mother-in-law is a connoiseur,” said Antonio.

  Shortly after Jean left, as Antonio was looking for another bottle that he had bought earlier in the afternoon, Eleanor said in a soft voice, “I’m afraid the toilet isn’t flushing.”

  “Merde alors,” said Antonio. He found the bottle on top of the refrigerator, opened it, and poured himself another drink. Then he went into the back room and tore open the shower curtain. Behind it was the toilet. A bit of paper floated in a small puddle of liquid at the bottom of the gleaming white porcelain bowl. He flushed. Nothing happened, except that a few drops of water leaked onto his neck from where the pipes joined above.

  So many hours and days he had worked on this damned contraption! The blood coursed through his muscles and into his hands. He would not let material things get the better of him, ah no! He wanted to weep with frustration.

  He returned to the living room. “Rosa, have you seen the hammer? . . . Ah, here it is,” he said, looking through a pile of objects in the bookcase. He finished his glass of wine. The newly opened bottle was already half empty. He could vomit with all the wine he’d drunk, but it dulled the electricity that pulsed against his nerve ends until he wanted to jump out of his skin.

  He rolled up the sleeves of his sweater and seized the hammer.

  “What are you doing?” asked Rosa.

  He whistled.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “You’ll see.” The gnome howled with laughter. He bent over the toilet bowl and gave a blow with all his strength. It felt good to grip the hammer like this, to crash against the porcelain. Isabel started crying. With another blow the bowl cracked. He smashed against it again. A huge chunk slid onto the floor. Smash the elusive pile of money. Smash his meeting with a film producer tomorrow which might land him a job.

  The strength in his hands was unbelievable. When he hit the tank, it split with the first blow. Again and again he attacked with the hammer. The ghost of poor Marguerite who had lived on the floor above seemed to float over him. If only Rosa hadn’t flung herself into the room and screamed like that. He needed an older woman. Perhaps he needed Eleanor, who could give him more comfort, more strength than Rosa. Smash Eleanor with all her ambiguity! Smash Rosa! Smash Isabel into smithereens. Smash Aaron in the United States. Smash all the effort he put into the damned plumbing.

  White porcelain dust clung to his best pair of trousers. Most of the bowl and tank lay in huge chunks on the floor. He did a little dance as he attached the base of the bowl. With a rag he sopped up the liquid which spilled over, wrapped the limp toilet paper inside the rag, and rolled it all up inside a piece of newspaper.

  “Eleanor! Rosa!” he shouted. “You take these damned pieces of toilet downstairs to the garbage!” He laughed at seeing Rosa tremble, at the flicker of fear in Eleanor’s eyes. “Now!” he yelled. He laughed as they scurried off holding great white chunks in their arms. He laughed as he kept on breaking up the fragments of porcelain with his hammer.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “You�
��re late,” said Khalil, who was producing a film. He glanced at his watch. “It’s one-thirty.”

  He was a large man with greasy black hair and a mole on the left side of his chin. He had an impassive face. Draped over the back of his chair was a camel’s hair coat. He wore a maroon velveteen vest embroidered with gold thread over a black shirt.

  “There was an accident,” said Antonio. “Our bus rammed into a Citroën. There were cops everywhere. They wouldn’t let us off until they’d made a full report.”

  “The most incredible things prevent you from getting anywhere on time,” Khalil said.

  Antonio thought back over what had actually happened. He’d stopped in a bistro to give himself courage with a café royale double so that he would not make a fool of himself.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve already ordered. I was very hungry,” said Khalil. He rubbed his belly. “In more ways than one. Remember that little Swedish blonde? Ah . . . she fucks like a tigress. What they say about Swedes being frigid is not true.”

  “Great,” said Antonio. “How’s the movie coming?”

  “Oh . . . not so good . . . not so bad.” Khalil made a gesture of dismissal and took up a pair of chopsticks.

  Ginger chicken with bamboo sprouts, steamed pea pods, sweet and sour fish, and beancakes in oyster sauce arrived, along with a bottle of rosé.

  Khalil came from Lebanon and spoke French with a thick accent. A graduate of Oxford, Khalil had installed himself in Paris several months ago to make a film with an American director. He was providing the money. There were innumerable delays, and only last week had they begun to film.

  He and Khalil had been introduced by Roland, the film maker. “Perhaps you can talk youself into a job,” Roland said. “And don’t forget, Khalil likes to be entertained. You’re just the fellow to do that.”

  Antonio showed Khalil sections of Paris with which the Arab was unfamiliar. Antonio read the script, haphazard though his English was, and he showed Khalil places which might be possible film locations. He even brought girls to his bed. Antonio introduced Khalil to several actors and actresses and took him to his favorite restaurants, where Khalil did the honor of paying. He introduced Rosa, in case Khalil might want to cast her for the main role of the American girl.

  “But we need a blonde,” Khalil said with a heavy sigh. “Your wife looks more like an Algerian or an Israeli. Besides, she’s never acted, has she?”

  Persistent, Antonio sent Khalil a young American would-be actress he had run into at the Dôme who had reddish-blonde hair. She, too, had failed to meet with Khalil’s pleasure. “You never give up, do you?” Khalil had remarked, bursting into loud laughter. Finally last week, a vedette, a friend of the director’s, had been flown in from Hollywood. At last a scene was filmed. Antonio played the walk-on part of a clochard, and everyone said he did marvelously well. He blackened his teeth and donned old clothes from a junk dealer for the role.

  Although from the beginning Antonio indicated his desire to be part of the film crew, Khalil hadn’t yet offered him a job. Antonio hesitated to ask directly. That was not the way things were done in Chile. If Khalil had any decency at all—he must realize Antonio was broke and out of work—he would offer Antonio the job of assisting Jack, the director, of finding props, or doing whatever else needed to be done.

  Now Khalil asked Antonio if he would like to watch the filming after lunch. Antonio eagerly agreed to do so.

  The plumbing he had smashed last night disturbed him. All that work for nothing! What a fool he had been. Whatever came over him? Perhaps it could have been fixed. It was the merde of Rosa and her mother, the unbearable pressures.

  Then he felt so upset with Khalil that he could barely eat, delicious as the meal was, and he loved Oriental food. How could he ask for work? He could not risk a refusal. He could not debase himself by asking. Khalil had no breeding. He was unscrupulous. He was merely a generation removed from peasants.

  Wanting to probe beneath Khalil’s bland exterior, Antonio tapped at his cigarette, letting the thick ash fall. He observed Khalil eyeing a young Asian waiter.

  “Perhaps the Swedish girl bores you, even if she fucks so well, and you would prefer a young boy like that garçon over there.”

  “What do you mean? You’re crazy.”

  “Isn’t it the custom in the Middle East for men to choose young boys as lovers?”

  “Not in Lebanon. Never!”

  “Excuse me,” said Antonio, with a mocking air.

  Khalil almost knocked over his wine glass when he stubbed out his cigar. Antonio was pleased to see that he had so thoroughly upset the Arab’s composure. Lychees in syrup and banane flambée arrived along with a pot of strong black tea.

  After lunch they took a taxi over to the Rue Mouffetard, in an Algerian quartier where an entire sidewalk and part of a building had been cordoned off. Stairs led up to an apartment where they were preparing to film. Everywhere there were klieg lights, cameras, people milling around.

  Antonio thought of the blue lights in the Algerian brothel he visited a few weeks ago with Khalil, at the Arab’s request. The huge almond eyes of the young girls with their delicate skins haunted him. They lived crushed inside small rooms which had Persian carpets and smelled of musk. He enjoyed the experience, even while the youth of the girls appalled him.

  He felt a whistling sound going into the dark hollow inside him.

  Why couldn’t he, Antonio, be one of these people fussing around with lights, props, actors? In what way were any of them superior to him? What kind of game was Khalil playing? What had Roland told Khalil about him? Why was he always the one to draw the short straw, the unlucky break? He had discovered this very building for them. “You want the light coming from over there . . . windows like these,” he pointed out to Jack and to Khalil. They took up his suggestions.

  He managed to help everyone else. Why couldn’t he help himself? Hadn’t he helped Roland find a sponsor for his own films--an eccentric woman of a noble French family who came to adore Roland? Hadn’t he secured the apartment across the courtyard for Jean, after Jean had looked everywhere for over six months?

  In Chile as well as in Paris, he had helped multitudes of artists with their personal and creative problems. Once he had helped Pablo Neruda with a certain domestic situation. He could penetrate at once to the heart of their dilemmas. “Et qué es el problema?” he would ask, after he reduced seemingly overwhelming obstacles to a mass of limp, lifeless outgrown things at which they could laugh. He cut clear paths for them through the tangled undergrowth of their emotions. Why then couldn’t he help himself?

  A difficulty had arisen. Lorna, who played the starring role of the American girl in love with an Algerian revolutionary, had been beaten up by her lover the night before. The bruises could not be concealed by makeup. Her face was swollen and purplish.

  “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Jack asked. “Now we’ve got everything set up. We’re paying these people by the hour. Sweetheart, we can’t shoot you like this.”

  Antonio heard the last words of what Jack was saying.

  “I have an idea,” he said in broken English. “I read through this scene. Is no reason the audience need to see the face of Lorna . . . in fact, is more dramatic . . . how you say . . . to have the young man talk to her back. She can face the wall while he talk. Or her side to him. She can cover her face with the hairs . . . so beautiful the hairs . . .” he said, stroking Lorna’s soft brownish blonde tresses. She was a tall girl who wore a short skirt and boots. “Ah, she also have the marvelous thighs,” he said, caressing them lightly through her skirt.

  He stood very close to Lorna. His voice was somehow hypnotic, so that she did not take offense at what he was doing. His eyes seemed to pierce some veil within her mind. His voice conveyed some secret warmth, some secret authority that she longed for.

  “Hey, stop feeling her up!” said Jack.

  Antonio stepped back. “Excuse me, Lorna,” he said. “I ha
ve not the intention to offend you.” He turned to Jack. “Is a scene Ingmar Bergman might photograph,” he said. “And then when Lorna turn to face him, she can be in the shadow.”

  Jack lit a cigarette, inhaled, thought a moment. “By God, you may be right,” he said.

  The klieg lights made everyone’s faces seem very white, harsh, even haggard, except for the actors with their flesh-tinted makeup. Under the lights Lorna looked terrible. The ravages of the night before were more clearly revealed.

  “All right,” said Jack, after deliberating. “We don’t have much choice. We’ll try it Antonio’s way.”

  Jack was about six feet tall, classically handsome, with straight black hair. There was something in him of a boy scout who had never grown up, Antonio thought. There was something boyish about American men in general, especially in relation to their women. Aaron must be like that. No wonder American women were screwed up. Damn American puritanism. Jack was jealous of him, but then so was Khalil, he thought.

  Khalil put a plump hand on Antonio’s shoulder. “They’ll be shooting in a minute. You want to sit down next to me?”

  “They’re using my idea about how to film Lorna,” said Antonio.

  Surely now he should be given a job.

  “Ah yes, very good,” said Khalil.

  Antonio sat in a folding chair next to the Arab while Jack placed Lorna by the grilled window with its interesting patterns of light. Her heavy hair fell halfway to her waist.

  The male lead, who had coal-black eyes, black hair, and olive skin, began to say his lines. There were countless retakes.

  During a break when Jack and the actors were talking with the cameramen, Khalil yawned, stood up and stretched.

  Antonio risked.

  He walked out on the tightrope, no net beneath, an audience of thousands watching. The Spanish grandee turned his head away in disgust. “Can you offer me any kind of technical position?” Antonio asked, lighting his cigarette as his fingers trembled, flicking the match down on the floor. “I can help the cameramen, or help with props, or whatever else you need. I’m broke. I need money. I don’t have a job.”