When it came, she felt sad. She drew away from him and wondered at whatever had compelled her to bring him home to her bed. She was insane!
After he left, she wept. She felt contaminated, despoiled. Why had she done this? She douched with vinegar, bathed, and sprinkled herself all over with cologne to get rid of his traces.
It was four in the afternoon, and the sun was sinking beneath the steep hills that rose up some distance behind the cottage. She wished Antonio were with her. He was the only person in the world—besides her mother, who shared guilt and knowledge—who would understand exactly why she had acted as she did.
She wanted Antonio with her. He would say, “You were desolée, Petite.” He would—sober, the divorce and all other barriers miraculously removed—take her in his arms, comfort her, accept who she was as no one else in the universe could.
Where was God? Who was God? There was blankness. No voice answered prayers. There was only Antonio who contained as much of God as there could be, mixed with something demonic.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
For several months after the Decree of Divorce was awarded, Rosa and Antonio did not speak, although she still saw him on the street, more and more often without Ruth.
One March day as Rosa was sweeping the front steps, he came by. She wore a loose green dress that billowed in the wind, which blew at Antonio’s collar and ruffled his hair. He wore baggy pants and a sweater, the cast-offs of a drinking companion.
“Bon jour,” he said. “Comment vas tu?”
“Très bien.”
A shock ran through her.
Continuing in French, he asked about Isabel, whom he called “La Princesa.” Isabel was taking a nap. He came inside and looked down on her for a long time as she slept, then left very quietly.
He began visiting every few weeks. When they spoke in French, as he liked to, she mouthed her words awkwardly and her jaw would feel stiff. She had grown unused to speaking the language.
If Isabel were awake, he played with her.
Sometimes he came by with Ruth. Ruth had something simple, something childlike about her. “Ah, watch how Isabel plays up to her,” he observed. “That child is a real politician.”
But all was not well between him and Ruth. He said that Ruth was becoming “hystérique” just as Rosa had been. Rosa smiled with gratification.
She began confiding in him. She talked to him about problems when they arose at work. She even began to ask his advice about her lovers.
One night she told him how her most recent boyfriend had broken up with her. “He didn’t show up three times in a row,” she said. “Each time I was so anxious. I get panicky when this happens. Each time he called with some excuse. Finally, when he did drive over, I yelled at him—I yelled and yelled—I was so angry. He wrote me a note saying he never wanted to see me again.” She laughed but tears welled up in her eyes.
She was afraid, however, to tell Antonio how handsome the boyfriend was. She thought it better not to tell him how good the lovemaking was.
“He’s a con!” declared Antonio. He stubbed out his cigarette, then lit another, and offered her one. “American cons. They don’t like women. They don’t allow women to be themselves.” His hand trembled as he held the match for her cigarette. “You’d be more at home in South America, Petite, or in Spain, with your emotional nature—they would adore you.”
She inhaled. He blew out the match. He seemed so much older than he had in Paris. He alone of all the men in her life was constant. Anyone else she could frighten away just as easily as he flicked out the match.
If only he would take care of himself. His yellowed nylon shirt from Paris was grimy around the neck, and a button was missing. His khaki trousers were too large, bunched together at the waist by his belt. He had lost weight, and the bones in his face protruded. Grey hair grew at his temples, mingled with the soft dark blonde locks she used to love to caress.
One evening in July Antonio appeared just as Rosa came home from work, her car loaded with groceries, Isabel in the back seat. He had walked over on foot. Usually he drove Ruth’s Volkswagen.
“Ruth has left me.”
“Why?” asked Rosa. She was putting food away. Isabel toddled around the kitchen with a piece of bread in her hand. She was small and round; her golden hair gleamed beneath sinking shafts of sunlight. She wore red corduroy overalls, a white jersey, and red sneakers. “Dada,” she said, tugging at Antonio’s hand. He swooped her into his arms and then sat down with her at the table. She gurgled sounds of contentment that were almost intelligible words.
“Ah the little one . . . she makes up for everything,” said Antonio. “Ruth has left me because she’s terrified to the point of folie . . . her mother flew out from New Jersey and made a terrible scene. . . . Ruth has applied for welfare . . . she’s five months pregnant. . . . She’ll have a marvelous bébé like this one here,” he said, patting Isabel’s rump. “Her mother kept asking if I would support her. What a question!” He laughed bitterly, opened the bottle of beer he had brought with him, and took a swallow.
“You’re drinking again,” said Rosa with dismay. For the last month he had stopped.
“Just a little to relax.”
“What will you do, Antonio?”
“I can’t pay the rent on her house . . . money . . .” He rubbed his fingers together. “For a while I was supporting her. I persuaded her to leave her job at the bank, which she hated, and she’s been learning how to design clothes. She was as happy as she could be. But I’m not earning enough. I’m only a pauvre gar. I can’t pay one hundred and fifty a month rent because I only work when they need me. I don’t understand North Americans. They’re all crazy. But I’ll find a way.”
She wondered just where his money went. Certainly he earned something. She thought of saying he could stay with her, but was prevented by memories of all the terrible things that happened when they lived together.
Antonio found another job cooking at the Van Damm, a huge ferry anchored permanently at Gate Six. He was happy with it. Again he stopped drinking. The owner provided him with a cabin, and one day Rosa took Isabel with her to visit him. His room was small and cozy, with portholes for windows, bright yellow curtains, a built-in bookcase where he kept his books, manuscripts, and huge manila envelopes full of photos. He took his meals on the ferry and drank coffee and Seven-Up at the bars, where he liked to go for conversation. He had no car and walked everywhere. He said he was saving a little money.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Steve gave her the tab, which she swallowed with a glass of water.
“That’s two hundred and fifty micrograms of pure acid, baby,” he said. “A small dose. You sure you don’t want more? With more, you can really take off.”
She shook her head. “No. This is my first time.”
Fully dressed except for his boots, he lay back on her couch with the blue and green madras spread over it, and he surveyed her. He had offered to be her guide. He had a crook’s face, she thought, although it had never seemed so before this instant. He had green eyes and red hair and a freckled, pointed face.
She was curious to try LSD. People were talking about it a lot. Next door Jane, a tall rangy Texan who taught art to children and who painted beautiful landscapes, flowers, and nudes, had taken it only a few weeks ago. Unaware of this, Rosa visited her towards the end. “Hold my hand,” Jane demanded. “I feel like I’m shattering . . . oh it’s so good . . . so good,” Jane said. She trembled on the edge of her bed, and her face was blissful.
Afterwards, Jane told her that under the impact of the drug, she experienced a new clarity. “It’s like fifteen years of therapy,” she said. “I understood so much more than I ever did before.”
“I’d like to try it.”
Jane looked dubious. “You never know what will happen . . . and you’ve already been through a lot.” They were outside. Rosa was hanging some clothes she had washed by hand to dry on the clothesline in her yard. She shook
out a yellow bib. “I’m only unstable on the outside.” She was determined to try it.
Rosa prepared. She cleaned her house, washed all their clothes, mended underwear, and bought a supply of groceries. She borrowed Jane’s record player and several records from Ginevra. She debated about whether to take Isabel to Joanna and Les, then decided to keep the child with her.
“You’re going to write?” asked Steve in disbelief, looking at the note pads and pens on the coffee table. “I’ve never felt like it myself.”
“I’ll see.”
Isabel was asleep in the bedroom. Rosa lit candles. She wore a long floating orange-gold gown. She had washed her hair, brushed it carefully, and let it hang loose.
She knew that under the drug she would be far more sensitive to physical impressions and that everything around her—and she herself—needed to be as clean and as beautiful as she could make it.
She had read a book on taking LSD which compared the experience to the after-life journey described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which she had studied so thoroughly in Paris. She knew not to be frightened by horrible visions, images, or thoughts, but to flow with them. (“Demons arise from your own thought forms.”)
She put on a record by Ali Akbar Khan, lay back on the bed next to Steve, and listened to the music.
“Nothing’s happening,” she said.
“Wait.”
Isabel began crying. Rosa got up and went to her. As she caught sight of the child in her crib, a smile arose on her lips, spread over her face and down through her body into the floor. The joy of beholding Isabel swept her up in a huge wave. Notes on the sitar sounded. They seemed to be sending her into different circuits of consciousness.
She held the child in her arms. “Don’t cry, I love you,” she murmured. She rocked Isabel back and forth in rhythm with the sitar. The child wasn’t wet. When she put the bottle to her lips, the child did not suck at it. She wasn’t hungry. “You sleep. Don’t disturb me now. Sleep.”
The child seemed to understand, because she sighed and dropped off to sleep in her arms. Gently Rosa laid her down and covered her with a blanket.
She seemed to walk more lightly back from the bedroom. She tasted something soda-like in her mouth and thought it was probably the tablet. There was a tension throughout her neck and shoulders.
Steve lay there watching her. His face was a crook’s. She looked steadily at him until the crookedness went out of his gaze. She dissolved something dishonest in his eyes. They seemed to change color, shifting from smoke to green. He reached out for her. His hands were warm. He was no one she would marry. Good God no. All of a sudden she wished he were not there. She waltzed beyond the reach of those hands.
Antonio.
Antonio.
The color light blue whirled out of the candles. For an instant sunlight drenched her eyes, although it was night. She clenched her stomach and uttered a deep cry. If only she had known him as a boy in Chile. If only . . .
It was all a big joke.
Life was a joke.
Problems were jokes.
The moonlight cast shadows on the walls. The glass made prismatic patterns. Through the window she looked onto the dark house opposite, trees, shrubs, and the Bay that glistened with reflected moonlight as well as lights from distant Belvedere and Tiburon.
Karma.
To untie the knot of karma.
You untied one and came to the next.
An old man in the corner seemed to howl with laughter. He was not there. (He was the creation of her own thought forms. “Don’t flee the visions. Flow with them.”)
Words were windows into reality.
Words could be prisons that kept away reality.
The present. The present.
The atmosphere in the room changed. The darkness seemed almost as if she could touch it. It soaked her in itself. The flickering light of the candles absorbed her. The sitar had slowed, and the pulse of a drum sounded faintly. Then the music stopped.
“Hey babe, it’s beginning to work.”
She smiled. Her muscles felt different. She felt a new grace. When she looked into his eyes, the usual fear of another person did not arise to cloud her gaze, fix it, or make her turn away. His face changed even as she looked at it. Child. Old man. (If she looked at him with the right vision, he would be a man. With the wrong vision, she could unman him.)
She looked down at the golden-orange material of her dress, faint in the candlelight, felt its roughwoven texture.
Then she reached for the note pad and pen and, seated on the floor, began to write because energy was flowing so fast, forming such violent and clearly etched perceptions that she feared she would explode, as if the voltage were too high, unless she formed the energy into something. She did not want to lose the thoughts that were coming to her. If she formed one thought into words, then the next could form. Otherwise they built up into huge masses that choked her.
Words.
Words.
“Let’s go,” said Steve. “Flow with it. Stop hanging on.”
“You want to fuck me, Steve?” With her gaze she dispelled the exploitation. She watched his face change to a teamster’s, to a Roman slave boy’s (she was a charioteer), to a leopard, and then to his own freckled countenance with his red hair.
“Later,” he said, “if you’re in the mood.”
Curious, he could see what she was thinking. He was not that stupid.
The deep blue rug.
Deep blue.
Sink into the color.
She put Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony on the record player. The music enveloped her inside huge ocean waves, brass, and violins, almost too sweet and too rich.
She laughed.
“Leave me alone,” she said.
She turned off the music, went into the bathroom, crouched on the floor, and wrote until she could pause. She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. Her face changed in the electric light. Each time she blinked, it changed.
I am my thoughts. But I’m more than my thoughts. My thoughts form what I see.
She left the bathroom, turned on Ali Akbar Khan again, and danced. She felt herself becoming various personalities according to the moods the music created, with its rhythms that wound into her muscles and nerves.
“Now you’re letting go,” said Steve.
He had turned into a lynx.
Much later he began to fondle her. She felt as if her body were composed of powder. A kind of horror seized her as he fumbled with her dress and slid it over her head. His face took on the aspect of a crook’s again. A gloating boy. One-more-notch-in-the-belt. I laid her, fellas.
Ignore the images. Do nothing about the faces that leer.
She felt huge, magnificent, all-giving. It was so little to give. He was a frogman. There had been countless others, and there would be more. (“Perceptions arise from your own thought forms.”) As they copulated, she felt anesthetized, as though he were still very far away from this strange substance which her body had become.
Afterwards he lay with his eyes half closed, while she gripped his hand and sat up on the narrow couch, half-covered with blankets which slid over her shoulders, watching the sky lighten. She feared she would fly out of herself unless she kept holding his hand. Energy rose from her stomach. The touch of him grounded her.
When she got out of bed to eat some grapes, everything seemed to be in disorder. Bolsters, blankets, and pillows were heaped over the couch and on the floor. Clothing was strewn about the room.
Isabel in her crib, wearing a long white jersey and plastic pants over her diaper, seemed a sad, patient old woman. Although her diapers were soaking wet and stank of ammonia, and it was long past her usual waking time, she had not uttered a sound.
Rosa changed her and warmed a bottle in the kitchen.
“Come here, Isabel.”
The child cried out and ran beyond her mother’s reach. Usually when Rosa held out her arms, she rushed into them. The child circled her as thoug
h tethered by an invisible rope, spinning out to the farthest edge.
“You know what’s going on, do you?”
Unable to supervise Isabel, she thrust her back into the crib with her bottle to keep her safe from harm.
Suddenly it all seemed crystal clear in this realm beneath the cluttered surface of everyday consciousness. Eleanor hated her because her life suffocated Eleanor’s. She in turn would hate her own child unless she lived fully. At the same time she believed Isabel would be golden, would be far more glorious than she. The child would build on Rosa’s tenuous strength, while Rosa barely survived because she had so much to battle. (“These are merely your own thought forms. Reality is a void.”) She was still in the realm of mara, or illusion, although the atmosphere was thinner. She could see more clearly. But she was not yet ready to tear out the twisted roots of those illusions. No not yet. Not yet.
Steve left late that morning. Afterwards Rosa sniffed the grass and flowers and walked in the open air. Sadness for Antonio overwhelmed her. He wanted to be loved. Everything, even the roses, even the leaves, wanted to be loved. Everything was crying out “love me.”
“Love me,” the grass blades were sighing.
Why had she allowed Steve to deposit sperm inside her? So little for her to give. Hard to resist. Payment for his companionship? How repellent. Better to remain alone.
Tired, she lay down on her bed. She began to stroke herself between her thighs, softly, gently, as if comforting herself. “No,” said a voice. What voice? Why did the hand between her thighs have to be a man’s? Preferably legitimated by a marriage certificate? Why not her own hand? Why not another woman’s?
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