by David Bergen
Not the words, Íso said, but they know the physical problem. They are women. They’ve had babies before.
He studied her. He asked her age.
She said she was twenty-two.
He said, You seem older.
This was obviously flirtatious, almost wrong, but she didn’t care, and it surprised her that she didn’t care. He asked where she had learned to speak English without an accent. She said at the American School in Panajachel. He asked about her intentions. Did she plan to stay at the clinic, working as a keeper? She said that once she had enough money, she planned to go to the city and continue studying medicine. Her goal was to graduate and then work at a local hospital. She wondered, when she said this, if he might think that she was making this up on the spot, or that she was only trying to impress him, to match him in some way. But it was true, medicine was her intention. And it was the dream of her mother, who had spent much of the money she had made from the tienda on sending Íso across the lake to the American School. She was an only child. There were hopes and expectations.
WHEN Doctor Mann arrived one day at the door to her mother’s tienda, it appeared to be by chance, but it wasn’t. He’d come looking for her. He bought a quart of ice cream and ate it as he stood beneath the awning of the shop. It was a Sunday, his day off, and her day off as well. They spoke English. He told her that her English was very smooth and pure. This is how he put it. Pure. He was flattering and clear and kind, and he looked her in the eyes as he spoke these words, and because he wasn’t a doctor at that moment and she wasn’t a keeper, she looked at his eyes and saw that they were blue.
He offered her some ice cream, but she refused because it hurt her teeth. He said that she should call him Eric. The other makes me feel old, he said.
She asked his age.
He said he was thirty. Is that old? he asked.
She said it didn’t matter to her.
You’re a strange one, he said. And then he said he would see her again, and he climbed on his motorcycle and left her standing in the street. She sat behind the counter in the tienda and tried not to think of him, but this was impossible. And so she thought about the colour of his hair and the colour of his eyes and the slight crookedness of his mouth that made it seem as if he was just about to smile, and the manner in which he leaned into her as he asked her questions, as if no one else existed save her. Even later, when they became very close, and when they were out with a group of interns or other foreigners, she was aware of how explicit he was in his attention to the person he was speaking with. It didn’t have to be her. Though she wanted it to be. And she suffered jealousy, a feeling she had never experienced in a large way before. The jealousy surprised her. She felt unbalanced, and she wondered where such a strong emotion had come from.
In the evenings he began to drop by the tienda, where she sat behind the counter serving customers and, when there was a lull, reading and writing. She was always waiting, listening for the sound of his motorcycle—the low, smooth hum of the Honda, which was cleaner and softer than the tinny racket of the Chinese-made motorcycles that moved up the street towards the market. He approached from the playa, following the one-way street, and he parked his bike, turned it off, and pushed back his blond hair. He swung his leg over the saddle and walked into the tienda and said good evening to her in Spanish. She pretended surprise, even though she had been watching him, and she responded in Spanish and for a time they spoke her language, and when his restricted vocabulary was depleted, they spoke English. He was very good at not talking about himself, even though she wanted to hear about his life. He asked her what she was reading and she told him, and he asked about her Saturdays at the American School and she told him that she was taking a class in English literature, and he asked her if she was smart, and she laughed and said she was all right.
I think so, he said. He asked about her friends and she told him about Illya, who also worked as a keeper. You must know her, she said.
He did.
She said that Illya was her best friend. She held her hand to her chest when she said this, surprising herself with the emotion she felt.
He asked if there was a boy who was also such a good friend, a novio, and she said, Sin novio. She asked him if there was a novia in his life.
He said no.
No wife? she asked. This was very forward, but she wanted to know. In fact, she thought that if he was going to flirt with her, she had the right to know.
No more, he said.
What does that mean? she asked. She’s dead?
He laughed. No, I live here and she lives there. We’re separated.
Íso nodded. And this is true? she asked. She said that her mother would like to know.
True, he said. You can tell your mother. Are there any other questions?
She tilted her head. What’s her name? she asked.
Susan.
Is she beautiful?
In her way.
What way is that?
As someone who is aware that others are looking at her.
He might just as easily have been describing himself, but she did not share this thought. She kept it as part of her tally, in which she gauged who he was and how he behaved, and how he might reveal himself to her. This was still early on, when she was capable of some objectivity, before she tumbled into adoration.
Sometimes, on those evenings when he called on her, her mother appeared, and then he did what he did best. He paid attention to Señora Perdido, whom he had met during one of his first visits. He looked right at Señora Perdido and said it was a pleasure, and then he asked her if she was happy with her smart daughter who was strong and beautiful, and of course Señora Perdido nodded her head and said yes, yes. Another time he praised the store, saying that it was stocked with things foreigners wanted, and this was a good thing. The first time he met Señora Perdido he said that she could easily be Íso’s sister, and this was true to a point, for she was still young and her face was youthful. Señora Perdido bowed her head. He made little flourishes as he spoke, and Íso was aware of his hands. When he addressed Señora Perdido, his vocabulary was weak, and sometimes they spoke English, a language in which Señora Perdido was quite adept. But the content of his speech was of little matter. It was the presentation, the company of this young man, that impressed Señora Perdido. And she was won over. In those moments.
ÍSO Did not tell anyone, and she might have denied the truth even to herself, though when he was near, when she smelled him, when she heard him speak, even when he was talking to someone else, she understood. Love was supposed to be complex and without a solution, or so she thought until she suffered it, and then she saw that it had no conditions, and that it was simple and brimming. Her heart ached. And her shoulders and her breasts and her thighs. There’d been one other before him, a boy from her village who used to ride the boat to school with her, and with whom she’d read assignments, and to whom she’d offered the occasional kiss in a dark street near the market, leaning against the stone wall of a carpintería, folding into each other so that she and he were one. But now she realized that boy had been nothing. Nothing.
Doctor Mann had the motorcycle, and within a month they were riding together on Sundays to the various pueblos around the lake or down to Patulul, where they walked through the market. He would pick her up early, and because he had only one helmet he insisted she wear it and so she did. The wind blew his hair back against the shield of her helmet, and she wrapped her arms around his waist, and when the road was straight, he took his left hand and held her wrist or her fingers. And then, after returning to the pueblo, he parked the motorcycle beside his bungalow, which was behind the hotel that overlooked the lake. They sat on his porch, he in the hammock, she in a chair, and he drank a Gallo while she drank water. And they talked. She said that she loved this time in the evening, when the birds had settled down, and the day was over, and the tumult of the day had finished. She chose the word “tumult” because he had used it just that mo
rning when talking about the tumult of his heart. She liked the word but thought that it was much too dramatic to talk about his heart. It was too intimate.
He said that she was hard to reach.
I’m not, she said. I’m right here.
She had not thought about him physically, other than in a dreamy way, and in her inexperience she imagined lying with him in a clean bed, side by side, fully clothed, and they held hands and talked, and perhaps kissed, but they did not touch other than to stroke each other’s face, and they spoke of love but did not act on it. And so it had to be that the first time she acted on her love for him, she was utterly surprised by his quick, hard need. She was also surprised by the colour of his body. She of course knew that he was blond and his hands were white and his face was white, but she was not prepared for his whole body to be white, and for a moment, when he stood before her, everything was a surprise. She kept her T-shirt and socks on, which made her feel safer, and yet unclean in some way, and when he slid her T-shirt up to her neck and kissed her there, she thought this was all fair and good, but it was not as she had imagined it. There was some tenderness, and he called her beautiful, but it was as if he was talking to himself. The lamp beside his bed was on, and though it was dim, she asked if it might be turned off. He did so. And then it was dark, and it was easier, because now his body was in the shadows, and she could have him without actually seeing him, and she found it good to touch him and be touched. She felt his breath on her neck and on her cheeks and on the top of her head, and she imagined a white piece of paper on which there was nothing, and all that nothingness turned into layers of clouds through which she fell. When it was over, she thought, So this is it.
She became freer. They sometimes went to his room in the afternoons, occasionally on Saturdays, when he met her by the pier as she returned from school in Panajachel. On those days, she hopped on the back of his bike and they rode straight to his bungalow. She had become accustomed to being with him in the afternoon light. She liked to study his body. And she liked him to touch and talk to her body. At times they were careless, or lazy, and didn’t use a condom. She wondered later, when she was alone, if she wanted something that she wasn’t even aware of.
ONE Sunday he invited her to ride down the coast with him to Tecojate. A few of the doctors were going there for the day, to swim and eat lunch and enjoy the water. She said that she didn’t know how to swim. He said that it wasn’t necessary. He wanted her there. She agreed, and so they rode down through San Lucas Tolimán and past the large fincas into the heat of Patulul and towards the coast. She had been to Tecojate only once, as a child, and she discovered that it had not changed. You parked and walked over to the river and crossed the river on a small boat, which cost five quetzales for a round trip, and then you walked past a few tiendas and settled into one of the comedores. The ocean with its large waves was one hundred yards beyond, and on Sundays it was full of those who were seeking reprieve from the heat. Three other doctors who worked at the clinic rode up by van and joined them. Hanna was from Germany, and Hans and Betje, a married couple, were from Holland. Íso had met all three doctors at the clinic, and so she knew them and they knew her, but they paid little attention to her, just as they did at the clinic, other than to ask about her plans and her mother, and so it turned out that the questions were always the same, and the answers the same as well, and soon they ran out of things to say. She would have been pleased to have a larger conversation, but it wasn’t her place to ask them questions.
And of course, there was the issue of bathing suits. Hanna and Betje wore bikinis, and though this didn’t bother Íso, she was aware of her own modesty, of the shorts and large T-shirt she had changed into. This was her swimming outfit—it was what she and her friends had always worn at the beach, though Illya, being Illya, wore a bikini when swimming. When they all walked down to the beach Íso was aware of Hanna and Betje’s beauty, and their freedom with their bodies, and of her own attire, especially when she got wet and the T-shirt clung to her skin. She kept pulling at her T-shirt in order to hide her shape, but no one seemed to notice, and so she gave up and walked out into the waves with Eric and when a large wave crashed over them, she gasped and Eric took her hand. She pushed him out into the surf. Go, she said, and he did, diving into the waves, following the others, and she went back to the shore and watched them catch the large waves, their arms and bodies and hair all the same colour, except for Hanna, whose hair was dark and long. And then Hanna was sitting on Eric’s shoulders and she was laughing, her head thrown back, and her body was shining in the sun. Íso walked back through the hot sand and lay in a hammock beneath the roof of the comedor, and she closed her eyes, and she must have slept, because she now heard Hanna talking, and she opened her eyes and saw that the four doctors were sitting at the table, and they were smoking a joint. Eric saw that she was awake, and he said, Come, join us. And so she did, and Eric offered her the joint, but she shook her head no.
Hanna was talking about the women in the village. She said it was an utter tragedy. They wanted to have their tubes tied, but they needed the signature of the husband, which rarely happened, and even when they did get the signature, the father would intervene and say no. She said the other day she’d done a C-section and tied the woman’s tubes without the husband or father knowing. The girl had requested it, whispered in Hanna’s ear before she went under. Nineteen years old, Hanna said, and already a mother of three.
Betje said that the women in the villages amazed her. So solid. So capable. Yet trapped beneath this rock of patriarchy. And then the husband runs off and takes a lover and spends all his money on his mistress. She said that it was absurd to tie a woman’s tubes in a fertility clinic.
Íso listened. She was worried that they would ask her opinion on some matter relating to men or women and children, or something about men and power, but no one asked her for her thoughts. She was relieved. They talked as if everything was clear and certain.
Eric was quiet.
For lunch they ate a mixto of shrimp and fish and they drank beer. She drank water and ate delicately, aware of how Hanna tore at her shrimp, her fingers dripping with sauce.
God, Hanna said, I feel like a pig.
You are a pig, Hans said, and he wiped at her face with a napkin. Betje was stooped over her fish, picking at the bones. She seemed very stoned. And for a moment Íso wished that she were freer for Eric’s sake. She wished that she could smoke dope and wear a bikini and drink beer with abandon, and then perhaps he would find her more attractive.
After lunch, Hans, Betje, and Hanna went for another swim. Íso and Eric watched them run into the waves.
Hanna’s beautiful, Íso said.
Eric shrugged. She talks too much, he said. She knows everything.
If you know everything, then you’re allowed to talk.
She thinks she knows everything.
And you?
He turned to look at her. Me?
Do you know everything?
Nothing. I know nothing. Especially about you.
My mother says I’m still young. She’s worried. Do you wish I had a bikini?
Do you want one? Your body’s perfect. You have nothing to be ashamed of.
I’m not ashamed. And then she said, You should have an American girlfriend, or a German girlfriend.
Why?
Because they’re free.
They might look free, but they aren’t. Believe me. You’re free.
How am I free?
You’re free to be modest. You’re free to not smoke up. You’re free to be here and listen and not respond to the nonsense that Hanna spouts. You’re very calm, and you’re very comfortable with yourself.
I’m insignificant to them, she said, and she waved her hand in the direction of the three doctors.
Next time we’ll come alone, he said.
But you like them, she said.
I put up with them.
She said that she found them funny. You come h
ere and think you know about us. You talk about men and patriarchy and tubes tied. And you talk about poverty. You don’t know half of it.
You? he asked. You’re including me? He took her hand and held it.
Not you, she said.
On the return trip they stopped at a dairy finca, on the outskirts of San Lucas, where there was a very modern shop that sold ice cream. They stood beside the motorcycle and ate ice cream cones. She had removed her helmet and loosed her hair from its ponytail.
He said that he had something to tell her, and that he wanted her to know this in advance so there would be no surprises. He said that Susan was coming to take the waters at the clinic.
Íso heard what he said, but at first she didn’t understand, and then when she realized who Susan was, a hole opened up before her and she turned away. And turned back to him and said, Did you invite her?
No. She insisted. It was her choice. You have to understand. She thinks the waters might help her.
She was quiet. Then she asked, Does she know about me?
I don’t want her to know about you.
You’re hiding me?
No. Never. To talk about you would spoil things. She has her life, I have mine.
She said that she was confused. I don’t truly know you, she said. I want to believe that you’re the same man away from me as you are with me. Is that so wrong?
I’m the same, he said.
And Susan left you?
We left each other.
How long were you married?
Four years.
You must have been happy.
We were at first. She wanted to have a baby, but we couldn’t. Her periods were irregular, although that’s not always a problem. And so we were both tested, but there was nothing conclusive. And this made her more anxious.
And you? Were you anxious?