The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg

by Deborah Eisenberg

  “Can’t,” Suky said. “Rob and I have tickets for the opera.”

  Mick looked annoyed. “Very funny,” he said.

  Kimball smiled indulgently. “Now, her family”—he pointed at the Indian girl—“barricades themselves in.”

  “No shit,” Mick said. He pursed his lips and examined his juice glass. “‘Barricades.’”

  “Hey, now,” Kimball protested, as though Mick had maligned the girl’s family. “These are good people.”

  Mick nodded gallantly at the immobile girl. “I don’t doubt that for a second,” he said. “But, what you’re…I mean, if there’s actual…conflict.” He turned the glass in his hands. “What do you say, Suke?”

  “Besides.” Suky smiled sweetly. “Rob wants to stay, obviously. Rob wants to see conflict.”

  “No conflict,” Kimball said. “Oh, sure, the odd incident, naturally, now and again, but the real problem around here”—he lowered his voice—“is brujos. There was one recently, changed himself into a wild boar nights. Rampaged, was tearing up everyone’s little plots of corn and beans, went after people whenever he got the chance.” He studied Mick for a moment. “Now, Micky. We know that anybody who’s out at night is up to mischief. I know that as well as you do. A person who’s out at night is not a reliable human being. But things happen, and you got to take that into consideration. Someone’s old lady gets sick, they have to get water from somewhere. A kid wanders out. You know how it is. And this brujo chewed up some folks something awful, they say, before they shot it one night in a cornfield. And in the morning? When the sun came up? The body turned into the sweetest old man you’d ever want to meet. One of our next-door neighbors.” He sighed and shook his head. “But you know what?” He looked up as though surprised. “Rob—Suky—Are you listening? Because this is the interesting part, now. Afterwards, there were a lot of people who said that sweet old man and his wife were guerrillas.”

  Suky was looking at him thoughtfully. “No shit,” she said, after a moment.

  “No shit,” he said. He stood, studying the empty spots where the soldiers had been, and hitched up his jeans. “Hey—” He whistled. “Pablito—”

  “A buck fifty apiece,” Mick said, when the bill was analyzed. “Can’t beat that.” He drained his juice, set the glass purposefully on the table, and stood. “Sure. We’ll try to give you guys a hand, go back today if we do good business early—no real need to stay over, then. So, ready?”

  “I think I’ll just hang around,” Rob said. “Explore.”

  Mick and Suky looked at him blankly.

  “Okay, professor,” Kimball said. “Explore away.”

  Now that Rob had succeeded in obtaining solitude, he found he had no idea what to do with it. The prospect of finding a ride back, which in the car had seemed so reasonable, was obviously absurd; he had noticed no other cars in the village. And who could he even ask? Pablo was at his elbow, staring at the little pile of money on the table. “Sí.” Rob nodded. “Gracias.” Pablo’s eyes glinted as he seized it.

  He could consult the man who had checked them in at the hotel, Rob thought. Though that didn’t seem too promising. For a hotel keeper in a village to which few surely traveled, the man had been remarkably—not actually rude, Rob thought, but, well,…preoccupied.

  There was one other party of guests at the hotel, Rob remembered. Three unsmiling button-faced blonds, of which one or two seemed to be boys. He could ask them. A good idea.

  But when he imagined himself strolling back and finding them, a feeling of weakness overtook him. Their presence in the hotel’s sunless courtyard earlier had been ghostly and forbidding. The hotel keeper had gestured to an enclosure beyond them—the shower, he explained. A shower! But Mick had been jittery and discouraging. “It’ll be freezing, man. Let’s go get some lunch—it’ll warm up later.” But Rob stood his ground—he’d earned the right, he felt, in the car. So Mick and Suky waited while he fetched the stiff little towel from his room—his cubicle—and disappeared into the shower stall. Instantly he was back in the courtyard, humiliated; the shower was literally unbearable. Mick had doubled up, and the blonds looked at him out of their button faces. But perhaps the blonds simply hadn’t understood—they were foreigners. Well, foreigners, of course, but what he meant, he corrected himself, was, not American.

  Rob gazed out at the watery sky, the cloudy lake. At the very worst, he’d only have to wait until late afternoon. Either Kimball would have succeeded in convincing Mick and Suky to return to town today, or he could take the mail boat by himself. Which was by far the more appealing alternative, actually—he was certainly in no hurry to be out on that road again. Anyhow, the urgency to leave had passed. There was something—well, something correct about being where he was. After all—the thought rose up dripping—it was where he was…

  He had wanted to go, while he had the chance this summer before starting grad school, someplace very far away. Whenever his parents came home from their trips, they sparkled with things it was impossible to say. In fancy books of photographs you could see clues, hints, in the glossy pages, where boats rocked in the harbors of seaside towns, streetlamps spread a soft glamour through the rain of antique cities, where men and women of distant nationalities hunkered in the circle of the lens, enticing and resistant.

  Since the beginning of summer he’d wound his way down and down and down, in buses throbbing with peasants and chickens. His heart had pounded at each blue and gold drop to the valley floors, at the crude white crosses marking death along the roads, at the shining, disinterested God-filled air, through which he had expected, at every moment, to plummet, along with his fellow passengers, bouncing in their tinny container from peak to peak. And he had felt, all the time, that he was following a trail of instructions that would lead him as far as it was possible to go.

  Now here he was. As far as it was possible to go. The end of the trail, where the world trickled out into mud.

  If Meredith were here, she would show him how to find the beauty of this place as though it were a photograph. Through her eyes, it would acquire coherence, meaning, intelligibility. The lake with its sudsy rolls of fog—Meredith would know facts about it: its size, its depth, its geological origin. She would have researched the social organization, the language, the economy of these silent, unreadable villagers. She would smile, now, and coax him to his feet.

  Oh, if only he could just go back to the hotel and have his shower! But he imagined Meredith’s bewilderment: You got all the way there and didn’t even see the market? Or the church? She shook her thick gold-brown hair and laughed. You just took a shower and went back? No, she didn’t laugh—her white smile dimmed when she saw his face.

  All right. So, market, church, then shower and return. A few tourists were struggling up the hill—evidently Suky had overestimated the impending plague. They would be headed for the market themselves, Rob reasoned, as he lost sight of them in the thicket of tin roofs and little hills.

  But despite the intricacy of paths and turnings, the market turned out to be no more than two minutes’ walk from the restaurant. Indian clothing hung from stalls, and careful heaps of dwarfed and fly-specked mangoes were displayed on crates.

  Pale, smiling people, determined, apologetic, wearing squashy hats to protect them from the sun, aimed cameras at undersize children and their glowering mothers. Even worse was the dickering at the stalls. The scene had a sickening familiarity. It was like seeing as an adult one of those frenetic, mean-spirited, sentimental TV shows Rob had watched as a child. “They want you to bargain, they expect you to. It’s insulting if you don’t,” one woman was informing her shame-faced husband. “Twenty dollar,” she said to the shop owner, believing herself, apparently, to be speaking a foreign language.

  The shop owner was a large woman. Some automatic function was releasing rage evenly into her face. She held out for inspection a pair of trousers, embroidered with rich tiers of parrots and ice-cream cones, while the customer deliberated—with sh
rewdness and forced gaiety—as though she were trying on hats in Paris.

  It was a large, rusty stain on the side of the trousers that decided the matter. The shop owner was adamant. The stain would wash out, she insisted without a trace of credibility. The customer was knowing, regretful. As she walked away, strength of character lighting up her face, the shop owner hissed after her. The retreating customer’s step did not quicken, though her expression toughened slightly. Rob, rooted to the spot, waited for her skin to blossom with hemorrhages, her flesh to turn to pulp, her hair and teeth to spring out onto the mud.

  Why did he feel he must redress the imbalance between buyer and seller? It was a stupid and superstitious impulse, he told himself. Humanity everywhere was at ease with the barbarism of his countryfellows. And how not? It was simple—one had power and money on one’s side; inevitably every act one committed was predicated on that fact. If he were to give in and buy something now, his transaction would be predicated on that fact as well.

  It was true, he thought. He could buy or not buy; he could exercise his power and money or refrain from doing so, and that was the extent of his choice. But the notion only fanned the agitation threatening to rattle him like a dried gourd should he leave the market with nothing.

  At the nearest stall he gathered up, roughly, like a criminal, several sashes and a pair of trousers, the inferior workmanship of which suggested a low price. He paid what was asked and left before the incredulous saleswoman could determine whether he ought to be addressed with mockery or with pity. Had his gesture alleviated in the least degree the disarray of his pulse, his breathing, his glands? No.

  Mick had been right, he thought; he should have ordered some juice. His lightheadedness might well be dehydration, in part. But at least he’d managed to see the market already, and the church could not be far. He would take his dutiful glimpse, return to the hotel to drink some water and take his shower, and by that time Mick and Suky might be ready to leave. He tucked his purchases under his arm, noting that these new trousers of his were marred, too, by rusty stains. Should he deposit them by the side of the road? No point in that; whatever was on them was on him now, as well.

  The church was not around the first turn he took, nor the second, nor the third. Around the fourth, little huts petered out into a foggy scrub. Figures were moving in the mist—women with water jugs on their heads and babies, wrapped in shawls, on their backs. Below, the gray lake and gray sky exchanged their vapors.

  Something bulged from the scrub! No, only an old man, coming toward him. Sometimes these Indians looked a little pathetic, Rob thought, in their wide trousers, in all their loose, swaddling clothing. Clownish, almost, like patients. “Señor,” Rob called. “Iglesia? Dónde está, por favor?”

  The old man approached Rob teeteringly. He held an old straw hat by the brim, and his expression was quizzical and humorous. Again, Rob asked where the church was, but the old man gave no sign of understanding, even of hearing, the question.

  Moisture made his large black eyes radiant, his gaze penetrating but unspecific. His face was a patchwork with deep seams. His mouth had simply been left open, like a doorway, and inside, stumpy teeth tilted at random intervals. Yet the effect was pleasant, even soothing. Rob felt as though a thrumming sleep were beginning to enfold him as he watched the man approach. “Iglesia,” Rob said again. The word was a wooden ball, rolling on a wooden floor. It rolled toward the old man, who reached out, and Rob remembered, just in time, to retract his hand.

  The old man paused in front of him, swaying. Drunk, Rob decided. In several places along the road this morning, they had seen figures sprawled out in the mud. “Drunk,” Mick pronounced at the first. And at the third, “Shit, all of these drunks.”

  The man’s face crinkled up, as though he and Rob were the oldest of friends. It wouldn’t hurt to let him hang on to my sleeve, Rob chided himself. He couldn’t stop looking at the man—it was as though he really had fallen asleep.

  But the man had lost interest in the arm Rob now offered. His mouth moved, and the silky sounds of the language of the village were slipping around Rob. Yes, like patients, wandering in the mist. “No entiendo,” Rob said, remembering that he was supposed to understand. The man smiled in agreement and nodded. They were both smiling, Rob observed with a mild, puzzled interest.

  The old man pointed to a hovering strip of fog. “No,” Rob said, smiling still, as the word breathed in and out—no, no—a sail, or wing, in front of him. But the old man beckoned, and retreated a few steps, looking at Rob.

  Several yards off the path a cluster of freshly painted wooden crosses rose up from the mud. The man watched Rob, feeding out the silken cord of his language. “No entiendo,” Rob said again, smiling just the way the man was smiling. “No entiendo…”

  Each declaration of Rob’s ignorance seemed only to amuse the old man more. He nodded, held up a finger, then stood very still and bowed his head, as though he were preparing a recitation, or prayer. He looked up roguishly to check on Rob’s attention, then bent over and picked up an imaginary bundle. Watching Rob playfully, he rocked the bundle in his arms, then replaced it on the ground.

  He held his finger up again, waited for Rob to nod, then drew himself erect and saluted at someone beyond Rob. As Rob struggled with the thick air for breath, the old man aimed an imaginary gun at the spot where he had laid the bundle, and pulled its imaginary trigger. “No entiendo,” Rob said, as the performance began all over. “I don’t—” But the old man persevered in his nightmarish repetitions. Behind him the crosses gleamed like bone, new and white, as Rob scrabbled in his pocket for small bills; when he thrust some at the old man, a handful of change fell twinkling in the mud.

  One more turn and Rob was at the church. It was enormous, ludicrous. Inside, the streaked blue-green paint and distant ceiling made it seem the size of a stadium. Rob’s empty gut kept turning slowly inside out, like a sock. He was covered with a chilling sweat.

  Aromatic grasses and flowers were scattered on the vast, cracked concrete floor. Here and there groups of Indians squatted, chanting over smoking vessels. A child skittered by him, cawing and waving his arms in play flight, or mental illness. The chanting spiraled high, modal, nasal—looping back, around the new Spanish god who starved on the altar, looping forward into the dark future…Rob wiped the sweat that was leaking into his eyes. Good heavens—the three button-faced blonds from the hotel were parading far down the nave, one of them holding, in both arms, a monstrous pineapple. A pineapple! Saints, dressed in embroidered trousers and battered straw hats, looked lustfully down at it from their niches, the hunger in their plaster eyes exaggerated, Rob saw as he felt about for something to lean on, by the kerchiefs—the guerrilla masks—the worshippers had tied across their saintly plaster noses and mouths.

  His room faced the lake. The glass in the window was broken and filthy, but that hardly mattered since the window could not be closed, and from where Rob lay he could see clearly. Perhaps the old man had only…There were a few shacks scattered along the marshy strip between the hotel and the lake, and children played near the docked mail boat. Rob closed his eyes, and the children’s voices floated up to him, intimate and allusive, like dreamed whispers in his ears. He had been lying there for some time. Two hours? Three? It was impossible to guess; the children’s voices rose and fell, measuring nothing.

  When Rob came in, he had slowly, carefully, drained one of his three bottles of water. Then he’d gone back downstairs to the shower stall, where no trickle, of any temperature, was to be coaxed from the faucet. The hotel keeper was outside, at the door, staring up into the hills. He waited courteously for Rob to struggle through his question in Spanish. “Generator,” the hotel keeper answered in English, and made an unmistakable gesture of termination before he returned to squinting up at the hills.

  Graffiti were scratched into the dirt and old paint on Rob’s wall. Hi, one said. My name is Bob I like this place I am American so all here stinks The toilet doesn
’t work Too All here is disgusting I like Indians I like I like most one good dead Indian The food here in this place is disgusting All here is dirty dirty dirty Bye bye Your Bob.

  Rob stared at it stunned, then laughed. An American named Bob! Oh, sure. Some German, more likely. And they had nerve to talk. A lot of nerve. Besides, Rob thought, the toilet worked perfectly. Or at least, he pointed out to himself, it had while the generator was functioning.

  His flat little pillow smelled of mildew. So did the shelf of uncompromising lumps that was his bed. He tried to isolate the strains of the odor, the ornate tangling of growth and decay; he concentrated as his body dripped from the heat into the mattress and plumes of gray light spread, confusing the water, the sky, the volcano. Where were Suky and Mick? If only Suky and Mick would walk in now, and they could all go back to town!

  He closed his eyes and the village lay before him. For a moment the market stalls, the tin-roofed huts, the children looked pretty, and exotic—beautiful. But smells, rising up from the scanty heaps of rotting food set out for sale and from the tottering, fly-plagued animals, were saturating the glossy surface, causing it to decompose into a deep welter. The smells were making Rob soft, seeping into his body, allowing the chanting from the church to permeate him, too, and alter the codes of his cells with every tiny, insistent modulation.

  He was now not merely dirty, he was contaminated. No, he was a crucible, originating poisons, spreading contaminants backward through his life. His parents appeared in their sunny kitchen. Rob drew himself in, but he could feel filth bleeding through his skin where his body pressed against the mattress.

  Down below, a few tourists were drifting toward the dock. The children who had been playing were now harnessing themselves into work, begging caressingly for pencils. Rob could hear them: Lápiz, lápiz, in their sing-song Spanish, see them advance, surround, pull at sleeves, undeflected by the stony embarrassment of their prey. Obviously Mick had abandoned his prudent thought of attempting to return to town today, and Rob was actually going to have to get himself onto his feet, and go down to the boat.