The Rhythm of Memory

by Alyson Richman

Samuel sat down next to her. The bone-gray pigeons at his feet poked around his heavy brown shoes, the birdseed having clustered around the bench.

  “You should have thrown the seeds farther,” she said as she turned to him.

  Samuel stammered at the sight of the girl’s bright green eyes. “Du har rätt…” he tried to muster in his broken Swedish. “You are right, I should have.”

  She giggled as she rearranged her scarf, bringing it down closer to her chin and revealing her white hair, her face red from the wind.

  He noticed that she had a sketchbook nestled on her other side and he inquired if she was an artist.

  “I’m a graduate student,” she said shyly. “I’m majoring in fine arts.”

  He leaned over and tried to stretch his neck in the direction of her sketchpad, hoping that she would open it and show him what she was working on.

  He could see her hands twitching in her lap, each finger gloved in soft wool.

  “I often come here to draw. I sometimes stumble across an interesting face or an unusual posture that I couldn’t get with a model in class.” She pointed to a small child sitting a few feet from his mother, who was reclining in a folding chair. “I could never find a child playing so naturally unless I sat here.”

  She took a stub of charcoal out from her pencil case and sketched the outline of the crouching boy. In a few abbreviated lines she had captured the arc of his back, the extension of his hand as he grasped a few blades of grass.

  “Perhaps I could buy you a cup of coffee after you’re finished sketching?” Samuel asked.

  She agreed on the condition that afterward he would allow her to draw his portrait.

  Over coffee, she withdrew her sketchpad and showed him its contents.

  Samuel studied each page carefully. There were sketches executed entirely in vine charcoal, and there were detailed, labor-intensive drawings that were done in pencil. But his favorite was her self-portrait.

  It was undoubtedly her. He could see the face as clearly as she was there sitting across from him. She had re-created the shape of her face perfectly, the high cheekbones, the sharp, intense eyes. But what he found particularly intriguing was how she had portrayed herself. She had clearly given herself the physical attributes of a woman, but she had contrasted those qualities with accessories that seemed meant for a child. For one thing, the coat she drew herself in was the kind a young girl might wear: the small notched collar, the four round buttons—two in each row—and the flared bottom. And instead of her clutching a handbag or a purse, she had drawn herself with a small, old-fashioned suitcase. One that was too small for an adult. And over the pencil shading, she had colored the suitcase completely in red.

  Samuel touched the corner of the drawing and looked back at the slender woman sitting across from him.

  “This one is my favorite,” he said as he tapped his finger against the page.

  She seemed to stiffen as he spoke of the drawing, as if by speaking of the portrait he was touching something inside her that she didn’t want to be disturbed.

  After several seconds of silence between them, she took the pad from him and closed it. “You have a sensitive eye; no one has ever commented on that drawing before. Not even my adviser.”

  “I’m drawn to things that have stories behind them.”

  She fidgeted. Trying to change the subject to something less personal, she took out her pencil case and placed it on the table.

  “You promised that if I had coffee with you, you’d sit for me.”

  “Well, I have every intention of keeping my promise. Just tell me what I’m supposed to do.” Samuel paused. “And, of course, you’ll need to tell me your name.”

  “I’m Kaija Sorenson.” She extended her hand to him.

  “I’m honored to meet you, Kaija. I’m Samuel Rudin.”

  She smiled at him sweetly. “Well, Samuel, I need you to stay perfectly still.”

  Samuel laughed. “You might find a better model in that child over there.” He turned and pointed to a young baby sleeping in a carriage near the entrance to the café.

  “No, I intend to draw you,” she said as she withdrew her pencil from her small aluminum case.

  She traced him in outline at first. Choosing to portray him in profile, his chin slightly bowed.

  Nearly half an hour later, she folded her arms against her chest and shook her head. “It’s not right.” She tore the page from her pad and crumpled it into a ball. “I’ll need to start over again.”

  Samuel stretched his back for a second. “This modeling isn’t easy work, you know. You’ll have to promise me that you’ll join me for dinner before I sit for another session.”

  Kaija giggled. “Very well. But this time, let’s try it with you sitting directly across from me.”

  Samuel readjusted his chair.

  “Yes, exactly, this way I can see your features more clearly.”

  In this position Samuel could stare at Kaija without difficulty. “I could get used to this,” he flirted.

  She looked up from above the edge of her sketchbook and smiled. And he imagined her as a young girl in that notch-collared coat, the tiny leather suitcase resting against her knees, and wondered what sort of stories this beautiful young woman might have packed tightly within.

  Fourteen

  GÕTEBORG, SWEDEN

  APRIL 1969

  Finally, Samuel had someone to share his free moments with. His first winter in Sweden was beginning to give way to spring and he rejoiced at the sight of the budding tulips. Since their initial meeting in the park, Kaija and he had begun to spend nearly all their free time with each other.

  Before meeting her, Samuel hadn’t realized how lonely he had been. Now, with her, he felt like a man reborn. He planned decadent evenings to counterbalance his difficult workdays. He made reservations at expensive restaurants that he would never have thought of eating at before. He took her stargazing and he made love to her on his balcony, not caring if the neighbors saw them or were awakened by the noise.

  When he was alone, he longed for her. When he was with her, he could think of nothing else but ways to postpone her departure. He imagined himself nestled beside her, holding her birdlike face close to his (did she remind him of a tiny swallow?), her thin fingers buried in his dark curls.

  They would arrange to meet several times during the week, but even that seemed too little for him. Often, he ordered extra courses at the restaurant because Kaija was so thin and frail that he wanted to make sure that she always had enough to eat the next day.

  He loved to look at her, and during brief moments when her eyes were downward and averted to the rim of her soup bowl or to a pedestrian on the street, he was unable to control the intensity of his gaze.

  He had never seen a woman as luminous as she. It gave her a fragile appearance, making her appear far younger than she was. A small gazellelike creature with delicate bones and haunting eyes.

  Some things, however, Samuel knew he had to get used to. From the first time he saw the tiny wooden crucifix around her neck, he was overcome by waves of nausea. Such religious symbols had an almost innate capacity to unnerve him. Only after they became more intimate with each other did he reach over and handle it from underneath her blouse, the wooden angles smooth and neat in his hand.

  “It was from my mother,” she told him, and he thought it strange that she was now whispering to him.

  She fingered the crucifix in her thin, pale fingers before slipping it back into her blouse.

  “It is one of the only things I have from my Finnish family. A crucifix and a prayer book. I never take the necklace off, even though I’m not religious at all.”

  He noticed that the leather cord from which it dangled seemed cracked and worn. It wasn’t a particularly attractive piece of jewelry, he thought, trying to be objective without his own religious bias. The crucifix was heavy and masculine, almost peasantlike. Nevertheless, he felt that her sentimentality toward it was sweet and endearing.
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  “I’m what they call a Finnish war child,” she said in a tiny, flat voice. They had been sitting in the park for some time now, and in the moonlight, she seemed even more waiflike than usual. Her thin, blond hair was pulled back in a loose bun, and her green eyes were wide with concentration.

  “It’s a dreadful name, isn’t it? But that’s what they call us, a footnote in the history books: ‘Over seventy thousand of Finland’s children were sent to Sweden during the war for safety and the prospect of a better childhood,’ ” Kaija mimicked. But her face suddenly became serious again. “You know, nearly all of the children were returned to their original families when the war ended, but not me.”

  He clutched her mitten-clad hand close to his.

  “I suppose I did return once, but it was only temporary. Not a ‘real’ return.” She sighed and pressed her nose into his shoulder. Clouds of steam circled from her mouth.

  “That is a long story, best saved for another night.” She looked up at him and managed a faint smile.

  He nodded to her gently and extended his hand.

  “Let’s go home,” she said.

  She rose from the bench and Samuel was once again struck by how tiny Kaija was in contrast to him. Her small head measured to his shoulder. He slipped his large hand into hers and pointed out the beauty of the city’s lights.

  “I’ve never really cared much for the city life,” she whispered as she clutched tightly to his arm. “I suppose I prefer the forest and the lakes.…” Her voice began to trail. “Especially in winter when they’re encrusted in a shell of ice.”

  Fifteen

  SANTIAGO, CHILE

  NOVEMBER 1966

  Neither Octavio or Salomé could ever have anticipated the success of Buenos Dias Soledad.

  “Never before have we seen an actor that brings such sensuality, such psychological intensity, to his character,” the critics in El Mercurio raved. “We are blessed to have a face that can reveal the Chilean soul!” boasted the reviewers on the radio.

  Overnight there were fan clubs established in his honor, billboards splashed with his image, and invitations to one event after another.

  The radio advertisers begged him to make commercials; women stood outside the gates of his set waiting for his car to pull up and threw themselves in the path of the limousine. Nearly a week after the film’s debut, the studios offered him another contract for six more films at a salary that he could never ever in his wildest dreams have thought possible.

  “What should I do?” he asked his wife, who was busy with their infant son. Rafael had begun teething early, and even though she now had the assistance of a housekeeper, she was teetering on the edge of exhaustion.

  “I can’t answer that for you, Octavio. I’ve always believed that we are each responsible for ourselves in this life. You must decide what path you want to create for yourself.”

  “I have you and the child to think about, Salomé. This life is not limited to just me.”

  “After the royalties from this film are divided, after you finish wrapping the other two films in your contract, we should have enough money to last for several years.”

  “I’m not sure about that,” Octavio said, scratching his head. He was easily overwhelmed by the topic of money. He had no idea how much money was necessary to keep his family living in the means he himself had never had as a child.

  “I’m sure my success will just be temporary. Perhaps I have just two or three years before I am replaced.”

  Octavio was trying to be realistic. He was trying to convince himself that this roller-coaster life couldn’t last. He hoped that eventually the decision would be made for him—that his career would eventually reach a point where there were no more movies to be made and he could return to a life of poetry without feeling guilty.

  Now, however, he just wanted to make sure his family had financial security. He needed to feel that he was indisputably a “good provider” and that Salomé’s father would utter his name with respect, not with the contempt that he knew he had spoken of him when they had first met.

  And so Octavio did sign the second contract. He got up every morning and kissed his wife on the cheek, only to come home late every night, weary and exhausted. He tried to keep a low profile in his newfound fame, doing only the interviews that the studios demanded and attending only the premieres of the movies that he was part of. But sometimes he could not avoid commitments and several days would pass before he’d be able to return to the Casa Rosa.

  Six months after Buenos Dias Soledad opened, his second film, Escapando de un Sueño premiered. Again, the reviews were spectacular and the attendance in the theaters unprecedented.

  Still, Octavio remained unsatisfied by his success. He hated saying lines that he didn’t believe in. He detested rehearsing the same scene over and over only because one of his colleagues had forgotten to memorize his or her lines.

  Some days, when he was reduced to sitting around in his studio chair, he would fantasize about his life as it had been when he was a student. He was barely twenty-two now, yet his existence as it had been when he was inscribing poems by candlelight seemed like ages ago.

  His nights with Salomé remained the highlight of his day. In between scenes he would always try to squeeze in a brief telephone conversation with his wife, because Octavio was well aware that by nine o’clock, when he usually arrived home, she would be so tired from taking care of their infant son.

  Still, she would allow him to hold her to his chest and to stroke her long black hair. If Rafael was sleeping soundly, sometimes he would take the Victrola upstairs, turn the volume down low, and extend his hand to her sweetly so that they could dance a tango or two in the privacy of their bedroom.

  Salomé knew that the endless hours her husband spent on the set were wearing him down. And she had grown used to his reluctance to speak of it. But she also felt that it had been his choice to sign the extended contract.

  Still, she hated seeing him so tired and unhappy.

  Octavio tried to make the best of the characters he was assigned to play. The movies he starred in mimicked the psychological dramas being imported from France and Italy. “They’re second-rate scripts,” Octavio complained. “The European writers aren’t concerned with this ridiculous romantic melodrama!” he grumbled to Salomé over his morning coffee and churro.

  The females he was cast against were caricatures. Written as one-dimensional characters whose only purpose was to show off the prowess and emotional fortitude of the leading man, whom Octavio was invariably cast as. Their physical appearance was uninteresting to him. Their black hair was never as lustrous nor as thick as Salomé’s. Their eyes were flat and devoid of the depth that he had recognized in his wife’s from atop a balcony twenty-five meters away.

  The plots were silly and inane to Octavio. He had just received the script for his third film, Siempre Carmen, in which he was to play the object of an older woman’s affection.

  He knew that he was blocking off his wife from his daily life. He knew that even after her exhausting day with their infant son, she still tried to make a few hours available so she could dote on him. But he had been unable to open up and tell her how he truly felt about the direction his life was heading. He thought such complaining might appear unmanly. Hadn’t men suffered for generations in jobs that were far less glamorous than his? And hadn’t they toiled for wages that were far less lucrative? He knew, in one way, he should be grateful because now Salomé and Rafael would want for nothing. In a few months’ time, as his contract began paying out his royalties, there would be little that he could not give his family. Even if he wasn’t intellectually satisfied, he had to find some contentment in the fact that no one, not even Dr. Herrera, could say that he hadn’t provided them with the best life possible.

  Sixteen

  SANTIAGO, CHILE

  JANUARY 1970

  As Octavio’s career became more demanding, and Salomé became pregnant with her second, then her thir
d child, she would often seek the comforts of her family’s hacienda during the summer. The house, situated just outside Talca, had been owned by the family for centuries, and Salomé loved to go there and breathe the fresh air and spend time with her mother.

  The train from Santiago to Talca was not a long journey, but Salomé always prepared small sandwiches and tea cakes for Rafael and his younger sisters, Blanca and Isabelle. They sat with their noses pressed to the glass, their childlike wonder reflected in the brass railings of the train’s passenger compartment.

  Their grandmother would wait for them at the platform. Her unusual, natural blond hair twisted like a churro, her face shaded by the brim of her broad straw hat. Rafael was old enough to run to her, to bury his cheek into her side, and smell the scent of marzipan that always clung sweetly in the basin of her palms.

  The Herrera family had maintained the same carriage for over a hundred years, and Salomé could not help but smile at the joy on Rafael’s face when he saw it waiting there at the station for them. She had been the same way when she was a child.

  The carriage had been cared for over the years like a family jewel. The forest green exterior sparkled, the black canvas top had been polished and tightened to perfection. But it was the inside that Rafael adored the most.

  The interior of the carriage was the color of crushed marigolds. Thick, yellow leather upholstery that smelled of polish and the hide’s natural oils. When the driver hoisted Rafael’s tiny body deep inside, his heart soared. Here, he felt like a king. His father would be joining the family in a week’s time, so he was the man of the family for the brief time until the carriage reached the hacienda. His grandmother, mother, and two small sisters surrounded him and busied themselves with their female chatter. But he, with the damask ceiling above his head, and the narrow window close to his face, was steeped in wonder.

  The roads leading to the estate were narrow and unpaved. Country roads where the dirt kicked up from beneath the carriage’s wheels like clouds of brown steam. The women’s heads bobbed back and forth, their shoulders sliding into one another, their knees rocking to each side. But Rafael adored it. He could feel each rock crushing underneath the carriage’s wheels, he could hear the rhythm of the horse’s footsteps, he could see the mountains and the shore beyond.