These few stories are all that Irene told (among the many stories she could have told) before Helena went on her first reconnaissance of the Island. Helena did not so much as smile. Irene doesn’t remember if she said thank you. She saw her enter into the thicket only to reappear an hour or two later with a ripe soursop fruit and an exact idea of what she would have to do with the woods to make them as hygienic and habitable as possible. You would have made an excellent captain of a Phoenician boat, Helena, said her brother Rolo.
Helena looks out of place in her pink satin robe, which, though old, still lends her a certain elegance. And the elegance must have to do with the wide sleeves encrusted with bunches of flowers, and the ample embroidered collar that looks like that of a queen, like the ones that appear in story book illustrations. She looks out of place, decked out like that, entering the Island through one of its stone paths, carrying a flashlight with a short beam of sickly yellow light that sickens Irenes trumpet vines and jasmines, murrayas, crotons, heliotropes, and creepers. The plants aren’t the same in the nervous glare of the flashlight. They’ve lost the varied tones of green Irene boasts about. The plants look yellow, almost white, like fake plants, paper plants, when the sluggish glare of the flashlight passes clumsily across them. At times the light stops to make its way through some opening in the foliage. Other times it goes straight for one of the stones that form the path. For a few moments it climbs (and the light is all the poorer when it climbs) and runs across a tree trunk, tries to search among the branches where it seems the devil’s dwelling tonight. Then it climbs back down and looks soft, slow, almost motionless, faraway as can be, and then it isn’t light anymore but an imitation of light, a sort of mist that, instead of making things visible, erases them, hides them, or makes them more spectral. There are moments when Helena stands motionless next to the light, and closes her eyes, as if by closing her eyes she could hear better. Except that tonight, with all this wind, the Island is filled with a thousand different sounds. At times, footsteps, people fleeing, screams, shouts, songs. At times, something like a choppy river sweeping away stones. Helena knows that the thousand different sounds are of the Island: no need to worry about them. That is why she opens her eyes and keeps walking forward, sure of herself, along the stones on one of the paths of the Island. And when a light opens up between the Discus Thrower and the Laocoön, Helena isn’t surprised because she knows without a doubt that it’s Merengues flashlight, and she can know that because the light moves the way Merengue himself moves, jerkily, falling to one side and then to the other, since Merengue always walks along pulling his cart, even when he doesn’t have it with him. Helena looks into every corner with a meticulousness for which eyes are not enough. The devil is on the loose and is mixing everything up. Everything is familiar and unfamiliar. There’s something here that isn’t true, and Helena knows it.
* * *
My hearing is more reliable than my sight. He is sitting in the little rocker. Not rocking. Nor fanning himself. Trying to listen. After the footsteps receded and he found the bloody stain, silence ensued, that is, the beating of the gusty wind that is silence tonight. And he remained calm, and nodded off thinking that perhaps the blood was that of some wounded animal, a cat, a dog, one of those vagrant dogs that wander through the Island. And in fact he thought he heard barking, and then, later on, a kind of howling over there by the old carpentry shop. Only now, remembering the howl, he isn’t sure what it was, it might have been someone crying for help. He smiles. How am I going to confuse a cry for help with a dog’s howling? He shakes his head, still smiling. And what if the cry was no more than the wind among the branches? And how am I going to confuse a cry for help or a dog’s howling with the beating of wind among the branches? He tries to listen. My hearing is more reliable than my sight. Nothing out of the ordinary occurs: the wind, the trees, nothing more. One night of wind shouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary. A body falls near the house. Probably a dry frond from a palm tree. The blow is followed by a brief silence; then, again the sounds of footsteps. Immediately after, the sound of pieces of cloth flapping in the wind, which must not be pieces of cloth but the close-set branches of the poplars, the close-set branches of the laurels, someone is weeping, I’m sure: someone is weeping, a timid wail, a wail afraid to be heard, that is, a real wail, so silent it is scarcely a wail, there to the right, precisely on the opposite side of where the body or the palm frond fell, they say that bamboo weeps when wind blows through it, willows must weep too, they must call them weeping willows for some reason, there aren’t any weeping willows in the Island, neither in The Beyond nor in This Side, the footsteps seem to circle the room, I’m trying to listen, my hearing is more reliable than my sight, they’re the footsteps of someone with the strength of youth, no doubt about it, full of vigor, only extreme vigor and youth can induce such soft, swift, rapid, almost fleeting footsteps, whoever is walking around is doing it leaning against the wall of my room, the sound of their hand rubbing against the outer surface of the wall is almost imperceptible, my hearing is acute, from the height at which the hand is sliding along I can deduce that it’s someone nearly six feet tall (man, woman, or devil), I know you’re tall and young, I know enough, the racket of broken glass stops the sound of footsteps, I’m going to turn around to look toward the sideboard, a spasm in my back prevents me, for a few seconds only the wind seems to be alive in the Island, I stand up (with such difficulty, every day with greater difficulty) and stop the rocker: I don’t like it to rock by itself, superstition, I don’t know what to do and carefully place the fan on the bed, the odious face of the cat on the fan looks at me and smiles mockingly, I turn the fan over so you’ll disappear, miserable cat, on top of the dresser all the glasses, jars, cups are intact, intact, nothing has broken inside the room, I decide to step out, confront whoever it is, I’m thinking I don’t need the toy pistol anymore, at my age even fear should disappear, no? I look for the keys that I’m holding in my hands, and when I find them I’m upset because I was looking for the keys while holding them in my hands, I let them fall in my jacket pocket, the sound the keys make when they fall in my jacket pocket is similar to that of the glass that may have broken outside, so couldn’t it have been the keys? it’s pretty dark out there, there are just two lightbulbs, the one by the door and the one in back, weak lightbulbs, so I light an oil lamp, with that I’ll see you, whoever you are, man, woman, or devil, or all three, because in the Island all sorts of freaks are possible, I am determined, I’m going to open the door, and if I’m so determined, why am I standing here motionless in the middle of the bedroom pretending to look for something I haven’t lost, and what if it’s the sailor? the young sailor, what if in him, dear God, what if? he’ll come whether I want him to or not, he’ll come. Professor Kingston is in the middle of the bedroom with the oil lamp raised almost to the level of his eyes. At this moment the footsteps begin to be heard on the rooftop. And loud laughter. No, not loud laughter but the banging of some window that has come open. A window has come open and is banging and banging and it sounds like laughter. And it happens that the footsteps are breaking the tiles. Once again, the sound of pieces of cloth flapping in the wind. Loud laughter, or the sound of an open window slamming shut, approaches, recedes, approaches, recedes, and a sound of murmuring water, now, right now, like when the river crests on very rainy days, I even look down at the bottom of the door as if I expect to see water coming through there, something that only happened once, many years ago, during the hurricane of ‘44, a hooting bird passes several times above the house, I cross myself, voices, voices, a long whistle, I walk toward the door, the hooting returns, goes away again, I don’t know if the whistling comes from the Island or my own ears, sometimes I hear the same whistling, it doesn’t come from anywhere but from me myself, from within me, and the voices, what they say is go, go, go, or no, no, no, I don't know, and the whistling, fortunately, stops all at once, and a torrential downpour, like thousands, millions of stones hitting the roof
, wipes out the sound of footsteps on the tiles, then there’s the distant sound of bells tolling, and a song, a lovely voice rising above the hubbub of this night in the Island, and I reach the door, it’s been difficult for me to reach the door, and I say I’m going to open it and I don’t open it, and I open it, outside, The Beyond with the trees stirred by the wind, ‘Tis the wind and nothing more, it isn’t raining, the river hasn’t risen, no one is there, nor can I hear the bells tolling nor the lovely voice, what lovely voice was I going to hear? who would even think of singing on a night like this? I raise the oil lamp, only the pool of blood remains there, in front of my door.
She closes her eyes and thinks I’m tired I’m tired I’m tired, tries to imagine a landscape, a beach with coconut palms, translucid blue waters, a splendid, warm day, endless skies, not a cloud in it, or a few clouds far away, a sailing ship, no, not a sailing ship, but a lovely red transatlantic liner, or not that either, the horizon, just the horizon that doesn’t seem unreachable, she’s on the sand watching the horizon, she is naked, playing with the sand, building little piles of sand on her thighs, she has the sensation that her body exists, well, that’s not exactly it, the sensation cannot be expressed very clearly, it might perhaps be better explained by saying that each and every part of her body has acquired life, she feels with every part of her body, or not that either, there’s no way to say it, and she enters the water, the temperature is delicious. And all of a sudden it isn’t a landscape, but rather a place she’s never seen before or rather, yes, maybe she has seen it, a garden, an abundance of trees and of branches falling from up high though you can’t say for sure what trees they’re falling from, and the garden isn’t a garden under the open sky, no, it’s more like a spacious enclosure with a roof so distant it can’t be seen, the sky has disappeared, in its place is a deep darkness from which blue and red lights escape diagonally, these aren’t, shouldn’t be, stars, in one corner there’s a grave and a bouquet of irises sitting on it, and she doesn’t approach it, all of a sudden, without her moving, she’s standing by the grave and she discovers that the irises are made of paper, smelling of dust, rubbish, pieces of time-dampened cloth, the garden does not smell like a garden, she goes to the trees, that is, she goes nowhere, the trees appear there next to her, and they are pieces of cloth, enormous painted canvases, hardened, yellowed paintings, and when she touches the trees, in other words, the cloth, in other words, the trees painted on the canvases, a powerful light shines on her and she sees no more, her body, in this light, becomes transparent, silence gives way to music that is too loud, deafening, and nonetheless above the music she can hear applause, applause, applause. Casta Diva opens her eyes.
Thine is the Kingdom Page 5