A Far Country

by Daniel Mason

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  Isabel pinched her lips and shook her head. ‘Isabel?’ asked her mother, and Isabel could hear her trying to steady her voice. I should tell her not to worry, she thought. She wanted to say: There is no space, there are crowds everywhere, it is filled with people, a different kind of people, who use words that I can’t understand.

  ‘Isabel?’ Her mother’s voice caught on her name.

  Manuela was watching her. She tucked a blanket around the baby. ‘I have to go,’ said Isabel. She waited to hear her mother hang up. After a long time, she said, ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello,’ said her mother.

  ‘I have to go,’ said Isabel again.

  At home, they listened to the radio until it grew dark. For dinner, they boiled beans and thickened them with ground manioc. Manuela told her about her arrival: how she began as a maid in a factory, found a job with a family, advanced from assistant maid to head maid, how she built her house. She seemed happy as she spoke. ‘I was the first in New Eden to have a concrete roof,’ she said. ‘You should tell that to people back home.’ When she asked about Saint Michael, Isabel told her about the new road from the coast. She didn’t mention the men, and it sounded as if the highway had unfurled alone in a path of black tar. When Manuela asked who was left, she told her, adding the names of the new babies who had survived. She lied and said they had celebrated Saint John’s Day before she departed. Manuela asked the price of rice and considered the numbers carefully.

  Later Isabel asked, ‘And Leo?’

  ‘He’s a good man. Not handsome and trouble like the last one. We didn’t marry properly, but you have to pay just to get married. You have to pay even to be buried here. He visits once a month, or whenever he can. He works on the coast, you know, on huge ships that go out to sea.’

  At night, before they fell asleep, Manuela said, ‘I know it looks easy, with the electricity and the shops and the wells, but in many ways it’s harder than Saint Michael. At least in Saint Michael you know which way your trouble’s coming from. And if something goes wrong, someone will help you out. In Saint Michael most of the killing’s done by God.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean what I mean,’ said her cousin. ‘Now quiet.’

  In the street, loud music played into the night.

  Isabel couldn’t sleep. She turned quietly to watch her cousin. She is still the same person I knew in Saint Michael, she told herself again, but now she was less certain. There was something new, a vigilance, or anger, different from the quiet responsibility of the young woman she had known in the north.

  She had been the flower girl at Manuela’s first wedding, and she clung to the memory now. She was five. Her dress was white muslin, and her hair was laced with ribbons. It was the height of summer, and a warm wind carried the clang of goat bells into the church. Manuela wore a long gown with embroidered cloth roses; Isabel’s mother’s lips were painted crimson; Isaias wore a hand-sewn tie and brilliantine in his hair. Because Manuela’s father had died when she was a baby, Isabel’s father led her to the altar. She played nervously with her ring, stopping only to touch her hair as if strands had come loose. Then she covered her nails; they were chipped and split and had been almost impossible to paint.

  Isabel borrowed shoes from a cousin of the groom. She sat in the front pew, where dragonflies droned through the scent of rose water. On the seat backs, wreaths of plastic flowers entangled her curls. Her hem was torn from catching on the thorn when they filed down a narrow trail.

  From the wedding, Isabel also remembered: Manuela’s trembling voice as she repeated the oath, a drunk uncle, the clean-swept square where they danced quadrilles. At the edge of the plaza, a photographer from Prince Leopold lit the air in dusty explosions. For the feast, they ate goat’s rumen stuffed with lime, black pepper, tomato and chopped heart, liver and lungs. They boiled tendons and added the broth to manioc flour. In the kitchen, glistening tripe hung from the counter like an exquisite velvet curtain.

  After the wedding, Manuela moved with her husband to Prince Leopold, where they built a brick house on the outskirts of the city. In the months that followed, Isabel saw little of her cousin. When a year had passed, the old women began to whisper that Manuela couldn’t conceive. They made her teas and poultices; when these failed, she traveled to a distant shrine, where she joined a line of young women, lifted her skirts and lowered herself against a blessed stone.

  She returned to find her home empty save the groom’s mother, who sat in a single remaining chair and knitted. Her son had left for the coast, she said, with another woman. ‘It’s better you learned his type now,’ she added, not without kindness, and gave Manuela back her trousseau.

  Manuela returned to Saint Michael. She spent long days at a neighbor’s sugar mill. By then, she realized she was already pregnant. She made a pilgrimage to pray for the baby’s health. Isabel was there when her cousin came home, her face bruised and her arm in a sling. She set her small bag down before a gaggle of women. ‘The flatbed turned over …,’ she began, standing in the pale light, her voice breaking. ‘You lost the child,’ said her mother, and Isabel told no one that she had dreamed this two nights before.

  The following year she went to the city. She was the first woman to go alone. Isabel’s father had always called her Simple Manuela, and when she left, he said he didn’t think she could make it a week there. But by then Isabel thought of her differently, as someone who moved through life the way she turned cane paste, steady, without stopping, head down and muscles tensed.

  Isabel was seven. She saw Manuela again when she was ten, still the same woman, quiet and persistent, settling easily into washing and caring for the children. She stayed for a month and then returned to the south.

  On that single visit home, she told stories about the city with words that somehow reduced it to something familiar. It was big and life there was hard but good if you found work. It wasn’t the city of the crime programs or the television dramas about the rich, but a place of dogged calculations: salary less rent, less water, less food, less the bus, less devotion candles, less clothes, less phone calls home. A city made of numbers, and the children were disappointed. Isaias had pursued her breathlessly. What about the street gangs, the trains, the museums, the parks, the giant markets? he asked, until Manuela turned on him with sudden viciousness, Those things are not for me, Those are for other people, That is not the city I know.

  Later Isabel cornered her out by the clotheslines. Yes, love? said Manuela. What about the sea and the beautiful people there? asked Isabel. Manuela paused for a moment before continuing to hang the clothes. The sea is still far away, she said, and what would I do with the sea?

  In the morning, Manuela woke Isabel for church. ‘It’s late,’ she said. ‘I was afraid you’d sleep forever.’ She wore a suit of brown nylon, burnished over the elbows and shoulders. Isabel put on her dress from the trip south. It was her best, yellow with patterned blue daisies the width of her finger. It was still moist around the hem and in the shadows of the clothespins, but it was the dress she wore to church at home. Manuela gave her a sweater. She brushed her hair and tied it with a ribbon. Curls sprang loose. She wet her hands and pressed them back. Her feet were raw where the shoe straps rubbed.

  At the base of the hill Manuela said, ‘On Sunday, there aren’t many buses.’ So they took off their shoes and walked. Manuela carried Hugo in a sling. It was early and the zinc roofs of the shanties glinted with dew. Finally, a bus passed. Manuela waved and shouted. They ran after it as it slowed, the door accordioning open with a hiss.

  They changed buses at a tall sculpture that looked like a bird or a giant C. The second bus took them across a river and toward a rise of towers before diving into a tunnel. This time, Isabel stood by a young girl with blond hair. The girl’s hand gripped the bar below hers. It was white and smooth, with long fingers and violet traces of veins. Isabel had never seen such a delicate hand, and at a bump in the ro
ad, she let her palm scoot against the girl’s thumb. Without looking, the girl slid her hand away.

  From the next bus they got off before the steps of a maize-colored church with white cornices like the icing on a cake. Inside, the church stirred with women in wool sweaters and suits like her cousin’s. Isabel wondered if her parents had ever seen such lush saints, in shawls of purple velvet, real tulle dresses and nacre crowns. There was a Jesus with lustrous enamel skin and a puckered wound like the scarlet mouth of a fish. A large statue of Saint Lucy carried her eyes on a platter and turned her face to the ceiling, where painted angel heads floated on peeling strips of cerulean. Isabel looked for salt at the saint’s feet, but there was none. Women came and ran their fingers over the eyes as if reading braille, then touched their own lashes.

  Manuela stopped beside her and whispered from an invocation card.

  Mass began. A gray priest’s hand trembled on the psalter, his sermon blurring with the murmur from the street. Isabel slid her shoes back and forth and wondered if anyone had noticed them. In front, an old man in worn wool trousers balanced his hat on his lap. He kept nodding to sleep and seemed ready to topple into a woman beside him. Isabel turned with a smile to tell Manuela, but her cousin’s eyes were glassy and her lips moved with the words of the hymns.

  The songs were of forgiveness and everlasting love. Isabel reached over and took Hugo, who slept.

  After the service, Manuela led her to a crowded shopping street with a narrow sky. Isabel had never seen such stores. She handed the baby back to Manuela and watched her reflection pass over window displays of typewriters and bridal gowns, cartoon-covered notebooks and glazed carmine cookies with candy pearl collars. But her reflection intrigued her most; it was the first time she had seen her full body since the mirror with Isaias. Behind, she watched the passing crowds.

  I am a small person, she thought.

  Manuela pulled her away.

  They stopped on a long bridge with wrought-iron rails. Manuela bought her ice cream from a passing cart, and she licked the sweet milk as it spiraled down her wrist. When she finished, she asked for another. ‘No,’ said her cousin. ‘You will think it’s normal, that in the city people eat ice cream every day.’ At a produce stand, she bought her an unfamiliar fruit. ‘It’s an apple,’ she said. ‘I had never seen one, either.’ Isabel held it until Manuela said, ‘Have it now or you will drop it and ruin it.’ She ate it in small, cautious bites.

  They walked on.

  From the bridge, they descended into a market. ‘The knife that cuts steel!’ shouted vendors. ‘The famous pencil that never breaks!’ ‘Best tomatoes in the world!’ In a far corner, a crowd had gathered around a man in a plaid suit and a feather in his hat. His face was wrinkled; when he wasn’t smiling, his mouth folded upon itself like a clenched fist. His little mustache wiggled as he spoke. As if reading her thoughts, Manuela whispered, ‘Just like the north. I know. They left, too. Would you stay if there was no one left to listen to you sing?’

  He was talking about a boy and a snake, or a boy who turned into a snake, or a snake who ate a boy; at first, Isabel caught only words. He held a pamphlet at arm’s length, waved his free hand, stomped his left foot and then his right, darted his head toward a pretty girl and went ‘Hissss.’ The girl screamed. The crowd was still laughing when he said, ‘And that, my friends, is the tale of the boy who became a snake.’

  The crowd moved off, and Isabel went to stand near the man. She found an unexpected solace in his familiarity. Noticing her waiting, he said, ‘My angel, shall you be purchasing anything today?’ She shook her head, intimidated by his elegant speech. ‘And what about your beautiful friend?’ he asked, bowing to Manuela.

  ‘Oh so charming,’ said her cousin flatly. ‘What do you have?’

  He spread a fan of chapbooks in his hand. ‘I have The ABC of Dance. Do you like music? No? How about The Man Who Became a Ford—it is an industrial tale.’ Manuela shook her head. ‘The Life of a Married Woman Is Never Secure.’ ‘Too close to the truth!’ ‘The Man Who Married a Mule.’ ‘That’s disgusting. You should watch what you say; my cousin’s just a girl.’ ‘Then Lives of the Cinema Stars, about the visit of the great Bogart to this city?’ ‘That’s nonsense,’ said another woman who was looking through the chapbooks. ‘The great Bogart never came to the city.’ ‘Of course he did,’ replied the poet. ‘He called it the city of lights. With his wife, the stunning Hayworth.’ ‘That isn’t his wife! What kind of crazy poem is that?’ The woman shook her head and walked away.

  The poet shrugged her off. He sold the last of the snake pamphlets and showed his empty hands to a disappointed customer.As a new crowd gathered, Isabel pushed to the front. Around her, a group of children jostled, whispering secrets into one another’s ears.

  The poet whistled through two fingers. ‘Ladies and gentlemen! Cowboys, taxpayers, beautiful girls! Gather around! One of you must be in God’s good favor today.’ He waved his hand. ‘Who knows the story of the Princess and the Mysterious Leopard?’ When no one answered, he clutched his chest. ‘No one? Oh! Your life is only hardship. No, I can’t tell you this story. Like a flood on dry soil, the joy will run right off your hearts. I must choose another.’ Laughter spread through the crowd. ‘No!’ shouted someone. ‘No!’ said a tall man.

  ‘No!’ blurted Isabel.

  ‘What’s that?’ said the poet, turning toward her. ‘You, young lady, what did you say?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘My dearest, I didn’t hear you say nothing. Come out with it: Which story do you want to hear?’ She whispered it: ‘The leopard story.’ ‘The leopard story?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘ “The Princess and the Leopard”?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘The tale of passion and punishment?’ ‘Yes, that one.’ ‘The greatest story of all time?’

  ‘Tell it, man!’ shouted someone. ‘Tell it, tell it, tell it!’ shouted a lady, clapping her hands together, and after shyly staring around her, Isabel joined in.

  ‘Silence!’ said the poet. ‘You are good humble people. Life has been hard for you. You’re far from home. I can’t let you suffer more.’ There were cheers. Isabel turned to catch Manuela’s eye, but a body was in the way.

  The poem was about a poor peasant in a small backlands town that sounded very much like Saint Michael. As the peasant traveled to an enchanted city, rhymes sprang from the words, met each other side by side, bounced and pattered along, hid and then jumped out when Isabel least expected. The poet sang, tipped his hat and shook his shoulders. He growled and pawed the ground with his foot. He tossed little kisses to the air, twisted his face, made his eyes bulge and puffed his cheeks. He swooned and passed his hand over his forehead, fluttered his fingers over his heart and sighed, ‘Aaaah.’ He said, ‘And so the princess thought and thought and thought. She looked first at the handsome prince, and then at the poor peasant, and said, I have decided!’

  He closed the book.

  The crowd stirred. Isabel waited for him to continue. Perhaps the girl would marry the peasant who was a prince inside, or maybe the prince who was really a leopard: it wasn’t clear at all. The man tipped his hat. ‘Special price today!’ he said. ‘Know the ending for a special price.’ Someone in the crowd groaned, ‘Tell us!’

  ‘Yes, tell us!’ said Isabel.

  ‘Tell you? Sister, it’s all here! Buy my book and you will know.’

  Eager people elbowed forward.

  Isabel cursed under her breath. How dare he! She pushed her way back to Manuela. ‘I have to know.’

  ‘Just this time,’ said her cousin, rummaging through her pocket.

  She went back to the poet. ‘The leopard story,’ she said, showing him the coin.

  ‘Ah, my saint, you’re too slow. I sold them all. But if you buy another, I’ll tell you the leopard’s ending. How about The Girl Who Cursed Her Mother and Was Turned into a Snake, or The Boy Who Thought He Could Fly’?’

  She selected the second one. It had a woodcut print of a boy with wings.

  He wrapped it carefully in butcher paper, ru
nning a cracked nail along the edges.

  Then he whispered in her ear. Now that he stood closer, she could see his tired eyes. He smelled of mothballs and cigar smoke. She nodded knowingly when she heard the ending. ‘The peasant,’ she said. ‘That’s the one I thought.’ He tipped his hat, and with a little bow he was gone.

  Manuela took her to Cathedral Square. On the steps beneath a Gothic dome of marble and verdigris, Isabel read the story slowly. It told, in rhyme, of a boy from ‘a land so poor it grew only gravestones.’ One day there was a great wind that carried him into the sky. He stared down at his home and saw only hunger and sadness, so he flew toward the sun. Then another wind came and blew him down, crashing through the clouds and into the center of the city, where he landed in a tree. A man, seeing that he could fly, offered him a job at a palace. But the palace was a factory, and his life was full of suffering. Isabel’s mood darkened. She wished she hadn’t read it.

  Manuela took out a small tin filled with rice. She fed Hugo and changed his diaper, setting him between her feet as they ate and watched the crowds in the square.

  They walked again. This time they stayed away from the fair. Inside the marble entrance of a department store, Manuela took Isabel on an escalator. ‘Step!’ she whispered. ‘Now!’ They rode up to the mezzanine, then down, then back up again, all the way to the top. As they walked, Isabel ran her fingers along the soft clothes. Below sale banners like Carnival coats of arms, they passed aisle after aisle of toothbrushes, perfumes, soaps.

  It is beautiful, she thought, but she began to feel dizzy. The perfume banks smelled of unfamiliar flowers. The soaps were wrapped and sealed and couldn’t be touched. She had never seen so many toothbrushes.

  They stopped before a towering wall of beauty products, photos of faces with hair done up in creams, gels, dyes, tints, oils, sprays, pastes. There was blond hair with brown ends and brown hair with blond ends, black women with straight hair and white women with curly blond hair, hair that fanned out like dry grass, that hid a face like a curtain, that tufted in a little wave, that glistened with wetness and shined like metal. When she had the money, she would choose something for her mother, she thought weakly. She wanted to sit. Manuela browsed a row of lightening agents. Suddenly, Isabel was angry. She shouldn’t have taken me here, she thought. She should have warned me so I could be ready. A girl in a store uniform touched her shoulder gently. ‘I can get you a basket,’ said the girl, pointing to a lace shirt in her hand. Isabel didn’t remember taking the lace shirt. ‘She doesn’t want it,’ said Manuela, and handed it back.