by Daniel Mason
Manuela’s house was empty. In the washroom, Isabel sat on the cement floor and poured cold water over her body. She scrubbed her skin furiously. Still she smelled of cane liquor and cigarettes, and she washed her hair again. She buried herself into the sheets. When Manuela came home, she pretended to sleep. The following night, alone again, she took Hugo from his hammock and kept him at her side. He slept with his arms stretched above his head, as if relishing the space.
She returned to the river and beat the clothes angrily against a rock.
She was there when Alin arrived, two days later, on a cold afternoon that broke intermittently into rain. ‘Look who’s coming,’ sang the women. Isabel pinched her lips. She could see him, with the portrait bag wrapped in plastic, treading the narrow edge of the road. When he called to her, she rose reluctantly from the water’s embrace. She gathered the clothes in one arm and perched Hugo on her hip.
They walked up the hill. Alin reached over to stroke Hugo’s head, and the baby smiled and leaned toward him. Angrily, Isabel shifted him away, realizing immediately that she was too rough. He began to cry. For a moment, she struggled with the balance of the baby and the clothes, then kissed his hair and walked on. Alin offered to carry him, but she shook her head. ‘You said you would come sooner,’ she said.
‘There was a problem in the north. My brother had an accident in the cane fields.’ He choked suddenly on the words. ‘There was a novena.’ Isabel turned to him. ‘Not a novena of mourning,’ he said. ‘A novena of prayer, to obtain a grace, and on the tenth day he was well. I said it here, too, all nine days of prayer.’
Farther up the hill, he said, ‘Something is wrong.’
‘Nothing is wrong,’ she answered quickly.
At her house, she said, ‘I have work to do.’ ‘Of course … I understand. I’ll go.’ He rubbed the stubble of his cheeks with his palm. ‘Listen, I was thinking, this weekend, if you want, we can go to the sea together.’ ‘I can’t,’ said Isabel coolly. ‘It’s too expensive.’ ‘I’ll pay. It will be good, you’ll see. We can get away from the city, just for a day.’ She shook her head. ‘Manuela won’t let me.’ ‘Ask her. I will come Saturday. Unless there is another reason you are saying no.’
He left. She pinned the clothes deliberately and creased the wet fabric over the lines. She stood in their wet chamber, feeling the cold on her face.
For the rest of the week, she remained inside the room. When Manuela came home, she told her about Alin. ‘I don’t understand why you don’t want to go,’ said her cousin. ‘Do you know that I’ve never even been to the sea?’
‘I’ve been,’ said Isabel. ‘I went with Isaias. I went a long time ago.’
‘I don’t understand what is bothering you, then,’ said her cousin. ‘What if I came with you?’
Isabel bit her nails.
‘Yes?’ asked Manuela, and Isabel nodded.
In the middle of the night, Manuela took her hand. ‘Can you swim?’ she whispered. ‘Yes.’ ‘How did you learn?’ ‘Isaias taught me. When the creek ran high.’ ‘I can’t,’ said Manuela, ‘but I will go where the ocean touches my feet.’
Alin came in the morning. Isabel watched her cousin’s face closely when he greeted her, but her expression revealed nothing. They took a bus to an empty stop, where they changed for a second bus bound for the coast. The traffic was light. After an hour, they passed an immense garbage dump, where carrion birds quivered in the sky and a row of shanties crested the hill like a coxcomb. Lone figures picked their way over the hillside, and children played.
The road was wide and wound through low hills. After another hour, the city ended and the plateau opened onto a view of the sea, the water vast and silver. Steep green forests draped the slopes. Manuela took Isabel’s hand.
At the terminal, they boarded a bus with a sandy wooden floor. The shore was crowded with umbrellas. Alin led them to a cluster of seaside vendors, where they shared juice from a fresh coconut and scooped out slivers of soft meat with fragments of the husk. He bought them cubes of white cheese grilled on ceramic braziers, and skewers of dried shrimp. Oiled bodies glided along a mosaic promenade. ‘Maybe we will see a movie star,’ said Manuela as she tried to feed bits of cheese to the baby.
Isabel didn’t have a swimsuit, so she folded up the cuffs of her pants and knotted the hem of her shirt. Alin took her down the beach, and they walked out into the water. Her stomach tightened with the cold spray. She rolled her shirtsleeves over her shoulders. Her arms were warm with the sun—it seemed as if she could feel every drop of spray that landed on them. The waves came and they dove. She felt herself tumbled by the swirling water, spinning, a weightless feeling of plummeting down.
Then they were out again, shouting as the wave retreated, dragging at their ankles. She fell and came up laughing. Joyfully, she shook her hair and tasted the water as it dripped down her face. As they ran back toward the shore, Alin stumbled and his hand brushed hers. She held it, briefly. On shore, she took Manuela to the water’s edge and laughed as her cousin held Hugo high above her and backed away distrustfully.
They lay in the sand. She felt sun-drunk and sleepy. The salt tickled her legs. Her eyes were warm. She could hear the waves crashing, laughter, and when she moved, she heard the sand squeak beneath her. She felt the heat dry her shirt.
In the shallows, children did backflips and somersaults and chased the shorebirds. Teenagers slouched and brooded behind dark glasses. The sand crawled with vendors extolling the pleasure of sugarcane juice and the most wonderful shrimp in the world. They sold sun oils and peroxide and pulled cold beers from styrofoam boxes slung from their shoulders. The tide rose, and she breathed in the salt water as it blew off the waves. She heard music in the distance. Manuela sat beside her with the baby between her legs and batted his hand as he tried to eat the sand.
Beside her, she sensed Alin sit up. ‘Isabel,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘What?’
‘I am going to the north to visit my family, to see my brother.’
‘Yes?’ she said, suspiciously. ‘You are coming back, then?’
‘Yes, yes, I’m coming back. But I was going to ask you. I was wondering if I should go to Saint Michael. It’s not far, you know. A day by bus. To meet your parents.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she said.
‘I know you’re only fourteen, and things are different in the city, so we would wait a couple of years. But my work is going well—maybe I can even open a store sooner than I thought. I was thinking, you could help me—we would be a good arrangement together. Like a team. You could go to school when I work and I could go to school when you work. That way both of us—’
She stood quickly and ran down to the water. She waded out to where it reached her waist. She stood there for a long time. She felt as if she could see herself from a distance, an unfamiliar girl against the backdrop of the sea. She heard her name, although she knew that the sound of the waves was enough to silence even the music blasting from the beach. She turned and stared out at the promenade. She closed her eyes, certain this time. She would open them and he would be there.
She looked at Manuela on the beach, the baby playing at her feet. She closed her eyes again. This time, she thought, he will be there, sitting with them.
She turned back to the sea. I will give him one more chance. One more. I will turn, and he will be here behind me, in the water. She felt a wet hand on her shoulder. ‘Isabel,’ said Alin. ‘I was only thinking aloud. I shouldn’t have said it. Back home, it worked that way, but here … It was the sun and the sea making me talk.’
Another wave broke over her knees. ‘Please, Isabel,’ he said. ‘Please forget I said it. I don’t want to ruin this day. It’s such a good day.’
Back on the shore, she pressed her face into a wet towel and closed her eyes. She took Hugo and sat him in her lap, and Alin came and sat by her. She felt the sun warming her slowly.
&nbs
p; Alin took them to a seaside bar, with plastic tables set out in the sand and walls covered with curling bikini posters. A stereo played loud music, and he invited Isabel to dance. She shook her head, embarrassed, but he persisted. They were barefoot. His back was warm and sandy. Later he asked Manuela. Her cousin danced well, Isabel thought, wondering where she learned.
At last Alin said he was tired. Manuela’s cheeks were flushed. She laughed, ‘No, please, it’s wonderful!’ She pulled Isabel from her chair and spun her away as the song began. Isabel felt the strength in her cousin’s back, her heavy breasts, her warm belly, the muscles of her arms. Rough calluses covered her hands. It’s still a sugar turner’s body, Isabel thought.
The song stopped, but Manuela pulled her closer. Another began. She pressed her cheek into Isabel’s hair and spun faster. Isabel held on, watching the shore spin past, then the shack and the tables and the sky, Alin staring into the sea, the baby reaching for his ear and Alin laughing, the shore and the shack and the tables and the sky. She felt her cheek was wet. ‘Manuela,’ she said. ‘Please,’ her cousin whispered, nuzzling into her hair. ‘Please keep dancing.’
When the song finished, they took dizzy, weaving steps back to the table. Isabel slumped into a chair and wiped her cheeks. She didn’t know whose tears they were.
A sea squall swept up the beach. Sunbathers rushed for shelter, crowding the bar with prickled, shivering bodies. The sky streaked with rain, they could barely discern the breakers. She found herself next to a taller girl with hoop earrings and a chatelaine on her ankle, who flirted with a tan, handsome boy in expensive sunglasses. They didn’t seem to notice her, but the intimacy of their bare skin made Isabel feel as if she were with them. She laughed as he teased and tickled the girl. The sea squall retreated.
They made their way back to the bus station, where the next bus was scheduled in an hour. Alin led them to a canteen with a long glass counter filled with chicken croquettes and pastries with braided crusts. Three men sat at the counter. The display was warm, and Manuela rested Hugo on the top of the glass. He slept. Alin ordered them sweet coffee. The bartender dipped the rim of the cups in boiling water and filled them from a plain samovar. On the walls were beer posters. Prices were pegged to a black tag board with little plastic numbers.
Isabel watched the bartender stop by the men at the counter.
He lit a cigarette. ‘I heard a good one today.’
He paused and leaned forward on the bar.
‘Goes like this: A German, a Frenchman and a backlander are arguing about a photograph of Adam and Eve in Eden. The German says, It’s obvious, Adam and Eve were German. Just look at him, with his strong jaw and his manly muscles. Not at all, said the Frenchman. They were French—look at her with her beautiful lips and her long, flowing hair. You are both wrong, said the backlander. They were from the backlands. They have no clothes, they are surrounded by snakes and they have nothing but an apple to eat. And still they think they are in Paradise.’
The men laughed. ‘I’ve heard that one before,’ said one of the men, ‘except it was about a kid in the Settlements.’ ‘Who the hell in the Settlements thinks they are in Paradise?’ asked the bartender. ‘You’re right,’ said the man. ‘It’s definitely better the way you told it.’
‘You should have added that God sent them away,’ said Manuela, beside them. ‘Kicked them out and sent them walking down a long road. You should have added that, too.’
On the ride back, Isabel sat with Alin. ‘You’re sunburned,’ he said, touching her cheek. Her face felt warm and tight. ‘I can’t be burned. I’m always in the sun.’ ‘You used to be in the sun,’ he corrected. The skin on her arm was rose-brown, and it blanched when he pressed it with his thumb.
They passed the garbage dump again. ‘Poor souls,’ said Manuela.
Alin said, ‘I once knew a man who worked on the mountain. That’s what he called it. He would say, “I am going up the mountain,” or “I found a good sheet of metal on the mountain.” It’s much more complicated than it looks, you know. It looks like people crawling randomly, like ants on an anthill, but really it’s organized. There are glass scavengers and plastic scavengers and cardboard scavengers, and then there are those who are allowed to scavenge only things the others left behind.’ He paused. ‘Things without use. That’s what he said. People offered him help, and he always said no. He was the proudest person in the world. Once he said, “Every other man has something good to start with, the fisherman with the sea, the carpenter with his piece of wood, even a poet with his collection of pretty words. But I build houses with rubble, I eat food others think is foul, I find beauty in waste and uses for useless things.” He said it like that, elegant like that. He said, “This is a holy place.” ’
The dump was long behind them when Alin finished. Manuela didn’t answer, but held the baby close. Isabel felt strangely cold.
The bus took an off-ramp. ‘This is my stop,’ Alin said. He lowered his voice. ‘Isabel, I’m sorry about what I said. I hope I can visit you again.’ ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I want that …’ She let the word drift. Ahead she could see a crowded pavilion.
‘In Saint Michael,’ she said suddenly, ‘when the situation was against us, we gathered. People ate things most people don’t think can be eaten. Like cacti, tree roots, ants. Things that other people don’t have any use for. I did that once, too.’
He said nothing and descended without kissing her. Her eyes followed him until the bus pulled away.
That night, she dreamed she was in Saint Michael. The sun was very warm, the air smelled oddly of salt water. As she walked down the road, she felt another presence. She knew it was Isaias before she turned. He said nothing but let his hand rest on her shoulder, like a blind person being led, although somehow he was the one who was leading. They walked together for a long time. Finally she said, I am very tired, and he took her off the road to a field that was too green for Saint Michael, with little clumps of people sitting, scattered far into the distance.
Together they lay on the grass. She rested her head on his chest, as she used to do when she was little. His heartbeat was slow and strong. She could smell him—not the smell of backlands dust that she remembered but the simple smell of warmth, and in the dream she cried and felt his shirt grow wet. She heard music and he began to sing, comforting her with an unfamiliar song of words that had no meaning.
When she awoke, she rose quietly and went outside. The hill was silent. The drunks slept, the night dogs slept, the birds were still in their cages, there were no airplanes and no wind.
She had dreamed of him many times since she arrived, but this time there were no clues to follow, only the comfort of his presence. But it isn’t him, she told herself, it isn’t the same. It is what her cousin would say, she thought, and for the first time she felt herself believing it, that dreams are just dreams, just the day passing through. She sensed suddenly that the convictions that had sustained her since Isaias left were no longer true: that being comforted in a dream wasn’t the same as being comforted, that it didn’t count; that talking to him when she was awake was different than dream-talking; that if he said something in a dream, he said it only in the dream and would not know it in his waking life; that if she held his hand, it was only a dream-hand; that if he sang to her in a dream, it was only her imagination and not him singing.
The city was silent while she had these thoughts and cried quietly, and then in the distance she heard footsteps. Then shouting, then the dogs started to howl, the birds stirred, the wind whipped up the road. A night bus switched gears and growled away, casting a light into the streets, a strange light that obeyed none of the rules of source and shadow.
She waited. After a long time, she went back to the room where Manuela still slept, and the baby was quiet.
As she tried to sleep, she thought, So this is what absence means. I never thought it was something that came so quietly. That you only really notice it later, when you go to look for someone and he isn’
t there.
Back when he left home, she had known he would return, so goodbyes were unnecessary. He would have told her this, he would have called them frivolous, empty. It was a word that appeared often in his songs. Just worries, he would say, just empty worries. Now she thought again of the word, but in a different way, like an empty place, this second meaning suddenly haunting the first. She wondered why she felt this now, if it had been the dream of him in that large field, with its strange quality of light and its distant people. Or just the day, the beautiful day without him.
Empty, she later thought, empty, not as a quality, but as a movement, to empty, to abandon, to go. To go away.
She called home.
‘There is good news,’ said her mother. ‘There’s rain. Can you believe? It’s October and there’s already rain. And not just once, but every day. Even if it doesn’t come again, it doesn’t matter—the stream is running, the cane will bloom.
‘Isabel?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘Isa, is something wrong?’
On the other end of the phone, she shook her head.
‘Isabel. You haven’t heard anything from him, have you?’
‘No,’ she managed.
‘He will come back. I promise, Isa. With rain like this, he has to come back.’
Isabel tried to answer, but she couldn’t. In her mother’s voice, she heard the steadiness that she had come to know from times her mother was afraid. A way of speaking that reminded her of walking and trying not to fall.
‘Isabel, are you there?’
‘Yes—yes, I’m still here.’
‘You sound so sad.’
The words caught in her throat. She waited for her mother to say she could come home, and she didn’t know how she would answer. But her mother didn’t say this.