by Miriam Toews
And here too, he said. He put his hand on my throat. And here, especially. He covered my eyes for a second.
And you found her? I said.
Yes, he said. In Germany. In a very small village. There was a woman in France but she was too beautiful.
Are you from Mexico City? I asked him.
Yes, but I’ve been living in Europe for the last few years. How long have you been living here? he asked me.
We came six years ago, I said.
It’s very beautiful, he said.
It is? I said.
Yes, it’s astonishing, he said.
What’s Mexico City like? I said.
Ah, it’s heaven and hell, he said. Are you nervous? You’re shaking.
No, I said. I’m cold.
Why don’t you come inside and meet the crew? he said. It’s warm in there. I’ll make you an espresso.
No, I have to get back to … there, I said. I pointed behind me.
The cornfield? he said.
I pointed again, towards the shadowy assortment of metal and concrete that housed my belongings. Diego smiled but I couldn’t tell if he was sad or happy because he hadn’t stopped smiling since rescuing me from his blood brother.
Okay, he said. But, quickly, let me just explain a few things to you about the job. We have a small crew, he said, and we are investing in time, not equipment and salaries. We all have specific responsibilities but everybody will be required to help out with everything. It’s very necessary. Do you agree with that, Irma?
Sure, I said.
I hate stories and photographs, he said. They scare me. They freak me out. They’re dead. I want emotion, the feeling, the emotional resonance of the person, the character coming out of a shot, a painting. I hate narrative. I hate actors. It’s very important that your translation of my words is precise. Will it be?
Yes, I said.
And Irma, do you feel that we can rebel?
I don’t know, I said. I had no idea what he was referring to, or on which word of the question to put the emphasis.
Do you feel that we can rebel against our oppressors without losing our love, our tolerance and our ability to forgive?
I don’t know, I said. I looked around towards nature for a clue. A bird, a gust of wind, a star? But there was nothing, as though nature had noticed me trying to cheat and quickly covered up her answers. Diego put his hand on my shoulder and continued to smile.
Perfect, he said. You will be perfect.
The next morning Aggie and I met on the road between our houses and had one of our speed conversations. It’s a silly thing we do together to make it seem like our imposed separation is not the source of continuous heartbreak and an abomination of what is just and loving but one long ridiculous joke like the Berlin Wall.
You’re working for the filmmakers as a translator? That’s crazy! Dad’ll kill you! He already hates them!
I know, I said, so don’t tell him. Diego will pay me and then I can use the money to go to Chihuahua or Juárez to find Jorge. Here, I have something for you.
What is it?
A switchblade. I brought it from Canada. Open it.
It’s a comb!
It’s a joke!
Drag.
Okay, then give it back to me!
No, I’ll keep it.
I gotta go or you’ll be in deep shit.
Irma, she said. But I had started to walk away. I heard her say some more things but by then I had yanked my skirt up and was running down the road away from her and begging the wind to obliterate her voice. She wanted to live with me. She missed me. She wanted me to come back home. She wanted to run away. She was yelling all this stuff and I wanted so badly for her to shut up. She was quiet for a second and I stopped running and turned around once to look at her. She was a thimble-sized girl on the road, a speck of a living thing. Her white-blond hair flew around her head like a small fire and it was all I could see because everything else about her blended in with the countryside.
He offered you a what? she yelled.
An espresso! I yelled back. It was like yelling at a shorting wire or a burning bush.
What is it? she said.
Coffee! I yelled.
Irma, can I come and live—
I turned around again and began to run.
TWO
I SPENT THE REST OF THE DAY cleaning the house and milking the cows and embroidering dangerous words onto the inside of my dresses, words like lust and agony and Jorge, and baking bread and yanking vegetables out of the ground, and making apple sauce with the apples that my aunt from Campo 4 had left for me at the end of the driveway with a note that said even sinners need to eat and a religious magazine with a headline that read the only way to heaven is to admit that you are a complete failure, and washing the windows and burning stuff and poisoning snake nests and killing rats. I didn’t see Aggie for the rest of the day. I knew she was mad at me. I could picture her stomping around the house and being sassy to everyone and brandishing her useless weapon.
That night I took off all my clothes and examined my body. I had forgotten about it. I poked at it like a doctor would and asked myself did I feel this and did I feel that? Then I looked at my face in a small mirror and tried to make the two vertical lines between my eyebrows disappear by stretching the skin away on either side. I brushed my hair until my arms ached and then I draped it over my breasts like Eve when she was being flirty in the Garden.
I still had no power. I couldn’t find the flashlight. The silver eye of God was right outside my bedroom window. I heard music coming from the filmmakers’ house, by now Marijke the German actress would have arrived, and I fell asleep alone and naked in my bed.
The next morning there was a knock on my door. It was a boy wearing narrow black jeans and enormous white sneakers. He said he was Miguel, Diego’s assistant, and I should come to the house immediately. Diego needed to explain things to Marijke before they began shooting and he needed me to help him do that. Miguel was very polite. When you are ready, he said. I told him I had to milk the cows first and he frowned. He asked me if he could help because Diego was already vibrating and we needed to hurry. There are sparks flying off him in every direction, he said.
What’s that? I asked him. He was holding something in his hand.
A two-way radio, he said. Listen. He pushed a button on the radio. He put his finger to his lips.
We heard voices, one in particular.
Who’s that? I said.
It’s Diego, said Miguel. He pointed at the filmmakers’ house.
Is he angry? I asked.
No, said Miguel, it’s a motivational speech.
I told Miguel I’d do my milking fast but alone and be at the house in half an hour. I told him that if Diego needed to tell me things before that he could come see me in the barn and talk while I milked. He could bring Marijke if he wanted to.
Roger, said Miguel. Is that how you say that?
Roger? I asked.
Yeah, in Canada. They said you were from Canada?
I left when I was thirteen, I said. Maybe over and out?
Over and out, Irma, said Miguel.
Okay, I said.
Miguel took off and I stood in the sunshine for a couple of warm seconds trying to think of other coded ways to say yes, I understand, goodbye.
Half an hour later I averted another attack from Oveja by befriending him with wieners and applesauce. For a soldier turned artist he was still surprisingly aggressive.
The filmmakers had tied plastic bags filled with water all around the front porch of their house to keep the flies away. The bags of water sparkled in the sunlight like little chandeliers. I stood outside the door poised to knock while Oveja lay on the ground beside me devouring my leftovers. Then the door opened on its own, well, not on its own but from the inside and all the shouting stopped and Diego came over and kissed my cheek and took me into the huge kitchen to meet the crew.
The house that used to belong to my s
hy farmer cousins was now inhabited by tattooed artists who lay around smoking and drinking espresso and arguing about politics and camera angles. Diego asked me if I liked the music. I nodded. Have you heard of Tuberculosis? he asked. I nodded again. They’re my favourite band, he said.
One by one they all got up and kissed me on the cheek and introduced themselves to me in Spanish or English or both. I didn’t see Miguel anywhere. Diego explained to me each of their responsibilities. The camera, the sound, other things I had never heard of. We are creating a small world, he said. A world that is more real than the one we know. He told me that he had just discovered that a very important piece of the camera was missing. Show me your thumb, he said. I held it out to him. It’s this small, he said. But it’s the difference between life and death. Can you do your farm work without your thumb? he asked me. I shook my head. I thought of how annoyed Jorge would be if I lost my thumbs. Diego told me that two of the filmmakers, including Miguel, had driven to El Paso to pick up a replacement part that was being sent from Los Angeles.
It’s an old Russian camera from the sixties, he said. It’s difficult to find parts. Now we have to wait for them to come back. It’s excruciating but we must be Zen about it.
I was so nervous. I felt like a moron. I stood there staring at them. I felt conspicuous in my long dress. I could feel the bobby pins from my doak stabbing me in the head. I could smell the cow shit on my shoes. I felt like Jonah after he’d been spit out of the whale onto dry land en route to wicked Nineveh. I didn’t know what to say. There were no women in the house.
Where’s Marijke the German star? I finally blurted out.
Diego whispered in my ear. She’s in her room, crying. Let’s go speak to her now. We walked down the long hallway to the back of the house. There were six or seven bedrooms that we passed to get to the very end. Diego pointed at each bedroom and told me which of the crew it belonged to. Somebody has painted an upside-down cross on mine, said Diego. Irma, did you know that Saint Peter asked specifically to be crucified upside down?
Nope, I said. I looked at Diego and smiled. It was a long hallway that led from Biblical times to the present and back again.
Out of humility, said Diego. To differentiate himself from Jesus Christ. The blood would have pooled in his head. I nodded. But I think, said Diego, that my crew meant it to be the sign of the Antichrist. They’re funny guys.
Marijke had been given my aunt and uncle’s former bedroom, the biggest one. Even the furniture was the same, and the bedding. My cousins had left in a hurry, apparently, and according to my dad it was because Wilf, the older boy, was a narco and about to be eviscerated by some rival narcos. My dad thought everyone who left Campo 6.5 was automatically a narco because why else would they be running away if they weren’t narcos. If my dad’s assessment was accurate this place was teeming with narcos, and not just garden-variety narcos but narcosatanics in search of sensations (like Jorge, allegedly), bored with drinking blood from skulls and poised to bolt for bigger thrills while the rest of us were in it for the long haul, working hard and honestly for very little money, the way God meant for us to be. But I didn’t believe it. I think my uncle got a job selling cars in Canada and Wilf wanted to study the violin and my aunt thought it would be cool to get a perm. But who knows. Maybe they’re a family of drug lords now, throwing bodies out of helicopters and bowling with the heads of double-crossers. That would be my father’s theory.
Marijke was beautiful, strangely beautiful, like Diego had said. Everything about her seemed elongated, firm and far-reaching, like a tower crane or a tall, flightless bird. I imagined cowering under her wing in the rain. She was a Mennonite but she dressed differently than me. She dressed the way I had dressed in Canada, sort of. She had on skinny black jeans, like Miguel’s, and a green T-shirt. She wasn’t crying anymore. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, on my aunt and uncle’s bed, and smoking a slim Vantage cigarette. Diego greeted her in Spanish and kissed her cheek and she murmured something and smiled at me and asked me, in German, if I was the translator. I told her yes and we shook hands and then Diego said he’d leave us alone to talk.
What did he say? she asked me.
He just said hello, how are you, I said.
He’s very polite, isn’t he? she said.
Yes, I said. She looked around the room and then she walked over to the window and stared out at the yard. She was quiet, looking, and then she turned around and smiled at me again.
How old are you? she said.
Nineteen, I said. How old are you?
How old do you think I am? she asked.
I don’t know, I said. Thirty?
I’ll be forty-one in three weeks, she said.
You don’t look forty-one, I said.
That’s because something very traumatic happened to me when I was fourteen and as a result of that trauma I was prevented from moving forward, she said.
Oh, I said. But you will be forty-one in three weeks?
Technically, she said. On some level I’ve been alive for forty-one years but on other levels I stopped progressing at fourteen.
What happened to you when you were fourteen? I asked. I sat down on the bed beside her and she handed me her pack of cigarettes.
I’ll tell you another time, she said. I have a son who isn’t much younger than you.
How old is he? I asked.
He’s sixteen, she said. But spiritually he’s much older. I’d say closer to eighty.
I hope that someday somebody asks me where I was when I smoked my first cigarette so that I can tell them that yeah, well, you know, I was in my aunt and uncle’s bed with this fourteen-year-old German actress who had an eighty-year-old son. No big deal. Marijke talked about her son, about missing him. She told me that she was worried that maybe she had been too much of a friend to her son lately and not enough of a parent.
Friends are good, she said, but sometimes a kid needs someone just to say hey, don’t inject that, or whatever.
Are you from Russia? I asked her.
Yes, she said. I was born there but the place where I was born doesn’t exist now.
What do you mean? I asked her. I was having a hard time following this conversation. I knew more about the social significance of birdsong, I realized, than I did about human interaction.
We talked about Diego and the crew and we talked about the script which I hadn’t seen but which she told me was full of little drawings that accompanied the text and that she thought she’d be expected to take off her clothes for one or two scenes.
Do you want me to tell Diego that you don’t want to take off your clothes? I asked her.
No, no, she said. That doesn’t bother me. It’s his story.
What is the movie about? I asked her.
Agony. And swimming. I don’t know. I can’t quite figure it out from the pictures and it’s written in Spanish.
She asked me if I wanted to see the script and I said yeah but then she couldn’t find it in her room and didn’t want to go out to the main room to see if she’d left it there because she’d be expected to socialize with a bunch of people she couldn’t communicate with beyond tequila and danke schön or learn how to juggle devil sticks or whatever they were doing in there.
I should go, I said. I was worried that Aggie would come looking for me here.
Why? said Marijke. You’re nineteen years old! Are your parents that strict?
No, no, I said. My husband.
What? said Marijke. You’re married?
Yeah, I said.
Does your husband mind that you’re working as my translator?
No, I said. Not really. Well, actually, he doesn’t know about it. He’s been away for a while.
Well then, how would he be worried? she said. Why should you go home? She put her finger gently on the bumpy ridge between my eyes. Where your source of energy begins, she said. She kneaded the bumpy ridge gently with her long finger. I tried to speak and she said don’t speak now, notice the ligh
t. Do you notice the light?
I don’t know, I said. I have to do the milking or the cows will explode.
Is your husband a good kisser? she asked.
What? I said. Jorge? I don’t know. I have nothing to compare him to.
We were quiet then, smoking, thinking about Jorge. At least I was. I think he might have been a good kisser. I pledged to tell him that if I ever saw him again. The cigarette was making me feel dizzy and I was trying not to cough.
Have you heard of the four-part cure, Irma? she asked.
No, I said. Cure for what? I stood up and looked around for a place to put my cigarette.
Here, said Marijke. She took it and put it in a glass of water next to her bed.
She said she had googled a new philosophy, a four-part cure, that would help her to live life on life’s terms. She laid it out for me:
Don’t fear God, she said.
Don’t worry about death.
What is good is easy to get, and
What is terrible is easy to endure.
I’m quoting, she said. It’s Epicurean. From a thousand years ago. People misinterpret Epicureanism these days. They misinterpret everything.
Plus, she said, I’ve learned that thoughts are atoms flying around in totally random patterns.
Oh, I said. They are?
That’s all they are, she said. It’ll help me in the desert. And I do believe in my soul. Anxiety’s the killer.
Yeah, I said. That’s true. Can I ask you a question?
Anything, she said. She squeezed my red, chapped hands and the room suddenly smelled like milk.
Why were you crying before? I asked.
Oh, that, she said. Okay, here’s the thing. It’s true that I have a new cure that I’m counting on to get me through life and it’s true that I’m a little bit tough but the reality is that I’m a middle-aged woman in the middle of nowhere, a Mexican desert for God’s sake, about to do something I have no experience doing and I’m feeling very, very alone and unsure and ridiculous and afraid.
Well, why did you agree to be in the movie? I asked her.