Santiago's Way

by Patricia Laurent

  ‘Hmmm!’ they would mutter thoughtfully. ‘That’s a tough one. The void, eh? Well, for me, it’s a hole in my stomach.’

  When couples were asked, they tended to burst into laughter.

  ‘It’s infertility.’

  ‘Death.’

  ‘Loneliness.’

  ‘Rejection.’

  ‘Explain yourself,’ said one woman in particular. ‘Oh, I see. Well, the void is something we need to make understanding possible. You are there, I am here. If there was no void between us, you know, no space, then I wouldn’t be able to see you, would I?’

  Then she vanished into her umbrella. I was so taken by her remark that I followed her without her seeing me. She was tall, slender and middle-aged. Her umbrella did not match her outfit. She went inside a building where the walls were all glass. I waited outside for her, and in the meantime I counted how many shoes, black, brown or blue, went by me along the pavement.

  It began to get dark, and still she did not emerge from the building. It wasn’t to my advantage that Reginald should discover I was leaving the basement: that would have been almost as bad as his finding out I could speak.

  When I got back he was already there. He looked at me with a disturbing twinkle in his eye, and then he spoke my name. I realized at once that he had ferreted through my handbag and found my passport. At that moment something in me snapped shut, like a clam trapping an intruding finger inside itself, a finger like the one Reginald used to stroke my teeth.

  With his burning lips he tried to warm up my icy cheeks, my forehead and the tip of my nose. In order to distract him I took him by the hand and led him to the little stove. I put the kettle on. We had hard-boiled eggs for supper, but now there was something different in the way he looked at me. His smile resembled my grin when I first met him. There was a fixed quality to it that spoke of inevitable grief.

  When supper was over he played his guitar for a brief while, and I took this opportunity to get into the bed, slipping under the blankets, still wearing my cap, scarf, boots and all. He switched off the light and got into the bed beside me. I could hear his agitated breathing. In the darkness he spoke my name again. He pronounced it as if it were something strange and profound, as though he were using it to dig under mounds of rubble in search of Santiago. Inside me, my veins and arteries felt like they were conspiring against my heart, and it began to beat irregularly.

  He ran a finger over my ear nervously like somebody testing the edge of a razor blade. My mind was concentrating on my numbers, on my census, on the woman from the Underground. He put his head on my shoulder when he realized I was still awake. Then once again he spoke my name. I fought it off by trying to recall every step I took down the avenue. I heard him sigh, and he turned his body away. Within a few minutes his breathing became regular, while I was struggling for breath.

  Every time I gasped for air Santiago proceeded to reconstitute himself. The melancholy telescope in my heart was shattered to fragments, and my connection with the blue beyond was broken. Suddenly the whole world was jammed inside my brain, wrapped up tight, with no way to turn it around, not even a little, and so unlock my memory. A glimpse that escaped through my eyes allowed me to recognize, in the glow of the sodium streetlights filtering in through the high window, that I was lying there under the plumbing pipes in Reginald’s basement.

  Fighting for breath, I got up from the bed and stumbled around my unlit cage from one side to the other, until I dragged a chair up under the window and stood on it to peer out. Outside, a damp mist was drifting listlessly around the lamppost. There I stayed, fascinated by the mist’s movements: it, at least, was not motionless.

  When the alarm clock sounded, Reginald sat up in bed. He switched on the lamp and saw me still standing on the chair under the window.

  ‘What’s up?’ His voice was locked in the frozen world. ‘You OK?’

  He reached for my hand and tried to pull me off the chair which, for me, was no longer a chair but my last point of balance on a precipitous cliff. I refused to fall. He shook the chair and caused me to wobble perilously. With both hands I hung on tight to the window-sill.

  Then he darted off to the bathroom. By the time he emerged day had dawned. Its pale light fell directly on the road above, which was filling up with cars and umbrellas.

  Again his two hands seized my waist. He pulled me off the chair, sat me down on it and crouched in front of me.

  He left me there when he went off to work, sitting on the chair, looking after him, with a steaming cup of tea in my hands. Many hours slipped by before I remembered that I had important work to do with my numbers and questions. I dashed out like somebody late for her job. The morning mist had blown away to be replaced by a cheerless sun, light without heat.

  At the mouth of the Underground I waited for the woman. Perhaps she would know how to get this huge clod of earth out of my head and how to create the distance necessary for me to observe her as a being outside myself. I couldn’t remember her face, but I had a clear idea of her body from behind, the unstylish combination of her clothes and the way she walked. I leaned up against the wall of a shop and checked out the backs of all the women. Then there she was! She was walking faster than anybody else, and I was forced to run to keep up with her. I didn’t dare speak to her. Once again she went inside the glass building and once again I sat on the pavement to wait for her. I planned what I would say to her. I would invite her to supper.

  Night fell once more. The building seemed to be composed of deceitful mirrors. People went in but nobody ever came out. Then I discovered that there was an exit into the street that ran parallel to the Underground. I crossed the foyer and came out of the rear door.

  There I found Santiago waiting for me with a photo he had just taken of the Christmas lights adorning the streets. Everything now had an icy glitter to it, the silhouettes, the cars, the glaring commercial signs. The cold air froze my face and I half closed my eyelids to protect my eyes.

  Suddenly, instead of car lights I saw coming towards me the lighted lanterns of a Mexican Christmas procession. At its head staggered my Aunt Socorro, her shoulders drooping under the weight of the empty manger of Jesus and the statues of Joseph and Mary awaiting the miraculous birth. Behind her walked my siblings, behind them the Gonzalez brood – Christmas is the season of peace – and behind them other kids from the neighbourhood singing carols that Aunt Socorro was leading with her strident nasal voice. A car horn blared.

  I love processions. Now Aunt Socorro forces us to walk street after street to reach the mysterious house where we will act out our Christmas ritual. We cluster around her while she asks if there is any room for Joseph and Mary. I, too, join in the singing and allow drops of freezing rain to land on my tongue. A harsh ritual rebuff comes from the house. Finally, an accord is reached, and we holy pilgrims are allowed to enter. Then begins the torture of prayer. Down on our knees, we offer thanks that the Divine Word has been incarnated among us. The prayers are endless. The tarmac of the London street is wet.

  My rosary beads turn into light bulbs that seem to chase each other around and around a chemist’s sign. My eyes focus on the roof-top of the house that offered lodging to the Saviour’s mother-to-be. I look around at the faces of adults and despairing children. But out here there is no sheltering roof, no consoling moon. The sky has overwhelmed the street with a shower of murky hail. Turning my head, I notice stairs going up to a second floor. It must be the home of wealthy people, for everything is gilded: the candelabra, the banisters, the numbers on the door. At long last we arrive at the songs of joy and we imitate the sound of tambourines by clapping our hands. Then the warm chocolate in my hands turns out to be cold mud. The cake with the crown and sickly masses of green, white and blue marzipan transforms itself into a policeman who interrupts my prayers. He hurts me as he tries to lift me to my feet.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I tell him, wriggling free of his grip. I walk away rapidly in the direction of the basement. It’s not too la
te, I realize, to get there before Reginald. People are still hurrying out of the tall buildings, pushing against each other in a vain attempt to make haste.

  I go past the end of Albert Street. There is Reginald, next to the fire, drinking with his friends. He will be getting home late tonight.

  21

  ‘We will all be late getting home,’ declares the voice of Santiago in my ear. I have put the kettle on and removed my clothes to dry them near the little stove. To thwart Santiago I start to count in multiples of five.

  ‘He’s a good lad, this Reginald,’ continues Santiago. ‘The problem is this dump of a basement. And that business tonight out there was, frankly, suicidal. It’s one thing to see images and quite another to act them out in the middle of a street in central London.’

  I listen to his nagging while I put on Reginald’s sweater and socks.

  ‘This kind of thing will be the end of us. I’ve had enough. I concede that our travel plans were a trifle over-ambitious. I also think we’ve been striving for far too much in life, but don’t forget that striving hard is one way to keep madness at bay.’

  I listen as I drink the tea.

  ‘So it’s over. Let’s head back home. We could carry on with our studies there and go on real-life pilgrimages. We can carry a little lantern behind a flock of people who are singing hymns of praise to the Virgin Mary. We could enjoy a tasty meal with your mother. Let’s have no more of this nonsense about eating bread and butter and drinking tea. This obsession of yours with numbers is quite intolerable. You’re never going to find that woman you’re looking for. Let me draw you a picture of what your life will be like if you stay here. Reginald will tire of you. And there’ll be no more handouts from Cuco to get you home.’

  So that’s the way it is, I think. One blackmail after another. The fear of living outside language.

  I fall asleep before Reginald gets home. I don’t want him listening to Santiago. The next morning, after Reginald has left for work, I put on my own clothes, even though they are still only half dry.

  I leave Reginald a letter. I set out, determined to cross the ocean.

  22

  After a flight, a stopover, another flight and long periods of hanging around in airports my separation from Santiago is over. Once more I have succumbed to the security of a perspective that is unreal and to his interpretations of space. Photographs are spread out to dry on my encephalic bumps and there they acquire an ochre hue. Promises of a brilliant future are tied to my submitting to reality; they are fettered to the rules and regulations of healthy living. The magic of the word is made flesh in a marble-sized creature composed of liver, with all its fantastic abracadabra.

  Talking of magic, here is a magic trick I learned from my brother Luis. One day, while my parents are out, probably shopping, he lights a ring on the cooker. He heats up a fork until it is red-hot. Then he pronounces magic words and plunges the fork into a beaker of water. Clouds of steam hiss upwards. Then he slaps the fork down on Lilia’s bare arm. She screams, but the fork is inexplicably cold. We all laugh. We beg him to do it again. But Luis bores quickly and prefers to hang out with his friends on the street corner.

  I leave the house, deeply impressed by the incandescent coldness of the metal fork. I race down several streets until I get to the house of Martha, my one friend at school. I tell her I had a visit from a strange man in a turban and cloak. He taught me how to turn myself invisible but I don’t dare do it in front of her, because she would be sure to faint. Still, I do have another trick to show her. I need fire and a fork to perform it. We go to the stove in the kitchen. We light the gas. I put the tines of the fork in the flame until they turn red, and then I put the fork on Martha’s forearm near her wrist. She screams just like Lilia. But then she weeps and weeps and blows on the burn. Her mother bursts in and calls me nasty names. Martha is forbidden to associate with me ever again. So goodbye juices and baked ham at break-times. I return home, picking up pebbles and batting them with a stick. I still can’t figure out where the trick went wrong.

  ‘The idiot forgot to put the fork in water!’ I am hearing Luis’s laughter for the first time in many years.

  He is recalling the incident at a party in Lilia’s garden. It is my welcome-home party. They have all come to see me. A couple of nephews have been born in my absence, and they are displayed like trophies. Here nothing has gone amiss, for nothing has happened. My mother smiles at what we say, although she doesn’t listen to it.

  ‘Do you remember how her mother came to our house to complain? She was like a raging lioness!’

  Of course. Now comes the photo of the long-expected end to the misfired trick. My father learns of my blunder and has me brought into the kitchen. There he is seated like a king on a throne, a towel wound around his head like a turban. An empty bucket stands at his feet.

  ‘Kneel down,’ he commands. He has a vicious-looking knife in his hands.

  I kneel.

  ‘Bend your head over the bucket! I’m going to teach you a trick I know. I hope it doesn’t go wrong like yours did.’

  I stare down at the bottom of the bucket and my long hair falls forwards over my face. My father begins to saw at my bared neck. He is using the sharp knife but only the blunt edge, as I learn later. I pray to God his trick won’t fail.

  Other similar images rise from my brother’s memories.

  We recall the yo-yos that Santa Claus brought one Christmas and old Don Simon. As we reminisce, we drink beer and offer toasts, but a sudden silence falls when the harsh exposure to language peels the glamour off our nostalgic ramblings.

  I think about Santiago, and my body feels it is back in that clammy basement, listening to a guitar, while I am counting footsteps and awnings. Now I am listening to Reginald’s irregular breathing. Over and over I review the words of the letter I left him. Without warning, an explosion of laughter erupts from my chest, every tone of laughter, choking, fluid, grating, deafening, rich in tears.

  23

  Laughter. Gusts of cackling mirth burst out of my chest uninvited. I had discovered that red-painted lips are the formula for unending laughter. Lipstick is now the instrument I use to recapture the laughter I enjoyed before Santiago’s arrival, a harsh, hopeless laughter that shatters the Muzak of daily life, peevishly bringing down the roof on the people close to me.

  When I reached fourteen, my laughter began to wither away, for I could no longer copy those around me and had to face the world wearing my own authenticity. Laughter distorted my face, as the creases of my mouth tried to link up with the corners of my drooping eyelids. Laughter I could not contain in the presence of teachers and other authority figures. Laughter I could not carry with me across the world, for it collapsed into silence when I saw myself in the mirror of the void, that suffocating emptiness where no echoes exist, for the invisible atoms and molecules refuse to allow passage to the sound-waves of mirth. That bitter mirth, which contained every ounce of my unhappiness, of my rejection of all I had learned in my fourteen years. The edges of my heart turned to stone under its pressure, taking on the grey, sad colour of lava that regrets ever having left the earth’s interior in order to glimpse the light of day.

  But my laughter had now returned. It lodged itself like broken glass in my throat. I cannot explain the physiology of laughter, but I know that everything comes gliding up the slippery slope of the larynx, everything I used to be and that I am, to go skidding away before it lands in a heap on the ears of others, like panicky schoolgirls tumbling over each other on an icy pavement.

  This hurtful laughter filled out the void left by the loss of Mina. Now no more remains of her than a nostalgia for my beginnings. My breakdown, the dreams shattered by my suicide attempt, the melancholy telescope scanning the blue beyond for some trace of Mina, my journeyings around and around in circles in search of nothing in particular, these are all recorded by Santiago, that creature of the word.

  Once we were a single unified being. Then language designed a mira
culous link between feelings and thoughts. After that, everything had to struggle across the battleground of cold logic. If an occasional glance, thoughtlessly absorbed in the twilight, chanced to open a crack in this logic, a nervous laugh would promptly seal it.

  There followed a decade of truce. Throughout this period my public persona, ever more seductive, was channelled into harmony. It so balanced out my laughter that both currents ran together in a tranquil stream, where I and Santiago flowed side by side. Once my humanity had been a precarious, fragmented gesture, but now it was stabilized by the kindly arts of forgiveness and interchange. It was at this point that Lucio, my jigsaw-puzzle man, appeared, composed of three pieces: the tenderness of Reginald, the generosity of Cuco and the intelligence of Vicente.

  Optimistic because of the truce we were taking for granted, we married Lucio. As was to be expected, ten years of inactivity were to prove too much for Santiago. One day, while Lucio was nodding off over his book and I was gazing pensively at the stains on the ceiling of our house, I heard once again the cavernous voice that had been silent for so long.