That day, I walked up La Cuesta de los Perdidos, remember? The hill of the lost: the name we gave the street you’d told me hundreds of times never to visit. “Nothing good ever happens there,” you’d say. In Ocumare everyone talked about that street. At the end of it was an abandoned house. The architect’s house. Even my aunts and you mentioned it at times. Aunt Amelia whispered its name, horrified, making the sign of the holy cross before kissing her thumb. You took her to task. That was what uneducated people did. “Superstitions!” you brought the discussion to an end, lowering your voice.
I had no trouble finding the mansion. It was at the end of everything, almost abutting the river. The main gate, a red color, had a broken padlock and wasn’t shut properly. I went in, drawn by one of the cotton plants that graced the main garden. I’d never seen anything like it. It was covered in white, spongey lumps. I felt like pulling them off and nibbling on them.
In my aunts’ tone, “the architect’s house” sounded like it must belong to a perverse magician, a bad man. So I was surprised to find, in that small and brackish backwater, a dilapidated but beautiful modern house with balanced, generous proportions. It was as if the Bauhaus had been tasked with bestowing order and progress on a scrubland. It seemed inexplicable to me that such dark comments could be directed at one of the few beautiful buildings in that dump. The house had nothing in common with the dark and ugly place I’d invented in my head. Its beauty redeemed everything surrounding it: the corrugated-iron houses and prefab blocks where fishermen salted and dried dogfish; the liquor stores with beaded curtains where men went in and out, swigging anisette on the plaza pavement. That house didn’t belong to the town—to its world, either.
I went inside unafraid, drawn by the white fixtures and colored glass windows. But the interior was destroyed. Creepers and weeds had swallowed up the white metal and glass staircase almost entirely. The tidemark on the walls spoke of floods, and door handles had been wrenched off. The mess was a sure sign of thieves, and the corners were full of wasp nests. Only a few pieces of furniture were left, and the floor was scattered with papers: notes on the theory of additive color, jottings on how to keep a sphere in the air, as well as designs and drawings of metal structures.
I peered at the books that covered one white wall. The first shelf was full of volumes in French. It was the first time I’d seen a book from Éditions Gallimard. It looked sober and elegant to me, with its twin border lines on the bone-colored cover. I found a lot of art manuals that had their pages ripped out. I’d never read those names before. The strange sound of some of them meant that they became embedded in my memory: Josef Albers, Jean Arp, Calder, Duchamp, Jacobsen, Tinguely . . . one plate corresponded to each artist, accompanied by a long text. The reproduced artworks seemed familiar to me.
In the city, the streets and subway cars, even the zebra crossings, had a similar style. It was years before I understood that something of the brightness that shone in that forgotten house in a seaside town had scattered all over the country: it was the promise that one day we would be modern. A statement of intent. But our intentions were in ruins too, like the metal murals ravaged and looted of their original beauty by scrap-metal collectors. The bare bones of those sculptures rose all around the city. I wanted to move into the architect’s house. I fantasized about cleaning it and setting it up so I could while away the spare hours that I had in abundance at the Falcón guesthouse.
A few fat blowflies flew around the main living room. Near the stairway I found a few objects that had nothing to do with the spirit of the place: broken missals, decapitated saints, coverless New Testament booklets. Also empty aguardiente bottles, seashells, chicken feathers, and dirty rags. I went up the steps, afraid and fascinated. They creaked, eaten away by Ocumare de la Costa’s briny air. From the highest point I could see the cotton plants, which at that time of day were iridescent, bathed in sun. The sounds of women washing their clothes in the river drifted up to me.
The bag of tomatoes slipped from my hands and fell on an empty cardboard box, which echoed as if I’d dropped stones, not vegetables.
“Who’s there?”
It was a man’s voice. I scooted down the staircase and slipped over. I scraped myself badly, but my panic was greater than the burn. I ran out, not looking back, and didn’t stop until I got to the market plaza. It was only then that I slowed enough to realize my pants were ripped and stained in blood.
I got back to the guesthouse an hour later. I don’t remember what was worse, Pancho’s squeals as he was boiled alive in the pot or the look you gave me, Mamá, when I arrived, my clothing torn and no tomatoes in sight. You didn’t believe me when I said I’d lost my bearings, I know. You were angry on the inside, which is how feelings hurt most, when they fester. You went out for the tomatoes. We ate Pancho’s remains unhappily. My aunts came in and out, their large, old-lady backsides wobbling.
“Amelia, it’s bland,” said Clara to her elder sister, who shot her a furious look.
“Put a rein on this girl, she’s not keeping to the straight and narrow, Santo Cristo!” responded Amelia, thrusting her anger in another direction.
“Virgen del Valle! The girl will turn insolent,” griped Clara.
You, Mamá, ignored my aunts’ drama. You ate the smallest piece of pie.
“Adelaida, m’hija, I kill the critter myself and you’re not going to eat it? This girl’s going to sour our day. My goodness you’re stubborn, child, look what you’ve done to your mother.” My aunt Clara fixed her crazy-snake eyes on me, offended, according to her, at the upsets and the spectacle I’d made.
You, Mamá, ate without raising an eyebrow. You were the first to leave the table and wash the dishes. You didn’t speak to me for two days. My first silent punishment hurt more than any hiding. But that’s how you were, Mamá. That was just you.
The taxi driver honked twice. I’d taken a lot longer than the time we’d agreed on. I left, this time without looking back. Digesting the letters wrenched from our name, yours and mine: Adelaida Falcón. I got into the passenger seat, feeling emptied out. I explained to the driver the directions they’d given me in the cemetery’s general office. We headed for the allotments with no hills, quadrants with graves deep inside flower beds, wherein the residents decomposed, piled on top of each other, with no view.
“Wait here. I won’t take as long this time, and don’t worry, I’ll pay extra.”
The man snorted, as if the trip would be the ruin of him. I got out and shut the door hard, a bunch of daisies in hand.
No one was in the graveyard. The long rows were covered in crackling leaves. This part of the cemetery, older than the part where my mother was buried, mostly had European immigrant graves. Despite following the same severe rectangular pattern, which made all the tombstones equal, some had small extravagances: toy windmills and candy for children who had been dead twenty years, Easter plants and little Christmas trees singed by the sun. Scores of tombstones were fitted with oval portraits of men and women dressed in old-fashioned clothing.
I found Julia Peralta’s grave a few steps from a tree. A thick layer of weeds covered almost all of it. I had to kneel and pull out a few weeds to read her full name. Julia Peralta Veiga. A squadron of furious leafcutter ants pooled out in all directions. There were hundreds of the red things, which looked like the ones used to make hot salsas and season bitter cassava juices. The insects surrounded the enameled photograph of Julia Peralta, a studio portrait, charmless and cold. Julia Peralta had something of that air in life, too: as if she were beyond this world. While I tried to arrange the daisies in the vase, one of the ants bit my index finger. I jumped backward, squeezing it. It was a big bite. A pinprick that palpitated and burned. I tried to move the rest of the weeds with a stick, but it was impossible. My finger swelled in a few seconds, an allergic reaction.
Julia Peralta must have thought my visit inappropriate; that was why she drove me from her grave with an infantry of ants whose eggs multiplied at the ord
ers of the queen. Sucking my finger like a child, I picked up the small bunch of flowers, already withered, and placed it on the cement plaque printed with her name.
I’m not sure if I was asking her forgiveness or her permission. I didn’t know what I was doing, standing before the grave that, if it hadn’t been for me, could have housed her daughter too. Julia Peralta slept peacefully a few meters belowground. Her daughter, in contrast, had been incinerated in a Dumpster. It was me who did that. It was me who abandoned her there. Me.
If we belong to the place where our dead are buried, which of all the places did I belong to now? The dead can only be buried when there is peace and justice. We didn’t have either. That was why there was no rest, much less forgiveness.
I I I, I I I, I I I’m bringing you a bunch of flowers; they’re for you San Juan, in all their different colors! Ocumare de la Costa’s black residents sang on June nights. The clock keeps on ticking, you can’t turn it back, bananas will never be green again once they’ve gone black they chanted, moving their hips on the beaches of my childhood. I I I, I I I, I I I’m bringing you a bunch of flowers; they’re for you San Juan, in all their different colors!
I left the bunch of daisies I’d bought for a woman I didn’t know well, someone I’d robbed of everything. And just as San Juan didn’t return to heaven, peace didn’t reign on earth. That afternoon it felt like the cemetery trees were dropping feathers from decapitated hens. Like the tomatoes were exploding again. Like the tortoise was squealing inside the pot of boiling water. Like cotton and fish were coming out of my chest. Like my dead mother was condemning me to an eternity of silence. And like my other mother, the Spanish one, was feeding ants with her body, was feeding their venom, in the land where she chose to die.
In this country, no one rests in peace. No one.
“To Avenida Urdaneta, where it meets Esquina la Pelota,” I said to the taxi driver before pulling the door shut.
CALLING PASSENGER Aurora Peralta. Passenger Aurora Peralta, please report to airport staff.”
I had to leave my Venezuelan passport on the counter. I went down to the tarmac. I obeyed, the only option when you have no choice.
“Dammit,” I said under my breath as I adjusted the reflective vest that those of us who had something to declare were made to put on.
It was the third inspection, so I supposed it was the decider. The one that determines whether you stay or go. I was sweating more than usual and was being overly affable, a sure giveaway when you’re not a good liar and don’t know how to commit a crime. There I stood watching how an official from the National Guard took great pleasure in exercising command, at least with me. He made me lift my suitcase onto a metal table. He raised his hand in a signal not to approach. He unlocked it. Click, click. He looked me in the eyes, leveling his green uniform at me, not to mention the cluster of medals on his chest, the gun at his belt, and the bullet holder around his waist, its bullets yet to be premiered. This official snooped through my things as only authority figures know how when they are busy demonstrating that they are The Authority.
“Why are you taking so many books and papers?” he upbraided me. “What do you do?”
“I’m a cook.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
He inspected the items jumbled in my baggage. My things: books, old notebooks, photos that would only serve to jog my memory about who I really was or had been, if the need ever arose. Then there were the other things: Aurora’s dreadful, out-of-date clothing; the photo albums and letters I’d sifted through and studied and was now carrying with me like a student preparing for an exam. In a false bottom I’d made especially for the trip were the two apartment deeds, Aurora Peralta’s and mine. Carrying them wasn’t a crime, but even so, I’d hidden them.
In the middle of the tarmac of the Eternal Revolutionary Commander’s International Airport, flustered by the smell of sea and fuel, I watched the items of mine that were meant to cross the Atlantic being paraded before me. It felt like I was standing in front of a whale that had been ripped open and was letting me touch its innards. I felt ashamed, wanted to cover it up and cover myself up, but I didn’t protest. I didn’t lift a finger. I didn’t ask the official how many bullets in his holder had our names on them. Nor did I want to take shelter in the solidarity of those who were still in line: civilians forced to obey.
“So you’re a cook. What kind of food? You don’t need so many books to cook now, do you?” he persisted.
“I make pastries and sweets, Officer. I also like to read. I get bored waiting for the oven to heat up; that’s why I read so much.”
“Mmmm . . . In that case, what else . . . ?”
“I don’t understand.” I kept looking at him.
“I’m asking you what else you’re going to do. Are you going to Spain to work as a cook? You only have a one-way ticket, citizen. I don’t see the return flight anywhere here.”
I went over my memorized speech, as I’d done hundreds of times in front of the bathroom mirror.
“Look, Officer, my aunt’s sick. She’s getting on, the dear old thing.” I hated speaking like this, but it was a way of driving home the part I was playing, “and, you know, I have to take care of her. My return trip depends on when she gets better. That’s why I haven’t bought my ticket yet.”
“Hmmm, okay . . .” he said with a simian air, as if he didn’t understand what he was reading, much less my explanations.
“Wait here, citizen.”
He left, and time stretched out eternally. I was afraid he would send me to the scanner room. That was where they stripped you and frisked you, put you in the middle of a metal V, in case you had pellets hidden in your stomach or, in your heart of hearts, felt like going to hell and taking everyone with you. I didn’t have the first, but you could see the second all over me. Just the thought of it made me dizzy. All my important things were tucked tightly in the back brace I was wearing. A poor alibi, but an alibi all the same. Pressed to my back and stomach I was carrying the euros still at my disposal, as well as Aurora Peralta’s bank cards. In another hidden pocket I’d made in my purse, the cards and few documents that corresponded to my real identity were pressed tightly.
Things had to go terribly wrong for them to search me. But, of course, the person who decides how things pan out is not the one who’s afraid, but the one who’s inspiring fear. That was the thing; it was like playing with food before taking it to your mouth. Subdue the other’s will without laying a finger on them.
The guy returned, taking long strides, his boredom weighing heavier than his boots.
“And what’s your aunt’s name then, citizen?”
“Francisca Peralta, Officer.”
“Right, Francisca Peralta. Do you have any food with you?”
“No, Officer. You can confirm that.”
“Hmmm . . . I say that because we have to watch for ecological and customs crimes.”
My baggage was still open. The guard grabbed a book and smelled it.
“If you’re a cook, why do you have no food with you?”
“Officer, I’m traveling to take care of a sick woman, not to cook.”
“Hmmm. But what are these books about? Do they include recipes?”
“No, Officer, they’re novels. I read them for pleasure.”
“Hmmm . . . And where does your aunt live?”
“In Madrid, Officer.”
“In what part of Madrid would that be, citizen?”
“In Las Ventas, Officer, near Plaza de Toros.”
“Oh, really? They have bullfights in Madrid?”
I nodded.
“And what about you? Are you Spanish? If you’re going for so long, it’s because you’re allowed to stay, is that right? You have papers?”
“My mother was Spanish and, as you can see, I’m a dual citizen.”
“Hmmm . . . And where is the Spanish passport?”
My head spun and I got a sharp pain in my gut.<
br />
I took my hand to my pocket to remove it.
“Here it is.”
“Why didn’t you show me that before?”
“Well, Officer, because . . . because . . . I’m a citizen of this country, you know?” I said, my passport still in hand.
“Give it to me.”
I hesitated a moment. If my life made any sense it was thanks to that document. I handed it to him with the feeling that I was giving up a kidney.
“Wait here.”
He departed again. I got the impression that any situation that was marginally complex had to be run by someone higher up, as if his comprehension levels didn’t extend to anything beyond the basic routines. Beside me waited a girl whose eight blocks of chocolate had been confiscated. She, who wasn’t a Spanish national, explained hundreds of times that she was going to study for a masters in Barcelona. After nibbling on each of the blocks, the National Guard officer asked if she planned on coming back. Without hesitation, she said she did. Two tables beyond her, an older woman had to unravel balls of wool and explain it was for knitting. Almost every person waiting was a woman or elderly, a profile easy to intimidate.
I looked at the German shepherds that the guards used to detect drugs that came from other countries, which the officials concealed. The dogs didn’t have muzzles and smelled everything, burying their snouts in crotches and people’s handbags. The officers dug around, stuck their fingers where it would hurt us the most. They called us citizens but treated us like criminals.
They pretended to be suspicious of certain individuals, detaining them so that others who did have cocaine hidden on them could go through. It was profitable to turn a blind eye to the packages, to play for time with the rest of us. Drugs pay more than intimidation. And inspiring fear has its pleasures.
The National Guard officer came back, my passport in hand.
It Would Be Night in Caracas Page 14