Hunger's Brides (159 page)

Near evening, already dusk. You have not returned from the orchards. I run a bath for you: you will be tired. Into the steaming water what scents shall I pour, what essences shall I choose for you to carry into this night's sleep? To cloak you, every mound and furrow, and still at dawn like fallen dew: cassis, angelica root, Italian bergamot, cloves? Marjoram, spearmint, olibanum, rose? Cinnamon … I pore over bottled roots and barks and essences like a wizard, a
curandera
over her healing incantations.

Can you be healed of this? Can I heal myself?

The water cools a little, the moment passes. A little later you come in, weary, as I expected. You see the water and smile, beginning to undress. No wait! An eyebrow arches—your dusty face—as if to ask, What's the matter?

It's ice-cold, I lie, putting on more water to heat, making you wait, cruelly.

Gardening, cooking, embroidery … Carlos asks me if this sudden interest in women's work—work she would never permit herself in here—is a parody of feminine servility?

I am thinking of this as I watch her silent among the weavers, taking her place at a loom, half-listening as the others weave and spin, telling stories to pass the time. Sitting across from her as she begins to work the loom, hesitantly at first and then more surely, I see her look up at me, dark eyes shining with awe, as a lost skill returns to her forgivingly from a bygone time, as though it were only yesterday she was girl in Panoayan….

Dedicated, rat-sated, battered, ears in tatters—convent cats in their leisure hours stalking wary birds. Juana watching.

The next day the
curandera
returns to her potions, a delicate case, this one, I mutter.

If what the ancient Mexicans believed is true—that a colour, a sound, a scent is as significant to a ceremony as any word—and if to change any one of these recasts the whole, couldn't this extend even to the play's outcome? Dear Lord, let this be so!

If I can't change that outcome with words, why not with scents and flavours? How am I to believe there's no such thing as magic when I have heard you speak of this so often, when I see you now under this spell?

Carlos always says the first step to understanding a thing is observing well … a careful description of its properties. The
bruja
unstops her bottles, passing them beneath her nose, one by one, eyes closed: the cream finish of sandalwood. Lavender's true, high notes. The rasp of pepper, deep and feral. Rose: warm and cream, but fine.
Nardo
, rich butterfat; with jasmin—low-pitched and gritty—its perfect complement. Violet: cool and powdery.
Lirio
root: a mushroom's musk—what will it say to the hard-eyed observer to smell that on her skin? Anise mixed with bergamot—a baby's pink fragrance, flesh of velvet creases.

Is this madness? I said I would try anything. Shall I wring my hands over what right I have, again? Am I not entitled to a little hope? Of undoing the hex I've helped put on you?

The cool, sweet convergence of vanilla and cassis, the eggshell whiff of
aldehidos
, the leather waft of
habatonia
. Regal essence of
Acahar…
.

From a dream of flowers I wake before dawn, looking to put names to the scented melodies in your bathwater: Temptation, Incantation, Jubilation …

Obsession.

Still in bed, arm flung across my eyes, I hear you moving through the darkened rooms.

I follow you everywhere now. You hardly seem to notice, like a wild creature grown used to me. I stand by you tending flowers; I cut a shock of white narcissus blossoms for our table.

You turn to me, your shirt splashed with pollen.

Gold. Carlos has already carefully explained this. The colour of the West as the evening star sinks into the swamp of night. Where souls taken prisoner in childbirth lie in wait.

I kiss your hands. On such and such a day, someone here will soon be saying, her palms tasted of clay….

Weeding, she uproots shoots of basil she planted just last week. She's started forgetting little things.

Tiny, white blossoms in a small, chinese vase, sky-blue. White-porcelain dragon clouds, with wings.

Flowers of such delicacy. Six wide-flung petals, frail rosette upthrust on its calyx like a jewel on a tiny crown.

For the longest time—the flowers seem to last forever in their vase—I can't think what their faint scent reminds me of. High and powdery, like perfumed wax. Chilled cream, honey and paraffin. Marble.

You.

Dawn, fog. Sky the colour of time. This place is filled with ghosts! I
live
with one—no, five hundred. I look out into the time-swept streets and see still others—past or future? Streets filled with mists, miasmas, phantoms. Spectres of vanished instruments and books, and cruel instruments of iron and timber soon, now, to come.

The ghosts of young men playing a ball game against the massive convent walls. And on those grey walls others sketching bright, crude symbols with strange cylindrical brushes. A few words I recognize:
Crisis. PAN. México para los Mexicanos …

San Jerónimo: the crumbling ghost of a ball court, an altar, an ancient book.

Tremulous blue light in the rooms across the street.

Mid-afternoon. Sun in a sky of brass. Thousand-throated roar of a bullring, five blocks away.

Thread of hairshirt wool stuck in the bed of rough-planed timbers where she sleeps. Strand of hair caught in the scaly bark of a potted tree. Ragged fingernail recovered from the garden soil. Peeled whorls of fingertips, wedged invisible in a pocked column of volcanic rock abrasive like a file. Flesh wedded to a flail.

With these, your textured leavings, I brew your returnings counter-spell.

H
ARLEQUIN
: C
IVIL
D
ISCOVERY
        

W
E WAITED FOR THE COURTROOM
to clear. The scrum would be assembling for us outside. Hostile sound bite on the courthouse steps. Opposing counsel and the aggrieved father were the last to leave save us. Beulah's mother, Grace, hadn't come today. The third time in a week I'd seen Jonas Limosneros and the third thousand-dollar suit. Plastic surgery I could believe—but only with the greatest difficulty that this could be a great cardiovascular surgeon. Thick, wavy hair, lightly oiled. Coal black, with a few crimped strands of white. He was particularly dark-skinned for a Spaniard. The impeccably shaven shadow of a heavy beard. Dark eyes. A very handsome man. A worried man, much relieved. Or so it seemed to me. Theatrical pause before me to check his expensive watch. My chance to find his long-fingered hands artful. No rings. Maybe surgeons weren't allowed, lest they leave them in their work. Our eyes locked. On the way past he took in my rumpled bleariness with a supercilious arch of the brow. Sick fuck.

My lawyer turned his amused blue eyes on me. “There. That went well.”

He seemed willing to include our manly exchange of glances in the generally favourable outcome of the day's proceedings. “Now the rest will be just like I said. The main thing was giving the girl's papers back. The clerk now hands them over to the police who, after a brief and muddled flip-through, return them to the family.”

“For safekeeping.”

“Look, I don't like the father—”

“Stepfather.”

“Whatever—any more than you do. The thing was you turning over those papers.”

I'd shown up at his office at closing time the night before with a cardboard box under my arm. Chris Relkoff, recommending him, had mentioned precendent-setting pro bono work and eclectic interests. Music and naval history, maybe. Fly-fishing. European jazz. I couldn't help noticing that his assistant, typing slowly away that day in an orange summer dress, was prettier than strictly necessary. I had the notion she'd chosen the colour of the dress to match her boss's thinning hair. Eclectic.

“This mean you're done playing cops and robbers?” he asked, eyeing the box.

“So it would seem.”

“Why the change of heart?” He poised his paunchy bulk at the edge of the typist's desk and crossed his arms.

“Think of it as me waiving my exclusive to the story.”

“Meaning?”

“I still want a copy.”

Shaking his head, he waved me to the photocopier. “Knock yourself out.”