Missing Rose (9781101603864) (6 page)

14

A
T THE END
of a long, routine, aimless day, Diana was sitting staring at her mother's photograph.

“Mom, let's suppose I did change my mind and went looking for Mary. What difference would that make? Do you really think we can reach Mary just through a name; the name of a woman who supposedly taught her how to talk with roses all those years ago?”

Her chest heaved. “Let's just, for a minute, suppose I traveled thousands of miles to the country where that palace is, and let's suppose I found the woman's guesthouse near that palace. Do we even know if the woman is still alive? If she is, will she remember the foreign girl who came to her guesthouse so many years ago? Well, if she really taught Mary to talk with roses, I'm sure she will. But we don't really think such a thing is possible, do we, Mom?

“And even if she does remember her, what good would that do? How would she know where Mary is now?

“If I really did go there, I'd ask her politely, ‘Excuse me, madam, I don't know if you recall but, a long time ago, a girl stayed here. Her name was Mary. Remember? She was the little girl you taught to talk with roses . . . Now please tell me, where can I find her?'

“What do you think she'd do, Mom, after hearing me ask her that question? Most probably she'd smile at first, but when I persist in asking the same question to the staff and even the guests, she'd politely ask me to leave. And when I tell her I won't budge an inch until I've learned where Mary is, reluctant to throw me out by force, she'd inform the Brazilian embassy. But I wouldn't give up. I'd keep the people from the embassy busy for hours, asking them, ‘Where's Mary? Where's Mary? Where
is
Mary?'

“And then what? I suppose, thinking that I must have lost my mind, they'd send me home on the first available flight with a report in my hand saying I was crazy. At the airport, there'd be men in white coats waiting to take me by the arm and escort me to the nearest psychiatric hospital.

“Well, that'd be good news, Mom. Because that's the
only
place I can find Mary.”

15

I
T WAS AS IF
all the tall chestnut-haired girls in Rio had convened in the park and as if they'd all agreed to look like Diana. As soon as they got nearer, however, the artist was once again left disappointed. For the past two evenings he'd waited for Diana in the same place, but she hadn't shown up.

He scolded himself for not keeping to his schedule all for the sake of a girl whom he knew wasn't right for him, but he just couldn't get himself to leave the park.

For a long time now, ever since he'd lost confidence in the trial and error approach to love affairs, the artist hadn't been involved in a relationship. In time, he'd come to the realization that each new relationship inevitably meant a new separation, so he'd decided to seek refuge in the turbulence-free state of being single.

Previously, he'd regarded every parting as a preparation for the next relationship and hadn't thought that he'd lost anything. But with time he'd come to understand that the ruins of a previous relationship were carried over into the next one.

He'd also realized that most people thought they were the ones who had been wronged when a relationship ended. They all thought they'd given much of themselves while their partner hadn't responded in the same way.

This had been the case for both him and his last girlfriend when they'd parted three years ago. For weeks he'd tried to understand this discrepancy. How could it be that both parties believed they were the ones who'd been wronged? One day, as he was watching two seagulls flying, he found the answer he'd been looking for.

T
HAT DAY HE'D
set up his easel on the cliffs, a short distance from where he lived. As he was absorbed in his painting, a seagull distracted him by taking off from a nearby cliff and diving down toward the water. Immediately, another seagull followed, launching itself from the cliff opposite, swooping down seawards toward the same place. Just as both were a hair's breadth from the water, in danger of colliding, a series of maneuvers took them up into the sky again. As if embracing each other with their wings, they rose in concert to a height far above the level of the cliffs from which they'd taken off.

As he watched the flight of these two seagulls, the artist thought that perhaps to be attached, first one needed to become unattached.

However, most people entered into new relationships carrying all their old ties with them. Whether what they carried from the past were feelings of mistrust, being misunderstood or a defensive wall, those old ties prevented them from living the new relationship freely. Maybe they were right in thinking they had been wronged in their previous relationships; but what they failed to see was that it wasn't their partner who'd wronged them but their own past, which they hadn't been able to leave behind.

These two seagulls coming from different cliffs had been able to leave their “past” place and descend to sea level, to “zero,” for each other, freeing themselves of their separate identities and so rising up into the sky as one.

The artist's habit of painting seagulls dated from that day. But for some time now his seagull had grown tired of solo flights and longed for the moment when he would descend toward the sea. Perhaps this wasn't the right shore for him to do that, yet he still couldn't leave and continued circling the sky.

W
HEN IT BECAME
quite dark, the artist realized that Diana wouldn't be coming to the seafront that night, either.

16

H
ER DREAMS DIDN'T
even let Diana enjoy a half-an-hour afternoon nap. She tried to rid her mind of fragmented scenes of a palace and a rose garden. It was impossible. If she couldn't get them out of her head, she wished she could at least make sense of them. But that seemed impossible as well.

She got up and put on her tracksuit and sneakers. Perhaps a short walk in the park or a brief chat with the artist might help.

T
HE OLD BEGGAR,
sitting on his mat with the air of a king rather than a beggar, immediately began to count his coins when he saw Diana coming. It was as if he were trying to show that he didn't intend to notice her today, either. Diana didn't care. She no longer expected any explanations from him anyway.

The artist was in his usual place, again busy with his painting.

“Well, how are your colors today?” Diana asked.

“Good. How about yours?”

“Okay, I guess, Senhor . . .”

“Jon or Mathias. You choose.”

“You have two names?”

“Kind of a split personality, if you like.”

“How do you mean?”

“Mathias wants to stay in this world and be indulged in it. Whereas Jon wants to fly away.”

“Fly where?”

“I don't know, beyond this world, maybe.”

“Oh, I see. Mathias . . . unusual name around here.”

“Well, some people think so,” Mathias said, just as Diana had the last time they talked.

Diana smiled and turned to look at the painting. Since there was still no seagull in the picture, she could tell that it wasn't finished. Although she stared at it for some time, she couldn't think of anything to say about it.

Her silence and the possibility of her leaving made Mathias uneasy. To get to know her better, not only had he changed his schedule, but for days he'd had to stay in a cheap motel—the kind where the shower runs cold, the toilet doesn't flush and the bed is lumpy and narrow.

“Well,” Mathias said, “as you can see, I lack inspiration today. I was thinking of going for a coffee at the café over there for a change of scene. Would you care to join me?”

Diana hesitated, before saying with an air of indifference, “Well, I suppose I could. I need a break to catch my breath anyway.”

Mathias placed his brush carefully into its slot on the easel. “Let's go.”

W
HEN THEY GOT
closer to the café, he realized it was a much fancier place than he'd initially anticipated or would have wished for . . .

17

T
HEY ARRIVED AT
a café with leather-topped tables, torches lit with special lighting effects and copper-coated fire extinguishers in the corners. The kind of place where customers would be eager to pay $25 to drink a cup of coffee and perch on uncomfortable wrought-iron chairs while listening to the hubbub inside. Mathias couldn't imagine himself coming to this place even if he stayed in Rio for a hundred years. But unfortunately, he'd seen no other café nearby.

They had hardly sat down at a table by the window when a waiter appeared.

“How may I help you?”

After they had sent him off quickly with an order for French vanilla coffee and an espresso, Mathias looked around the room. “What a place for inspiration!”

“Mmmm, inspiration,” Diana said. “I used to paint too, once. But I must admit, inspiration never visited me. I guess that's the difference between a painter and someone who just paints.”

“I don't think inspiration is essential.”

“You don't?”

“For me, inspiration reveals itself in the time it takes to finish a painting rather than in the painting itself. Some paintings take only a couple of days; others I can't call finished even after working on them for a few years. And there's not that much difference among my paintings, either.”

“Oh, right, I was going to ask you about that—why do you always paint the sea? Don't you ever paint anything else?”

“No, not lately. I went through a stormy time a few years ago and, since then, I've just painted the sea.”

“Is it all right if I ask what kind of a storm?”

“It was strange. It all began with the breakup of a relationship. One day I would feel like chasing away anyone who came near me with a baseball bat; the next day, I couldn't do without people. In the end, I decided to pour out my ‘waves' onto the canvas as seascapes, hoping that they'd help me understand myself.”

“What about the seagull?”

“Long story. I doubt you'd want to hear it.”

“Try me.”

“Do I really have to tell it?”

She looked at him insistently, so he began to tell her about the day he'd witnessed the flight of the two seagulls. He didn't go into detail, but Diana could work out the significance of the lone seagull in his paintings.

Placing their coffee carefully on the table, the waiter inquired if that would be all. When they nodded their heads, he bowed and withdrew.

“You're still painting the sea; hasn't your storm come to an end yet?”

“Well, it has, but in the meantime I've realized something: I've realized that I always like painting different things.”

Diana looked confused. Just a few minutes ago he'd said he only painted seascapes, but now he was saying that he liked painting different things.

“As I went on painting scenes of the same shoreline one after the other, I realized the thing I thought changed the least actually changed the most: the sea.”

“Like you?” Diana asked, remembering the connection Mathias had made earlier between himself and the sea.

“Well, like everyone. We all think we see the same person when we look in the mirror each morning. Our friends think they see the same person even when we meet after several years.”

“True,” Diana said. “And even if they do notice a change, it's usually about things like your weight or hairstyle . . .”

“Exactly. They never consider that the person in front of them might have become somebody new . . . I personally think we can change in even a few days.”

Diana lowered her gaze as she thought of how much everything recently had forced her to change.

Mathias gently touched her arm. “I'm sorry, did I say something wrong?”

“No, no. What you said reminded me of something, that's all.”

Leaning forward on his elbows, Mathias drew closer to her. “Would you like to talk about it?”

“Well . . . Maybe later.”

The waiter reappeared to ask if there was anything else they would like. Diana turned to Mathias. “What would you like? I'm going to have the chocolate cookies.”

“Yes, that sounds great—I'll have chocolate cookies, too.”

“I'm so sorry,” the waiter said. “There are only two chocolate cookies left, and that only makes one serving. How about I divide the chocolate cookies between you and add a vanilla one each to complete the portion?”

Reluctantly, they both agreed.