Winter of artifice; three novelettes (7 page)

was wonderful to caress. Her mother was busy, bustling, maternal. Her mother was never elegant.

Since he often left them to go on concert tours they were so used to her father's departures that they barely ceased playing to embrace him. She remembered now the day he was leaving to go on tour. He was standing at the door, elegant, aristocratic. He looked the same as always. Suddenly, moved by an acute premonition, she threw herself on him and clung to him passionately. "Don't go. Father! Don't leave me!" she begged. She had to be torn away. She wept so violently that her father was startled. Even now she could feel again the effort her mother made to loosen her clutch. She could still see the hesitancy in her father's face. She begged and implored him to stay. She clung to him, desperately, her fingers knotted in his clothes. She remembered the effort he made to wrench himself loose and how he walked swiftly off without once looking back. She remembered too that her mother was surprised by her despair. She couldn't understand what had possessed her to behave as she did.

Since that day she had not seen her father. Twenty years have passed. He is coming today.

* * • •

They entered New York harbor, her mother, her two brothers and she, in the midst of a violent thunderstorm. The Spaniards aboard the ship were terrified; some of them were kneeling in prayer. They had reason to be terrified,—the bow of the ship had been struck by lightning. She busied herself making a last-minute entry in her diary, which she had begun when they left Barcelona.

It was a monologue, or dialogue, dedicated to him, inspired by the superabundance of thoughts and feelings caused by the pain of leaving him. With the sea between them she felt that 60

at least she might be able to reveal to him with absolute sincerity the great love she bore him, as well as her sadness and her yearning.

They arrived in New York with huge wicker baskets, a cage full of birds, a violin case and no money. She carried her diary in a basket. She was timid, withdrawn.

She caught only fleeting patches of this new reality surrounding her. At the pier there were aunts and cousins awaiting them. The Negro porters threw themselves on their belongings. She remembers vividly how she clung to her brother's violin case. She wanted everybody to know that she was an artist.

Entering the subway she observed immediately what a strange place New York was,—the staircases move up and down by themselves. And in the train hundreds of mouths chewing, masticating. Her little brother asked: "Are Americans ruminants?"

She was eleven years old. Her mother was absent most of the day searching for work. There were socks to darn and dishes to wash. She had to bathe and dress her brothers. She had to amuse them, aid them with their lessons. The days were full of bleak effort in which great sacrifices were demanded of all of them. Though she experienced a tremendous relief in helping her mother, in serving her faithfully, she felt nevertheless that the color and the fragrance had gone out of their life. When she heard music, laughter and talk in the room where her mother gave singing lessons, she was saddened by the feeling of something lost.

And so, little by little, she shut herself up within the walls

of her diary. She held long conversations with herself, through

the diary. She talked to her diary, addressed it by name, as if

it were a living person, her other self perhaps. Looking out

the window which gave on their ugly back yard she imagined that she was looking at parks, castles, golden grilles, and exotic flowers. Within the covers of the diary she created another world wherein she told the truth, in contrast to the multiple lies which she span when she was conversing with others, as for instance telling her playmates that she had traveled all around the world, describing to them the places which she had read about in her father's library.

The yearning for her father became a long, continuous plaint. Every page contained long pleas to him, invocations to God to reunite them. Hours and hours of suffocating moods, of dreams and reveries, of feverish restlessness, of morbid, somber memories and longings. She could not bear to listen to music, especially the arias her mother sang: "Ever since the day," "Some day he'll come," etc. Her mother seemed to choose only the songs which reminded her of him.

She felt crippled, lost, transplanted, rebellious. She was alone a great deal. Her mother was healthy, exuberant, full of plans for the future. When she was moody her mother chided her. If she confessed to her mother, she laughed at her. Her mother seemed to doubt the sincerity of her feelings. She attributed her moods to her overdeveloped imagination, or else to her blood. When her mother was angry she shouted: "Mauvaise graine, vaP' She was often angry now, but not with them. She was obliged to fight for them every day of her life. It required all her courage, all her buoyancy and optimism, to face the world. New York was hostile, cold, indifferent. They were immigrants, and they were made to feel it. Even on Christmas Eve her mother had to sing at the church in order to earn a few pennies.

The great crime, her mother made them feel, was their resemblance to their father. Each flare of temper, each tragic 62

outburst was severely condemned. Even her paleness served to remind her mother of him. He too always looked pale and ready to die, but it was all nonsense, she said. Every day she added a little touch to the image they had of him. Her younger brother's rages, his wildness, his destructiveness, all this came from their father. Her imagination, her exaggerations, her fantasies, her lies, these, too, sprang from their father.

It was true. Everything sprang from him, even the lies which originated from the books she had read in his library. When she told the children at school that she had once traveled through Russia in a covered wagon it was not a lie either, because in her mind she had made this journey through snow-covered Russia time and time again. The cold of New York revived the memories of her father's books, of the journeys she had longed to take with him when he went away.

To face the cold of New York required superhuman efforts. Standing in the snow in Central Park, feeding the pigeons, she wanted to die. The dread of facing the snow and frost each morning paralyzed her. Their school was only around the corner, but she had not the courage to leave the house. Her mother had to ask the Negro janitor to drag her to school. "Po' thing," he would say, "you ought to live down South." He would lend her his woolen gloves and slap her back to get her warm.

Only in her diary could she reveal her true self, her true feelings. What she really desired was to be left alone with her diary and her dreams of her father. In solitude she was happy. Her head was seething with ideas. She described every phase of their life in detail, minute, childish details which seem ridiculous and absurd now, but which were intended to convey to her father the need that she felt for his presence. Though she detested New York, she painted a picture of it 63

in glowing terms, hoping that it would entice him to come.

When, to amuse her brothers, she impersonated Marie Antoinette as she marched proudly to the guillotine, standing on a chariot of chairs with a lace cap, she wept real tears. She wept over the martyrdom of Marie Antoinette because she was aware of her own future sufferings. A miUion times her hair would turn white overnight and the crowd jeer at her. A million times she would lose her throne, her husband, her children, and her life. At eleven years of age she was searching in the lives of the great for analogies to the drama of her own life which she felt was destined to be shattered at every turn of the road. In acting the roles of other personages she felt that she was piecing together the fragments of her shattered life. Only in the fever of creation could she recreate her own lost life.

There was a passage in the diary wherein she wrote that she would like to relive her life in Spain. At that early age she was bemoaning the irreversibility of life.

Already she was aware of how the past dies. She re-examined what she had written about New York for her father because she felt that she had not done justice to it. She watched every minute of the day as she hved so that nothing would be lost. She regretted the minutes passing. She wept without knowing why, since she was young and had not yet known real suffering. But without being fully aware of it, she had already experienced her greatest sorrow, the irreparable loss of her father. She did not know it then, as indeed most of us never know when it is that we experience the full measure of joy or sorrow. But our feehngs penetrate us like a poison of undetectable nature. We have sorrows of which we do not know the origin or name.

She remembered a night before Christmas when, in utter 64

desperation she began to believe that her father was coming, that he would arrive Christmas Day. Even though that very day she had received a postcard from him and she knew that he was too far away for her hopes to be realized, still a sense of the miraculous impelled her to expect what was humanly impossible. She got down on her knees and she prayed to God to perform a miracle. She looked for her father all Christmas Day, and again on her birthday, a month later. Today he will come. Or tomorrow. Or the next day. Each disappointment was baffling and terrifying to her.

Today he is coming. She is sure of it. But how can she be sure? She is standing on the edge of a crater.

Her true God was her father. At communion it was her father she received, and not God. She closed her eyes and swallowed the white bread with blissful tremors. She embraced her father in holy communion. Her exaltation fused into a semblance of holiness. She aspired to saintliness in order to conceal the secret love which she guarded so jealously in her diary. The voluptuous tears at night when she prayed to God, the joy without name when she stood in his presence, the inexplicable bliss at communion, because then she talked with her father and she kissed him.

She worshiped him passionately but as she grew older the form of his image grew blurred. But she had not lost him. His image was buried deep in the most mysterious region of her being. On the surface there remained the image created by her mother—his egoism, his neglectfulness, his irresponsibility, his love of luxury. When for a time her immense yeirn-ing appeared to have exhausted itself, when it seemed that she had almost forgotten this man whom her mother described so bitterly, it was only the announcement of the fact that his image had become fluid; it ran in subterranean channels,

through her blood. Consciously she was no longer aware of him; but in another way his existence was even stronger than before. Submerged, yet magically ineffaceable, he floated in her blood.

At thirteen she recorded in her diary that she wanted to marry a man who looked like the Count of Monte Cristo. Apart from the mention of black eyes it was her father's portrait which she gave: "A man so strong. . .with very white teeth, a pale, mysterious face, ... a grave walk, a distant smile. ... I would like him to tell me all about his life, a very sad life, full of harrowing adventures. .. .1 would hke him to be proud and haughty ... to play some instrument...."

The image created by her mother, added to the blurred memories of a child, do not compose a being; yet in her haunting quest she fashioned an imagined individual she pursued relentlessly. The blue eyes of a boy in school, the talent of a young violinist, a pale face seen in the street—these fleeting aspects of the image that was buried deep in her blood moved her to tears.... To listen to music was unbearable. When her mother sang she exhausted herself in sobs.

In this record which she faithfully kept for twenty years she spoke of her diary as of her shadow, her double; "I say I will only marry my double." As far as she knew this double was the diary which was full of reflections, hke a mirror, which could change shape and color and serve all kinds of imaginative substitutions. This diary she had intended to send to her father, which was to be a revelation of her love for him, became by an accident of fate, a secretive thing, another wall between herself and that world which it seemed forbidden her ever to enter.

She would have liked great love and tenderness, confidence, openness. Her father, she felt certain, would have

rejected her—his standards were too severe. She wrote him once that she thought he had abandoned her because she was not an inteUigcnt or pretty enough daughter. She was a perpetually offended being who fancied that she was not wanted. This fear of not being wanted weighed down on her like a perpetual icy condemnation.

Today, when he arrives, will she be able to lift her head? Will she be able to keep her head lifted, will she be able to stand the cold look in his eyes when she raises her eyes to his? Will her body not tremble with fear when she hears his voice? After twenty years she is still obsessed by the fear of him. But now she felt that it was in his power to absolve her of all fear. Perhaps it is he who will fear her. Perhaps he is coming to receive the judgment which she alone can mete out to him. Today the circle of empty waiting will be broken. She is waiting for him to embrace her, to say that he loves her. She made a God of him and she was punished. Now when he conies she wants to make him a human father. She does not want to fear him any longer. She does not want to write another line in her diary. She wants him to smash this monument which she erected to him and accept her in her own right.

He is coming. She hears his steps.

• • • •

She expected the man of the photographs, the young man of the photographs. She had not tried to imagine what the years had done to his face.

It was not any older, there were no wrinkles on it, but there was a mask over it. His face wore a mask. The skin did not match the skin of his wrists. It seemed made of earth and papier-mache, not pure skin. There must have been a little space between it and the real face, a little partition through

which the breeze could sing, and behind this mask another smile, another face, and skin like that of his wrists, white and vulnerable.