A Far Country (28 page)

He grabbed her waist and pulled her closer. ‘One more dance.’ ‘No … I have to go.’ She twisted out of his grip with a force that surprised her. He lifted his hands. ‘Take it easy,’ he began, but she had turned away.

Retreating now
. She shouldered her way toward the entrance, trying to steady herself. Halfway across the room, she felt another hand on her arm. She spun angrily.
‘Hey
, Isabel,’ said Josiane, laughing. ‘It’s just me. I saw that you stopped dancing. I … Isabel, what’s wrong? What are you looking at? What’s going on?’
Moving along the far edge of the wall
. ‘I have to go.’ ‘Now? Cool it. I want to dance some more.’ ‘No, it’s not that—’
At the door now. ‘I
have to go.’ ‘Isabel, you can’t go by yourself. It’s not safe. It’s not … Hey!’ Josiane caught her. ‘You’re acting crazy—what’s happening?’ She wasn’t laughing now. ‘My brother,’ said Isabel.
‘What?’
‘My brother, Isaias.’ ‘You saw him.’ ‘No, but he’s here, outside now. I have to get to him. Wait for me.’

She broke free and pushed her way to the stairs. It was cold outside. Her ears rang with the sudden quiet of the street.
Above her the balcony was full of people, and the light of the bar blued the ceiling. A drunken girl leaned on a man as they descended behind her. Down the street she could see a pair of boys coming up the road. They were backlit by the colored neon of a distant club and the reflections in the wet sidewalk. She waited for the feeling to return, but now she doubted herself. ‘I’m drunk,’ she said. ‘I’m going to be sick.’ The heels were unsteady. She thought of the day on the hill and how she had lost him because she had hesitated.

The music dropped off swiftly behind her. The street bifurcated and then split again. Uncertainly, she bore right, her skin prickling in a sudden wind. The road was empty.

A pair of girls wobbled toward her. She ran to them. ‘Did you see a man?’ ‘A man!’ They laughed. ‘We wish!’ Isabel wavered uncertainly. ‘No!’ she said.
‘Really
, did you see anyone?’ One of the girls stared. ‘You’re serious … Yeah, sure, we passed a man just a second ago. He went into the tall building on the corner. Didn’t get a good look at him, though—’ ‘Which building?’ ‘Gray one, that one there, with the metal fence.’ ‘He went inside?’ ‘Yes, but I didn’t get a look at him. Maybe it’s not your man …

‘You alone?’ she asked, and Isabel ran on.

The gate was topped with iron spades, and open. She pushed through and crossed a concrete yard, past an empty sentry box and a cracked fountain. The door handle was broken off, the lobby empty except for a fan of glass blown in from a window. A trail led through the debris to a rumbling elevator shaft. She watched the numbers rise until the 12 shimmered and the lift began to come down. It was on the second floor when she realized that someone might be inside. She pressed herself against the wall. The door opened. Empty. Without pausing, she slipped inside, squinted in the darkness
and found the 12. As the lift rose, she waited for another sign of Isaias, but now she sensed nothing. It was dark in the elevator. Distant shouting began to get louder.

The door opened. For a moment, she hesitated. Go down, an instinct told her, get away, but blindly she stepped into the hallway. She had enough time to register two men, the glowing scribble of a lightbulb, chipped plaster and an open door, before she heard a hiss and rumbling, the elevator door scraping closed behind her. ‘Who the hell?’ she heard, and turned to hit the elevator button, but the carriage was gone. Without waiting, she turned from them and began to walk away down a long corridor, quickly, straining to hear footsteps following. She rounded a corner, and another, the hallway snaking past open doors until at the end she arrived at a stairwell. She didn’t stop. As her foot touched the top step, she heard the distant ring of the lift.

She ran. She threw herself forward, almost falling, her legs breaking her descent in tiny, thudding steps. She descended through a strange gray light that seemed to emanate from nowhere, glinting on broken bottles, cigarettes, discarded clothes, a shoe, a dead pigeon, a corncob, twelve flights and then she reached the landing and slammed through the door.

A man was waiting in the lobby as the elevator door closed behind him. He followed her out into the street and walked calmly alongside her. ‘Where you going, angel?’ She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He had a narrow face like a goat’s and he grinned.

His hand was suddenly on her shoulder. She lurched. For a second he held on, but then his fingers slipped and she pulled away. She ran, turned an ankle and shook off the heels. She sprinted across a street with a flashing yellow light, her arms pumping madly, her skirt riding up her thighs, her lungs
burning. She could see a figure on a doorstep in the distance and ran toward it. As she came close, it stirred and sat up. ‘Get her!’ it shouted, falling over drunkenly, laughing. She turned a corner onto another empty street, this one longer. Behind, she heard the man gaining. She saw the mouth of an alleyway breaking a line of shuttered stores.

She dashed into it, stumbling over spilled trash to a jumble of garbage bins. Her hands felt their way through them to a chain-link fence, but it was too dark to see anything beyond. Something stirred. A dog backed away through a sliver of light, growling, the greasy hair of its haunches bristling. At the entrance she could see the man, staring into the dark, clenching and unclenching his fists, rocking lightly on his feet like a boxer warming up before a match. He began to speak, to taunt her. She pressed herself up against the wall and closed her eyes, terrified of the sound of her heart pounding. She began to mouth prayers,
Mother of God, Saint Michael, Saint George, Isaias, please
. She tried to remember the words of invocations, but her memory failed.
Isaias
, she whispered,
Isaias, now
. ‘Come out,’ said the man.

She felt around for a stick, a pipe, anything to fight with. Her hand found the splintered slatting of a broken fruit crate, and she lifted it, running her thumb over a cluster of nails at the broken end, letting it sway in her hand. More growling. In the street, the man hesitated at the edge of the darkness. His taunts trailed off.
‘Angel,’
he said again, and for the first time she heard uncertainty in his voice. Her breathing slowed. She choked up on the crate, tears running down her cheeks, suddenly terrified less by her fear than by her own anger. ‘If you’re coming in, come now, coward,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll crush your face, coward, I’ll crush your head.’ At her side, the shadows stirred. She saw the dog retreat and slip behind the trash bins.
Now that her eyes had accustomed themselves to the darkness, she could see a narrow gap along the wall at the edge of the fence. Then the man was beside her. He lifted his arm, and she hurled the crate into him, bolted, heard the wood break, a gasp of pain, but she didn’t stop to turn. She squeezed through the gap, following the dog, the chain links catching on her shirt. The alley was long; at the end she could see a road, lights, the silhouette of the animal sprinting away.

In the street, a bus was leaving its stop. She banged on its door. It opened and she pulled herself in. It was empty. Wind whistled over a broken back window as it swung into the street.

‘Where are you going?’ asked the driver, staring at her as he upshifted. ‘New Settlements,’ she said, her shoulders heaving. ‘This bus doesn’t go there.’ ‘I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.’ She began to cough. ‘Just go. Just until dawn, I promise, then I’ll go.’ He stared at her again. She looked down at her bare feet. Her knee was bleeding.

The driver nodded. He was nearly the age of her grandfather. He rummaged in the space beside his seat. ‘Here is my sweater,’ he said.

‘I can’t. I’m dirty.’

He shook his head. ‘You’ll be cold.’

She took it, trembling. The wool scratched her bare arms, and it smelled of cigars. Still shivering, she looked at her hand, where she had torn through a finger with the edge of the crate.

‘Sit close,’ said the driver. ‘It isn’t a good hour for someone like you to be out.’

S
he rode the bus until dawn. Somehow she slept. She lay on the seat with her hands together beneath her ear, her head pressed against the aluminum siding, the engine’s vibration thrumming through her skull.

Sometimes she heard voices, but mostly the bus was empty.

Once she sat up and saw a girl in a tight skirt standing in the center aisle. She sang and wobbled as if she were dancing. She wore a man’s white shirt, the top buttons open. It fell unevenly on her shoulders, and Isabel could see the pale edge of one of her breasts. Mascara was smeared back past her temple. She filled the bus with the smell of cigarettes. ‘The night is ours love ours love our love,’ she sang. She pumped her fist at the air. ‘What are you looking at?’ she asked, laughing, when she saw Isabel stare.

The sky turned cobalt blue, and the bus began to fill slowly. Isabel went to the driver and handed him the sweater. He shook his head. ‘You still need to get home,’ he said. She got off at a bus station near the Settlements to wait until she knew Manuela would be at church. Curling up in a corner,
she slept again and awoke with someone pressing a coin into her hand and a pair of feet walking away. There was a direct bus home, but she got off early and followed a backstreet up the hill.

Manuela’s house was empty. In the washroom, Isabel sat on the cement floor and poured cold water over her body. She scrubbed her skin furiously. Still she smelled of cane liquor and cigarettes, and she washed her hair again. She buried herself into the sheets. When Manuela came home, she pretended to sleep. The following night, alone again, she took Hugo from his hammock and kept him at her side. He slept with his arms stretched above his head, as if relishing the space.

She returned to the river and beat the clothes angrily against a rock.

She was there when Alin arrived, two days later, on a cold afternoon that broke intermittently into rain. ‘Look who’s coming,’ sang the women. Isabel pinched her lips. She could see him, with the portrait bag wrapped in plastic, treading the narrow edge of the road. When he called to her, she rose reluctantly from the water’s embrace. She gathered the clothes in one arm and perched Hugo on her hip.

They walked up the hill. Alin reached over to stroke Hugo’s head, and the baby smiled and leaned toward him. Angrily, Isabel shifted him away, realizing immediately that she was too rough. He began to cry. For a moment, she struggled with the balance of the baby and the clothes, then kissed his hair and walked on. Alin offered to carry him, but she shook her head. ‘You said you would come sooner,’ she said.

‘There was a problem in the north. My brother had an accident in the cane fields.’ He choked suddenly on the words.
‘There was a novena.’ Isabel turned to him. ‘Not a novena of mourning,’ he said. ‘A novena of prayer, to obtain a grace, and on the tenth day he was well. I said it here, too, all nine days of prayer.’

Farther up the hill, he said, ‘Something is wrong.’

‘Nothing is wrong,’ she answered quickly.

At her house, she said, ‘I have work to do.’ ‘Of course … I understand. I’ll go.’ He rubbed the stubble of his cheeks with his palm. ‘Listen, I was thinking, this weekend, if you want, we can go to the sea together.’ ‘I can’t,’ said Isabel coolly. ‘It’s too expensive.’ ‘I’ll pay. It will be good, you’ll see. We can get away from the city, just for a day.’ She shook her head. ‘Manuela won’t let me.’ ‘Ask her. I will come Saturday. Unless there is another reason you are saying no.’

He left. She pinned the clothes deliberately and creased the wet fabric over the lines. She stood in their wet chamber, feeling the cold on her face.

For the rest of the week, she remained inside the room. When Manuela came home, she told her about Alin. ‘I don’t understand why you don’t want to go,’ said her cousin. ‘Do you know that I’ve never even been to the sea?’

‘I’ve been,’ said Isabel. ‘I went with Isaias. I went a long time ago.’

‘I don’t understand what is bothering you, then,’ said her cousin. ‘What if I came with you?’

Isabel bit her nails.

‘Yes?’ asked Manuela, and Isabel nodded.

In the middle of the night, Manuela took her hand. ‘Can you swim?’ she whispered. ‘Yes.’ ‘How did you learn?’ ‘Isaias taught me. When the creek ran high.’ ‘I can’t,’ said Manuela, ‘but I will go where the ocean touches my feet.’

Alin came in the morning. Isabel watched her cousin’s face closely when he greeted her, but her expression revealed nothing. They took a bus to an empty stop, where they changed for a second bus bound for the coast. The traffic was light. After an hour, they passed an immense garbage dump, where carrion birds quivered in the sky and a row of shanties crested the hill like a coxcomb. Lone figures picked their way over the hillside, and children played.

The road was wide and wound through low hills. After another hour, the city ended and the plateau opened onto a view of the sea, the water vast and silver. Steep green forests draped the slopes. Manuela took Isabel’s hand.

At the terminal, they boarded a bus with a sandy wooden floor. The shore was crowded with umbrellas. Alin led them to a cluster of seaside vendors, where they shared juice from a fresh coconut and scooped out slivers of soft meat with fragments of the husk. He bought them cubes of white cheese grilled on ceramic braziers, and skewers of dried shrimp. Oiled bodies glided along a mosaic promenade. ‘Maybe we will see a movie star,’ said Manuela as she tried to feed bits of cheese to the baby.