Eva Luna (34 page)

*  *  *

In the only available hut, lighted by the kerosene lamp flickering in a corner, the guerrillas lay on the floor and I in the hammock. I had imagined I would spend those hours alone with Huberto; we had never spent an entire night together. Nevertheless I was content with the arrangement; the young men's company soothed me and I was able finally to control my fears, relax, and doze. I dreamed I was making love in a swing. My knees and thighs were bared in a flutter of lace and yellow taffeta petticoats. On the backward arc of the swing I was suspended in air, and I saw the powerful sex of a man waiting below. The swing hung for an instant at the height of the arc; I lifted my face to the sky, which had turned purple, then plummeted downward to be impaled. My eyes opened in fright; the room was filled with warm mist. I heard the roar of the river in the distance, the crying of night birds and the sounds of animals among the dense trees. The rough cords of the hammock irritated my back through the fab
ric of my blouse and the mosquitoes were pure torment, but I could not move to brush them away; I was dazed. I sank back into a stupor, soaked in sweat, dreaming this time that I was adrift on the ocean in a narrow boat, in the arms of a lover whose face was covered with a mask of Universal Matter and who thrust deep inside me with every swell of the waves, leaving me bruised, swollen, thirsty, and happy: desperate kisses, omens, the wall of that hallucinatory jungle, a tooth-shaped gold nugget given as a gift of love, a knapsack of grenades that exploded noiselessly and filled the air with glowing insects. I started in my sleep and awoke in the darkness of the hut, and for a moment did not know where I was, or the meaning of those spasms in my belly. I did not sense, as at other times, the ghost of Riad Halabí caressing me from the far side of memory but, instead, the presence of Rolf Carlé sitting on the floor beside me, resting against his knapsack, one leg doubled, the other extended, arms folded across his chest, watching me. I could not see his features, but I saw the gleam of his eyes and teeth when he smiled.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

“The same thing you are,” he replied, also in a low voice, to keep from waking the others.

“I think I was dreaming . . .”

“So was I.”

We slipped quietly from the hut and went to the small open space in the center of the village. We sat beside the dying coals of the fire, listening to the eternal murmur of the jungle, in the light of the faint moon rays penetrating the foliage. We did not speak; we did not touch; we did not try to sleep. Together, we waited for Saturday to dawn.

When it began to grow light, Rolf Carlé went to get water to boil coffee. I stood up and stretched; my body ached as if
I had been beaten, but I felt at peace. It was then I noticed the reddish stain on my slacks. That hadn't happened for so many years that I had almost forgotten what it was. I smiled, content, because I knew that it meant I would never dream of Zulema again, and that my body had overcome its fear of love. While Rolf Carlé fanned the coals to start the fire, and set the coffeepot on a hook over the flames, I went to the cabin, pulled a clean blouse from my bag, tore it into rags to use as sanitary napkins, and went to the river. When I returned, my clothing was wet, and I was singing.

By six o'clock everyone was ready to begin that decisive day in our lives. We said goodbye to the Indians, and watched them leave in silence, carrying children, pigs, chickens, dogs, and bundles, fading into the foliage like a row of shadows. The only ones who stayed behind were those who were to help the guerrillas cross the river and guide them through the jungle. Rolf Carlé was one of the first to go, camera in hand and knapsack on his back. The others followed, each to his own task.

Huberto Naranjo kissed me goodbye on the lips, a chaste and sentimental kiss: Be careful. You, too. Go straight home and try not to attract attention, and don't worry, everything will work out fine. When will we see each other? I'll have to hide for a while—don't expect me. Another kiss, and I put my arms around his neck and hugged him hard, rubbing my face against his beard, my eyes moist because I was saying goodbye to a passion shared for many years. I climbed into the jeep; El Negro was waiting with the motor running to drive me north to the distant town from which I would take a bus to the capital. Huberto Naranjo waved, and we both smiled. My best friend, don't let anything happen to you, I love you very much, I whispered. I was sure that he was echoing the
same words, knowing it was good we could count on and always be near to help and protect each other; at peace because our relationship had taken a turn and finally slipped into the track where it should always have been. We were two best friends, affectionate and slightly incestuous brother and sister. Be very careful. You, too.

*  *  *

All day I was buffeted by the jolting of the bus, bumping along a treacherous road constructed for heavy trucks and eroded to its skeleton by rains that had washed out potholes big enough for boas to nest in. At a certain bend in the road the vegetation suddenly opened into a fan of impossible greens and the daylight turned stark white, illuminating the perfect illusion of the Palace of the Poor floating some fifteen centimeters above the rich humus of the jungle soil. The driver stopped the bus and all of us passengers pressed our hands to our breast, not daring to breathe during the brief seconds the sorcery lasted before gently fading away. The palace vanished, the jungle reappeared, the day recovered its normal transparency. The driver started the motor and, awed, we returned to our seats. No one spoke until we reached the capital many hours later; each was searching for the meaning of that revelation. I did not know how to interpret it, either, but it seemed almost natural since I had seen it years before from Riad Halabí's truck. That first time, I had been dozing and he had shaken me awake when the night sky turned bright from the lights of the palace; we had left the truck and run toward the vision but before we could reach it, it was enveloped by shadow. I could not stop thinking about what was to happen at five o'clock in Santa María. I felt a racking pain in my temples, and I cursed the morbidity that
tortured me with visions of disaster. Let it go well, oh, let it go well; help them, I begged my mother, as I always did in moments of crisis, but once again her spirit was unpredictable: sometimes she appeared without warning, startling me, but at times like these, when I needed her urgently, she gave me no sign that she had heard. The landscape and the sweltering heat reminded me of when I was seventeen years old, of the day I had made this journey carrying a suitcase with new clothes, the address of a boardinghouse for young ladies, and the still-vibrant discovery of pleasure. I had wanted to take my fate into my own hands, and since then much had happened to me. It seemed as if I had lived many lives, that I had turned to smoke each night, and been reborn each morning. I tried to sleep, but the sense of impending disaster would not leave me in peace, and not even the mirage of the Palace of the Poor could rid me of the sulfurous taste in my mouth. Using the rather vague criteria in the Maharishi's manual, Mimí once had analyzed my premonitions, and had concluded that I should not trust them because they never predicted anything important, only trivial events, and when anything significant happened to me, it always came as a surprise. Mimí had demonstrated that my rudimentary divining powers were completely unreliable. But again I begged my mother to make everything all right.

I arrived home that Saturday night looking like the victim of some disaster, filthy from sweat and dust, in a taxi that drove me from the bus terminal to my door, passing through the park illuminated with coach lamps, past the Country Club with its rows of palm trees, the mansions of the millionaires and ambassadors, the new buildings of glass and steel. I was on a different planet, at an incalculable distance from the Indian village and young men with burn
ing eyes ready to fight to the death with absurd grenades. When I saw the house ablaze with light, I had an instant of panic, imagining that the police had preceded me, but before I could turn back Mimí and Elvira threw open the door. I went inside like a sleepwalker and fell into a chair, wishing that everything that had happened was only an invention of my feverish brain and it wasn't true that at that very hour Huberto Naranjo, Rolf Carlé, and all the others might be dead. I looked around the living room as if I were seeing it for the first time; it seemed more welcoming than ever with its eclectic furniture, my improbable ancestors looking over me from their ornate frames, and the stuffed puma in a corner, its ferocity intact in spite of all the abuse and upheaval it had endured in its half-century of existence.

“I'm happy to be home!” I said from the bottom of my heart.

“How the devil did it turn out?” Mimí asked after examining me to be sure I was all right.

“I don't know. I left just as everything was about to start. The escape was planned for around five, before the prisoners were locked in their cells. There was supposed to be a riot in the yard about that time to distract the guards' attention.”

“Then it should have been on the radio or television by now, but there hasn't been a word about it.”

“That's
good
news. If they'd been killed we'd have heard, but if they escaped, the government will keep it quiet until they can concoct their version of what happened.”

“These last few days have been terrible, Eva. I haven't been able to work. I've been sick with fear. I imagined you captured, dead, poisoned by snakebite, devoured by piranhas. Damn Huberto Naranjo!” Mimí exclaimed. “I don't know why we ever got mixed up in this crazy mess.”

“Oh, little bird. You look like a sparrow hawk. I'm of the old ways, I don't like all these goings-on. What is a girl doing mixed up in a man's affairs, I'd like to know? I didn't boil lemons and make you drink them for this,” Elvira sighed, as she scurried around serving coffee, preparing a hot bath, and laying out clean clothes. “A good soak in a hot tub full of linden leaves is good for getting over a fright.”

“I'd better shower instead,
abuela.
”

The news that I had begun to menstruate after so many years was welcomed by Mimí, but Elvira saw no cause for celebration; for her it was nothing but a dirty nuisance, and she thanked her lucky stars she was too old for all that business. She'd always wondered why humans didn't just lay eggs, like chickens. I searched through my bag and pulled out the package I had dug up in Agua Santa; I placed it on Mimí's lap.

“What's this?”

“Your dowry. I want to sell what's inside so you can have your operation in Los Angeles and then get married if you want to.”

Mimí ripped off the dirt-stained wrapping and exposed a box damaged by mildew and termites. When she prized open the lid, Zulema's jewels fell into her lap, as brilliant as if they had just been cleaned, the gold gleaming yellower than ever: emeralds, topazes, garnets, pearls, amethysts, all glowing with new light. The pieces I had thought so wretched when I aired them in the sunlight of Riad Halabí's patio now glittered like the treasure of a caliph in the hands of the world's most beautiful woman.

“Where did you steal those?” Elvira whispered, frightened. “Didn't I teach you to do right, little bird?”

“I didn't steal them,
abuela.
Out in the jungle there is a city of pure gold. The cobblestones of the streets are gold,
the roof tiles are all of gold, the carts in the marketplace are gold, and all the benches in the plaza—even people's teeth are gold! And there children play with colored stones like these.”

“I'm not going to sell them, Eva, I'm going to wear them. That operation is barbaric! First they cut off everything and then they take a piece of your intestine and construct a vagina.”

“And Aravena?”

“He likes me the way I am.”

Elvira and I breathed a dual sigh of relief. I had always hated the idea of that operation, the result seemed nothing more than a mockery of nature—and to Elvira, the idea of mutilating her archangel was a sacrilege.

Very early Sunday morning, when we were all still asleep, the doorbell rang. Elvira got up, grumbling, and opened the door to an unshaven man with a knapsack over one arm, a black machine on his shoulder, and teeth gleaming in a face blackened from dirt, sun, and fatigue. She did not recognize Rolf Carlé. Mimí and I, in our nightgowns, were not far behind. We did not even have to ask: Carlé's smile was eloquent. He had come to take me away until things had calmed down; he was sure the escape would unleash a maelstrom of unpredictable consequences. He was afraid someone in Agua Santa might have seen me and identified me as the girl who years before had worked in The Pearl of the Orient.

“I told you we should have kept our hands clean of this business!” Mimí wailed, unrecognizable without her makeup.

I dressed and packed a small suitcase. Aravena's car was waiting outside; he had lent it to Rolf when he went to his house at dawn to deliver several rolls of film, along with the most astounding news of recent years. El Negro had driven
the car to our house and then taken Rolf's jeep, his mission to dispose of it so no one could follow its owner's trail. The Director of National Television was not used to getting up early, and when Rolf told him why he was there, he thought he must be dreaming. To clear the cobwebs from his head, Aravena had drunk half a glass of whisky and lighted his first cigar of the day; then he sat down to ponder what to do with what had been placed in his hands. Carlé, however, did not have time to wait, and asked for the keys to his car: his job was not finished. Aravena handed him the keys with Mimí's words: Keep your hands clean, son. I'm already in it up to my neck, Rolf had replied.

“Do you know how to drive, Eva?”

“I took a course, but I haven't had much practice.”

“I can't keep my eyes open. There's no traffic at this hour; drive slowly and take the highway to Los Altos, toward the mountains.”