The Invisible Mountain (22 page)
They sat without moving. He reached for his hat.
She walked him to the door. “Please come tomorrow. Won’t you?”
He studied her. His face was pleasant, in a bookish, beakish kind of way. “Of course.”
The following afternoon, Eva was ready, armed with a silver tray, teacups, saucers, steeping pot, cream and sugar, and confections from La Parisienne. She wore a new dress, bought with the contents of yesterday’s envelope: blue, with ivory dots and matching belt.
“Ah! Looking lovely.”
“You’re too kind.”
“Feeling better?”
Eva lifted the tray. “Much.”
“Delicious.”
“I hope you’ll like them. Shall we sit?”
Eva poured her guest a cup of tea. The liquid fell in a dark curve. They listened to its quiet splash.
“Sugar?”
“Please.”
“Cream?”
“Yes.”
He watched her pour his cream and stir his tea. It was a hot and humid afternoon, ill suited to this refreshment. She handed him his drink. Steam rose from their cups, a gauzy wall between them. “How was your morning?”
“Busy. Extremely busy.”
“Tell me what you did. I’m dying to know.”
He sipped some tea. He reached for a chocolate éclair, and began to talk about his day. He told her about the patient who had died with his nine daughters saying rosaries in a circle around his bed. His eyelids had closed under Dr. Santos’ fingers, like soft butter. Eva stayed rapt, so Dr. Santos told her more: about the daughters’ nine skirts cut from the same coarse purple cloth. The quiet way they pressed against the wall as the nurse drew a white sheet over the body. The halls had been packed this morning, several patients admitted at once. By lunchtime, his feet had grown sore from marching halls and standing over bedsides. At lunch,
an argument broke out among four students over the best approach to dosages on painkillers. Dr. Santos, sought as judge in this discussion, had not been able to finish his salami sandwich. He kept talking. The light deepened slowly around him. He told her about his students, the earnest ones and the lazy ones, the ones like mechanized robots trying to memorize every rule (not accepting, to his chagrin, that medicine was also an
art)
, the ones made obsequious by raw ambition. How he fantasized about being alone, no doctors, no nurses, no patients at all, just him inside a great white empty hospital. Eva leaned forward, chin on hand, listening and nodding. By the time his stories slowed to a trickle, two hours had passed. He stared at his watch.
“I should go back.”
“So soon?”
“I’ve wasted this time.”
“Not at all. It’s been fascinating.”
“You’re fascinated?”
“Isn’t everyone?”
Dr. Santos scanned the pastry plate, reduced to crumbs and a single strawberry tart. “No.”
“Hard to imagine.”
He reached for her thigh. She rose as his hand brushed her, a touch neither acknowledged nor denied.
“What a lovely afternoon. I’m sorry you have to go.”
He got up, uncertain on his feet, like a man who’d drunk more gin than he’d meant to. They walked to the door and stood at the threshold, Eva holding the tray of crumbs between them.
“Tomorrow, then?”
“Tomorrow.”
On his third visit, he entered with more resolve. Tea poured, steamed, grew pale with cream. “Good to see you, Dr. Santos.”
He sat closer today. “And you.”
“How was your morning?”
“I’m not thinking of my morning.”
“No?”
“I’m thinking of you.”
His mouth landed on hers, big hands on her, wet pushing; the teacup splattered as she fumbled it to the table and hot liquid hit her arm; a hand roved her body, a tongue explored her teeth, she was pressed against the sofa and the hand was at her breast, rubbing, starved, then quick and greedy at the hem of her skirt.
“Roberto.”
“Yes.”
She made a slice of space between them. “I can’t.”
“What?”
His face was close. His breath had weight against her cheek.
“Please understand. I’m deeply in your debt—and I wish we could”—she paused—“I do. But I’m a virtuous woman. You know that, don’t you?”
He blinked. His lips moved but he said nothing.
“You’re surprised.” She looked down, as if hurt. “I’m waiting for the man I’ll marry.”
Roberto’s hand pulled on its captured swath of skirt.
“Things are different here, in Argentina. I should have known.”
“Eva.” His voice was throaty. “I meant no disrespect. But you must know how I want you.”
He could have burned a hole in her, just looking. Relief washed through her. He would not use force. She would lose the battle and the war if he used force. But no, he was a good man, addicted to propriety. He wanted her to open, to offer herself in gratitude or debt. She was supposed to do this, the next step of the proper dance. “My dear doctor.” She traced his jaw with her hand. “I wish we could. But it’s impossible.”
A tragedy, perfect in its thwarted longing. A moment when the strings would swell in a romantic film. Eva heard no strings, just the moan of a car and a groomed dog barking on the street. Roberto closed his eyes. His trousers bulged below the waist. Eva cupped his face in her hand. They stayed that way, his hand on thigh, her hand on cheek, close enough to breathe the same charged air.
“Thank you.”
“For respecting me.”
Roberto lay silent.
“I wrote you a poem.”
His eyes stayed closed.
“Would you like to hear it?”
He nodded. She gave him words. His face relaxed, a boy beneath a lullaby. She stroked his hair. It was not Andrés’ hair, not curving tightly from the scalp and back again. It did not spring from her fingers in tense, energetic curls. This hair was straight and fine, the morning’s pomade had lost some of its hold, she could make it all point in the same direction with just a few caresses. She wondered what the years would be like beside this man, if she won the war and took him as her spoils. How he would hold and see and touch her, and who she would become inside his house. The boy in him was so close to the surface, hungry, delicate, alone. She ran out of poetry and fell silent, stroking gently, bringing order to the doctor’s fragile scalp.
He came every weekday. She shaped her days around his arrival. In the mornings she wrote, smoked, and idled on the balcony, pretending not to scan for the widow, who was never there, and pretending not to gaze over buildings to the south of Buenos Aires. At midday she strolled to La Parisienne and bought a sandwich for her lunch and confections from the gleaming case for Roberto’s visit. Back home, she boiled water and prepared the tea tray under the kitchen window, where light fell copiously and seemed to wash her hands. She looked forward to his knock, which was always the same: staccato, taut, devoid of any flourish. She held court in that apartment as though she owned it, as though his entry were dependent on her good graces. She gave him slivers of herself: a lap to rest in, supple words, listening ears, a thigh to brush or lips to kiss on his way out. She felt the coil of power in her body, between her hips, a long and steady lasso she cast toward him, the way a man in gaucho country lassoes cattle, or maybe the way cattle lasso a man. It thrilled her. Each visit was a victory over laws as old as gravity, as constant as the
laws of fang and prey: the law of man and whore, and she was breaking it, wasn’t she, turning it upside down and letting all the pieces shake like false snow in a globe.
“Have another tart.”
“I couldn’t.”
She nudged him playfully. “You could.” She held the platter up. He raised hands of surrender and took a glazed pear tart. Eva watched him bite, cleanly, with his front teeth. “How’s your fiancée?”
He stopped chewing. His fingers squeezed the pastry crust, creating tiny cracks.
“Of course I know.”
“She’s fine.”
“She must be very beautiful.”
“My parents like her.” His eyes were so pale. “I have a duty.”
“To her?”
He shrugged.
“To your parents?”
Roberto clasped her hand with both of his. Sweet pear and butter crust broke in her palm. “Eva. I want you. You’re always in my mind.”
“Roberto—”
“But I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“Marry you.”
They stared at each other. Deep afternoon light edged the furniture with gold. She would keep it all, the furniture, the north-side sun, the man. She shook her head, slowly, sadly. “
Querido
. What will we do?”
He leaned toward her. His breath smelled of black tea. “Stay here. Be together. You’ll have what you need.” He kissed her. His mouth was lush and damp and sweet with glaze. She fell back against the sofa. He was on top of her, already stiff.
“Roberto.”
“Mm.”
“We can’t.”
His voice came like a child’s. “Why not?”
“You know why not.” His sex was firm and so were her hands around his jaws. “We’re not married.”
He clawed at her, her blouse opened, her legs opened to the push of his knees, and she almost relented—why not, why not, he had waited so long—but when she closed her eyes she saw a dirty alley, fast rats, her own throat bared in the cold. She pushed at him. He did not stop. She pushed harder, and his weight jerked back. He crouched beside the sofa, and made a low sound.
“Roberto?”
He did not look at her. The walls framed him with ornate wilderness: hordes of mauve roses in a lattice cage.
“Roberto.”
“I have to go.”
He lunged for the front door and disappeared.
The next three hours went by in a haze. Eva drank a whole bottle of wine and watched light fade from her beautiful home. It was not her home. She had lost. He’d had enough. There would be no more discreet envelopes, no more dreams in satin sheets, no more afternoons of subtle glances and slow lassoes and sugar in English tea. Night fell; the room grew dark, tinged with low light from the street lamp outside her window. She should have settled for his offer, stayed his woman-on-the-side, kept what she had and let him satisfy himself, instead of placing all her chips back on the table. If he gave her another chance, she’d take it, but it was probably too late. She’d have to pack her bag. There was little to pack and she had nowhere to go. Buenos Aires loomed around her in all its brutal grandeur, hissing with triumph, you don’t belong, you never will, you’re nothing. She saw her father in the dark corner of the room, glistening, translucent. Whore, he called her. Stupid whore. She bared her teeth at him and he faltered like a reflection in water disturbed by stones. Her head hurt. She couldn’t think. She longed to stop the eddies in her mind. She closed her eyes.
She woke up to a staccato knock and stumbled through the dark room. Roberto stood in the hall.
“I left my hat.”
“Come in.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll turn on a light.”
“No. Don’t.” His silhouette approached her. He smelled of cigarettes. She’d never seen him smoke. “Eva.”
She braced herself.
“It’s all right. We’ll get married.”
She didn’t breathe.
“Say yes.”
“Yes.”
They held each other in silence. Outside the window, a car gunned by, on its way to a lavish party or lonely bar. Roberto sank both hands into Eva’s hair. Eva breathed into his starched collar. His mouth fell against her cheek, jaw, neck.
“When?”
“Soon,” he said, low enough that the corners of the room would not have heard him. “Very soon.”
The next day, Roberto broke off his other engagement and reserved the church for a Saturday two weeks away. He handed Eva a list of boutiques. “They’re expecting you tomorrow.”
She didn’t ask how it went with Cristina, but she sifted through the possibilities in her mind. Cristina had raged, thrown precious vases against the wall, cursed Roberto and all his future offspring. She had fallen on her knees, wept maiden-tears, implored him, with her hands over her heart, to reconsider. No. She had smiled a tight, noble smile, said stiff little words (a poor girl, ah, how nice for you), and dismissed Roberto with a nod of the head. She braced herself for Cristina Caracanes to appear at her door, face red, hands fisted, but no such thing occurred. Even the society pages kept their talk of the Santos scandal to two brief paragraphs, having devoted most of their space to the Peróns. Juan Perón had just won the presidency. Evita would be his first lady. It was necessary to speculate endlessly on the future, to herald a new era, to dissect rumors of Evita’s inauguration gown. Still. Two paragraphs are enough to hide a knife in.
Srta. Caracanes has been replaced by an unknown
girl, suspected to be of dubious origin
. Eva sat on the floor in the morning light and read the sentence thirty-seven times. She tore the article out and broke it into pieces, smaller and smaller, until it almost looked like dust. She took it to the balcony and threw it toward the mansion across the street. The shreds fell in slow, haphazard clusters. She went inside and took out a blank page.
Dear Mami
,
I am sorry I haven’t written, but today I have wonderful news: I’m getting married. His name is Dr. Roberto Santos, and he’s a highly respected man. Also, he is reliable and kind
.
The pen paused a moment, then resumed.
Our engagement is in the society pages, near photos of Evita! The wedding is in twelve days. There is much to be done, as you can imagine. Roberto wants me to have a whole new wardrobe. He’s very generous. I have this address until the wedding: 657 Avenida Magenta #10. The apartment has gilded wallpaper and beautiful teacups (you’d love them, Coco). These pesos are a gift from us
.
I love you, Eva
.
She immersed herself in preparation. She spent long mornings in svelte boutiques sheathed in glass that had once seemed impenetrable. She could love the way the lamps glowed in those places, lending radiance to silks and stones and pearls. She wanted to gleam like gemstones, to flow like a gossamer scarf, to rustle with the dignity of finely crafted petticoats. She was taken seriously by the women who measured and folded and pinned at her ankles (she remembered, acutely, that hem’s-eye view of the world). She could finger a satin gown and make it hers with a mere nod. She was asked, in cool, courteous tones, whether she preferred her diamond set in gold or platinum. Gold, she affirmed. Gold in all its boldness. She needed it against her skin for her first dinner with Roberto’s parents.