The Rhythm of Memory (8 page)

That day never came. With each passing month Samuel’s mother seemed to retreat further from him and the rest of the family. The chic woman who had sat on the boat dreaming of the faces of her loved ones had been replaced by a ghost who spoke little and cared even less for her appearance. Fine lines channeled through her once porcelain skin. And the smile he had known as a child vanished and was replaced by a permanent expression of strain.

Unlike her husband, who was able to mask his grief, she appeared to be ravished by hers. It was as if she would have preferred
to die rather than to live with her guilt at her good fortune of having survived. And even though she never spoke of it aloud, her face betrayed her. The flesh of the eyelids ebbed downward, her mouth was tense, her lips permanently pursed. Every day, from the moment she rose until the time she lay down in her bed, she wondered why it had been her destiny to marry the wiser brother.

Silently, she cursed her brother-in-law for his foolishness. But she was far more severe on herself. She truly believed that somehow—no matter how difficult it might have been—she should have done more.

Her light-boned hands became even thinner. She wrung them so much that the skin became cracked and raw, the veins so pronounced you could chart them, her once pink nails now a mottled blue.

Her thick, black hair became gray before her fortieth birthday, and she wore it like a widow, coiled in a bun, stuck with stickpins at the back of her small, sparrowlike head.

She no longer cooked, leaving the meals to be prepared by the maid. She no longer ate more than a nibble, as if she were tempting fate to see if she could survive.

“Mama,” Samuel would call to her, and try to crawl into her lap. But she would look at him and instead see her late nephew, Tovi, the boys having shared the same week of birth. And she would reference everything with “If Rosa were here,” her sister-in-law’s memory, like a shadow, hanging over her in the heavy, humid air.

Unlike most families, Justine considered her husband’s family her own. Rosa had welcomed her like a sister, and their friendship was genuine. Rosa was the first one she had told when Justine suspected she was with child. Before her mother, before Isaac. And Rosa held her and told her that she too believed she was pregnant.
“They’ll be the same age,” she said, and her black eyes were now wet from her tears. “Let’s tell the men separately and let them have the joy of discovering on their own that the children will be born in the same month, perhaps even the same day!” They both reveled in their sisterly conspiracy and went into the kitchen to prepare their afternoon tea.

The boys were born within a week of each other, and Justine had loved Tovi as if he were her own son. After the children’s births, their circumcisions having been completed, the two women confessed that they felt as though they had each given birth to twins, their hearts so full with love for the other’s child.

After Jacob had refused to leave with them, Justine had begged Rosa to try to change his mind. “We will all be together,” she tried to assure her. “Together, the journey will be less hard, the transition not as difficult.” Rosa was shaking her head and repeating, “I cannot influence this decision, it is not mine to make.” Rosa wrapped her sister-in-law in her shawl and held her close. “I promise we will come if things get worse. You understand, I must trust my husband.”

They bade each other farewell in the early hours of the day they were to leave. Justine knelt down and kissed her nephew and rubbed his cheeks one last time. “Write us,” she said to Rosa, and tried to muffle her breaking voice. “We will see each other soon.” From a few meters beyond, Isaac beckoned Justine to hurry, insisting that they could not be late. As she approached the car, she turned once more, catching sight of her sister-in-law one last time. Rosa’s tiny fingers waving good-bye, her face tightening as it tried to force back her fear. Years later, Justine was forever haunted by that last glimpse of her sister-in-law’s face. Often, she replayed it in her mind, imagining herself running back to the three of them,
dragging them into the car and insisting that they leave Paris. If only, she thought to herself again and again, so much that even her dreams gave her no rest. If only she and Isaac had done more.

Justine knew that Isaac had no satisfaction in that his intuition had been correct. But still it was as if she had to punish both herself and Isaac for their and their family’s survival.

“We left them there, Isaac. Rosa, Tovi, Jacob, my mama, my papa…all of them. We should have insisted they come.”

He was quiet. His gray face bearded white.

“Don’t speak to me of what we should have done,” he said solemnly. “I see how you look at me every day, as if I am to blame.”

“No,” she begged, and began to weep. “It’s only…”

Isaac looked at his wife sprawled out on the bed, her face buried in the pillow. Her long black hair spreading on the linen, like the feathers of a large black bird.

“I’m sorry, Justine,” he said, his own voice cracking, for it was nearly impossible for him to communicate his grief. He reached out to stroke his wife’s back. “You mustn’t blame yourself.” He felt his throat beginning to constrict. He was struggling in dealing with his own emotions, let alone those of his wife.

So, he rose to his feet and began to walk out the door. But as he reached the threshold, he placed his palm on the sideboard and said softy, “It was I who should have been stronger. It is I who am to blame.”

In his last year in medical school in America, Samuel learned that his mother had passed away. She had lasted longer than anyone
had expected, as she had spent the past twenty years of her life living wedded more to her regrets than to her equally tormented husband.

Inspired particularly by his mother’s anguish, Samuel had begun publishing papers on “survivor’s guilt” in the months before and had decided that was what he wanted to focus on during his psychiatry residency.

Years later, when he received an offer to run a mental health clinic in Göteborg, Sweden, for survivors of torture and war, he wondered if he could meet the challenges of the job. He spoke five languages and had written extensively on the subject. But what did he really know? He hadn’t even been able to help his own mother, and she had never been physically tortured, nor had she directly witnessed the atrocities of war.

But he would always remember her face; that sight of her after his parents had returned from reciting the kaddish for the family they had loved and lost, his mother’s face resembling that of one of those classical sculptures in a museum—a face that is still beautiful despite the crack running down its side. Even at the age of seven, he had wished he could rub out those lines of sorrow. How he had wished, so many times, that he could place his hands on her tired eyes and rub back in the radiance he remembered from when he was a young child before the war. There was so much sorrow in his own family life that all he wanted to do was help those who had suffered.

Perhaps, he thought, if he had the ability to help just one person, then all of his studies and papers would not have been in vain, and his childhood failure to save his mother could finally be redeemed.

S
ANTIAGO
, C
HILE

F
EBRUARY
1966

Octavio Ribeiro had never expected to be famous. It came, as most things do, by surprise. But he welcomed the opportunity, not because he had any desire to be an actor, but because he thought it would afford him the means to support his beloved Salomé and their unborn child as well as gain the respect of his disapproving in-laws.

He was sitting in a café when it all began. Nearly two months had passed since Octavio had spoken with Dr. Herrera, and he had yet to find a job. He was trying to finish his final papers for his pending graduation while drinking a coffee and picking at a slice of lemon loaf, when he noticed a man staring up at him.

The man was dressed in a pale yellow suit and his head was cloaked by a stiff, white fedora. He was sipping a glass of sherry with one finger gently tapping against the rim.

Octavio tried to resume his writing, but still, the man continued to stare.

After several minutes, Octavio stood up and approached the man.

“Is there a problem?” Octavio asked, clearly bewildered. His thick black curls were hanging over his forehead and his large brown eyes were framed by two furrowed brows.

The man extended his hand and smiled. His white teeth
gleamed like a row of glazed white tile and his impeccably manicured hand now dangled in the air.

“I am Juan Francisco de Bourbon.” His evenly brown hand remained unshaken and he used the opportunity to make a self-referring gesture.

“May I ask you a question, señor?” he asked Octavio politely.

Octavio nodded his head.

“Do you go to the movies often?”

Octavio stared back at him, his wide eyes betraying his bewilderment. “When I have the money,” he answered.

Juan Francisco looked at Octavio with great intensity. “Young man, may I tell you frankly, I have been staring at you for nearly an hour, and now as I look at your features even more closely, I am confident without a doubt that you have one of those rare faces that are destined for the screen.”

“What the devil are you talking about?” Octavio replied curtly. He was naturally suspicious of such kinds of flattery from another man. Now, as he stood there dumbfounded by the conversation he was having, he was beginning to be annoyed at himself for leaving his writing. His coffee would soon be cold and his paper still half-done.

“I’m sorry I haven’t the time for a conversation. I am trying to work and you were distracting me.”

“Please accept my apology,” Juan Francisco said, his teeth flashing white. “It was just that you’ve intrigued me and it is my business to find faces such as yours.”

He reached into his jacket pocket, the inside lined in mustard-colored satin, and withdrew his card.

Octavio gazed upon his fastidiously manicured fingernails as they pushed the small, professionally typed business card in his direction.

“I have no background in acting,” Octavio told him. “I am a student of literature and poetry, not of cinema or the stage.”

“It’s your face I am interested in,” the man said flatly. “Your high cheekbones, your large eyes…your face has all the angles we look for in the film business.”

“My girlfriend is far more beautiful,” Octavio insisted.

“We have too many girls who want to be actresses. The studios want me to find actors who can match the beauty of the female leads.” The man grinned again at Octavio. “You, I believe, have star-quality assets. With a little more polish, we could probably make you the Cary Grant of Chile.”

Octavio shook his head. What this man was telling him seemed ridiculous and rather far-fetched. After all, he had never considered himself handsome, believing that his mind was his most valuable possession.

“Take my card and think about it, son,” Juan Francisco told him in a well-practiced voice that almost seemed paternal. “Call me if you’re interested.” He leaned over to Octavio, swallowing his last sip of sherry. “I assure you, the money is well worth seeing if you have any talent.”

Octavio visited Salomé that evening. Her belly was beginning to show, and in a few weeks she would have increasing difficulty in disguising her pregnancy.

“Have you any luck finding a job, darling?” she asked him as he sat beside her, his hand resting between her small fingers. He
could tell that she was becoming nervous about their situation and the promise he had made some months earlier to her father.

“None of the local schools have responded to my applications,” he replied quietly, his eyes fixating on her swelling abdomen.

“Something will open up,” she said, trying to sound hopeful.

“I had a strange thing happen to me this afternoon, though. A man approached me and gave me his card.” Octavio reached into his trouser pocket and fumbled to retrieve Juan Francisco’s card.

He handed it to Salomé.

“What’s this?” she asked, obviously perplexed. “Artistic manager? I don’t understand.”

“He thinks I should take a screen test.”

“Screen test!” Salomé couldn’t contain her laughter. “He thinks you should make movies?”

“Salomé’s reaction only increased Octavio’s embarrassment. “I know it sounds ridiculous. I know I have no experience, nor really any great interest in the movies, but he said the money would be well worth my time.”

“But what about your books, your poetry…your teaching?” she asked gently. “Would you want to give that up?”

Octavio didn’t reply. He was feeling the weight of responsibility mounting on his shoulders.

“Perhaps I will be able to return to that, but now I must think about your condition and the promise I made to your father. We will need to get married shortly or it will become uncomfortable for everyone.”

Salomé clasped Octavio’s hand over her lap. She giggled once again to herself. “To think, I thought I was going to marry a poor, starving poet and now my future husband might become a screen star!”

Octavio shook his head. “Star? No, perhaps just a small role or
two so we can make ends meet. And who knows even how this screen test will go…I doubt I have any talent for such things.”

The next week, Octavio met Juan Francisco at one of the major film studios in Santiago. Amid the chaos of the set, he was ushered to an area where three girls were waiting with scripts in hand.

“First, we’ll put some makeup on you and take some shots of you alone. Then we’ll have you read with some of the girls,” Juan Francisco informed him while making small gestures with his hand. As he smiled at Octavio, the brim of his straw hat cast shadows over his already dark complexion.

“Don’t forget to read slowly and to make the best of those eyes of yours!” he whispered to his young protégé as Octavio made his way into the makeup chair.