A Change of Skin (19 page)

“Ulrich and I looked at each other. We had lived together for a year and a half. We knew each other completely, we had become like one mind, and now the same thought came to both of us. Want a cigarette, Lisbeth?”

“Yes, thanks. No, Franz, you were different. He was Ulrich and you were Franz. You've never been anyone but yourself.” Franz lit your cigarette and handed it to you. In the mirror across the room you saw your naked bodies on the bed, the cigarette in your mouth, the smoke rising.

“We told the concierge not to worry, that we would take care of everything. She must stand in the corridor and make sure no one saw us. We wrapped Herr Urs in his bedspread and Ulrich took him in his arms. We went out quickly, quickly into our room. The concierge wanted to follow but I put my finger to my lips and warned her: not a word or the other tenants would find out and take their departure. Nothing had happened. Nothing at all. Clean up his room and throw out his things and forget him.”

You moved your head from his shoulder and studied your reflections in the mirror.

“That's enough, Franz. Look at us in the mirror. What do we look like?”

“I don't know, Lisbeth. Like Lisbeth and Franz. What?”

“We look like a memory or a premonition.”

“You're being as complicated as your husband.”

“Are you through?”

“No. I'll tell you about the party.”

“Let's smoke first. What did you say to that old Indian this morning?”

“Nothing, Lisbeth. Nothing at all.”

“You know, I can take almost anything so long as there are compensations. Not just part, either, but everything. But there has to be a compensation. I really love these people. And maybe to love them earns a kind of forgiveness.”

“Maybe, if I understand you.”

“Don't look at me as if I were an ingénue. It's true. In the end I have no other way.”

“It's a woman's way.”

“It's mine. Smoke your cigarette, Franz, and then put your head on my breast and fall asleep. Sleep until the room is as warm as we are.”

*   *   *

Δ   Elena rapped on the cabin door and came in, saying in her broken Italian that it was a beautiful day out, and put the fresh figs on the table and winked an eye. Javier got up from bed. Elena laughed and said wheeee! showing the stumps of her teeth; she crossed herself and covered her face with widespread fingers and said that it would be a better world if the signor could walk on the beach exactly like that, and you, Dragoness, were lucky, oh, quant'è lungo, oh, quant'è bello il signor, sei fortunata, signorina, sei fortunatissima. You got up too and put on your bathrobe while Elena waxed as eloquent about your beauty as she had about Javier's, and the three of you walked out Indian-file, Elena and her bucket of figs first, her face dark and wrinkled as the kernel of a nut with eyes and a brilliant smile, wrapped in a black shawl, the torn white shawl beneath framing her brown face. Elena with her stride that was at once both light and tired. Elena with her black stockings and her canvas shoes which she placed on the sand with supreme elegance as she told you what she told you every morning, the story of her eight children. She has eight children and five of them die (she never used the past tense in speaking of them) and her husband is sick with rheumatism and the oldest son works in Athens but she knows nothing about his job, nothing except that he has a girl there and never sends money home, while the other son is a waiter in a café in Rhodes and the last child is a little girl. And every day someone leaves the island, emigrates to a better country, for here wealth is to have olive trees and not many do have them. She raises her arm and gestures toward the restaurant near the beach. The couple who own that restaurant used to be as poor and skinny as she herself. Today they are fat pigs. She aims her finger at them and shows her rotten teeth as she shouts “Brava, brava!” She laughs and shouts at them that now that they weigh two hundred kilos each they have forgotten that once they didn't own a pot to piss in. The fat owners of the restaurant grunt and turn and run inside. Elena shouts “Brava, Brava!” and shows you and Javier her hands: twice a week she must scrub clothes; she shows you the copper bracelet that is her amulet and serves to protect her skin and nerves from the effects of hard labor. The owners of the café reappear with a
carabiniere.
They shout in Greek, he in Italian: they have told her again and again to stay away from the beach in front of their restaurant, that she may not sell her figs there, how many times must they repeat it? Elena plants her bucket of figs on the sand before her, she looks at Javier, she looks at you. Loudly she hums a song that makes the proprietor of the restaurant furious. The
carabiniere
moves toward her and she begins to sing. You look at Javier and he is motionless, merely observing. You step in front of Elena.

“If you people bother her, we won't eat in your restaurant. Never again.”

The fat couple stare at you and then at each other. They put their heads together. They shrug their shoulders finally and invite the
carabiniere
to step inside for a glass of Lindos wine. Elena laughs and laughs and offers you a fig and you feel yourself the mistress of Falaraki.

“Soy la dueña!” you say to Javier. “I'm the mistress, the lady of the manor!”

“Mitzvah,” Javier laughs. “A good deed every day. Oh, the spirit of the Boy Scout.”

“Soy la dueña!” you repeat.

To become baroque for a little, Dragoness. Falaraki is a beach rimmed with the pebbles that follow the line of the coast. While Javier sits at the table in the cabin and writes, you walk the beach gathering pebbles. You have nothing to do except love your husband and wade along the beach, sometimes diving, stretching your fingers for those small polished stones. When still wet they are brilliant, like mirrors, you can even see your face in them. For hours you sit on the beach sorting out your pebbles and giving them names. You call them the hemispheres of the hours of the sea. You say that the pebbles of the coast of Rhodes are like the island's sternest sons and you think that some secret depth of the sea gave them their watery colors long ago so that those colors would never be lost. Some are red, some ocher, some white, green, yellow, black, but not these colors as they are seen on land; no, different, new, like the polished shield-shaped stone you hold now: all grays unite in it, the veins are of transparent white, the nerves of silver, the arteries of duller tin. Some of the stones are like sculpted eggs, some are tablets of mustard, some are half-moons, and all have been polished and smoothed by the friction of water and sand. They are valueless, but the treasures of the island's poor. Children adorn their sand castles with them. Fishermen's wives string them into necklaces. But away from the water, the pebbles lose their brilliance and become opaque and in the end forget their origin. So say the women of Rhodes, and they are right.

You never know which pebble to choose. There are so many and when they lie on the soft sand where the beach enters the sea they are all beautiful. They are of the sea and of the land also, and when brought ashore they become like the land. But within the sea they reproduce all its lights and shadows, all its colors. They are the gentle teeth of the sea fastened in the land to allow the sea to hold itself to the land, and without them the sea would be different, a different world, faith, dream, the promise of a different millennium. You sit on the beach entire hours fingering your pebbles, staring at them. You have found every color except blue.

You sort your pebbles out. You know that each of them will change color as the sun moves. Noon's yellow becomes orange as the afternoon lengthens, is red at twilight, beneath the moon is violet, a fusion of red and blue. But not beyond that: a clear and unmixed blue never appears. It is there, that blue, buried within the tight concentric circles of the little pebble, you believe. And every day the pebble must withstand the attack of the sun, which would like to force the blue out into sight. The pebble allows itself to be overcome and transformed, from yellow through orange to violet, then to white at dawn and at noon back to yellow again. But only darkness is permitted to see the secret blue.

So much for your pebble hunting, Elizabeth. You were young and idle in those days and it was indeed an innocent enough pastime, harmless, in a vague way poetic. Now I must quote you a classic:
What you say to me is not true but nevertheless, simply because you say it, it reveals your being.

Okay, Dragoness?

Okay.

*   *   *

Δ   You had changed clothes, Isabel, and now were wearing tight black stretch pants and an open-throated white blouse. Your breasts danced as you whirled on your toes, frowning with dissatisfaction and concentration, biting the nail of your little finger, with your long hair loose and your feet bare. A João Gilberto recording.

“No, damn it, that's not how it goes.”

You moved your right leg forward and whirled again. You placed your arms in the pose of a Hindu goddess and bit your fingernail.

“Watch me now. Tell me if I get it right this time.”

“But, Isabel…”

“I know you can't dance, Proffy. But you can give an opinion, can't you? Sing out, darling. Look, the trick of the bossa nova is to hold the rhythm of the samba against the cross rhythm of the jazz. Like this, see?”

You whirled again, laughing. You walked toward Javier, who was lying on the bed smoking and watching you. You smiled and half narrowed your eyes.

… não pode ser, não pode ser …

You fell on Javier's chest and kissed his forehead.

“Proffy, I love you.”

Then you hopped up again and ran to your open bottle of Coke and belted it down. Javier placed his notebook on his knees and chewed the eraser of his pencil. You went near him again and caressed—yes, Pussycat,
caressed
—his thinning hair.

“Like the way I've fixed up my room?”

“Of course I like it. It's amazing. You should see ours.”

“What do you mean, ‘ours'?”

“Mine and Elizabeth's, across the corridor. There were even two snails on the wall.”

“Where is she now?”

“She's taking a nap. It looks as if you've been here for days.”

“That's the record player, Proffy. Have phonograph, can travel. And Coke for those who think young. What are you writing?”

“Oh, just some thoughts I want to remember.”

“Like maybe the day we met?”

“It does seem a long time ago.”

“Four months, Proffy, darling. You had just flunked me in Classical Literature. I told you I didn't care, because now I could take it over and have you for my proffy again.”

“And I asked you out to dinner. Immediately.”

“From sheer narcissism, sweetheart. I built you up.”

“You did that, all right, just by being with me. Maybe that's why I teach, to keep in touch with kids who are kind enough to build me up sometimes.”

“Don't lie, Proffy. I had you hanging on the ropes.”

“Well,” Javier smiled, “you were quite a discovery. And it continued in the taxi and in the restaurant you picked out. The discovery of the two halves of your face, one half angel, the other demon. Your face framed by your straight dark hair.”

“Keep going, darling. You're doing great.”

“Your green eyes. The eyes of a child, without malice, when your mouth is in repose. Brilliant and cold eyes when your mouth laughs so innocently and you talk about the simplicities of your life as a well-reared young lady.”

“Well-reared? Hah! A discovery?” You got up and turned the record. Once more you began to dance, smiling. “You know, someone told me once that he liked me so much he was afraid to come near me. Really! And for a whole year, until you flunked me and I spoke to you, I was just another of your students. I wasn't even a rabbit to trap. And at home no one ever made any fuss about my looks. God, no! Now, darling, watch this step. Then you told me I was beautiful and you turned me on. You're still a lively old Proffy.”

“Still lively? Thanks.”

“You're very welcome, darling. My man of distinction whose hair has begun to gray, though you know, you
are
getting to be a bit bald. I like your complexion, too. That paleness.”

“So you attend the university only to observe the good looks of fortyish professors.”

“No, darling, I go to splash in culture. That's you too.” You balanced on your toes and laughed. “Really, when you talk, my wheels begin to go around. I get ideas. Imagine! And it's relaxing, too. As if I were floating. What it comes down to is that I like you. Just that.”

“And I you, Isabel. From the first day of class last year.”

“At home everything was ‘Chabela, don't do this, Chabela, don't do that. Don't wear your hair loose, you look like an existentialist or a straw broom. Chabela, don't pick your nose, you'll make your nostrils even bigger than they are already.' You can imagine what I felt. Am I boring you?”

Javier shook his head.

“I like to get rid of my complexes talking about them.”

“But above all…”

“Above all, my dear parents. Did you know my father has made a mountain of money higher than the Matterhorn, which is where he keeps it, by the way.”

“How?”

“Gas stations. You do it like this. They give you a concession and you rake in thousands and let a little trickle back to Pemex. And the next thing we knew we had our house in the Lomas de Chapultepec. And God, talk about houses! You remember that plantation house in the movie we saw together?”

“Gone with the Wind?”

“Yes. There you have it. Doric-Ionic or Ionic-Doric columns or whatever they are. Green slate roof. French windows with louvers, darling. Everything! And inside! God only knows where they found that furniture. Authentic Chippendale, Mother says. What a blast! She's off two centuries and one continent. Don't you believe me?”