Grace (20 page)

“
¿Por qué lloras?
” I asked, looking up from the boat. The child did not answer me, but kept bawling, and I was helpless of what to do until Doña Iñes ran out of her store to check on the commotion.

“
¡Su hija!
” she exclaimed. “
¿Perro, por qué llora?
”

“She is not my daughter.”

“
Ich kann nicht meine Vetters finden,
” the little girl wept, explaining her misery.

“No? But she speaks English.”

“She's German. Have you seen her before?”

“No,” Doña Iñes said. “And there are not any Germans around here. They go to the south.”

I asked the child her name.

“Lenore,” she said.

“Und hast du einen Nachname, meine kleine Dame?”

She giggled. “
Ja. Himmelstein.
”

“That's a funny name you have,” I said. Lenore laughed.

“Is there a Himmelstein family on the island?” I asked Doña Iñes.

“Ah, she must belong to Juan's family. They live on the island just there,” she pointed across the watery flats to a spit of land with a single house perched on it.

“Can you telephone over?” I asked. The clouds were gathering more quickly, and I was anxious to get back before the downpour.

“Why don't you take her?” Doña Iñes asked, incredulous. “It's right there. You can see the house.”

I did not want to be responsible for a child, and made the excuse that I had left my house open and did not want it to flood.

“What is there to flood?” She laughed at me. “Ah,
mi niño
, you do not wish to be involved,” she gleaned. “Here we may not be rich as in your country, but at least if someone loses a child we do not worry they will sue us if our boat capsizes. Ferry the child.”

“Call to the house, and ask them to meet us at the dock,” I agreed reluctantly.

“
Sí,
” Doña Iñes smiled. Lenore beamed, and climbed into the boat. “You are doing the right thing.”

Lenore was sitting near the prow like a creature born of the sea, happy to be going home. I was never around children, and as I rowed her toward the island, did not know what to say, so asked the usual questions you would a stranger.

“Who do you think will win the elections?”

“I don't know. I can't vote.”

“What are your teams for the next World Cup?”

“I do not like sports,” she answered. “You seem sad. If I had such a wonderful boat I wouldn't be sad.”

“You think so?”

“Yes. No one would be able to tell me where to go, or make me go anywhere I didn't like, or ever be able to leave me.”

“Where would you go?” I asked, wondering about her parents.

“Oh, everywhere,” she lit up. “Even the moon, if I could row there. But everywhere on earth.”

“You'll go lots of places, Lenore, when it's your time for it,” I said. “When I was your age I had never been anywhere yet.”

“You think?” she asked, hopefully.

“Absolutely,” I assured her.

“Which place do you think is the best in the world to see first?”

“It does not matter,” I said. “It is just the land, the language, and the people that change.”

“Well, I can't wait,” she hugged herself.

We neared shore, and she brightened to see her mother waiting on the dock. The mother was a handsome woman, but tipsy with drink and beside herself with worry, as she stooped down to lift Lenore from the boat.

“What happened?” The mother asked the child.

“They left me,” Lenore told on her cousins' mischief. “And this nice man brought me home. Thank you.” She turned to me.

“Would you care to join us for a coffee?” the mother asked. She was ringless, and I might have been curious to hear their story on another occasion, but I realized I was uninterested in anyone but Sylvie. Besides that she had used the formal tense, and I had been in nature too long, so the remove seemed dissonant with the landscape itself. I shook my head, pointing to the clouds, which had already begun to open.

An Egyptian blue sky unfurled overhead, clear to the edge of space, and the prelapsarian air below fluttered with a clement, pure breeze to inspire the blood. The usually muddy delta waters shone like a mirror, rippling gently each time we broke the surface with our oars.

Near the market we crested alongside another couple, out rowing for sport. Sylvie began to pull with a quickened pace, and I followed suit, and they smiled at us, like-minded, pulling even again until we had a race.

“To the next island,” they cried.

“
¡Vale!
” we answered. We sprinted prow to prow, exhausting ourselves, until they seemed to flag as we opened enough of a lead to be sure of victory. They took advantage of our slacking off to surge again, though, and soon began pulling even, but we had by then reached the island, doubled over from the effort.

“
Bravo,
” they called, and waved in a gesture of fellow feeling. We were all drenched with sweat and our hearts beat quick and glad, as we floated down near the sea basin, relaxing again. Sylvie and I smiled at our victory. I still felt the bliss of physical exertion and the bliss of being with her, making me never want to leave that little corner of the world.

“We make a good team,” she said, as we neared the open sea. She saw the fishing tackle under the seats and maneuvered it out through the slats. “May I?”

I took her oar. She baited the hook with a lure, then cast an expert line into the sterling water.

“You cast well,” I said.

“My family used to go when we were young. I did not like it, but it was always nice to be on the river with the people I cared for. I felt we could be anytime in all of history, and it would be just like that. I would cast my line, telling myself if I caught a fish I would get to the next epoch in history.”

“That was a lot of pressure.”

“I know.” She laughed at herself and her amber eyes shone, as her bare arms arced over the water with a sensuous poise.

I idled the boat on the current, letting us drift around toward one of the seaward islands in the full midday heat, though it was not as hot as it had been in previous weeks, so I felt the season beginning to ebb.

As we reached the open sea, I rowed around the island, the fishing line tensed.

“We caught something,” she said excitedly, the breeze playing in the folds of her white summer dress.

The fish leapt, and the line played out until I thought she was going to lose it, but she pulled up expertly and it was snagged sound. She began to reel it in toward us, but too quickly, and gave way when the line tensed tight to the point of snapping. The fish ran free again, fast toward the open sea, but she had it with both hands and all her might, so it was clear how big it was. She opened the line, letting the fish run until it seemed to tire. When it swam less furiously, she began reeling in intently. From the curve of the pole I was afraid it might snap, but she loosened it in time, as the fish ran back, in a mighty struggle I would not have imagined she had in her.

“Is it too much?”

“No.” Her face was furrowed with sweat, and I could see she took pleasure in the contest. But the fish was massive, and I put one hand on hers to help her steady it, helping her coax it hard or slack as the fish kept struggling below.

“Yes, you can help me now.”

We saw the fish down in the clear water, close to the boat, and began to haul it in, as the beast lunged angrily into the air. Sylvie let out a shriek of fear and surprise at the sheer size of it, then surprise and joy. The fish dove under again, and we pulled up again, one final time, to claim it silver and glistening into the boat.

“What do we do now?” She laughed, proud, but drawing away from its convulsive final moments. It was a giant river creature, but I managed to pick it up soundly by the gills, and hold it against the bottom of the boat, where I so took up an iki stick.

“Don't look,” I said, seeing her agonize, as I prepared to kill it.

“Yes, you can do this part,” she said.

“It will be painless.” I kept my voice calm, though it was something I had only forced myself to learn since I was on the island, and did not look forward to it.

“Do we have to kill it?” she asked when she saw the spike.

“We can throw it back, but if you want to eat it, this is the best way to end it.”

“It looks cruel,” she wavered.

“It is your fish. You can do whatever you wish.”

“It is our fish. We should cook it for dinner.”

“Then this is the best way.”

I got it over with quickly, and we rowed directly back to the Saavardra's dock, where we carried the fish into the kitchen. There was no one about, as we cleaned the fish in the sink, then packed it in ice, and put it in the refrigerator for later, before cleaning up.

“You think it is okay we took the fish?” she asked.

“It is terrific we took such a fish,” I said. “It will be a great dinner.”

“Yes,” she said. “We can do it on the grill. I don't know where my uncle and aunt are, but you will come for dinner tonight, and we will make a fire for the fish.”

I nodded.

“Then one day it will be our turn for the fire.”

“Eventually. It is the second law of nature, or so they say.”

“What do they say is the first?” she asked, though I think it was just to hear me say it.

“It is the radiance and connection of all things.”

“Have you ever seen it?”

“No, but I've been told.”

“Yes, they told me that, too. Do you believe it?”

“I want to believe it.”

“I don't know that I can anymore. I once did, but you go out and give your heart to doing things you think matter, and find out how little all your efforts are worth, and it weighs on you. Does that make sense?”

I looked at her in the diminishing light and nodded, and felt a great uprush of kindredness and the desire to continue with her.

She had walked with me toward the river, and we were still on the verandah of the house. I put my arm around her waist and she did not move it. But when I bent to kiss her she turned away.

“Don't you feel what I do?”

She looked at me with the full force of our attraction, before turning back to face the dock. “I'm not sure I know exactly what you feel.”

“Yes you do. I don't want to name it yet.”

“Then we won't.”

“So that means you feel the same way?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“That makes me glad.”

“It scares me. You don't live here, so we may suffer, and even if you did, we might still suffer.”

“That scares me less than missing an opportunity for happiness.”

“Me too.” She said, looking away. “Do you have another woman?”

“If I did I would not kiss you.”

“Do you swear?” she asked.

“Of course,” I nodded, and she cried. It was then I kissed her the first time, careful because I understood why it was she always played so godforsakenly hard.

The southern summer passed too quickly. We left our little island and returned together to her apartment in Farodoro, where I caught up on my affairs and balanced my accounts in New York.

The film had enjoyed a good opening, and the final wire from the production company, a bonus Westhaven had negotiated, had reached my bank. It was as much as I had ever received at one time, enough to not worry for a couple of years, if I was smart with the money, so I felt flush and brimming with energy.

As I was logging off, my cell phone rang with a call from Davidson, who was out in Los Angeles. He told me he had been trying to contact me for weeks, which I was happy to hear because I needed to get back to work.

“Well?” he asked expectantly.

“Well, what? I need work. Where have you been, by the way?”

“In the Gobi Desert, where I had the most amazing vision. I asked the universe to show me the future.”

I took the bait. “What did you see?”

“Television.”

“Of course.”

“So, did you get paid?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And what? Like I said, I need work. I have expenses, plus catching up to do.”

“What are you going to buy? A house? An electric car? A car with bad gas mileage?”

“Nothing.”

“A man Friday who drives and build houses?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Maybe a little more time for myself to figure things out.”

“You cannot buy time, my friend. Time cannot be created, only used up. Compensation is for time you have spent. They give it to you to make you forget for a moment you're going to die.”

“In that case buying something will not help.”

“Trust me, it will. Go buy yourself something that has a meaning for you, Harper. Anything. So long as it is something you will continue to enjoy.”

“I will think about it, but my pleasure is in the work.”

“Interesting. I did not know you had that in you.”

“Had what?”

“You don't know your own power. Remember when you were a kid, before you ever got some, and you were walking around, all nuts, because you were tired of being a no-name chump virgin? Then one day, at last at last, you get some. You got some. But it was not how you imagined it would be, or what you heard it should be, because you were a no-name chump virgin, who would believe anything, and she was a no-name chump virgin, who knew nothing, so neither of you knew what you were doing. But you got some—alleluia—and were still marked by the newness of her skin; of the experience itself. You smell every electron in the room; feel every hadron, every boson; sense every tau in the air and it didn't even feel like you were doing it. It was not bodily, but ethereal as innocence. Afterward, you don't know how you feel, or how you are supposed to feel. Part of you wishes you had waited and were still a virgin, but you walk your half-virgin self through the streets, over the hills, across the lawn, down the beach, not knowing you just entered the hall to the big dance, and you do not know the steps. You just float through the subway, down the highway, over the hills where the dew has not burned away yet, like the baby fuzz on your upper lip, looking at the little kids playing tag, as you hear music and voices drifting from the houses you cannot make out. Everything has a new feeling to it. You got some. And you don't know what or how, but something is different, take-me-to-the-river changed, because Time just looked out over that field, down that street, up across the sands, and noticed your chump self for the first time—putting a hand on you in a way you will not understand for years.