Lost in the City: Tree of Desire and Serafin (7 page)

“Where?” Angustias' threats immediately had the desired effect on the girl.

“Upstairs. Go look for it.”

Cristina was looking at things as if she didn't believe them, as if she knew that when she remembered them, she wasn't going to believe them: the glass cabinet with small porcelain figures—why so many ducks?—the clock with a pendulum that was like a tired heart, the family pictures in gold frames, the tapestries on the stairs—whose house was it? And what were they going to steal?
Before going up the last step, she stopped, stroked the handrail, and looked back at Angustias fussing over her injured knee; the windows with the curtains open so anyone passing on the street could see them . . . Her fear was like lead in her feet, keeping her from moving forward. Who was up there? There was no one who would defend her. She swallowed hard and began saying the Ave Maria. She went down a few steps to look into the dining room at the bronze fruit bowl with grapes, like a sun in the middle of the table.

Angustias suddenly appeared and yelled at her. “Bring the alcohol right now, you little fool!”

“I'm going to get some grapes. I haven't had any breakfast.”

The look that hit her was enough to make her run upstairs.

But on the floor above, as she went near the first door, she heard a voice . . . A voice? She stopped with her legs rigid and a hand stretched out, like in a game of statues. Then there
was
someone. She dared to bend her neck closer and heard more clearly: “We-we-well . . . no-no-now . . .” It was a guttural, opaque voice, as if coming from someone speaking out of the depths of a cave.

She stumbled down the stairs, hardly able to talk by the time she reached Angustias.

“Someone . . . up there . . . I heard . . .”

Cristina could endure no more and started to cry. Angustias looked upstairs with an annoyed expression, but said mildly,

“All right, we'll go up together.”

15

Going up,
Cristina could not resist the desire to hold her hand, but since Angustias rejected her, she had to content herself with hanging onto her skirt. A Santa Teresa in a flowery frame looked at her with sympathetic eyes, as if caressing her.

“Poor Doña Luz,” Angustias was telling her, “I know her very well. She's got time all mixed up. She thinks what happened yesterday is happening today and what's happening today happened yesterday. Her daughter committed suicide twenty years ago, and if you ask her, she'll say she has just seen her.”

Angustias calmly opened the door where Cristina had heard the voice. The man with the knife held ready, the police, Papá . . .

“It's been so many years since I was in here,” Angustias said.

Cristina held back, leaning against the doorway, and from there she saw the elderly lady in the brass bed, among lace pillowcases, wearing a cap and a shawl around her shoulders.

“Good evening, Doña Luz. It's Angustias,” she said, sitting at the foot of the bed.

“Ah, Angustias.” She opened her mouth so wide her jaw seemed to come loose and looked around with her eyes unfocused.

“Pretty soon I'll bring your supper.”

“Yes, Angustias, yes.”

“But first I want to introduce my little granddaughter,” and she motioned to Cristina to come close.

Cristina walked as if before an altar. She was terrified of the old lady's hands, almost transparent on the edge of the sheet. And she felt even more terror when one of those hands raised up to find her and pat her.

“Her name is Cristina.”

“A pretty girl.”

When she felt the old lady's hand, it seemed to Cristina that a fish was grazing her cheek.

“Give Doña Luz a kiss, child.”

Cristina leaned over the bed to kiss her forehead. She was revolted by the wrinkled skin, the watery, yellow eyes without eyelashes that seemed to look through things, and the vague smile.

“Did your daughter come, Doña Luz?” Angustias asked in a tone that suggested a trick.

“Yes, Luisita.”

“Luisita, of course. Is she well?”

“Fine. With Tubby.”

“Tubby. What a handsome boy. By now he's very big.”

“Ve-very big.” Her eyes were searching, as if she were talking with a shadow.

Cristina saw herself in the mirror on the wardrobe and again felt a slight dizziness. Was that herself? Standing there with her hands
clasped over her stomach, near an ancient-looking bed where two old women were talking and remembering, their reflection seeming to fade away?

Yes, herself, there.

“Well, Doña Luz, I'm going to get your supper.”

“Yes, Angustias, yes.”

“A little
atole
?”

“Yes.”

“I'm also going to put some alcohol on my scratch. Look.”

“Ugh, ugly.”

“I did it down below in your garden.”

“Io-iodine.”

“Yes, later. Right now I'll just put some alcohol on it. Cristina will stay with you.”

Cristina's thumbs drummed rapidly on her stomach. She looked with pleading eyes at Angustias, who reinforced her order with only a nod of her head as she went out.

They were silent, although Doña Luz kept looking at her and smiling.

“In the wardrobe,” Doña Luz said after a few moments.

Cristina remained quiet, turning up her hands in question.

“There,” Doña Luz said with a movement of her chin toward the wardrobe.

“Should I open it?”

“Yes, yes.” Her smile grew wider, and a small gleam crossed her eyes.

Cristina obeyed. She had the feeling she was opening a casket, and she looked at the row of old dresses as if they were ghosts.

“Up above.”

Cristina looked at the shelf in the upper part of the wardrobe.

“In that box?”

“Yes, yes.”

She had to stand on a chair. Lips trembling, Doña Luz watched her movements.

Cristina brought the box down. The dust made her cough. She opened it with the fear she'd had on entering the room, as if inside she might find something beyond imagining. Even though the old
lady's smile and even her confusion were gaining ground, Cristina's confidence was growing. She put the lid on the floor carefully, as if it could disintegrate, and lifted the tissue paper. Inside were a straw hat with a veil, a notebook with blue covers, some peacock feathers, a photograph album, and a doll.

“How lovely!” she said, picking it up with both hands as if it were a baby. It had a muslin dress with lace on the sleeves and at the neck; rosy cheeks that contrasted with the pallor of the rest of the face; and curly, blonde hair.

“She's very beautiful.” Cristina added.

“Beautiful, yes.”

Turning, she saw Doña Luz was weeping. Cristina's smile evaporated and she put the doll on her shoulder, as if the movement might have hurt her and stimulated the old lady's crying.

“It's yo-yours.” Doña Luz said from within her tears.

“Mine?” The smile reappeared, covering her face.

She hugged the doll firmly, and looked at her as if questioning her.

“Oh, how wonderful!” she added.

“The pictures.”

“Would you like to see the pictures?”

Cristina felt obliged to do whatever she wished. She left the doll on a wicker rocking chair and went to get the album. Doña Luz took the album with a sigh, put it in her lap, and untied the blue ribbon. Emotion increased the trembling of her lips, pushing out her lower lip. Cristina felt her fright fading at last, giving way to a sad, salty tenderness that burned in her eyes like the dust from the wardrobe.

Doña Luz showed her the yellow snapshots, with edges eaten away by time, of a blonde woman with gentle eyes in full skirts and a man with hair slicked back, posed as if looking over his shoulder.

“Me. My husband.”

“What a handsome couple!”

In one they were in the leafy garden paths near the stone fountain, which Cristina recognized and pointed out, saying, “It's down below!” to Doña Luz' smile of agreement and enthusiasm; in another they were seated on a small stone bench looking at the sky;
in another he was smoking a cigar behind a huge rolltop desk; in another she, with a listless air as if she were about to faint, by the trunk of a eucalyptus tree; in the breakfast room on the terrace, he with a forced smile, she pouring from an elaborate teapot; in the country, hand in hand, their heads leaning together and, behind, the wavy profile of some high mountains.

Doña Luz' eyes found the stability they had seemed to seek, and she pressed her lips together so her tears rolled slowly over her cheeks. Cristina looked at her, she herself almost crying, and went a little closer.

“Now, now, Doña Luz. Don't cry. I know how you feel.”

But the picture at which both had paused thoughtfully was one in which the woman appeared much younger, in a batiste dress, and seated on the lap of a gray-haired gentleman with a stern look.

“My Papá,” said Doña Luz, pointing to it with a wrinkled finger.

Cristina's heart skipped a beat. The young girl—how old was she, seventeen, eighteen?—had her arm around his back and her glowing face on her father's shoulder, as if holding him close, softening his apparent firmness, with a security of possession not reflected in the other pictures, and without that languid air that seemed to have overcome her.

“My Papá,” Doña Luz repeated, outlining his profile with her finger.

Cristina put herself in the photograph, and it was she who was clinging to her father's shoulder, putting her face near his to gain from his strength, and with that peaceful expression that says all is well here beside you. She burst out crying openly, like Doña Luz, with a corollary cry, ageless, equally old.

16

Doña Luz
closed the album suddenly, raising a light cloud of dust in which Cristina thought she saw memories and pain depart.

“I don't want . . . pictures,” Doña Luz said. She sighed, picked up the ends of the blue ribbon, and began to tie them. “I'm crying.”

“I cried, too.” Cristina said and passed a hand in front of her eyes as if brushing away a spider web . . . She had not wanted to cry. One
night she had sworn she would never cry again in her whole life. Papá had finished a long argument with Mamá by slamming the bathroom door, and Cristina felt a wave of anger rise to her lips, and she clenched her fists. Then she swore, no matter what happened, she would never cry again.

Doña Luz rested her limp hand on the album's leather cover and let her heavy eyelids close slowly.

“The . . . notebook . . .”

“You want me to get the notebook?”

“Yes,” Doña Luz answered without opening her eyes.

Cristina went to get the notebook with the blue cover and took it to the bed.

“Would you like me to read it?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?” She leafed through the pages: it was written in blue ink and small, tight handwriting with heavily marked commas and crosses on the T's, and some of the paragraphs underlined.

“Stories . . . She wrote them . . . Luisita.”

“Luisita, your daughter?”

“Yes.”

“Which would you like me to read?” Tiny stains had diluted the ink and turned it to a very pale blue.

“It doesn't . . . matter.”

“They're very long, Doña Luz. We won't have time.”

“Some of it.”

“Well, but I can hardly make out the writing. Let's see the end of this one. Wherever . . . she went she asked for it. And nobody . . . knew what to tell her. What kind of tree? And she kept on asking . . . I can't understand it here, Doña Luz. It says something about . . . I don't know. Then she traveled . . .”

Cristina heard Angustias' voice calling from the first floor and it was as if her mind came back to reality. What was she doing there? She left the book open on the bed and stood up, tense.

“Señora is calling me. We have to go. It's late.”

Doña Luz seemed not to understand and reached toward the place where the child had been, stroking the air. The shawl fell off her shoulders.

“Stay here . . .” Her sad, trembling smile was meant to be an invitation.

“I can't, Doña Luz. Really.”

“The end . . . of the story.”

Cristina looked toward the door with anxious eyes.

“Well, quickly.”

She sat on the edge of the bed and fixed the shawl on Doña Luz' shoulders. Angustias was yelling at the top of her lungs downstairs, calling her. Cristina picked up the book and continued reading.

“Let's see, where did I stop? Now I've lost the place. Anyway, I'm just going to read the very end. By herself . . . she traveled through the world. I don't understand very well what it says here, either. Something about rivers. Many years passed . . . and she found it . . . in the deepest part of a forest . . . and she said to herself, I knew the tree of desire, of desires . . . that they told me about when I was a child . . . existed here. And . . . the child was no longer a child, but an old lady, tired of . . . I think it says searching, Doña Luz.”

Angustias' shrieking could be heard closer. Perhaps she was coming up the stairs. Intermittently, Cristina looked toward the door.

“She had searched for so long that . . . I don't understand anything clearly here at all, Doña Luz. Then, among the other trees . . . she recognized it immediately, as if it had . . . always been near . . . And she was . . . very sorry . . . because the tree was as old as she was, about to die . . . as if it had been aging . . . at the same time . . . and she said . . .”

Angustias exploded into the room like a tornado, screaming and waving her arms around. Cristina and Doña Luz shrank back, looking at her, terrified. The notebook fell to the floor.

“You stupid brat! Do you think you can ignore me? Didn't you hear me calling you? Do you want them to find us here? Get downstairs right this minute!”