The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (49 page)

“That’s my son, Rubén,” said Sra. de León, who had come up quietly next to me. “We’re very proud of him. He’s living in Paris, now. He’s been a great help to his father in the last few years.” She gave Sarah a frosty, slightly challenging smile.

Eventually we were all moored around the table. Dinner excellent. Amazed by quality. Sadly, though, was unhungry in the extreme. Throughout parade of courses McGees and de Leóns conversing with the informal amiability of old friends: an archaeological site just uncovered nearby, then lurid local gossip—a nun from the U.S. who claimed to have been abducted from a convent in town and tortured. Though eventually, de León told us, the Embassy revealed that the cigarette burns all over the nun’s back had been inflicted by a lesbian lover.

“It’s always in small places that the most incredible things happen, isn’t it?” Dot said. “New York City can’t compete with this story.”

De León turned to Sarah with a brief burst of male charm. “This government is a collection of amateurs,” he said obscurely.

“Vicente is sentimental about the old days,” Sra. de León said. “When less was required of us.”

“I will not walk around my own property armed,” Sr. de León said, his warmth disappearing in the frozen wastes of his wife’s smile.

There was a small silence as Sra. de León looked at her napkin with an amused, measured loathing. “Ah,” she said, as maids brought in trays of dessert and coffee. “Here we are.”

The McGees appeared to be accustomed to the climatic shiftings between the de Leóns. “Vicente”—McGee waved his fork—“Angélica has outdone herself tonight.”

“A triumph,” I said, gently pedaling Sarah’s foot. “And I never would have dreamed it was possible to do something like this with a banana.”

“Oh, nor I,” Sarah said, withdrawing her foot.

“Very simple,” Sr. de León said. “Just caramelize lightly, add a little orange, a little rum, and flame.” He handed me a small stack of cards; turned out he had had all the recipes from dinner typed up.

Gabriela laughed. “Daddy is so shy, isn’t he,” she said.

“Yes, ha,” I agreed. Consommé with Tomato, Avocado, and Cilantro, I read. Sole with Good Morning! Grapefruit. Carrots with Zest of Good Morning! Orange. Volcano Salad. Good Morning! Bananas with Juice of Good Morning! Oranges and Rum. Dark Roast Good Morning! Coffee and Cardamom Chewies. “I hardly know how to thank you,” I said. “These will really
make
my article—”

“It is my great pleasure,” de León said.

“And it will be nice to have some decent press up there for a change,” Gabriela said.

“Gaby,” Sra. de León chided.

“No, but it’s true,” Gabriela said. She turned to Sarah. “You know, it happens all the time. Some reporter, who knows nothing about this country, who doesn’t care anything about it, who only cares about making a reputation for himself, comes down and says he wants to write an objective story about life here. And the next thing you know, you open up some magazine and read the most fantastic stuff. As if the country were one big concentration camp—as if all we ever did was bomb the villages.”

Sarah put down her fork.

“I
know
,” Gabriela said. “Never one word about the
wonderful
things—”

“Gaby,” Sra. de León said, and put down her own fork, “why don’t you show our new friends the garden.”

It was a great relief to leave the table. Gabriela led us through the pungent floral riot, and cut some elegant little lilies for Sarah. Sarah thanked her; asked how far the plantation extended. Gabriela looked puzzled for a moment, then laughed. Explained that we weren’t on the plantation at all—that it was hours and hours away, over terrible roads. Said, “Of course, these days if we were to go we would use helicopters, and it would only take minutes. But we never do anymore. Even Daddy hardly goes.”

Sarah silent, considering. Then asked who was it, that being the case, who saw to the planting, harvesting, etc.

Gabriela mercifully innocent—entirely impervious to offense potential of Sarah’s question.

“Oh, we have what amounts to a rather large village living up there,” Gabriela said. “And some very reliable overseers. But we always used to go out at harvest time ourselves, anyway.”

Frankly, was very touched by her regretful tone. “You enjoyed it,” I observed.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I loved it. We all did. We loved to watch the harvest, to ride around the countryside on our horses…Well, it was a long time ago, when we could do that—that was back when our Indians still had their own little plots of land up north, and we had them brought down on trucks for the harvest, big trucks, from their tiny villages. And they were all from different villages, so they wore different colors and patterns in their clothes, and they spoke all sorts of different languages. They were so strange, so beautiful. I used to love to listen to them, and to watch them. To watch them harvesting the coffee…”

“Harvesting coffee,” I said. “You know, I never think of coffee as a legume, but, of course—
coffee beans
!”

Gabriela smiled and shook her hair. In the moonlight she had a newborn look. “Coffee isn’t really a bean at all,” she said. “It’s a berry. It’s very nice to look at—it turns bright red. But it’s a nuisance to pick. You really have to watch what you’re doing or you can strip the plant. Still, at least, it’s not heavy, as long as you’re not hauling the sacks. So it’s one thing that small children can learn to do. Fortunately for the families.”

Sarah started to speak, and stopped.

“It was so beautiful,” Gabriela said. “I wish I could show it to you as it was then…” She sighed. “You have to forgive me for talking and talking like this. But there are so few people who would understand what it’s like for me. People here can’t really understand because most have never lived in the States or Europe, and my friends in the States can’t understand, because they’ve never been here.”

“Do go on,” I said. I glanced reprimandingly at Sarah.

“Oh, I don’t know…” Gabriela smiled faintly, as though she were watching something across the garden. “Well, it’s been so long since I’ve been back, hasn’t it. I was about twelve, I suppose, the last time. That’s right—because my brother, Rubén, who’s in Paris now, was sixteen. It’s incredible to think about that time, really. It was very confusing. It was very hard, particularly for my parents, because it was just when things were at their worst in this country, and the guerrilla movement really had some strength. And Rubén had picked up some funny ideas. He was just at that age, you know, when children are very susceptible. And I suppose some older boys had gotten hold of him because our family, well”—she smiled sadly—“because our family is very well known. And Rubén began to go around saying things he couldn’t possibly even have understood—talking about giving land away, ‘returning it,’ was how he put it. And ruinous increases in wages. Things that would absolutely destroy his own family. And Mommy and Daddy tried to reason with him. They were very patient—they kept telling him, Rubén, you know, certain people own the land. They have legal title to it. You can’t just snatch it away from them, can you? And if we’re to drink coffee, if we’re to eat fruit, someone is going to have to pick it. And it’s a tragedy, of course, that you can’t just pay the laborers anything you’d like, but it’s a fact. It’s simply a fact. Because what do you think would happen to the world if we did? And a banana cost ten dollars? Or a cup of coffee cost twenty dollars? But Rubén would always just slam out of the house. So it was a very hard time for us all. And of course that was the period when the workers had to be watched very, very closely, because, you can imagine—if it was possible to contaminate Rubén, imagine how much easier it would be with a poor, uneducated Indian.”

Gabriela reached out to touch a pink rambling rose. “So,” she said, “we were all up for the harvest one year, and there was a morning when I woke up very, very early. Before the sun rose. I woke up to this delicious smell, this absolutely delicious smell, of roasting coffee. And I thought, well, now it’s time to get up. And then about one thousand things happened in my mind all at once, because I realized it wasn’t time to get up—it wasn’t time to get up at all, and something was happening that couldn’t possibly be happening. And so, before I even knew what I was doing or why, I rushed over to my window. And the window was black and red—black with night and red with fire, wave after wave of fire in the black sky. And the whole store house, all our coffee, was up in flames.”

“Oh—” Sarah said. She sat down on the rim of an old fountain from which cascaded tiny weightless white flowers.

“Yes,” Gabriela said. She seated herself next to Sarah and drew me down beside her. “It was terrible. And after that I never really went back. Mommy and Daddy felt it would be too dangerous, and of course it wasn’t nearly as pleasant, because security was tightened up a lot, too. The army came—there are still hundreds of soldiers living there, in fact.” She laughed. “Daddy doesn’t like that at all. He says it’s more of a—what do you call it?—protection racket, than protection, and that the army is bleeding us worse than the workers. But what can you do, after all? And there are guard towers now, and the landing strips, and those awful, you know,
fences.
So it’s not so nice anymore.

“But Rubén went back once again with my father. And instead of bringing him to his senses, it all just seemed to make him worse—angrier and wilder and more unhappy. My parents wanted him to go away to school. To Harvard, or perhaps to Oxford. But he wanted to stay in the country, and it turned out to be a very bad thing for everyone that he did. Because then he really became involved with all these crazy student groups. It was so sad. They were so young—they thought they were idealists, but, really, they were just being used. Rubén had been such a sweet boy, such a wonderful brother, but he became very hard. It was just this hard, awful propaganda all the time.”

Gabriela frowned at a petal she was smoothing between her fingers. “He said terrible things. He said that we were thieves, you know, and so on. And it’s not as though any of us are thrilled with the way things are, of course, but after all—it is people like our parents who generate the entire economy here.” She sighed. “He said that people were starving. Heavens! You have to be
stupid
to starve in this climate, don’t you?” She turned to Sarah for confirmation and smiled gently. “The fruit simply drops off the trees.

“Anyhow, during the next year, several of our workers and some of the other students—friends of Rubén’s—got killed and were found by the side of one road or another. So, even though none of them were from important families, we were all terrified for Rubén. And in fact it was late that same year that the first letter arrived.”

Inside, in the soft light, we could see Gabriela’s parents and the McGees sipping their coffee and chatting contentedly. I closed my eyes and raised my face to the tiny white flowers above us, as though they were a spray of cool water.

“And the letter stated it all in no uncertain terms—They knew who he was, they knew
where
he was, and so forth. Well, my father got on the phone right away, and started sending my brother to see important people. My father had friends in the police, and friends in the army. And he even had several friends in the Embassy—your embassy here—so we thought we could take care of it quickly enough. But every day went by, and everyone my brother talked to said they didn’t know anything about it—they couldn’t find out who was sending the letters. And one day Rubén went to see a colonel in the army, whom Rubén and I had known since we were
babies
—my father is the
god
father of one of this man’s children. And Rubén came back from that meeting looking like a corpse.”

A little leaf spiraled down through the air and landed on Gabriela’s dress. She picked it off and looked at it affectionately before she let it flutter away. “Because the Colonel said, you know, right away, that of course he’d help, and he made a phone call while Rubén was sitting right there in his office. The Colonel explained the situation over the phone to whoever it was he’d called, and then he just sat there on the phone, listening, for about twenty minutes, Rubén told us later. And when he hung up, Rubén asked what the other person had said, and the Colonel said, ‘Nothing.’”

Gabriela stopped speaking for a moment, and as she resumed, Sarah’s cold hand rested briefly on mine. “So the Colonel stood up to walk Rubén to the door, and at the door he burst into tears. And he said, ‘I’m sorry. I can’t help you. But now, listen to me, please—there’s something I have to say to you.’ He put his hands on Rubén’s shoulders and looked into his eyes, and said, ‘When you leave your house, be sure to tell somebody where you’re going. Always walk in the direction of traffic’”—Gabriela leaned up for a moment, as I had, into the cool spray of white flowers—“‘and be very, very careful when you cross the street.’”

This morning particularly blue and bright. Ricardo’s greeting, María’s smile, the roses, the hummingbirds—everything bright, large, standing out in the blue air as though I’d been far away for a long time. Woke up famished. Couldn’t eat enough. Melon, grapefruit, pineapple, banana—I ate and ate. Thought of all that fantastic food last night, just sitting in front of me. Laughed slightly. “Horrible, wasn’t it?” I said to Sarah. “Thank God we’ll never have to do that again.” My fork scraped startlingly against my plate. “Sarah?” I said.

Saw she hadn’t touched her fruit or her juice or her coffee. I speared a piece of banana and held it out to her. “No?” I said. Waved it temptingly. “All right, but you’ll be starving by the time we get to the airport.”

She looked at me, then slammed her napkin down onto the table and stalked off.

Made an embarrassed farewell to Ricardo, hurried to our room, where I found Sarah sitting, staring at me accusingly from the unmade bed—the geological record of the aeons of our horrible night, our tense, mid-sleep lovemaking during which the ghouls from Gabriela’s wild story rubbed their wicked little numbing dream hands and waited.