Читать книгу The Ann Ireland Library - Ann Ireland - Страница 13

Another damn leak in the plumbing. Nothing works in this godforsaken house. Manuel Juerta, a semi-patriot until three months ago, curses the decaying faucet, then the entire crumbling country that it is his misfortune to live in. He’s been jettisoned by his wife from their perfectly serviceable house — to this piece of shit with no view of the Malecón He twists the ancient faucet, and a dribble of water appears at last — un milagro! — indoor plumbing, the latest invention. He splashes his furry face, brushes his teeth, then waits with cruel patience until his glass fills with water, then embarks on the morning gargling routine, making plenty of noise, since Lucia isn’t here to object. It’s still early, judging by the sharp light latticing through the blind. He can hear the usual cacophony of vendors selling their wares, bicycles grinding past on the pavement, and the occasional diesel-spewing camella, the so-called camel bus that takes state workers to their jobs.

The steady rhythmic thump on the other side of the apartment wall is Señora Pineda, pumping her treadle sewing machine for her off-the-books tailoring business that she operates when she isn’t teaching English.

Manuel Juerta is not always in such a foul mood. He’s generally thought to be an ebullient fellow, one of the lucky ones, which he was until recently. He spits into the corroded sink. The air reeks of mould in this cramped bachelor’s box on the edge of downtown.

Visa trouble.

Sometimes a man’s whole existence comes down to two miserable words, one gut-churning phrase. His current difficulty is apparently due to a quartet of nationally trained gymnasts on tour in western Canada who hopped off their trapeze into the waiting arms of the local do-gooders: welcome to the land of opportunity and bottomless stew pots. Manuel grabs his briefcase, courtesy gift from that stint as guitar competition judge in Caracas. Such a generous professor couple hosting his stay, room with attached bathroom, a local woman cooking mounds of food, much of which would get tossed to the dog at the end of the evening. He’d even played for them, a short solo recital, Ponce and then Rodrigo, the great blind composer from Valencia.

Best of both worlds is what Manuel inhabited until three months ago. He’d return home, when he was still permitted to live in his real home, after recitals or teaching and judging duties, with his pockets crammed full of dollars, ready to convert them into the national CULs, and a suitcase bursting with clothes, toiletries, electronic gizmos, which Lucia and her avaricious sisters would dive into the moment he entered the house. Within an hour the black market lines would be humming.

All this appears to be in the past tense. Manuel blames the gymnasts for the immediate difficulty, but as he tears through the flat, packing sheet music into his briefcase, he knows there’s more to it, this visa denial. He pours the last of the raisin bran into a bowl and eats quickly. Even his modest addiction to this breakfast cereal won’t continue. And he’s out of milk, an irritating situation, given the fact that Lucia’s fridge will be stuffed with dairy products and will remain icy cold, since she keeps the appliance plugged in day or night with no heed to energy conservation — thank her resort-working nephew Eric for this — and it doesn’t hurt that her parents are inner circle, and that Gabi, their youngest daughter, is now receptionist at the city’s swankiest hotel. They don’t check her pockets when she leaves work — not a daughter of Lucia and Manuel Juerta.

The conservatorio is his second home — maybe his first home now. It’s located at the north end of Avenida Simón Bolivar in a once-stunning colonial building, now propped with wooden beams at significant junctures so it won’t collapse and kill them all. Today he arrives, ducking cyclists on the road outside, waving a beleaguered hi to Teresa, who stands guard against nothing every day, grabs a bun from Leticia, the girl with the red apron, nods at the gang in the office who labour over an ancient computer, then strides through the still-elegant courtyard surrounded by classrooms from which the usual sound salad emits: fiddles and horns and strings and the rat-a-tat of drums. He loved all this when he could leave at will to embark on his international adventures, then return bestowing gifts of strings and metronomes to his grateful students. They would soak up his stories of the world outside their island, his hobnobbing with the greats.

Lucia, never God’s gift to men, has decided that Manuel is evil incarnate, and she seeks to destroy him. This is not hyperbole.

He kicks open the door of room 117 at the back of the building. His office is bright and relatively well furnished with a desk and chair, floor-to-ceiling bookcases full of imported sheet music and texts, along with multiple copies of his own opus, Guitarra clásica: un método completo, which still seeks an English translator.

The first student of the day knocks cautiously on the door, and Manuel roars “Enter” in English. He was brushing up on the language last night when he received the catastrophic news that he was not only denied entrance into Canada but would not be allowed to leave his own country.

Alberto steps in, a slight fellow with a long nose, aristocratic brow, and excellent teeth. Manuel thinks a lot about teeth these days, since his right cuspid was pulled a month ago and his dentist informed him there were no false teeth to be found until some vague date in the future. He might as well get used to a gap-toothed smile. Better not to smile at all.

His student clears his throat. “Mama tells me I should switch to clarinet so I can play in the National Touring Orchestra.”

Sensible boy.

“Tell your mama she’s quite right. The orchestra will offer thirty weeks employment per year with extra rations. Do you own a clarinet, son?”

The boy perks up. He was expecting a rant. “My uncle will lend me his.”

Manuel opens his hands, palms up. “Then any difficulty is solved. You will master the clarinet in no time. It’s like the guitar. You must play through the breath.”

The boy frowns. He hasn’t thought of it this way. Only thirteen years old, he is one of Manuel’s most talented students, son of one of Lucia’s cronies.

Manuel’s expression changes from avuncular to stormy. Surely, she hasn’t meddled in his business here. But he can imagine it all too well — his wife and Alberto’s mother meeting at the café, Lucia planting the idea of switching to clarinet, of a plausible career for Alberto with steady employment, meanwhile she sips one of those deadly espressos.

“Can I sell my guitar?” Alberto asks in a small voice. He has been instructed to ask this question.

“Leave the task with me, son.”

The boy backs out of the office, relieved.

Manuel stares at the wall, at the peeling poster of Picasso’s morose painting of The Old Guitarist. A cadaverous figure with huge hands, soaked in blue, plays some chord unknown to man. Terrible wrist position, Manuel notes, not for the first time. This is his future if he’s not allowed to leave.

The government says no dice, high risk of defection. Idiots. If he wanted to defect he would have charged off years ago, in Paris or Madrid or Cologne or Winnipeg, or any one of the other cities that have made him their honoured guest. Do they really think he wants to burrow into that cold country for the rest of his time on earth?

He drops onto the office chair and sinks his head into his hands. The days ahead will be pissed away working telephones and chasing bureaucrats: pure misery.

Manuel finally gets through to the Montreal festival organizer, a pleasant woman who speaks English with a Québécois accent. She is appalled by the government’s irrational decision. “We need you here, Maestro,” she says. She’ll make some calls. His flight doesn’t leave for ten days? Then there is still time.

“Lucia.” Manuel stands at the doorway of what used to be his home. The old iron lantern hanging outside hasn’t worked for years, but a warm glow issues from within the building. He smells grilled chicken. Lucia always finds meat.

“What do you want?” his wife asks as she blocks the way in.

He forces himself to match her tone. “Do you know why they aren’t letting me leave?”

“How should I know such things?”

“Because you know everything that goes on here.”

She gives him a steady look. “You believe it’s all my fault?”

“They’ve denied me an exit visa.”

“I’m sorry.” There’s grey in her hair, a broadening white streak that she flips back with one hand.

“If I can’t travel to festivals and concerts, then I can’t earn my living.” He peers over her head at the black-and-white television screen blaring one of the state’s three channels. Where is Gabi? He hardly sees his daughter these days, between her fancy new job and the boyfriend. They used to play duets together, he on guitar and she on flute. His wife starts to close the door, but he sticks out his hand and stops her.

“Tell me what’s going on,” he pleads.

She tosses her hair again. “Perhaps they think you won’t return.”

“I always come home.”

“Yes, but —”

“Nothing is different, Lucia.”

“We are different, Manuel.”

He feels heat flood his face. “Our separation has nothing to do with my profession.”

She shrugs. “Perhaps it’s easier now for you to leave us.”

“Is that what you think?”

She says nothing.

“Have you been putting ideas in the heads of certain employees of the state?” he asks.

“Why should they listen to me?”

She always does this, answers a question with another question.

“I have no life without my connection to the musical world,” he says, staring into a face so familiar that he could map out each crease and freckle by heart. She’s changed in twenty-two years, become leaner, and those violet-flecked eyes seem duller. Life wears them all down, even the privileged few.

“My parents are coming over soon,” she says.

Manuel takes a step backward and nearly falls down the stone staircase. Lucia smiles, and he can’t help himself. He smiles, too. It’s no secret that her parents believe he’s Lucia’s big mistake. She even reaches out a hand to rescue him, and they touch, her skin still soft after all these years.

No, that’s a lie. Her skin is rough and dry, like his.

A baby giggles in the arms of a passing girl. The street is lively this time of the evening, last of the workers coming home, some toting packages, many with nothing. A few old-timers hang out on the sea wall drinking rum from bottles in paper bags. There is music, of course, but not the kind tourists crave, no picturesque ancients singing son or strumming homemade guitars: this is Mexican pop music blasting from someone’s radio. Señora Castilla, who lives in the flat next door, comes out with her watering can to freshen up her window boxes. Seeing Manuel and Lucia, she waters quickly and hurriedly withdraws. She is a sensitive woman, a teacher of post-colonial studies at the university.

Lucia lets go of his hand, then steps out onto the porch with him. Her expression has changed. She looks afraid, and when she speaks, it is in a whisper.

“Eric is in trouble.”

This is the helpful nephew, a brilliant boy who already manages kitchen operations at one of the sprawling beach resorts.

“How?” Manuel asks. He sees the vein in her neck pulse. She is wearing a cotton sweater and jeans rolled up mid-calf. The tiny stud earrings were a present he brought back from Italy.

He touches her thin shoulder. This is like old times, when he would comfort her through her nervous episodes.

“He’s been apprehended,” she says.

“Yes?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Yes?”

She tosses her hands into the air. “A total squalid mess.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We’re all sorry, Manuel.”

“Can your parents help?”

“Of course, they’re making submissions to certain people. They’re coming over tonight to discuss tactics.” She checks her watch, the fake Bulova he bought off a street vendor in Paris. “But because the hotel is owned by Spain, our government ...” She doesn’t need to fill in the rest of the sentence. Manuel understands perfectly: the state must show itself to have no patience with illegalities or the resorts might disappear, leaving the island even more destitute.

“What has Eric been accused of?” he asks. The list of possibilities is long: diverting kitchen supplies being the most obvious. Manuel has sampled its offerings many times. But it could be something nastier, procuring women for conventioneers, or robbing suppliers.

“I can’t say,” Lucia tells him.

That is how he leaves her, a small-framed woman, no longer young, standing in the doorway of the house they once shared.

Guillermo is no help. Manuel’s colleague at the Foundation for Filmic Arts stares at the computer screen, hand on mouse, editing his latest masterpiece. “I need two more minutes of music,” he says. “Ending’s reshot and your score doesn’t work.”

“Write me a letter I can take to the Department of Immigration,” Manuel urges, while his friend presses a key, and swoosh, the figure on the monitor disappears.

Mónica saunters in, holding two mugs of coffee. “You look terrible,” she says, giving Manuel a quick once-over. Then to Guillermo: “Delete the reaction shot. No, next one.” She leans over his shoulder, sipping one coffee and recklessly setting the other next to the precious keyboard. She points at the screen. “Too obvious. Flash back to the kid instead.” She straightens and says to Manuel, “Have you brought us the final two minutes?”

Guillermo, without lifting his gaze from his work, says, “I just told him about it.”

Manuel leans against the concrete block wall — this building was built during the Soviet era — pressing his shoulder blades against a poster advertising Neptuna’s most recent triumph, a documentary about the revival of certain antique grain cultivation processes. He moans. “No one is listening to me!”

“You’re in a state,” Mónica observes.

“My flight for Montreal takes off on Monday, but they’ve denied me a visa.”

Guillermo finally twists around on his stool and glances at his colleague. “Tough luck, brother.” He uses the resigned tone that is much in fashion.

They work in a converted elementary school classroom that used to be open air on one side but has long since been boxed in. Guillermo and Manuel rigged up the trestle table that the computer rests on.

“Tough luck?” Manuel snorts. “It’s a catastrophe!” He hovers over his friends, smelling the coffee no one has offered. “I could be blacklisted, never able to leave. The only reason I can survive in this backwater is because I get out whenever I please.”

“Lucky you,” Mónica says.

Guillermo is silent.

“You two are used to being stuck here,” Manuel rails on. “But I’m not. They might as well haul me off in a straitjacket.” He knows how this sounds, but he’s too upset to care. They’re jealous of his privileges, but he’s earned them, and through his travels he brings honour to the country.

Guillermo taps on the keyboard, slurps coffee, and peers at the screen, which is fast-forwarding through the garden scene: Papa and the boy find the bleating goat, look up to see a man with knife in hand. This is where Manuel composed a sprightly arrangement of the children’s song “Señora Santana, Why Does the Boy Cry?”

“I’ve been invited to attend festivals in Madrid, Seville, Lyon, and Zurich next year,” he says. “It’s inconceivable that they can hold me prisoner here.”

He waits for reassurance.

Mónica, without glancing up, repeats, “Inconceivable.”

Her tone, inflected with irony, enrages Manuel. “Lucia is gouging me. She must have her trips to the massage therapist and special shoes for arch support. I can’t possibly survive on the pittance of my conservatory salary.” Realizing that his colleagues are forced to survive on a similar pittance, he quickly adds, “When I go abroad, don’t I bring you domestic items and computer software and —” He searches for an item that made Guillermo shout with joy. “This external hard drive, super-megabyte —”

“Which got fried in last week’s electrical seizure,” Guillermo reminds him.

Blackouts are a regular occurrence, often followed by a sudden disruptive surge as power returns. Mónica rubs her husband’s shoulders. “Pobrecito.”

Again the resigned tone. It is this attitude that Manuel must regularly flee, or he, too, will be drawn into the sinkhole of passivity.

An idea strikes him, an old one, many times courted and just as many times denied: this time if he wangles a visa, he may never return. It would serve them all right for not appreciating his talents. With Lucia on the warpath, recent life has been a misery. Their daughter is well placed as receptionist at the hotel. His job here as father and husband is over.

Mademoiselle Gagnon from Montreal has been trying to reach Manuel all day. “Is something wrong with your phone down there?” she asks.

Manuel has to laugh. He’s talking over the din of late-afternoon conversation at Café Bohemia, a place frequented by tourists that features an operating telephone.

“We’ve pulled it together,” Mademoiselle Gagnon tells him. Her French accent is musical, sliding into his ear like Afternoon of a Faun. The knot in his stomach finally begins to uncoil.

“Thank you,” he says after a moment, realizing he is close to weeping. His future is in the hands of others. The patrons of the café, mainly tourists and local guides, watch with interest. He’s become a familiar figure in recent days, darting in and out to use the phone.

Mademoiselle Gagnon says, “Of course you must finalize things on your end.”

Manuel doesn’t feel a shred of guilt about Eric’s arrest. Until three months ago when Lucia booted Manuel out of the house, his only involvement in Eric’s shenanigans was eating the roast chicken that magically appeared on his plate several times a week. Since then it’s been rice and beans with a scoop of Chef Ana’s unnamed fish when he’s desperate for protein. He pictures Montreal’s shiny streets and bustling bistros, a riot of flavours. Fortunately, he’s been granted a generous per diem. His attendance as judge at the festival guarantees a higher quality of competitors. This is not vanity but simple fact.

Manuel spends the following day cycling between state funcionarios in their cubicles, watching them laboriously type the necessities of his case. None seems to share his sense of urgency. Of course, he hides this urgency by sitting with an arm slung over the back of the chair and legs crossed. One must be slightly haughty and never reveal a hint of desperation.

He is sent to the next office and the next carrying his growing dossier and multiple copies of his passport until he ends up in a tiny cabinet where a young man earnestly dabs at a cracked keyboard and stares at the monitor that remains blank. Without speaking to Manuel, he disappears for twenty minutes and returns with a plug-in hard drive retrieved from another office, but soon realizes there is no cord to attach it to his own computer and begins to rummage around in a box at his feet, pulling out wires and cords and tossing them onto the floor. Tourists find such poverty quaint, along with the crumbling facades of the once-noble colonial buildings.

Manuel clears his throat. “I have business with you,” he reminds the functionary who has worked himself into a sweat. Startled, the young man pulls himself up. He is light-skinned, almost blond, with blue eyes. Manuel has copperish hair, what’s left of it, and freckled skin.

The lad grabs his file, then begins to scrutinize each page for an interminable length of time.

Manuel shifts in his seat. “I understand there will be a further tariff to pay,” he says with the proper mix of pride and obsequiousness.

The young man rises from his chair, closes the door, and returns, pressing his buttocks against the edge of the desk. Now he is facing Manuel.

“Fifty dollars,” he says, meaning the convertible pesos worth twenty-five times the national currency.

Without moving a hand toward his wallet, Manuel says in an equally calm tone, “Shall we say thirty?”

The youth considers, drops onto his chair, and puts his feet up on the desk. “Forty-five.” He stares at the ceiling, the picture of patience.

Manuel peels off the bills and slides them under a coffee cup on the desk.

Suddenly, the computer screen springs to life, and Manuel spots his own name printed on the monitor. A rash of typing ensues, then without a word the functionary disappears from the room, clutching an ancient floppy disk and leaving Manuel to cool his heels for another twenty minutes. Will there be another “tariff” to pay? He’s half asleep in the airless little room when his tormentor returns with a freshly printed form.

“Your visa,” the youth announces, handing the paper to Manuel with reluctance. The precious tarjeta blanca.