Читать книгу A Land Without Sin - Paula Huston - Страница 12

Jan scraped his feet on the straw porch mat a couple of times, still stalling, then opened the door and went inside. I hung back as long as I could, until Rikki came back out. “Eva,” he said, “what are you doing?”

I followed him obediently, through the empty living room decorated with a small Christmas tree and down a hall to what, it suddenly occurred to me, could only be a bedroom. Oh, God, I thought, she’s sick. That’s the deal here. And then Rikki stepped aside and gently pushed me into the room, and I saw for myself: a bed with a thin woman in it, her eyes as brown as the immigration officer’s, and classic cheekbones, too sharp, as though she never ate enough. She was wearing a white T-shirt and a dark blue Indian skirt and sandals, and was propped up against pillows. She didn’t move, except to turn her head, and the curious limpness of her arms and hands made me think for a moment that she was paralyzed. But then she brought one hand up and extended it out toward me, and I saw the way that it wavered in the air like kelp shifting in the tide. She couldn’t even shape a symmetrical smile.

“This is my mom, Anne,” said Rikki.

I stepped forward and took her limp hand. Her skin was smooth and cold, and I could feel the bones inside.

“Eva,” she said slowly in a slight but unmistakable British accent. “How nice to meet you.”

I was still holding her hand and not sure what to do next.

“I am so sorry not to be up when you arrived. Felice went off to the market to get the things for dinner, and it’s hard to make it into the chair on my own these days.”

The accent, also a surprise, added a note of class to a scene that seemed to be drifting dangerously close to the rocky shoals of melodrama, but then I made the mistake of glancing around at the rest of the room. Sure enough, there sat a serious-looking wheelchair, the kind used by people who are never going to walk again. I set her hand back on the bedspread and tried not to look at the chair. I felt clammy, as though I’d breathed too many diesel fumes or drunk bad water.

She was still smiling, difficult though it must have been, and I thought, she’s smiled more in ten minutes than Jan has the whole time I’ve known him. I tried to fix my eyes on hers so that it didn’t appear that I was avoiding looking at her, but it was hard. Despite my prizewinning headshots of bewildered two-year-olds in war zones, weakness is a kind of horror to me, and once I smell it, I keep as much distance as I can. A strange form of cowardice on my part, but there it is. I looked at Jan for the first time, who was not showing much but not hiding anything either. Somber, dependable Jan, who liked to smoke his pipe in the evenings. Good old Jan with his red driving cap and his hands easy on the wheel.

“How about,” I said, “if I start things going in the kitchen? You know, whatever Felice—that’s her name?—was thinking of making for dinner.”

Anne started to shake her head no, a slow, painful-to-watch motion, but I cut her off before she could say it. “I like to cook,” I said. “Ask these guys if I like to cook.” I wanted to be out of the room. I could feel my hands fidgeting.

“She does, Mom,” said Rikki. “She makes great arroz con pollo.”

“It’s no problem, really,” I said, “and I need to stretch after sitting all day on that bus.” Then I came to a belated halt, realizing how this must sound.

She’d stopped trying to say no and simply watched my face with a faint, uncertain smile. I backed out of the room and fled down the hall to the living room before I made it worse. There, I sank down on the sofa and sat for a minute, getting my breath. This was impossible. I could not deal with handicapped people. Dead people, fine. I’d photographed my share. People scarred and scalded and shot, all right, as long as it was clear they were either going to die or get better. But the long, drawn-out, permanent stuff was beyond me.

Pretty soon Rikki came down the hall. He stood in front of the sofa looking down, not saying anything. Looking at my face, he must have been able to see what was there—that his mother revolted me. He got pale, then flushed, then went pale again. Then he gave me what on anyone else would have been a hard look and went to the kitchen. I sat there for a few minutes longer. When I finally went in, he was dragging things out of the cupboard and didn’t turn around.

“Look, Rikki,” I began.

He waved me off.

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

“Never mind.”

I put my hand on his arm, which was shaking a little, he was so upset with me. I could see that for years his job had been to defend her against the cruel world and its cruel remarks. This was the way he judged people: by how they reacted to her. “Nobody told me,” I said. “Neither of you. You shied away from it every time I brought her up. So I built a different picture of her in my mind and it was a shock, that’s all. I didn’t figure on her being sick. You could have said.”

“My dad doesn’t like to talk about it,” he said, still not looking at me or down at my hand on his arm. “He said it’s better that way. It’s nobody’s business but ours. He doesn’t like people gossiping about her, he says.”

“But Rikki. I’m not just anybody. I’m living here for the next two weeks, or at least I’m supposed to. And it’s Christmas. That’s not somebody who’s going to gossip, that’s somebody who needs to know ahead of time.”

“You think she’s ugly.”

“No.” I shook my head and I shook his arm. “That’s not fair.”

“You looked sick to your stomach when you saw her.”

“Well, okay,” I said. “I admit it. I’m not good around sick people. I’d make a bad nurse. I get the willies when I see people hurting like that.”

“She’s not hurting.”

“What’s wrong with her? You still haven’t said.”

He shrugged. “She’s got MS. Multiple sclerosis. She got it when I was six, when we were first at Tikal. It wasn’t that bad for a long time. But now. . .” He shrugged again.

“What’s going to happen to her?” I still had my hand on his arm, but now I was giving it a little squeeze.

He finally looked down at me, sighing. “What do you think?”

“She’s going to die.”

He nodded. We looked at each other.

“They don’t know how long,” he said, “but when they get to this stage, sometimes it speeds up. First she won’t be able to get up at all anymore, then she won’t be able to talk or see.”

“She’ll have to go to a hospital.”

“Somewhere. We don’t know where yet. But for now she wants to stay in the house and do her usual stuff until she can’t anymore.”

“What stuff?”

“She’s been teaching since a couple of years after she got sick, after she couldn’t keep her balance enough to be out in the field with Dad anymore.”

I thought about Jan in the early morning, sitting by the campfire with his big bound journal. “What does she teach?” I asked.

“She teaches people how to read. She always used to have classes at the church, but now it’s too hard for her to get there, even with Felice. So they come here, and Felice writes on the board for her because she can’t hold onto the chalk anymore. But I don’t know how much longer she can do it.” He stopped.

We stood there in the kitchen for long moment while the light died outside. It was a nice little kitchen without any charm. Functional, like the monastery buildings at the Hermitage. I could see modifications here and there, like the chopping block on cut-down legs at wheelchair height. I gave his arm a final pat and let it go.

“Have you always lived in this house?”

He nodded. “My dad’s tried to move her out of here. He says it’s embarrassing how rundown the place is getting, but she won’t leave. He wants her closer to the doctors, maybe in Tuxtla or Villahermosa, but she feels at home here, and she’s got her students.”

“It must be tough on you.”

“It’s harder on my dad.” He stopped, as though he were edging into indiscretion.

“I don’t think she’s ugly, Rikki. Just give me a chance to get used to the idea, okay?”

“Okay,” he said in a muffled voice.

“I like you, Rikki. I don’t say that to many people. And she’s your mom, so I’m guessing I’ll like her too. When I get used to everything.”

“Well,” he said. “At least you’re honest about it. Some people just pretend, but she’s too smart for that. She picks right up on it. So just ask her things, if you want to know something. It’s better than faking that you don’t mind what she looks like.”

Somebody came through the back door without knocking. “In here,” called Rikki, and a young girl, nineteen or twenty, poked her head into the kitchen. She had big eyes pulled down sweetly at the outer corners and glossy hair in a horse tail down her back. “Felice,” he said, brightening, and then, “This is Felice, Eva. The person who helps out my mom.”

“Hello,” she said shyly. “I’m glad to meet you.” Her English was very good. She motioned with her head toward the hallway, where Anne’s bedroom was. “Did she sleep? She has been sleeping a lot in the afternoon these days.”

“We woke her up when we came in. She was embarrassed about not being up.”

Felice shook her head and the glossy tail shifted like prairie grass. “She says naps are for babies. But they help, you know? She is refreshed.”

Rikki said to me, “The thing about her disease is that you need a lot of rest. You can’t push yourself too hard or you get worse faster. And she was so active—she’d want to scramble all over the pyramids, even after she couldn’t hold her balance. But the heat in the jungle wore her out.”

“And she was sick already when you spent the night on Temple IV?”

“That’s what I mean. Dad could have killed us. Her right leg was all goofed up by then, and she was always losing her grip on things, dropping coffee cups and forks. And there she was, going up that crazy ladder. Luckily, I was too young to realize how nuts we were. I just thought it was the coolest thing any kid ever did with his mom, especially since they never caught us.”

“She had her ladies this morning,” said Felice. “There are twelve of them in that group now, and five in the men’s, but she does the men’s at night because of their jobs.”

Rikki said, “So she hasn’t cut back any yet.”

“Not yet,” said Felice cheerfully. “Not Señora Anne.”

Meanwhile, the two of them were laying out queso and chilies and fresh tortillas, and Felice took a big bowl covered with plastic wrap out of the refrigerator and poured it into a pan on the stove. “Mole,” said Rikki. “How’d you know I was dying for mole?”

“You are always dying for mole, muchacho.”

I watched them working together at the chopping block, the tall young Dutchman and the Mexican girl with her sad eyes and sweet smile. They bantered like siblings. The affection clearly went both ways, but without any apparent sparks. That’s nice, I thought, that brotherly, sisterly stuff—and of course thought immediately of Stefan.

“Felice,” I said. “Señora Anne—she used to teach her classes at the Catholic church?”

“Yes. But it is very hard for her to go out now. So her students on their own say no, they will come here instead, she can teach them in her house.”

“But you know the priest at the church?”

“Oh, yes, si. Padre Miguel. He is not the real priest, but he is here for a while so that Padre Gilberto can travel to la Ciudad.”

“If I want to go to Mass, what time would that be?”

“You are Catholic,” said Felice happily.

“Well, not really. Well, I am but I haven’t been for a while. But I might want to go while we’re here. You know. Christmas and everything.” Rikki was giving me an odd look, and Felice was trying her best to comprehend. Nominal Catholics, I took it, were rare in these parts; you either were or you weren’t. “Anyway, Fr. Miguel, right?”

She nodded.

“Okay. Maybe tomorrow, if we’re not out at the ruins.” I glanced at Rikki.

“Not tomorrow. We’ve got the day off, Dad said.”

“Early Mass is at seven in the morning,” said Felice, “and another one at nine.”

Jan came down the hall and into the kitchen. He looked old. “Felice,” he said, “good to see you. How have you been?”

“She looks fine, doesn’t she, Señor? Good spirits.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “She seems in very good spirits. Has she been sleeping more? It seems to me she has been sleeping more, and not up so much.”

“Not so much,” said Felice. “But her spirits are good.”

“You are doing a fine job, Felice. I am grateful to you.” He had not yet looked in my direction. I felt like the only person in the room without a reason for being there. Here they were, all united in their common cause, Señora Anne, and I couldn’t even look her in the face. This was a test and I wasn’t passing.

“Is there anything she needs right now?” I said. “Something to drink, maybe? Water? I’ll just trot it down the hall, if you want.”

All three of them turned and stared at me.

“No problem,” I said. “You all need to catch up with each other. So I’ll just . . . go check up on her or something.”

“She’s sleeping now,” said Jan.

“Oh.”

“But after she wakes up,” he said very slowly, “it might be a good idea for you to chat with her for a few minutes.”

“Okay,” I said. “After she wakes up. No problem.”

“She doesn’t see many American women. She was looking forward to this.”

“Well, then, that’s what we’ll do. A little chat.”

“Eva,” he said, right in front of everybody. “Don’t patronize my wife.”

A cold knife slipped between my ribs. It was the first time I could see how angry he was, much angrier than Rikki had been after I went plunging out of the room. Rikki was transparent. Jan could hold it in, but it was in his voice. And I knew I would not be forgiven soon.

“All right,” I said, putting my chin up, which was what I always did when I was caught out. “I wouldn’t do that, though. I might not be great in the sickroom, but at least I don’t put on some act. If you knew me, you’d know I wouldn’t do that.” And then I turned and went out the front door and took a long walk through streets that were filled with the clamor of barnyard animals. All I could think of was that Stefan would have handled everything differently. He wouldn’t have been thinking of himself, for starters, and he wouldn’t have let the hospital atmosphere get to him. He would have walked right by the wheelchair like he never even noticed it and sat down beside her and taken her bony hand in his. And then he would have listened to her for as long as she wanted to talk.

But it was no good comparing us. It never had been. I was no more like my brother than Bruno was like Jesus Christ.

I didn’t sleep much that night even though I was plenty tired. It was raining hard, for one thing, and the wind was blowing in gusts around the stucco house. I was on the sofa in my sleeping sheet with an extra blanket on top, feeling just about as blue as I ever had. It wasn’t loneliness, exactly, though if you’d asked me right then, I would have said that the one thing I could take to the bank was that I was all by myself in this world, even before Stefan disappeared. Whatever it was, it had started in Flores, and Palenque was making it worse.

I must have finally dropped off about 3:30 and was awakened after an hour or so by the clacking of the wheelchair rolling down the hall. Jan, helping his wife to the bathroom. They said a few words I couldn’t hear, the light went on briefly, the door closed, and he waited in there with her until she was done. What a life, I thought. Did they actually sleep in that sickbed together? Did he ever feel like touching her, except in the way a caregiver would? And yet he’d bitten off my head to defend her honor.

I knew I wouldn’t get back to sleep. I waited until he had rolled her back down the hall, and then I got up and turned on the living room light. My pack was propped against the wall, and I sat down on the floor in front of it in my black T-shirt and underwear and white socks and dug around until I found the packet of Stefan’s letters. Then I began to read from where I’d left off in Tikal. Letter #3 was dated February 16, 1992.

Dear Jonah,

Sorry about yet another long silence. I don’t mean to leave you hanging between letters. But I’m pretty much up to the eyeballs all the time, and when I do get a minute to myself, I try my best to hide out somewhere, even if it’s only for a couple of hours. Next time you’re tempted to gnash your teeth about the rigors of the hermit life (i.e., your New York Times is a day or so late), try to spare me a thought. Right now, I’d give my left arm to be sitting on that redwood bench outside my cell, watching the whales go by.

But I chose this, right?

There’s a young man here I’m asking you to pray for. Mat—a Maya name—has only been in San Cristóbal for three years. Before that he lived in the Ejido Morelia, a Tzeltal community outside of Altamirano, where his family grew corn and coffee. It’s an independent-minded ejido, and for a number of years has resisted the overtures of the PRI’s official campesino federation (which is more about keeping the campesinos in line than it is about helping them), despite having to face even worse neglect by the government as a result. Morelia has no doctor, no potable water, no full-time teacher, no priest.

Three years ago, Mat’s father drew down the wrath of a powerful local latifundista, Donaldo Aguilar, whose plantation runs along the ejido boundaries, and who’s had his eye on Morelia’s land for years. Mat’s father made it his business to keep track of Aguilar’s plans, and spoke out against them once too often. So Aguilar called out his private little police squad, which, like most of these mercenary gangs, is primarily made up of disgruntled ladino ex-cowboys.

Mat’s father was kidnapped on the road to Belisario Dominguez. Witnesses, a ten-year-old girl and her eight-year-old brother, recognized at least two of the men, rough types from Altamirano they often saw lounging around town when they went to the market. They were in a new blue Ford pickup without any license plates, and there were six of them, four riding in the bed. The little girl said they beat Mat’s father with the butts of their guns, then slung him in the back. Six days later, he reappeared on the track to Belisario Dominguez in almost the same place, this time propped against a rock, with his severed head in his lap. Based on the burns on him, he’d been put through hell.

Mat was old enough to be next, so the community smuggled him out of Morelia, and he resurfaced in San Cristóbal, living at first in La Hormiga slum with a group of expulsados. Did I mention the expulsado thing in my last letter? How Maya converts to evangelicalism, or else what’s known as “Word of God” Catholicism, are being driven out of their ancestral villages? The charge is that they no longer recognize the authority of the caciques (local chiefs), but the real issue is that they’ve started thinking for themselves, which power brokers like Aguilar and company, who more often than not have the caciques in their back pockets, refuse to countenance. Sadly, the villages themselves are no help, only too happy to drive out those who they feel are passing moral judgment by swearing off drinking, wife beating, and polygamy. Homeless and landless, the exiles head for the towns and cities where they are making up an increasingly large portion of the slum populations.

Mat was lucky. He found his way into the Guadalupe barrio, a community founded by former expulsados, where he lives with a Tzeltal family from the congregation. In three years he’s learned Spanish, and in the few months I’ve known him a fair amount of English besides. He has the idea that when he learns enough, he will bring his father’s killers to justice. What I can’t help hoping is that when he learns enough, he’ll want to become a priest instead. He’s got it in him, Jonah. I can see it from a hundred miles away.

And why, you are no doubt asking, is someone like me, a confessed coward, getting so wrapped up in this kid’s situation? Lots of reasons, but here’s the most direct. When I was in Nepal, probably nineteen or so, young enough to have not yet personally witnessed a purely evil act, I was dragged to a festival at a little village called Khokana at the far end of the Kathmandu Valley. A normal little town, mostly known for its mustard seed industry. Nobody would tell me what was going to happen, only that I was about to see one of the old, authentic rituals tourists are not invited to.

There’s a temple there, the Rudrayani, and nearby is a walled pond. At a certain point, people started gathering on the ledge above this pond, jocular but intent, and you could feel the excitement level starting to rise. The next thing I know, someone tosses in a young goat. This poor creature is terrified and bleating and trying its best to swim, and I’m already getting sick to my stomach at the callousness of what’s going on here. Then nine guys leap in after it like they are going to save it, and I breathe a sigh of relief.