Those moments with the sea lion are sacred. I feel affection for her as vast as an encyclopedia. I get a demented urge to dive into the water and frolic with her. There was no greater proof of love I could give Daniel than to take him to the cave. La Pincoya was sunning herself, and as soon as she saw me, she dove into the water to come and say hello, but she kept a certain distance, studying Daniel, and finally returned to the rocks, offended because I’d brought a stranger. It’s going to take a long time to recover her esteem.
When we got back to town, around one o’clock, Juanito and Pedro were waiting for us anxiously on the dock with the news that Azucena had suffered a hemorrhage at Manuel’s house, where she’d gone to do the cleaning. Manuel found her in a pool of blood and called the carabineros on his cell phone, and they went to pick her up in the jeep. Juanito said that the girl was at the police post right then, waiting for the ambulance boat.
The carabineros had put Azucena on the cot in the ladies’ cell, and Humilde Garay was pressing damp cloths to her forehead, for lack of any more effective remedy, while Laurencio Cárcamo was talking on the phone to headquarters in Dalcahue, requesting instructions. Daniel Goodrich told them he was a doctor, sent us out of the cell, and proceeded to examine Azucena. Ten minutes later he came back out to tell us that the girl was five months pregnant. “But she’s only thirteen!” I exclaimed. I don’t understand how no one realized, not Eduvigis, not Blanca, not even the nurse; Azucena simply looked fat.
Then the ambulance boat arrived, and the carabineros allowed Daniel and me to accompany Azucena, who was crying in fear. We went into the emergency ward of the Castro hospital with her, and I waited in the corridor, but Daniel made use of his title and followed the stretcher to the wing. That same night they operated on Azucena to remove the baby, which was dead. There will be an investigation to find out if the abortion was induced; that’s the legal procedure in a case like this, and apparently more important than finding out the circumstances in which a thirteen-year-old girl became pregnant, as Blanca Schnake complains furiously, and rightly so.
Azucena Corrales refuses to say who got her pregnant, and the rumor’s already going around the island that it was El Trauco, a mythical three-foot-tall dwarf, armed with an ax, who lives in the hollows of trees and protects the forests. He can twist a man’s spinal column with his gaze and pursues young virgins to impregnate them. It must have been El Trauco, they say, because they saw yellow excrement near the Corraleses’ house.
Eduvigis has reacted strangely, refusing to see her daughter or hear the details of what happened. Alcoholism, domestic violence, and incest are the curses of Chiloé, especially in the most isolated communities, and according to Manuel the myth of El Trauco originated to cover up the pregnancies of girls raped by their fathers or brothers. I’ve just discovered that Juanito is not only Carmelo Corrales’s grandson, but also his son. Juanito’s mother, who lives in Quellón, was raped by Carmelo, her father, and had the boy when she was fifteen. Eduvigis raised him as if he were hers, but in town they know the truth. I wonder how a prostrate invalid could have abused Azucena, but it must have been before they amputated his leg.
Yesterday Daniel left! May 29, 2009, will remain engraved in my memory as the second saddest day of my life, the saddest being when my Popo died. I’m going to tattoo 2009 on my other wrist, so I’ll never forget. I’ve been crying for two days straight. Manuel says I’m going to dehydrate, that he’s never seen so many tears, and that no man is worth so much suffering, especially if he’s only gone to Seattle and not away to war. What does he know! Separations are very dangerous. In Seattle there must be a million girls much prettier and much less complicated than me. Why did I tell him the details of my past? Now he’ll have time to analyze them, and might even discuss them with his father. Who knows what conclusions that pair of psychiatrists might reach! They’ll brand me an addict and a neurotic. Far away from me, Daniel’s enthusiasm will grow cold, and he might decide it’s not advisable to get hooked on a chick like me. Why didn’t I go with him? Well, the truth is he didn’t ask me. . . .
Winter
June, July, August
If someone had asked me a few weeks ago when the happiest time of my life was, I would have said that it was in the past: my childhood with my grandparents in the big magical house in Berkeley. However, now my answer would be that my happiest days were the ones I spent with Daniel at the end of May, and, barring catastrophes, I’ll be experiencing more of the same in the near future. I spent nine days in his company, and for three of them we were alone in this house with its cypress soul. During those prodigious days a door half opened for me; I glimpsed love, and the light was almost unbearable. My Popo said love makes us good. It doesn’t matter who we love, nor does it matter whether our love is reciprocated or not or if the relationship lasts. Just the experience of loving is enough, that’s what transforms us.
I wonder if I can describe the only days of love in my life. Manuel Arias went to Santiago on a quick three-day trip for some reason to do with his book, he said, but according to Blanca he went to see the doctor about the bubble in his brain. I think he went in order to leave me alone with Daniel. We were completely on our own, because Eduvigis didn’t come back to clean the house after the scandal of her daughter’s pregnancy; Azucena was still in the hospital in Castro, recovering from an infection; and Blanca had forbidden Juanito Corrales and Pedro Pelanchugay to bother us. It was almost the end of May, so the days were short and the nights long and chilly, perfect weather for intimacy.
Manuel left at noon and entrusted us with the chore of making marmalade out of tomatoes, before they started to rot. Tomatoes, tomatoes, and more tomatoes. Tomatoes in the fall—who’s ever heard of that! Blanca’s garden has produced so many, and we get given so many, that we don’t know what to do with them all: salsa, pasta sauce, dried tomatoes, preserves. Marmalade is an extreme solution, I don’t know who might like it. Daniel and I peeled pounds and pounds of them, chopped them up, removed the seeds, weighed them, and put them in the pots; that took us more than two hours, which weren’t wasted, because with the distraction of the tomatoes our tongues were loosened, and we told each other all kinds of things. We added a pound of sugar for every pound of tomato flesh, and a bit of lemon juice, cooked it till it thickened, about twenty minutes, stirring constantly, and then we put it straight into sterilized jars. We boiled the full jars for half an hour, so they were hermetically sealed and ready to be exchanged for other products, like Liliana Treviño’s quince jelly and Doña Lucinda’s wool. When we finished, the kitchen was very dark and the house had a delicious fragrance of sugar and wood smoke.
We sat down in front of the window to look at the night, with a tray of bread, soft cheese, sausage sent by Don Lionel Schnake, and Manuel’s smoked fish. Daniel opened a bottle of red wine, poured a glass, and when he was about to pour the second I stopped him; it was time I gave him my reasons for not tasting it and explained that he could go ahead without worrying about me. I told him about my addictions in general, without going into depth about my terrible life last year, and I explained that I don’t miss having a drink to drown my sorrows, but I do in moments of celebration, like this one in front of the window, but we can drink a toast together, him with wine and me with apple juice.
I think I’ll have to be careful of alcohol forever; it’s harder to resist than drugs, because it’s legal, available, and constantly offered. If I accept one glass, my resolve will be weakened, and it’ll be much harder to turn down the second, and from there it’s just a few sips to the abyss. I was lucky, I told Daniel, because in the six months I was in Las Vegas, my dependency didn’t assert itself too much, and now, if temptation arises, I remember the words of Mike O’Kelly, who knows a lot about it, because he’s a rehabilitated alcoholic. He says being an addict is like being pregnant: you either are or you’re not; there are no half measures.
Finally, after many digressions, Daniel kissed me, softly at first, barely brushing my
lips, and then with more certainty, his full lips against mine, his tongue in my mouth. I sensed the faint taste of the wine, the firmness of his lips, the sweet intimacy of his breath, his scent of wool and tomato, the murmur of his breathing, his hand hot on the nape of my neck. He pulled back and looked at me questioningly, at which point I realized I was rigid, with my arms stuck to my sides, and my eyes popping out of my head. “Forgive me,” he said, pulling away. “No! Forgive me!” I exclaimed, too emphatically, startling him. How could I explain that it was actually my first kiss, that everything that had come before had been something else, quite distinct from love, that I’d spent a week imagining this kiss and having anticipated it so anxiously, now I was foundering, and having feared so much that it would never happen, now I was going to burst into tears. I didn’t know how to tell him all this, and the easiest way was to take his head in my hands and kiss him as if in a tragic farewell. And from that point on it was just a matter of casting off moorings and setting out at full sail into uncharted waters, throwing all the vicissitudes of the past overboard.
In a pause between two kisses, I confessed that I’d had sexual relations before, but I’d actually never made love. “Did you ever imagine that it would happen here, in the back of beyond?” he asked me. “When I arrived, I described Chiloé as the ass end of the world, Daniel, but now I know it’s the eye of the galaxy,” I told him.
Manuel’s rickety sofa turned out to be unsuitable for love; its springs were sticking out here and there, and it was covered in Dumb-Cat’s brownish gray hairs and Literati-Cat’s ginger ones, so we brought blankets from my room and made a nest near the stove. “If I’d known you existed, Daniel, I would have paid attention to my grandmother and taken better care of myself,” I admitted, ready to recite a litany of my mistakes, but an instant later I’d forgotten, because in the magnitude of desire what the hell did they matter. I brusquely tugged off his sweater and long-sleeved shirt and began to wrestle with his belt and the fly of his jeans—men’s clothes are so awkward!—but he took my hands and started kissing me again. “We’ve got three days. Let’s not rush,” he said. I caressed his naked torso, his arms, his shoulders, running my hands over the unknown topography of that body, its valleys and hills, admiring his smooth African skin, the color of ancient bronze, the architecture of his long bones, the noble shape of his head, kissing the cleft of his chin, his cheeks, those languid eyelids, innocent ears, his Adam’s apple, the long path of his sternum, nipples like cranberries, small and purple. I returned to my assault on his belt, and again Daniel stopped me, with the pretext of wanting to look at me.
He began to take off my clothes, and it seemed he’d never finish: Manuel’s old cashmere sweater, a winter flannel shirt, another thinner one underneath, so faded that Obama is just a blot, a cotton bra with one strap fastened with a safety pin, pants bought with Blanca at a secondhand store, short in the leg but warm, thick tights, and finally some white cotton schoolgirl panties that my grandmother put in my backpack in Berkeley. Daniel laid me out on my back in the nest and I felt the scratching of the rough chilote blankets, unbearable in other circumstances but sensual at this moment. With the tip of his tongue he licked me like a candy, giving me a tickling sensation everywhere, awakening who knows what sleeping creature, commenting on the contrast of his dark skin and my original Scandinavian coloring, as pale as pale can be in the places the sun never touches.
I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to the pleasure, wriggling to meet those solemn, expert fingers, touching me like a violin, delicately, gradually, until suddenly I was in a long, slow, sustained orgasm, and my cry alarmed Fahkeen, who started to growl and show his teeth. “It’s okay, fucking dog,” I told him and snuggled up into Daniel’s embrace, purring happily in the warmth of his body and the blended scent of us both. “Now it’s my turn,” I finally announced, and then, at last, he let me take his clothes off and do with him what I very much desired.
We stayed sequestered in the house for three whole memorable days, a gift from Manuel; my debt to this old anthropophagus has increased alarmingly. We had secrets to confide and love to invent. We each had to learn to adapt to the other’s body, calmly to discover the best routes to pleasure and how to sleep together without bothering each other. He lacks experience in this, but it’s natural for me, because I grew up sleeping in my grandparents’ bed. Clinging to someone, I don’t need to count sheep, swans, or dolphins, especially if it’s someone big, warm, fragrant, who snores discreetly—that’s how I know I’m alive. My bed is narrow, and since we thought it would be disrespectful to use Manuel’s, we made a hill of blankets and pillows on the floor, near the stove. We cooked, talked, made love; we gazed out the window, looked out at the rocks, listened to music, made love; soaked in the hot tub, fetched firewood, read Manuel’s books on Chiloé, and made love again. It rained, and we had no desire to go out; the melancholic Chilote clouds encourage romance.
Now that we could finally be alone without interruptions, Daniel proposed the exquisite task of studying, under his guidance, the multiple possibilities of the senses, the pleasure of an aimless caress, just for the feel of skin on skin. A man’s body can supply years’ worth of entertainment; the crucial points are stimulated a certain way, others require different attentions, some don’t even need to be touched, you can just breathe on them; each vertebra has a story, one can lose herself in the wide field of shoulders, well built to bear burdens and sorrows, and along the hard muscles of the arms, made to hold up the world. And deeply buried afflictions, never-expressed desires, and marks invisible under a microscope are hidden beneath the skin. There should be manuals on the infinite variety of kisses: woodpecker kisses, fish kisses, and so on and so on. The tongue is a daring and indiscreet snake, and I’m not talking about the things it says. The heart and the penis are my favorites: indomitable, transparent in their intentions, candid, and vulnerable; one shouldn’t take advantage of them.
Finally, I was able to tell Daniel my secrets. I told him about Roy Fedgewick and Brandon Leeman and the men who killed him, about distributing drugs and losing everything and ending up homeless, about how much more dangerous the world was for women, how we should cross the street if a man’s coming toward us and there’s nobody else around and avoid them completely if they’re in a group, watch our backs, look to both sides, turn invisible. At the end of the time I spent in Las Vegas, when I’d already lost everything, I protected myself by pretending to be a guy; it helped that I’m tall and skinny as a board, with my hair hacked off and men’s clothes from the Salvation Army. That’s probably what saved me in the long run, I guess. The street is implacable.
I told him about the rapes I’d witnessed and about which I’d only told Mike O’Kelly, who can stomach anything. The first time, a disgusting drunk, a big man who looked hefty in all the layers of rags he wore, but might have been skin and bones, trapped a girl in a blind alley, full of garbage, in broad daylight. The kitchen door of a restaurant opened into the alley, and I wasn’t the only one who went there to scavenge through the Dumpsters in search of leftovers before the stray cats got to them. You could hear there were rats too, but I never saw them. The girl, a young, hungry, dirty addict, could have been me. The man grabbed her from behind, threw her facedown on the pavement, strewn with trash and putrid puddles, and slashed the side of her pants open with a knife. I was less than ten feet away, hidden between the garbage cans, and it was only by chance that she was the one screaming and not me. The girl didn’t defend herself. In two or three minutes he finished, adjusted his rags and left, coughing. During those minutes I could have smashed him on the back of the head with one of the bottles lying around in the alley. It would have been simple, and the idea did occur to me, but I immediately dismissed it: that wasn’t my fucking problem. And when the attacker had left, I didn’t go to help the girl who was lying motionless on the ground either, just walked quickly past her and left, without looking back.
The second time it was two young men, m
aybe pushers or gangbangers, and the victim was a woman I’d seen in the street before, who was very ill, wasting away. I didn’t help her either. They dragged her into an underpass, laughing and mocking, while she fought back with a fury as concentrated as it was futile. Suddenly she saw me. Our eyes met for an eternal, unforgettable instant, and I turned around and ran away.
During those first months in Las Vegas, when money was plentiful, I hadn’t managed to save enough for a plane ticket back to California. It was too late to think of calling my Nini. My summer adventure had turned sinister, and I couldn’t involve my innocent grandma in Brandon Leeman’s misdeeds.
After the sauna I went to the pool, wrapped in a robe, ordered a lemonade that I spiked with a shot of vodka from the flask I always carried in my purse, and took two tranquilizers and another unidentified pill; I was taking too many different-colored and -shaped tablets to distinguish one from the other. I stretched out on a chair as far as possible from a group of learning-disabled youths, who were splashing around in the water with their caregivers. In other circumstances I would have played with them for a while; I’d seen them many times, and they were the only people I dared mix with, because they couldn’t be any threat to Brandon Leeman’s security, but I had a headache and needed to be alone.