Paula (12 page)

W
ILL YOU KNOW
I
AM YOUR MOTHER WHEN YOU WAKE
, P
AULA
? O
UR
family and friends never falter; so many visitors come during the evening that we resemble a tribe of Indians. Some come from very far, spend a few days, and return to their normal lives, among them your father, who has a half-finished construction project in Chile, and must go back. During these weeks of shared sorrow in the corridor of lost steps, I have been remembering the good times of our early years together; unimportant grudges have been receding, and I have learned to prize Michael as an old and loyal friend. I feel a quiet consideration for him. It is difficult for me to imagine that once we made love, or that by the end of our relationship I had come to detest him. Two women friends and my brother Juan came from the United States, Tío Ramón from Chile, and Ernesto's father directly from the Amazon jungle. Nicolás cannot make the trip because his student visa would not allow him to reenter the United States, and also because he should not leave Celia and their son alone. It's better that way, I would rather your brother not see you as you are. And Willie comes, too, crossing the world every two or three weeks to spend a Sunday with me, and make love as if it were the last time. I wait at the airport in order not to lose even a minute with him. I watch as he deplanes, pulling the little cart with his suitcases, a head taller than anyone else, his blue eyes anxiously looking for me in the crowd, his smile radiant when he spots me from below. We run to meet each other and his embrace lifts me off my feet. I smell his leather jacket, feel the roughness of his twenty-hour beard, his lips pressed hard against mine, and then we are in the taxi; I huddle against him as his long fingers renew their knowledge of me and he whispers, “My God, how I've missed you! You've lost weight, you're nothing but bones.” But suddenly he remembers why we've been apart, and in a different voice he asks about you, Paula. We have been together for more than four years, and I still feel the indefinable alchemy of our first meeting, a powerful attraction that time has colored with other sentiments but is still the essence of our union. I don't really know what it consists of, or how to define it, because it is more than sexual attraction, though at first I thought that's what it was. Willie says that we are two fighters fired by the same kind of energy, that together we have the strength of a racing train; we can achieve any goal together, he says, and united we are invincible. We both trust the other to guard our back, to be loyal, not to lie, to offer support in moments of weakness, to steady the helm when the other goes off course. I think there is also a spiritual component; if I believed in reincarnation, I would think that it was our karma to meet and love each other in every life, but I won't speak of that yet, Paula, I will just confuse you. In our urgent coming together, desire and sorrow blend into one. I cling to Willie, seeking pleasure and consolation—two things this man who has suffered knows how to give—but your image, Paula, submerged in your mortal sleep, comes between us, and our kisses turn to ice.

“Paula cannot make love with her husband for a long time, maybe never again. Ernesto isn't even thirty yet, and his wife could be an invalid for the rest of her days. How can there be such injustice? Why did it happen to her and not me—I've already lived and loved so well.”

“Don't think about that, there are many ways to love,” Willie tells me.

It's true, love has unexpected resources. In the brief minutes you can be together, Ernesto hugs and kisses you, in spite of the array of tubes. “Wake up, Paula, I'm waiting for you; I miss you, I need to hear your voice; I am so filled with love for you I am going to burst. Please come back,” he begs you. I picture him at night when he goes back to his empty house and lies next to the hollow left by your shoulders and hips. He must imagine you beside him, with your fresh smile, recall how your skin felt as he caressed you, the harmony of your silences, the lovers' secrets whispered in the night. He remembers the times you danced till you were drunk with the music, so attuned to each other's steps that you seemed a single being. He sees you moving like a reed, your long hair wrapping you both in the rhythm of the music, your slim arms around his neck, your lips on his ear. Oh, your grace, Paula! Your sweetness, your unpredictable intensity, your fierce intellectual discipline, your generosity, your insane tenderness. He misses your jokes, your laughter, your ridiculous tears at the movies and your serious tears when you empathized with someone's suffering. He remembers the time in Amsterdam you hid from him in the cheese market and he was beside himself, yelling for you everywhere, to the astonishment of the Dutch merchants. He wakes, soaked with sweat. He sits on the side of the bed in the darkness and tries to pray, to concentrate on his breathing and the sensations of his body, seeking peace, as he has learned in aikido. Perhaps he goes out on the balcony to gaze at the stars in the Madrid sky, and repeats to himself that he cannot lose hope, he must be patient, everything will be all right, soon you will be with him again. He feels the blood beating at his temples, his veins throbbing, the fire in his chest, he is choking, and he pulls on his sweatpants and goes for a run through the empty streets, but nothing helps to calm the agitation of frustrated desire. Your love is newly born, the first page in a blank notebook. “Ernesto is an old soul, Mama,” you told me once, “but he hasn't lost his innocence; he has the gift of play, of amazement, of loving and accepting me unconditionally, without making judgments—the way children love. Since we have been together, something has opened up inside me; I have changed. I see the world differently, and I like myself more because I see myself through Ernesto's eyes.” And he, Paula, has confessed to me in the moments of his greatest terror that he cannot live without you, that he never imagined he would find the visceral rapture he feels when he takes you in his arms; he says you are his perfect complement, and that he loves you and wants you to a point beyond pain, that he regrets every hour you were apart. “How could I know our happiness would be so short-lived? I dream of her, Isabel,” he has told me, trembling. “I dream constantly of being with her again, and making love till we are senseless. I can't explain these images that assail me and that only she and I know; her absence is like a hot coal in my heart. I cannot stop thinking of her for an instant, Paula is the only woman for me, the companion I dreamed of, and found.” How strange life is, Paula! Only a short while ago I was a distant, rather formal mother-in-law for Ernesto. Now we are confidantes, the most intimate friends.

The hospital is a gigantic building intersected by corridors where it is never night and the temperature never changes; day is captive in the electric lights and summer in the heating. Routines are repeated with irritating precision. This is the realm of pain; you come here to suffer, and all of us understand that. The misery of illness makes everyone equal. There are no rich or poor; when you cross this threshold, privilege blows away like smoke, and we are all humbled. My friend Ildemaro came from Caracas on the first flight he could wangle during an interminable strike of airline pilots, and stayed with me for a week. For more than ten years, this cultivated and gentle man has been like another brother to me, an intellectual mentor and companion during times I felt cut off from my country. As he hugged me, I felt an absurd certainty: you would react to his presence, and when you heard his voice you would wake up. He took advantage of being a physician to question the specialists and read the charts, tests, and X rays; he checked you over from head to foot, with the care that distinguishes all his actions and with the special affection he feels for you. When he came out of your room, he took my hand and we went outside and walked through the streets around the hospital. It was very cold.

“How do you find Paula?”

“She's very ill. . . .”

“That's how porphyria is. They assure me she will recover completely.”

“I love you too much to lie to you, Isabel.”

“Tell me the truth, then. Do you think she might die?”

“I do,” he replied after a long pause.

“Might she stay in the coma for a long time?”

“I hope not, but it is a possibility.”

“And if she never wakes again, Ildemaro?”

We stood silently beneath the rain.

I will try not to be sentimental, I know how much you hate that, Paula, but you will have to forgive me if sometimes I break down. My nerves are shattered. Am I going crazy? I don't know what day it is, I've lost interest in news of the world, the hours drag by painfully in an eternal waiting. I'm allowed to see you for such a short time, and I fritter the day away waiting for those moments. Twice a day, the door to intensive care opens and the nurse on duty calls the name of a patient. When she says “Paula,” I go in, shivering. I can't help it, I can never get used to the humming of the respirator, to the monitors and needles, to seeing you always asleep, your feet bandaged and your arms bruised purple. As I hurry toward your bed along the white corridor that stretches endlessly before me, I call on Memé, Granny, Tata, and all my beloved spirits; I beg them to let me find you better, without any fever, your heart regular, your breathing tranquil, and your blood pressure normal. I say hello to the nurses and to don Manuel, who is growing worse every day; he can barely speak now. I bend down to you, and sometimes I dislodge some cable and an alarm sounds. I examine you inch by inch, observe the numbers and lines on the screens, the entries in the open book on a table at the foot of your bed—futile tasks, because I understand none of it, but with these meaningless ceremonies you belong to me again, as you did when you were a baby and entirely dependent on me. I place my hands on your head and your breast and try to transmit health and energy. I visualize you inside a glass pyramid, isolated from harm in a magic space where you can get well. I call you all the pet names I have ever given you and tell you a thousand times, I love you, Paula, I love you, and repeat it over and over until someone touches my shoulder and tells me the visit is over, I must leave. I give you one last kiss and walk, now slowly, to the door. My mother is waiting outside. I give her an optimistic thumbs up, and we try to smile. Sometimes we don't succeed.

Silence, I crave silence. The noise of the hospital and the city have seeped into my bones. I long for the quiet of nature, the peace of my house in California. In the hospital the only place free of noise is the chapel. I go there to look for refuge in which to think and read and write. I accompany my mother to mass, where usually we are the only ones present and the priest officiates for us alone. Above the altar, upon a wall of black marble, bleeds a Christ crowned with thorns; I cannot look at that poor tormented body. I do not know the liturgy, but from hearing the ritual words so often I begin to feel the strength of the myth: bread and wine, fruit of the earth and labor of man, converted into the body and blood of Christ. The chapel is behind the intensive care room, but to get there we have to make a complete circle around the building. I have calculated that your bed is precisely on the other side of the chapel wall and that I can send thoughts straight to you. Mother insists that you won't die, Paula. She is negotiating the matter directly with heaven; she tells God that you have lived to serve others, that you have much good yet to do in this world, and that your death would be a senseless loss. Faith is a gift; God looks into your eyes and speaks your name. That is how He chose you, but He pointed his finger at me only to fill me with doubt. My uncertainty began when I was seven, the day of my First Communion, as I walked down the nave of the church, dressed in white and wearing a veil, a rosary in one hand and a ribbon-tied candle in the other. Fifty little girls in two rows marching to the chords of the organ and the novices' choir. We had rehearsed so many times that I had memorized every gesture, but the point of the sacrament had escaped me. I knew that if I chewed the consecrated Host I would burn in eternal hellfire, but I did not remember it was Jesus I was receiving. As I neared the altar, my candle broke in two. It just broke, without provocation, the upper half hanging by the wick like the neck of a dead swan, and I felt that someone from on high had pointed to me, amid all my companions, to be punished, perhaps for some sin I might have forgotten to confess the day before. In fact, I had elaborated a long list of major sins to impress the priest. I did not want to bore him with bagatelles, and I had also reasoned that if I did penance for mortal sins, even though I hadn't committed them, the venial sins would be pardoned in the lot. I confessed everything imaginable, even things I didn't know the meaning of: homicide, fornication, lies, adultery, sins against my parents, impure thoughts, heresy, envy. . . . The priest listened in stunned silence, then, aggrieved, rose to his feet and signaled to a nun. They muttered a few minutes and she seized me by the arm and led me to the sacristy, where with a deep sigh she washed out my mouth with soap and made me pray three Ave Marias. In the evening, the hospital chapel is dimly lighted by votive candles. Yesterday I surprised Ernesto and his father there—heads in hands, broad shoulders sagging—and did not dare go to them. They look very much alike. Both are large, dark, and sturdy, with Moorish features and a way of moving that is a rare mixture of virility and gentleness. Ernesto's father's deeply tanned skin, his short gray hair and wrinkles like knife scars speak of his adventures in the jungle and forty years of living with nature. He seems indestructible, and that is why I was so moved to see him on his knees. He has become his son's shadow; he never leaves him by himself, in the same way my mother is always at my side. He accompanies Ernesto to his aikido classes, and they walk for hours in the country, until both are exhausted. “You need to burn off that energy or you'll explode,” he tells Ernesto. He takes me to the park on nice days, sits me down facing the sun, and tells me to close my eyes and feel the warmth on my skin, to listen to the sound of the birds and the water and the distant traffic and see if that will help calm my nerves. When he heard about his daughter-in-law's collapse, he immediately flew from the depths of the Amazon to be with his son. He does not like cities or populous areas, the hospital gives him claustrophobia, people bother him, he paces the corridor of lost steps with the sad impatience of a caged beast. You have more courage than the most macho of men, Isabel, he says, with great seriousness, and I know that is the most flattering thing a man accustomed to killing snakes with a machete can think of me.