Private House (3 page)

Mathilde laughed, a laugh at herself; she'd known it was coming, but here it was. “We can talk about it,” she said.

The woman was disturbed by the laugh; she'd missed something. “I do not think it is funny.”

“No.”

She nodded, apparently satisfied at this acceptance. “Not here. It is too open.”

“Where, then?”

“In the Plaza de Armas there is a small hotel, the Santa Isabel. In the bar, you can always see who is listening.”

The Plaza de Armas: it was where she'd wanted to go in the first place.

“My name is Mathilde. Mathilde Delores.”

By the fountain, the girl in red was lifting her skirts, ready to replace the blue girl.

“I am Adamaris.”

3

Lorraine knew Calle K must be ascending because her hips ached with every step and her body was tilting forward, so that now she had a pain in the small of her back. And it was hot. And her feet hurt. After twenty minutes, all she wanted to do was sit down. But she kept on, walking with her head down, just concentrating on putting one foot in front of another: and so she was surprised when she came to a corner, almost stumbling.

She took a breath. Where was she, exactly? It didn't help, not knowing; she didn't really feel anxious, but she felt alone in all this heat. She looked around. This was a side street, not a main thoroughfare. In Vedado, she'd discovered, there were no street signs; intersections were marked by cornerstones cut in the form of pyramids, whose
faces indicated the corresponding streets. Sometimes the stones were missing, but she found this one on the opposite sidewalk, and by tilting her glasses she could read it. She was on the corner of K and Calle 21. In fact, she realized, Calle K ended here. Ahead, where the ground rose abruptly, was a park and trees.

She'd put away her map; now she dug it out of her bag, which was her old brown leather bag, with a drawstring, quite long, rather a nuisance to pull open. And then she had to unfold the map, and get it the right way around.

Everything was harder in the heat but finally she worked things out.

There was no Calle 22; for some reason—another discovery—they only used odd numbers. But Calle 23, better known as La Rampa, had to be on the other side of the park . . . a green square on her map. And that's where she wanted to get to. La Rampa. She said it over in her mind, giving it a twist: it sounded as Cuban as
salsa
. Then, looking at the map, and looking up, she realized what the green represented: Coppelia. A name she recognized, and she sighed with relief. She'd been planning to come here. Murray had gone on about it as the source of the finest ice cream on the planet, because that's what it was, a huge ice cream parlour. But who cared, she thought. There'd be a place to sit down. A toilet. She'd be able to think.

Lorraine crossed the road and by the time she reached the other side, she was beginning to feel more like herself. She smoothed her hair under the brim of her hat and patted her face with a tissue. She also checked her guidebook,
The Lonely Planet
; it said there were several entrances, including a “dollar café” especially for tourists; but even in her exhausted state she felt that was beneath her dignity. The book also promised lineups, but only a few people were clustered around the sign—it was a menu—marking the entrance at Calle 21 and L, the next street over. They all seemed to be Cuban. She wasn't quite sure
where to go, so she stood a little apart, waiting, and then followed at a discreet distance as they strolled along a path that wound into the trees, and finally up a curving ramp.

The ramp carried them into a strange building—strange because it was completely old-fashioned, but old-fashioned precisely because it was so “futuristic” . . . the word came into her mind, along with a rush of memories—1958? A whole era came back to her. This was what the future had looked like, back then. Inside, the ramp branched off, leading to a number of pavilions, conical rooms with pointed roofs— “pods”—separated by alternating panes of coloured plastic, of the kind that had once divided “rec” rooms. She could almost hear the theme of
Walt Disney Presents
.

Letting the Cubans go on, she slipped into a pod by herself. It was almost deserted: two young men sat together, hunched over stainless steel bowls filled with ice cream—
helado
; further back, a young mother was treating her baby daughter, who was licking a chocolatey spoon, and a tall, slim black woman was sitting off on her own.

Lorraine sat away from all of them, sinking down with perfect gratitude on her little chair. The waistband of her trousers itched, her feet throbbed, and for a horrible moment she felt like an old, bothered lady: she
hated
that feeling. But then she got herself settled; she was sitting down, she was out of the sun. She felt relief spreading through her. The waitress came over. When she realized Lorraine didn't speak Spanish, she began to jabber and point—probably meaning the dollar café—but Lorraine insisted, and they managed to communicate. Three fingers. Chocolate . . . she remembered
fresa
, strawberry, from somewhere . . . and when she was struggling for a third, the waitress smiled kindly and suggested
vainilla
, which was her favourite, anyway.

She ate slowly, turning over the plastic spoon, and licking into the hollow, as she finished each bite. She wanted to stretch this out. The
relief she was feeling told her how upset she had been. She had to get hold of herself, she thought. She had to get some perspective. For her, she knew, that was always
retrospective
. She was always better at second thoughts, and the right word always came too late—on the other hand, it always did come. For example, looking around her pod, and recalling the earlier run of her thoughts, it was now perfectly obvious that her encounter with Enrique and the woman in the green curlers had been a lost episode of
I Love Lucy . . .
all it lacked was Desi screaming
babaloo
!

She smiled; there was no sense blaming herself for this morning.

She watched the young mother fussing at her little girl, dabbing her mouth, and the child, noticing her, waved a greeting with her spoon. Desi had been a Cuban, but would these people remember him? Probably not. Probably no one did. And then she found herself recalling another show, as everyone had always called them,
The Millionaire
. An immensely wealthy figure, who was never seen, gave away a million dollars each week to some unsuspecting individual, then watched the ensuing drama unfold. It always began the same way, a heavy-faced man with slightly oriental features and the demeanour of a butler would take a slip of paper from a leather portfolio. “Good afternoon. My name is Michael Anthony. I have here a cashier's cheque, made out in your name, for the sum . . .”

But this brought her mind back to the subject at hand, for even though the money involved was much less, it was, in effect, the role Murray had cast her in. She closed her eyes: fatigue welled up again. It had sounded so simple, as he'd described it, almost fun, but apparently not. She quietly cursed Almado Valdes—
and
Enrique—and then—did Cuba have voodoo?—she stuck her spoon into the
bola
of
chocolate
, which had always been Murray's favourite flavour; this was all his fault in the end. But that made her smile once more. Besides, she liked
chocolate too. She ate some. Then she glanced over at the two young men who were sitting together; she wondered if they were gay. Almado was, Enrique was. The Cubans weren't good about gays; they were not “gay-friendly.” Murray hadn't cared. Few people ever guessed in his case. He never camped. He didn't
look
gay, whatever that meant. She could see him in church, singing the hymns he loved, his voice blending with the others: he had a wonderful tenor. She remembered being with him once when someone had described him as “a pillar of the church,” and he'd given her the most marvellously vulgar wink. That was Murray all over; he always saw his homosexuality ironically, an amusing twist of fate. Lately, it had frustrated her that she could never remember when she'd learned about his “orientation”; it was simply there, a fact of life. When she'd asked Don—her husband, who had died three years before—when he had learned about it, he only shrugged and said that he had always known, though obviously that couldn't have been true. Of course some of their friends thought that Murray loved Don, others that Don harboured a secret passion for Murray, but she'd always known such ideas were ridiculous, and missed the point. They were
friends
. That was true enough, and for years she'd accepted it as the answer to every question; only toward the end had she wondered what this answer meant. She was still not sure. Their sexual disagreement, to put it like that, had been entirely amicable; having agreed to disagree, they could find common ground everywhere else. And then there'd been the question of how she had fitted in. Again, she was never sure. She took up her spoon; in turn, she scraped a smidge of the chocolate, strawberry, and
vainilla
, a taste for each of them—Don making do with strawberry, though he probably liked butterscotch best. But of course they hadn't been arranged in a line like the
bolas
, had formed, rather, a triangle: isosceles, not equilateral—she had always been the shorter stroke. It had been
their
friendship, after all. She'd been the third wire, the ground; she occupied the neutral corner, like a referee; she'd been the go-between. And finally their audience. It was how they'd used her. It had been the price of her admission into their friendship, and all it represented. Knowledge, and
knowingness
—a little different—and culture: doorways into other worlds . . . but one door was always closed. They were men, she'd finally concluded, despite their different ways of being male, and they kept that a secret, a mystery she wasn't allowed to penetrate. Had they mocked her? That wasn't exactly right. But she hadn't known the rules, even known what the real game was. No doubt that was why she resented this “little mission,” as Murray had called it. So often her rewards had been obligations. Of course she couldn't have refused him; he'd been dying. But it was undeniably galling. As she tilted her bowl to get the last of the melted
vainilla
—
her
flavour—it occurred to her that it went further still. Although she was here, officially, at Murray's behest, she was really here as much because of Don; she was here for
both of them together
, but this only meant, so far as they'd be concerned, that she was also here for herself. For herself ! No wonder she resented it. To make it all worse, it was true. They were both dead, but she was still their creature. She smiled ruefully and whispered softly, “Damn you, Don, my love! Damn you, dear Murray!” She put down her spoon. After such damnation, she surely owed them both a prayer. And one for herself, of course. And of course she'd be forgiven. They had both loved her; she had loved them. She was stuck with it—they all were.

Whether you like it not.
Apparently, as perspective, this was all she could hope for; but she admitted to herself that she felt a lot better. For one thing, she'd needed something to eat. Now she used the toilet, splashed water on the back of her neck, and came back to her table feeling refreshed. The black woman with the baby had gone; the two young men were getting ready to leave. She couldn't stay here forever.
What was she going to do? She pushed the empty bowl away. She had no other address for Almado: no phone number. Murray had given her no idea where Almado worked,
if
he worked. She had only one other clue, and now she wondered whether Murray had provided it just because he'd guessed that Almado might be harder to track down than he'd let on. But he had taken the young man,
his
young man, to church—he was apparently quite happy to go—and they'd befriended a priest, one Father Rodriguez. That was typical of Murray: he wouldn't just go to church, he'd get to know people, although she knew that this had been part of his plan to bring Almado to Canada, a way of giving him respectability; Father Rodriguez had agreed to be some sort of referee. So she could appeal to him. She had to, she thought—yes, she told herself firmly, you do. And if he couldn't help . . . she could try Enrique again, she
would
try Enrique again—that, too, was obligatory; after that she could say she'd done her best and go home with a clear conscience.

She took a breath. This sounded like a plan, or as close to one as she was going to get. Gathering her things, she paid, leaving a two-peso tip for the waitress—convertible pesos, that is—since she'd been kind about not speaking Spanish. Then, to get her bearings, she walked to the back of her pod, and looked out the window; from here, she could see La Rampa through the trees. It was a busy street, four lanes and full of cars. She'd find a cab. She definitely didn't want to walk any more. She kept looking out for a moment. There were more people down there, she thought, than in here. Paths led through the trees to gazebos set out with tables and white wrought iron chairs. It all looked very nice but she was glad she'd come in here, she decided; this was the real Coppelia. Then, to her astonishment, she saw Almado Valdes. Her eyes were just passing over the scene below, but they jerked back. It couldn't be. But it was. No. She stared. It
wasn't
, but it was certainly
someone who looked very like him. . . . He was sitting in one of the gazebos. She pressed right up to the window. Of course she was looking from a high angle, but it really did look like him. She shaded her eyes with her hand. She could see him quite clearly, and after a moment she asked herself, Why couldn't it be Almado? She knew what he looked like, because Murray had kept a photograph on the bureau in his bedroom. It was in a wicker frame. Murray was in it, too, standing with his weight thrown to one side, very relaxed, an expression of his face and body that you rarely saw at home. Almado's arm was thrown across his shoulders. . . . But as she kept looking down she realized that Almado, in the photo, had blond hair—
that
was it—whereas the young man down there was dark. Still, it did look like him—something about him just fitted. And then she remembered Murray saying that Almado was always dyeing his hair, and that he liked to cut it in all the latest styles. . . . She closed her eyes, to get the photograph into her mind, then opened them again. It was a good picture. The sea was behind them and the sun was bright, but they weren't squinting. Almado's left arm was thrown around Murray's shoulders, his right hanging down at his side, his sunglasses dangling loosely in his hand—and down there, whoever it was, he was tilted back in his chair, with his arm back and
his sunglasses were dangling down in just the same way.
It was him. All at once, she was sure of it.