The Five Acts of Diego Leon (24 page)

“Well, she wasn’t quite there yet,” Fiona said. “This was in the early days of her career. I had just started at Frontier. Anyway, he says to always be aware of your body. Hands, feet, eyes, everything. Always remain in control of it, of its limits and capabilities.”

She said he needed to use everything—shoulders and hair, mouth and nose—to convey feeling. “There’s a difference between picking something up”—and she bent down and plucked a small shell rather gingerly from the sand—“and
lifting
something up.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Lifting it and treating it as though it is the single most important, most cherished thing in the world.”

She set the shell back down, took a deep breath, and then did the most extraordinary thing. Her movements were different the second time, not casual and glib, but they were artful and fluid, as though they’d been choreographed. Fiona started first by tucking back a fragile curl of hair behind her ear, letting her hand linger on her neck. Then, with so much care and attention, she reached out, picked the shell back up and, cradling it in her hands, brought it close to her face, which wore a look of soft concern, her eyes sorrowful, as if she were about to burst into tears. The gesture was heart-wrenching but also very lovely, for she had made him believe that that seashell was no longer simply an insignificant object but something rare and cherished.

When she broke character, he applauded. “Fi,” he said. “I didn’t know you had it in you!”

She bowed. “But don’t overdo it,” she told him. “Don’t overact, don’t overemphasize. Otherwise all meaning gets lost, and the danger is that it comes out looking absurd and comical.”

“How do you know all of this?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Watching people. The strangest things are revealed when you’re just a spectator in all of this. People forget you’re there. Until you blow the whistle on them. Speaking of—” Here, she grabbed hers and blew. “Up. One more lap then we can go home.”

Diego sighed and rose.

“Catch me if you can,” she shouted, running off fast, her small feet kicking up grains of sand.

Diego ran, almost certain that he would never catch her.

March 1931

S
TUDIO
8
HAD BEEN CONVERTED INTO A LAVISH
R
OMAN TEMPLE
honoring Bacchus. The round pool lay in the middle of the set, the water bright blue and shimmering. Wide imitation marble columns supported large and elegant arches stretching around the pool. Fake plaster statues of Roman gods—Jupiter, Mars, Saturn—were perched on pedestals standing more than ten feet high. The walls were covered in decorative mosaic tiles of bright crimson, deep blue, and pastel green and lit by torches and sconces that gave off a dim glow.

The film told the story of Bacchus, the god of wine, debauchery, and excess, who falls in love with a mortal girl. Diego and a number of other young men had been cast as Roman subjects whose job it was to entertain the god, while he sat atop a gold throne, eating grapes, surrounded by a group of beautiful maidens. Diego and other young men all wore the same costume—a black wig with a crown of artificial laurel leaves painted gold, and a skimpy loincloth—and they huddled together around the small pool, dipping their feet in the water. The director was milling around, shouting something to technicians high above on the scaffolds, positioning the actor playing Bacchus. Diego glanced around, the light low, the faces of the others obscured by shadows.

“I hope the water isn’t too cold,” said someone.

Diego said, “Yes. I hope not either.” His face was only dimly
lit, and Diego squinted, tried making the features out. “Javier?” he asked, his heart pounding. “Is that you, hermano?”

But the young man didn’t hear him. There was too much shouting, and the director was barking out orders. Then the lights faded even more and the cameras started up. The group of men migrated toward the pool.

“I guess there’s no other way than to just plunge right in,” the young man said and he gripped Diego’s arm and pulled him in. Once in the water, Diego looked around, watching the others surrounding the perimeter of the pool step inside, one after the other. The director yelled action and shouted commands, and there was music, and the maidens at the foot of Bacchus’ throne danced, while the god ate grapes and drank from a large silver goblet. The director barked out orders through his bullhorn, as the camera turned from one end of the set to the other, and Diego stretched his neck, trying to find the figure he thought was Javier.

When the director called it a wrap, they emerged out of the water, dripping, the thin fabric of their loincloths clinging to their skin. The group joined the dancing maidens, the actor playing Bacchus, the musicians, and the lighting technicians as the group made its way toward the giant studio door in one large and imposing herd. Diego followed, not fully knowing where they were headed, his eyes fixed on the one he thought was Javier.

“Javier?” he shouted. “It’s me. Diego.”

He was striking like that, his hair a dark mane, skin glistening and almost iridescent in the light. He turned now, just as Diego reached for him, and walked out the studio doors. Someone had left a towel draped over a chair, and Diego reached out and grabbed this. By the time he was able to tie it around his waist, he looked around for them, but they were gone. Outside, the swimmers had left wet footprints on the asphalt, and he followed these. In spots where there was no shade, though, the footprints were already evaporating, continuing again on the other side of the path shadowed by the soundstages. He ran across the drawbridge of a castle surrounded by a fake moat, turned left and collided with a procession of men in marching band attire, toting trumpets and horns and xylophones.

“Watch it,” yelled one of them. “You nearly knocked me down.”

“Sorry,” Diego said. “I apologize.” He ran along, down the wide driveways and through the back lots, looking for him. It was him, wasn’t it? But it couldn’t be.

On he ran, past a jungle, past a western town, through a narrow alleyway in New York City, until the wet prints ended just outside the doors to the Frontier Pictures diner. The place was crowded with people at every table dressed in costumes and outfits, smoking cigarettes and sipping cups of hot black coffee. He looked around the room but couldn’t find any of the other swimmers. They had all simply vanished without a trace.

Maybe the vision of Javier was a sign. An omen. Maybe the spirits of his parents were calling him back home now that he was nearly certain he could make a good life for himself in Los Angeles. But, it was looking more and more as though the United States government might make that decision for him.

As the Depression continued into 1931 and gradually worsened, as people around the country struggled to feed their families, as jobs became more and more scarce, the good people of America looked for someone, something, to blame. The newspapers around Los Angeles reported on the “scourge of Mexicans” living in tightly packed dwellings around some of the more disagreeable areas of the city. Shacks, the reporters observed, with no electricity, no running water, where crime was rampant and so was disease—typhoid, tuberculosis, cholera. They were called animals by the press, uneducated, dirty scoundrels. The Los Angeles police department conducted mass deportations—rounding up as many as they could catch and hauling them away, back to the border, back to a country many of their children had never known—emptying out whole city blocks, whole neighborhoods. They were to blame for the economic catastrophes taking place so far away. They were to blame for taking jobs away from needy Americans. They were to blame for spreading diseases, for crimes and robberies and murders, for soiling the fabric of a great nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Diego’s hands shook as he read the reports of thousands of Mexicans,
“strains on the economy,” the paper said, being forced against their will to return. Women, children, men, teenagers, people who had escaped the revolution—the very one that had caused his father to lose himself, to return to the rancho a changed person, forever withdrawn and sullen—had no other choice but to go back. What if they came for him? He imagined it: a loud knock on the door late in the middle of the night. Two police detectives in sharp suits and fedora hats wielding steel guns and shiny badges.

“Come with us,” they would say.

“Where?” he would ask.

“Mexico. You’re being repatriated.”

That’s what the papers called it. “Repatriation.” It sounded so nice, so benevolent, Diego thought. He would be “repatriated,” reunited with his grandparents who had been waiting for his return for several years now. Every month, he sent messages, urging them to hold on, that he was working, that he was fine, that he would return soon, very soon. His grandmother, in turn, would reply each time she received his wires: “Your grandfather is drinking more and more each day”; “Please return. We need you.”

Caught between there and here. Between two lives, two cultures, two identities. He was frightened all the time now and carried with him a strong feeling of anxiety that he couldn’t shake away no matter how hard he tried. It was only a matter of time, he believed, before he would be forced to return there, penniless, empty, shamed, with nothing at all to show for his sacrifices. His father had returned to San Antonio de la Fe with his mother, the beautiful and refined city girl, the daughter of a wealthy business owner. But what would Diego return with? Only disappointment. He would die a failure. The passport sat on the bed, the ink from the stamp smudged, the words and numbers slightly faded, but he could see that the visa had expired some time ago now. The only person he had confided in was Fiona. Only she knew his true beginning. To everyone else, he was the young Portuguese or Spanish man. He was whatever they wanted him to be.

A few days later, when he and Fiona were out walking around and window-shopping, Diego was uneasy. He felt as though people were staring at him as they meandered down the street. “Mexican!” he imagined a pedestrian shouting. “Arrest him!”

“What’s with you?” Fiona asked, sensing he was tense.

“Nothing,” he said. “Everything’s fine, my dear.”

They stopped at an intersection and waited for the light to turn. Fiona touched his forehead. “I think you got too much sun today.” She glanced about and pointed across the street. “We’re going into that drugstore to get you something to drink.”

Inside, the electric fans whirred, and the air felt cool and moist. They took a seat at the very end of the counter, and Fiona removed her hat and Diego’s and asked the soda jerk behind the counter—a freckle-faced young man with bright red hair and thick eyeglasses—to tilt the fan in their direction.

“Sure, miss,” he said. The soda jerk walked, clumsy and uncoordinated, to the fan, and fiddled with it a few times before getting it right.

Fiona loosened Diego’s tie for him. “He’ll take a Dr. Pepper,” she said to the jerk. “I’ll have a cherry phosphate, please. Can you make it quick? He’s ill here.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, pushing the glasses up the bridge of his bony nose. “Coming right up.”

“Fi,” Diego said, as she struggled with the knot of his tie. “I’m fine. Really, darling.”

“Hush now,” she said. “You feel warm to me. We’ll sit here for a bit and cool off then head home.”

The soda jerk rushed over with their drinks, and while they drank, Diego looked around the drugstore. It was empty except for a handful of diners scattered here and there throughout the place. When they were nearly done with their drinks, and Diego was swishing around the bits of ice in his glass while Fiona was talking about how important it was for him to take care of himself, and that she felt real bad because maybe she was making him exercise too much, the two brown men walked in. They wore baggy trousers and shirts with wide lapels, and their black hair was long and combed back,
held in place by generous amounts of hair grease that perfumed the air as they passed. They took a seat at a booth near the back, next to a service exit. Several of the other patrons eyed them, and an old lady in a frilly white hat and gloves took the child she was with by the hand, stood, and stormed out, dragging the little girl with her.

The jerk stood behind the counter, arms crossed, glaring at the two of them. “Can you believe those people?” he said to Diego and Fiona. “The city’s overrun with their kind. Filthy greasers.”

Fiona took a few sips of her cherry phosphate, grabbed her things, and said to Diego, “Let’s go.”

He stood there, though, unmoving. “I’m still not well,” he said. He pointed to his glass. “Besides, I’m drinking this.”

She sat back down in a huff. “
What’s
with you?”

The soda jerk continued to glare at the two greasers. A few times, he went around waiting on the other customers, serving sodas and malteds he carried on a silver tray. Each time, he walked by the greasers’ table, ignoring them altogether. Finally, after a few minutes, one of them rose, walked over to the counter and leaned in, between Diego and Fiona.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Service.”