In the spring, Orlando started writing for a leftist newspaper. By December he’d gotten Salomé to work there. The office was in the attic of a former Tupa’s house, with a desk, a chair, a great deal of shelving, and a broken sofa. It was a small job, part-time and for no pay, but it was good work for her, fact-checking, copy editing, translating from foreign sources. There were investigative articles, interviews, opinions, analyses, requiems for the revolution. The most heat surged around the topic of human rights, on the swells of new confessions, new evidence, disappearances of
uruguayos
in Argentina, where a commission documented all the crimes, but no commission here, not in Uruguay, no call to justice, no call even to memory; the president called for amnesty for military men, urged the people to press forward from the past, but he was
pushing against the public tide, which swirled with emotion and debate. Salomé could not have brought herself to write about these things. She lacked the stridency. But she could correct the grammar, could pare down exclamation points, could add commas and periods where the authors had dropped them in the fierce push of their pens. It soothed her to bring order to brash text.
The day after Christmas, after another awkward call with Roberto and Flor and Victoria, Salomé received an envelope from Mexico City. The return address said
LA FAMILIA CASSELLA Y VOLKOVA
. It was thick enough to hold a letter, perhaps a photograph or two. She left it on her dresser, unopened, for a week. Each morning she woke up enraged at its existence, at the fact that she would see it when she opened her eyes. She hated herself for her own rage. She battled. She opened her eyes facing the wall, the door, the ceiling, shredded by her own thoughts by the time she was out of bed. Finally, at New Year’s, she threw the letter away.
But perhaps she wouldn’t stay this way. The thought unfolded slowly, carefully, a shocking missive written on torn paper. Perhaps there was another way to open her eyes in bed. The seasons turned. Her sleep grew calmer after two years of brown teas brewed by Abuela Pajarita’s creased old hands. She woke in sweats but did not scream, and this was good, although she missed (she’d never say this) her mother’s secret visits, her
shhh, shhhh
, her perfumed body in the dark. There were things to wake for; the world held more than pain. She told herself this, at first, to trick her way out of her covers: there is more out there than pain, wake up, wake up, at least live long enough to brush your teeth. She had some teeth left, after all—she saw this in the bathroom mirror as she brushed, and since she wasn’t dead or toothless what excuse did she have not to sink them into something? Sink them into the soft flesh of days: afternoons of cards and
mate
with Abuelo and Mamá; mornings in the kitchen with Abuela, trimming plants, braiding her hair, the radio chattering between them, Abuela with her tender forceful silence, her radiant unspoken stores of memory. Abuela still sank teeth into her life. And look at Mamá—she did too, leaving for card games that surely were not card games, writing poems while the onions fried and occasionally burned.
“Yes,” she said, too quickly. “Don’t worry, I’ll chop.”
“I really mean it.”
She turned away, to the cutting board. “I know.”
Three days a week, she climbed the stairs to an attic office and sat beside Orlando, fixing text, on a sagging sofa that tilted them both toward the middle. They traveled to different neighborhoods together, gathering signatures for a referendum against the new law of impunity, knocking on bruised doors, looking into the faces of Uruguay: Hello, good sir, we are here to ask, I stayed alive today so I could meet you. Some evenings, Orlando persuaded her to stay out.
“Just for a drink,” he’d say.
She knew as well as he did that Just a Drink, in Uruguayan, means as long as you please, means at 3 a.m. the night is young, however short life seems to be the nights will still be young.
“Just one,” she’d say, and stay.
They went to bars with round tables and many candles. La Diablita was her favorite, thanks to its piano that sounded like it hadn’t been tuned in her lifetime, but still did its best. They met with Orlando’s friends—our friends, he said—who were old communists and socialists and Tupas, no longer different camps, now part of one broad and ostensibly united left. Some had been in exile, some in prison, some in both, all adherents to an old defeated dream, disciples after the crucifixion, toasting to the days when suppers had not seen their last. They talked and smoked and drank too much wine, just enough wine to let the past fall on the table like so many poker chips.
I was here.
I was there.
I was not there, I want to know. Tell me.
No.
Oh, come on.
It was like this—
I always wondered.
One time I.
And I.
And what about.
And also—
Don’t get me started.
You already have.
That’s true.
Another time I.
And I.
I never told, never.
Tell it tonight.
Tonight—
She came home late and lay awake, swimming with their stories and her own, imagining the dizzying routes that
uruguayos
had taken through the years, imagining a house in Spain, an Australian bar, a certain family in Mexico, a certain girl on a California beach, in a California car, until she slept and dreamed of dark lakes, oceans, Victoria on a raft that Salomé was swimming after. In other dreams she was alone in a dark room, and suddenly Victoria was present, she could make out the shape of her but could not see her face, and Salomé would say,
Turn on the light so I can see you
, but when Victoria did, she disappeared, the room disappeared, and all around her on the walls were the shadows of the past, shifting, dark, expansive, demanding witness, demanding space, demanding light.
And there was this city. Montevideo. She lived and rose each day to see it. It was the only city she’d known, and not the flashiest, but surely like none other, so it was said by those who’d returned from Paris, New York, Caracas, Sydney, Salerno. Anyway, it didn’t matter what they said. It was her city and she roamed it, at 3 p.m., at 3 a.m., skulking the streets, touching windowpanes, inhaling the scent of other people’s cooking, turning left or right according to her impulse. She was free. She could walk anywhere. Usually, though, she found her way, over and over, to the water. She walked along La Rambla, watching moonlight wink along the wide river. There were always other people, day or night,
mate
thermos under one arm, ambling slowly, talking, laughing, never rushed; perhaps most of their relatives were gone overseas; perhaps their jobs had
evaporated; perhaps their lovers were haunted by La Máquina; perhaps they wished they were living in the United States; but here they were. Many had gone. The years had been centrifugal, distending her known world, scattering
uruguayos
across the globe. But look, some clung on, insisting, Uruguay still exists within its own borders, even though it’s not the same, will never be the same, the idyllic country Batlle shaped is gone forever. But we have this one. This Uruguay: less innocent, smaller somehow, dwarfed by the looming world, more wounded, bleeding people out through its wounds, mourning the lost blood of the exiled and the dead and also those who simply shrugged and flew away, but also stronger for its wounds, mature, tenacious, wiser about what it can withstand, with a heart that beats and people who pulse through its pathways. She watched the people walk by. She made eye contact and struck up conversations. La Rambla opened its curved path to everyone, echoed all their feet, caught their gazes in the glitter of the river.
One night, Orlando kissed her at the shore, gently, his tongue like water.
“Come home with me,” he whispered.
Phhh
, said the waves on the rocks.
Salomé leaned into him. He smelled of musk and wool. “I don’t have much to give you.”
“So don’t give anything. To hell with giving. Just come home.”
That night she touched him like a feral cat, all claws and hunger.
Victoria had grown up. She was a young woman. Salomé heard it in her voice on Christmas Eve of ’88. It shouldn’t have shocked her—it was normal, inescapable, it happened to everybody after all—but still she could have crushed the receiver in her hand.
“Victoria? That’s really you?”
“
Sí
, Tía.”
“You finished high school.”
“Yes. I’m in college.”
“You like it?”
“Mostly. It’s cold in New York.”
“You must be glad to be back home.”
“Yes.”
“What are you studying?”
“I don’t know yet.” Static. “How are things in Uruguay?”
“Fine. Maybe you’ll come visit us one day.”
“I’d like that.”
The force of Victoria’s response surprised her. “Me too.” She’d been terribly greedy. It was a costly call, she should stop, she should pass the phone. “There’s always a place for you here.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Salomé said. More static. “Okay, I’d better pass you to your great-grandmother, before I get in trouble. You know how threatening she can get.”
Victoria laughed. “Okay. Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas.”
Salomé gave the phone to Pajarita and slipped into her bedroom. Victoria’s voice echoed from the bare walls.
Really?
She couldn’t discern the tone of the question, and with each unheard echo it shape-shifted from pleasure to longing, from longing to surprise, from surprise to mere familial courtesy. She a girl with remote origins in a small and remote country, a place she’d never been to, or at least not since she was old enough to retain memory. Perhaps she’d been raised with bits and pieces: inflected Spanish, an amethyst doorstop, occasional empanadas, branded leather images of gauchos on the walls, photos of her parents’ childhood homes, selective tales of how things used to be, an annual call. Perhaps she hadn’t. Perhaps she felt like a plant cut at the root. She might crave this place—to know it, to imbibe it—or she might not care at all. Maybe Roberto and Flor were experts at forgetting, and raised Victoria not to care. But girls don’t become exactly what they’re shaped to be, I of all people should know that. All this forgetting, it was exhausting, it required intricate invisible convolutions of the mind, and what was served by it? What would she do if she were not a coward? She was a terrible, terrible coward. The room was quiet. The sealed envelope leered at her from the bedside, another annual card from Mexico, unopened, as always. She looked at it for a long time. She picked it up and traced its edges with
her fingertip.
No, I can’t
. She put it down and picked it up four times before tearing the flap open. The front of the card held an image of Frida Kahlo, bleeding, heart exposed. Inside, she read:
Dear Salomé
,
We hope that you are well. We are well here, the three of us and the children—Cacho is 10 now, Ernesto is 7, and Salomé has just turned 6 years old. We are grateful for our health, our humble house, and the carpentry business. This year, Leona became a full professor of history. We celebrated with a Uruguayan-style
asado,
which our Mexican friends enjoyed!
We think of you often. The offer of flying you out still stands. We hope that one day you’ll accept it and come visit us, here in México D.F
.
With lots of love
,
Leona, Tinto, Anna, Cacho, Ernesto, and Salomé
She reread the card several times. Her hands shook. She closed it, looked at the picture on the front, put it back in the torn envelope, took it out, looked at the picture, put it away and took it out and read it again and again and again.
We hope that you. The offer of. Salomé has just turned
. She felt sick. She felt like laughing. She felt like throwing everything in sight. She felt as though she were in a glass box and the world beyond it breathed a different air. She wanted to break every pane around her. She wanted to cling to the staleness inside, but no, you can’t, you won’t, not this time, there is too much waiting on the other side. She rose and walked to the hall. From the living room, she heard Abuelo telling some exaggerated tale about a man staying up all night to build a boat. He was making his wife laugh, well into his nineties—miraculous, really, their good health. The door to her mother’s bedroom was ajar. She went in without thinking. She was alone. She opened Mamá’s closet with hands that seemed to know before her mind what she was doing, and reached up to the shelf that she now accessed with no trouble, pulling down the heavy box that was still there. She unfolded the flaps and pulled them out, her childhood shoes, Roberto’s shoes, the Mary
Janes and oxfords and worn tennies, red galoshes, white leather that must have been her first communion, white patent baptisms even deeper down, all with three eucalyptus leaves hanging from their mouths like tongues; somewhere one was broken—she had broken it—but which one, she didn’t know, couldn’t remember, it was too late to find it, too late to fix it, the shoes spread across the floor like an army. She stared at them. They didn’t charge. They stuck their leafy tongues out at her.
She heard steps and looked up. Mamá stood in the doorway. They stared at each other. Mamá made a sound that could have been the first part of a word.
“I’ve always wondered,” Salomé said, “what these were for.”
Mamá hovered for another moment. She was wearing a red silk blouse for the occasion; it matched her lipstick. Her hair was swept up with two silver combs. She sank down on the floor beside her daughter. “Me too.”
“I failed you.”
“No.”
“Of course I did.”
“Stop it.”
“I thought things would go differently.”
“I know.”
“You must have hated me.”
Mamá looked immensely sad. “No.”
“How can that be?”
Mamá leaned forward. She smelled of rose perfume. “Salomé. Salomé.”