“I promised to tell you. . but I can’t today. . I have a world of things on my mind. .”
When she said, “world,” I could imagine her well-rounded shape without looking at her.
“Besides,” she went on, “though it’s not your fault. . It bothers me that you’re so different.”
Her eyes crinkled and her face broke into an unexpected smile. Her upper lip gathered at the edges like some theater curtains to display a row of big sparkling teeth in perfect alignment.
“Whereas I’m delighted that you’re just the way you are.”
I must have said this with a roguish smile because I felt like an old-time charmer with a feather in his cap. Emboldened, I searched for her green eyes behind their lenses. But in the depths of those two small crystal lakes without a ripple, her eyelids had shut and swollen in shame. Her lips began to wrap over her teeth again and gradually her whole face flushed a reddish color I had seen on Chinese lanterns. There was the sort of silence produced by a misunderstanding, and she stubbed her foot on a frog trying to clamber back into the boat. I would have given anything to turn back the clock and erase what had just happened. My careless words had revealed base thoughts that I regretted bitterly. The distance between the island and the surrounding glass walls had become a hostile space where things exchanged offended looks, as if agreeing to reject me — which was a pity, because I had started to grow fond of them. But then suddenly Miss Margaret said:
“Stop by the stairs and go to your room. I think later I’ll feel very much like talking to you.”
I was watching some reflections in the lake and they seemed favorable. The plants were out of sight but I felt their approval. So I ran happily up the bare bones of the concrete staircase, like a child climbing the spine of a prehistoric animal.
I had just begun to arrange my books properly in the wardrobe, enjoying the smell of fresh wood, when the phone rang:
“Please come down again for a while. We’ll go around a few times in silence and when I give you the sign you’ll stop at the foot of the stairs and return to your room, and I won’t bother you again for two days.”
Everything happened as she had foreseen, although once when we circled close to the island she gazed at the plants and seemed about to speak.
Then began an indefinite waiting period: a vague stretch of lazy days, boring moonlit nights, and all sorts of hunches and suspicions involving the husband who might or might not be buried under the plants. I knew I had great difficulty understanding others and I tried to imagine Miss Margaret a bit as if I were seeing her through Hector’s eyes, then through Mary’s eyes, but I was too lazy to keep that up for long and soon fell back on my selfish ways: listening placidly while I rowed, hoping that if I just sat there and waited with careless but genuinely affectionate goodwill for her to say whatever she pleased, in the end she would settle comfortably in my understanding. Or it might happen that by simply living next to her, letting myself fall under her spell, that understanding would gradually form in me on its own and reach out to envelop her. Afterward, in my room with my books, I would return to my view of the plain, forgetting Miss Margaret. And that was the view I would steal — harmlessly — and take with me when I left at the end of the summer.
But other things were happening.
One morning the man in charge of the waterworks had a blueprint spread on a table. His eyes and fingers were following the curves representing the pipes that wormed their way through the walls and under the floors. He had not noticed me, although his tangled hair seemed to bristle watchfully in every direction. Finally he lifted his eyes. It took him a minute to adjust to the idea that he was looking at me instead of the blueprint. Then he started to explain how the machines sucked in and vomited out the water of the house through the pipes to produce an artificial storm. I had not yet witnessed one of his storms — but I had seen the blurs of holes with metal flaps under the water. He said they were spouts that alternately opened and closed, some swallowing water, others spitting it out. I was having a hard time understanding the system of valves, and he had begun to explain it all over again when Mary came in:
“You know she wants those twisted pipes kept out of sight. She says they’re like guts showing. . and what if she comes by, like last year?. . And you, sir, if you please.” She had turned to me. “You’ve heard what I said, so keep your mouth shut. Did she tell you we’re having a ‘wake’ tonight?. . That’s right, she puts candles in pudding bowls, sets the bowls to float all around the bed, and makes believe it’s her own wake. Then she has running water sent in to sweep the bowls away.”
At nightfall I heard Mary’s footsteps, the gong that announced the rush of water, and the sound of the motors. But by then I was bored again and refused to let anything surprise me.
Another night, after too much food and drink, while rowing Miss Margaret around endlessly, I had the feeling I was in a crazy dream, hidden behind a mountain that glided along in the silence I associated with heavenly bodies. And yet it gave me a secret satisfaction to know the “mountain” moved only because my force was driving the boat. At one point she asked me to pull alongside the island and wait there quietly for a while. They had put shady plants with long stalks on the island that day, tipped forward like parasols that now blocked the moonlight shining in through the glass dome. I was perspiring in the heat and the plants hovered over us menacingly. I thought of slipping into the water, but Miss Margaret would have felt the weight of the boat shift and I gave up the idea. My mind had wandered off on thoughts of its own: “Her name is like her body — two big fat syllables carrying the main load and the third for her head and tiny features. . It’s unbelievable: such a beautiful night, with such a wide open sky, and here we are, two grownup persons sitting so close together and each off on his own stupid thoughts. It must be two in the morning and we’re still awake. . for what?. . Suffocating under these branches. . and look at her: wrapped in her solitary self, impenetrable. .”
Suddenly, without warning, there was a roar in my ear. I was badly shaken. It took me a minute to realize she had coughed to clear her throat and was saying:
“Please, no questions. .”
She broke off. I was choking back words I seemed to remember hearing late one night from the bandoneonist of a tango orchestra I used to play with: “So, no questions, all right? Why don’t you just go to sleep. .”
She completed her sentence:
“. . until I’ve told you everything.”
Finally I was going to hear the promised words — when I least expected them. The silence crowded us together under the branches, but I dared not move the boat to another spot. I had time to hear myself thinking about Miss Margaret in a smothered voice, as if there were a pillow over my head: “Poor thing — so lonely, so in need of talking to someone. . And such a huge body to manage, full of so much sadness. .”