The village enchanted Cyril. He liked the river’s cool scent, the jungle’s sweet rot, the booming surf, liked sleeping in the afternoon and waking to the spectacle of sunset, but best of all he loved the dawn when the air was almost chill, the sky cinematic, and the world was cleansed not so much of its sins as the muddled chaos of the previous day.
Once a week he shaved in a mirror the size of a playing card propped on two nails driven into a post. If he stepped back his entire face fit in the mirror; up close only his nose, eye, or mouth. It was this fragmented self-scrutiny that started him on a series of self-portraits. He went to Don Antonio Martin Smolenski’s general store to buy a bigger mirror but there wasn’t one, so he bought two more small ones and arranged them on a shelf. From a distance he saw three Cyril’s; up close he saw himself in pieces.
Then there was the moth, tan and grey, the size of a quarter, attracted to the light on the mirrors. Each day the moth lit upon one of Cyril’s reflections. He drew the moth over and over, in pen, pencil, line, shade. The moth was an obedient model, its powdery wings suited to charcoal. He named the moth Gustavo, in honour of Carl Gustav Jung, whose book on dreams he’d once tried to read. It seemed to Cyril that the moth was the unconscious while the butterfly, crass, tacky, superficial in its loud beauty, was the conscious.
Yet in spite of all his efforts, the fear lingered that he was nothing more than a draughtsman, that the fat bastard at the interview had been right. No matter that Don Antonio Martin Smolenski praised him and that the villagers called him el artiste and there were regular requests for his services, the kids wanting caricatures, the fishermen usually wanting him to draw their boats, and the girls wishing to look like movie stars.
One of Don Antonio’s daughters looked better than a movie star. She had two different coloured eyes and a voluptuous figure. Gilbert lusted after her. “I’d like to bite her ass,” he said. “If I could unhinge my jaw, like a snake, I’d bite her whole ass.” As if to demonstrate, he opened his mouth as wide as he could.
Cyril looked away. He didn’t want to see down Gilbert’s throat. They were in their hammocks. Chickens worried the dirt while the parrots in their cages worked the kinks from their necks. Cyril informed him that her name was Remedios, and he agreed that biting her ass would be very satisfying. They grew wistful at the thought of Remedios’ ass.
“You realize that Don Antonio’ll cut your nuts off if you even look at her ass much less bite it.”
“Not when he sees how much dinero the birds get me.”
“You think that’s all it would take?”
“That’s all anything takes.”
Cyril hoped he was wrong because in his view Remedios was too good for Gilbert.
One afternoon during a downpour, Gilbert mused on the possibility of collecting and selling rain. “Pure rain water. Not from the ground, but the sky… from God! These cat-lickers’ll buy anything if it’s from God.” Gilbert was Scotch Presbyterian and had inherited the view that Roman Catholics were medieval. He stood in the deluge with his arms wide and face upturned as if embracing the rain of wealth. “Then senior Smellyinski’ll pony up what’s her name.”
“Remedios,” said Cyril, irritated. “You’re going to hell.”
“Maybe. But I’ll get there in a Mercedes.”
Remedios and two of her sisters came to gaze at Gilbert’s birds. While Gilbert deployed the full arsenal of his charm, Cyril watched from the hammock, his drawing pad in his lap. The ladies looked queenly and statuesque even though none stood taller than five foot two. They turned as one to Gilbert with the serene if giddy hauteur of adolescent royalty. Even from thirty yards away Cyril could read the dance-like rite of male-female interaction that was unfolding.
“You like my parrots?”
They smiled.
Cyril judged that all three were in their late teens. He wasn’t sure, but the eldest might be married, for he’d seen her with a baby. He dreaded the thought of Gilbert scoring with Remedios. It would make him unbearable, cock-walking around, that maddening self-confidence bolstered yet again. Cyril tried ignoring it all by focusing on his drawing, a man in a straw hat with two long strings of garlic bulbs slung over his shoulders. His face was in shadow, his straw hat frayed, his hands long and sinewy. Hunched over his work detailing the fibres of the hat, Cyril couldn’t ignore the three shadows that suddenly darkened the pale sandy dirt. He looked up. The girls stood at a respectful distance, intrigued by what he was drawing but too polite to intrude. He held it up. They murmured.
Remedios nodded and said that the garlic seller’s name was Angel. Ang hell.
Cyril wrote the name at the bottom of the page.
Gilbert approached, grinning, proprietorial, as if to gather up his harem.
“You can draw me?” Remedios asked.
Cyril could see the pride and yet hesitation in her manner. Her long black hair framed her face as if she was peeking through dark curtains. She was risking rejection. But why would he draw Angel the garlic seller and not her? “Okay.”
“Bueno.”
The women turned to leave.
“When?” asked Cyril.
“Tomorrow.”
“Here?”
She waved her forefinger side-to-side and clucked her tongue once. “No. My house.”
Cyril and Gilbert watched the girls depart. Gilbert wasn’t angry or jealous at Remedios’ interest in Cyril. He was so genuinely surprised it was as if they’d witnessed a quirk of culture, on par with the Chinese regarding live monkey brains as a delicacy.
Cyril showed up at Don Antonio’s the next morning at ten, shaved, showered, in a shirt still damp from having washed it at dawn. Don Antonio Smolenski’s house was simultaneously elegant and haphazard. Some walls were wood, some breeze block, others palm thatch. Parts of the roof were baked ceramic tiles and others corrugated aluminum sheeting. The fence was cement with broken glass on top, though there were gaps big enough to step through. Dogs howled heralding Cyril’s approach.
Remedios met him at the gate, which had a leather strap for a hinge and was flanked by two cement dolphins heavily pitted by the wind-blown sand. Just inside the gate were two enormous nopal cacti on which were snagged scraps of paper, shreds of cloth, and hen feathers. Two carved wooden chairs waited in the dirt courtyard where chickens pecked and laundry dripped. Remedios was wearing a lemon yellow dress that tucked tightly under her bosom and fell to just below her knees. The collar, cuffs, and hem were black ruffles and the buttons on the bodice were copper coins.
“Que linda,” he said.
She nodded and then sat in one of the chairs, crossing her legs and presenting him a three-quarter view.
“Don’t make her too beautiful,” said Don Antonio, joining them. He was barefoot and bare-chested and smoking a cigar. “It will go to her head.”
“Papa,” she scolded.
The older man directed a look at Cyril that was an appeal for sympathy as well as a warning to him to behave himself, then he turned and departed, smoking his cigar.
Cyril got busy with his pad and pencils and then positioned the other chair. Then he stepped closer, studying her. It seemed strange that she kept so much of her face hidden within the curtains of her hair. He reached out—she flinched. He hesitated, looked at her, and slowly, with his forefinger, folded her hair back behind her ear: and that’s when he discovered her scar. It ran like a thin, pale, upturned sickle from the corner of her right eye to the edge of her right nostril. It wasn’t huge or even unsightly, rather it was dramatic and intriguing.