She turned to the left, giving him a full view. In a hard voice she asked, “Do you like my mark?”
“Muy bonita. How did you get it?”
“A duel. With my sister Magdalena. We were twelve. She insulted me.”
“You insulted me,” came a voice.
Magdalena’s face appeared in the window of a blue cement wall nearby. Some rapid Spanish was exchanged, then Magdalena went away.
“She is a bitch.”
“You are a bitch,” came the retort, this time from another window.
“She is my best friend in the world,” called Remedios.
“You are my life!” cried Magdalena.
“You have family?” Remedios asked Cyril.
He described his family and she regarded him with what might have been a smile.
She called him Señor Picasso. “Mi ojas aqui,” she said, indicating her eyes in their proper places, “no ahi,” she added, indicating the side of her head.
“Su ojas muy bonita,” he said.
“Y usted muy guapo.”
“Gracias.”
“Are you famous?” she asked.
He barked a laugh. “No.”
She frowned. “Why not?”
He was about to say he was young, but he was ten years older than her.
“Are you rich?”
“Do I look rich?”
“Are you a hippie?”
“No.”
“Of course not,” she said with deep satisfaction, “hippies are godless drug addicts. You are an artist.”
On the day Cyril showed the finished portrait the entire family gathered. He’d managed to find a sheet of window glass, have it cut to size, framed it with thin strips of split bamboo on a panel, and presented himself at noon Sunday in a white shirt that he had not only washed but pressed by laying his Da Vinci book on it and weighing it down with bricks.
Don Antonio Smolenski, his wife Josefina, married daughter Conchita and her husband Fidel and their two daughters, plus Magdalena, Palma, Esmerelda, Gustavina, and Remedios were all present. The unveiling took place in the yard with the hens and dogs and a table laid with a white cloth and a buffet of goat and fish and chicken served in platters and bowls and pots all of baked red clay. No such ceremony had accompanied the drawing of don Antonio himself. At one point Remedios appeared at Cyril’s side and hip-checked him lightly and whispered, “Tranquilo.”
Still, when he slid the pillowslip from the portrait everyone, including Remedios, was silent. During this silence Cyril’s heart thumped so ominously that he wondered what his chances were if he had a stroke here in such a small town. His gaze moved from person to person starting with Don Antonio and ending with Remedios. She was expressionless. Then, as though returning from an out-of-body experience, her lidded eyes blinked and the corners of her mouth curled upward in a smile and she nodded. “Muy bueno. Mucho gusto.” Don Antonio shook his hand then poured drinks.
During the ten days Cyril had worked on the portrait, Gilbert had continued amassing birds. He now had twelve parrots, a few large and wrinkled, most small and green, three toucans, three macaws, and half a dozen brilliantly coloured creatures whose names he couldn’t get straight. The rainy season was approaching, and the next step was to arrange the transport and deal with the paperwork, tasks involving tortured discussions with various officials of vague authority. Cyril, whose Spanish was better, accompanied him.
“You must pay the mordida,” one sympathetic jefe informed the gringos with a deep sadness at such a state of affairs as he held out his hand for money.
Gilbert rated himself too worldly to be shocked, and informed Cyril that was the price of doing business when he borrowed yet more money from him. So absorbed was Gilbert in the complexities of his project that he had forgotten about biting Remedios’ ass and was indifferent to how close Cyril was getting. Remedios had taken to passing by their hut two and three times a day on her way to and from the market, nodding and occasionally deigning to converse.
Don Antonio sent a message inviting Cyril for a talk. Smolenski’s study was not an example of baronial splendour, but it did aspire. The floor was made of broad planks of oiled mahogany, there were blue and white ceramic candlesticks in the shape of nymphs, there were sea shells the size of footballs, a rack of pool cues though no pool table, an old clock, black and white photographs dating to 1880s Krakow, one showing a boy on the shoulders of a man in front of a small stone church. Smolenski indicated that Cyril should sit in the chair matching his own. They were carved wood and cracked leather, with ball and claw feet and high backs. Between them was a three-legged table on which sat a decanter of smoky liquor and two small glasses with gold trim. Smolenski poured, raised his glass, “Nostrovia amigo,” drank it in one go then set the glass down with a rap. Cyril dutifully followed. He managed not to gag even though it felt he’d gulped a burning coal directly from a forge. Smolenski gazed out the glassless window. The sea glittered in the late afternoon sun. His eyes were half shut as though he was either falling asleep or meditating on some deep subject. Eventually the old man directed his formidable attention upon Cyril. “You love her?”
Cyril stared at the seamed and striated face so bluntly confronting him. The nostrils were long and dark and the whites of the blue eyes as yellowed as old piano keys. Cyril found himself nodding.
“She loves you.”
Again Cyril nodded.
Smolenski refilled their glasses and again they drank. He pointed to the oldest photograph, “My great great-grandfather as a child.”
Cyril nodded a third time. He tried imagining the journey of that boy from Poland to Mexico and the many crises and adventures that must have occurred en route. What had made him leave? What had made him choose Mexico? Or had it all been an accident, a stumble from one side of the world to the other? Cyril looked at the decanter on the table. “What is this stuff?”
“Mezcal.”
It tasted like motor fuel.
“There won’t be much dowry,” warned Smolenski. “There are four sisters.”
Cyril swallowed.
“A small house. A small piece of land. Goats. A boat. It leaks but you can fix it. You can work with wood?”
“Yes.”
“Good. And you can do your other work. Your real work.”
Cyril saw what was being presented: a life with a beautiful woman in a beautiful place where he could pursue his work. He settled into his chair and shut his eyes feeling a deep relief. He thought of Gilbert and his birds, of his mother and the cemetery, and of Paul and his numbers, and all the while the mezcal warmed his blood and his heart beat to the tick of the old clock and his gratitude was immense. I’m here, he thought, I’ve arrived. When he opened his eyes he turned to Don Antonio Martin Smolenski and with great solemnity put his right hand over his heart and said, “You do me a great honour, but I cannot marry Remedios.”
Smolenski frowned.
Cyril stood.
“Is it her scar?”
“No. She’s beautiful. I’m sorry. I have to go.”
He didn’t go straight back to their hut but walked off along the beach, hands deep in his pockets and shoulders hunched. The sun was setting and birds shrilling in the jungle. The waves washed up the shore and then hissed back down leaving the sand seething. His mind was blank, stunned, as though deafened by an explosion. A wind gusted up and while it kept the evening rush of mosquitoes at bay it spat sand in his face. He didn’t care, he kept walking.
Long before he returned he heard Gilbert’s shouting and saw parrots swirling into the red sky and burning pages tumbling past. There was Gilbert chasing back and forth. He lunged and missed and fell to his knees and stayed there, exhausted, defeated. Cyril didn’t even take his hands from his pockets. He watched his scorched drawings scud away into the night. Resting a consoling hand on Gilbert’s back he tried to think of something to say but no words came.