That night Efraín dreams he is standing at the door of a room with people he does not know. Two men, one younger and one older, and four women of different ages. One of the women is lying on a bed. She is pretty, but her stomach is very fat. Another woman is sitting on the bed of the pretty fat one. The rest of the people are on chairs around the bed. The woman sitting on the bed, who is older than the woman lying down, but not as old as La Vieja Juanita, fingers some beads and begins to chant in a language Efraín recognizes as Carib.
Mábuiga Maria Lionza,
Buíntibu Labu gracia,
Búmañei abúreme binuatibu,
Jeda su uriña,
Biníua tiguiyé tin bágai.
Sándu Maria Lionza,
Lúguchu búnguiu,
Ayumuraguaba uao gafigontíua urguñetó,
Lídan ora úouve.
Itara la.
When the old woman completes the incantation, the pretty, fat woman says, “Who is that?” and points toward the door. Efraín moves into the shadows.
“Where?” say the others.
“Oh, I thought I saw someone.”
The younger man goes to investigate. “It’s nothing, mi amor, you are just tired.”
“It must have been a shadow,” says the pretty, fat woman, “Never mind, Marta, please go ahead.” Then the woman sitting on the bed begins to tell a story. It is a story Efraín has heard before. It is the story of Maria Lionza.
A long time ago, to the Cacique Yare was born a beautiful daughter with green eyes like a cat. She was called Yara. On the night Yara was born, her father had a vision. In the vision, a monstrous snake consumed an entire village. The next day Cacique Yare summoned the tribal priest. The smoke-blowing priest told him that the color of his daughter’s eyes was a signal of bad times to come. Furthermore, the priest said, sending a cloud of smoke into the chief’s face and obscuring his view, if the green-eyed girl ever saw her reflection in the nearby lake, a giant anaconda would emerge from her mouth and bring death and destruction to the Caquetio tribes. Because of this, said the priest, the girl must be sacrificed to the Great Anaconda. But the Cacique Yare refused to kill his child. Instead he sent her to a secret place in the forest. For seventeen years, as Yara grew into a young woman, twenty-two guardians—eleven men and eleven women—watched over her. The guardians’ most important job was to prevent the girl from ever reaching the water of the lake, where she might see her own reflection. But one day, after a heavy and gratifying meal, they fell asleep in the sweltering noonday sun, and Yara wandered away from them. She strayed into the valley and to the shores of a splendid lake with water like glass. With fascination, she observed her reflection in the water. As she watched herself in the water, her appearance began to change. She grew longer and longer and longer, until she had taken the shape of a giant anaconda. The snake kept on growing. It grew so much that it filled the lake, which itself overflowed and brought floods to the surrounding villages. Yara kept on growing. Her head remained in Acarigua, but her tail extended past Valencia and all the way to Tamanaco.
It is said that many years later, no one really knows how many, Yara shed her snakeskin and emerged once again as a beautiful young woman with emerald eyes. In her hair she wore a passion flower, a sign of her divinity.
(I thought it was an orchid, says the pretty, fat woman.)
(No, it is the passiflora edulis, which is sometimes confused with an orchid, says the woman telling the story.)
Anyway, while Yara gathered herbs and berries in the forest, she was discovered by a search party of Spanish soldiers who mistook her for Doña Maria Lionza, a Spanish lady presumed shipwrecked off the coast and rescued by local tribes. The soldiers attempted to detain her, shouting, “Maria Lionza, Maria Lionza,” but she did not answer them. Instead, she called in a high singsong voice to a giant tapir that grazed nearby. When the tapir came to her side, she leapt astride it and disappeared into the thick of the forest. She rode into the Sorte Mountain, where she made her home, leaving the mountain only once after that, to meet with the conquistador Ponce de Leon, as an advocate for her people. Ponce de Leon fell in love with her and she with him, but it was an impossible love because of their opposing worlds. And so she returned to her world, leaving a piece of her heart with him and carrying a piece of him in her belly. It is said that she is immortal, that she lives in Sorte until this day, that she is known today as Maria Lionza, venerated by hundreds of thousands who call themselves Marialionceros. It is said that she visits the world by possessing a chosen woman with her spirit. It is said that one day she will send her son, El Niño, to deliver a secret message, and he will whisper it into El Presidente’s ear.
The fruit of the passiflora edulis is sweetest when the skin is slightly shriveled.
Consuelo
Whatever challenges life has thrown at her, and no one familiar with the details will dispute that she has passed through some extraordinary ordeals, Consuelo has always landed squarely on her feet. According to Marta, it is because artists are especially beloved by the goddess Maria Lionza. Consuelo herself is wary of too much happiness, a tenacious seed sown in her in childhood by a cynical mother who had herself been abandoned at birth and who whenever anyone asked how her day was going, would invariably reply, “Pésimo.” She had counseled Consuelo repeatedly that to expect the worst was to be well prepared for life. And so, the moment Lily slipped and fell on the kitchen floor, her thoughts were already anticipating the future, arriving at the culmination of a fast-moving event, an event in which her worst fears could be realized.
It was as though her mind had suddenly separated from her body. Even as she grabbed the keys to the young couple’s Range Rover while Luz hurried to open the door for Carlos Alberto, whose arms were full of Lily, even as she helped him settle Lily with her head in his lap in the backseat, she was making a mental inventory of all the things that could go wrong. With her heart squeezing and her mind howling in alarm, it should not have been possible for her body to make itself climb into the driver’s seat, for her fingers to turn the key in the ignition, for her foot to gun the engine in reverse, almost before Luz could pull in her foot and slam the door on the passenger side. They screeched out of the driveway at a speed that kept pace with her racing thoughts and made Carlos Alberto shout in protest, “Try not to kill us all before we get to the hospital.” In response, her foot only pressed down harder on the accelerator, a robot foot powered by fear and the determination to overtake the future.
They sped past the Plaza and onto the Avenida Franco, where a terrific traffic jam forced the car to an abrupt crawl. Her eyes scanned for an opening in the left lane, and in the absence of one, she cut sharply in front of another car and sped onward to Los Aves Hospital. She parked haphazardly in the place for ambulances and ran behind Carlos Alberto, who was carrying Lily, through large and bloodied glass doors that Luz held open. In the emergency room, she stood like a startled deer, blood pounding against her temples, her breath coming in quick, jagged rasps.
A nurse arrived with a syringe to take some blood from Lily’s arm and administer a tranquilizer because, according to her, Lily’s pulse was too fast. Dr. Ricardo Uzoátegui, a former school friend of Carlos Alberto, rushed into the room, quickly examined Lily, and said: “We would like to conduct some tests to check on the condition of the fetus. You will need to admit her for observation.” Luz, squeamish about hospitals since the surgery that had left her barren, said she would wait in the lobby.
Could a tranquilizer be good for the baby? Consuelo heard words of protest in her head but nothing came out of her mouth, which was dry as hay. No se preocupe, said the nurse, patting Consuelo’s arm before wheeling Lily briskly away.
An hour later Dr Uzoátegui said the fetus was positioned with its head against the patient’s kidneys. Although there was no imminent danger, to be on the safe side it might be advisable to perform a Cesarean section, he said. And later, if it should turn out that the patient’s kidneys were bruised, per
itoneal dialysis might be prescribed following the operation. This kind of dialysis could, he said, be performed at home, but under the supervision of a specialized nurse. Even though it was a completely hypothetical matter at this stage, he proceeded to describe the peritoneal dialysis procedure.
“A catheter is used to fill the abdomen with dialysis solution. The walls of the abdominal cavity are lined with a membrane called the peritoneum, which allows waste products and extra fluid to pass from the blood into the dialysis solution, taking on the function of the kidneys.”
Although the features of her face were assembled in an expression of deference and attentiveness, Consuelo was rattled by the way Ricardo Uzoátegui, who had been best man at her daughter’s wedding, kept referring to Lily as “the patient,” as though he didn’t know her personally, and to the baby as “the fetus,” as though a baby were a thing. She was irritated by the way he seemed to want to apply all his medical knowledge to this one case, as if it were a contest he was determined to win. She was bothered by the way he was looking into the air as he spoke, rather than into the eyes of his friend, Carlos Alberto. She felt an almost irresistible urge to slap his freshly scrubbed face, to hear the clap of flesh smacking flesh, if only to feel and confirm the existence and solidity of her own hand.
“A natural delivery may not be advisable,” Dr. Ricardo Uzoátegui continued, still looking not quite at, but in the vicinity of, Carlos Alberto. “We do not know the full extent of the effect the fall has had, and she is very close to her due date. In such cases, we find it best to operate. You will need to sign a release form.”
Carlos Alberto took the doctor into the hallway, but Consuelo could hear. “What is the risk of surgery to my wife and child, Ricardo?” Carlos Alberto asked. His tone was polite but tinged with a hint of panic.
“Of course, with surgery there is always a risk, Carlos Alberto,” said Ricardo Uzoátegui. “However, the risk of doing nothing outweighs the risk of surgery. With surgery, the odds are surely in favor of the patient. As for the fetus, we won’t know until we see it. The heartbeat is not robust. I understand that there was some trouble conceiving, but in the unfortunate event the fetus is not viable, one might even consider a surrogate at some time in the future. Although it is not legal here, there is no reason one couldn’t go elsewhere, the United States, perhaps. I would be happy to recommend a specialist there.”
As though the baby might be expendable; a canvas to be painted over. No reason! No reason except that both parents wanted this baby in particular, and not some other baby grown in a stranger’s womb. No reason except her daughter’s wish to deliver this child the natural way. There was no reason for Ricardo Uzoátegui to talk about the baby in such a dehumanizing manner! And there was the cost of an operation to consider. Without Lily’s income after she became pregnant, Carlos Alberto had struggled valiantly to meet the financial burden of supporting not only his wife but also two of his five sisters, at a time when the whole country was staggering under the crushing weight of recession and spiraling currency devaluation. His documentary film career was in shambles; all the financiers had vanished. In addition to teaching courses on film at the Universidad Simón Bolívar, he had supplemented his income by penning stories for the radio. Occasionally, if he was lucky, television producers would purchase the rights and convert his stories into screenplays. Consuelo had contributed whatever Ismael sent her to the Quintanilla household. Still, as the currency fell sharply against the dollar, inflation had risen exponentially. When Lily’s filly, Luna, had developed an arthritic hip, they couldn’t afford the treatment and it had been Amparo who paid. These days, they could barely pay their bills each month and frequently were forced to rely on the kindness of the Portuguese grocer on the corner of Avenida Benadiba and Cinco for credit. They were not insured. Where would they find the money for an operation?
The two men came back into the room.
“No Cesarean,” Lily said.
Consuelo watched Carlos Alberto watching his friend Ricardo, who, perceiving silence as an agreement between hombres, began discussing preparations for surgery. His voice whirred on, an impassionate machine sound.
She heard Lily call out to her, but could not make her mouth respond.
“Shush, mi amor, your mother is right here, and so am I,” said Carlos Alberto.
“I refuse to be cut open like a melon. I want to go home,” Lily said, her voice trembling with rage.
Ignoring Lily, the doctor again aimed his words in the direction of Carlos Alberto, insisting that Lily must not be moved.
“Take me home,” Lily repeated in a categorical whisper, and began to cry.
Carlos Alberto’s gaze darted agitatedly around the room. To Consuelo he had the look of a cornered animal. And she was suddenly incensed by her own timidity and fearfulness, by the palpitations of her heart. What was she afraid of? Wasn’t she the woman who had captured the wildest man on the planet? Hadn’t she pushed out a six-pound baby through an aperture the size of a pea? She was the mother, was she not? She could be the mother of everyone in the room, including this puny man-child with the pristine coat and superior smile. As the mother, she must take over, take a decision, overrule all other decisions. She must take charge of the future.
“Muchacho, look at me,” she said to the doctor, reaching forward, taking his sparsely whiskered chin in her hand, turning his head to face her. “You know me. I am Señora Consuelo Martinez, the mother of this young woman who is the wife of your friend Carlos Alberto. From this moment forward, you will look at my daughter when you make recommendations regarding her treatment. My daughter’s name is not ‘the patient,’ it is Lily, como usted bien lo sabe. You will address her by her name, and you will address her as if she has a brain. Lily is intelligent; she designs buildings on the rare occasions anyone has the money to build them these days; she will, I assure you, be able to grasp what you are saying. As for the baby, he or she has no name yet, but refer again to this child as ‘the fetus’ and I will remove that stethoscope from around your neck and throttle you with it.”
Dr Ricardo Uzoátegui snapped to attention at the sound of the universal voice of mothers. And, incapable of enduring Consuelo’s laser stare even a moment longer, he turned to Lily and looked into her eyes for the first time all morning.
“Is there something you would like to say, Lily?”
“If you don’t mind, Ricardo, I would like to consult my godmother, Amparo Aguilar,” said Lily, calmer, now that her mother had successfully balanced the scales.
“Amparo Aguilar,” explained Consuelo for Ricardo’s benefit, “is a licensed midwife.”
Ricardo looked pained; he knew very well who Amparo Aguilar was. Amparo Aguilar was the bane of every obstetrician in the city. She was despised by the medical professionals of the mainland almost as much as the Cuban physicians who were scurrying about the country like cockroaches, dispensing free treatment and vaccines everywhere. Disappointed that the Universal Mother would consider such brujerías as those practiced by Amparo Aguilar on a par with his own scientific knowledge, he turned toward Carlos Alberto. At which point, Consuelo decided she must act swiftly. She must phone Amparo.
“All right, then, Ricardo,” she said, “before we come to any decisions, would you be so kind as to permit us the use of a telephone?”
“I have one in my office, Señora,” said Ricardo Uzoátegui, who had realized the foolhardiness of obstructing a tigress defending her cub. “First door to your left.”
Consuelo, unsure of what influence Ricardo might exert on Carlos Alberto if left behind, and unwilling to leave it to chance, asked her son-in-law to accompany her. But before anyone could leave the room, before Carlos Alberto could agree or object, and as if in answer to an unspoken prayer, she saw Ismael, her beautiful Ismael, chiseled in the doorway. Without even a glance at Ricardo, or anyone else for that matter, Ismael strode into the room, gathered Lily in his arms, and walked out.
It was at this stage that Carlos A
lberto began to dissent in a strangled voice, but Consuelo put a finger to his lips, caught him firmly by the arm. And together, leaning against each other more for moral than for physical support, they followed, down the long, white, antiseptic hallway, into the lobby, where Luz, surprised, joined the procession, out the hospital doors and into the bright afternoon. Ricardo Uzoátegui shot past Consuelo, Carlos Alberto, and Luz, gaining on Ismael, braying out hospital rules and regulations regarding patient discharge. But Ismael kept walking.
By the time they had all congregated near the car, which was covered festively in orange flower petals from the acacia tree above, Ricardo was winded and had lost all semblance of authority.
“Señor,” he said to Ismael. “if you insist on taking her home, please ensure that she gets complete bed rest.”
Ismael ignored the doctor, signaled with his chin to Carlos Alberto to open the back door of the Range Rover. When Carlos Alberto hesitated, Consuelo handed him the car keys and said, “Ricardo will come by to check on Lily later, won’t you, Ricardo?”
Obediently, Ricardo confirmed, “I will come by after my shift to examine her, Carlos Alberto.”
Consuelo observed with relief that Carlos Alberto seemed somewhat appeased. He thanked his friend, helped his father-in-law to settle Lily in the back of the vehicle, and handed the keys to Consuelo. But Consuelo, whose heart had not caught up with events and was still pounding irrhythmically, shook her head. “You drive,” she said.
The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos Page 7
