Santiago walked down a creaking hall to the bedroom. Since the apartment came furnished, all he’d brought was his kit bag with its cards, toiletries, and a change of clothing. It lay on the floor, next to a double bed in a white iron frame. He left the light off; moonlight streamed in through the window, illuminating the room, comforting him. He stroked the scar on his wrist and lay down in his shorts.
All of a sudden, he felt a tomb pressing down on his heart. It began to smell of wet earth. Santiago stood, trembling, dizzy with an invisible omen. He opened the window with a shaky hand and inhaled the night air. Among the pipes crisscrossing the narrow inner patio walls were rows of windows aligned in the dark torpor of dreams—all but one, that is, the one directly across from his bedroom. A small lamp illuminated a desk covered with books and papers. A woman sat with a quill in hand, writing what Santiago sensed in the pit of his stomach were the hieroglyphics of his destiny.
He stared at the woman’s profile, the ribbons of chestnut hair falling down over a turquoise robe. The smell of ink and parchment paper wafted up like a strand of life and death. The woman set the quill on the desk, picked up a cigarette, and placed it in a long holder, lighting it, the smoke smudging her face for an instant. Santiago reached into his kit bag, pressing down on his toiletries, his razor slicing the tip of a finger, which began to gush blood. Leaving that trail of memories behind, he crept to the window and found the woman at hers, reaching into the sky in search of nonexistent rain. The moon, reflecting off TV antennas on the roof, flooded her face, and Santiago could watch her without being seen. He grew sick with ecstasy, affection, and fear. This woman had been resurrected from his dreams: the sad, jet-black eyes he had sought for so long, the small nose, the geometric cheekbones, the thin neck, the full breasts peeking out from her half-open robe. Santiago stood still, his extremities numb with an intense heat, blood dripping onto his chest, his knees, his shorts, absorbed in the splendor of reality until the woman left her window, lay back on a cushioned divan near the desk, and began to quell the heat with a peacock feather fan.
21
WATCHING HER, SANTIAGO fell asleep standing up and woke on his knees, his head resting on a spot of dried blood. The cut on his finger was proof of the previous night’s reality. He got to his feet with the sound of nutshells cracking as his spine fell back in line, then he stretched and leaned against the wall, smiling. He was afraid to go to the window and find her. First, he wanted to savor events alone, internalize them, die with them if necessary. He recalled her writing, smoking, looking up at the sky, fanning herself. He fell into bed, curled up in the delight of what was his, the delight of the wait and eventual encounter. He prayed fervently to Saint Pantolomina, showering her with praise, gratitude, and precious stones; he prayed to her virginal irises and her serious eyes; he prayed to the blessed body of Saint Isidro, to the splinters from Christ’s cross, and fell back asleep muttering a series of Our Fathers.
At three o’clock that afternoon, Santiago was awakened by a shout that suddenly hung in the room.
“Paco! Mari’s on the phone!”
It was a woman’s voice, coming from the courtyard. For a moment Santiago had no idea where he was. Flashes of anxiety exploded in his mind: He pictured himself in bed at Scarlet Manor, curled up to the heartbeat of vegetation as it climbed the trellis; he pictured himself in his cell at the church, his fingers sticky with Padre Rafael’s medicine; he pictured himself in his military cot, dazed by the flatulence and sweat of strangers; he pictured himself in his Madrid hotel room, botanical garden dahlias under his pillow. Until he sat up in a swirl of sheets, Santiago did not recognize that house with its window open onto paradise. He wondered whether the voice might be hers, though it sounded different from the one he’d heard in the chapel to Saint Pantolomina. This one sounded rude, angered by the day-to-day minutiae of life. He wondered whether she lived alone, with a girlfriend or family, whether she was married or had children, and the sting of impatience, of needing to know, pricked his chest. He slipped over to the open window and scanned the inner patio. The desk lamp was off. A pyramid of books that might have been dictionaries or encyclopedias had grown up around it, but papers continued to dominate. Over the divan lay the fan and the turquoise robe.
His mouth was parched. Santiago went into the large kitchen decorated with vanilla-colored furniture. He let the water run and poured himself a glass. Heat led him to open the window, desire to search for the woman in the window across the way, and destiny to find her in the kitchen, her windowsill filled with potted petunias, eating what looked like a chicken sandwich. The thrill that coursed through him when he realized she needed to eat like every other human, to drink a cola as she seemed to do with near-adolescent enthusiasm, caused him to let down his guard and be seen. He smiled when she did, after licking a drop of mayonnaise from the corner of her mouth. He smiled unaware of the tears in his eyes, the rain-scented sweat coursing down his body. A cramp of hunger brought him back to this world. He moved away from the window, slid down a cabinet until he was sitting on the floor in a fit of laughter.
Since there was nothing to eat in the kitchen, he went back to his room to breakfast of a cigarette and a few loose pieces of gum he found in the bottom of his kit bag. He had planned to go shopping that day, but evening was already dismantling the sky and he had no intention of leaving home, no intention of letting her out of his sight as long as he lived.
Santiago’s tenacity nearly made him sick. He spent hours spying on the woman from the bedroom, from the kitchen, taking great care not to be discovered again. He stalked her like an animal his prey, running from one room to the next, barefoot, panting. He watched her smoke with her long cigarette holder, write with the quill dipped in violet ink, consult the books on her desk, fan the heat while sitting on her divan in a blur of peacock feathers, and dance with her arms like a swan’s neck, her body’s undulations leaving him crazed in a puddle of sheets. He was fascinated by her short pants and the shirt that left her bellybutton bare. He was even fascinated by the fact that she had to relieve herself; her bathroom window was next to his, and though he could not see her, he felt the fury of the chain and peed at the same time, laughing. When overcome by weakness, Santiago would give in and smoke, utter the names of books of the Bible named after women, and recite saintly poems, transcribing the verses on his arms to forget his hunger.
Before it was completely dark, someone rang his bell. Santiago assumed it must be Isidro but decided not to answer—he wanted no one to disturb his joy. I’ll drop by tomorrow, he thought. Before long he realized the guard might know who she was and was overcome by another wave of delight. Something as simple as her having a name seemed almost supernatural. A name by which to remember her, a name that contained her entirety. Santiago’s dreams seemed dull, tedious, soulless, compared with a life with eyes wide open. Still, he did not go see Isidro but spent another night watching, for she worked until dawn. As he watched he imagined names, discarding some with a laugh, savoring others, as if he might discover the answer in the way the syllables rolled off his tongue.
Her name was Úrsula Perla Montoya, and she wrote romance novels. When her first book was published, she insisted they include her middle name in homage to her grandmother, a Persian poet who at the turn of the century fell into the arms of a Spanish archaeologist excavating near Persepolis. He brought his bride back to Spain years later, a converted Christian hauling a trunk of secrets and Eastern garments, not to mention a longing for the desert locked in her dark eyes, a longing only ever satisfied on holidays in Almería. She had looked after Úrsula until Úrsula was twelve, when death took her like a sandstorm, sealing her heart with an infinite dune that Europeans insisted was angina. Only her granddaughter understood the reality of this loss, which sent her to a Catholic boarding school in Valladolid while her parents, classical actors, toured the world. At her grandmother’s wake, Úrsula took diabolical pleasure in sharing one last secret with her: the reason the deceased’s
lips remained parted, melancholy puffs of superfine sand and salty dust slipping out, causing sneezes and hot flashes in the mourners. Ever since then, though not a woman easily drawn into the hurricane of nostalgia, Úrsula Perla Montoya fell asleep to the droning of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer that her grandmother had sung like a lullaby, overwhelmed by the cataclysm of a soul that never ceased being Muslim, telling her woes to a stone the size of an egg and dancing a thousand-year-old dance whenever she was troubled. It was her grandmother who taught her Persian, the language they spoke together, and Úrsula translated from and into whenever not immersed in the literature of love, an emotion she considered a tool of her trade.
When she ran into Santiago Laguna on the fourth-floor landing that Saturday morning, she recognized him as the young man she had seen through the window at lunch the day before. This time, however, she saw his eyes up close, and a poem of her grandmother’s sprang to mind. It was about a young man who bathed in a sacred lake and was punished by a genie, forever condemned to bear the weight of the lake’s turquoise water in his eyes. Úrsula smiled stiffly; an invisible string between her stomach and her lips tugged at the sight of the handsomest man she had ever seen standing before her.
“I’m Santiago Laguna, your new neighbor,” he said, unable to hide his idolatry.
His voice sounded timid—gone was the depth with which he usually dominated his conquests. She was the only thing left in his heart, sheathed in a strappy dress. The entire world was reduced to their two stomachs. Úrsula thought he looked like an enchanting bird, though there was an air of torment about him, as if he had been locked in a cage.
“I’ll see you around, then.”
Santiago’s scar began to throb. Úrsula’s voice, asking him to take her to Scarlet Manor, pounded in his temples. He was lost in memory as she walked to her door, jingling her keys.
“Wait. Will you sign this for me?”
Santiago hurried to pull Úrsula’s most recent book, Evening Passions on the Divan, out of his grocery bag and hand it to her. He had bought it that morning after breakfast with Isidro, after contemplating Saint Pantaleon’s still-liquid blood at the exact moment he asked the guard to reveal her identity, first hearing her name before that glorious relic.
“Have you read my other books?”
“No, but I’ve heard of you. I mean, I’ve seen you before.”
“Really? Where?”
“You know, I’m going to bake you a cake—I’m an excellent cook. I’ll bring it over and tell you everything then.” The Santiago with a sheen of arrogance from his messianic days was back.
Úrsula wrote “May the genie never take pity on your eyes” as she glanced sidelong at him.
“What genie is that?”
“I’ll tell you when you bring me that cake.”
Santiago’s hands were soon immersed in a bowl of egg yolks. He opened the window wide. The last time he’d cooked was when Olvido was alive. He added flour, sugar, and a pinch of salt to the yolks, his hands mixing the ingredients, transforming them into a dough. He dipped his right index and middle finger in, smeared a bit on one nipple to test the consistency. It was perfect. He kissed that bit of dough and combined it with the rest. He knew Úrsula was watching from her window, in plain sight. She watched him with interest at first, becoming more intent on the ripple of his hands, the thickness of his lips, the drops of sweat on his brow, an anatomy she began to intuit by staring at his temples, his cheekbones, his chin. She was sweating, too, as late-July heat baked the courtyard with its silent pipes. She, too, could feel the soft dough. Santiago opened a mesh bag of lemons and grated one until a little mountain of zest formed. He stared at it with awe, as if observing a landscape he could run his fingers through, smell, and suck. So he did. Then he put the zest in the dough and rolled it out on the counter, painting Úrsula’s face with more yolk. She had never seen such technique; this was a ritual that made her want to eat the cook, not the cake. She had never seen anyone bake with such love, a love that was solid, liquid, and gas, a love that crossed the inner patio to enlarge the corollas on her petunias, her windowsill becoming a jungle that gave way to the inevitable.
That night, on his way to perform at the café, Santiago felt as if someone nearby was weeping bitterly for him. The unexpected drama made him feel uncomfortable, caused his skin to tense, turning it frosty under the asphyxiating embers of bats plastering the Madrid sky. Walking down Calle de las Huertas, he wondered if it were scientifically possible for the dead to cry in a process to eliminate waste or something like that. He mused on whether only the recently departed could cry or those who had been dead for a long time, cemetery subsoil becoming secret marshland. These were the thoughts consuming him when he arrived at the café, his skin still icy cold. The usual bartender served him his whiskey and kissed him on the lips. Santiago took several gulps as lights flickered onstage, a reminder that they were waiting for him.
He climbed onto the stage and told a story about the sea. He rushed through it, accelerating storms, making mermaids capricious, drowning sailors without any consideration at all. He even introduced a traitor, like when Ezequiel Montes came into his life, someone to blame all misfortune on and finish the story before it was done. He felt the scar on his wrist burn with impatience under the moonlike warmth of the lights. All he wanted was to get home and bring Úrsula the cake. He had napped while it was in the oven, then showered, put on a shirt to look more like a man than a boy, and brought it to her. He rang the bell. No answer. He waited and rang the bell again, listening to the most painful silence through the door. He looked for her through the windows, seeing nothing but the jungle-filled sill. He was so frightened by the thought of her sudden disappearance that he had to fight the desire to cut himself to prove this was not a dream.
From his place onstage, Santiago saw Isidro on a barstool with a beer, looking like the good, solitary man he was. Over the years, the security guard’s eyes had grown bigger from watching TV, his soul Caribbean from countless soaps. Santiago suspected a rocky young love in his past, for his skin would become striped like a tiger’s whenever he heard a romantic story, an unmistakable sign of melancholy that could be cured only by shouting himself hoarse at Atlético matches. A woman with a white scarf covering her hair had sat down beside Isidro but kept her back to the stage. Santiago was annoyed by this gesture, as if his story was of no interest to her at all, and for a moment that not even he noticed, his chest began to sweat an earthen smell.
Santiago told the end of his story, stopping first for a few seconds, just long enough to drop a flower onto a grave. He got down from the stage and walked over to the bar amid applause that slashed ribbons of smoke and alcohol vapors. The woman in the white scarf finished her orange soda in a single gulp and jumped up from her stool the moment Santiago arrived to greet Isidro. She bumped into his arm as she hurried out, not turning to look at him or apologize. The door slammed shut, and Santiago stood watching through the window as her slightly stooped figure melted into sultry Madrid. His skin turned cold once again, overcome by a reptilian omen warning of something, though he had no idea what.
“Oh, how that poor woman cried,” Isidro said, burning with compassion. “Tears as big as pears.”
“Do you know her?”
“I only just saw her profile, but no.”
The bartender walked over to Santiago, smoothing her teased hair.
“Can I get you anything, love?”
“No, I’m heading home.”
“You’re such a bore sometimes,” she said, stalking off to serve two patrons in rock band T-shirts elbowing each other at the opposite end of the bar.
“Walk with me?” Santiago asked Isidro.
“Sure. I’m not up for any high jinks tonight either.”
Night plunged Santiago into an Úrsula paralysis yet again, and he forgot everything else. She was a pier that could stop any stormy wave the past might toss at him. Isidro saw the boy shiver before the blood of Saint
Pantaleon when he pronounced her name, as instructed. When he overheard Santiago inject the suffering of Úrsula Perla Montoya into his prayers, Isidro’s lips drained of all blood. He took Santiago by the arm and marched him out of church, crossing himself with his other hand, afraid such sacrilege would cause hell to swallow him right there. Ever since, every time the guard looked at his friend, his face constricted in worry.
“She’s too old for you,” Isidro said as they walked up Calle de las Huertas.
“She’s only ten or twelve years older. That’s nothing.”
“It is when you’re only twenty-one. You’re just a kid and she’s an experienced woman. This is a bad idea. I’m telling you this because I know things, things I shouldn’t but I do. Our building is a small community and that courtyard a showcase of shame.”
“I don’t care what you know.”
“She’s like a praying mantis—beautiful, yes, but her beauty attracts her prey. They say she uses a man for every novel she writes, leaving him when she’s done.”
“Well, she’ll write the rest of her books with me. She’ll never leave me once she knows.”
“Once she knows what? That you fell in love like a dog after seeing her through a window?”
“Once she knows I’ve been searching for her for five years, that for five years she has appeared to me both asleep and awake.”
The two walked the rest of the way in silence. Isidro now understood all those times when Santiago kneeled before the relics of saints and martyrs, praying to find Úrsula, praying she would fly into his life on the same miraculous wings she had used to enter his dreams and visions. A shiver ran up the guard’s spine as his mind wandered to a series of soap opera arguments about lovers with miraculous destinies.
The House of Impossible Loves Page 29
