Irma Voth

by Miriam Toews

I’m not really sure, she said. Why did you agree to be my translator?

  I’m not sure either, I said.

  Well, I think I do know, actually, she said.

  Yeah? I said. Why?

  Because we were asked to, she said.

  Oveja was stoned and following me from a distance. Elias, the cameraman, had told me on my way out that Oveja had eaten his stash of pot and that it had made him more philosophical. He’ll think twice before he attacks, he said. Elias made me laugh. He didn’t stop talking, like he didn’t care that silence was supposedly golden, his currency was different. He had bought himself some clothes from the store in town, Wrangler jeans and a plaid shirt and work boots. Now I’m a Mennonite, he said. He told me that when he was a boy in Mexico City he had learned about Mennonites. He had seen some of them selling cheese on the streets and he had wanted to be one. Elias told me that he had even drawn a self-portrait of himself as a Mennonite in a bathtub. It’s remarkable, he said, that now I’m making a film about them. He showed me a photograph of himself as a little boy on a beach in Acapulco. See that? he said. He told me that when he was a little boy he had an ass but that somehow, along the road to adulthood, he had lost his ass. Do you see? he said. He turned around so I could look at him. I thought he did have an ass but a small one. Look at Wilson, he said. He’s got two asses and I have none. That’s not fair.

  Wilson ignored him completely. He was writing something down. Then he looked up and smiled at me and shrugged his shoulders. I’m Wilson, he said. That’s fine, I said. Why did I say it was fine for him to be Wilson? I wanted to go back and tell him that I was Irma. But he knew that.

  Diego asked me, before I left for home, if Marijke was okay and what we had talked about. She’s fine, I said. Diego told me that the others had returned with the essential camera part and that tomorrow morning, early, we’d start shooting.

  I was less afraid of Oveja now that he was a philosopher but I was nervous when he followed me home. I imagined his brown teeth sinking, pensively, into the back of my leg in search of something elusive. I thought about what Marijke had said. Oveja, I said, would you please stop following me? Asking didn’t change anything with dogs.

  Aggie was standing like a thief in the night at the dark end of my driveway. Her hair was tied back tightly, viciously. Her head shone like an egg.

  What’s wrong? I asked her.

  What’s that? she said, pointing at Oveja.

  What’s wrong? I asked her again.

  Everybody hates you, she said. She kicked a bit of sand in my direction. Oveja sighed. What was the point. Stars fell.

  That’s not true, Aggie, I said. They don’t care enough about me to hate me. You’re the only one who does.

  I don’t hate you, said Aggie.

  I know, I said. How do you like my new friend?

  He’s hideous, said Aggie. He’s an asshole and he stinks like shit. I hope he gets run over by a baler.

  We stood quietly and stared at the night. We were living in a dark, empty pocket. Not even the Hubble telescope could spot us on the earth’s surface now.

  Oh, c’mon, Aggie, I said. Stop crying. I wanted to tell her about the four-part cure. I wanted to convince her that everything good was easy to get and all that was terrible was easy to endure.

  Hey Aggie, I said, you know what?

  What? she said.

  Oveja’s stoned right now and thinks he’s a philosopher. When it wears off he’ll go back to attacking people. I don’t think we have a lot of time. Then Aggie told me that her friend Aughte’s dad, Alfredo, was going to play the husband in the movie. That Diego had promised him and his wife and kids a two-week all-inclusive resort package in Cancún when it was over and now everyone was mad at him too, and maybe after the movie they’d all move to a colony in Veracruz and she’d lose her best friend and Alfredo would find out that I was working for Diego too and tell our dad and that would be it, curtains.

  And Mom’s pregnant again, said Aggie. And doesn’t want to get out of bed and doesn’t smile anymore and I have to do everything now and Dad just yells and prays and I have chigoe bites all over my legs. So, why did you have to be such an idiot and go and marry a cholo?

  He’s not a narco, Aggie, I said. Let me see.

  She lifted her dress a bit. There were ugly red sores all over her ankles and shins where the fleas had burrowed beneath her skin.

  Let me sleep at your place tonight, Irma, please?

  That night I had a dream about my mother and the next morning I saw her for the first time in months. I was up early, ready to start my new job, and I was standing in my yard waiting for the sun also to rise and warm me up. In my dream I was thinking about my dad yelling and praying and wondering if he got them mixed up sometimes and forgot who he was talking to. In my dream I looked at the road and there was my mother walking slowly, proud and majestic, or maybe just exhausted, like one of those giraffes you see briefly in shimmering sunlight on the savannah. She didn’t look real and for a second I thought my mind had conjured up the thing it craved, the way a pregnant woman cries so she can taste the salt her body needs. Which is actually a lie my mother told us to explain away all her tears. But I was thinking about that stuff while I was running and then I was hugging her and I knew she was real because she was holding me so close to her it hurt and I was coughing trying to catch my breath and I could smell fresh bread and soap. I touched her stomach. She was farther along than I had thought.

  Another one? I said.

  Is Aggie with you? she said.

  She’s still asleep.

  Send her home now, Irma, quickly.

  I wanted to tell her about my dream but she had already begun to walk away and I stood there, like always, like forever it seemed, in the middle of the road waiting for something or someone to revive me, God or a parent or my husband or any of those things or people or ideas or words that by their definition promised love.

  Diego suggested I keep a diary of “the shoot” after I mentioned a few things that Marijke had wondered about. For instance, why her character would be serene all the time. Was she in a depressive fog or not quite human or just plain stupid? He told me that he found it easier to understand certain ideas when he wrote them down or captured them on film and that I could try to do the same thing by keeping a diary of the shoot rather than by worrying about his ideas. Or something like that. He gave me a black notebook and a pen with a small light bulb on the tip.

  Does this pen light up? I asked him.

  Yes, there’s a switch, he said. It doubles as a flashlight.

  Thank you, I said.

  The first thing I wrote down in my new notebook was:

  YOU MUST BE PREPARED TO DIE!

  That’s what Diego told us this morning before we headed off to our first location. This is commando filmmaking, he said. The little red dot in the white of his left eye shone brighter than usual, like fresh blood on snow.

  This is guerrilla filmmaking, he said. When it’s time to work, it’s time to work. If you’re not prepared to risk your life, then leave now.

  Irma, he said. Are you afraid?

  Of dying? I said. I laughed out loud.

  What is he saying? asked Marijke.

  He wants us all to have fun, relax and be brave, I said.

  I ran my fingernail over the leathery cover of the notebook and tried to carve my name into it. Then I thought to use the pen. I wrote my name on the inside cover and then crossed it out. I was afraid that my father would find it. I traced my left hand on a blank page and then filled it in with lifelines that somewhat resembled my own.

  Diego has put Marijke into a dress like mine and tied her hair back with a kerchief and scrubbed off all her makeup. I explained to her that the first scene we’d be shooting was the family in their farmyard checking out a new tractor. We’d have to drive about an hour to the farmhouse where the scene would be shot. She stood in the yard like a smoking tree while the rest of us carried the equipment to the trucks.

>   Then Alfredo showed up with his wife and kids from Campo 3 a mile away, and they were not happy. I waved to them because I’ve known them all my life and Peter, the little boy who doesn’t know any better, waved back. His older sister, Aggie’s friend from school, pulled his hand down. They stayed in the truck and stared away at something. Alfredo ignored me and went over to Diego and told him that he had to quit.

  What do you mean, quit? said Diego. What are you talking about? We haven’t even started!

  Alfredo told Diego that he was getting too much pressure from his wife and his parents. They didn’t want him to act in a movie and it was taking him away from his work digging wells and his wife was jealous of his movie relationship with another woman.

  Como lo arreglamos? said Diego. He wanted to know how they could work things out. Alfredo shrugged.

  Diego smiled at me and then took Alfredo’s arm and led him away behind the barn to talk about it and everybody standing around heard them yelling at each other in Spanish. Oveja went running around to the back of the barn to see what was going on and I heard Alfredo say he’d rip Oveja’s jaw out and crush it under his truck tires if he came any closer. Then Diego yelled at Wilson to come and get Oveja and tie him to the pump.

  What’s the problem? Marijke asked me.

  Nothing, I said. Diego is preparing Alfredo for his role.

  At first Diego pleaded with Alfredo and then he was shouting, saying he had thought they had an understanding, and then he changed his strategy and appealed to Alfredo’s ego (There is nobody, NOBODY, but you who can give this part the depth and humanity that it demands) and then he shifted his position again and offered him some more money and shortly after that they stopped yelling at each other and emerged from behind the barn and Alfredo went over to his wife and kids and talked to them and they drove off without waving and without Alfredo.

  I don’t want him to yell at me, said Marijke, if that’s what it takes to prepare me. I can’t handle that.

  He won’t, I said, your role is different.

  We all piled into the trucks and drove off to shoot the first scene. Elias was driving the truck that Marijke and I were in. In Rubio, the closest village to our campo, he smashed it into a fence trying to back up and Diego, following behind, radioed him to let me drive because I knew the roads around there. We had to wait for a while so that Diego could negotiate something with the owner of the fence. Alfredo came over to where Marijke and I were standing and asked me if my father and my husband knew I was working for Diego.

  When Diego came back he suggested that Alfredo change trucks and sit next to Marijke so they could get to know each other because they did speak the same language, but Marijke said that in fact their dialects were entirely different, she was a Russian Mennonite living in Germany and he was a Canadian Mennonite living in Mexico, and Alfredo was drunk and reeked of booze and was completely unintelligible and so … no.

  She just wants some time to herself to organize her thoughts, I told Diego.

  What thoughts? he said. Is she unhappy again?

  I drove for a long time past various campos, clusters of barns and houses here and there, and down dirt roads and through cornfields and little streams and mud and desert. Elias and Sebastian, the sound guy, were sleeping in the back seat and Wilson sat in between them writing in his notebook.

  What’s he writing? Marijke asked me.

  What are you writing? I asked Wilson, in Spanish, and he said stories, small stories. He said he’d like to read them at a festival in Guadalajara but he can’t now because he’s been commandeered to work for Diego and he needs the job.

  Marijke, I said, does your husband mind that you’re here in Mexico working on a movie?

  No, she said, not at all. I don’t think he does. Do I mind if he goes to work? Do I mind if he shits and breathes?

  I thought, that’s what I should have told Alfredo when he asked me about Jorge.

  Elias woke up and lit a cigarette. I forgot my light meter, he said. I’m a dead man. Wilson looked up briefly from his writing.

  We drove through clouds of dust in silence. We passed a few Tarahumara Indians on the road, a mother and her daughters clad in beautiful colours. They didn’t seem to be walking anywhere. They were just there, standing brightly. I turned around to look a few times to see if they would move. I did it quickly, trying to catch them moving, but they had my number.

  Marijke and I sat in an empty shed on upside-down feed buckets talking about the script and sex and the nervous system. She asked me if Jorge had wanted to have a baby with me.

  I’m not sure, I said.

  You didn’t talk about it?

  I don’t think so, I said.

  Would he make a good father, do you think? she said.

  Well, I said, I’m not sure. What do you mean?

  I mean would he be helpful with the baby and love it more than himself.

  I was quiet, thinking of fathers, of my own and of Jorge’s, who had watched his small shoes bubble over and then disappeared.

  Well, what do you think? said Marijke. Are you crying?

  Diego had asked me to do Marijke’s hair like mine. I started combing it and a few chunks of it, long strands, fell onto the dirt floor. Those are my extensions, she told me. She told me they had been welded to her head with a heat gun and glue. She told me that mostly her hair would have to be braided and stuffed under her doak when she was acting but she thought there was one scene where it was required to tumble out of her kerchief and that’s when she’d need the extensions.

  I had that dreamy feeling of falling, for a split second, and then losing my footing again. To regain it, I tried quickly to remember the meaning of the word samizdat. And then I heard screams. A kid came running into the shed and grabbed my hand and dragged me outside into the yard where a bunch of other little kids were standing around a four-foot tiger snake. I grabbed a rake from the shed and neatly (not to brag, but you know) sliced the thing in two and the kids stared for a while, a couple of the boys kicked at it, and then went back to their game. Marijke came outside and asked me what was going on. Well, this thing is dead now, I said.

  We stood with our hands on our hips and looked at it. Marijke’s hair was half done and billowing out from one side of her head like the flag of some beautiful and indefinable region. She moved her fingers gently over the tight braids on the other side. Good job, she said.

  Check this out, I said. I picked up a piece of the snake and peeled off its skin. I crushed the hard shell in my hand and showed Marijke the powder. You can sprinkle this over your food like salt, I said.

  She licked her finger and dabbed at the crushed bits in my hand.

  Hmmm, she said. Are you sure?

  Diego called to say he needed Marijke then, to just shove the rest of her hair under the kerchief and come right now because the light was right and the Mennonites who owned the house were getting restless. The crew had set everything up and the Mennonite kids playing the Mennonite kids were in their places and their parents, Alfredo and Marijke, were supposed to talk about stuff while checking out the new tractor with the family. One of the kids didn’t want to be there and Miguel was trying to cajole him in Spanish, which the kid didn’t understand yet, and then to bribe him with chocolate. Eventually Miguel just said okay, go play, and he went out and plucked a different, more pliable blond-haired, blue-eyed kid from the crowd that had gathered around and set him down next to the tractor for the scene.

  Diego asked Alfredo to remove his beer can from the hood of the tractor so it wouldn’t be seen in the shot and then he took me aside and said that this was the scene of the family together, pivotal and establishing, and must be perfect. Alfredo will tell Marijke that he has to go to town on some kind of business and Marijke will indicate through her body language that she does not believe him but that she will accept what he is saying for the sake of peace in the home. Alfredo will take a few steps then come back and put his hand on her shoulder and tell her that he loves her
. Marijke will tell him that she loves him too. Okay? he said. It’s simple, right?

  I nodded. Yeah, I said. Should I tell her now?

  Yes, Irma, please, said Diego. We’re ready. And can you also tell her to please not look into the camera.

  I went over to Marijke and told her what Diego had said about not looking into the camera.

  And when Alfredo tells you that he loves you, I said, you smile a little sadly and put your hand softly on his hand and tell him quietly that you’re tired of his bullshit. In fact, no, not tired, but very close to being defeated by his bullshit.

  That’s what I tell him? she said.

  Um, yes, I said. Quietly and sadly.

  Okay, she said.

  And remember the camera, I said. Not to look at it.

  On the way home Elias and Sebastian smoked Faros and shared headphones.

  Irma, said Elias. Do you know Neil Young?

  Yeah, I said.

  You do? said Elias.

  No, I said.

  He’s from Canada! said Elias. He handed me his headphones and I put them in my ears and listened. I heard Neil Young singing about a sky about to rain.

  What does that last part mean? said Elias.

  I don’t know, I said. Then I thought about it. I don’t know, I said again.

  It comes out of fucking nowhere but it fits perfectly, said Elias. I don’t know what it means either but it’s fucking brilliant. He took the headphones back and listened to another song. When it was finished he took them off and told us that the song was about this guy, he loses his way, his map, he loses his telescope, he loses his coastline! It’s so great, he loses everything, he loses his words! So he keeps singing but just this la la la la la la la la and it gets more and more joyful and builds into this incredible crescendo, it’s so happy, because he’s finally free and he’s lost but he’s free!

  Marijke slept with her rubber boots up on the dash and Wilson wrote in his notebook.

  Hey Wilson, said Sebastian. What are you writing about?

  Nothing, said Wilson. He closed his notebook and put it on the seat beside him.