Irma Voth

by Miriam Toews

I didn’t know that a grown-up could do that, she said. She pointed at the mural. I didn’t know that a person could do that.

  I stared at it with her. She was in some kind of trance. Finally she asked me where Ximena was and I told her about Noehmi and that we should probably get back to her. If I had known more about anything I might have pointed out how Diego Rivera was asking all Mexicans to look squarely at the history of their lives, at the beauty and the misery and the pain and the struggle and the wreckage created by that profligate Cortés. I could have added too that Diego Rivera was completing his mural around the time the seven Mennonite men came to the palace to ask for the land in Chihuahua, now the scabby homeland of Aggie, Ximena and Pancho Villa, and how Mennonites always choose to live in places nobody else wants to.

  Can we come back? said Aggie.

  Of course! I said. As often as you like.

  We snaked our way through the crowd and found Noehmi huddled under a lean- to made of garbage bags and using a flashlight to read her book ‖ And Other Problems in Waking Life. Ximena was fast asleep under Noehmi’s baggy sweater. Noehmi rested her chin on Ximena’s head while she read. There were fireworks going off in the rain. People were banging on pots again and there was sporadic shouting coming from all over the square. We crawled under the lean- to and sat down next to Noehmi and Ximena.

  How was she? I said.

  Perfection, said Noehmi.

  Did she cry a lot? I said.

  No, said Noehmi, hardly at all. I sang Jonathan Richman songs to her.

  Who’s that? said Aggie.

  My hero, said Noehmi. He’s old, like sixty or something, and he still loves the world and when you listen to his music he makes you love it too.

  A guy walked past and said something about a blow job to Noehmi.

  Go fuck yourself with Hitler’s dick, said Noehmi happily. Are you guys hungry?

  Noehmi’s friends weren’t there at that moment but they had cooked up some kind of meat with onions and peppers on a small barbecue they’d brought with them to the square. There are tortillas in that basket over there, she said.

  While Aggie and I ate, Noehmi sang Jonathan Richman songs to all of us. We chewed and smiled and Aggie clapped.

  Where did your friends go? said Aggie.

  To get a camera, said Noehmi. They want to make a documentary about the protest.

  Where are they going to get a camera? I asked.

  I don’t know, said Noehmi. They’ll probably get sidetracked along the way. Or they’ll come back with paint instead, or beer, or some new idea for a circus or something. They’re social anarchists.

  Oh, I said. I looked away. I scratched my arm and racked my brain for a fluid response and then quickly prepared some food.

  Aggie and Noehmi were sleeping with Ximena between them on the tarp beside me. I tore a strip of material off my old dress and tied one end of it to Ximena’s tiny wrist and the other end to Aggie’s. When I lie down, I thought, I’ll tie another strip of the dress from my wrist to Ximena’s other wrist. And maybe one to Noehmi. I hope I don’t wake her up. For a few seconds I thought about my little brothers who loved connecting things with rope. I wondered if I’d ever see them again and a torpedo of sadness struck me and moved straight through my body. Steady on, I said to myself. Earlier, right after the blow job incident, a man offered to buy Ximena, and Aggie pulled a knife on him, the new one that we bought earlier in the day. Noehmi’s friends were called Alexis, Guillen, Dupont and Ernie. They’re wasted, Noehmi told me. They were very nice and would die for her if she asked them to.

  What do you mean wasted? I asked her. She said they were on another plane. She read something out loud to me from her book: Katherine compared the energy of trauma to a cobalt bomb with a radioactive half-life of one hundred years. I asked her what that meant and she said she didn’t know exactly but that she loved the way it sounded. She thought maybe it meant that every trauma presents a choice: paralysis or the psychic energy to move forward.

  Hmmm, perhaps, said Aggie, stroking her chin. I told her in Low German not to make fun of people who were more enlightened than her. She told me she was bored with shitball trauma talk and wanted to see more pictures. I told her to go to sleep and dream some up and she told me those were only words. But she did go to sleep, finally, thank God. After that Noehmi told me about her life. She told me that one year ago she broke up with her boyfriend and life became a nightmare. Her boyfriend was heartbroken. He tried to prevent her from leaving the apartment they shared and he drank non-stop all day and night. When she finally left to go and stay with her sister he somehow hacked into her emails. He suspected that she was seeing someone else and he tried to kill himself with booze and pills. All that stuff, she said. That crazy stuff. But it was desperate behaviour, she said. He had lost something he loved. There’s no dignity in that. How can there be? He was a wild animal, she said. She told me that she still loved him.

  Where is he now? I asked her. She pointed at Guillen and said right there. He’s not my boyfriend anymore, she said. Dupont is. But Guillen has a different girlfriend. She said they were all friends. It was madness. It was awful. But that’s normal. And now it’s better.

  I’m not sure what Noehmi’s friends came back with, no camera anyway, none that I’d seen, but they were outside the lean- to singing now and playing drums in a circle. Other protesters were dancing around to their music and the rain had stopped and the air smelled clean. My desert friends, the stars, were invisible above the bright lights of the city.

  In the middle of the night I untied myself from Aggie and Ximena and got up to find a pay phone. My fists were clenched when I woke up, ready to milk cows or kill kidnappers. Aggie was moaning in her sleep again like she was haunted. Dupont was sleeping next to Noehmi with his arm around her waist and the other boys were gone. The drums were piled neatly in a corner underneath the tarp. I had never used a pay phone before and I only knew one person with a phone. I put my coin in the slot and it fell into a little tray at the bottom. I did this over and over, like an idiot. An old woman walking past noticed that I was having trouble and helped me out. I thanked her and she held my face in her hands and squeezed. I tried to smile and she kissed me on both cheeks. I dialed Jorge’s number and a man answered but it wasn’t Jorge so I hung up. I didn’t know what I would say to him anyway. I checked to see if my coin would come back to me. No. Well, I thought, now I know how a pay phone works. I didn’t want to let go of the phone right away. I held it to my ear and pretended to have a conversation. I wondered if I was going crazy.

  A guy with tattoos all over his body came and stood beside me, staring at the ground, waiting. I told my imaginary husband that I loved him and said goodbye. The man waiting for the phone had the name Esther tattooed across his throat.

  It’s all yours, I said, and he said thanks, I didn’t mean to rush you. I started to walk away and the man said excuse me, but are you Irma Voth? My heart leapt into my throat and I whirled around to face him. How could this dark stranger possibly know my name?

  That didn’t happen.

  I started to walk away and the man said excuse me, you forgot your bag.

  Thanks, I said. I took the tattered farmacia bag from him.

  Are you here alone? he said.

  Yes, I said. Well, no, not alone.

  You are or you aren’t? said the man.

  I’m not, I said.

  That’s good, he said, because it’s dangerous for a woman to be on her own in Mexico City. Especially a tourist like yourself.

  I’m not a tourist, I said.

  You’re from here? he said.

  North of here, I said. But in Mexico.

  I once lived just north of the border, he said. In El Paso.

  I nodded and told him I’d been to El Paso a bunch of times.

  I lived there with this woman, he said. He pointed to his throat.

  Esther, I said.

  Yes, he said. Esther. She’s in Houston now.

  He t
old me that he and Esther had managed to cross the border into Texas by paying off a guard and that they had made their way to El Paso where they both got jobs in a restaurant working under the table. Esther started to like one of the cooks and eventually she ran off with him and married him and even had a kid with him. The tattooed guy parked his car in front of Esther’s new house and spied on her. He cried in his car and tried to get her to love him again by leaving gifts outside her door. Finally the guy she had married got fed up and called the immigration people and told them that this guy, the tattooed guy, was in America illegally and they kicked him out of the country, back to Mexico.

  Now you’re stuck with the tattoo, I said.

  Yeah, he said, at first I wanted to have it removed but that costs a lot of money. I tried to turn it into a different word but I couldn’t think of one.

  In English you could have it say Rest Here, I said.

  It’s okay, he said. Now I’m happy to see the name Esther on my throat every day.

  Because you have good memories? I said.

  No, he said, because it reminds me of this treacherous world. If I’m ever foolish enough again to trust a woman I’ll look at myself in the mirror and see her name and I won’t make another mistake.

  But it’ll be backwards when you look in the mirror, I said.

  It doesn’t matter what it is, he said. I see the ink, I feel the pain of the needle pricking my throat, I see tiny bubbles of blood, and I’m reminded of the day I pledged my love to her.

  There you go, I said. I’m Irma Voth. Pleased to meet you.

  I’m Jeronimo Galvez Paz, he said. Likewise.

  We shook hands and said goodbye.

  When I got back to the tarp Aggie and Ximena were gone. I woke up Noehmi and Dupont and asked them if they knew where my sisters were and they said no, they hadn’t noticed them leave. I stood next to Noehmi and Dupont, who were rubbing their eyes and clearing their throats, and looked in every direction for as far as I could see. It was dark so I saw very little.

  We’ll help you find them, said Noehmi. She told Dupont to get up and find his flashlight.

  Do you have a flashlight? I asked him.

  No, said Dupont. She always expects little miracles of me.

  Let’s go, man, said Noehmi. Why is this ribbon tied around my wrist?

  But then she forgets about them, he said.

  Noehmi and Dupont walked off in one direction, it might have been east, and I went north, or maybe south. The point is we split up and began our search. I could tell you all the things I was feeling but there is one picture that sums it up and that’s the one of that skinny guy running across a bridge holding his face and being chased by a mushroom cloud. My sister Katie had that picture tacked to her bedroom wall and she liked to make word bubbles for the skinny man that had to do with reasons for his panic. One day she ripped it off her wall and stuffed it into her garbage can. She said it was ubiquitous.

  It’s really true that a person can become rigid with fear. I felt my limbs stiffen as I walked across the Zócalo calling out Aggie’s name and imagining one horror after another, each scenario worse than the one before it. I prayed. I made a deal with God, wondering how I could have prevented all of this from happening, and hating myself. I punched myself in the side of my head. Think, Irma, I said. I stopped walking and stood still in the centre of the Zócalo and all of the protesters, sleeping and awake. I scanned the crowd, looking for one white-blond head that would pop out of the darkness like a piece of toast. Okay, I said to myself, how can this even be happening? How can I have lost all of my sisters? This is without a doubt the shittiest moment in the history of my life. Then the words history of my life started to carve some kind of repetitive groove in my brain. I touched the space between my eyes, the source of light, my internal … whatever. What had Marijke told me? The history of my life, I said. The source of my internal … light. This was stupid. And then I knew.

  I ran towards the National Palace at the far end of the Zócalo and found Aggie leaning against the door, asleep, with Ximena in her arms. I woke her up and hugged them both. Aggie hugged me back. We stayed that way for a long time. And then I asked her when the doors opened and Aggie said she didn’t know but if we waited there we’d be the first ones in when they did open.

  I didn’t know where you were, said Aggie. I woke up and you were gone. I freaked out.

  I’m sorry, I said.

  Where did you go? she said.

  I went to find a phone, I said.

  Why? said Aggie. Who would you call?

  I didn’t call anybody, I said.

  Here, said Aggie, can you hold her? My arms are killing me.

  I took Ximena and stuffed her inside my sweatshirt. I rubbed her back a bit and hoped she wouldn’t wake up for a while. I needed to sleep.

  A couple of hours later the doors to the National Palace opened up and Aggie went inside so that she could stare at her mural. I had managed to find Noehmi and Dupont in the meantime to tell them they could stop looking and we had agreed to have breakfast together on the tarp when Aggie was finished looking at art. I waited outside with Ximena and gave her a bottle. We sat in the sunshine and she looked at me while she drank and I scanned the crowds and looked at her every once in a while too and smiled and told her she was holding up well. Are you a little lamb? I asked her. I tried to shield her eyes from the sun. Are you a warrior? I said. I told her I’d find us a real home that day. Somewhere, you know, out there. In the city. This one. It feels good to make plans with a baby. They seem a little more flexible than the plans we make with people who remember making them.

  We all ate a delicious breakfast of eggs and peppers and avocados together in the sunshine on the tarp. Another day of protest had arrived, we had survived the night, and it was time for the three of us to get organized.

  Where do you want to go? said Noehmi.

  I don’t know exactly, I said.

  What kind of job would you like to have?

  I’m not sure, I said. Anything, I guess.

  Do you have enough money for one month’s rent? said Noehmi.

  I’m not sure, I said. We ate our eggs and I silently critiqued my organizational skills. There were lists that I needed to make.

  Do you have a job? I asked Noehmi.

  We’re students, said Noehmi. Most of us still live with our parents.

  What are you students of? I said.

  Art, said Noehmi. Politics. History. Cinematography. Dupont is studying madness in film.

  Me and Irma work in the movie industry, said Aggie.

  We do not work in the movie industry, I said. We helped out on one movie in Chihuahua.

  What movie? said Dupont.

  I think it’s going to be called Campo Siete, I said.

  Who’s making it? said Dupont.

  Diego Nolasco, I said.

  Dupont stopped chewing and looked at me. Really? he said.

  Yeah, I said. Do you know him?

  Are you serious? said Dupont. You were working for Diego Nolasco?

  Yeah, I said. Just as a translator.

  I helped carry things, said Aggie.

  After that Dupont talked for a long time about Diego’s other movies and Aggie and I explained how it was that we had worked for him and Dupont found it all kind of hard to believe but I think we finally convinced him that it was true. Dupont said he sort of knew someone from his university who almost got a job working for Diego and I asked him if that person’s name was Wilson and he said no, it was Roberto. He wanted to know if we were still in touch with Diego and I said no, it had ended a bit awkwardly. He’s a genius, said Dupont. Yes, I said. Noehmi gave us the address of her sister’s husband’s brother who owns a bed and breakfast in Condesa, a different part of Mexico City with a huge park in the centre of it. You could ask him for a job, she said. She said she’d call him and ask him too. You’d be perfect because you can speak English to the tourists and you’d probably be able to carry Ximena around with you
while you clean rooms or whatever.

  We’ll come and visit you, said Noehmi. She gave me another piece of paper with her phone number and address. She lived in a place called Tacubaya, not far from Condesa. She had drawn a picture next to her address for Aggie. It was of the National Palace with me, Ximena and herself standing in front of it. Where’s Aggie? she had written in a word bubble coming from my mouth. In there! she had written in another word bubble coming from her mouth.

  She said she wanted me to have her copy of ‖ And Other Problems in Waking Life. But you haven’t finished reading it yet, I said. She said I could read it in the meantime and she’d start reading another book called The Outsider, which was written by a Frenchman named Albert Camus. He died in a car crash, she said. And the novel he was working on went flying all over the road.

  Do you know Nausea? she asked me.

  Well, I said.

  Jean-Paul Sartre? she said.

  No, I said.

  He was married to Simone de Beauvoir? she said. I’ll bet you’ve heard of her.

  No, I said.

  Well, said Noehmi, she was this really intense woman. She had a passionate affair with an American writer named Nelson Algren. He’s one of my favourite writers. He was mostly a recluse and then one day he decided he should smarten up and celebrate something and he decided to have a party at his place but just before the guests were due to arrive he fell down dead in his house.

  Oh no, I said.

  It’s perfect, she said. But that was long after he had an affair with Simone de Beauvoir. She had fun fooling around with him in America but then she went back to Sartre who treated her like shit. And yet, she said, somehow she managed to inspire women to be free. I was nodding. Isn’t that ironic? she said.

  Yes, I said. It really is.

  One of my favourite books from when I was a young teenager is by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, said Noehmi. It’s called Wind, Sand and Stars. I’ll get it for you, Aggie. It changed my perception of the world. Aggie and I thanked her and Dupont a million times for their friendship and they said we would meet again, soon, maybe after exams, but that we should call any time if we needed anything.